Social media for newcomers to London – an introduction

We come to London to expand our horizons.  We get to know people from different backgrounds, and want to experience the best of what this city has to offer. There is also a very busy viral life on the net and if you experience London life to the full there is no way you can miss it. According to an article on Telegraph.co.uk from 29th September, “London is the social media capital of the world”. Londoners love using Digg, Facebook, Twitter and other popular web applications.

Where to start?

Social networking – Facebook - connect with your friends online. Sign up, upload your photo, search for old and new buddys, share your thoughts by adding a message to your wall, post a link to an interesting blog post, share your holiday photos and much more!

Facebook is great because as well as keeping you in touch with people you know from all over the globe, it connects you to new people as well: you can join groups with similar interests, or you can even create your own.  It is also a great way to organize an event. Join the Success Abroad Fan Club.

Communicate with the world – Twitter - share you thoughts with the world in 140 words or less. You can read other peoples’ thoughts or ‘tweets’ as well, and if you like what someone has to say you have the option ‘follow’ that person. You can post links to recommend an interesting article or video, and you can send direct messages to people.  If you want to share another person’s tweet that you like with your followers you can ‘retweet’ it.

The best thing about Twitter is that it is a truly instant method of communication: once you send a tweet, the whole world can see it.  If you posted a tweet with the word “Skyride” for example, anybody searching “the Twitterverse” for the word Skyride at that moment would see your tweet pop up, in real-time.  How cool is that!

Twitter supports the use of special tags.  The most popular commands are ‘@’ when you reply to someone, ‘RT’ when you retweet someone’s tweet or article, and ‘#’ when you want to use a keyword in your tweets. Follow Success Abroad.

The hottest news, videos, and images on Digg – find the best web content submitted by users, and share your favourite articles with others. You can submit this article to Digg if you like, just click the link at the bottom!

Find and meet like-minded people on MeetUp – find groups with similar interests and attend a meeting in the real world. You can sign up to a few groups, exchange your ideas and thoughts, get inspired, connect to people just like you, help and be helped. With a user friendly calendar on your profile page you won’t miss any meeting.  Check out Meet up now.

Share your photos online with Flickr – dazzle your friends and family with your latest adventures, and search for some amazing photos from around the world. Have a look at our Flickr gallery.

Watch or share a video on YouTube – you can watch a whole series of films, funny videos, interviews – a whole assortment of weird and wonderful things are to be found here. Very useful if you don’t have a TV set in your flat-share. Have you been hiding under a rock, or what?  Check out youtube now.  Another video platform which we use is Vimeo, watch us on Vimeo here.

Listen to your favourite radio online – Last.fm – where you choose a genre or a artist that you want to listen to, and Last.fm will find similar songs and play them for you. It’s kind of like having your own personal radio station. Genius!

Get an answer on Yahoo Answers – if you have a question about anything, really, you can probably find an answer there.

Other social media services, to mention just a few are Blogger, Bebo, LinkedIn, MySpace, Picassa, StumpleUpon, Delicious, Reddit.

Facebook, Twitter and blogs have revolutionared the way we communicate. Every few months there is a boom for a new social media web service.  What are the future big hits in social media? Audioboo.com for ‘tweeting’ audio bites?

Keep an eye out for Google Wave – could this technology actually replace e-mail in the near future?  E-mail, something which has become part of most people’s, including your granny’s, every day life?  Stay tuned.

Photo by Unlisted Sightings on Flickr