Kindle Subscription Now Available!

Did you know that Amazon offers Kindle subscriptions to some blogs? I recently bought a Kindle and just discovered the Kindle blogs store contains over 13,000 blogs! Some are free, most are 99 cents a month (FYI Amazon decides on the pricing, based – I think – on publication frequency).

After some RSS feed tweaking I applied to have What Betty Knows listed, and it is now live here!

WBK Amazon subscription page view

Note that it is only available on certain Kindle devices (because some of them do not reproduce images, NOT because I “opted out of making it available”), so check your device. In any case you will not be allowed to purchase a subscription if you don’t have a usable Kindle model registered.

There is a 14-day free trial period, so you can cancel if the Kindle experience doesn’t work for you.

However! Whether or not you have a Kindle, please do me a favor: If you enjoy WBK please go to this link and write a review. It doesn’t need to be long (there is a 20 word minimum required), but would help convince others to check out WBK. Most helpful would be for you to say what you like about it, as trying to describe the content is difficult unless you already know me :-)  Thanks!

When Real Death Comes to Virtual Life – Part 1

It has been one hell of a week+ for me emotionally: four people whose lives have touched mine in various ways died in the space of ten days. Three of those used social media (mostly Twitter and Facebook), and that is how most of their friends have learned of their passing – and we learned of the fourth via the mailing list of a group of which he was a part.

It would take a much longer series of posts than I currently have the time or energy to compose to cover all of the ways social media users and their friends/family need to consider handling their digital assets and communities when the user dies. But for now I will note some specific technical tips for when (not if, increasingly) you find yourself mourning the loss of a loved one and are left with how to communicate about their departure with their social media friends.

[Note: I originally planned to cover both Twitter and Facebook in this article, but it’s already lengthy about Twitter so I will do a Part 2 about Facebook later]

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What’s That Event?

When you create an event on Facebook, presumably you

  1. Want people to pay attention and attend, plus
  2. Want others to know that their friends are attending so they might consider it as well.

But failing to title your event in a specific way may sabotage its visibility!

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Update: Increasing Facebook Page Views

A few months ago I posted my research on what types of Facebook posts are allowed to be seen by more of your Page’s fans without your being forced to pay Facebook. Since Facebook frequently changes how they treat your posts I just did another quick experiment with posts to my band Ginger Ibex‘s Page to see whether my prior conclusion still holds.

Here’s the result:

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