After making it to the fourth part of the Social Networking for Security Professionals series , it was clear that we needed some kind of directory. There is a pretty robust group of physical security pros that are now using social networking services, and it would be great to have a one-stop location to find them on each service.
I looked at Wikis, LinkedIn Groups, Facebook Groups and others, but I think in a lot of ways FriendFeed's Rooms feature was custom made for this kind of thing.
FriendFeed is a social media aggregator. Once you set up your account, and plug in all the social media accounts you want to share, it creates a custom "feed" for you. (Note: FriendFeed can handle almost EVERY kind of social media or network. You can have your FriendFeed include all your accounts, or just the ones you feel comfortable sharing. For instance, I share my Blog, Twitter, LinkedIn and a few others but I do not list my online photos (flickr , picasa ). ) For all intents and purposes, when we say "feed" we are referring to a RSS feed (which we will go into detail about in the next post of the series). But for our purposes now we can say that a feed is the best way to take a list of items (blog posts, tweets, status updates, posted pictures, etc) and make them available for use through other sites, services or readers. For instance, I join a lot of social networking sites that I'm not active in, and have no intention of interacting with on a daily basis. But since I can plug in the RSS feed for my blog, anyone checking out my profile at that networking site sees up to date information. I can just set it up and forget it.
What makes FriendFeed unique is that it takes all the feeds from your networks and puts them in one place. You can "friend" people just like the other networking sites but with FriendFeed, you're not just subscribing to one of their networks - you've got them all in one place. On your home page view, all your friend's feed items are posted in chronological order. Now, since many of us use services that post to multiple networks there is a lot of repetitive posts but that's normal. There are other services out there that do this kind of thing, but FriendFeed has been sort of established as the standard and in the most interoperable of the bunch.
And that's the key. Sure, we can make our own social networking sites 'till the cows come home but that would be one more network to keep up with instead of using existing networks and FriendFeed to tie it all together.
Essentially, you could just subscribe to that feed (your home view feed) in Google Reader or another feed reader and keep up with everyone across all their networks instead of one at a time. And with this Physical Security Online Room feed - you can do the same thing.
Friend Feed's Room feature is a way for like minded users to connect, share relevant information and network. We can have specific blogs or accounts post directly to that room list automatically or share specific things manually.
Right now - it's set up with the RTP PhySec blog posts to automatically run on the home feed, and the Twitter account for RTP PhySec which I run amber alert and other crime alerts through.
If you'd like your blog listed automatically, just let me know. You'll need to have a RSS feed for your blog - just get me that URL or point me to it and I'll add it.
You can also put a bookmarklet on your toolbar (or a bookmark) easily share things to that room.
When you're browsing online, and see something you'd like to share with the group you can hit that bookmark to pull up this interface:
You can choose which room to post the item to, what to call it and post a comment as well. For icing on the cake you can select an image to go with the post.
Once members of the room join up, we'll have the directory under the "members" tab. From there you can click on a member to go to their homepage (not filtered to that specific room) or their posts in the Physical Security Online room. Each members social networks are listed on their home page.
