Social Networking Archives - Page 3 of 6

August 6, 2015August 21, 2015

Live from Facebook Mentions vs. Periscope

You didn’t think Facebook would sit idly by while Twitter did LIVE streaming via its Periscope App did you? Early yesterday evening I got an App update to the Facebook Mentions App announcing that it now has a feature called “Live from Facebook Mentions.”

What’s Facebook Mentions – Live?

Facebook Mentions is Facebook’s dedicated App for those of us who are Public Figures and have a “verified” Page on Facebook.

While I was certainly honored that Facebook verified my page without any action on my part and the fact that they even created this separate celebrity app, I really didn’t find that it was all that useful compared to the regular Facebook Pages Manager App. Well that all changed yesterday. Now I can bring up the Facebook Mentions App on my iPhone and start a live broadcast at any time. People that have previously “Liked” my Page will get a notification and they can watch the broadcast and make comments via text in the broadcast itself. The best part compared is that after the broadcast is over it appears as a regular video post on my Page for anyone to view after the fact. I also like that this post can be edited so that I can add links, additional information to the items or sites that I mentioned in the broadcast.

What’s Periscope?

Periscope is Twitter’s Live broadcasting service. Like Twitter it’s free to use. You can download the iOS or Android version and start broadcasting immediately. When you start a new broadcast the app sends a tweet to your Twitter followers as well as a push notification to any of your Periscope followers. People can watch the broadcast either in the Periscope App or on the web in a browser. People can also make comments via text in the App that you can respond to verbally and they can also tap the screen to give you “hearts” (their version of Likes). The idea behind Periscope is to be able to show the world what you’re seeing in realtime. After the broadcast is over it will be available for replay by anyone that follows you in the App or has the link for up to 24 hours. After that it automatically self destructs forever.

Facebook Mentions Live vs. Periscope

Obviously Facebook Mentions Live (FML <- LOL) is the new kid on the block and will come at a disadvantage to Periscope that has now been out for 5 months. Periscope has had several App updates to address user feedback and finally released their Android version. FML is only iOS at this point and currently limited to only those with a Verified Public Figure Facebook Page.

Video format

Periscope’s video format is portrait. This pisses off most people not viewing the video in the app and while Periscope has promised to deliver landscape video it hasn’t made it on the scene as of this post. FML on the other hand is a square aspect ratio. This makes it less frustrating to view, but means that they may never deliver landscape video. As you might expect the quality of the video/audio to your viewers will depend on the strength and speed of your data connection. When I’m on WiFi at home both Periscope and FML look awesome. On slower cellular data connections Periscope can be sketchy.

Your potential viewing audience

Here’s where it gets interesting. While your Periscope broadcasts automatically announce to your Twitter followers that you’re LIVE, it can be missed if someone is viewing your tweets in the moment. Unless your followers are diligent about scrolling their timelines and viewing your tweets, your broadcasts will only be seen by a fraction of your followers. Periscope does have the advantage that people can follow you on Periscope separately from Twitter, but from what I see the average number of Periscope followers to Twitter followers is usually a small fraction. For example, I have over 43,000 followers on Twitter, but only 3,227 followers on Periscope. My buddy Scott Kelby has over 288,000 followers on Twitter and only 10,830 followers on Periscope. I think that the lower number of Periscope followers is largely due to the fact that people can only follow you on Periscope from the iOS App or recently released Android App. There’s also no way currently to give someone a link to follow you. You can only give them your user name (ie. @TerryLWhite <- yes follow me please).

On the FML side you already have an audience on your Facebook Page. I have 39,736 Likes on my Page. That’s my potential audience each time I do a broadcast. Facebook does play games though when it comes to showing your post to your followers. Look at the graphic above and you’ll see that last night the post had only reached 1,725 of my audience. The more popular your post is the more people that Liked your page will see it. So with that being said not all 39,736 people were notified when I did my 1st broadcast. There’s no way to control who gets notified and who doesn’t.

If you want more people to see your post/broadcast you can click the Boost Post button and PAY to have to promoted to more people. It’s a shame that people ask to follow you by clicking the Like button on your Page, but unless they manually visit your page regularly they may not see many or any of your posts via notifications or in their timeline unless you pay for them to see it. Let’s face it that while social media is free, Facebook and Twitter make their money from advertising.

Comments and adorations

Both Periscope and FML allow people to make comments during the broadcast. in the case of Periscope the comments appear superimposed over the video and some find that distracting. FML on the other hand displays the comments at the bottom of the screen below the square video. With Periscope if your viewers like what they are seeing they can tap anywhere on the screen to give you hearts (adorations). I haven’t seen anything like that yet in FML. However, I did see at the end of the broadcast that I had “Likes” not sure how I got them at this point?

Replays

Both Periscope and FML offer the ability for people that missed your live broadcast to see it after the fact. With Periscope your broadcast remains active for up to 24 hours in the feed of everyone that follows you. Anyone that got the tweet when you went live can still click it to watch after the fact. Recently Periscope was updated to allow you share a link to anyone. The obvious downside is that if you send the link to someone and they don’t watch it within 24 hours, the link won’t work afterwards. Periscope also offers the option to save the raw video to your device after the broadcast. This means that you can post the video anywhere you want afterwards but note that it will be a vertical video. FML on the other hand puts the raw video of your broadcast on your Facebook Page immediately after the broadcast ends. That’s VERY COOL because there’s not expiration date. It also means that I can edit the post after the fact and add more info and links to the things I was talking about during the broadcast. Also since it’s a regular Facebook Post you can share it with others on Facebook that aren’t on your page. If you right click the video on your page you can copy the URL and share it anywhere like here.

Why not broadcast to both at the same time?

I came up with an idea to broadcast to both Periscope and Life from Facebook Mentions at the same time. It became a product from Arkon called the TW Broadcaster Pro. Check out my video below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbslnsl41_I

The Bottom Line

Periscope is cool and I use it regularly. However, I’ve always felt that many of my fans were missing out if they’re not on Twitter or don’t follow me on Periscope. I’ve posted links to the Periscope replay on Facebook afterwards but again the replay is only available for 24 hours. If Facebook opens up Live streaming to the regular Facebook app, Facebook Pages app and Facebook Groups App I think they would ultimately win as there are more people on Facebook than there are on Twitter. Twitter should open up Periscope a little more by offering direct links to follow people even on the web and they should give the option of allowing replays to last longer than 24 hours. If Facebook wanted to “own” the Live Streaming social media world they certainly have the base to do it. Live from Facebook Mentions Live may be just the beginning of their strategy!

Follow me on Periscope @TerryLWhite

Like my Facebook Page here.

Follow me on Twitter here.

Get the Periscope App here for iOS .

Get the Periscope App here for Android

Get the Facebook Mentions App for iOS here (if you have a verified public figure page) .

October 21, 2014October 20, 2014

20 Million Views and 20 Million Thank Yous

Wow! I just checked my YouTube views and noticed that I have passed the 20 Million View mark! I wanted to take a few moments to thank all my viewers and supporters. Whenever I’m out at an event, conference or on tour so many of you make it a point to come up to me and thank me for my videos or to tell me how my videos have taught you various things. This of course encourages me to do more and to continue doing what I do.

I also noticed that I now have over 180,000 subscribers to my channel. It seems like it was just yesterday when I received the plaque above recognizing me for surpassing the 100,000 subscriber mark. I expect to hit the 200,000 subscriber mark some time around the beginning of 2015.

Thank you guys so much!

As much as I love doing my videos, believe it or not the hardest thing to come up with is new topics. More often than not I dismiss a topic that pops in my head because I think “everyone already knows that.” However, when I actually do go ahead and record it anyway it’s usually a hit. So please sound off in the comments about which upcoming topics you’d like to see videos on. Now before you jump in and start suggesting things, keep in mind that I (nor does anyone else), know everything or every product. So asking for a Dreamweaver topic or an After Effects (beyond the basics) topic probably won’t happen. It would be like me asking you to record a video on open heart surgery (unless of course you are a surgeon). I primarily focus on Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Adobe Muse and Lightroom. I dabble in Premiere Pro and a little After Effects. Now that we have that out of the way, feel free to tell me what you’d like to see:

P.S. If you haven’t subscribed to my channel yet, please do so today! Let’s hit that 200,000 subscriber mark by Christmas 🙂

A new easier to remember URL

I almost forgot that I setup an easy to remember URL that will take you straight to my videos. Just head over to terrywhite.tv

June 17, 2013June 17, 2013

Why You Should Be On Behance

I’m a photographer. I have a website. I post images to photography oriented sites such as 500px.com, Flickr.com, Smugmug.com, etc. These sites and others are geared towards photography. However, what if you’re a graphic designer, musician, visual effects artist, retoucher, etc.? Sure many of the photographer sites let you post videos and such, but the communities on those sites really aren’t geared towards anything other than photography. There’s an online community for creatives. It’s called Behance.net and it’s the world’s largest creative community with well over 1 million members.

Young up and coming photographers and graphic designers are always asking me to look at their work and give feedback. I do it when time permits, but usually what makes it more time-consuming is the the way the work is presented to me to look at it. It’s either an attachment in a Facebook message or on a website. From there I have to look, evaluate and then find the original communication to give feedback on via a reply. With Behance you can post projects that you’re working on (work in progress) all the way through to completed projects, including revisions along the way. These can be photos if you’re a photographer, they can be graphic designs, videos, and even music. You can follow others for inspiration, but best of all you can post your work and get feedback from those who follow you. If you make revisions, people can see those revisions in place without having to seek them out. The more I use Behance, the more I like it. If you like something on Facebook you can hit the Like button. If you like something on Behance you hit the “Appreciate” button. If you post work on Behance you can easily share the link via all your other social networks with the built-in sharing features.

Sounds great! What does all this cost? It’s free! You can set up your Behance account and start posting work in a matter of minutes. You can even sign in with your Adobe ID. You can upload your work via your web browser. However, if you’re using Photoshop CC or Illustrator CC you can use the Share on Behance command directly from the File menu to share your open document.

Get work!

Behance.net also has a Job listing area where creatives can get full-time job listings as well as freelance work.

Be sure to follow me on Behance.

Create a Professional Online Portfolio

While Behance.net is free to use, there is an optional paid service called “Prosite”. Prosite allows you to build a customized portfolio that you can brand as your own. You can even point a custom domain name to it. During the Prosite building process you can either pull in your completed Behance projects or create new ones on the fly. Prosite goes for $99/year. However, if you’re an Adobe Creative Cloud member, it’s part of your membership. Just sign in and build your Portfolio. While many of my photographer buddies are raving about squarespace.com ($8/month), I’d rather use Prosite since it’s already part of my Creative Cloud membership and I can upload directly to Behance from Photoshop, Illustrator, and Lightroom.

Here’s mine.

Go Mobile

Both Behance and Behance Prosite have free iOS Apps. I did a post here to tell you more about them.

August 8, 2011August 8, 2011

Will Google+ Kill Facebook or Twitter?

My initial response to that question is "no." However, If I were taking bets i'd say that Twitter is more at risk than Facebook. I find that people I know that LOVE Twitter love it mostly because they don't like Facebook. Maybe it's the whole "friend" concept vs. "followers". Maybe it's because Twitter is short, sweet and too the point at 140 characters. I'm not sure what the real attraction is of Twitter over Facebook for those users that prefer it, but the one thing I can say is that Google definitely took a hard look at both services and decided to integrate the best of each into their own Google+ network.

Circles instead of Friends

Like Twitter, you don't have to be someone's "friend" to follow them. You can just add them to one of your Circles and you'll see their public updates. However, like Facebook's "lists" (my favorite Facebook feature) the whole Circle concept makes it easy to control what you share and with whom. You can target both status updates and photo albums to specific Circles of users that you create.

Speaking of photos

I would dare say this is probably one of the most used features of Facebook. Facebook users post millions of photos each week! I think it's the photos aspect that makes a Facebook user prefer Facebook over Twitter. While you can share links to photos on Twitter, it's just not the same.

Google+ Hangouts are cool too

Google+ Hangouts is a cool little feature that lets you set up a LIVE video conference chat with up to 10 people. I gave this feature a whirl while I was watching my new studio being painted. Yes, I invited people to watch paint dry 🙂 OK, I was bored and didn't want to be bored alone. I fired it up. Positioned a spare laptop upstairs and we all sat around chatting about photography, Adobe questions, and of course painting. It worked extremely well. The only downside was the limit of 10 people. But hey, it was free!

Who will win?

I think it's way way way too early to say that Twitter or Facebook is going to die because of Google+. First of all Google+ isn't open to the general public just yet. Most "everyday" people I talk to have never even heard of Google+. This is why I think Google+ will have a hard time overtaking Facebook anytime soon. In order to beat Facebook they'd not only have to do just about everything Facebook does and in most cases better, there would have to be a groundswell movement of hundreds of thousands of users away from Facebook and I just don't see that happening. The reason is, most Facebook users I know (everyday folk) like Facebook. They don't see anything (much) wrong with it. They use it everyday to keep in touch with friends/family and for the most part they are happy with the way it works.

Yes it could happen. Look at MySpace. MySpace was king/queen, but you never hear anyone talk about it anymore. Facebook killed it. So yes it could happen, but you'd have to look at the reasons why MySpace has almost disappeared. It had no class! MySpace was all about letting you create and unfortunately "customize" your presence. This lead to many non-web designers creating really crappy looking MySpace pages. These pages were a pain to read and for some reason everyone thought that you wanted to hear their favorite music the minute you entered their page. I absolutely hated using MySpace and the only reason I was on it was to see the pages of people that I was communicating with. I spent as little time on it as possible. I think this is why it was easy to beat MySpace with something "better" or at least more consistent. I don't miss MySpace one bit. It won't be so easy with Twitter and Facebook.

This begs the question, is there room or desire for all three? I certainly don't need something else to do. Having a Google+ presence means that I now have one more thing to feed and maintain. Share your thoughts in the comments below.

I'm inviting 150 of my fans to join Google+

Like I said above, Google+ isn't available to the general public just yet. However, if you're wanting to get in just click this link and be sure to add me to your Circles! Thanks!

Which one do you prefer?

Which Social Network do you prefer? » create a poll
Tags : social networking

June 15, 2011June 16, 2011

Polleverywhere.com Powers My LIVE Audience Polls

If you've attended any of our tour stops on the Adobe CS5 Evolution Tour or if you were at the Adobe Photoshop World Keynote in Orlando, then you may have seen us do a live poll of the audience. Rather than simply asking for a show of hands, audience members participated with their mobile devices. Polleverywhere.com is a web based service that allows you to setup and conduct Live Polls in real-time. The cool factor is that the poll results come in and can be displayed in real-time. This usually gets people a little more involved when they see that they can actually drive the results right in front of their eyes.

Another option is the ability to create a custom URL where your users will go on their devices and instead of keying in the onscreen codes, they'll actually see the poll questions on their own screens and the responses are then tappable. When you switch to the next question their browser will update on the fly.

How does it work?

Once you setup an account, you can then start to create your Polls ahead of time. During your event, class, seminar, etc. you can then bring up the site, go full screen and people can answer the questions by either using SMS texting (standard text messaging rates do apply) to a local/regional number for the area that you are conducting the poll in OR they can simply go to the mobile friendly poll4.com web page on their device and enter the codes there for free. You can even enable the Poll via Twitter so that people can Tweet their responses and lastly there is the option to have a Private Link like this one. The page uses Adobe Flash to update live and in real-time. As the votes come in the bars will move for all to see. The data is saved to your account and you can close the polls whenever you like to prevent further voting.

If you don't want to do it live there are several options for embedding the polls into your website, like I've done here (click on your answer):

The results can also optionally be embedded for all to see as either LIVE update via Flash:

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