Why Local Techie Women Are Cool

Last month, I attended my second BarCampRDU (@BarCampRDU), a great one-day unconference that covers a very wide range of ad-hoc technology topics. What I love about the unconference is that you meet a ton of new people and get into some great conversations and discussions – the kind that you might have in the hallways [...]

November 6th, 2011 | Tags: RDU, social media, Twitter | Category: Events & Conferences, Social Networking | One comment

Social Media vs Social Networking

For many of you out there, the difference between social media and social networking is not entirely clear. And you may ask, why should it matter? The way we see it, being knowledgeable about subtle differences between the latest technologies, trends, or phenomena is akin to what it was like to be able to point [...]

August 29th, 2010 | Tags: Facebook, LinkedIn, social media, social networking, Twitter | Category: Social Networking | 6 comments

What is Twitter? Three things you need to understand

Twitter, Twitter, Twitter! You hear about it all the time… but what is it? Why is it such a big deal? And why should you use it? Well, it’s actually quite simple….

Twitter is a way to communicate with other people. Yep, that’s all it really boils down to. You post something online and other people can read it. So the obvious question: why do we need yet another way to communicate on the internet? We already send emails, chat over instant messengers (AOL, Yahoo, MSN, etc), post on Facebook, participate in forums, post on blogs, and so on. Well, if you think about each of these tools, you’ll realize that each tool helps us communicate in a slightly different way. This is where Twitter comes in: you can use it to share information and communicate in ways that you never could have before. How so? Well… I could walk you through creating an account and tell you how to use the service — but I don’t think that really explains “what” Twitter is and “why” it is useful. Instead, let me tell you about what makes Twitter a fundamentally different way to [...]

March 14th, 2010 | Tags: communication, social media, Twitter | Category: Social Networking | 7 comments