Rob Cottingham's blog | Social Signal

The year that started with Angry Birds and wrapped up with Angry Delicious Users is finally over.

Last week, the Vancouver Police Department launched their Twitter presence with a day-long marathon of tweeting the calls that came into the force. It was a success, rocketing them from zero to well over 1,800 followers that afternoon.

It's come up three or four times at workshops I've conducted in the past few weeks: people who work for organizations with an entry in Wikipedia, wondering whether and how they can edit it - if, for instance, misinformation creeps in. (I'm assuming you're not trying to sanitize your entry.

My friends Maddie Grant and Lindy Dreyer have just launched Open Community, "a little book of big ideas for associations navigating the social web". (I was fortunate enough to get to do cartoons for the book, which meant I got a sneak peek – and I was impressed with both the scope of their vision and the practical suggestions they have for their readers.)

I had something of a happy mystery yesterday: a huge surge in traffic on one of my Noise to Signal cartoons with no apparent reason why.

That's the kind of mystery I dearly love to solve. Not just because I'm nosey, but also because I'd like to thank whoever's responsible. So I donned my deerstalker, broke out the virtual magnifying glass and started an investigation.

I solved that mystery... but discovered something a lot more important in the process.

Here's how I proceeded:

Facebook's announcement yesterday of a new Groups feature caught a lot of people by surprise.

Even more surprising, though, was the discovery that you could be signed up for a Group without knowing about it - and that your inbox would promptly start filling up with notifications every time someone posted, well, pretty much anything.

If you're a WordPress.com user, you've come across Gravatars before. They're the avatar, or user image, associated with your account, and they show up next to your comments - not just on your own blog, but on any WordPress.com blog... and on any other blog or forum that has Gravatars enabled. (The word is short for "globally recognized avatar", and there are plugins available for Drupal, Moveable Type and even the venerable GeekLog.)

We're coming up to the fifth anniversary of the Social Signal blog. So it's fitting that this Bedtime with Rob and Alex podcast looks at the heart of what we do: developing strategies for participation.

And this time out, we're looking at strategies for smaller organizations (both in budget and membership). We cover:

Nothing concentrates the mind, the saying goes, like the prospect of being executed in the morning. When you only have a few hours left, you want to make them count.

But substitute space for time, and give people a 160-character limit on summing up their life's story (or even just the past 525,600 minutes), and they start adding the oddest things.