My Question of the Day: Social media has truly changed the way we interact and engage. Facebook, in particular, has reconnected us with people we haven’t seen and/or heard from in years. With that in mind, what has been your most amazing reconnection through Facebook or any other social media tool that you’ve used?

My 2 Cents: I’ve made two amazing reconnections through Facebook.

1) When I was nine, my family moved from Arkansas to Oklahoma. When I was 39, my parents moved back from Oklahoma to Arkansas and built their retirement home on the land they’ve own since our family left Arkansas.

I went to school with a boy named Marvin Jordan up until my family moved away, and we considered ourselves girlfriend/boyfriend. I put his name in Facebook search, and he popped up right away. He looks exactly the same as he did when I last saw him at the age of nine. When I asked him if he remembered me, he wrote back and said, “Yes, you were my girlfriend before you moved away.”

That was so thrilling!

2) I have a friend from high school who I’d wondered about over the last 20-some-odd years. When I went home for my 20-year hish school reunion in 2007, I was hoping to see her there, but she didn’t show up.

Again, using Facebook, I did a search for Shelly West. She popped up and it showed her living in the same area as me. I sent her a note and she was happy to hear from me, too.

We got to going back and forth through messages on Facebook, and we discovered that we’d been working in the same building for the last two years, two floors apart and never ran into each other.

A couple of days later, we got together in her office and had a blast of a catch-up session!

It was amazing!

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The commentary doesn’t have to end!

Please feel free to continue to add your comments below.

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RULES FOR COMMENTS

1. DO NOT include links in your post. There is a place for you to include one link when you’re filling out the Name/Email/Website information. Comments that include links will be deleted.

2. If your post is obviously irrelevant to the question at hand, it will be deleted. This is a tactic spammers use to simply show up on blogs.

3. Please keep your comments respectful. We can agree to disagree without attacking each other.

This article was first published to Examiner.com. It is duplicated here because it’s my content.

NING.com, a popular social-network-creation site, has decided to begin charging a monthly and/or yearly subscription fee to all users.

NING became popular because, unlike Facebook and MySpace, NING allows its users to create their own social networking communities based on whatever goals or interests the creator would like to promote.

NING.com has this to say about its services:

Ning is the social platform for the world’s interests and passions online. Millions of people every day are coming together across Ning to explore and express their interests, discover new passions, and meet new people around shared pursuits.

NING began emailing current users at the beginning of May about their free-to-fee intentions.

Starting in July, and there has been no specific date that has been mentioned, all current and future users will be asked to choose from three pricing plans to continue and/or start a customized network. The following image shows NING’s proposed pricing structure:

For detailed information on the different pricing plans, go to Pricing Plans on the NING.com site.

Once the fee-based services begin, NING discloses in its Frequently Asked Questions section that it will not maintain a free-based business model. Once the fee-based structure is live, current users will have 30 days to decide to stay and pay or discontinue their networks. New users will be given a 30-day free trial, but they too will have to decide to pay or go once the trial ends.

For more information about NING.com in general, and about their free-to-fee plans specifically, vist their site.

Twitter + history = Twistory!

Twistory is a service that allows you to save your Twitter updates to your favorite calendar application. You can save to a web calendar or even to Microsoft Outlook. There’s no need to give up your password. All you need is your Twitter handle, and Twistory will generate the URL of your updates.

Please keep in mind that your Twitter account must be set to public, as Twistory will not work with private accounts. Also note that it is only your public updates, not direct messages (DMs), that you will see in your Twistory feed. If you tweet to someone, or if someone tweets to you or about you, these are the updates you’ll see in your calendar.

Why use Twistory?

Twitter, and even Twitter search, only allows you to see your past updates for about two weeks back. Twistory allows you to see much further back than that. It may even go back and bring in updates prior to the date you actually make your first URL request with Twistory.

See the video below for more information on Twistory.

If you can’t see the video below, click here.

Social Media Spotlight: Twistory from Faydra Deon on Vimeo.

Have “they” blocked Twitter and other social media sites in your workplace?

Do you have email?

PROBLEM SOLVED!!!

Nutshell Mail allows you to receive updates from Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and LinkedIn. Once you receive your updates via email, there are buttons on which you can click to seamlessly reply and post as if you were in that particular application.

Click the image to see a larger view.

I set up my Twitter account as an example, so I could show you some screenshots of NutshellMail.

The sign-up process for NutShell Mail took me about three minutes.

In the email Nutshell Mail sent me to click to confirm my account, I got my first updates, which included my latest five direct messages and @replies, the latest accounts that have unfollowed my account, my latest 10 updates from any lists I maintain and/or follow, and the latest five tweets from the public timeline. Your maximum items per email can be changed. See the image below:

Click the image to see a larger view.

Nutshell Mail will also show you tweets based on any search terms you’ve saved.

Click the image to see a larger view.

When I clicked the reply link in my email, it took me to the following screen.

Click the image to see a larger view.

Notice all the choices I have: reply, retweet, DM or add this person to a list. Cool, huh? And, all from my email Inbox.

UPDATE: I left out the fact that NutshellMail will also let you monitor all your email accounts.

Click here to get started.

@md20737 turned me on to this social media tool. Thanks, L.T.!

My Question of the Day: Cell phones have become a staple in our society. We can do so many things with them; listen to music, take photos, record video, play games, surf the web, use social media tools (like Twitter and Facebook), etc. On top of all that, many cell phone companies now have unlimited, monthly talk/text/data plans. With all that, do you still have a home phone?

My 2 Cents: Yes, I still have a home phone.

Although I have a smartphone, which allows me to listen to music, take photos, record video, play games, surf the web, use social media tools, watch television, use the Global Positioning System (GPS), and so on, my home phone is the phone I use when I’m at home. Even though I have unlimited everything with my cell phone, I prefer having a home phone.

I actually have Voice-Over IP (VoIP) with Vonage, and I’ve had it since 2005 without any major issues. Having a home phone allows me to have 911 attached to my home location in case I have an emergency. As someone else pointed out, that’s not the case with the cell phone.

The $30 I pay for unlimited local and long distance calling, along with 911-location, isn’t too much for my peace of mind.

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Take a few moments to check out the tweets from Twitter on this subject:

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PROTECTED TWEETER i do have a house phone because sometimes the cell phone dies lol. also cell phones can be sneaky!!

JoshDamage actually no I don’t have a landline anymore. We cut if off because what was the point. Everyone in my home has a cell

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The commentary doesn’t have to end!

Please feel free to continue to add your comments below.

———-

RULES FOR COMMENTS

1. DO NOT include links in your post. There is a place for you to include one link when you’re filling out the Name/Email/Website information. Comments that include links will be deleted.

2. If your post is obviously irrelevant to the question at hand, it will be deleted. This is a tactic spammers use to simply show up on blogs.

3. Please keep your comments respectful. We can agree to disagree without attacking each other.

FYI: You may edit your comment for up to 30 minutes after posting. After 30 minutes, your comment can no longer be revised.