Interesting points, Daniel. Twitter certainly does very little to improve your writing although it makes for cheap advertising for your blog postings; and Facebook, well, you can always use it to network with your scientist friends, but it’s probably not the ideal tool to find new people in your domain. Although Groups does give you one way of reaching new people.
I still haven’t been able to motivate myself to try out Friendfeed.
OTOH, there is something to be said just to being present on all of these social networks, beyond the “we get it” message that is spreading through the political body at the moment. More of a “I want to interact with other researchers and you can reach me through this or this or this” message. And that too is very important.
Of those 3 tools you mention, FriendFeed is by far the best tool for science related work, from my own experience. It is very good at creating discussions around shared items (blog posts, science articles, etc). One example of how it can be useful is conference reporting. I and others have even benefit directly from this by getting a publication out of a joint collaborative effort to cover a meeting using FrindFeed.
Daniel,
I share your views.
I love writing and research. I found it challenging but rewarding to immerse in this virtual networking environment. We might never see each other face to face, but the writings could be ‘recognised” over the blogs. http://suifaijohnmak.wordpress.com
Interesting points, Daniel. Twitter certainly does very little to improve your writing although it makes for cheap advertising for your blog postings; and Facebook, well, you can always use it to network with your scientist friends, but it’s probably not the ideal tool to find new people in your domain. Although Groups does give you one way of reaching new people.
I still haven’t been able to motivate myself to try out Friendfeed.
OTOH, there is something to be said just to being present on all of these social networks, beyond the “we get it” message that is spreading through the political body at the moment. More of a “I want to interact with other researchers and you can reach me through this or this or this” message. And that too is very important.
Of those 3 tools you mention, FriendFeed is by far the best tool for science related work, from my own experience. It is very good at creating discussions around shared items (blog posts, science articles, etc). One example of how it can be useful is conference reporting. I and others have even benefit directly from this by getting a publication out of a joint collaborative effort to cover a meeting using FrindFeed.
Daniel,
I share your views.
I love writing and research. I found it challenging but rewarding to immerse in this virtual networking environment. We might never see each other face to face, but the writings could be ‘recognised” over the blogs.
http://suifaijohnmak.wordpress.com
I just learned about http://www.academia.edu. I don’t known if it will be good.