Wide-eyed and Jaded

What was more interesting and fun to me than Cuil’s launch this week? Delicious‘ redesign! I normally find out about these things on Twitter, but not this time! I logged in to my account to pull something up for one of my colleagues and was shocked by an aesthetically pleasing user interface.

The good:

• Sleek presentation!
• I love the UI’s organization and how much easier it is now to search for something in my hoards of bookmarks
• The Top 10 Tags chart is much nicer to look at than a long tailed list

I’m not sure about:

• I might like the Top Tags more if they were listed in order of most to least tagged rather than alphabetically
• I really liked the del.icio.us brand!
• My blog’s Delicious widget is messed up now

I’m sure I’ll learn about and fall in love with other details of the new site as I play around with it a little more. But for now I suggest checking out this video from Delicious that walks the viewer through the redesign:

Now that you’ve read what I think, I want to know what you love and hate and the new site!

One of the first things I was taught in my Online PR course was the importance of building, protecting and managing my personal brand. Keep up blog posts (I promise I’m working on this!), leave comments on other blogs, get involved in various online spaces, be careful of what you have on your Facebook profile, etc.

I found it pretty easy to produce some top notch Google juice of my own. It isn’t difficult when you have a name like Rayanne Langdon. Even before joining Seesmic, signing up to Twitter or starting a discussion about ethics on Inside PR, googling “Rayanne Langdon” turned up dozens of pages—most of which directly related to me. A LiveJournal account here, a profile on the CBC Radio 3 website there… I’ve existed online for a very long time. One of the first searches I did resulted in my re-discovery of an ICQ Foo Fighters fan group I made when I was 14. I called it Forever Foo. I’m a moron. Hah.

I was never scared of any of the information out there about me. I’ve never worried about what I did or said in the past that may rear its questionable head again. I’ve done and I still do some weird and ridiculous things on the Internet (more posts are a-brewin’), and I am not ashamed or embarrassed. I’m the girl who had Wayne Gretzky as an imaginary friend when I was a child, remember?

The intricacies of my online activities make me who I am. I love and am so proud of everything one can learn about me by doing a simple Google search. My heart goes out to those with names a little more common than mine.

So, when I see influencers teaching young people to constantly remain professional in all their online endeavours, I feel sad for them. I recognize the necessity to smarten up about the public photos posted on one’s Facebook profile, but I think introducing someone to online public relations by giving warnings about what can and will be used against them deters young people from wanting to get involved in such a space.

Yes, being social media savvy might help a student land a great job in the near future, but don’t lie—there are still plenty of communications jobs for those refusing to blog or tweet. Many people still need to be convinced that this a great place to be! Please don’t use scare tactics. And yes, I believe scare tactics are exactly what is being used.

We are all people. We all make mistakes and we all want to have fun. We can be responsible and human at the same time.

I dig brands. Well, certain brands. I totally buy into companies with strong, unique and recognizable brands.

Example: I’m a Mac girl. It all started with my utter obsession to get an iPod. About five years ago, my big brother’s desire to own an iPod became mine as well. For a couple of Christmases, he’d shake every gift box next to his ear and ask aloud, “iPod?” It was never an iPod.

When I got my OSAP loan about two and a half years ago, I bought a silver, six gigabyte iPod Mini. It’s pretty old school now, but I’m still kind of in love with it. And, I only use Apple earbuds. Specifically, this in-ear version:

You’re probably thinking, “She only wears those earphones so people will know she has an iPod.” That’s a common reaction, and I get it. Honestly, I used to think that’s why I wanted only those. But, it’s more about the Apple brand for me. Apple earbuds are fairly recognizable, and that’s just the way I want to roll.

I hated the colour of my iPod when I first bought it because it’s not white like the original iPod. But, I could only afford a Mini, so silver was the next best choice.

A year and a half ago, I bought a MacBook. It was around the time Apple released the black version of the product. What colour do you think my MacBook is?

Most of you reading this know I’m crazy about Twitter. I’m ridiculously obsessed with it, and I know I’m not alone. But, most Twitter fanatics are devoted to one twitter application or another. The thing is, I’m just not feeling it.

Snitter is a Twitter application that users can download to their desktop. The client allows twitterers to see what’s going on in their feed while going about their daily online business. If a Twitter users receives a message directed at her, she’ll see a notice (accompanied with a pretty, little ding) pop out of the top-right corner of her monitor. Best of all, she can reply without going to the website. Here’s a picture of the pretty, little ditty:

Twirl is another application similar to Snitter. It does essentially the same thing as Snitter, but all clients have their own tiny differences that make them unique and appealing to different people. I don’t know much about it because I’ve never used it. Actually, I haven’t used Snitter, either. But, I’ve seen Miranda use it quite a bit. Here’s the visual:

The reason I’m not terribly fond of either of these applications lays in the Twitter brand. I like the way the website looks. When I see it, I immediately know where I am. It’s familiar. It’s Twitter.

I prefer keeping a tab on my browser open to twitter.com at all times when I’m online. Every few minutes, I refresh the page. That way, I’m always on top of everything that’s going on in my twitter stream. I’ve seen people tweet they missed an @message or direct message because of their application one too many times to put my faith in an outside source.

However, I’m not attacking twitter apps without trying something out myself. Actually, I’m not attacking anything. I’m just stating my preference. Anyway, I use TwitterFox:

TwitterFox is a client designed for users of Firefox, obviously. I like it because it appears as a tiny “t” in the bottom-right corner of my browser. Tweets appear as they are posted. @messages show in green, and direct messages in yellow. My feed is hidden until I click on it and ask it to appear. And, if I double-click on the t, I am directed to the site. But, what I like most about TwitterFox is the colour. It looks a lot like the website. It adheres to the Twitter brand.

And yes, you can change the look of your Twitter page; you don’t have to be a sheep like me. But, I just like the site the way it is! I tried playing around with the colours, but nothing looked as good as the default. Developers really know what they’re doing, ya know? This is the same reason I never souped up my MySpace page.

There are many more applications for Twitter I haven’t mentioned. But, I think you get the point.

Fellow Twitter pals, what application do you use and why? Perhaps you can convince me to experiment with a new client.