My community building mission meant that I needed to set up a range of networks. One network within CPIT and another externally using a number of accounts with some of the community sites, on behalf of CPIT. So over the past month I have have set up accounts with Flickr, YouTube and Facebook with Twitter planned for a little later.
The Flickr and YouTube accounts I'm planning on using as repositories for photos and video. Both of these provide options for embedding the files stored with them on any site you wish, which was a key requirement of mine. As much as possible I want people to be able to look at the content I'm linking to, within the page they are currently viewing. These community sites by and large can also link extremely well with each other updating one another as new material is added. A big plus!
Developing profiles on this range of sites I felt might create some confusion later when it came time to use them though. In spite of that concern I still didn't really plan the account creation process as well as I could have. For those of you thinking of doing something similar I would recommend you select a common username and email, and check their availablity with all sites before you finalise your application. I didn't and had to make some small tweaks to the username or userID with some sites.
Also be aware that the various sites authenticate you in slightly different ways too. Some use an email address while others use the userID that the sites generally create for you during the account creation phase. Some sites also let you choose the email you wish to use while others make you use one from a parent account. My whole rationale was to ensure that in spite of content coming from a number of different sites people would at least recognise a consistent username. In the end I'm not sure how visible the variations actually are to the user. Nevertheless I've taken the precaution of listing all my login details in a file so I don't forget them. I have described the process in more detail in subsequent posts, External Links and Internal Links.
The Flickr and YouTube accounts I'm planning on using as repositories for photos and video. Both of these provide options for embedding the files stored with them on any site you wish, which was a key requirement of mine. As much as possible I want people to be able to look at the content I'm linking to, within the page they are currently viewing. These community sites by and large can also link extremely well with each other updating one another as new material is added. A big plus!
Developing profiles on this range of sites I felt might create some confusion later when it came time to use them though. In spite of that concern I still didn't really plan the account creation process as well as I could have. For those of you thinking of doing something similar I would recommend you select a common username and email, and check their availablity with all sites before you finalise your application. I didn't and had to make some small tweaks to the username or userID with some sites.
Also be aware that the various sites authenticate you in slightly different ways too. Some use an email address while others use the userID that the sites generally create for you during the account creation phase. Some sites also let you choose the email you wish to use while others make you use one from a parent account. My whole rationale was to ensure that in spite of content coming from a number of different sites people would at least recognise a consistent username. In the end I'm not sure how visible the variations actually are to the user. Nevertheless I've taken the precaution of listing all my login details in a file so I don't forget them. I have described the process in more detail in subsequent posts, External Links and Internal Links.
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