The Blogo’Shawn

Chiming in after a drought in personal blogging…

Been steeped in my social networks, and I find myself repeatedly evangelizing for two in particular: LinkedIn and Facebook. Yes, I preach the virtues of LinkedIn to my unenlightened, professional relatives and friends, as in ‘why didn’t you complete your profile? Don’t you know you can attract the right kind of recruiters and opportunities by buffing up your LinkedIn?!’ And I’m deadly serious too as my experience has borne out. I have garnered some wonderful introductions and interactions via LinkedIn, and let me tell you, if you happen to encounter a juicy job description emanating from one of your first or second network contacts on LinkedIn…well, there’s no finer way to fly. They can screen you easily and see what you’re all about, and you are, oh, many tens of percentage points more likely to get an interested response. Square that off with chugging your way through Monster, Dice, Craigslist, et al. Couldn’t be easier!

And then we have Facebook. I began my affair with Facebook only a year ago and it has wormed its way into my psyche to the point that I check in practically every day and now leave my MySpace account untapped for weeks (take that you fugly user experience!). And you know why I am latched to Facebook? Because I want to see which events my friends are RSVPing for, and there is no better way to reduce my needing to scout out events of interest on my own precious time. Sure I used to pour over other services to meet the need, but I progressively find myself dispensing with the others in favor of Facebook’s native events app - it trumps all others!

Now I would be remiss in not mentioning Twitter. So happens that Twitter doesn’t render me delerious with excitement so far. I know it does others who are more into getting their name and personal brand out to the tweetosphere. Bloggers, vloggers, and marketing folk especially seem latched onto it. Only…I don’t have the patience to wade through all the cruft to ferret out the good stuff. Good stuff for me simply comprises knowing where the buzz is and better yet, where people are massing for social occasions. I installed Twhirl and monitored activity in the moment for awhile, and all the updates were so disruptive for the most part, almost akin to repeated phone calls from telemarketers. I just don’t care, particularly with the healthy dosage of ‘@’ bantering which fly by and don’t mean diddley-squat to me. Someone at a mobile chat recently nailed it on the head and referred to Twitter as a mini-exhibitionist platform…so true! All told, I put my Twittery thing into dry-dock and presently adore the vast silence…permeated with my thoughts alone.

So in summary, ‘yea’ for LinkedIn and Facebook. ‘Meh’ for Twitter, unless I’m headed to a conference like SXSW, and here’s hoping MySpace implodes to rubble sometime soon.

And just to extraneously tack on one more find for fun: Pandora. Love it to smithereens and it often trumps the selections contained on my mere iPod!

Note: I decided to turn the @reply setting off on my Twitter feed and that really helped - right away I saw a notice regarding a social friend who has been admitted to the hospital! Now then, if users were allowed to set urgency level on their tweets and I had the ability to filter for high urgency only sometimes…well then I could see myself clinging to Twitter more.

Been keeping busy, so much so that I’ll just point to my latest Yahoo Local post - a shortcut I know, but between keeping abreast of all my social networks and events, sometimes I overlook the need to post in my own personal blog!

Local has made great strides since re-launch…our review coverage on businesses has leaped to new heights and the quality and length or reviews has improved dramatically - the revamped UI has been a boon, indeed.

In other news, there are some cool geek-girl events afoot. I am to participate in a Women in Technology panel about leadership at Yahoo on the 28th in 2MC-2 at 2PM…not sure if it’s open to the public, but I mention it to underscore that there are women techies in the company who have decided to band together and inspire each other. Also, a Girl Geek dinner to occur 1/31 at Google - looks like I’ll finally be sampling the fabled cafeteria’s wares.

Have you gotten down and Local lately?

It’s high time!

Well I’m back…have had my head to the ground making fundamental changes. After an extended, listless search, I have landed an apartment in Menlo Park. Yes, I succumbed to the horrors of daily commuting back-and-forth from SF to the South Bay and I have slagged over three hours daily on trains, shuttles, and automobiles. Not worth it at all! I had yearned to get this done sooner but reality was that the rental market is beyond insane at the moment. That I got a decent apartment at a reasonable price exactly where I wanted it is a bit of a coup too, especially since I had to go through Craigslist, which is definitely *not* the channel of choice right now during summertime in a brisk economy when folks are choosing to rent in droves rather than buy. Every showing I went to was mobbed with people. Cue the dot-com flashbacks! Anyway, it’s still sinking in that I don’t need to reflexively hunt like a bird-of-prey anymore. The plan is to make the moving trek no later than the coming Monday. Lots of packing *sigh*. But the shorter commute to work will ultimately be gained. And I may actually regain a social life on week nights - hurrah!

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More exciting news is that I participated in my first internal hack day for the Local LMC division! I had been itching to do this since I first joined Yahoo. Best of all, besides the fulfillment of a great effort made, my team wound up as a finalist…and then we proceeded to win! I am thrilled because it really did take concerted effort to pull together and coordinate. I had a dedicated project to lead in short-order and I had an enjoyable time hammering out the requirements, interaction, and priorities with the two engineers over the course of the hack and finals days. I bestowed the name “NewsDrive” on the hack, and derived the messaging for it. I also had the pleasure of delivering the presentation for finals judging. Compacting the essentials into an effective four-minute presentation certainly took some preparation, but it came off well in the end. I see now how addictive and all-consuming hack days can be, and good thing - they really got my creative juices flowing and I anticipate the next one which isn’t all that far away.

One more thing of note: I attended the Women 2.0 mixer in Atherton at Minti founder Rachel Cook’s abode. It was a fantastic occasion and I have to hand it to Rachel for hosting so soon after moving to live in America! Now that’s dedication to forwarding entrepreneurism. Want to mention that Katherine Barr gave an insightful presentation on negotiation and really got me thinking about it more consciously. Also the founders of Women 2.0 are wonderful as well and I am amazed by how they have forwarded the organization in such short order. I look forward to seeing what’s brewing up for August. I hope there are more events on the Peninsula in relaxed settings such as this last one - so much easier to talk lucidly outside of bar venues where so many professional mixers wind up.

SFGate ran an article about Citizendium, a contender to Wikipedia…and instrumented by a purported co-founder to Wikipedia: Wikipedia Co-Founder Seeks to Start Over. My main thought is that I’d like to mash-up the best of both. Citizendium intends to benefit from the contributions of named sources, preferribly experts and authorities in their fields, while Wikipedia can be somewhat erratic in relying on the contributions of many who usually lack credentials and traceable identities…but both approaches have relevancy. It’s a shame they will be presented separately as different sites. My bet is on Wikipedia remaining on top, especially given Wikipedia’s tremendous and sustained first mover advantage. I hope, though, that the emergence of Citizendium inspires Wikipedia to take steps towards better highlighting content contributions from verified experts.

Now that I have wrapped up work for the redesign of a major web2.0 mobile community website, I have had some time to re-explore Second Life. Alot more people are onboard now and it’s a delight to hear a smattering of languages, more so than ever. Last night, I conversed in German and Spanish. I look forward to more occasions to flex language skills.

I am also anticipating the advent of voice in Second Life which will introduce a whole new dynamic. Namely, I will be more inclined to go into Second Life after a hard day of typing, because I will be able to let my fingers do the occasional avie navigation while my voice counteracts repetitive typing stress!

I have also been wondering…wouldn’t it be great if you could review places, performers, artists, etc., in Second Life?! Sure would make it easier for newbies to figure out what to check out first!