I have to say I am very impressed with Google+ so far. It has a lot to offer technogeeks like myself. But can it go mainstream like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.  Before being invited to try Google+ I spent most of my time on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook, in that order.  Now the order is more like Google+, LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.

Here is a great visual aide on how to explain Google+

Facebook+ Twitter+ Tumblr = Google+

What I like most about Google+

Something so simple yet so amazingly complex is ones circle of connections to people and to the world. We all have many circles relationships we come across  in our daily lives. Google has made this shape the backbone of its social network. These circles serve as a visible way to organize, share and secure information with only the people you identify. You can create and name as many circles as you like, yet none of those whom you put in these circles knows what circle you have placed them in. They also don’t know that they have been placed in the same  or different circles.  With this concept you don’t have to worry about mistakenly sharing the wrong information with someone who may not like it or may take offense by it. If you really look at it, it’s kinda like Social Segregation at its finest.

What I like least about Google+

There may be 10 million plus using it now but they are still limiting it to invitation only. Google has done this with almost all of it’s services, and I kinda understand it but that does not mean I have to like it. The invites are also currently limited to those who have a gmail account. So if you have anything else you will be forced to create a Google profile that requires you to have a Google gmail account.

What I think still needs some work

Google has taken video conferencing 2 the next level with their new “Hangout” service inside Google+. Creating a Hangout was very easy and made you take notice of how cool it is to get together with some of your friends face to face via the Internet.  The audio was impressive but the video was a little choppy and delayed.  You also only get to speak to 10 people at once. I say this only because 10 is currently the maximum number they have right now and I can’t really fathom video chatting with more than 5 people at one time let alone 10. Can you imaging a video conference session with say more than 20 people?

What I think will make Google+ even more appealing.

Google launched a native Google+ mobile app for all of its Android users right around the same time they launched the service. The app makes Google+ even easier to use and even adds a group chat service called “Huddle” to the mix.  Most smart phones still don’t have a front facing camera so I understand why the “Hangout” service is currently not on the Android app.  Although I do think they will add this feature when they release the mobile app for the iPhone and iPad. Google+ is probably working on integrating their Hangout service with the iOS “FaceTime” feature.  When this happens I think Google’s mobile subscribers to Google+ will skyrocket, taking that 10 million plus number in 10 days to record heights.

Why I think you should try it once you get invited.

Google has put a lot of thought behind this new social network. They have definitely learned from their many mistakes and failures of the past. (see: Why Is Google Not Afraid To Fail?) Google has also seen what has worked successfully for other social networks like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. All of this work by Google has allowed us all to benefit from what Google+ has brought to the table.  Is Google+ a “Facebook Killer”? only time will tell.  I suggest you check it out for yourself and make your own comparisons. Google+ is by no means the perfect social networking site, especially with the current invite limitations. Yet I can’t help but think that some of the ex employees of MySpace who currently work for Twitter or Facebook are secretly thinking, “OH SH**, Not AGAIN!!!;-)

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It has been 4 long years since I had the ability to call my cell phone anything but smart. Today I was fortunate enough to be given a brand new smart phone. Why does it seem such a surprise it has taken me this long to finally get with the program and get one of these remarkable devices.  Well, without going into detail I guess I was waiting for just the right one to come along and give me everything I ever wanted in a smart phone.  Believe me it was a long and drawn out quest to find this phone.

I like most of you toyed with the idea of going First Fruit Phone but I have been a PC man for so long I just new there was something out there for folks like myself.  Then came HTC and the Android operating system by Google and I was hooked. HTC came out with so many great looking phones to rival the First Fruit of Phones and the Android operating made me take notice even more. The HTC G1 was a  huge draw to me and I was 2 minutes from jumping into the deep end of the smart water pool when that first G-phone just looked so darn bulky and down right ugly compared to Mom’s Pie Phone.

It finally took an oldie but goodie cell phone manufacture to get me back. Motorola, king of the cell  phones back in the 80′s. Did you know that In 1969, Neil Armstrong spoke the famous words “one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind” from the Moon on a Motorola Radio? And who could forget the Motorola DynaTAC 8000X, AKA the “Brick Phone”.

Well Motorola is back with a vengeance and it has taken their new Android powered phone the CLIQ with MotoBlur to bring me back into the smart phone fold for good. Please see my blog post “Social Media Meets Motorola MOTOBLUR” for additional information on this spectacular smart phone.

This Christmas Santa brought me a smart phone that can connect me to my social media network without missing a beat. I watched my first Youtube video, downloaded my first smart phone application, updated my status on Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin all while I chatted via Google Talk with two of my best friends.

Motorola I solute you for bringing me back to life when it comes to mobile technology.

All the best and Happy Holidays

JB

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(ATLANTA) – September 29, 2009 – Atlanta Tribune : The Magazine will host its first annual Social Media/Technology Day on October 1, 2009 at Clayton State University from 8:00 a.m.- 3:00 p.m. Atlanta Tribune: The Magazine recognizes in today’s social media–driven society, it is imperative for businesses to learn how to use social media as a highly effective marketing tool.

Sessions featured in Social Media/Technology Day include:

• Strategically Social-Tips and Tricks for Maximizing the Effectiveness of LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter
• Blogging for Dollars  – The Best Practices for Business Blogging
• Analyze This! Five ways to measure The Impact of Your Social Media Activities
• Working Lunch: Real Talk about Social Media
• Five Technologies to Help You Build Your Brand and Connect with More Customers
• 5 Ways to Use Social Media to Attract Customers

Brent Leary, co-founder and partner of CRM Essentials, has assembled a skilled team of social media and technology experts to serve as moderators; including Six Apart’s Andy Wibbels, award winning blogger, social media trainer, and author of “Blogwild; John”ColderICE” Lawson, president, 3rd Power Outlet; and Jeff “JB” Brathwaite, 2 The Next LEVEL, Inc.

Registration is free and includes a free breakfast sponsored by MetLife Securities, starting at 7:45 a.m. For more information, visit http://atsocialmedia-techday.eventbrite.com.

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I had a great time with the members of the Dekalb Chamber of Commerce last week. We had a packed house and a very eager audience who really wanted to know more about social media. I only had 90 minutes to give them a better understanding on how to use Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin in their businesses. The pressure was on but I was up to the challenge. Here are some of the comments I received after the event.

Jeff,

Great presentation on Social Media Marketing. I thoroughly enjoyed the information you presented and am currently focusing my attention on this area of marketing to provide as a service to my clients. Your presentation helped in making everything more clear for me.

Thanks for everything,
Sharla Bell
Triniti Business Concepts
A Virtual Assistance Company

Jeff,

It was great to meet you at the Dekalb Chamber of Commerce today.

I am already taking some of what you talked about to heart and will apply them to my blog TheSocialSet.blogspot.com.  I’d also love to talk to you about wordpress.

Sincerely,

David

David S. Cohen

Social Media Copywriter

JB

Attended your seminar today — it was FABULOUS!!! Let’s connect

Jennifer Whitaker
Executive Coach and Management Consultant

I want to say a special thank you to all of the staff at the Dekalb Chamber of Commerce for allowing me to speak before their members and the staff of the Dekalb Convention and Visitors Bureau for the use of their great facility. Please go to both their websites to learn more on how both their agencies can help your business.

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What are some Web 2.0 services you couldn’t live without? This blog post is inspired by one of my all time favorite blogs TechCrunch.  Here is my list of Web 2.0 services I would recommend to all the Soloprenuers and Small Businesses. Life would not be the same without these services may they never cross into the deadpool.

• PayPal
• Zoho CRM
• GrandCentral (GoogleVoice)
• iContact
• WordPress
• Google Reader
• Mint
• Twitter
• Hulu
• Facebook
• Linkedin

PayPal

PayPal.com: I have been using PayPal for almost 9 years now and still can’t do without it. Point blank if you are a Soloprenuer or Small Business owner and don’t have a PayPal account you are clearly missing out on  major revenue streams. Please check out my blog post PayPal.com Makes Ecommerce Easy for Solopreneurs and 10 Great PayPal Tips for Solopreneurs and Small Business Owners

Zoho CRM

Zohocrm.com: Clearly one of the best CRM’s for Small Business. I was at one time a very heavy Salesforce user until I found Zoho. Been using Zoho for over a year now and my Free version is still going strong. Check out my blog post Zoho.com Gives Solopreneurs a Suite of Successful Business Tools then go and get yourself a Free ZohoCRM account and let me know what you think.

GrandCentral/Google Voice

GrandCentral.com: One phone number you can have for life. Most of us have multiple ways to be contacted by phone.  We have a home number, work number, cell number and in many cases a second home office line.  I, only give out one phone number my GrandCentral number and it automatically forwards my calls to any one or all of my other numbers. Please read my post, Solopreneurs Stay In Touch With One Number From GrandCentral for more information on this great service.

iContact

iContact: Email marketing has come a long way from just gathering email addresses in Outlook and sending them through your local Internet Service Provider. The key to  using a service like iContact is taking advantage of all the broadcast email features like Open and Clickthrough Tracking, Message Scheduling and List Segmentation. Yes, there are many other email marketing services on the market like Constant Contact and Vertical Response but iContact is by far the better bang for the buck.

WordPress

WordPress: I have been using WordPress to power this blog and many others I have created. I used to use the Joomla CMS for my blogs but decided to move them all to the WordPress platform and have never looked back. Although both platforms were what I was looking for in Open Source, I was really impressed with the amount of plugins and themes WordPress had to offer. Please check out my post WordPress 2.7 Is Finally Here!.

Google Reader

Google Reader: Google has many great tools to choose from and all of them are good. Google Reader is one of my favorites because it helps me manage and keep track of all the blogs I enjoy reading on a regular basis. As long as the blog has an RSS feed I can bring it into my Google Reader. I can also create Blog topic folders to help keep the 100 plus blogs I subscirbe to in order. If you are new to using a RSS reader for all you blog reading I highly recommend Google Reader.

Mint

Mint: With all that is going on with the financial challenges of our nation and the world many of us need to make sure our current finances are in order. Mint is the ultimate way to keep track of almost all  your finances online. I have been using it for over a year now and it has made a big difference in my financial bottom line. Please check out my blog post Web 2.0 Solopreneur Site Of The Week: Mint.com out how it can help you and your small business.

Twitter

Twitter: @jbrath is officially on the Twitter bandwagon and suggest you all come ride it with me. Twitter is a micro blogging service that is currently taking the Internet by storm. And when I say storm I mean it literally has helped people navigate storms, hurricanes, earthquakes and in my personal case house fires. See my blog post Twitter Gives First Response News On House Fire In The Bronx Everyone now wants to look like the Twitter interface with Facebook and just recently FriendFeed changing their look to imitate Twitter. I currently have just over 1100 followers and have had my Twitter account for almost 2 years yet @Oprah just got on Twitter 2 weeks ago and will have one million followers by the end of 2 months.  Now that Oprah is on Twitter we can be rest assured that Twitter will have a way to make profit soon.

Hulu

Hulu: I don’t watch much television anymore but I really don’t have to with Web 2.0 video services like Hulu. I was one of the first beta testers of Hulu thanks again to TechCrunch and have been a huge fan ever since. Hulu allows you to watch some of your most favorite TV shows on-demand for FREE. I watch past episodes of  shows like Burn Notice, The Family Guy, Lie To Me and Rescue Me. Hulu’s mission is to help people find and enjoy the world’s premium video content when, where and how they want it. I still own a TV but Hulu makes it so much easier to watch quality programing on my computer.

Facebook

Facebook: Like everyone else on Facebook I am pretty hooked. I don’t spend as much time as I used to on Facebook but that’s because my business keeps me on another social networking site that I will talk about next. Facebook is great for keeping up with all my high school and college mates. I have also recently used it to invite many of my Facebook friends to attend a teleseminar I held.  Facebook is awesome for keeping track friends and family members without having to call them on the phone or sending them an email.

Linkedin

Linkedin: LinkedIn has over 40 million members in over 200 countries and territories around the world. A new member joins LinkedIn approximately every second, and about half of our members are outside the U.S. Executives from all Fortune 500 companies are LinkedIn members. I have been concentrating me efforts on Linkedin for the past few months because I feel it is the best social networking site that meets the needs of most profesionals.  Soloprenuers should create a profile on Linkedin and start making connections. Take a listen to the Teleseminar I did with Linkedin Expert Lewis Howes.

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Lewis and I would like to thank all of those who were able to make the teleseminar on Social Media and Linkedin. If you were not on the call and want to hear the replay please click here for the Get Linkedin, Ask Lewis Howes replay. This blog will also give you the opportunity to ask your Linkedin Questions that we were unable to cover on the teleseminar. Lewis and I will be monitoring the comments so please feel free to tell us what you thought of the call and give us some feedback on how we can do better with future events on social media and especially Linkedin.

Here are the 5 tips Lewis gave our on the call that can help you take your Linkedin profile 2 the next level.

1. Put a professional picture on your profile.

2. Write a compelling headline

3. Give and Get recommendations

4. Use a custom URL
(http://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffreyalexanderbrathwaite)

5. List your website:
Instead of  (My website) use (Twitter Marketing Case Studies)

Please ask your questions as a comment below.

Thanks again

JB

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If you have a linkedin.com account you may want to try their new Linkedin Applications section.  Linkedin.com is a Web 2.0 social media website designed to help you with online networking for you or your business business.

The Linkedin Application suite is currently limited to 9 different applications right now. Company Buzz, Box.net Files, Blog Link, Reading List by Amazon, My Travel, SlideShare Presentations, Google Presentation, Huddle Workspaces, and WordPress.

I have tried all the applications but the ones that seem to work the best without any trouble in loading is Reading List by Amazon and SlideShare Presentations. These application are supposed to be similar to the many Facebook application that help you enhance your experience with the website. Unfortunately Linkedin may need a bit more time to get all these applications up to speed.

What’s great about having these applications on is they allow you to optimize your Lnkedin profile page. Given time these application will allow your Linkedin network to follow your blog posts using the Blog Link or WordPress app. Follow your Tweets with the Company Buzz app and follow your uploaded presentations with SlideShare and Google Presentations.

What’s not so great is the lack of support of these applications if they are not working on your profile page. I have been trying to get answers to why I can’t change the URL to the Blog Link app and why the Company Buzz app won’t show up on my profile page at all. All they give you is a feedback form that says your feedback is helpful but will not get a response.

As impressed as I am with Linkedin as a whole I am less than impressed with the roll out of these new applications. I would have thought that the 9 applications currently available would have been tested on multiple profile pages using multiple browsers. I have tried the applications on Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and Google Crome all with the same results.

Even though I can only get 2 of the 9 to work consistently on my profile page, I still have hope that all of the applications will eventually perform to their fullest.  If you would like to see some of the Linkedin Applications in action please take a look at my profile page below and click on the View full Profile button on the bottom of the page. Oh and please leave me comments on your experience with loading and viewing these applications on your Linkedin Profile page

http://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffreyalexanderbrathwaite

All the best

JB

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Image via Wikipedia

The jury is still out with the new Facebook Redesign. I took a look at it 2 days ago and at first glance thought it was Good for the most part. Its now wider than it was before and not as congested.

Current Facebook

New Wider Look Facebook

I also did a search on the comments of the Twitter community on the Facebook Redesign and got some interesting results. Although I liked and was comfortable with the old look I did think there was some room for improvement. Only time will tell if Facebook made the right decision. One thing I do know is that even with the changes Facebook is still the fastest growing social network on the Internet and most Solopreneurs and small businesses would be wise to design their own strategy to take advantage of its success.

I would really like to hear back from you on what you think of the Redesign. If you have not seen the new look just log in to your Facebook account and click on the link below.

http://www.new.facebook.com/

All the best

JB

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What if you could combine the simplicity of Yahoo Groups the professionalism of Linkedin, the look and feel of a Ning, the social skills of Facebook and the added security of a corporate intranet. We as Solopreneurs and Small Business owners have many different group memberships and affiliations.


I myself have a Yahoo Group for keeping track of my old college mates, I am on Linkedin for many of the professional and job related contacts I make on a regular basis. I administer a Ning with a colleage of mine to help us grow a community of ebay users. I keep track of most of my social networking on Facebook and also use Google Apps for a secure intranet. This is why I am so impressed with CollectiveX and its Groupsites. CollectiveX is the creation of one “Serial Entrepreneur” named Clarence Wooten.


In 1994 to early 1998, Clarence ran Metamorphosis Studios, Inc., a multimedia and Web design firm. Metamorphosis Studios was acquired in 1998 by MediSolv, Inc. In 1998 Clarence founded ImageCafe.com, a leading e-commerce website solution. With less than $1 million in capital raised, Clarence sold ImageCafe to Network Solutions/VeriSign for more than $20 million. Prior to starting his most recent venture, Clarence was managing partner of Wooten Ventures, an angel investment firm providing seed funding and guidance for entrepreneurs building innovative businesses.


Groupsites are powered by CollectiveX and combine the best features of forums, calendars, email lists, and social networks. Groupsites are a meeting place that provides members of the 2 The Next Level group with a shared calendar, discussion forums, photo gallery, files and member profiles.


Please visit our Groupsite http://www.2thenextlevel.collectivex.com and while you are there you may want to create your own.

Congratulations CollectiveX you have just taken our readers 2 The Next LEVEL of Success.

All the best

JB

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