One of the features I use extensively within Gmail is Groups. By creating these lists within my contacts, I can track who I met at Gnomedex, or who listens to RPG Countdown. I can easily see if someone falls into multiple categories, which helps me when I’m in contact with them. This is important if, like me, you have over 10,000 people in your address book.

The one thing I haven’t had – the one thing I’ve been looking for – is a way to see where my contacts are in my social graph. When I’m talking with a fellow podcaster, it’d be nice to know if they are on Facebook so I can attempt to connect with them there. Until now, I’ve been playing this game by ear, relying on my ability to spot holes in my social graph and plugging them manually.

Today, I found rapportive.

When I open an email from someone, rapportive allows me to see which social networks they participate in. It easily allows me to note if I am connected with them, so that I can take steps to reach out if I am not.

Rapportive isn’t perfect. It relies on plumbing account data based on the addresses in your contact list, so if you don’t have the right email on file you won’t get all the data available on someone. Likewise, if your contact hasn’t maintained their social profiles, the data you get may be out of date. Still, this is a wonderful, and free, tool to help with CRM.

Example URL: http://ephealy.com/sample-blog-post

Let’s say I want to tack on a tracking code for Facebook before feeding it to a Facebook page so that traffic resulting from Facebook can be tracked. Example Facebook URL: http://ephealy.com/sample-blog-post?tid=12345

And let’s say I have a different code for Twitter that I’d like to tack on before bit.ly takes over and the update feeds to a Twitter account. Example Twitter URL: http://ephealy.com/sample-blog-post?tid=67890

Is there a service that can handle this type of thing? I’d love to hear from you, if you know the answer.

There is.

Step #1: Click on the Home Page

Step #2: Hover over the right hand side of one of the updates in your news feed until you see the Hide option

Step #3: Click on on the Hide option and select the option to hide the person whose update you’ve selected

Step #4: Select ‘View Live Feed’ (Upper Left)

Step #5: Select ‘Edit Options’ (Bottom Right, near Footer)

Step #6: In the dialog that pops up, unhide the person you ‘hid’ in Step #3 (above), and then change the number of friends in the bottom left.

That’s it. You’re done.

On yesterday’s Marketing Over Coffee, Chris Penn said he’d been able to look into the developer docs for Wave. What he discovered was that Wave was more than just IM on roids – it’s a federated protocol, apparently using XMPP, that allows for synchronous real-time streaming of information between multiple platforms.

If this is true, then Wave is potentially a game changer, allowing information to not just flow into a conversation, but back out of it to update outside sources; bi-directional exchange. Bi-directional interfacing of services will allow us to break down the silos that keep media channels independent.

Twitter, Today: I post an update and followers A & B see it. If follower A replies, I can see it. If follower B is not following follower A, though, follower B can’t see follower A’s reply to my initial update.

Facebook, Today: I post an update and my friends can see it. If anyone replies to that update, all my friends can see it, regardless of whether they are all friends with each other.

Twitter + Facebook, Today: I can dump my Twitter stream into my Facebook account. This means that my Twitter followers and my Facebook friends can both see my updates. Unfortunately, at this point the conversation fragments. When my Twitter followers reply, my Facebook friends don’t see that side of the conversation. This is true of replies on Facebook as well – they don’t push out to Twitter.

Google Wave and Microblogging: With Wave, if I’m understanding it properly, you can post to Twitter, populate your status updates on Facebook, and any replies from any sources can be seen by all participants in the conversation. It won’t matter where people enter a conversation from, they will all be able to exchange information with each other. Twitter and Facebook, Plurk and Seesmic, it won’t matter which account your using – as long as you’re added to a wave, you’ll be able to participate with individuals on different platforms, using different services.

Conversation portability. Very cool.

UPDATE: I was totally wrong about what Wave is. So what. I want my version!

Bulgaria was an opportunity for me. We had very low expenses while living overseas and so I was blessed with a chance to build my businesses without having to worry about paying too many bills.

In April, I ran across an article by Chris Brogan entitled ‘Social Media for Your Career’. Chris mentioned a lot of things in the article, but I focused on his mention of LinkedIN. Based on his recommendation, I decided to take LinkedIN for a spin (http://www.linkedin.com/in/ephealy).

One thing I noticed was that you can sort potential connections by geographic location. I decided to see how many people were in my neck of the woods: Sofia, Bulgaria. Right now, there are almost 5,000 people in the Sofia metropolitan area with LinkedIN profiles. At the time, though, there were far fewer – 41 to be exact. With so few people to choose from, I decided to scroll through the list and see what popped out.

On the second page was a rather generic listing for ‘CEO of Haemimont Games’. I had no LinkedIN connections who knew this person, so I had no way to contact him via the service, so I relied on another useful service: Google. What I discovered was that Haemimont Games produced some pretty cool products. Even better, their offices were two blocks away. I called, gave them my credentials as a gaming professional, and asked if they’d like to get together. As luck would have it, they were having a company outing at the local bowling alley the next day and asked me to drop by.

As it turned out, Haemimont was looking for people to help write for their first Xbox title. I’d worked on various game products and Rone, my business partner, had sold screenplays to MGM – we had the skills they were looking for, and I told them as much.

The meeting went well, as did the next one. By the end of May, Moonstew Games was knee deep in our first computer game project (to be released this Christmas).

And that’s how social media helped me land my first Xbox gig. Thanks to Chris Brogan (blogger), I learned about a networking site for professionals (LinkedIN), which pointed me toward a potential business partner. Without those two first steps, I would never have met the good folks at Haemimont Games.

Social media won’t do it all, though. It’s great for making connections and sharing ideas, but it took a real-world connection to seal this deal. That’s just as an important a lesson – something I’ve learned time and time again. The internet is great, but it’s no substitute for face-to-face communication. Instant messages and a webcam can’t replace a living, breathing person.

Likewise, nothing replaces experience. If Rone and I didn’t have a resume to back us up, I doubt Haemimont would have given me more than an invite to go bowling again.

Be professional with a solid track record, be prepared to show that record to others, and strike when opportunities arise – you’ll do fine. Social media can help you find those opportunities, though.

For instance, I have a new podcast coming out this week. It’s a show about game design and game mastering, for people who enjoy roleplaying games. I could announce the show at any time, but why not make the announcement at a time when people are most likely talking about RPGs and podcasts already? Furthermore, why not release each episode during that ‘sweet spot’, if one exists?

Let’s see if one does.

Mentions of the terms “rpg” or “roleplaying game” by day of the week:

Fridays are a good day for RPGs – with 20% more chatter than on Thursday. RPG discussion appears to taper off steadily thereafter, with a nice little spike on Wednesdays.

This makes a lot of sense. Most roleplaying happens on the weekends, when people have more free time. If I wanted to give them something to talk about, I might want to do it just before the weekend, so it’s fresh in their minds before they get together with friends or chat about their gaming experiences online.

I looked at what time of day people are talking about RPGs as well. 9 AM and 6 PM PST see definite spikes in RPG conversation. Whatever the reason, those are the times I need to remember when deciding when to talk about my RPG-related news.

Mentions of the terms “podcast” by day of the week:

Unlike RPGs, there doesn’t appear to be a definitive spike in chatty about podcasts on any given day of the week. The weekend is slightly more active, but the percentage of chatty on a day-to-day basis stays pretty consistent.

Likewise, there doesn’t seem to be much of a difference in volume of chat during the day. Podcast discussions seem to be a little more popular in the morning than the evening, but not enough to make any real hard judgments.

The Verdict

I’ve decided that I’ll release my new show on Thursday afternoon. This will give people something to talk about on Friday, and it will be fresh in their minds as they go into the weekend. On Fridays, I’ll post on various forums and news sites about each episode, driving conversation about the show so I can take advantage of the Friday spike.

On the Wednesday before each episode releases, I’ll pre-promote the show on forums in a similar manner, riding the mid-week wave of RPG conversation to remind people that a new episode will be coming out the next day.

I set up a MySpace account in a fit of boredom. The service had already been out for some time – long enough to become notorious of the immaturity of the content. But it was also known for being a place for artists to self-promote. That interested me. MySpace was good, allowing me to reconnect with some people I would never have been able to keep track of. It was my at-arms-length social network, though. I’d fire off a friendly message now and again, or post on someone’s page, but I wasn’t too engaged.

When facebook came along, it held no appeal to me. What did I need another MySpace for? I had my answer soon enough as MySpace suffered from security breaches that resulted in tons of annoying spam. It got so bad for me that I signed up at facebook and told all my friends at MySpace that I was shutting down my account. I’ve never gone back, and don’t plan to.

A similar tale can be said for Plaxo and LinedIN, except in this case LinkedIN has proven to be such a valuable service that I have no incentive to migrate to Plaxo. And I’m loathe to maintain multiple account and profiles on networks with duplicate scopes. I’m sorry Plaxo, but LinkedIN is where I’m at, and you’re going to have to work really hard to convince me to give you the time of day.

And so we come to micro-blogging and Twitter. Twitter had me – hook, line and sinker. Like others, though, I’m getting frustrated by the little whale that couldn’t (stay off my screen). I don’t think it’s the outages, though, that are driving people to seriously consider other services. While I have a sizeable cloud of contacts on Twitter, and I like simplicity of the service and the “personal news ticker” feel, it’s just text. Other services, like Jaiku and Pownce, use MMS instead of SMS – making them a little more attractive because of the added functionality. The only things saving Twitter right now are the entrenched user numbers and the fact that the other services don’t (yet) have interfaces that are easy to use.

Take Pownce, for instance. If I had a twhirl for Pownce, I’d be in heaven. Pownce Monkey is OK, but there are many things that need to be tweaked before it’s a truly useful application. If Pownce would implement geo-tracking elements a la BrightKite… Well, let’s just say that I wouldn’t shed a tear for Twitter.