I recently read an article by Social Media strategist Chris Brogan in which he talked about how to Reach Outside Your Fishbowl to Build Community. He says that by reaching out to disparate audiences, you can find those who may not have exposure to you otherwise.
This is great advice and got me thinking about how we can also take advantage of our personal interests and dive deeper into our existing groups for the same purpose, how to use our multiple fishbowls.
Networking is all about building relationships, but who says these relationships have to originate around our area of business? How can we harness the networks that exist for our personal interests as well?
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I was checking out personalization service matchmine today and it made me think of Last.fm vs. Pandora for finding music to listen to while I work. Last.fm uses collaborative filtering — recommending music based on what people with similar taste in music like — while Pandora characterizes music on a number of attributes and then suggests music similar to songs and artists you say you like.
I prefer Pandora, because it consistently provides music that I enjoy. Last.fm never seemed to get my taste quite right. But many of my friends prefer Last.fm.
matchmine seems closer to Pandora in its approach, matching content such as music, movies, video, and blogs to people based on its inherent qualities rather than based on who liked it. matchmine’s service is only available in beta right now, but they’ll be rolling out integration with online services in the new year. You can read more about matchmine at GigaOM.
Where do you prefer to get your music recommendations? Collaboratively filtered (Last.fm), matched by musical DNA (Pandora), or some other way?
Take the poll, then tell us in the comments what kind of music you like to listen to while you work.
Web Work 101: How To Escape The Cubicle
