Connecting With InformationWeek On Twitter, Facebook, And Our Forums

InformationWeek is slopping over the edges of our Internet domain, connecting with this new-fangled "social networking" technology all the kids are talking about nowadays. We're expanding our presence on Facebook and Twitter, getting ready to beef up our forums, and making plans to connect on other social networks as well.Connect On Facebook

A while ago, we created the InformationWeek group on Facebook, and this week we actually put it to work. We'll use it to update you on our best stories, discussions, and other Web content we think you'll like a lot and find extremely useful. We'll also let you know about upcoming events using this group. And of course you can use the group to connect with the elite of the Internet: InformationWeek readers.

To join, visit the InformationWeek group page and click the "Join this Group" button.

My colleague Alex Wolfe created two InformationWeek apps earlier this week, one for receiving headlines and links for new posts to the InformationWeek Blog and the other for headlines and links for new articles on InformationWeek.com. Follow the links to add the apps to your Facebook page.

We'll figure out other uses for the group, together with the InformationWeek community, as we go.

Connect On Twitter

I've been Twittering away for over a year now under my nom-de-Second Life, Ziggy Figaro. Inspired by Alex's good example, I created two Twitter feeds for InformationWeek.

The first, called (cleverly enough), InformationWeek, is an automated feed of all the article and blog headlines we publish, with links. I built it in mere minutes using the excellent TwitterFeed service, which lets you update any Twitter account you own using any RSS feed.

The second Twitter feed, called IWpicks, contains only the best articles, blogs, and other Internet content on InformationWeek. We'll update that one manually, a few times a week -- as I write this, there's one, and only one tweet in IWpicks but, of course, there will be more to come.

Connect On Our Forum

You already know about the comments areas at the end of our articles and blogs. But you probably didn't know know that those areas are just the most visible part of the InformationWeek Forum, containing discussions in 11 different areas, including careers, software, hardware, Linux/Open Source, etc.

Until now, we haven't been doing a great job building a community in the Forum; visiting there now is like wandering through a new house that nobody's moved in to yet. However, we're working on changing that. Every week, we're launching a new conversation in the forum, starting last week with a discussion on whether we're facing an IT talent shortage. Join the discussion, or start a new thread.

We've got some other ideas as well. One thing I'm thinking about: How can we better take advantage of LinkedIn? Facebook and LinkedIn are the Dynamic Duo of social networking sites: Facebook for friends, and LinkedIn for professional connections. We went to Facebook first because it's got a huge user base, and it's got the most obvious tools we can use -- but we're really not doing it right unless we start doing something with LinkedIn also. But what?

More questions: Should we start a group on Ning? I'm not sure what advantage that gives us over Facebook and LinkedIn. Yes, it would be our network, which we could control, but I'm not sure if control is the name of the game here. Also, is there anything we can do with Spock, which seems quite promising. (What the heck is Spock? I'm glad you asked.)

Got any ideas? Leave a message below and let us know.