If I was to make a prediction for 2013 it would be that it will be the year of social network normalisation.

You might of noticed you’re no longer friends with someone on Facebook, perhaps you go to send someone a DM on twitter and they’re not following you any more .. maybe you want to get rid of some recruiters on LinkedIn who keep messaging you… you’re bang on trend for 2013.

…and yes, whilst I’m relying on mostly anecdotal evidence I do believe there is a trend towards what I call social network normalisation.

For me this takes 3 forms:

1. considered posting
2. friend reduction
3. network rationalisation

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Still a very happy bunny!

The only things I’ve had to do manually are update my Amazon card on file, the standing order for my flat maintenance and council tax.

No hiccups, no drama.

Go forth n do it!

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Tweeted about this a few times and people have asked lots of questions…  so a blog post is born!

With a saving account at Barclays and a current account with HSBC, recent banking scandals/rate fixing/money laundering had really made me keen to move banks.

I spent a bit of time reading sites like Move Your Money UK (very good) and deciding where I wanted to go,  in the end it mostly came down to the Ethical Consumer banking configurator-thingy which allows you to say which values are important to you and suggests an appropriate place for your dosh.

After some more reading/faffing/pondering I settled on Nationwide for my current account for two reasons:

• The main one – they scored well on the index with my chosen values
• The added bonus – they employ quite a few of my friends in Bournemouth – I know it sounds silly, but if I’m going to move banks it’s definitely an added bonus that in some small way it helps keep my friends in jobs!

So, bye bye HSBC + Barclays – hello Nationwide + Credit Union*!

*For my savings, I’m going to go for a local credit union – I’m still researching them at the moment, when I’ve decided I’ll write a follow up post I promise!

Closing my Barclay’s savings account was surprisingly quick and easy, they didn’t offer any resistance (I’d expected a “Are you sure we can’t…” or something!) and was all over in about 5 minutes.  I got the feeling, it was quite a common occurrence at Barclays at the moment.

Opening and moving to Nationwide…

I tried to do it online, but the site had an error – as I was heading to Barclays anyway (having found my passport) I thought I’d do it in person.

The lady who served me was very good, it didn’t take very long and they promised to take care of it all for me (transferring direct debits etc) – the only exceptions were that I’d need to update my paypal bank account details, inform my lodger and my employer.

That was it.

My advice:

1. Do it. It’s easier/quicker than I expected.
2. Do it. It felt good to have some (small) element of control over these banks.
3. Take your last 3 months worth of statements with you and they’ll match credit limits/overdrafts limits.
4. Do it. If we all moved bank accounts it’d have more effect than voting, whinging, writing to our MPs or anything else we could do short of some sort of full on anti-bank revolution!
5. Do it. The total time it’s taken has been at most an hour (once I decided on which bank).

If you have any questions/comments please share them below – I’d love to hear about others moving their money!

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It’s been too long since I last blogged, sorry world.

For those that hadn’t heard, I’m now working for the RNLI!

I’d really like to thank Ross @ RT for being so understanding in me leaving for my (pretty much) dream job: a pure social media job with a charity… and not just any charity but a whopping big one!

As time allows, I’ll be moving my more personal SocialTech posts across to here (Bar Camp Bournemouth type ones esp.) so hold tight for a flood of posts.

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I’ve started a little experiment, to prove that you can make your own luck:

http://onecompaday.tumblr.com/

Simple really, I’m going to enter one competition every day and see what happens.

If I miss a day, I have to enter two the next day.

—> UPDATE <—

I canned the idea. Partly because… well it was lame and partly as a friend of mine pointed to an automated entry webapp which took all the fun out of it….

That’s ok, I can think of better things to spend my life doing.

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I ticked another one off the to-do list.. speaking at a TED/TEDx event:

Mostly happy with how it went, was a bit thrown at the start due to an equipment malfunction just before I went on, but recovered after a minute or two!

Sadly you can’t really see my slides which were revealed one by one, so I’ve loaded them onto slideshare.

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Some time ago I wrote a blog post on “My thoughts on when to FWD, RT, re-post etc” it got a lot of hits and RT’s. In light of recent high profile viral causes (not least Kony2012) I felt it needed an update.

Yes the power of the internet is changing the way we as individuals can collectively bring about change…  but…

“with great power comes great responsibility” Voltaire
(not Uncle Ben in Superman, as most people seem to think)

There was something that bothered me about the Kony 2012 video that I couldn’t put my finger on. So as I usually do (I’ll admit I’m human, not always) I looked deeper into the issue first, before RTing it or FWDing it on.

Without getting into the detail of the Kony issue (no doubt he is a bad man) it made me view the video differently and that’s when I realised my post needed an update.

There is a trend, I’d almost call it a fashion, to believe that which is contrary to established thinking… just because. Often these views come from edgy “thought leaders” who are often trying to sell books, sometimes (not always) this is deliberate. To be controversial is a form of link-baiting.

Another great example of this is a TED talk buy Derek Sivers who claims that sharing your goals makes them less likely to occur. Great headline, quick forward it! But wait, if you read the paper he refers to it simply doesn’t say that. (I’m not saying he deliberately mis-represented the paper btw)

I ask you this: is it better to be convinced by a slick viral video, or main stream press… by unknown figures (or organisations) than politicians or celebrities?

Of course the answer to this is, it depends.

Do some research, read around the area and make your own decisions, then FWD / RT / re-post it.

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