I used to think a hashtag was a crocht ball that hipster boys kicked around in their bare feet.

Apparently that’s a hacky sack.

Did you know the 33rd anual World Hacky Sack Championship will be in Poland this year?

I don’t know of any hashtag conventions, but you never know.

I’ll keep you posted.

Anywho, let’s get back on topic.

A hashtag is just a way to tag a conversation. It’s mostly used in Twitter. If you see it in Facebook, chances are someone is using an application like Tweet Deck to post the same information in both locations.

Hashtags were created for general organization and public discovery. Anyone can create a hashtag by adding a pound sign (looks like this #) in front of a converstion.

Except for Prince.

Can you imagine if he was still The Artist Formerly know as Prince?

Then we would be using a hashag symbol with another symbol, and then just everyone would be confused.

Whew! So glad he figured out his true identity.

When using a hashtag, you have to remember that you want people to find your post when searching by the topic you tag. So, if you are posting on Twitter about Ice Cream, you would type #IceCream, not #Ice Cream. The latter would only make “Ice” searchable, and let’s be honest. No one likes a party with just ice.

In terms of capitol or lower case letters, there are no rules. However, if I capitalize the “I” and “C” in #IceCream, it does make the hashtag a little bit easier to read, rather than just plain #icecream.

(Not to be confused with plain ice cream, as in no flavor.)

Oftentimes, companies will host or sponsor Twitter parties, and you will see hashtags used in posts where some are about the topic, and others really have nothing to do with what the hashtag is about. You can always click on the hashtag anyway to join in the fun, or try starting your own conversation with a new hashtag.

(I think we better have another post explaining Twitter parties.)

When a specific hashtag is used over and over again, it may become a Twitter Trending Topic.

Here’s the topics that wer hot when I sat down to write this post yesterday:

Twitter trends can be just about anything. A person, a place, or even a product.

If you look above, you will see a yellow arrow describing “GetCurveAppeal” as a Promoted Trend. Even though no one owns a hashtag,  Twitter will sell that top spot to companies so that their hashtag is placed above popular trends. Twitter users interact with Promoted Trends the same way they interact with any other Trending Topic.

Promoted Trends are different than Promoted Tweets. Promoted Tweets are ordinary Tweets purchased by advertisers who want to reach a wider group of users, or to spark interest  from their existing followers. If you look below, FAGEUSA is paying for a Promoted Tweet, and it appears on my suggested following list.

Whether it’s a Promoted Trend, or a Promoted Tweet, both utilize hashtags to make their topic searchable.

(On a side note, if you are wondering why my twitter page is tan instead of the typical bird blue, it’s just a setting I changed within my account.)

So… ready to give hashtags a try? Go to your Twitter account and do a search for #Tech4Moms. There you will find all the tweets that have references to out site. Just remember, if you want to talk to us directly, you need to type @Tech4Moms.

@ is talking to someone or something, # is about that thing or about that person.

Got it? Good luck!

Someone on Google+ shared this image… I’ll give you a minute to figure it out…

With Google+ coming on the scene recently, and Facebook, and Twitter, and LinkedIn, and etc and etc and etc.  It’s easy to become overwhelmed with all of the various features and networks of each individual social networking site.  For someone like me, it’s actually important for me to be involved in as many as possible.  I want to be where the people need my information, and let’s face it… EVERYONE needs my information…. right?  For the everyday person, though it’s more about choosing the RIGHT social network for your needs, and going with that.  So let me break down some reasons that you may want to be on each of the following social networks… and believe me, there are a lot more than what is on this list.  Today I’m just focusing on the big 3…(with a little Google+ thrown in)

Facebook – The LARGEST social networking site.  With over 750 Million users, you are bound to find most everyone you want to share with on Facebook.  I typically restrict Facebook friends to people I have actually met in real life.  I feel like on Facebook is where I communicate with the people that I know.  I also use Facebook to communicate with brands.  It’s a great place to see the walls between business and consumer come down on Facebook.

Twitter – Ah, my little status length challenged friend.  If you think in 140 characters, then Twitter is going to be a great tool for you.  You may wonder why it’s limited to 140 characters?  That is the approximate length of a text message.  Early stages of Twitter wanted to make it mobile friendly and allow you to see status updates of people you followed in your text messages on your phone.  Today?  I don’t really see a ton of people subscribed to anyone’s Twitter feed within the message app on their phone.

LinkedIn – Looking for a job?  Want to communicate and share with other professionals in your field?  Want some serious business to business communication?  Looking to hire someone?  LinkedIn is the place for you!  With your profile acting as more of an online resume, LinkedIn is the place that professionals go to make things happen.  There are groups on LinkedIn for just about anything.  Join a group like the Geeky Girls group I’m in to discuss topics you are passionate about.

Google+ – I said last week that Google+ is when Facebook and Twitter had a baby.  A friend of mine recently asked in Google+ why she couldn’t post on a friend’s “wall”.  I had to be a smart aleck and say “Because this isn’t Facebook”, but it’s totally true.  Don’t try to make Google+ Facebook, because it isn’t.  It’s a completely different way of consuming information and sharing information.  I get to pick what I see, and who I see it from.  If I don’t have you in one of my circles, I won’t see what you are posting, if you don’t have me in your circles, you don’t have to see what I’m posting.  Google+ is about seeing the content you want to see.  It has allowed for a higher level of sharing and better content really.  When I go to post a status on Google+, I actually think about it, because I feel like I can’t post a status about what I did last weekend.  It needs to be good!

Tomorrow we’ll discuss some of the lesser known networks!

Today we’re going to dig into some of the other great features of Google+.  Specifically Huddles and Hangouts.

Hangouts – First up is the group video chat feature of Google+ called a Hangout.  Essentially, I can click “Start Hangout” and if you are following me, a notification will come into your stream that I am “hanging out”.  Up to 9 more people can come join me in my hangout and talk.

One thing that is great about this is that if I’m bored and feel like talking to anyone, I can start a hangout and whoever else wants to join me can hop on and join.  It’s less threatening than requesting to video chat with you specifically.  Also the fact that 10 people can hang out together at any given time is a great way to collaborate.  I’ve always been very much an “in person” kind of talker.  I hate the phone, and love texting and face to face interaction. 

You can start the hangout and share it only with specific circles, because you don’t want your work friend dropping by a conversation you are having with all of your siblings!  There are two places you can specify which circles you want to “hangout” with.  When you start the hangout you can choose which circles, and then after you can invite specific circles from within the hangout.

Next up is a Huddle.  This is available on the Android version of Google+.  A Huddles is basically a text message group.  You can have a Huddle for your Girl”s Night Out friends, which will make it much easier to coordinate the next event.  Basically if you have a group of people you text on a regular basis, this part of Google+’s Android app will make that task oh so much easier. 

This is just more proof that Google is serious about helping you share content with the people that want to receive it.  Google is giving you the tools you need to communicate and share via text or video chat with a group of people that care about the same things instead of the one to one interaction we are used to.

While Facebook and Twitter gave us access to brands, Google+ is giving us access to the people behind the brands.  Michael Dell regularly creates hangouts (that fill up in split seconds), and I see more and more “important” people becoming so much more accessible through this service.  Time will tell if that will change as the masses (see: spammers) join in and ruin it for the rest of us.

A few of my friends have recently asked “So what IS Google+?”  Then a friend of mine who is already ON Google+ posted yesterday “OMG, GOOGLE+!!!! I DO NOT GET YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1”  So I decided some serious tutorials were in order, in addition to the review I have already posted.  Plus, (no pun intended), I’ve been using the service some more, and have really liked what it’s got to offer.

This week will be all about how to do stuff in Google+, from getting your feet wet to being fully engaged in the community.  I’m writing all of these posts in advance, since I probably won’t have much time while I’m hanging out with my BFF, CEO of Dell, Michael Dell (OK, so he’s not my BFF, but a geeky girl can dream, right?)

I feel like Facebook and Twitter got together and had a child, they named it Google+.  What Google+ is, is the best features of both Twitter and Facebook combined for my sharing and consuming joy.  On Twitter, I share public status updates.  I follow people I don’t know, people I don’t know Follow me.  I’m OK with this, because I wouldn’t share anything private on Twitter.  On Facebook, I only accept people as friends that I have met in real life.  I share more private information because I know every single one of my friends.  With Google+ I can have circles for sharing content that is private, and I can make a status update public, so that the people I don’t know who follow me can see those as well.  It’s really the best of both worlds.  At this time I don’t see it overtaking Facebook, but I think Twitter needs to watch it’s back.

First things first, you need to be “invited” to use Google+ right now.  If you are still looking for an invite, make sure to hit me up on Facebook, Twitter or even right here in the comments.  All I need is your email address, and you can come to the party! 

As soon as that invite hits your inbox, and you click on it, you will be taken to Google+’s login screen.  Go ahead and enter your basic information, and make sure to click “Add Photo” so I can take a look at that pretty face.  The mystery face is nice and all, but I’d rather talk to a person than a shadow.

The next thing I want you to do is to fill out your profile.  You may want to skip ahead and start adding people to your circles (we’ll get to that later), but I want you to fill out as much profile data as you can.  When people add me to a circle, the first thing I do is check out their profile to see if I’d like to follow them back.  Don’t worry if none of this is making sense.  It will.

If you already skipped ahead, the first thing you should do is click on the profile icon and select “Edit Profile”.  The “about” field can be pretty lengthy, so go nuts… tell your life story, tell me your hopes and dreams, have fun! 

Next we’re going to dive right in to circles.  Since that is the next area you should set up.  You can go as compartmentalized as you want, or leave it broad.  Circles are groups of people that you will share information with.  Each of your contacts probably fits into a circle in your own life.  So there can be a circle for your work friends, a circle for high school friends, circles for your blogging friends.  If you generally want to share information with all of your friends, then you can just lump everyone into a “friends” circle.  For me, though, I’m probably not going to share something I learned about blogging with my work friends, and I won’t share something about work with my high school friends.  It’s just easier to make the circles just like the compartments of your life.  Don’t worry, you can add people to more than one circle too.  So I have a friend at work, that is also a good friend of mine, and also a “church friend” of mine.  She’s in several of my circles. 

Next, I have circles just for people I follow.  Such as celebrities, tech news folks like Mashable, and corporate executives that I like to follow.  Likely these people will not follow me back, and I’m ok with that.  I just want to read their content, they don’t really need to know that my kid lost her tooth. 

Now I also have a circle called inbox.  This circle is limited to the people I absolutely want to read if they post a status update.  It’s mostly comprised of actual real life friends of mine, and a couple of my favorite “following” people.  My other circle is the “firehose” which is the rest of my following people, and then maybe some friends of mine, who I don’t care too much when they post an update.  When I’m short on time I’ll go straight to the inbox.  When I have some more time I’ll check out what’s going on in the firehose. 

This is a great way to set up your circles so you are always reading the content you want to read in the time frame you have to work with.  Then when you share you can select to share with all of your friends, or your more compartmentalized group of friends. 

The rest of this week we’ll dig into some of the other features like hangouts, huddles and sparks… oh my!

News from the folks over in Palo Alto had the interwebs in a buzz yesterday!  Facebook held a live press conference over the web yesterday at 10 AM PST.  Mark Zuckerberg started the announcement with a background on trends they are seeing, and what they predict will happen over the next few years.

Zuckerberg spoke about how at first it was more about the numbers, and increasing the amount of users on Facebook.  He mentioned that they hit 750 million users, but they didn’t make a big deal out of it.  Basically he said that connecting people is the old mentality.  Most everyone is already connected.  Now that the infrastructure is in place, and the connections are mostly built the next phase is sharing.  He said that people are sharing things at an exponential rate.  We are sharing twice as much this year as we did last year, and twice as much as they year before, and it’s just continuing to grow.  4 billion things are shared every day according to Zuckerberg.

Which leads to his announcement about 3 new features of Facebook.  First up is Group Chat.  I know this has been around for a little while, within actual facebook groups, but now what it means is that you can invite a few of your friends to join into a chat at once.  Not within an acutal Facebook group setting.  So I can chat with my friends Therese and Danielle just like in the old days when we were all on Windows Live Messenger!  Hey girls… are your shoes on? 

Second up is the new design for chat.  He said that most people have the screen real estate to run a whole chat bar on the side, and they are going to use that space to make starting a chat much easier.

The last super big announcement was that Facebook has partnered with Skype to offer video calling from within Facebook.  The applet is really easy to use also.  You can go to a friend’s profile, and if they are online you can click on the Call button at the top right of your screen.  You can also open the chat bar, double click on the friend’s name and then click the little video camera icon within the chat window. What your friend will see is a little pop up message that you want to call them, and you can accept the call and install the applet yourself with just a couple easy clicks.

To get started with Video Calling now just go to http://www.facebook.com/videocalling and find out more information!

What Zuckerberg made clear was that Facebook will continue to focus on the social infrastructure and then partner with companies that are best in class to bring additional features to the table.  They don’t want to try and do everything themselves like some other internet companies (ahem Google ahem).  The other super interesting thing he said (while never really directly mentioning Google or Google+ in either the previous statement or this next one… is that while limited sharing (he’s talking about Google+’s circles here, indirectly) is a nice feature to have, and one that Facebook actually already has put in place (although it’s just not as intuitive as the Google+ Circles), Facebook has found that not many people are interested in that functionality.  I’m not sure if it’s just because it’s difficult to use in Facebook, but I have found that to be the case as I share things within Google+.  My default is Public for most of my sharing in Google+.  Once a majority of my friends and family are also in Google+, I’d probably limit some things I share to those specific circles, but I’d say for the most part I wouldn’t utilize super in depth circles to limit my sharing.  We love the Google+ Circles, but how many of us will actually use them to limit sharing on a very specific level?  Food for thought…

Anyway, if  you’d like to watch the whole press conference  yourself, I’ve embeded it below!  It is pretty interesting!

Seems like right on top of the heels of Google+’s release, Facebook has opened up Facebook messages.  While I know they have been beta testing this technology for a while, it does seem to be released in response to Google+ (to me).  When you update your status on Google+, the people who are not members of Google+ that you have added to your circles will receive an email about your status update.  Integrating with Gmail is a big perk for many Google+ users.  Now it has come to Facebook with Facebook Messages.

When you login to Facebook over the next few days, you may see several “new” messages waiting for you on the page.  When you click the notification bar to see the messages you’ll get a message asking if you would like to enable Facebook Messages and to approve the username.  Since I have already chosen organizedmom as my personal facebook account username (my other Page is www.facebook.com/TheOrganizedMom ), it chose organizedmom@facebook.com as my Messages email address.

I decided to do a little test run, and composed an email to organizedmom@facebook.com.  I wanted to check out the speed of the message delivery, and how it would look within Facebook.  I have to say.  I really like the new functionality.  The message was delivered to my Facebook account very quickly, and I was able to reply to the message even quicker.  There is a little box at the bottom of the message where I could type in my reply.  Right under the text box is a checkbox.  When checked all you have to do is press the Enter key for the message to send.  If you are in the habit of typing paragraphs, then you might want to uncheck it so you can press enter without the message sending right away.  When you uncheck the box, a handy little “reply” button will pop up for you to click when you are done typing all of the paragraphs you want.  Another really great feature is that you can attach pictures or files to the message, right from Facebook.

Lastly, you can integrate text messages into messages.  If I open a new message in Facebook to my husband I can click the little checkbox and have it send him a text message too.  I definitely type much faster on my computer, and being able to send a text from my computer on Facebook is a great piece of functionality.

So, definitely go check it out, and claim your facebook.com email address today!  All I need now is an @dell.com and an @microsoft.com email address and my life will be complete.

I was lucky enough to score an invite to Google+.  This is Google’s latest attempt at a social network to try and rival the powerhouse that is Facebook.  It’s still very much in the beta stage (meaning that the program isn’t quite ready to go out to the world, and will still have many bugs).  Last time they tried it was with Google Buzz, and I listed the pros and cons of that system, stating that unless it had some serious business capabilities it wasn’t going to catch on.  It didn’t.  I think Google is learning a little bit every time they try their hand at this.

Lesson #1 – Opt in.  When Buzz came out, if you had a gmail account, you were almost automatically opted into it.  This didn’t sit well with people.  They like the control of adding who and what they want.  This time, it’s an additional service you sign up for.

Lesson #2 – Exclusivity.  If anything can be learned from Facebook’s launch is that it was cool because it was exclusive at first.  Then they kept allowing more and more schools to join, then they started allowing more people and more people, until finally it was open to everyone.  Being exclusive feels like you are one of the cool kids if you are on the system.  They did this with gmail when it first launched.  You had to have an invite in order to get a gmail account.  They definitely learned from that and Google+ is the same way now.  This means all of the geeks are clamoring for an invite.

Lesson #3 – Specific Sharing – One thing that really made people mad about Buzz was that automatically if I sent one email to a person they became my “friend”.  What people like about Facebook is the double opt in for friends.  This one still doesn’t quite have that DOUBLE opt-in, since I can pretty much follow anyone I want (as long as their profile isn’t private, I think), but what I can do is only share information with specific groups of people.  So you have a “Circle”, and you can add contacts to the circle.  You can create different circles for different areas of your life.  So I have a group of girlfriends I go out with every so often.  I can have all of them in a circle so if I want to set up another girl’s night out, I can just send an update to that circle.  You can also add people to more than one circle, so my girls night out friends can also be in “friends”.  I can have a circle of work friends and church friends, etc.  You can pick what information you share goes to which circle, or you can select all your circles and go for it.

THE GOOD

So the things I like about Google+ so far is definitely the circles.  Very easy to add people and compartmentalize them.  I really like how in my profile I can add all of the places I’ve lived, which is quite a few, and see it on a map.  If someone is looking for me, and they knew me from when I lived in Florida, they can see on my map, yep, this is the same Sarah that lived in Florida.

I also like how I can easily view updates from just specific people in those circles.  On the main page you can click on “Friends” and only view updates and links from those people who you have included in your Friends circle.  That is one gripe I have with Facebook sometimes.  I just want to see my friends status updates sometimes.  I don’t want to see all of the pages that I like when I don’t have time.  So here I can easily filter out exactly what I want to see.

The photos page also looks incredible.  You don’t lose image quality when you upload pictures.  You can even have a setting on your phone so that as soon as you take a picture it automatically gets uploaded to your profile.

The profile page is really fun too, in that I can see any websites that I’ve +1′d (speaking of… go ahead and click the +1 for me on the right hand side of the page… kthxbye!)  I also like that you can add links to the right side of your profile, which will actually bring in the favorite icon, so people can see all of the websites that I own, which is many.

THE BAD

Now even though I really like circles, I which there was more of a way to share the circles.  Like I have added everyone to my girls night out circle, but someone else may not have added all the same people.  If I send a message to that group, and then someone else sends a message to that group some people may not get everything depending on how everyone’s circles are set up.  Also, my friends at Livid Lobster… I know everyone has already set up a Livid Lobster circle.  It would be nice if we could all just use the same circle that ONE person set up.  much like Twitter lists, and how I can follow someone else’s list.

Another area I believe it is lacking is usability for companies and corporations.  Truthfully I don’t see companies switching to this anyway, as most have already built their following on Facebook, and would not like to reinvent the wheel and start over on a brand new system.  That is one thing where Facebook completely excels!  The interaction between brand and consumer has improved like never before because of Facebook and I just see that continuing on Facebook, and not here.

This is probably because the system is so new, and so it may be a bug, but it’s almost impossible to find someone.  Even a friend of mine who I invited to Google+, I can’t seem to find anywhere to add them to my circle, and I know they have joined.

So right now, it’s very simple.  The user interface is nice and clean and the circles are just fun.  So when it opens up again some more (invites have been closed again), you may want to give it a try, or maybe not.  I really don’t see it overtaking Facebook anytime soon, even with a big name like Google.

You see people post on Facebook with hyperlinks to people and pages on Facebook all the time, yet you don’t know HOW to do it!  Facebook has actually made it pretty easy for you now (if not somewhat annoying).  Now if you just start typing a friends name their profile will come up, you can click on it, and instant hyperlink.  The reason I call it annoying is that every time I’m typing the word the my friend Therese pops up.  Hi Therese! 

Tagging pages though, still goes by the old method.  When you are writing in your status simply type @ and then start typing the name of the page you are trying to tag.  Such as @Tech (and then my page should pop up if you “like” my page).  Next you just click on the page you are trying to tag, and voila!  Hyperlink! 

Thank you to BING Social Search for sponsoring my post about social media. I was selected for this sponsorship by the Clever Girls Collective, which endorses Blog With Integrity, as I do.

I remember signing up for a Facebook account. Then I remember doing NOTHING with said Facebook account for pretty much about a year. I never really got into MySpace, and wasn’t too sure what Facebook was all about. My husband had a MySpace page, and I did too, but I just never liked it that much. So my Facebook account lay dormant. What the heck is this whole “wall” thing? I just didn’t get it. So then one day in September 2008, I was trying to promote something with my Daily Home Planner software, and my friend Brendan said that he’d post about it on his Facebook. I think there was a light bulb above my head at that moment. I could USE Facebook to promote my business?? Genius!

So I started to use Facebook, I found friends to add and started communicating with people again that I haven’t seen in a while. I loved being able to catch up with friends I had recently left in California when we moved to Utah, and even more fun was finding people I haven’t talked to in YEARS. I even pulled out my old journals so I could find people I had even forgot I knew.

I have never been much of a phone person. I can’t stand just sitting on the phone talking to someone, even when I love the person to pieces. Facebook has allowed me to stay in contact with all the friends I have and would have lost touch with!

The other way Social Media has changed my life, is the way it has brought businesses and consumers closer together. For the first time ever there is a real live person to interact with at large corporations. The circle of friends we talk to about products and experiences from companies has grown exponentially. This also means that the way I promote my own business and interact with my own customers has changed dramatically as well.

Across the board communication has improved on all levels. From communication between me and old/new friends, to communication between consumers and corporations everyone has something to say, and there are more people willing to listen.

If you haven’t quite gotten into Twitter yet, I’m here to tell you what it’s really all about.  So many people sign up for a Twitter account, not really knowing what it’s about or how to use it effectively.  Twitter is NOT just a simplified Facebook status update.  It’s a tool to allow you to have conversations with other people all over the world!  Things on Twitter can evolve so incredibly quickly that you would be amazed.  You can get excellent customer service through Twitter, that is extremely fast, and you could even create and coordinate a real/fake conference (more on that in a second). 

So here’s my rules for following people or following them back.  If they follow me, and I check their stream (the line of status updates that they have created) and the entire thing is just them tweeting out their latest blog post or promoting something of theirs I will not follow them back.  I don’t want to be a spam receptacle.  If I see that they actually have conversations then I will follow them back.  I like to talk to other people on Twitter, and the fact that they are joining in the conversation makes me think that they will likely talk to me too.

So my number one Twitter tip to get followers and to become a Pro at Twitter is to just jump into the conversation.  If someone posts a status update, comment on it (if you have something relevant to say).  If you see a conversation between two of your friends, and you want to talk about it, jump on in!  If someone wanted their conversation private they would move it to a Direct Message, or off Twitter all together, so they won’t mind you adding to the conversation. 

So a few of my friends were bummed about EVO Conference ending and started joking that they were going to have their own little conference to keep EVO alive called the Cupcake Conference (or #cupcakeconf for Twitter users).  One thing led to another, and another, and more and more people wanted to come to Cupcake Conference that now it’s a fully legit thing that we are doing here in Utah.  Hosted by the wonderful @sahans and the Grand America Hotel.  Seriously!  A conference springing out of thin air all because of Twitter!

So jump into the conversation today!  The possibilities are literally endless… well… unless it’s over 140 characters…