Part 6. Integrating it all

Web 2.0 technology is all about collaboration and integration. Therefore you should work as far as you can to integrate your different internet-based activities, letting people know what you’re doing, reading, listening to or watching. This helps to build up your identity, and also shares information with people that they may otherwise not know about.

Most websites these days provide facility to ‘share’ their contents (which would then display on Facebook, most likely), or one can bookmark it for future reference with Reddit or Digg. Most blogs (and many websites with dynamic content) allow for RSS feeds, which can then be stored in a feed reader (eg. Google reader) until you have time to read them.

One method of working that makes sense to me personally is to carry out some activity, such as posting a blog, which is fed through to various locations, such as LinkedIn, Facebook and feed readers. Then one can ‘alert the world’ to the presence of a new blog entry by microblogging on Twitter – which can feed through to Facebook, LinkedIn etc. The same can be done for a new photo album.

It is all about getting the various tools to work together, blending the different information types together to present a whole picture of the person behind them.

Some final tips:

1. Keep your personal information secure (eg. Phone numbers, birth date, address)
2. Always have the same photograph up.
3. Link everything to everything else. For example, where Facebook asks you for any websites on your Info, give them your twitter profile website, your blog site, your photo sharing site etc. This will show people consistency and alert them to the media that you use.