Yesterday, I watched my Twitter stream transform into a spirited conversation, complete with hurt feelings, wounded pride, and genuine attempts to put forward logical and eloquent arguments. Online friendships were torn asunder, and strong new allegiances formed. The culprit was a deceptively simple question: What makes someone a social media expert?

The question seems to have arisen because a certain print and online publication hired someone to fill that particular role, and another party felt the chosen person’s follower count was insufficient for the task. Implying, you see, that someone’s Twitter follower count is an important (if not the sole) indicator of social media success, and therefore a strong contributor to achieving “expert” status in that particular field.

Many, many people took umbrage with said view, and responded essentially that quality, not quantity, accounted for true “expert” abilities in social media. More specifically, many pointed to the quality of interaction, which defines the “social” aspect. As such, people like celebrities — who might have high follower counts but primarily broadcast more than they engage in back-and-forth conversations — don’t really count as social media experts.

So what is it that makes a true expert? It’s a question that is no doubt on the minds of hiring managers everywhere as social media becomes more and more important to the everyday business of all kinds of companies. Without established metrics (despite some great ways to measure ROI) and hiring criteria to fall back on, what should HR departments and individuals looking to hire or contract social media experts be looking for? Should Twitter be considered first and foremost among social networks when weighing expertise? What should we validate social media expertise with, and what should we maybe not put so much stock in?

Add your comment on this debate below.

As Om reports over on GigaOM, Amazon’s Kindle device has taken a price cut and is now available internationally. I’ll be adding one to my holiday wishlist this year; it’s the perfect device for anyone who likes to read and travels frequently but doesn’t want to lug books and magazines with them. I have been dying to be able to get my mitts on one here in the UK. However, as Om notes, the price still looks a little steep at $279 (plus international shipping and taxes — as yet, Amazon.co.uk is not selling it and international customers must order through Amazon.com).

Now that the Kindle has dropped in price and is available internationally, will you buy one?

I confess: I’m a terrible scatterbrain. It takes a lot for me to force my thoughts into a nice, orderly line and to keep them there — particularly in those busy times when I have a lot of competing priorities. In those times, I’ll often find myself working on one project while ideas for other tasks pop into my head at random.

Those thoughts can be as simple as “don’t forget to email Pete about that invoice” or as intricate as a new angle on an idea I’d been working on before. They’re basically the random things my brain spews out while I’m trying to focus on something else. I know I’m not alone — a lot of people experience the same thing.

Through a long process of trial and error, I’ve found that the best way to deal with these random thoughts — thoughts that are important and valuable, but unrelated to the task I’m working on — is to note them down. This way, I can be sure I won’t forget them, but I also reduce their interruption into my focus on other tasks.

For this reason, the handiest tool in my home office is a pen and paper. I’ve tried using online tools to note down my ideas, but I find that going online to add a task to my to-do list is like opening a door to the world: The temptation to check the news, weather, or my email is often too great to resist.

The problem with noting these random — but important — tasks in something as simple as my text editor is that, as a result of my scattered approach to work, I usually end up with so many apps open, and so many things going on, that I can forget I have my list hidden behind five other panes. Sometimes, I have trouble finding it at all.

My pen and paper are always at my elbow, so I don’t have any difficulty finding them. I like the fact that they’re physically separate from my computer: the place where I do my work. That physical separation helps me mentally divorce these thoughts from what I’m doing, which prevents them from distracting me from the task at hand.

My notepad is my “random thoughts” area, so I treat it as such; my tasks lists are online, well-planned and carefully formulated. But my notepad is a space that’s dedicated to shards of thoughts, germs of ideas that I know need more work and attention before I can do something with them.

And I do give them that attention — sooner or later. Usually, I try to take a look at my list when I get to a break point in what I’m doing. I can take the easy-to-do stuff, prioritize it, and add it to my task list immediately. And I can check my schedule to see when I can set aside half an hour for thinking more about the new angle for that previously concepted idea. Perhaps I’ll also take the opportunity to find my brainstorming notes for that idea and add the new thought to them, ensuring that I keep all the thoughts about that project together.

Once I’ve sorted through the items on my page, I turn it over and start a new page: a clean slate for new random thoughts that may occur in the next work period. So, my pen and notepad are the handiest tools in my home office.

What about you? What remote working tool do you value most?

Photo credit: stock.xchng user RAWKU5.

Almost exactly a year ago, Apple introduced its unibody aluminum MacBooks. “Unibody” means that the case is a single piece, with the battery being sealed inside. My immediate reaction, shared by many road warriors and web workers, was horror: “They can’t do that!” Not only did Apple do it, but soon after, the range was expanded to include the 17” MacBooks as well. As of today, the only MacBook available with a removable battery is the legacy white 13” MacBook, whose days are believed to be numbered by many analysts.

So what happened when legions of Apple fans were faced with being unable to change out the batteries on their beloved notebooks? Did angry mobs descend on Cupertino? Not exactly. After the initial shock wore off, we began to ask ourselves how important removable laptop batteries actually were.

There are good arguments for removable notebook batteries, especially if you compute on the go a lot. Power outlets are frequently unavailable in locations such as conference rooms, convention centers and aircraft. Power access is improving in newer facilities but it is still easy to find yourself without power. Having the security of the second battery in your bag makes the quest for power a little less panicked. Also, replacing a battery that has outlived its hardware life requires no downtime.
A sealed battery has its advantages too, though. It can provide more power for the same weight/space as a removable battery, because you aren’t sacrificing some of the footprint to the hardware and case to make it removable. Your onboard battery will thus get you further with no need for extra power (or to carry around the weight of the back-up).

This debate was front-and-center in my mind when I purchased my latest computer, a MacBook, last April. My choices were narrowed down to a white MacBook with a removable battery, and the MacBook Air that has a sealed one. (Obviously these machines have a lot of other major differences, including their prices.) I was finally convinced to discard the battery difference as an issue when my geek husband pointed out that I rarely if ever used the backup battery that I had for the machine I was replacing. I realized that the spare battery was more of a security blanket that I hauled around than a necessity. Although I eventually purchased the white MacBook, I haven’t felt the need to buy a spare battery for it yet.

The reality is that only a small percentage of notebook users do purchase and use extra batteries. Apple seems committed to this path, and Dell is also trying the concept out. Others may follow.

But heavy battery users are not completely out of luck, and we aren’t all doomed to a future of using our notebooks for four hours at a time. An accessory market has sprung up for external batteries for MacBooks. While not as convenient to use as (and definitely more expensive than) an onboard battery, they do fill that need for people who must have additional power.

We should remember that technology advances. Batteries will continue to improve and soon will be easily capable of getting a notebook through an entire workday. New aircraft are being built with in-seat outlets to power passenger electronics through long flights. Maybe Apple will even realize that there is money to be made by offering its customers the option of a battery upgrade at purchase.

Do you have a spare notebook battery? Do you use it?

Paid tweeting is nothing new. We’ve all seen spam users and posts in our Twitter feed and our following list, but usually the attempts are painfully obvious and easily dismissed. A new venture, Sponsored Tweets, by IZEA founder Ted Murphy (the guy with the tongue, in case you, like me, didn’t recognize the name but know the face) is bringing sponsored tweeting to the mainstream, and he has a pack of celebrities, both traditional and online,  to back him up.

The idea is simple: companies pay Twitter users to mention their products in a favorable light. It’s paid content, not uncommon in the blogging world, brought to micro-blogging for the first time in a concerted, organized and coherent way. It even includes an attempt at transparency, via a “disclosure engine,” use of which is required for Sponsored Tweets posts.

For celebrity bloggers like Jessica Gottlieb, it’s a system that pays admirably. For every sponsored tweet she makes, she’s compensated to the tune of around $22, according to a Fast Company article on the new service by Lydia Dishman. Dishman’s own sponsored tweets would only be worth about $3 by comparison. Sponsored Tweets takes into account your number of followers and the frequency of your posting, among other factors, when determining your rate of compensation.

Arguments in favor of and against the scheme have already been popping up all over the place, with people making good points on both sides. Personally, I like to keep social networking and advertising as separate as possible, and have been known to delete Facebook friends after receiving a pitch message. I’m still not entirely sure how I feel about the same sort of thing on Twitter, since a 140-character tweet in my stream is much easier to ignore than a message that triggers an email, but at first blush, it isn’t something that sits well with me. I think the degree to which it becomes popular will end up having a lot to do with how tolerant I am of paid tweeting.

What are your thoughts on Sponsored Tweets? Do you produce paid content as a web worker already, and would you consider moving into this new space? How do you see tweet sponsoring affecting your Twitter usage, if at all?

Before becoming a full-time freelance consultant, I worked at a couple of very large companies and some small startups. While big companies and startups have different ways of doing business, there are also many common business practices used by most companies regardless of size. Measuring success across a variety of metrics is one of those practices embraced by companies of all sizes. When I work with clients, I help them figure out how they will measure the success or failure of the online community projects that we are implementing together. However, recently I realized that I haven’t done a good job of measuring how successful I have been as a freelance consultant.

Don’t get me wrong, I measure many things and look at the results with a critical eye. I have analytics to measure my blog traffic, tracking tools for social media metrics, business metrics (finance, marketing, etc.), and much more. What I haven’t done is clearly defined what success as a freelancer looks like for me. Do I want steady growth in blog traffic, and if so, how much? What are my financial goals for individual programs (training, consulting, book sales) and overall for my consulting company? How important are various social media metrics to my business?

The measurement options are almost endless. I could measure hundreds of activities and track everything, but I think that I will take my own advice. I generally advise clients to pick the top three to five items that determine success and focus on those items as the primary success metrics. I will continue to measure much more and use those additional measurements as background research to help determine additional ways to improve my business. I think that it is important to draw this distinction between measurement and success metrics. Success metrics determine whether or not you have been successful while measurements feed into your success metrics and can be used to help understand how and why certain programs are a success or failure.

While I figure out how I plan to measure my success, I’d like to hear from you. How do you measure your success?

Hi, my name is Dawn, and I am an information junkie.

I love learning new things and sharing them with others, and you can see this trend by looking back across my posts here on WebWorkerDaily and elsewhere. You’ll see many posts focused on finding and consuming information. As I write this blog post, I’m sitting in a coffee shop getting ready for a meeting with someone who has agreed to spend some time demoing Yahoo Query Language (YQL) to help me learn even more techniques to feed my information habit.

I’m also an avid Twitter user, primarily because it is a quick way to consume a variety of information, from keeping up with personal friends to discovering new tools to little nuggets of useful information.

It seems that I am not alone in using Twitter primarily to consume information. A recent acticle on Media Post noted:

Rather than ego fulfillment or networking, what appears to truly motivate Twitter users is learning new things and getting information in a timely manner, according to new data from research firm MarketingProfs.

The study of some 425 Twitter users, conducted in early and mid-April, found that nearly 100 percent respondents agreed with the statements “I value getting information in a timely manner,” and “I find it exciting to learn new things from people,” while about 80 percent “like to be connected to lots of people.”

This is certainly true in my case. As I’m writing this post at 8:30 a.m., Twitter has helped me discover an article about social media statistics, which is where I found the above article and came up with the idea for this blog post; find an embarrassing picture of me from last weekend’s BarCampPortland that I helped to organize; and learn about Google’s standalone contact manager. Not bad for a few hours of posts consumed in just a few minutes.

Are you an information junkie? How do you feed your information habit?

Recently, I was commiserating with a friend looking for a new job about the unpleasantness of that task. I remembered the hours of fruitless toiling, sending countless resumes off into the void, along with unique, individually tailored cover letters for hundreds of positions. Days that first seem like a pleasant extended vacation eventually become a drawn-out reminder of just how little money you’re making, and just how unproductive your waking hours actually are.

Thing is, I realized that was what it was like before I became a web worker, when my ideal job was still a cozy 9-to-5 in an office somewhere, with a salary, benefits and a paid lunch hour. Once I gave up that ideal in favor of pursuing freelance opportunities online, the dreaded Job Hunting Process, which I thought was written in stone, largely ceased to exist. Sure, what replaced it wasn’t exactly a walk in the park, either, but for all its faults, it definitely beats the cold dread of Workopolis and Monster.com.

Instead, when I want to find work these days, I generally tap friends and contacts in one way or another. Often, people will suggest me for projects that seem to be up my alley when they come up in conversation, and I’ll get an informal request for more information at least, and a contract at best. If I’m actively seeking work, I’ll likewise ask friends in industries I’m targeting about relevant work. This might be as easy as sending a DM via Twitter, or as complicated as arranging a meet-and-greet portfolio presentation. Or if all my personal network leads are cold, I know my field well enough to start some cold-emailing that results in a positive response often enough. More so than a Workopolis job search, at least.

This got me wondering if this is a shared experience among web workers, or if I was alone in finding it easier to search for and land work. What do you think? Is part of the appeal of working online that finding work is easier, or do you actually find it harder, but with a bigger pay-off?

Microsoft launches IE8 to the public this morning; you can now download it from the Microsoft web site. But do most web workers even care? Despite using a Windows machine, I haven’t touched IE for weeks. I downloaded the release candidate to check it out but since then I haven’t opened it up once.

IE’s marketshare has declined markedly over the past few years as better alternatives have entered the market. IE8 just doesn’t have anything to offer me over my two staple browsers, Firefox and Chrome. My thinking seems to tally with web workers generally: according to Google Analytics, only 22 percent of you access this site using IE, while more than half use Firefox.

However, as Om noted last night, for those people who are unwilling to consider alternative browsers, IE8 is an improvement on previous versions — particularly with regard to security — and probably does enough to stop IE’s browser share declining much further, so IE isn’t going away any time soon.

Will you download IE8?

The news that Gmail went down this morning (UK time) got me thinking about how we increasingly rely on third parties for essential business services. With a proliferation of web apps offering to meet our every business need and the inexorable rise of cloud computing, are we investing too much trust in them?

Fortunately, I have Offline Gmail support enabled, which meant that I could at least continue working on emails received overnight while Gmail was down. But judging by the outpouring of angst on Twitter, many people had a pretty unproductive morning, with some four hours of downtime.

Gmail appears to be back up now, but you can bet that this won’t be the last time a major web app suffers downtime. While we can probably be reasonably confident that Google has the engineering talent to recover from most failures quite quickly (especially as Google’s paid-for Google For Domains users have a service-level agreement, including an uptime guarantee of 99.9 percent), we’ve seen many services suffer from a lack of continued support and investment, and some that disappear altogether.

Are we putting too much faith in services that we have no control over? Do you have a backup plan in place in case a critical part of your workflow goes down?

Or at least it feels that way every time it happens.

Gmail, including Google Apps, went down for about four hours or so this morning (or this afternoon, depending on where you are). It says a lot for Gmail’s reach that when it does go offline, it makes immediate headlines.

Like many, the first thing I do every morning is check my email accounts. When the errors started popping up, I went straight to Twitter Search to be assured I was not alone.

I had other things to do. I could have checked headlines. I could have finished some work that had nothing to do with email. I could have balanced my checkbook. Heck, I could have spent extra time with the morning paper or gone for a brisk walk. But no, I kept trying to load my email while keeping an eye on Twitter. Judging by the tweets, I was not alone.

I know I’m over-reliant on email. As soon as I saw it was a global problem, I knew Google would resolve it quickly, and they did. But still, it bothered me that it was so difficult to concentrate on anything else until service was restored.

Checking email is part of the web worker’s routine. Does it throw you off kilter when it’s not available? What do you do to pass the time until Google gets the hamsters running again?

Last week, Pinch Media released some interesting statistics about App Store usage in a presentation, now available online.

In short, they’ve found that while free apps are downloaded like crazy, active use drops off fast. Paid apps tend to see more use after installation and are used for longer periods. If it’s a paid game, all the better.

Long before he stopped using his iPhone altogether, Om raised similar questions on GigaOM regarding app usage.

Does your own iPhone usage support this data?

Looking at my iPhone I find that most of the applications I actively use are those that support or work in cooperation with the web-based tools on my desktop computer. Even though I’m not using a wide variety of applications, overall I’m using my iPhone on a daily basis far more than I have used any other mobile device.

My app mainstays include Remember the Milk, Facebook, TwitterFon, Salesforce, BeejiveIM (expensive at $15.99 but worth it), 1Password and Box.net. I also regularly launch eReader, TWC (Weather Channel) and Now Playing. While I still have a few games on my iPhone, I can’t remember the last time I launched one.

I took a rare visit to the App Store to see what I might be missing.

#9 on the Top Paid App list is something called “White Noise”, which pretty much sums up what the store is like for me these days. Not much seems to stand out in a sea of mindless games and fluff entertainment.

Part of the reason I’m bored by the App Store is how often I’ve been burned by apps that don’t live up to their promise. The ratings aren’t as helpful as they could be since you can’t see which version the reviewer was using when they cast their vote. So instead, I tend to grab apps from developers I already trust or those that are recommended on other web sites.

What apps, if any, are still making your cut? How do you decide what to buy/download?

Technology propels society forward, and web workers are more keenly aware of that than anyone. In just the last five years we have made leaps and bounds in terms of how connected we can be, how quickly we can receive and disperse information and how we communicate with each other. It has been an exhilarating ride as we have embraced all of the new technology innovations.

I began thinking about what has had the biggest impact on my ability to be an effective web worker when I heard about a PBS “Nightly Business Report” feature: 30 Most Important Innovations from Last 30 Years. This list will be announced on the show tonight.

It got me thinking about the specific technologies that make what I do possible. Using the same criteria, I made a list of some of my own most valuable innovations for the web worker.

Here are the criteria used by “Nightly Business Report” (in conjunction with Knowledge@Wharton, the online research and business analysis journal of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania) in making their list:

1. Did it have a direct and/or material effect on quality of life?
2. Did it address a compelling need? Did it solve a compelling problem?
3. Was it a fresh, new breakthrough? Was there a “WOW” factor?
4. Did it change the way business is conducted?
5. Did it increase the efficiency of how resources are used?
6. Did it spark an ongoing stream of new innovations on top of the original innovation?
7. Did it lead to the creation of a vast, new industry?

So given that, here are my Most Valuable Innovations for the Web Worker.

Gmail – Sure, email existed before Gmail, but the massive adoption of the ubiquitous service by web workers shows they got it right. A web-based platform with powerful search capabilities allows us to harness the massive amounts of information that flows through our email.

Skype – The distributed nature of web working means we need an easy and inexpensive way to talk with clients and colleagues. VoIP solutions like Skype offer us the ability to communicate from just about anywhere. I love it when it works.

RSS – For the publisher it offers the ability to syndicate and distribute content to the masses. For the consumer, it enables aggregation and the ability to retrieve the content more efficiently and view it on demand.

Wi-Fi/Wireless Broadband – Allows us to lose the wires and lets us work anywhere. Along with the widespread adoption of the laptop computer it turned any place in to our work place. I still maintain an office but it’s great to know I can connect from anywhere and get things done. Would the coffee shop industry really be sustainable without wireless connectivity and the web worker?

Digital Media/Streaming Music – We web workers sure do love our music. The transition from physical media to digital formats lets us take our music with us anywhere, or listen online to streaming radio services like Pandora or Slacker. I know I work better with music playing.

I know this list is incomplete, and intentionally so. It demonstrates what I think is the most important benefit to all of these innovations — the power of collaboration. It is now so easy for us to work together to create and share, I thought we could finish the list together. I’ll be watching the “Nightly Business Report” on PBS to see how many of the innovations on their list are also on this one.

What would you add and why? Let us know in the comments.

(photo via Wayne Lee)

Not too long ago, I posted about BookGlutton, a service which allowed for online collaborative reading. You could also upload your own work, but that wasn’t the main focus of the site. Smashwords, on the other hand, is a web site devoted to self-publishing. It doesn’t lend itself to collaboration, necessarily, but it does present another possible method of content delivery, and for web workers looking for another revenue stream, it may provide an avenue for monetizing your content.

For me, it also raises the age-old question: is self-publishing really just a form of vanity publishing, along with all the negative connotations that implies?

It’s a thorny question, and one that takes on new significance as we slowly but surely move away from print media towards online publishing. I went to school for writing, and had it drilled into me pretty much every day that unless it was someone else’s name on the masthead of the journal or press I was publishing with, I wasn’t accomplishing anything.

Online, however, many of the most successful professionals are self-published, and self-made. Darren Rowse, Guy Kawasaki and Om Malik Richard MacManus come to mind. They are dealing primarily in the medium of the blog, however. The stigma associated with self-publishing doesn’t seem to have entirely disappeared when it comes to books.

Smashwords is a service for self-publishing your own eBook. Once you’ve signed up for an account you can upload your original work and offer it for sale at a price of your own choosing. Your book will also be available for purchase via Stanza for the iPhone, the most popular and fastest-growing eReader available. Authors make a royalty of 85% of the net proceeds from the sale of their work. Readers using the service get free samples of all the books available on the site, and get access to search and library-building services.

It’s a good system, but will it work? Even if you already have a built-in readership from a successful blogging career, will users be willing to take the extra step and pay for your content in eBook form? The answer probably depends on what kind of content you’re offering. If you’re just repackaging your blog as paid content, it probably won’t pay off. But if you’re offering valuable content that extends, rather than mirrors, your blog-based content, Smashwords may be a useful platform.

To me, the benefit of a service like Smashwords, and self-publishing in general, is the same benefit that consulting firms get from preparing free research reports for distribution to clients. It’s a proof of competency, a means to show you can and will deliver the type of results they’re looking for. And with distribution via Stanza, there’s also the possibility that you could reach potential clients where you otherwise wouldn’t have, even if you do end up just reformatting your blog content for alternative distribution.

What do you think about self-publishing? Is it a good means to increase your revenue or profile as a web worker?

This week, Google finally answered our pleas and introduced over-the-air contact and calendar sync for Windows Mobile and iPhone. Instead of a separate sync application, as with the Blackberry, the syncing works through the Exchange client already in the device.

I’ve decided to only sync my calendar between Google and my iPhone, which after one false start now works well. I didn’t bother syncing contacts. Why? Because nowadays when I need to find someone, the last place I seem to look is in my usually-outdated contacts application.

Sure, I have some contacts in my desktop address book which I sync back to Google with Spanning Sync. Mostly immediate family, doctors, school contacts, etc. Those few people I really need to call when out and about. Every work contact is in our organization’s CRM and is accessible through the Salesforce iPhone app. The rest of my life is either in Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn where the contacts themselves make sure their own data is up-to-date. All are easily accessible from my iPhone.

When I leaf through my desktop address book there are so many out-of-date entries, I often wonder why I bothered putting them there to begin with. I know there’s Plaxo for keeping an address book updated, but that utility comes with its own set of problems.

Let’s hear how other web workers handle their contacts.

Has your local address book been shoved aside in favor of web-based tools? Do you worry about the accuracy of contact data on your phone or desktop? How do you keep it all up-to-date and in sync?

Many of us here at WebWorkerDaily seem to have a love-hate relationship with Google and its products. While we love the conveniences and features that allow us to be so productive, we also lament lost opportunities and frustrating limitations.

For example, while Judi laments on the languishing Grand Central, I am sharing some of My New Favorite Gmail Features.

My current frustration is trying to manage multiple Google accounts and resources. I maintain a personal Gmail account along with a few domain accounts and I am finding it increasingly difficult and frustrating to manage them all.

I’ve found that I can consolidate all the email into a single inbox, which is nice, but there are tradeoffs. Event invitations I receive to my business email still show up on my personal calendar, documents aren’t universally available across accounts, and I would love to have the ability to be logged in to multiple gtalk accounts simultaneously.

I’d really like to take full advantage of the services offered by all of my Google and Google Domain accounts more seamlessly. I can already create a Google Profile, what would be outstanding is if I could link all of my Google accounts to it and get to everything in one place.

Am I missing something obvious?  I can’t be the only one struggling with this!

How do you manage your multiple Google accounts? Share your tips in the comments.