The City of Boston and Mayor Menino is hosting:
Restaurant Roadmap Workshop Flyer
Join us at the Ashmont Grill, Thursday, September 2nd, beginning at 11:30AM
August 20, 2010
January 14, 2010
Integrate your status updates with Twitter
This is a cross post from this Ning.com blog. Ning is social networking platform we use to build our networks!
We’re excited to announce several new features that integrate the micro-blogging service Twitter with your Ning Network. Spreading the word with Twitter is an effective way to reach a wider audience and increase the membership of your Ning Network. In the coming days, you and your members will be able to:
- Automatically push Status updates to Twitter
- Share photos, videos, and other content on Twitter without leaving your Ning Network
- Take advantage of a new URL shortener
(Note: To take advantage of these new features, make sure you have Twitter integration enabled. To reflect the preferences of different Ning Networks, this feature is off by default for Ning Networks with the Use Your Own Domain premium service. You can enable or disable Twitter integration by going to your Manage page and clicking “Twitter & Flickr.”)
AUTOMATICALLY POST YOUR STATUS UPDATES TO TWITTER
If you’ve enabled the feature, a Twitter icon will now appear in the Status box. Here’s how it looks:
Check that box to update your Twitter account with your status. The first time you check this box, you’ll be asked to authenticate with Twitter. And after that, you can always change your settings by clicking on Settings and choosing My Page.
SHARE YOUR CONTENT ON TWITTER WITH SHORT URLS
You’ve always been able to share any piece of content — like a photo, video, or profile page — on Twitter, but with this release we’re making it a lot easier. Now you’ll see a Twitter link next to your Share link. And if you have Twitter integration set up, you and your members can click the Twitter link to send a tweet without leaving your Ning Network.
In the spirit of 140 characters, we’re also rolling out a brand-new URL shortener that will automatically condense hyperlinks to shared content:
This helps trim down the length of your tweet, giving you more room to rave about some cool sidewalk art you just discovered — or anything else.
WHAT’S ON DECK FOR TWITTER INTEGRATION
As believers in agile development, we plan to bundle more improvements to Twitter integration in the near future. Here are two things we have in mind:
- By default, members’ posts on Twitter will say “from a Ning Network” in the gray text below the tweet. For our next steps, we want to offer a premium service that lets you brand your Ning Network by customizing this text and linking it back to your Main Page.
- We’re also looking into ways to make it easy for you to update your Twitter account any time you upload a photo or video.
As always, your feedback will help us plan out and prioritize our next steps. So stay tuned, and be sure to join the conversation on Ning Creators!
January 9, 2010
How to start and promote a new group on NFN
Our mission is to connect people who live, work, and serve in the same neighborhood and provide tools for them to communicate and to colloaborate around common interests.
Think of Groups as micro communities of common interests. They are how we collaborate to create something new for our neighbors.
HOW TO CREATE A GROUP:
- Sign into the neighborhood network
- From the main page, click on the “Groups” tab.
- On the Groups tab, click on “Add a Group.”
- Come up with a Name for your group
- Add an Image like a logo or photo that captures the essence of your group
- Offer a brief Description of your group, letting people know what it’s about
- If there’s a Website for your association or organization beyond the network you can add it.
- And the Location could designate a physical place for the group.
- We recommend that you put a check to enable Comments and Discussion Forums
- Text Boxes are cool because they allow you to provide a welcome message to teh group and to embed videos, documents, presentation slides and other content on the site.
- You may also want to include RSS feeds, such as news, Twitter hashtags or other content that will be updated regularly.
- People often ask if they can keep their groups private. Yes you can. And you do that under the Privacy setting: Check anyone if you want your group to be open. Check “Moderated” if you want be in control of who can join and see group content.
- You can allow members to send Messages to all other members of the group or not. We suggest you DO NOT enable this feature as messages are not archived and discussions serve the same purpose and members are notified when new discussions are added.
- Once you’ve got your group set up, be sure to promote it to your neighbors and other members of the community.
- Most importantly, plant a see discussion, and ask people what they think and what the groups next steps should be!
PROMOTE YOUR GROUP WITH A BLOG POST:
- Go to the “Blogs” tab.
- Click on “+ Add blog post” link near upper right hand corner of the window.
- Fill in the subject
- Fill in the body
- MAKE SURE YOU ADD A LINK TO YOUR GROUPS URL!! for people can join and participate in your group.
- Add tags (keywords) to help people search for it
- Choose “Publish Post”
