Tag Archives: Facebook

Social Curation, the last frontier

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People are talking so much these days about social curation, or social media curation, or social content curation, or however you want to call it. And it is obvious that it is the next step in social on the net.

There are a few services that let you ‘curate’ content in a social way. The first one is Pinterest, which is a new platform that lets you interact with others so everyone contributes to the social curation and the result is outstanding in terms of content accuracy for people like you and me; they (Pinterest) have triggered all this social curation crazyness, the term has been coined thanks to them.

Youtube has made recent changes on the platform; at the beginning I thought some of them were a flop, but given some time I think those changes are ok for the platform (most of them). The main change related to social curation are Youtube playlists, which are just lists of similar videos. Everyone can create a playlist, and although they existed before the change, they have promoted them a bit with it (seems like the Pinterest effect is not just taking over Facebook).

Facebook has included some sort of content lists, but as I’m not very into Facebook, I don’t know how they work.

In sum, seems like now we are prosumers and there’s a new duty for us: we create content, we comment and consume content, and now we can easily curate content, or at least contribute to its curation. So much fun!

How to become popular on deviantART

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Now here comes a long post. Hope ya like it. DeviantART is one of my favorite places on the net, with lots of drawings and paintings made by people like you and me. I visit dA almost every day, to check what’s a trending topic, for instance, on the net, and to amuse myself with wonderful paintings. I’m not on the ‘become popular on dA’ run now, but I’ve studied what people with many views on their profiles have in common and I’m explaining it here.

Here are some points that will help you out become popular on deviantART:

  • Make good art. This is not necessary but I had to say it first (LOL). Art is a subjective matter; I’ve checked which pages on dA have more visits and trust me, Kerem Beyit has few pageviews compared to people who make silly webcomics or silly fanarts.
  • Make deviantART your headquarters on the net. When you start a profile on deviantART you’ll find out that you’ll be given a subdomain like myname.deviantart.com. This means that, for Google (as far as I know), your profile is an entire new page, as Google treats subdomains like standalone pages. So point people to that website first and all around the net; if you’re using a signature in a forum, place that URL instead of others; tell your friends about that URL. You have a blog there so you can populate it with stuff instead of making another blog… In sum, make dA your headquarters on the net.
  • Choose your name or a pseudonim and stick to it. Make your name or your pseudonim an easy way people can identify your work on the net. Sign your artwork with that name always, and use it everytime you write down anything on the net. A name is like a brand, you must make people recognise it and make it valuable and trustful.
  • Make just art. Many people have a blog, then they have some videos on Youtube, then they have their Facebook account, then they have a Tumblr, because they make art, music, videos, games, and other stuff (like me). dA works better for people who just makes painted art, like a painter or a manga artist. If you are a multi-talented artist, perhaps dA won’t work as desired.
  • Respond to every single comment anyone posts on an artwork you made. When you exchange comments with another person, an emotional tie appears between you and that other person. If becoming popular means making a lot of people believe that your art is interesting, then the more emotional ties you make the more friends you’ll have and they will more likely comment or help you on your duty. For instance, Pikiru, an emerging young artist on dA, which has more than 500,000 views on her profile, doesn’t leave a comment without an answer. You can ask her about whatever stupid thing you may think; she will answer (I’ve exchanged comments with her like three or four times already and believe me, that’s true).
  • Be active on the community. Comment, give feedback, know interesting people. Watch people.
  • Make friends, not enemies. This suggestion is tied to the previous one. Don’t tell anybody ‘your art is bad’ because you’ll make an enemy and he/she will do the same to you. Try to make as many friends as possible.
  • Make fanarts. I’m not into this so much but, if you’re stuck on getting views from your creations, make fanarts. This will help people place your art on their minds and recognise what you’re doing and what you like.
  • Fanart for fanart. Make a couple friends on dA (they can be real-life friends if you have them) and tell them to make fanarts of your OCs (original characters) and in return make fanarts out of their original characters too. This will make your characters become ‘more popular’ or at least look like if they were popular!

So, if you follow these steps, I don’t know where you’ll go, but I’m sure they will help you out. These are some profiles on dA which I follow or I know they’ve got many visits, you can judge for yourself if they deserve them or not (LOL):

Pikiru – http://pikiru.deviantart.com/
Kerem Beyit – http://kerembeyit.deviantart.com/
RainCookie – http://raincookie.deviantart.com/
Wen-M – http://wen-m.deviantart.com/
ArtGerm – http://artgerm.deviantart.com/
PhoenixLu – http://phoenixlu.deviantart.com/

There’s life beyond Facebook

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Finally, Facebook has found its own rival, its own “pain in the neck”. You know, Facebook is a pain in the neck for Google, and now… Pinterest is a pain in the neck for Facebook.

I personally didn’t like Facebook much. You know, when you get older it is more difficult to find a game in which you have to grow vegetables funny and all friend-shared-content amusing. People I found interesting from my friends didn’t update; instead, I got many updates I din’t like from other friends. The problem with Facebook is that it doesn’t take into account your… let’s say… Pinterests.

That’s why I feel this new social network called Pinterest is promising, because it takes care of your interests, which is far more useful than receiving silly updates. Plus, Mark Zuckerberg should be watching this social network close, because it could burst his plans, especially the Facebook IPO plans. I thought Mark was clever enough to see that he wouldn’t always be the king of the world, and made a mistake by delaying the Facebook IPO. Now that they got a new ‘friend’ it might be more difficult to sell a share and his horizon as king of the known world may dilute, so his company might be less valuable… Zynga has got down after a couple months on the stock market and this could also be the future of Facebook… Let’s see what happens.

A click away is so far away

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This post is dedicated to all the people who want to upload a piece of content to the web and want to promote it. As we are all basically prosumers now (we all upload content), perhaps you’re interested. Keep on reading.

My experience as a 10 year webmaster tells me something: if you want people to find your content, a click away is so far away. Put the content (or the service you are providing) when they have to make no further clicks to find it. For instance, if you are promoting an online game, don’t take people to a beautiful landing page; if the game is free and is online, take them to the game itself. People get bored easily, and if they don’t find what they’re looking for in a click or less, they’ll quit searching.

Plus, if the content is hosted by a well-known service provider and you are sharing a link to it, take them to the better known hosting provider first. For instance, perhaps you have a Youtube video embedded on your website; but if you are to share the link (maybe on Facebook?), share the www.youtube.com/?w=… instead of www.yourdomain.com/mycontent. Why? Because they will trust Youtube, and perhaps your site is not very well known. People will more likely click on something that will take them to a page they already know rather than clicking on something they don’t know.