So as I sit here today I have four main web 2.0 or social media outlets:
Twitter - http://twitter.com/shanescows
Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/people/Shane-Young/536832933
SharePoint Blog – http://msmvps.com/shane
Personal Blog – http://www.shanescows.com
The purpose of this post is to clearly spell out my intended use of each one. This way you can make an educated decision on which you may want to subscribe or follow me and my antics around the web.
Twitter (Professional)
I use Twitter for SharePoint stuff. This includes posting links to my blogs, announcing new web casts and white papers, links to SharePoint content, general SharePoint news for the community, and networking with SharePoint people. You will occasionally see non-SharePoint techy stuff on my twitter but it is done under the spirit of SharePoint community. For example when I was at SharePointTechCon several of us went on a field trip to downtown San Francisco. During the trip I had tweets talking about riding in the trunk and stuff. Since I was with SharePoint people at a SharePoint conference I felt this appropriate for Twitter. You will not see tweets about my dogs or how much airports suck.
I do also subscribe to the Twitter search for the term SharePoint. So I will see people with SharePoint question tweets and will try to respond to them with suggestions as appropriate. Also, on Twitter I follow some people who are non SharePoint. Typically I am doing this only to consume their information, if I start wanting to "tweet" with them about non SharePoint stuff on a regular basis I will start a new Twitter account at that time.
You are welcome to follow me at http://twitter.com/shanescows. I do not follow everyone who follows me but I do generally check a new followers profile and see what they have recently tweeted, if I am interested I follow them. Don't take it as an insult if I don't follow you, I may have been super busy when you started following me or you may have just had a run of tweets I didn't care for. It is a free country Tweet as you would like.
Unfollowing: I will typically unfollow people for things like posting they lyrics of songs to be annoying or for just generally posting dumb crap more often than good stuff. If I unfollow you, sorry, but your and my ideas of what Twitter is for have changed. No big deal.
Facebook (Personal)
This is where I post things like "We got tickets to the Cyclones game in a suite tonight" or "The weather in Tampa is awesome". This is for my friends old and new to keep up with my personal tidbits. I also enjoy reading friends updates of the tidbits of what they are doing.
As a rule I don't play the Facebook games. No snowball fights or birthday apps for me. Not to say you don't enjoy them but I don't use Facebook for that. Also, 95% of the time I use Facebook (FB) mobile to get information so none of the other crazy FB stuff works there.
Feel free to add me as a friend on Facebook if you want to keep up with those types of adventures and want to share with me the little things you are doing. I will take all the friends I can get. http://www.facebook.com/people/Shane-Young/536832933
The SharePoint Farmer's Almanac – SharePoint Blog (Professional)
Are you looking for how to upgrade from SharePoint Portal Server 2003 to Microsoft Office Server 2007 or want to know what is an SSP? This is the place for you. I only post pertinent, professional SharePoint information on this blog, typically covering the administrator's point of view. Sometimes I have lots of post (like when the next version of SharePoint is in Beta) other times they are few and far between. Either way this is a great resource if you are a SharePoint administrator who doesn't want any noise, just good information. I promise if it made it to this blog you need to know about it.
You will see no personal post on this blog. Though I have been known to give away free stuff and discount codes to training classes.
Comments – I generally approve all valid (not spam) comments to my blog within a few days but I do stink at responding to comments. Sorry. If you have a SharePoint question you need answered you should look to different community resources such as the Microsoft SharePoint forums or the SharePoint helpdesk my company offers. http://msmvps.com/shane and then there is an RSS feed you can subscribe to.
ShanesCows – Personal Blog (Personal)
This is where I will say things people will probably hold against me. :) I am about to become a Dad for the first time so should be lots of fun things to post. Also, I travel A LOT. So I always have things to post about airports, airlines, hotels, rental cars, and strange cities. I really am looking forward to this new blog as an outlet. Might be interesting, might be lame, guess we will all find out together. Hopefully the kid will be able to look back at it one day and see the embarrassing things I said about him as a baby. I will print out stories and hand them to his dates when he gets older.
http://www.shanescows.com will be the location of the blog, interestingly enough it is actually going to be hosted on SharePoint.
Other places I am on the web
LinkedIn http://www.linkedin.com/pub/0/89/110
I manly use this to accept connections and occasional contacts. I am not very active.
SharePoint Forums
I don't participate here as much as I should but occasionally I pop in to answer questions.
Summary
So I realize this is a lot to consume and I don't expect you to agree with how I am using everything. That is cool; you very well may do things differently. I just wanted to clearly state the way I am using these different outlets so you can know what to expect of me. I meet a lot of great people from conferences, classes I teach, and from virtual communities so I wanted to make it easier to connect and follow up with all of you in this virtual world.
I look forward to seeing you on the web!
Shane Young