Today’s Guest Post is written by George Hall from Social Media and Technology Roundup Follow @geehall1 on Twitter.

Although Twitter‘s been the big-name star, Friendfeed‘s been the quiet achiever.

And while there are some great third-party services for Twitter, the best features of Friendfeed are built-in.

Recently I’ve been utilizing a few of those features to enhance both my Twitter tweets and my own blog posts.

Using Friendfeed on Your Blog

Embedding a Friendfeed item is fairly simple.  Underneath the item, you’ll find options for likes, comments and sharing.  If you choose sharing, you’ll find this dialogue (shown below) pop up.  As you can see, links, embedding and even short URLs.  But for a blog post, we’re concerned with embedding only.  So we choose ‘embed’ which will place an iframe in your post.

Friendfeed Share Options

A benefit of doing this is that you can also have any comments from that item drawn into your blog post.  In real-time, too, I might add.  As the embed code is html, you can even alter the size of the iframe to better fit your blog layout.  You can even comment to this item and it will also show up in the original Friendfeed version.  Assuming you’re logged in there, of course.

Another way to use Friendfeed is with its aggregation capabilities.  As you also saw with the first picture, there’s a checkbox for sending the item directly as a Twitter update.  This can also be set up from your individual settings, where you can choose to have any aggregated feed update your Twitter account.  In the next two images, we see how you go into settings, click on “Twitter publishing preferences,” then select which feeds we want publishing to Twitter.

Publish Friendfeed activities to Twitter

Friendfeed Services

The end result is that I have Australia’s ABC and Melbourne Herald-Sun items now automatically published in my Twitter feed, along with blog items and a couple of humorous links.

And all thanks to these 3 benefits of using Friendfeed.

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Earlier I posted about the Facebook Vanity URL that was launched publicly today and I am happy to report that mine was easy to grab. I don’t know of any other Ange Recchia’s online, I don’t have a fan page and I cannot see any reason why anyone else would want to have facebook.com/Ange.Recchia.angesbiz for themselves… yet.  Although, it could be a form of flattery

Controversy Over Facebook Vanity URLs

Controversy did arise however when Problogger aka Darren Rowse tweeted that facebook.com/Problogger was not available. We soon found out a domainer, aka @ChefPatrick (on twitter) had taken the name. Not long thereafter, Ed Dale from Thirty Day Challenge fame also tweeted that one Jessica Yuwell had snapped up facebook.com/EdDale. John Reese also had his name used as a vanity url by an imposter.

This is what transpired through my twitter stream this afternoon.

Now, it might be just me however, why would you choose such well known names if it wasn’t anything to do with your Facebook profile? Afterall, Facebook is for personal profiles. I can understand the domainer choosing a well know brand for business purposes perhaps. He did offer a lame excuse of being caught up in the excitement. I’ll let you decide.

The vanity url’s are not transferrable or for sale and if anyone was searching for Problogger or EdDale as a Facebook url I’m pretty sure as soon as Jessica was spotted they would know immediately it was an imposter. Same goes for Problogger as a Facebook url. Darren’s brand is so well known.

So an eventful afternoon here in Melbourne and in the Twitterverse. I am curious about the outcome of these two imposters and how Facebook will deal or if they will deal with them in light of the brands they stole.

One thing I’m not sure of is if the Vanity URLs could have been pre-claimed and then used on the day? Your thoughts and comments are welcome and if you have any answers, I’d love to hear them.

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This image is linked to where you need to go to claim your own username.

When Facebook made the announcement last week it caused some discussion which prompted many Social Media Marketers to share their thoughts.

There are, according to Facebook statistics

• More than 200 million active users
• More than 100 million users who log on to Facebook at least once each day

That is mind boggling. In my humble opinion, I do not think that 100 million users will all be logged in at the same time wanting to claim their Vanity URL. I could be wrong.

What do you think? Will you be sitting at your computer with countless others choosing a username?

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Firstly, RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. Basically, this is published content from a website or blog with a feed enabled. In order to be able to receive this feed,  you will need to have an account with one (or more if you like) feed reader or aggregator. There are many options available and I will tell you about these later. Let’s take a look at what an RSS Feed is in this Slideshare presentation.

Let’s recap Renee’s points in this presentation.

1. We have established that an RSS Feed is published content which is made available via a website or blog and in so doing,  distribution is automated.
2. Before you subscribed to a feed, you would have to seek the content yourself via google search, visit sites and/or find it in newsprint.
3. After you have subscribed to a feed, you can read the content of interest to you via your feed reader.

Now it’s time to explore the wonders of Google Reader.

Google Reader

Google Reader is the most favoured of readers to have your chosen feeds delivered right to your desktop everyday. When I open mine, all my favourite blogs are updated and fresh for me to read. Not only can I read the feeds, Google Reader also allows me to share, share with a note or email any posts I feel would be useful with my friends.

This image is linked to my public shared items which you are welcome to browse through and subscribe to in your reader.

Social Networking has allowed me to make connections from all kinds of Social Media sites and the one thing I have found in common is that they all have a Gmail account. What this means is when I add them as a contact in my GTalk, they are automatically added to my sharing friends in Google Reader. To connect with me and share your items, add me, angesbiz[at]gmail.com and send me an invite.

Clint Maher, WordPress specialist who is also an author on this site has made two tutorials on How to Use Google Reader which I have embedded here. These videos explain how to set up your reader and the options available.
How to Use Google Reader Part 1

How to Use Google Reader Part 2

Like Clint mentions in his video, you may want to subscribe to your Social Media feeds for various reasons. I discovered when I went into my reader and searched for Ange Recchia the feeds which were available on this list included not only my Social Media sites such as Twitter and Friendfeed, but also any blogs I had added comments to. This can be a very useful tool for Internet Marketers. You can tack almost anywhere you have been on the web!

Other Readers You May Subscribe With

Other readers you may consider subscribing with are:

• Newsgator
• Netvibes
• My Yahoo
• iGoogle
• Pageflakes
• iTunes, PodNova and Odeo are for podcast subscriptions.

All of these other feed readers are excellent although they do not have the Social features of Google Reader.

How To Decide Which Feeds To Subscribe To

You may want to subscribe to hundreds of feeds. If you think this sounds messy then don’t worry because with any feed reader, you can sort your subscriptions into folders. If you are organised, the minute you subscribe to a feed you can automatically add it to an existing folder or create a new folder for it. This way you can immediately find the feed you are searching for, and take my word for it, it really is a good idea to sort your feeds.

My interests lie in many areas and if you’re like me, you find most of your information on the internet in which case, I have a category folder and file each subscription into the relevant folder. Much like I do with my bookmarking sites.

In my case, my categories are split into the following folders:

• Travel and Fabulous Journeys (who doesn’t love to travel?)
• Regular Everyday Recipes (always in need of new recipes)
• Investing in the Stock Market (I know how to hand chart a stock!)
• SEO (for my own sake as a blogger)
• Web Business/Internet Marketing/Affiliate Marketing
• Scrapbooking (so I know what latest items to buy for my niece’s hobby)
• Social Networking/Social Media (this goes without saying)
• Personal Development/Self Improvement/Mindpower
• Health and Wellness (because no reader is complete without some health topics, especially if it’s about chocolate )

I even have a friend who’s an Aussie Cop and blogs his experiences so I like to keep up with how he copes on the job. Makes for an interesting read.

Feel free to visit these blogs and subscribe to them if they are to your liking. Now that you know what some of my interest are, please feel free to suggest some blogs that are your favourites for me to subscribe to in the comments below so I can add them to my reader.

RSS Icons

RSS Icons have become more fanciful since they were born. My Billboard icon at the top right of this page is where you need to click in order to subscribe to the Social Networking News Daily feed, so if you haven’t already, please do so to keep up with the latest trends in Social Networking and WordPress.

I found a variety of icons you can download and use on your site depending on what kind of site you have if you want to be a little more creative. This RSS Button Collection is one of the most comprehensive I’ve come across. You’re bound to find the right one for your blog here.

RSS Directories for Content Publishers

As a content publisher, you will want to syndicate your quality content over a far reach. In other words, reach as many readers as you possibly can. Here is a list of 55 directories to promote your RSS feed to. I didn’t want to add the whole list here so please visit Mahesh’s site to grab this. He has done a fabulous job so there’s no need for me to duplicate it here.

I hope you enjoyed this post. If you did, you know what to do and remember to leave your links in the comments for me to subscribe to. TTFN!

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Last night in Melbourne, for the second time, Sam Mutimer arranged a social gathering of tweeps in Melbourne. Unfortunately I could not attend as my daughter had a bad fall yesterday afternoon, landed on her back and hit her head so I was home monitoring her well being. She was my priority last night. Thankfully she is fine with no serious injuries.

It looks like I missed out on an exciting evening and the chance to meet with some online friends I have yet to meet however, there’s always a next time.

Sam uploaded this video of what @Tweetupmellers means to her.

She’s gorgeous and if you’re in Melbourne, follow  Sam @sammutimer on Twitter. Here she is posing as the disco queen DJ!

Take a look at who was there on Tweetupmellers Flickr Photostream and Jade Craven’s Flickr Photostream!

Jade can also be found on Twitter as @cravenjade. Be sure to hook up with both these lovely ladies. It looks like a fun night and could someone please explaine the doll in the photo’s to me?

See you at the next event Melbourne Tweeps

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