Recently, we launched a new initiative on Twitter, using the popular hash-tag feature to start keeping an eye on tweets related to Café links (which are broadcast on @episcopalcafe) and to allow Café readers to talk amongst themselves about these links and related topics.
It's been a busy week on the Café Facebook page, which has become very good about showing our posts in people's streams. One person on Twitter asked if we could start cross-posting comments from Facebook, and while it's a noble thought, it's not really possible at this time.
Interesting week on the socnets, as some folks call social networks. Relatively quiet, with plenty of Facebook thumbs-ups and Twitter retweets.
With humblest apologies for an unstable internet connection that's causing this update to run about 12 hours late, welcome to the late edition of Sunday Social Hour with the week's activity from Café social networks.
Pretty quiet on the social networks this week, aside from some of the posts about South Carolina and various other breakaway issues stirring the pot a bit. But we had some great things shared with us, in the meantime.
Twitter has been quiet this week, although we've seen plenty of retweets from our followers. One comment worth sharing: Daniel Stroud cracked up the #ecafe chat stream with his reply to "Not KJV? Burn it!": "Someone once told my father in all seriousness that the KJV was good enough for Jesus so it's good enough for him."
This week in social networking land, we have a book on Hispanic Ministry, Bono pointing out why he thinks Obama deserved the Nobel, and angry reactions to Uganda's announcement of tough laws criminalizing homosexuality.
Twitter and Facebook continue to be the dominant social platforms for sharing news about the Episcopal Church and faith in the wider world. But we're curious, are there other platforms out there where you're discovering communities of faith and conversation? Be sure to let us know so we can keep an eye on them as well.
Not sure what's causing the glitch, but our Café notes stopped posting on Wednesday to both Twitter and Facebook. The problem appears to be with the backend we use to pipe things to Twitterfeed and Facebook, so we'll be beating that with a virtual hammer until it cooperates again. The end result is that it's been relatively quiet this week--but not totally so.
Our feed to the social networks is working again. Apologies for the delay, but it was well timed for me since I was a bit busy welcoming a new Mosher into the world last week. Of course, this week we're hit by a bug that keeps us from seeing older Tweets today, and a similar problem plagued Facebook last night. So if you tweeted something to the #ecafe line, be sure to share it again in the comments.
Another late night run with social media, Facebook primarily! Twitter saw numerous retweets this week, with particular attention to our posts on recent vandalism in churches and attempts to end charitable outreach efforts by churches. On Facebook, these posts are being discussed, although it's been relatively quiet this week, possibly because of the holiday, and possibly because we actually used the FB moderation tools this week.
It's been an interesting week on the social networks. On the one hand, The Cafe on Facebook has quieted down considerably now that the commenters there are no longer being antagonized. On the other hand, Twitter picked up a lot of steam thanks to several hash-tag memes and conversations.
This week on Facebook and Twitter, we've seen a lot of commentary and re-posting/re-tweeting about the Glasspool election and the Ugandan legislation. But some other posts have caught the attention of readers, as well.
This week in social media has seen a lot of commentary on the Archbishop of Canterbury--mostly critical. But other topics have brought about some entertaining gems. Gretchen R. Chateau wrote about excessively literal bible interpretations after some commentary on Is Genesis to blame?:
Have you noticed on Facebook that our wall doesn't always contain the most up-to-date posts? Check the "notes" box to see if there is a more current update, and either click through the "see all" button on the Notes box to see entire posts and their Facebook comments. Don't forget to click the "read original post" button to comment directly on the story here and see other comments that way too.
Facebook this week was dominated by chatter over the Haiti earthquake. Our Wednesday post featuring email updates from those in the loop got a lot of FB comments as people checked in with one another and asked after folks. We ask that you revisit that thread with any updates you may have,. It's also important, if you're reading us through Facebook or Twitter, to visit the original post when there's breaking news afoot, as we often update those posts but the updates don't get piped into Facebook.
We're starting to see more activity on the Café's Facebook wall, partly because it's now possible to give a shout-out to the source when you share one of our links. But you can also post directly to the wall.
The sun is out here in the northern Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, where your social hour editor got not only 2 1/2 feet of snow, but a lovely head cold and a case of pink-eye to boot, so I wouldn't have made it to church even if today's services hadn't been canceled. But our Facebook fans gave us even more ideas for things to do to stay spiritually connected during weather/disaster-related closings in comments to our post on such from Friday:
It's been quiet on Facebook this week. So quiet, in fact, that I wonder if the Cafe is still showing up in your feeds what with their new design. I'll investigate and get back to you next week with information to improve your ability to interact with the Cafe on Facebook.
Oprah, Lance Armstrong, the Archbishop of York, and now...the Dalai Lama has joined Twitter. Will the Archbishop of Canterbury follow suit? Time will tell.
This week saw a return to normal activity on Facebook, so whatever bug was happening last week seems to be resolved. Twitter, on the other hand, was on the quiet side other than for a couple dozen retweets, which we're grateful for. Which service do you prefer? Have you checked out Google Buzz yet? We're curious, so let us know.
Here's a neat trick: We've been adding diocesan Facebook pages as well as those of cathedrals, bishops, and Episcopal-related nonprofit organizations to our "favorite pages."
Welcome to the first springtime edition of the Sunday Social Hour!
Things are quietly returning to normal over at the Cafe's Facebook page after we had to take down a few inflammatory comments. We also posted a reminder about the blog's feedback comment policy, which extends to our Facebook page. But when I trotted out the common USENET admonition to "not feed the trolls," we wound up having an interesting conversation about "What is trolling?" -- which you can read here.
It's been fascinating to watch Holy Week unfold in the social media sphere. On Facebook, the prayers and meditations coursing through priestly status updates have reached a point where someone is going to need to develop a Facebook liturgy soon. It's culminated today with much call and response on both Facebook and Twitter. Alleluia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed, Alleluia!
In the spirit of "Easter Is 50 Days," we're happy to report that last week's solicitation for readers to share their favorite Easter traditions was a rousing success. From hot cross buns to lilies to Easter Egg hunts to bow-ties to favorite Eastertide hymns, many traditions are ones we all know and love.
Twitter has been kinda quiet this week. Are you all enjoying the spring weather all of a sudden? But on Facebook, we are rapidly closing in on 3,000 supporters. We've had to do more moderation these past two weeks than in the life of the Cafe on Facebook total, but it's worth it to see the community growing.
The feed is piping beautifully into Twitter, so we're not sure why Facebook is having a lovely off and on relationship with it. Resetting it last Sunday worked until... Monday. So again, it's quiet in Facebook. So we're asking a question this week, just in case it's still not working next week. What are your favorite pages and applications in Facebook? Who are your favorite people/entities to follow on Twitter--and why?
Look for your "nominees" to get featured with Facebook tags and "Follow Friday" recommendations this week, too!
The persisting bug in the Facebook feed has been reported, as the validation error that bounced back to us makes no sense whatsoever and Twitter has no problems with it. Posts came through on Wednesday and Thursday, but since no one posted any comments or likes we suspect they are not coming through on your feed. For now, we're blaming the new "community page" thing they are rolling out and hope to hear back from Facebook this week; we're also investigating other means of getting posts out to you on FB since we know that's how many of you stay in touch with us.
After several weeks of feed issues persisting in Facebook, we're starting to see it work again. Two things to note: Right now, there are only Lead posts piping in to Facebook, so be sure not to forget to check Daily Episcopalian, Speaking to the Soul and the other Cafe blogs hosted here. Also, the feed is not checking as regularly, so there have been gluts of post from time to time, making seem like a bad feast-famine cycle is in effect. As always, posts should appear here without any problem, and the feed seems to work in Twitter just fine.
A huge sigh of relief from here at the Cafe as we see posts are showing up on Facebook again, though not as regularly as before. What may be more interesting is that some of the decreased traffic may be due to people not using Facebook as prolifically as before.
We held Social Hour this morning because of the news from Nigeria and watched as it spread like wildfire around Facebook. One commenter on our page drew this bit out: "Theologically, I believe people like Okoh are simply stuck in a Christianity which denies emerging Truth and denies the Holy Spirit. Their scapegoating is ignorance and prejudice, pure and simple, regardless of the issues that are driving it." An interesting point, given the focus we pay the spirit on Pentecost and Trinity Sundays.
Facebook and Twitter continue to be popular ways of getting the word out about our posts, but a funny correlation seems to exist that those which get the most comments on Facebook tend to be the ones that generate the most comments on the blog itself, and it's not always the ones you might expect.
We are approaching 3,200 fans on Facebook! Overwhelming. Thank you one and all!
We are still taking submissions for copy for a Facebook ad for the Cafe. Stop by the post here and weigh in with your 135 word blurb to entice the masses to join our page! (Helpful note: I was inspired to do this by the UCC ad we mentioned in last week's social hour post.)
Over at Unapologetically Episcopalian, they've posited a "weekend wondering" question that they'd like readers to weigh in on. "How have you introduced someone to the Episcopal Church? How has that introduction made a difference - to that person, to the Church, to you?" You can answer them here.
When the Rev. Torey Lightcap, in his first post of the morning, challenged Café readers to create a Facebook page welcoming Anne Rice to the Episcopal Church, he couldn't have foreseen that your erstwhile social media junkie would rise to the bait in order to post it to the social media hour. In fact, I probably would not have done so had the infamous Facebook feed problems not reared their heads again. Therefore, here's a link to The Episcopal Church Welcomes Anne Rice, and since it's still under construction, we invite anyone interested to come post more personal greetings to the welcome.
Half the fun of social media operations is the fact that the platforms are continuously evolving, and often breaking along the way. "Notes," the application we use to import content to Facebook, has gotten a facelift to mixed reaction. While it looks great and works _ok_, it still doesn't update in a timely fashion; fortunately we've discovered the manual override to that.
Well, our feed is back on Facebook, even if it's still not updating as often as we'd like it to. Invariably, the one item which posts to everyone's wall in each daily update gets the most comments. It probably doesn't help that when you come to our page, those posts seem to be duplicated several times. But we're glad to be back on Facebook at least somewhat.
One thing we have been able to figure out about Facebook's recent quirkiness: it's not "spamming" you when we invariably pipe in 5-6 new items at a time. We know this because whenever the feed updates, we get plenty of comments on the one or two items that DO get posted to your walls, but none of the rest. So just consider the wall update you do see to be a nudge to check the site for new posts, or the Facebook page for new notes.
It has been a busy week at the Café's Facebook page because for the first time in months, posts are importing properly. We're using new tools to import posts and monitor page traffic, and will be posting new guidelines on what we expect from commenters and those who post content to our wall. Our biggest question to readers, as we formulate these guidelines, is what do you find disruptive?
Busy week on Facebook this week. Of course, perhaps it's always been this busy, but with our new notification and update tools it just seems busier. Some of the commentary is trenchant, some is playful, some is helpful, some is critical. Just a couple of highlights below, as we were still getting the bugs out of the new system early in the week:
Sometimes it's interesting to see how comments on the Facebook page can take a different tack than comments here on the blog. But in other times, it's more interesting to see how the conversations converge.
Welcome again to Sunday Social Hour, where we tune into our social media communities on Facebook and Twitter to see what you all are talking about--and mostly, the chatter is about blessings of the animals. But other, more sobering highlights from this week include:
This week on our social networks: A facebook bug prevented page posts from going on to users' feeds for a while midweek, but we caught it in time to let people know to stop by. Twitter is rolling out a new interface to keep us all on our toes, but we're finding it easier to spot our retweets and mentions in it, at least.
One of the lovely things about social media is being able to see things shared. As we become more and more connected through Facebook and Twitter and other social media services, we're apt to discover things we might not otherwise have.
Pretty quiet this week on the social networks, if you don't count the fact that everyone is tweeting and Facebooking about the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear as well as Halloween.
Facebook this week is full of "likes," and less full of comments. Some stories, however, drew a larger number of comments, including a thread evolving from Robinson's retirement announcement that included one suggestion that he retire immediately. You can't please everyone, it seems.
This is more of a potluck than a social hour, this week, being a bit later in the day and around dinnertime for the easterners afoot. If you noticed bad links in any of the Facebook stories this week, it had to do with our updating links as news changed over the course of the day.
In case you are wondering where Sunday Social Hour has been lately, we haven't been getting as many substantive comments here since moving to the dlvr.it interface for sharing posts. So now we're trying something different: a question of the week.
New for Sunday Social Hour: We'll post a question on Facebook (and Twitter, once we get the hang of this) to get your feedback, and then on Sunday we'll round up the answers (as best we can when there are a lot).
This week for Social Hour, we're wondering what you're wishing for, and you'd like to see more of (or less of) in the coming year. And from Facebook, we got...
Between Facebook, Twitter, Flikr, and others, religious leaders are trying to find how to use social media to share their message and to engage with their communities.
On Facebook this week, we asked about how people are honoring Martin Luther King Jr. this weekend, whether in services or otherwise.
Lent comes late this year, but it's not too early to start thinking about spring. In posting a Social Hour question about Groundhog Day, we had a reader point out that we can't really reflect on it without observing that it's also Candlemas; the two are inextricably intertwined:
This week on Social Hour, we thought we'd explore a little on Facebook and share a page we stumbled upon rather by accident, shared on our wall, and watched it grow by exponents over the next few days--when we posted it, I had just signed up as its 33rd fan. The Episcopal Foodie Network now has 621 fans and links to discussions about things like King's Cake, Valentine's Day treats, and favorite recipes. Specifically relevant to social hour, we have this question:
This week for Social Hour, a question based on Facebook's new relationship options--and a question that didn't occur to me to ask until this morning, so we don't have any responses to share.
Facebook pages are newly aggravating, because they have applied their so-called relevance engine (the same thing that generates their "top news" feed on your personal FB page) to pages, so you can no longer visit our page for a chronological view of all blog posts, and what sits at the top of our page is largely determined by how many of you like and comment on a given post. So if you are a page admin for your parish or diocese and haven't "upgraded" yet, be prepared for that maddening change when it rolls out.
This week, a lively discussion arose off the post about "online seminary education."
We had a few issues with links on Facebook not going through to the blog this week. When that happens, if we don't address it immediately, just come to http://www.episcopalcafe.com directly and click the appropriate blog--most of the time, that will be The Lead. In addition, we'll be posting images from the art blog directly to the Facebook page from time to time.
This week on our social networks, it's been fairly quiet. The Cafe's art blog now has its own photo album on Facebook, which should make it easier for fans to share the images on their own pages if they wish to do so.
Recently, Facebook rolled out a new feature called Facebook Questions, aiming for a built-in poll interface that would allow people and pages to easily survey their friends and readers from time to time. What they forgot to put on the feature was the ability to ONLY poll friends or readers--every single question was pumped out on public feeds. The end result was that some questions went insanely viral, such as this one documented at the NetworkedEffect blog:
Earlier this week Pope Benedict used Twitter for the first time. On behalf of the rest of us who've been tweeting away for long while now; "Welcome!"
Café friends and contributors Dr. Meredith Gould and Canon Dan Webster are getting married today. As people who work to empower sharing the Gospel online, it's not terribly surprising that this will be one of the most "wired" weddings many of us have ever seen.
