Continuing along with my little overviews about some of the Social Media aspects that we encounter on a daily basis I wanted to bring up this entity known as “DISQUS”. Now Disqus in and of itself is not a Social Networking site or medium per se, but it is a tool that let’s you better integrate several of your online homes and comment from them via one single methodology. For instance, I can comment on any number of blog posts and sites using my Facebook profile, my personal or PiercingMetal Twitter and my Google account thanks to Disqus and that is wonderful since it allows for some level of consistency across the board. The appeal is maximized since folks who click my profile will see links to my own websites and online accounts that I wish to broadcast. I am all about sharing my music adventuring but I think all of you readers know that by now.

I enabled Disqus as a commenting mechanism several months ago on both this blog and my http://www.piercingken.com site and its worked very well for me in terms of maintaining course. My advice to those who frequent a lot of sites and love to participate with comments of their own is that they create an account as well and get to tossing the world at large their views. Like most other mediums of this particular kind there is a free service and apparently a pay for use one but I have no interest in the latter to be quite honest. The free one works well for what I need and gives me some control over the commenting that comes in for my work. I like being able to reply right to comments from another one because that is pretty useful. I can see this working out for me a little more when I further debate doing more of my contests on the site blog as opposed to Facebook but oops, I have said too much on that last little item. Now back to our regularly scheduled blogging.

Register For An Account: http://disqus.com/

Official Wikipedia Entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disqus

I’ve been on the fence about doing a post about this particular medium in the online realm because like some of the others we have briefly discussed, it is NOT a social network per se. What Klout amounts to is a kind of gauge as to what ones social media standings are based on a number of criteria that gets pooled all together from interactions on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and all the rest of them.

According to what I have read about Klout, it ranks you on a 1-100 scale and I imagine that the closer you are to 100 means the more influential in Klout you are perceived to be in terms of online influence. The account I created was set up by using my Official Twitter for PiercingMetal.com because while a personal profile might have been nice, I decided to do one for the brand identity to see how it was reaching the world around it. At the time of this posting, I appear to rank a “57″ Klout Score which I guess is not all that influential across its system. To be honest I am not all that concerned about that since it does not affect the way that I do things on the website and blogs that I compose for you all. The tally itself has been one of the main concerns that people have with this medium as many feel that it is not truly representative to ones true social networking impact. Who knows. To me this stuff is all subjective anyway but still fun to see how it all presents itself. Check it out…..

PiercingMetal on Klout – HERE

It’s interesting to learn how they compile one’s Klout score and you can learn all about that via their Wikipedia entry which I have added to this posting. Some hold their findings with a bit of a question about the overall validity of them and I cannot blame them because even I found a couple of things that didn’t make sense being a part of my numeric gauge. When our friends or colleagues join in on Klout and see us they can rate us as either an influencer of their own stuff or not. I do admit to being a little flattered when I see that someone I know rates me as being of influence in a particular area, but let me not get misty eyed here. One thing that did surprise me was several accounts that list under my profile as being my own influencers. Now to be honest I only have about an handful of people that influence me in Media and in the social networking side and I do not recall marking many of those listed as being influential to me. If they are automatically making me view certain profiles as influential to my own workings then I am suspect of this. Maybe this stuff will mean a lot more to you but for me its only something to give a glance to every now and again. I did update my profile to reflect my business Linked In and the Official Facebook Page for the website so let’s see if they have any impact on the current score.

What are your own thoughts on this kind of process? Do you think its valid or a bunch of hooey?

Official Wikipedia Entry = http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klout

Alright, now this next one is not as much of a Social Network as it is a means to put up a signpost that will show off how people can network with you socially. Does that make any sense? I found this one while clicking around in Foodspotting and was reading the profile page of one of my contacts. I was directed to this medium and thought it to be very interesting, depending on just how much you actually want to put out there. Since I have a few different interests and spaces online that direct you to my adventures in music reporting or photography, I felt that I should examine it a little deeper.

With this being in mind I did a test run of this resource with an account for myself and used my real name as opposed to the pen name of Piercing Ken or my PiercingMetal brand identity and listed my WordPress Blogs for PiercingMetal, my site Twitter and Instagram accounts first. You have a score of options to choose from and right off the bat for me there is stuff in those networks that I want people to find and hopefully enjoy the most. I opted to NOT add my personal Facebook Page and instead chose to add the two Official Facebook Pages that I maintain for each of my websites. Like many friends of mine, I am becoming a lot more strict on who I want accessing my personal happenings but if it is the media stuff that you enjoy then by all means hit up our official pages. You appear to be able to add a Google+ account along with a Tumblr and while I have these I essentially repeat many postings that you see on Facebook in those mediums. There are Last FM and Reverbnation accounts for the website, but each are used sparingly. Check out the graphic below to see the menu. Pardon the grayed out ones, this is from my profile and hence the ones I am using.

When I compiled my apps I was surprised to learn of two new Social Networks that I had not yet explored but they really don’t seem like ones I will tinker with anyway in all honesty. I am speaking of both Smarterer and Trippy and since I didn’t see how I would employ them as a media person you shall NOT be seeing overviews in this little set of observations any time soon. They had something related to food and drink called “Forkly” but I am a die hard Foodspotting dude now and shall stick by them. This looked exactly the same as far as interface went. Since I run the main PiercingMetal.com and PiercingKen.com websites I used the option to add the two links so perhaps if you have any number of domains under your command that you should do the same thing for good measure. They offer the ability to find ones friends but this is where I ran into an issue. I clicked “Find Your Friends” and while it worked on finding a couple of my Twitter connections, it took forever and then failed on my attempts to import the contacts on both Gmail.com and AOL.com. There is also a means to use your Yahoo.com email but I do not use that account at this point in my life. Its a redirect for me like Hotmail.com is. I didn’t get an error message – it just failed on me. So much for that. I guess anyone who searches for my name on this can find me with little incident or just CLICK THIS since they are right here already

So what made me add this to our little rundown of Social Networking sites and the like? Well, considering this resource amounts to a signpost of what you have going on in the online world, I felt that it helps you reach new people that might be of like mind or reconnect with friends who might be out there as well. Depending on what you want to share you can post it on this page and let yourself be found. You can even toss in a brief bio to cover all the bases. They seem to have the chance to get some business cards with this information on them but I already have a ton of cards with my branding already and I don’t post any of my social networks on them since it is secondary to what I am doing out there. You might feel different and that is alright with me. The link below brings you to the service so give it a whirl and if you add us to your favorites we hope that you click our links and find out more about what we are doing. Have fun.

Official Website: http://about.me/

This news might surprise you but “Yes, there is now one more Social Network to learn about”.  Oh come on, did you not think that this was going to happen?   I hate to alarm you but while the world currently finds itself entrenched in Facebook and Twitter, these networks are going to keep coming at us and vying for our attention.  So now let’s welcome to the fold a new networking site called “Staree”.  I first learned about Staree from the fine folks at Blog World Expo (which is now going by the name “New Media Expo” in case you have not heard) and like all new launches you needed to “apply” or “request” an invite to sign up.  After I tooled around the screens and saw that I could list my Official PiercingMetal Twitter and also make mention of the various other networks where you could find the brand I pressed “submit request” and waited to see what would happen.

Since this is new and only at the “invite” time of its existence there is not a lot of playing around that I could actually do since I don’t have anyone connected to me, nor did I see a means to find ones existing friends by searching via an email address. I copied the screen for my profile for your examination and found a couple of interesting items on it that I was not able to find any more information about. Take a look at the image and know you can make it larger by clicking on it.

Did you see the part on the side that showcases a dollar value? That is apparently one of the aspects of this network as it said on one of the screens I found that you can “take pictures and earn money”. Believe me I am always game for making a little side scratch since PiercingMetal.com does NOT pay its bills by reaching into the money tree branches. If the images they pay you for somehow become the exclusive property of Staree then this doesn’t interest me at all, since my images are mine and no one else’s. The first post I did was to show my “Official Photo” that Skeleton Pete took for me about a year ago as a test sample. I wanted to post some text and do a little introduction to say who I was and the like but it seems at this point the only options are to post a photo or a video. Visually this first struck me as very similar to Tumblr and I would have hoped that we would find the means to RSS some posted content into our own streams in Staree as we once were able to do in Tumblr but that did not appear to be the case.

I’ll keep experimenting and you readers are welcome to find my profile via this LINK but do be aware that the best place to keep up with the website is via the Facebook Fan Page and the Official Twitter because they are used quite a bit to tie all of our adventures together. Even though Facebook made some serious changes to the reach of its fan pages unless you paid, you can still be in the loop if you check back with it on a regular basis. Should I learn anything else that is cool about Staree I will append that information into the narrative for your indulgence.

UPDATE 5/3/2013: I’ve never found any positive use for the website brand via Staree and decided to cancel my account this evening. The interesting thing was that there was NO means for me to login and go to account settings and choose this option on my own. Instead I had to search around on their Facebook to hopefully find someone who had inquired about the same procedure. This exploration found me learning that a ticket needed to be drafted to their support desk who would address it in the order it was received. Wow. Talk about effective. Goodbye Staree, you appear pointless to me.

For a number of months I have been offering up our readers a veritable cornucopia of Social Networking posts here in our our sites blog and speaking in relation as to how we were using them to better generate attention to the PiercingMetal.com brand identity. Since site launch back in 2005, I’ve seen networks come and go and while some have even remained active all this time, their own reach and considered impact on the larger geography has waned while others took the reigns and rose to new heights. MySpace in particular was one that is no longer deemed relevant by a large faction of Net savvy people. On the other hand, Facebook is now without question one of the most popular, if not THE most popular and powerful Social Network that is currently online. It seems that everyone you encounter in your travels has a Facebook page and while people used to ask for telephone numbers, I now hear “can I add you on Facebook” much more. Not long after I created my own personal account, I learned of being able to create a focused page that could be dedicated to my website and this community page was limited in its quantification and use to the readership. That left me with some serious doubts about its benefit.

Click This Logo for the Official PiercingMetal Facebook Page

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Alight, so perhaps this is another case of my using this little section of narratives to speak about something that is not quite a Social Network but please indulge me since I did this for the Instagram application as well. Soundcloud is not a social network per se but really does help those who are musically inclined get there songs around the vast and varied social networks a lot easier.

For years the bands and performers of the world have been using either their own website/blog to showcase their music or the likes of MySpace, and now Reverbnation to do it but with the latter two programs you had to fill out a whole profile and upload stuff. At the end of the day it can be a little bit involved, especially if you only want to share a new song with your listeners, fans and immediate circle of friends. Once you are logged into your Soundcloud account you will be able to have a specific URL to share with your fans and that is great for posting on an Official Facebook Page which many bands have now as well. They can even Tweet it to the world which is the hot thing to do right? Over the course of the year I have been sent links to enjoy from bands that I was interacting with and I like the idea of it. Like most of these services it has a free feature and a pay one that offers you additional features.

Take a look at it if you are at the level where you are building up your fan base and see if it works out for you. That’s all I have about this one but you can learn more by clicking the links below and signing up for an account.

Official Website: www.soundcloud.com
Official Wikipedia Entry: HERE

Continuing along in my little series of narratives that briefly discuss the Social Networking mediums of the day I get to a site/service that I actually first learned about at the NY Comic Con back in 2011. Perhaps you recall one of the photos that referenced them if you have a very focused and attentive eye and if you do not, this is called Foodspotting. So what is it and why am I even discussing it on my Metal Sites blog you might be asking.

Foodspotting (which I think is one word) is what they are calling a “visual food guide” and of course “there’s an App for that”. The premise is kind of cool and appealed to me quite a bit since I like to go and meet friends at various bars or restaurants before hitting the Metal shows that we are all attending. Sometimes you find an amazing place to hang and start to call it home, and such practices led me to do my other series of narratives in my “PiercingMetal Pregaming” series. New readers might not know about this one unless they are digging deep into the blog, but they were done to discuss the various places my friends and I would convene before shows for food and drink. I’ve not done one of them in awhile and will likely create any of the new ones in my personal blog since I discuss food much more often over there; but I digress let’s get back to Foodspotting. The site works with the idea of our not only recommending a place to go and eat but also a particular dish that you or a friend might have ordered. Let’s say I ordered a burger at Smith’s Bar and wanted to share my thoughts on it with anyone who follows me. I can snap a photo with my phone and then upload it to the site and line out some comments about the order itself. Was it good, was it crappy, did it leave me wanting more or just left me cold? Whatever it was you can say it here. That’s pretty cool right? I think so, since the best way to find awesome things is through our friends in many cases.

From there you can like other peoples posted images or say that you want to try it yourself and if it was helpful. To me this was almost like dissecting the sites of Foursquare and Yelp! a little more. Foursquare tells our friends where we are, while Yelp! lets us analyze the larger experience and now Foodspotting let’s you get down to the finer details. Whew, that’s a lot of work to go have a good time isn’t it? At the time of my posting this narrative, I have not really dove into it as a user but I plan to going forward. Friends and interested parties who might be reading this post can find me by searching my real name of Ken Pierce. At the end of the day the question remains as to is this really a Social Network or not, and part of me says yes it is because what is more social than sitting down for a meal or a drink with ones friends. It’s certainly a lot more social than telling people you did it on Facebook right? Let’s run with that model okay? Do check it out and happy dining. I look forward to your input on some great places that I should investigate during my own adventures in our fair metropolis.

Official Website: http://www.foodspotting.com/

If you have an iPhone you have no doubt already heard about and have been using the application known as “Instagram”. If I had to venture a guess, I would say that almost everyone I know must have an iPhone because I am constantly seeing their captured visuals on their Facebook pages and Twitter posts. So what is Instagram and why am I adding it to this little series of narratives you might ask? Well, let’s get down to it shall we.

Launched to the public as a free application in October 2010, Instagram is a photographic application that makes use of your Smartphones camera and let’s you change images around a little bit in terms of their design and shading to make them even more appealing or interesting. You can even add captions to them that your friends/followers can read or comment back on. Similar to the Facebook Liking system, there is a little heart that you can click to approve an image. Sadly, at this point in time when I post this for you, its only something that the iPhone users seem to have to their advantage in their application arsenal. Mind you I can take photos with my Droid Incredible device and then share with my Twitter and Facebook as well, but the tinkering that people can do in Instagram adds a new level of coolness to doing this kind of thing and that is what is driving more and more people to download it. Those who want to play around can get it via the iTunes Store.

Now to the reason I added this to my little Social Networking narratives. The answer to that is very simple. With so many people networking and sharing information via the two giant Facebook and Twitter mediums, the use of Instagram has created a sort of photo social networking. I’ve not been able to really experiment by being a Droid user, but I have looked at friends phones and their accounts with them to see how they are chiming in on celebrity account photos or following people of note or friends that they find more interesting than some others. The following and commenting on and sharing of these images makes it a bit of a Social Network of its own to me but on a slightly different level. It’s pretty cool as long as people keep using this for good and not to do anyone harm. I will add that I do not know offhand if Instagram will work on the new iPad’s that are coming out in March so if any readers get one and can play around perhaps let us know in the comments section of this posting.

UPDATE 4/3/2012: I am happy to be able to share this news with you readers and Android device users because today anyone with a Droid phone will be able to download and use Instagram. For me this is a kind of technological birthday present for the website because tomorrow is the anniversary of PiercingMetal’s launch. I downloaded it and can be found under the user name of “PiercingKen”. I might create a more music scene focused ID like PiercingMetal and this way can share exclusive finds that relate to my journalism and photo adventures. For now though I will use this ID and dabble about to see what I can learn. Follow me if you want.

PiercingKen on Instagram = HERE

UPDATE 4/12/2012: Wow, Facebook has purchased Instagram. Will this be good or bad? You decide. I am on the fence about it.

UPDATE 9/15/2012: I’m heading out to see Nightwish and Kamelot in New York City this evening and since its a big event for Metal I decided that I would act upon my months ago comment about potentially creating an Instagram account purely for PiercingMetal.com adventures in music and media. My readers already know that I take a lot of photos so this makes sense and lets me instantly get some more cool ideas out before I sit down and write the articles and blogs up. I think that it will be a lot of fun so please come and follow that account via the link below.

PiercingMetal on Instagram = HERE/

Official Website: http://www.instagram.com
Official Wikipedia Entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instagram

I first heard about Pinterest thanks to the postings over on the Blog World & New Media Expo Facebook page that I am a fan of. This mention intrigued me since they often point out things that are very helpful to resources like my own and columns such as this that try to explain the good and bad of such things. That being said, my next Social Networking examination would be “Pinterest”. It appears to be a combination of the word “pin” and “interest”. Clever.

Pinterest is labelled as an online pin board where you can keep reference to things that interest you the most. After I managed to get my account activated (you had to request an invite during the early stages like Google+ before being approved) I figured I would use the service to broadcast several friends websites as my test subjects and hence send more friends over to my friend SkeletonPete, the Beehive Hairdresser and even my own PiercingKen site but there didn’t appear to be a clear way to do this kind of thing. Instead I was able to add several of my existing Facebook friends and choose to “Follow Them” much like is done in Twitter. Once they find a pinner who they have interest in, I will see it, and the same applies for things that I enjoy being broadcast to them. Sadly this did not have any immediate value for the things I was doing on PiercingMetal.com because there did not see to be an easily discoverable “music” category. There was Art, Photography, Cooking, and Tourism, so I followed a bunch of people for good measure. I did add the websites that I mentioned a little earlier but who knows if they will find any additional readers for me.

I understand that this is a new thing so perhaps it has some kinks to work out, but at the end of the day I just had far too many other things keeping my interest so I will not be playing around on Pinterest all that much. Maybe it is what you are looking for and if so, that is awesome.

Official Website: https://pinterest.com/

Have you Yelped yet?

I know, I know, what on Earth are you talking about this time Ken? Well here is the scoop about Yelp as I continue to offer up my thoughts about the various Social Networks and how we apply their use in the role of Music Journalist and Photographer for the PiercingMetal Command HQ. Yelp is a reviews website and Social Network that lets you post your thoughts about restaurants, stores and numerous other things. You are able to rate across a five star scale and then offer up your objective views about the space. For example, let’s assume you visit a fast food restaurant and it takes you thirty minutes to get an order in when there is no one on the line. Clearly this is something that other Yelpers could benefit in learning about. Oh yes, the reviewer community are called Yelpers. Pretty clever right?

I’ve been using this a little more religiously over the past year and really try to be as on point as possible. If I have only tried the hamburger at a place I cannot speak to the rest of their cuisine, but I stress that this is all I had. If I had companions with me who had other fare that I sampled I mention this, or line out their own comments for better Yelper understanding. It’s very important to be honest with what you write and not have an agenda over one place against another. Questionable reviews can get flagged by the other Yelpers in the community and sometimes the profile or email address gets banned for improper practices. Keep that stuff in mind when you begin typing. To see my existing reviews and profile just click the logo below as that will bring you right over there. I add to my Yelp account when the moment and the experience motivates me to do so. At this point in time there are a few dozen reviews and surely more to come since I have been trying some new places as well as re-visiting some favorites.

One quick note about my profile. While I often speak about the places and spaces that I adventure into for the sake of my musical scribe life, it is a personal profile at the end of the day. With that in mind when it comes to adding people to the list of friends in the network I am pretty locked into only adding those folks who I actually know or do business with as a member of the media. It’s nothing personal and can be thought of as keeping certain groups in certain circles like one does with the Google+ stuff. One of the things that I like most about this network is that you can follow the Yelpers that you find of some interest and still leave them compliments, messages and the like. Someone actually contacted me about a restaurant once and remembered seeing me at a Metal show. I was more than happy to help them along.

The premise has expanded to more than just restaurants and bars and now features shops, scenic places and more. I’ve never had to add a new place but I think that you can do that if you need to. Each Yelp review also offers the means to answer additional questions that will benefit the community so please always try to answer them since its very helpful. If there is free Wi-Fi let them know, if there is only street parking get the word out and if you need to wear a tuxedo and tails – You get the picture – Just be honest and objective as that makes you more valuable to the whole process. Yelpers who continually add items and grow popular became Elite members and hence are respected a lot more. The way I use this as a writing adventurer is that I speak about the places I am hitting before or after a concert or event and even discussing the venue of the show itself when its possible to give a few tips to the fans who might want to know more about the place.

This kind of Social Network was one of the key reasons that I began my series of Concert Pre-Gaming narratives some months ago. I offer up some candid images from those hangs and a little more fun details and memories. Check those out when time allows via THIS LINK.

Learn more about Yelp by clicking their official Wikipedia entry HERE.

Should you have any interest in seeing the places that I have Yelped, please check me out via the badge link below. You can click “Follow This Reviewer” if you like and then you will be in the loop a little more.

Recent reviews by Ken P.

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