Old School, Part 2: Would You Take Twitter Advice From Someone Who's Never Tweeted?

I wouldn't. Let's get more specific.

How about taking advice on social media best practices -- for something serious with high stakes, like looking for a job, becoming visible to recruiters, re-entering the job market after a hiatus or otherwise attempting a career change  -- from an advisor whose Twitter account is empty?

Existent in name only.

How about if it's April 2013?

How about if it's the same month that the Wall Street Journal declared The New Resume: It's 140 Characters and @WSJCareers held a Twitter chat about using social media to get a job, concluding it's all about LinkedIn & Twitter & a digital footprint that shows your best stuff.

(I participated in this blisteringly-paced and totally on-target chat that featured The Daily Muse's Kate Minshew. Some of the tweets are Storified here. Search for more with the hashtag #WSJchat.)

No?

How about expecting to get guidance on the latest advances in online career development at an event conducted by someone who thinks LinkedIn is exclusively for connecting with people you already know well rather than people you are loosely associated with professionally and want to grow closer to? Someone whose policy lets connection requests go unanswered while, creepily, LinkedIn alerts us she's reviewed our info-rich profile and decided that's a no.

Again, I wouldn't. Yet these are things I have witnessed and experienced recently.

Do you see where I'm going? This is not helpful. This is place holding.

Old-school is occupying the space where actionable help is supposed to go.

And, if you find yourself thinking you don't need up-to-the-minute Twitter advice from a career advisor -- you're wrong.

How Pinterest Is More Like Twitter And Less Like Facebook

A fellow transmedia storyteller I encouraged to try Pinterest just let me know I am "flooding her stream so she has to unfollow".

I imagine an active bout of pinning by anyone you follow will put a flood of images into your timeline. That's the nature of the beast.

If you follow too few people or too few boards, you'll probably be like this woman, wanting people to post less so you don't suddenly see a ton of images of one topic or from one pinner if what you want is more variety in your timeline. (Algorithmically, perhaps, like you might expect at Facebook.)

But the beauty of Pinterest is the customizability (for instance, you can follow a pinner's specific pinboard rather than all of that pinner's activity).

And this isn't Facebook where one might be right to worry you're becoming a nuisance (to the limited numbers and strong tie relationships of most people's Facebook accounts) by posting every five minutes.

The reason we're on Pinterest is to pursue our interests -- it's a network of weak ties based on interests -- it's not connect to people we happen to know (nor are we concerned on Pinterest with making people we happen to know think we are behaving non-annoyingly on Pinterest).

The reputation I generate on Twitter or Pinterest is going to be about the quality and subject matter of what I share and interact with. I'm much less inclined at those services than at Facebook about whether what I pin or share pleases the people who follow me. That's for them to decide and adjust as necessary. But telling me not to do it, or do it less, however indirectly? Nope. Just go.

This is the exploration of my interests. You can come along if you want, but I won't be curtailing my pinning because someone who follows me can't figure out how to handle it.

Much like at Twitter, at Pinterest I usually favorite images at a fast pace then add them to my boards/share them with my followers at a much slower rate. And I consume much more than I produce. I still may post more than you can handle. At Twitter, I put high volume accounts on a list I can dip into so they don't overwhelm my feed. Pinterest could certainly use more flexibility in this area.

On Pro Networks At Facebook, LinkedIn, Google Plus And Diaspora

In a discussion at the GlobalNiche LinkedIn group about BranchOut, here's what I had to say: BranchOut hopes to be the LinkedIn of Facebook -- we're getting that meta now -- but I have to say I've heard a lot of complaints about the way it works (and auto-posts things for you). I joined a while ago, did nothing with it. Not sure I'll need it either. But if it fills a gap in the way Facebook pro connections work, then it may be useful since Facebook is increasingly my contact book.

And, if it at the same time fills a gap in the way that LinkedIn works, then great. Those kind of solutions are really interesting to me.

I try things and see if they are useful. Plenty of things haven't been, other things were useful for the time I used them and then I was done. Still other apps have yet to show me what I might do with them.

In the end we have to use the networks that provide what we're looking for.

Personally, I am working on developing my weak ties and creating a diverse network that will not only help spread my content to their own groups, but also supply guidance and info and perspective that perhaps my stronger ties/morelikeminded contacts cannot. I don't know that I will spend even a minute on BranchOut, but it's not a random network (it's Facebook!) and for that reason worth it for me to be part of in whatever limited way.

I've tried other things like that open source network DIASPORA and no one was there! Great idea, maybe before its own time. Now Google has its own Facebook like network, Google+. Will eventually try that too. If it only amounts to having a profile there, not much trouble for me.

BTW, here's what's what about GOOGLE+ (for writers and publishers, but applicable to creative entrepreneurs): http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/what-publishers-authors-need-to-know-about-google_b33317

If you're on Google+ please connect with me! (So lonely...) Then we can test the group video chat HANGOUTS.

P.S. Here is Chris Brogan on 50 things about Google+ http://www.chrisbrogan.com/googleplus50/