How To Create A Timeline

Google+ invites create timeline full of geeks bragging plus little

Google, you might want to invite some more people to your party before the nerds ruin it. Google+, or Google Plus, depending on which iteration of the nomenclature users end up settling on, is currently just like Facebook – if Facebook consisted of nothing but status updates from geeks bragging about how they have an entire social network to themselves. There’s plenty of potential there with Google+, as it already has a status update viewing system which is arguably theoretically superior to the ones Facebook and Twitter employ. But as per custom, Google has launched the service by only initially inviting geeks and insiders and then allowing them to invite fellow geeks and insiders (see Gmail beta). And as a result, a Google+ user’s entire timeline consists thus far of nothing but geeks and insiders. The troubling part, if Google wants Plus to become a mainstream service, is that the geek exclusivity is exactly how the geeks want it to stay.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. There’s actually precedent for this early Google+ geek phenomenon, and last time around it didn’t require an invite system in order to play out this way. Back in 2007, Twitter consisted of nothing but geeks and it was a nice community. But it was a closed, exclusive community. The “celebrities” of Twitter at that time were people whom the mainstream had never heard of (and still never has). When mainstream celebrities found their way onto Twitter, the geeks hated it, derided it, and fought it every step of the way. Contrast that with Facebook, which grew outward from college kids who graduated and eventually saw their mainstream co-workers, relatives, and old high school classmates find their way on there. In its function, Facebook is arguably just as geeky as Twitter. But the geeks always favored Twitter over Facebook because it was their playground – geeks love feeling like they’ve got something different and special to themselves, regardless of whether it’s better or worse than what the mainstream has – and once Twitter went quasi-mainstream, the geeks began to turn against it as well.

Now the geeks are praising Google+ as being the perfect social network, and they’re doing so after about five minutes of using it. The problem for Google is that their praise of Google Plus is based almost entirely on how much they love the fact that no one but geeks is on there. In fact the typical Google Plus timeline is full of almost nothing but bragging. That may soften once they run out hot air and decide to begin actually doing something with Google Plus, if they get that far. The most likely scenario is that, as with users who are already cross-posting to Facebook and Twitter, Google+ will simply become a third place in which they cross-post the exact same status update. In other words, it’ll be just another place to go and read the same things you’ve already read on the last social network. Which is fine for Google if it can win by pulling the mainstream away from Facebook and Twitter and becoming the social network which most users visit first each morning.

How to create an interactive timeline – a guide to Dipity

How to create an interactive timeline – a guide to Dipity

Dipity is an interactive web tool that allows the user to create a timeline based around a wide variety of topics and historical events. This blog post aims to give an understanding of how to create an interactive timeline using the Dipity tool. The timelines are available to share with friends and colleagues via the integration of the tool with other social networking sites such as Digg, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook and Stumbleupon.

The Timeline can be viewed in a variety of ways to suit the individual user with choices such as the timeline view, flipbook view, list view, or map view which allows you to keep track of friends and events.

Register – Go to dipity.com and register for a free account and log in using your user ID.

Add a Topic – Click Create a Timeline to start a new timeline (topic). Proceed by filling out the required settings. The setting can be altered to help protect against privacy and allow for other users to contribute.

Events – Click Add an Event to add a new event to your timeline. A menu box will appear to enable you to input the relevant event information such as the title, date, description, display picture, link, location and video URL’s. For link building purposes it is recommended that you include relevant back links to your website/blog.

Add Resources – Dipity allows the user to easily add messages, videos, photos, blogs and other timelines to your topic via the user friendly Events and Event Sources section under Topic Settings. Here Dipity automatically adds the content to your timeline.

Share – If the user has a personal or company blog you can embed your timeline in any view type using the embed code. Alternatively you can alter your settings to public for other dipity users to view your timeline or share via the social media widgets.

Dipity allows for users to include links to other social media platforms and blog posts simply by entering them into the event details sections.

Those who interact with social media generally use the social websites themselves rather than tools that bring together all the users relevant social updates. The timeline offers the user an opportunity to view all social media updates in one virtual space in historical order. This is not only a fantastic tool for organisations to archive information, it is also a useful tool for personal use as it enables you to keep track of web links and information that you have gathered previously, enabling you to return to the pages in the future.

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