Let me start by saying this. If you are still using Hotmail or Yahoo or any other type of web-based (or even worse: non-web based!) program that is not Gmail, finish reading this post and then go SIGN UP!

Google is one of those companies of which I am truly in awe. (Facebook, Twitter, Apple, AIM, are others that come to mind). Google’s products have COMPLETELY revolutionized our lives. Gmail, Google’s web-based mail application, simply BROKE THE MOLD and shifted the way we think about e-mail communications.

The first example of Gmail’s uniqueness I can think of at the moment is the threaded conversation feature, which has made it easier to follow the life of an e-mail. And the second is its chat feature within the mail client.

In fact, GChat is to this second era of the internet what American Online and American Instant Messenger were to the first. (And, as I wrote in October, it has helped bring about the convergence of our offline and online identities.) People you e-mail a certain number of times get added to the list of people you can chat with. And there are different ways to alert those people to your availability: you can be available to talk, idle if you’re away from the computer, ask people not to message you if you are busy and, lastly, you can “go invisible”. This last status allows you to view and message your contacts without allowing them to do the same.

In the past few weeks I’ve had several experiences which have led me to the creation of my first rule for GChat: I do not talk to those who have made themselves invisible. Why, you ask?

To begin, I consider myself to be a compassionate and loyal friend who stands by and supports the people she cares about. And, truly, I expect nothing less from the people that I allow to be a part of my life. Yes, those words were chosen carefully – being a part of my life and commanding my friendship are privileges.

When someone is “invisible” it means that they can contact me if they need me, but I can’t contact them to do the same. It ruins any chance at a reciprocal relationship which makes it inherently selfish. And that’s the sort of thing that I just can’t tolerate from those around me.

Listen, folks, I know it seems like such a trivial thing to get caught up in, but I think it’s a small thing that reflects a person’s general personality and that’s why it bothers me. 

But, let me turn it over to you. How do you feel about “invisible” people on GChat? Do you yourself have rules for GChat?

I have recently been receiving quite a bit of traffic to this website from those who have specific questions about Facebook functionalities. If YOU are one of those people, I am more than happy to do my best to answer your question. To do so, simply submit it here.

If you’ve talked to me lately, you’ve probably heard about my frustration with Facebook status updates.

When the updates were first added as a Facebook feature during the Spring of 2006, the site was still only open to those with .edu addresses.

In fact, I distinctively remember first discovering status updates. I accidently put “Julie is Jeff’s” rather than “Julie is at Jeff’s” as one of my first statuses. They were that new that it was before I instinctively translated my thoughts into third-person snippets and formatted them to fit the “Julie is…” standard. I didn’t catch the error until Jeff pointed it out to me. And I remember being hugely embarrased by my Freudian slip. But I digress…

In the Spring of 2006, Facebook was still unknown to the general public and only used by college students. Status updates were to social networks what away messages had been to Instant Messaging services… And users weren’t afraid to push boundaries and include “not-for-adult-eyes” content since, well, there weren’t any adult eyes to see it.

But, here we are, three years later, and the landscape of social networks has obviously changed. Our safe playground is no more.

Currently, my status updates can only be seen by my “wide inner circle”… I’m still defining what that means, and I promise it’s the subject of a half-written blog post on Facebook privacy, but let’s just say that these are the people who are my “friends” and/or my high school and college classmates. Family members, colleagues and professional contacts compromise the majority of those excluded. Now, let’s be honest, as someone whose profession is the mastery of social media, I understand the consequences associated with anything created online – whether it has been restricted to certain users or not. As a result, my updates have evolved to be, for the most part, pretty benign. But I still don’t think my colleauges need to know when I’ve had a late night out and am struggling to keep up in the morning. (Not that I do that… frequently.)

But, by restricting these updates, I’m effectively limiting the power of Facebook since the focus of the site has shifted to exactly this feature  in the latest redesign. And the whole thing is compounded by the fact that Status and Shared Link privacy is a single control (also the subject of an upcoming blog post). Everyone who can’t see my statuses also can’t see my shared links. Let’s take a step back and think about this – a lot of the content I’m sharing on Facebook is local, since that’s what affects my daily life. Now, guess which of my Facebook contacts would benefit most from this content? Would it be the high school and college classmates who have now scattered all over the country, or would it be my colleagues and professional contacts who are DC-based? You see what I’m getting at?

So why not just give in, realize that Facebook has evolved, and open up my status to everyone? Well, because, that’s not how I’ve chosen to use Facebook. Instead, that’s how I leverage the power of my Twitter account. I use Twitter primarily in a professional capacity, sharing useful links and remembering that I must be well-behaved and well-spoken at all times. My Facebook friends DON’T CARE about developments in my industry. They want to know what’s happening in my personal life – presicely the information that my professional contacts don’t need to see…

What it comes down to is that I’m struggling, as is everyone else, to find a balance between managing my personal and business contacts. And when things are so interwoven (since you can bet that everyone in the Social Media space is on Facebook), things aren’t so easy.

Digsby is a program that integrates instant messaging, e-mail notifications and social networking actions. I downloaded Digsby a little over a month ago, and never expected that I would come to love / rely on it as much as I have….

Here are my TOP FIVE* reasons for being a “raving fan” of Digsby:

1. I can be online with multiple screen names from multiple services. That means I can be signed onto several GChat accounts AND with several AIM names AND facebook chat. (It also supports MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, and Jabber, but I don’t use any of those…)
2. It manages my instant messages and notifies me when I get new e-mails as well as updates to my twitter feeds and activity from my linkedin and facebook contacts!
3. Just like me, all my friends have multiple accounts (AIM, GMail, Facebook) – Here, I can merge them into one “contact”. (Yay for no duplicates!)
4. My chat history is saved, which is pretty much a standard feature of instant messaging clients nowadays, but what I love even more is that for GChat, my chat history is saved within GMail, just as it would have been had I been using GChat itself.
5. I can sort my buddy list in a variety of ways. I’m still playing around to find the best way to sort my buddy list… I’m torn between sorting by status (available, idle, away) and then by name OR sorting by status and then by service (GMail, AIM).

*I started writing down ALL the reasons I love Digsby but then the post got too long and boring, but EVERY DAY I discover some new little trick that makes me appreciate the program more and more.

Hopefully, I’ve convinced you to check it out. It’s really a great tool! (For those already using Digsby, I’d be interested in hearing tips and tricks you’ve learned or if you have any gripes you’d like to share…)

me (12:24:35 PM): “wehn the cat’s out of town, the mice come out to play”
my friend (12:24:49 PM): when the cats away the mice will play

I hope everyone enjoys my version of the saying. Good thing I have friends like Andrea who also sit online all day to help me figure out what I’m trying to say. I was telling her that my boss and the other person in my department are both out on vacation today and all of next week, so I feel like I should somehow take advantage of this situation. The thing is that I’m really lucky and work independently even when they are here, so it’s not a major change. But still, it’s that same feeling as when your parents go out of town and you are dying to have a huge party because you can, but people aren’t around, or there’s something else going on. And it feels like a wasted opportunity. As a result, I’m updating this from work, which isn’t something I would usually do, so at least I’m doing something.

The other thing that’s been making me laugh recently is the AIM and internship relationship. I have friends who are scared to sign online, and others who literally just sit at work and have conversations all day. I’m somewhere in between. I believe in the philosophy of, “it’s better to ask forgiveness, then permission”. If they have a problem with it, they’ll let me know. At my old job, everyone was always online and it was a good way of communicating rather than sending a thousand short e-mails. Here, I just found out one of my co-workers’ screen name yesterday… It’s a little embarrasing when a IM pops up while someone is at my cubicle, but hey, it happens.