Social Media

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• 5 Ways to Use Social Media for Things You Are Already Doing

  Social Media Today

  16 Mar 2010 | 7:42 am

• SXSW: 99Designs Launches Logo Store (video)

  CenterNetworks

  Allen Stern

  15 Mar 2010 | 5:37 am

  During the SXSW conference in Austin this week, Google held an all day hackathon event. The idea behind the hackathon is to allow developers to create applications in one day and also get help from Google employees on applications they are developing. I recorded the session that discussed Google App Engine and the video is below. You can also download all of the “code labs” which are simple tutorials on how to use a variety of Google APIs and services including Google App Engine. CenterNetworks Partner: Get your business cards scanned and transcribed with CloudContacts.

• Does Online Customer Service Encourage Dissent?

  Social Media Today

  16 Mar 2010 | 6:05 am

  5 Ways to Use Social Media for Things You Are Already Doing This content from: Duct Tape Marketing One of the biggest road blocks facing small businesses when addressing social media is the questio...

• Bang For Your PPC Buck

  @NowSourcing.Com » Blog

  Don

  18 Feb 2010 | 9:18 pm

  Guest post by Justin Parks – He’s Northern Irish and a big time advocate of social media stuff and making sure its done right.  Loves a pint of the black stuff from time to time and tends to swear a lot.  You have been warned!   He hangs out on twitter and on his social media blog Justinparks.com. There is no question that social media is hitting the mainstream. It is evolving into a major part of the Internet, developing hordes of devoted users and advocates who are raising their hands in the air and creating virtual Mexican waves* with their ability of share information…

• Social Media Responsa to the Great ROI Debate

  @NowSourcing.Com » Blog

  Brian Wallace

  29 Jan 2010 | 10:17 am

  If you read my blog, there is a good chance that you have a blog yourself, or that you’ll have one someday soon.  As you know, blogging is a lot more work than you might initially think.  One of these factors is the amount of time spent on commenting: approving comments, responding to comments, and commenting on other blogs.  What if they aren’t commenting on your blog, though? Here are some reasons that might shed some light on the subject: (credit) 1 – You’re boring. Ok, maybe boring is a strong word, but if you are just putting something very general, late (we…

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  Building43

• The Cube

  Michelle Greer

  15 Mar 2010 | 4:32 pm

  Watch live video from nicefishfilms on Justin.tv

• Gillmor Gang 03.12.10

  15 Mar 2010 | 4:29 am

• Opscode Gives Small Development Firms Enterprise Level IT

  Robert Scoble

  11 Mar 2010 | 6:54 am

  Twitter.  Digg.  Facebook.  37Signals.  These are companies known on every continent.  They are not publicly traded and don’t have huge offices or development teams around the world. How can such small teams build applications with such robust IT specifications?  For one, virtualization is allowing small to medium businesses to stretch their IT dollars a lot further.  There are also tools like Opscode’s Chef which help automate the cost prohibitive and time intensive work sys admins have always had to do.  Opscode’s goal is to take the focus off the “muck that…

• Keen On III Part I

  11 Mar 2010 | 4:34 am

  Andrew Keen and Steve Gillmor debate Campaign 2008. Recorded December 7, 2007.

• Living Small is the New Living Large

  Ben Huh

  10 Mar 2010 | 7:31 am

  This is a guest post by Ben Huh. The toughest competition I’ve ever had to deal with was The Joneses. I had never met them, but I always knew that they had the newer car, bigger house, and even their dog could do more tricks than my dog. No matter what I did, they were always getting ahead of me. During a recession, it’s necessary, if not fashionable, to be frugal. Eventually, the boom will be back, and those Joneses will be flaunting their new found wealth at your doorstep again. Often, I get questions about how I managed to get out of $40,000 in debt after the first dot com bust. The…

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  TechCrunch

• Now Nexus One Owners Can Bitch About AT&T Too (And This Won’t Help Sales)

  MG Siegler

  16 Mar 2010 | 10:47 am

  There’s a lot of talk today about how the Nexus One’s initial roll-out has been a flop. And while the numbers aren’t official, things do look pretty grim for the first Android device Google is attempting to sell itself. But Google is wasting no time answering its critics — indirectly — with the launch of a version of the device that will work on AT&T’s 3G network. To be clear, this isn’t Google teaming up with AT&T on the device. Instead, it’s simply a second version of the Nexus One that works with AT&T’s 3G frequency, which is…

• Chatroulette Is 89 Percent Male, 47 Percent American, And 13 Percent Perverts

  Guest Author

  16 Mar 2010 | 10:36 am

  This is a guest post by Robert J. Moore, the CEO and co-founder of RJMetrics, an on-demand database analytics and business intelligence startup. His last guest post was an analysis of Twitter user data. It’s no surprise that Chatroulette is the latest media darling. It has all the elements of a good story: technology, mystery, celebrity, and sex. If you haven’t heard of Chatroulette, this Daily Show segment is a good primer. We were itching to study Chatroulette in a RJMetrics Dashboard, but no one seemed to have any good data for us to explore. So, we decided compile the data…

• Team Europe Makes Early Investment

  Steve O'Hear

  16 Mar 2010 | 9:26 am

  Team Europe Ventures, the Berlin-based VC firm focused on early stage Internet companies, has made a minority investment in Infakt. The Polish startup provides web-based accounting and invoicing solutions for small companies locally. Alongside Team Ventures, angel Christoph Janz also brings new investment, with the combined funding amounting to a 30% stake in Infakt. Polish business angel Krzysztof Nowinski (formerly with the VC firm BMP) is an existing investor.

• Hey Twitter, are you going to deal with these Nazis or not?

  Mike Butcher

  16 Mar 2010 | 9:23 am

  There is a tweet being retweeted heavily within the German Twitter community right now which roughly translates as “BEWARE Nazi-pigs on Twitter! @Heil_Hitler_88 Please block so that the account gets deleted. #nazi #block #rt Please!” (original). Now, if Twitter had servers in Germany an account like @Heil_Hitler_88 (we’re not linking BTW) would be illegal and would be deleted right away.

• TC50 Movie Search Startup AnyClip Launches, Without Many Clips

  Erick Schonfeld

  16 Mar 2010 | 9:06 am

  When movie clip search startup AnyClip demoed at last year’s TechCrunch50, it was one of the crowd pleasers. The concept was to be able to search for any line or scene in a movie, and the site would take you to that exact moment and play the clip. The demo looked great, but could the startup actually get the movie studios to license their films? Sean Parker, one of the judges on the panel noted: “This is the kind of thing that absolutely should happen. But it will take you twice as long to make those deals.” Parker turned out to be right. AnyClip continues to negotiate with…

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  ReadWriteWeb

• BizSpark Accelerator Finalists: Our Pick for 'Most Innovative Web Technology'

  16 Mar 2010 | 12:10 pm

  Today at the South By South West festival in Austin, three finalists competed in the Microsoft BizSpark Accellerator finals in the "Innovative Web Technologies" category. The companies, RecycleMatch, Siri and Skimble argued their positions on stage in front of three judges and tonight the winner will be announced at 6pm CST. Sponsor The Accelerator competition is in its second year and started out with a list of 32 finalist companies in three categories. While all three categories have some strong entries, we wanted to check out the innovative technologies to see what was, well, innovative.

• The Rocky Road for LBS: Beyond Smartphones and LBS Games

  16 Mar 2010 | 11:50 am

  The first thing we think of these days when someone mentions "location-based services", or LBS, are the mobile social platforms we've gotten used to "checking in" to wherever we go - Gowalla, Foursquare, Brightkite, MyTown and the like. But looking forward in the LBS market actually requires us to look back to feature phones and a GPS-less existence. According to Jason Finkelstein, the director of product and marketing at LBS solution-provider WaveMarket, we are looking at a "truly horizontal market" that can be "applied to dozens of different types of businesses". But first, there are a…

• Microsoft Launches First IE9 Developer Preview with Support for Hardware-Accelerated HTML5

  16 Mar 2010 | 11:20 am

  Microsoft just announced the launch of the first developer preview version of Internet Explorer 9. This release is clearly geared towards developers and only features a very stripped down user interface. The developer preview does, however, include Chakra, Microsoft's new JavaScript engine, as well as a new hardware accelerated graphics subsystem and additional developer tools. Sponsor Better Support for New Web Standards Microsoft is clearly focusing on making Internet Explorer compatible with the latest standards, including HTML5, CSS3 and SVG2 support. Even though Microsoft is very focused…

• Crowdsourcing in the Enterprise With Gambling In Mind

  16 Mar 2010 | 11:16 am

  In the world of risk management, it's all about probability. But often, it takes considerable time to get an answer to important questions. But as of late, risk management is seeing a transformation, in most part fueled by the advent of real-time communication. The most recent example comes from Crowdcast, which has entered into a partnership with SAP's risk management group. Sponsor Crowdcast is a service that provides real-time capabilities for understanding the collective intelligence of an organization. At first look, the service seems a bit gimmicky. To get answers to questions, a group…

• Nexus One Flopped, but Android Didn't

  16 Mar 2010 | 9:52 am

  A new report from mobile analytics firm Flurry reveals some interesting numbers about Google's first attempt to sell its own custom branded Android device, an HTC-built phone called the Nexus One. It's a flop. After 74 days, the same amount of time it took the original iPhone to sell its first million units, the Nexus One sold only 135,000. But before you read too much into these numbers, thinking that it has any meaning with regard to the Android ecosystem as a whole, think again. Android market share is growing fast - it more than doubled from September to December of last year, for…

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  Mashable!

• Unlocked Nexus One Comes to AT&T and Rogers

  Christina Warren

  16 Mar 2010 | 11:04 am

  Today, Google announced that it is now selling a new version of the unlocked Nexus One that will work on AT&T and Rogers Wireless in 3G. Earlier today, we discussed the lackluster sales of Google’s Nexus One smartphone. One of the reasons we think sales are below expectations is that the phone was previously only available on one 3G carrier in the U.S. and Canada.While Google is still only selling the phone unsubsidized through T-Mobile, consumers now have two options when buying an unlocked handset. Both versions sell for $529. Additionally, the Nexus One can now be shipped to…

• Nexus One Sales Are Lackluster: Here’s Why

  Christina Warren

  16 Mar 2010 | 10:24 am

  Ten weeks after the launch of Google’s Nexus One smartphone, sales continue to remain slow. Mobile analytics firm Flurry, who also projected first week and first month sales for the snazzy device, has just released its latest sales estimates, deducing that in 74 days, 135,000 devices have been sold. This is in sharp contrast to the Motorola DROID and the original Apple iPhone, which both sold a million units in the same period of time.Flurry actually used 74 days as a barometer, because that was how long it took for the original iPhone to sell one million units back in 2007.

• PayPal Transfers Made Simple: Just Bump iPhones

  Samuel Axon

  16 Mar 2010 | 9:41 am

  The newly released 2.0 version of PayPal’s iPhone app [iTunes link] can transfer money to another iPhone when you bump the two handsets together. Don’t worry, though; you probably won’t do it by accident.PayPal licensed the tech developed by Bump Technologies, which also powers that iPhone app that friends people on Facebook when you shake your phone.With this app, you can either enter the e-mail address of your friend’s account or bump your phones together to download the necessary info. Then you enter the amount and send. Your friend can also request money by bumping…

• 4 Ways the Entertainment Industry is Getting More Social

  David A. Yovanno

  16 Mar 2010 | 9:28 am

  David A. Yovanno is the CEO of Gigya, Inc., a leading social optimization platform for online business. He can be found on Twitter at @daveyovanno or e-mail dave(at)gigya(dot)com.Now that most social networks are supporting functionality on third party sites — via Facebook Connect, Sign in with Twitter, Yahoo! Open Strategy, MySpaceID, and other similar technologies — entertainment companies are experimenting with a variety of approaches.While movie promotions on Facebook, top sports moments on YouTube, and MySpace music pages remain key fixtures, many entertainment companies are…

• Lady Gaga and Beyonce’s “Telephone” Gets Indie Pop Cover [VIDEO]

  Brenna Ehrlich

  16 Mar 2010 | 9:18 am

  Lady Gaga and Beyonce’s “Telephone” video went ultra viral after it premiered on Vevo last week, and now a new cover of the jam has blown up (albeit on a smaller scale): Enter “Telephone” (the super twee, adorable version), by Pomplamoose. You might remember Pomplamoose (a.k.a. musicians Jack Conte and Nataly Dawn) for their similarly stripped-down, hipstered-up version of “Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It),” which came out back in September and has since racked up more than 3.5 million views.Well, Conte and Dawn’s newest track hit YouTube just…

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  Altimeter Group

• Altimeter Report: The 18 Use Cases of Social CRM, The New Rules of Relationship Management

  jeremiah

  5 Mar 2010 | 10:02 am

  18 Use Cases That Show Business How To Finally Put Customers First Social and CRM: How Companies Will Manage Their Social Relationships Over the last six months, I’ve been working closely with Ray Wang who is well known in the CRM space as an expert. Coupled with my focus on social technologies we did a deep dive on how our worlds are intersecting at Social CRM. In our opening webinar when we announced our joining of the firm, we made it clear that we were looking at the holistic business, across multiple business departments –not silos or roles. Companies are unable to scale to keep up…

• Social Strategy Webinar Slides Now Available

  charleneli

  25 Feb 2010 | 10:26 am

  Jeremiah Owyang and I held a webinar entitled “Developing A Social Strategy” that had over 495 participants asking very insightful questions — we had a great time sharing the information and got new ideas on how to develop our thinking as well. Many people who wanted to attend the webinar weren’t able to because of schedule conflicts. We also received quite a few requests from people for the slides or recording so that they can forward it to colleagues and friends who would benefit from the content. Feel free to forward this information along — we make these…

• Welcome Michael Gartenberg, New Altimeter Partner!

  charleneli

  23 Feb 2010 | 10:00 am

  by Charlene Li A hearty welcome to Michael Gartenberg, the newest partner to join Altimeter. With the addition of Michael, we now have seven partners along with a staff of five other people. We also recently moved offices in San Mateo to accommodate our new growth (more on that below). Michael has been a long-time, respected voice in the space of personal and mobile technologies, and he brings to Altimeter a unique viewpoint of how these technologies are changing the consumer experience. Understanding how people use devices to connect  with content and each other is an important linchpin in…

• Google Buzz and Kids – Parental Control Nightmare

  charleneli

  21 Feb 2010 | 11:25 pm

  by Charlene Li Like many parents, I try to take steps to keep my kids safe online, making sure that they understand not to share personal information online, or even to use their real names. They know how to write appropriate emails, and I constantly monitoring what they do, the emails they send, and most importantly, engaging in a constant dialog with what they are doing online. But when I logged into my Google Buzz account this evening, I found that my 9 year old daughter had posted the following: Pretty innocuous, but it was PUBLIC! I saw it because Buzz conveniently made me a follow of…

• Welcome to new Altimeter Group partners: Alan Webber and Lora Cecere

  charleneli

  26 Jan 2010 | 10:00 am

  I’m pleased to announce that Altimeter Group has brought on two additional partners to meet the growing demand of our clients, which now number over 40 retained clients. Alan Webber and Lora Cecere each bring with them unique areas of expertise, but what makes them great partners for Altimeter is their ability to help clients understand and address opportunities and problems created by emerging technologies. Trends such as open government and supply chain/demand orchestration disrupt traditional business and organizational models, creating both problems as well as opportunities. We…

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  SmartBrief on Social Media

• Can you see beneath the SXSW sparkle?

  15 Mar 2010 | 10:00 pm

  The bells-and-whistles side of social marketing is front and center at SXSW this week, but it's worth taking a moment to look -More- 

• Your turn: Twitter's @anywhere -- nice diversion or next big thing?

  15 Mar 2010 | 10:00 pm

   -More- Take a Measureable Approach to Social Media Marketing. Finally, there's one centralized application for launching viral social media campaigns and tracking the results that matter — conversions, customer acquisition, revenue and more. Free 60-day trial. Learn More >>

• Twitter rolls out third-party-integration platform

  15 Mar 2010 | 10:00 pm

  Twitter has announced plans for "@anywhere," a service that will allow third-party sites to mesh more closely with Twitter's  -More- 

• Facebook becomes most popular U.S. Web site

  15 Mar 2010 | 10:00 pm

  Facebook overtook Google as the U.S.'s most popular Web site last week, according to a report by Hitwise.  -More- 

• The big re-tweet

  15 Mar 2010 | 10:00 pm

  Every day, we search our SmartBrief on Social Media Reader List and reprint one great tweet.  -More- 

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  Social Media Today

• 5 Ways to Use Social Media for Things You Are Already Doing

  16 Mar 2010 | 7:42 am

  5 Ways to Use Social Media for Things You Are Already Doing This content from: Duct Tape Marketing One of the biggest road blocks facing small businesses when addressing social media is the questio...

• Does Online Customer Service Encourage Dissent?

  16 Mar 2010 | 6:05 am

  One of the highlights of South By Southwest for me so far was the Customer Support in a 140 Character World panel with Caroline McCarthy (CNET), Frank Eliason (Comcast), Lois Townsend (HP), Toby Ric...

• Decisions in the Social Space... are you a creative or a reactive leader?

  16 Mar 2010 | 1:52 am

  Are You a Creative or a Reactive Leader? A good leader always seem to be the one that can find or facilitate the solution to a persistent problem and tends to more creative in their thinking rather...

• My blog: The End of the Road or a Change of Lanes?

  15 Mar 2010 | 11:43 pm

  In three days, it will be the two-year anniversary of my first blog post on Experience: The Blog.  Originally intended to an exploration of experiential marketing strategies, my interest and focus qui...

• Enterprise 2.0: The Next Narrative

  15 Mar 2010 | 12:09 pm

  Enterprise 2.0 was launched in the spring of 2006 as a result of Andrew McAfee’s case study interviews in 2005 on Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein (DrKW), an investment bank in London.  The story unfo...

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  ProBlogger Blog Tips

• Updates from SXSW

  Darren Rowse

  16 Mar 2010 | 10:30 am

  Over the last few days I’ve been in Austin Texas attending the South by South West Interactive (#SXSWi) conferences. Sometimes known as ‘Spring Break for Geeks’ I try to get out to this gathering each years because there are so many of my colleagues in attendance and it is an opportunity to meet up with old friends, network, do a little business and a meet a few readers at the same time. Today is the last day of SXSW (I return home tomorrow) and despite some late nights I woke up this morning with a start on the dot of 5am (jet lag sucks). As I lay in bed reflecting upon the…

• 7 Ways to End a Blog

  Darren Rowse

  16 Mar 2010 | 6:39 am

  Yesterday I wrote a post about some of the factors that bloggers might consider when deciding whether to end a blog or not. Today I want to continue the theme and look at some options available to bloggers who have decided to end their blog but who don’t quite know how to do it. Here are some of the most common ways that I’ve seen people end blogs: 1. Sell It Before you decide to delete your blog, or simply decide to stop writing – consider whether it might have some commercial worth. This might not be appropriate for all blogs (for example if you have a more personal blog…

• When Should You Quit a Blog and Move On?

  Darren Rowse

  15 Mar 2010 | 6:56 am

  Over on Twitter last week @ChrisGuthrie asked me – ‘At what point should you quit a blog and move onto the next project?’ It is a good question and one that I’m not sure that there is any single answer for – however I can certainly talk about what has led me to quit some of my previous blogs. There have been a variety of reasons – in fact in most cases it was more than one reason that led me to quit a blog. The reasons included: Lack of Passion/Interest in the Topic – I went through a phase where I decided to choose topics to blog about that I thought…

• Navigating the Middle of Your Post – Without Getting Lost

  Darren Rowse

  14 Mar 2010 | 7:19 am

  A Guest Post from Ali Hale from The Blogger’s Guide to Effective Writing” – normally priced at $29, ProBlogger readers can get a $5 discount by entering the code “ProBlogger” Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger. Navigating the Middle of Your Post – Without Getting Lost Share This

• Why Your Business Needs Friends

  Darren Rowse

  13 Mar 2010 | 5:27 am

  A Guest Post by Johnny B. Truant from The Charlie and Johnny Jam Sessions. I got an email the other day from a man who was at his wit’s end. The email explained that in this man’s business, he was doing many of the same basic things that I was doing, but with much less success. He had been building websites for years. He had refined his craft. He felt that the sites he built were better, more complete, and had more features and better support than mine. He had more experience than I had. He even said that he was probably smarter than I was. Yet I was doing really well and he was…

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  Scott Monty: The Social Media Marketing Blog

• The Rich Are No Different Than You & Me

  8 Mar 2010 | 8:27 am

  Well, except for that money thing. They want the pretty much want what we all want from social networks: to connect with people they know and trust, spend some time unwinding, and share content.   The key difference is this: affluents don't want to friend a brand on Facebook - they prefer to check out fan pages. [Then again, I feel the same way. Hmm. Maybe I qualify to be rich? I can haz affluence, plze?]   What they do prefer is a user experience on the company's website that addresses their needs. Easy navigation, helpful information, perhaps even the availability of a live chat…

• How Ford Uses Social Media [VIDEO]

  4 Mar 2010 | 8:24 am

  At the risk of giving away too much of what we do (not really - everything we do in social media is in the public, so you just need to pay attention or search around to find out), I'd like to share with you a little bit about Ford Motor Company's approach to social media.Here's a great video that WebPro News did when we were at Blog World Expo last October. It captures a lot of what Ford is doing in the space.I keep a clipsheet of coverage of our social media efforts (using Profilactic), which is helpful when speaking to reporters or digital media and they're looking for…

• Social Media Marketing Spending Spirals Up

  3 Mar 2010 | 8:36 am

  When you start hearing about social media taking up more budget rather than having to struggle for dollars and attention, it's clear that the practice is gaining in legitimacy.    Remember the days of having to gently introduce the concept, or of having to prove that in fact it's something that's a coming trend? We had to deal with skeptics - the same type of people, who maybe less than 10 years ago, doubted that the Internet was going to catch on. And we've had to deal with a struggling economy and limited funding.    Things are a little different now. In fact, you might…

• Email - the Silent E

  2 Mar 2010 | 9:37 pm

  A rather unlikely suspect has been making the rounds lately. And while you may have come to know this blog for covering the cutting edge communications and marketing tools, it may seem odd that this suspect is rather old school.That's right. Good old email is making a comeback. But it shouldn't be a total surprise - it's not like I didn't warn you.Every indicator I've seen lately indicate that people still use email as a primary method of sharing interesting news, keeping in touch, and notification - not to mention that it's usually the price of entry for belonging to a social network. In…

• Study: Most Effective B2B Social Media Tactics are IT ‘Lite’

  1 Mar 2010 | 1:20 pm

  Guest post by Ben Hanna, VP of Marketing for Business.com, the Web’s leading portal for business owners. According to a new study involving more than 1,700 small business leaders, companies marketing to small businesses would be well advised to focus on social media tactics requiring little IT investment, such as webinars, podcasts and establishing a presence on top social networking sites, before pursuing more IT resource intensive initiatives such as creating a company-managed online community. The study, conducted by Business.com, finds that that four of the top five most effective…

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  CenterNetworks

• SXSW: Discussion With Cliqset Founder Darren Bounds

  Allen Stern

  16 Mar 2010 | 8:28 am

  At the Mashable party during the SXSW conference, I caught up with Cliqset founder Darren Bounds to learn more about where the social service is today and where it is headed. Louis Gray also spoke with Darren and recorded an audio interview that’s worth listening to. Lastly, check out the Cliqset SXSW mashup which pulls in content from Cliqset users from the following services: Brightkite, Flickr, Foursquare, Gowalla, Qik and Twitter. Darren described Cliqset as a real-time conversation and aggregation service.  Currently they aggregate content from a variety of services from their…

• SXSW: Google App Engine Demo

  Allen Stern

  15 Mar 2010 | 8:03 pm

  During the SXSW conference in Austin this week, Google held an all day hackathon event. The idea behind the hackathon is to allow developers to create applications in one day and also get help from Google employees on applications they are developing. I recorded the session that discussed Google App Engine and the video is below. You can also download all of the “code labs” which are simple tutorials on how to use a variety of Google APIs and services including Google App Engine. CenterNetworks Partner: Get your business cards scanned and transcribed with CloudContacts.

• SXSW: 99Designs Launches Logo Store (video)

  Allen Stern

  15 Mar 2010 | 5:37 am

  Last year at SXSW, I interviewed Jason Aiken from crowdsourced design service 99designs. The service is described as, “We connect 62,177 passionate designers from around the globe with small businesses who need design projects completed. And, we do it in a timely fashion without the usual risk or cost associated with professional design.” Basically 99designs allows companies to create “contests” and then designers submit their designs for the contest. The company selects a winner and pays for the selected design. Some call this type of relationship, “spec…

• SXSW Video Demo: Lifeyo – Simple Website Builder

  Allen Stern

  14 Mar 2010 | 8:40 am

  If you’ve been working online as long as I have, you probably remember the WYSIWYG craze of the late ’90s. Everyone and their mother had a program that attempted to make building a webpage easier. The most popular (and also the worst) was Microsoft Frontpage. Today I am seeing more “cloud” services that aim to make building websites easier. Most of these tools are web-based and are very easy-to-use. About 18 months ago we covered the launch of SnapPages (which at SXSW launched a new developer service). Launching at SXSW, Lifeyo is a new website builder that co-founder…

• SXSW 2010: Day 2 Recap and Links

  Allen Stern

  14 Mar 2010 | 5:01 am

  Day 2 of the SXSW interactive festival is complete. Here are some of the best reads from the second day of the conference: Lifestreams, Neuroscience Marketing, Privacy and Content Strategy – Weber Shandwick Mojito Internet device video demo – Information Week (my post) I Don’t Do SXSWi – Jeremy Pepper (I agree with him) Lost in Translation: Nuances of European Social Media – Peter Bihr Boyd Calls Out Google and Facebook for Abusing Users’ Privacy – GigaOm New Version of Digg Revealed – Mashable If you aren’t interested in SXSW posts and/or…

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  SocialMouths

• Followers, Subscriptions or Fans? [Poll]

  Francisco Rosales

  16 Mar 2010 | 11:42 am

  There is a community building around your blog, people signing up via RSS or email, some of them following you on Twitter or even joining your Facebook fan page. But what is your main focus? Do you have a clear strategy of how you want to lead that community and help it grow. How do you prefer people to follow your blog?trends Let’s see what we find in the results… Thanks for participating!

• How To Run Successful Contests On Twitter

  Francisco Rosales

  15 Mar 2010 | 7:56 am

  Giving stuff away is a great way to raise brand awareness. Get yourself in the map. Running a contest on social platforms can also give you great opportunities to start interacting with people and showcase your product or service. While running a contest on Twitter offers some juicy advantages like very low cost, the opportunity to interact with the user on real-time or the possibility to go viral, you should also consider taking the time to have a strategy in place. After all, getting no response at all is no fun and, it can even make you look bad. So here are a few items to take in…

• How To Manage Your Twitter Following And Followers

  Francisco Rosales

  10 Mar 2010 | 2:52 pm

  Are you truly aware of who’s following you or not? The mutual relationships? Or who is worth following and who’s not? In this post we will review the importance of managing your following/followers on Twitter and a couple of tools to create a painless process to do so. But let’s start from the beginning… Why Do You Need To Worry About This? 2-Way Street Social media in general is a 2-way street, what’s the point of listening to somebody that doesn’t listen to you. Unless there is a person you are interested in following for different reasons and don’t…

• What Can YOU Do For Better SEO? (Without Being An Expert)

  Francisco Rosales

  8 Mar 2010 | 12:34 pm

  If you are not a SEO (Search Engine Optimization) expert chances are you know very little about it but, is there anything you can do to better your performance on your own? SEO is very complex and expensive but there are things you can do and tools you can use to work on the basics of your site’s performance. Should you consider hiring somebody? of course, just as you should hire a designer, a programmer, just as you hire a CPA for your taxes. This is an investment. If you are not ready to hire a consultant, here is a list of ideas so you can get started in the game: Google Analytics…

• Do You Know What Other Blogs Are Saying About You?

  Francisco Rosales

  3 Mar 2010 | 8:57 am

  Do you know if you are being mentioned on other blogs? Did you know there are ways of tracking this? And, why is this important anyways? In this post, I’ll explain why paying attention to what other blogs say is important and how to be aware of these mentions. So let’s get started… Why You Should Care SEO When you get mentioned by another blog, the author usually links back to your blog/site and as you know, getting backlinks is one of the most important things you can do to your SEO (Search Engine Optimization) as they can improve your page ranking. The search engines want…

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  Marketing Voices

• Steve Rubel: Edelman’s Digital Maven Talks of Communicating in the Age of Streams

  podcast_info@ConnectedSocialMedia.com (Jennifer Jones)

  22 Feb 2010 | 12:33 am

  Digital technologies in people’s personal lives is carrying into the workplace and vice versa. It’s hard to separate the two says Senior VP of Edelman Public Relations, Steve Rubel. The competition to capture peoples’ attention is at an all-time high and continues to grow. The average American now visits 111 different Web site domains each month and only reads about 20 percent of an email or Web page says Edelman Public Relations. Rubel talks about how this type of communication affects marketers today. On this podcast he discusses strategies to deal with this massive amount of…

• How Marketers are Using Facebook: New Study by Marketing Profs Director of Research Tim McAtee – Part 2

  podcast_info@ConnectedSocialMedia.com (Jennifer Jones)

  12 Feb 2010 | 2:26 pm

  Facebook takes the work of navigating the web out of the hands of the user and that’s one reason why it is having success with marketers says Tim McAtee, Director of research for Marketing Profs. Facebook is seeing enormous usage by corporate marketers and yet it’s truly still the early days of sophisticated use says McAtee. Marketers are mainly using Facebook to drive traffic to get to their corporate websites. For B2C marketers, Facebook is a more effective tool than for B2B marketers. To find out more about the study go to marketingprofs.com. Related posts:Social Media Adoption by…

• Social Media Adoption by Industries Not As Prolific as Believed Says Marketing Profs Director of Research Tim McAtee – Part 1

  podcast_info@ConnectedSocialMedia.com (Jennifer Jones)

  25 Jan 2010 | 7:17 pm

  In an interview that is part one of a two-part series, the latest research from Marketing Profs Director Of Research, Tim McAtee, has released a new comprehensive study. It delves into the participation rates of companies in social media by industry. What they find is although the overall use of social media is high, the adoption rate is over just 1/3 in just a few of the top industries. They found that the majority of industries are NOT participating in social media. But what he does say is the usage of social media networks in B2B and B2C is similar. Facebook is the most commonly used tool…

• Nate Elliott Of Forrester Research Tells Brands What Social Media Tools Work Best For Generation X

  podcast_info@ConnectedSocialMedia.com (Jennifer Jones)

  11 Jan 2010 | 4:29 pm

  Generation X, those who were born between 1961 and 1981, are a group of people marketers are trying to reach. Nate Elliott, Principal Analyst of Forrester Research told me what he thought effective social marketing strategies are for this generation. He mentioned that there are many social media channels that work. He said that every marketer should identify their objectives and goals first then work to identify the social media tools. When I asked what program he liked and thought was most effective, he brought up the TV show Mad Men and talked about a launch strategy used to engage viewers…

• Columnist Chris O’Brien of the San Jose Mercury News Tells how Social Media Is Impacting His Job

  podcast_info@ConnectedSocialMedia.com (Jennifer Jones)

  21 Dec 2009 | 11:38 am

  Well known and respected columnist Chris O’Brien who works at the San Jose Mercury News of California talked to Marketing Voices about what impact social media has had on his job. He is trying to figure out how to leverage his time so he does not work 24/7 and yet has the time to blog, podcast and do a great column. He’s still figuring it out, and gives listeners his latest perspective in my December 2009 interview. Related posts:How Social Media is Impacting the Corporate Marketing and PR FunctionsNate Elliott Of Forrester Research Tells Brands What Social Media Tools Work Best For…

• 

  JasonKeath.com

• Love + Soccer = Beautiful Viral Video

  Jason

  16 Feb 2010 | 10:46 pm

  Let’s look beyond the fact that I love soccer and the fact that I am filled with deep, deep anticipatory joy for this summer’s World Cup action. The juxtaposition in this Puma video of rough UK football hooligans singing some harmonizing a cappella is simply magnetic. It pulls you in from the first moment and holds you there until you beg them to show you their logo. Great stuff. I watched it a few times. For those of you who hate soccer, move along, there is nothing for you here. You cannot be helped.

• Cottonelle Almost Gets Social

  Jason

  22 Jan 2010 | 7:21 am

  I really enjoyed the Cottonelle “How do you roll?” commercial when I first saw it last week, asking people how they prefer to present their paper, over or under (apparently the answer is over). But, for a campaign that can get people to the internet pretty easily, their integrated social media, if you can call it that, reminds me more of any empty roll that needs to be replaced. Yes they have two of their commercial’s characters on Twitter, and a Facebook page, and the poll itself with a nice map of results. But these small efforts are social for social’s sake with…

• Social Media is Just a Hobby

  Jason

  19 Jan 2010 | 5:15 pm

  Jason Falls delivers a little Gary Vaynerchuk impersonation at Social Fresh Nashville, a social media conference for marketers. A good portion of Social Fresh spoke to what social media can really do for business, including Jason’s talk on “Moving the Needle, Social Media for the Bottom Line”. In the quick video above, taken at the Social Fresh photo opp zone, Jason recaps why the social media purists (dirty hippies and treehuggers) do not get that if social media is not making you money, it is just a hobby.

• Chipotle’s Organic Social Strategy

  Jason

  16 Jan 2010 | 5:47 am

  While I was in Florida preparing for Social Fresh Tampa on Feb 8th, I got the chance to meet and speak with Chris Arnold, Director of Communications for Chipotle Mexican Grill, and we discussed their slow, but deliberate, adoption of social media as a corporate controlled marketing channel. From taking over a customer created 500,000 fan Facebook page to supporting consumer driven blogging, Chipotle is focused on staying true to their word or mouth and earned media roots while evolving their social media efforts. Not everyone has the good fortune of a massive and committed fan base, like…

• Superbowl Commercials and Youtube with Bridgestone

  Jason

  20 Dec 2009 | 8:54 pm

  Bridgestone has had several top ranking Superbowl commercials over the last few years and has seen great return from them. From this, they have begun to see the value in sharing that media through social sites like Youtube and are beginning to actively invest in these tools and social media as a whole. Michael Fluck, Director of Brand and Retail Marketing, had a quick talk with us about this and more. Bridgestone will be attending Social Fresh Nashville, a one day social media conference for marketers, on Jan 11, 2010 One of my favorites of their Superbowl Commercials

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  Liz Strauss at Successful Blog

• Have the BIG Idea for the Next Twitter? What’s that Worth?

  ME Liz Strauss

  16 Mar 2010 | 7:59 am

  A Guest Post by Carol Roth What if you had the BIG IDEA that trumps Twitter — the one that could get everyone to leave the Fail Whale for your newly imagined super-site? Or maybe your idea is for the next VitaminWater or Under Armour - what would that be worth? You may know someone who came up with a great idea, or maybe you came up with one yourself - an idea that someone else pursued and made major money from. If you could just find a way to get paid for thinking of the next big business idea, you would be set for life. . The problem is, you can’t. The biggest bummer about business is…

• How Experts Can Really Help Beginners

  ME Liz Strauss

  15 Mar 2010 | 7:35 am

  A Guest Post by Amanda Markham My Story: I wanted to take my blog, Desert Book Chick, from its place on Wordpress.com to a self hosted Wordpress.org site. I signed up with a webhost, got my shiny new domain name, got in the driver’s seat, and off I went. It took two painful weeks before I finally had my site looking vaguely like I wanted it to look. Along the way I learned a lot. Being an anthropologist, I’m always looking for hidden cultural ‘memes’ and understandings. In the course of reflecting on my experiences, I found I wasn’t alone - and this conversation…

• Thanks to Week 229 SOBs

  ME Liz Strauss

  13 Mar 2010 | 7:39 am

  Successful and Outstanding Bloggers Let me introduce the bloggers who have earned this official badge of achievement, and the right to call themselves Successful Blog SOBs. I invite them to take a badge home to display on their blogs. They take the conversation to their readers, contribute great ideas, challenge us, make us better, and make our businesses stronger. I thank all of our SOBs for thinking what we say is worth passing on. Good conversation shared can only improve the blogging community. Should anyone question this SOB button’s validity, send him or her to me. Thie award…

• SOB Business Cafe 03-12-10

  ME Liz Strauss

  12 Mar 2010 | 7:22 am

  Welcome to the SOB Cafe We offer the best in thinking — articles, books, podcasts, and videos about business online written by the Successful and Outstanding Bloggers of Successful Blog. Click on the titles to enjoy each selection. The Specials this Week are Chris Brogan Someone else took your idea. You’ve been talking about it for years. That’s your thing. I can’t believe she said what I’ve been saying for years, and now she’s got a book. I could totally do that. I Could Totally Do That Saul Colt Way back in October I put my “money where my mouth is” and…

• “Is your personal Web site an embarrassing entrance to your online house?”

  ME Liz Strauss

  11 Mar 2010 | 6:12 am

  A Post on Web Identity by Sheila Scarborough If someone wants to know more about you before deciding to do business with you, they do not want to have to sort out your all-over-the-place lifestreaming babble on Twitter or Facebook or your 3 different blogs (at least no one probably wants to dig through mine!) They want to be able to go to one place and quickly figure out what you’re all about. The question is, in the fragmented social Web, which is the one site where people can go to find out what they need to know about you and your talents….and is that site an accurate representation of…

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  chrisbrogan.com

• On OPEN Forum- Quick Customer Touchpoints

  chrisbrogan

  16 Mar 2010 | 11:12 am

  I’ve written a post called Quick Customer Touchpoints for business people today over at the American Express OPENForum. It talks about contact/customer management topics, as well as some ways to keep your connections alive. Hope you enjoy. Quick Customer Touchpoints.

• We Could Do So Much More

  chrisbrogan

  15 Mar 2010 | 7:13 am

  I’m at South By Southwest in Austin, Texas. It’s been called “spring break for geeks,” which is definitely the vibe. To the plus, lots of people are making lots of relationships and connections. I think the networking is unsurpassed. Startups are a big deal here, and I think people are going to see some good things coming out in the tech scene (though I didn’t really hear of anything especially giant or buzzy). People have been so very nice at this event. I’m so happy to meet people that I’ve only seen from online. That’s a wonderful thing.

• Nikon Just Let Me Use a New Camera

  chrisbrogan

  12 Mar 2010 | 10:13 pm

  The folks at Nikon let me try out a D300s camera. It’s a lot more pro-feeling than my Nikon D-60. Honestly, I’m not yet that clever with it. I’m trying it out, and shooting stuff, and they’re giving me little tips so I can try to do better stuff with it. I’m part of their outreach project, which they’re doing for the South by Southwest event in partnership with YFrog. So, if you check out http://yfrog.com/nikon, you’ll see what me and a few others are shooting. Why let an idiot like me use such a powerful camera instead of someone who’s a really…

• Business Cards And Little Programs – Kitchen Table Talks

  chrisbrogan

  12 Mar 2010 | 1:30 am

  For this, our next in the Kitchen Table Talks series, I’m going to emphasize a point I was trying to make about business cards: namely, we shouldn’t just hand them out willy nilly. We do it because we’re not sure what else to do. But we don’t always need to end a face to face interaction with trading business cards. Here’s more: Can’t see the video? click here. Direct link to the video People always ask which camera I used to shoot my video. I use the Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX3 (that’s a review of the camera).

• Changing Lives

  chrisbrogan

  11 Mar 2010 | 10:59 am

  Hey. Take five minutes (it took me three), drop by this site and give $10 or so to send 300 autistic kids to summer camp. Think about it. Two lattes worth of cash and you can send 300 kids to summer camp. We’ve raised about 1/3 of the money required in the first 20 minutes. Want to be part of a case study in charitable giving via the social web? Come Donate $10.

• 

  Logic+Emotion

• Edelman Digital: When Is Your Website A Community?

  David Armano

  9 Mar 2010 | 12:24 pm

    One of the pet projects I've taken on since joining Edelman has been assuming the responsibilities of the "website", an initiative that as many professional services firms can relate to began to head down the path of the "cobblers children". One of the first things I was empowered to do was to hire a resource, fully dedicated to this property—this was probably one of the more innovative moves on the initiative since the property isn't a content destination nor a product platform. It does however allows us to be content publishers, facilitators and provides us with the flexibility to…

• Random Thoughts

  David Armano

  5 Mar 2010 | 7:07 am

  We all live in glass housesSo when you throw that stone—and you will, don't be surprised when you are picking up the pieces of your own house as it shatters around you. Build something You'll be happier, healthier and wiser if at the end of the day, month or year if you've built something of value. If it helps others to be better—bonus.Don't give up Even when you really, really want to throw in the towel. Fight as if you're fighting for your life. Maybe in some ways, you really are. Hit it hardIf you're going to do something, go at it with everything you've got. FailWords such as these…

• Catching Up

  David Armano

  1 Mar 2010 | 5:30 am

  It's been around three months since I joined the team at Edelman Digital and whether you are a casual or frequent visitor here, you may wonder from time to time what I actually do. Here's a few things I've been focusing on. Since joining, I've worked on several new business initiatives, have been plugging into a number of clients including eBay, RIM (Blackberry), Chevron and several others. I recently hired a community manager who will work exclusively on our Edelman Digital property (not clients) and we've been heads down on planning our launch within the next few weeks. I've also been…

• How Social Is Too Social?

  David Armano

  25 Feb 2010 | 5:30 am

  More articles on Harvard BusinessImagine walking up to an ATM — you insert your card and begin to check your balance before you put in the amount of cash you want to withdraw from the machine. As you do this, a small crowd of people begins to form around you peering over your shoulder. Some are friends, some family, some are casual acquaintances and some you don't even know. Uncomfortable situation? Absolutely. While ATMs are in public settings, they are meant to be private interactions. If someone — even someone you know began to involve themselves with your financial activity you would…

• Four Ways of Looking at Twitter - Research - Harvard Business Review [del.icio.us]

  darmano

  Twitter visualization tools and tips

• 

  trendsspotting blog

• The New Entrepreneur: Research Slides Report

  Taly Weiss

  9 Mar 2010 | 2:05 am

  The New Entrepreneur: TrendsSpotting.com has provided a research review on entrepreneurs for our client – Grasshopper.com, who designs virtual phone systems dedicated to the needs of entrepreneurs. In this report we provide facts about entrepreneurs: profiles, inspirations, home based workers statistics, incomes and revenues. We explore the influence of the recession on new jobs, profits, and the establishment of new businesses. We look at the future and suggest a lookout on the main trends influencing entrepreneurs’ activity in 2010 and beyond. Enjoy. The New Entrepreneur: View…

• Dogs and All The Rest: Twitter Trends

  Taly Weiss

  28 Feb 2010 | 1:41 am

  Cross examining Twitter with its 50 million daily tweets, and seeing such pattern on other social networks and blogs it is obvious that people largely refer to “friends” more than they do to any of the closest relatives they have. We take this for granted in the age of the Social Web. Thus, spotting this on Twitter is not much of a surprise. But, wait for this: While doing a 2.0 research for one of our clients on pets on the Social Media, we have discovered that people tweet on their dogs more than they do on any other relative they have, but their mom. We have compared dogs…

• Is Twitter “Losing” or “Gaining”? Recent Stats

  Taly Weiss

  26 Jan 2010 | 8:26 pm

  Recent analysis by RJMetrics pulled from Twitter’s API may suggest that Twitter is losing popularity: The average Twitter user has 27 followers, down from 42 followers in August 2009. Twitter is losing 20% from its July peak: The monthly rate of new user accounts is currently around 6.2 million new accounts per month (or 2-3 per second). A large percentage of Twitter accounts are inactive, with about 25% of accounts having no followers and about 40% of accounts having never sent a single Tweet. Only about 17% of registered Twitter accounts sent a Tweet in December 2009, an all-time-low.

• Summary: TrendsSpotting 2010 Influencers Series: Trend Predictions in 140 Characters

  Taly Weiss

  20 Jan 2010 | 2:41 pm

  TrendsSpotting Market Research has completed the release of the “2010 Influencers Series: Trend predictions in 140 characters”. We have followed major trends in six of the most promising categories to dominate the web this year: Social media | Consumer Trends | Tech and IT | Online Marketing | Video | Mobile. In this series we featured the predictions of digital and marketing experts on the big changes awaiting us. By adopting the “tweet style” format (limited to 140 characters), we were able to provide our readers with a more focused image of the predicted trends. Many of…

• 2010 Mobile Influencers: Trend Predictions in 140 characters (6th report)

  Taly Weiss

  18 Jan 2010 | 12:20 am

  “2010 Mobile Influencers” is the sixth and last report from the series “2010 Influencers Series: Trend Predictions in 140 Characters“. Findings: Major trends in 2010 Mobile: Across many of these predictions, we have identified the following trends suggested to influence Mobile in 2010: # Payment      # Commerce      #Metrics # Advertising:  networks,  SMS, display, search, premium # Smartphones: Apple, Apps, iPhone, Google, Android # GPS      # Location      # Augmented Reality # Gaming      # Music      # Video 2010 Mobile Influencers: Trend Predictions in…

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  Blog World Expo

• Why is “Linkbait” Such a Dirty Word?

  As bloggers, we’re supposed to be building traffic with good, useful content. Though it’s something we all strive for, we’re not supposed to publicly state how much we want to build traffic and back links. We don’t want anyone to know we want our posts to go viral. We would be scandalized if folks knew [...]

• The New Media Way Is Better Than The Old Media Way

  The New York Times ran a story yesterday on a new group known as The Coffee Party. What follows is a classic contrast in how old media handles a news story vs. how new media handles a news story. Leave your politics aside for the moment and look at this excerpt from Le-gal In-sur-rec-tion: Update: Interesting, [...]

• BlogWorld isn’t SXSW (and Vice Versa)

  In the last few days I’ve been seeing a lot of “BlogWorld or SXSW?” type Tweets. Most of them are from folks who can only afford to attend one conference this year and aren’t sure where their money is best spent. While both BlogWorld and South by Southwest are “must attends” for much of the [...]

• How Darren Rowse Liberated My Facebook Account

  I was reluctant to embrace Facebook and fought it for several years. I had Twitter and that was enough of a time suck for me. The problem with Twitter was that my family and personal friends weren’t really a part of it. So I joined Facebook to be keep in touch. That was all she wrote. Thanks [...]

• Why Do Small Businesses Need To Be Blogging?

  This is a guest post by Tara Anderson Marketing Manager at Lijit: With the landscape of today’s media changing at a rapid pace, if your company doesn’t have a blog, it’s sure to be left behind. I know, I know, everyone tells you that. But perhaps by answering a few of the commonly asked questions I [...]

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  Social Media Portal

• Russell Athletic 80s-izer viral site continues to embrace social media

  1 Mar 2010 | 4:00 pm

  Russell Athletic 80s-izer viral site continues to embrace social mediaSports brand Russell Athletic themed 80s viral site 80-izer continues to spark interest using social mediaSportswear brand Russell Athletic has continued to tap into the evermor...

• Social network Bubbalicious launches to support teen parents

  27 Sep 2009 | 5:00 pm

  Cot death charity unveils social network for teen parentsUK charity FSID build social networking site to support teen mums and dadsThe UK cot death charity, The Foundation for the Study of Infant Deaths (FSID) has launched a social networking site...

• President Obama to address health care on BlogTalkRadio

  18 Aug 2009 | 5:00 pm

  US President Barack Obama to discuss health care on BlogTalkRadioBlogTalkRadio and Faithforhealth.org feature address from President Barack ObamaPopular podcast platform BlogTalkRadio, will broadcast a live program with United States President Bar...

• Which? turns to social media platform Pluck to get consumers talking

  11 Aug 2009 | 5:00 pm

  Which? adds social media functionality to websiteUK consumer champion Which? partners with Pluck to socially charge siteUK consumer champion Which? has announced a partnership with social media provider Pluck that will socially charge its website....

• ZAGG launches new app recommendation engine AppSpace

  2 Aug 2009 | 5:00 pm

  New application recommendation engine AppSpace launchesAppSpace, a new mobile application directory launched by invisibleSHIELD company ZAGGA new service to recommend mobile applications has launched in beta over the weekend.  Billed as a ‘ap...

• 

  Building Communities, Forming Partnerships

• Help bring Google’s Gigabit to Hawaii

  NEENZ

  4 Mar 2010 | 1:35 pm

  UPDATE:  The easiest way to sign the petition is to join the Gigabit Hawaii Facebook fan page. Google is at it again! A community-based appeal for Google to make Hawaii one of the test locales for... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

• Register for free social media training

  NEENZ

  1 Mar 2010 | 6:15 pm

  Today, Neil Abercrombie filed his paperwork and took an oath at the State of Hawaii Office of Elections as a candidate for Governor of Hawaii in 2010.  Part of his campaigning efforts include the use... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

• The Art of Self Branding

  NEENZ

  3 Feb 2010 | 7:31 pm

  The kind folks at Ad2Honolulu have invited me to speak to their organization about the Art of Self Branding.  As someone whom over the years first accidentally created a self-brand and then... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

• 10 reasons why you should attend SOBCon2010

  NEENZ

  16 Jan 2010 | 1:37 pm

  Last year, I attended SOBCon: Biz School for Bloggers in the beautiful City of Chicago and was literally blown away by my experience, knowledge gained, and most importantly engagement with others. ... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

• Media companies come together for #HART

  NEENZ

  16 Jan 2010 | 12:54 am

  Haitian Assistance Relief Telethon #HART My friend, Founder of One by One Media and the Social Media and Conference Director for BlogWorld, Jim Turner emailed me earlier today asking for help.  I... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

• 

  idaconcpts

• How to Attract Car Enthusiasts Online

  Damian Davila Rojas

  12 Mar 2010 | 6:07 pm

  Recently I got back in touch with a close friend whose hobby is to tune up his cars and “pimp them out” like that famous MTV show. One important part of his hobby is to look for car accessories and truck accessories that add a distinctive touch. He spends a lot of time looking online for custom grilles, spoilers, wheels, car floor mats, body kits, tail lights, and all things automotive that unveil beauty and style to his rides. Talking with him about his online searches for car parts, reminded me a lot of a previous article where I discussed how to attract fashionistas online. We…

• Generating Sales Leads for Bulk Material Handling

  Damian Davila Rojas

  12 Mar 2010 | 2:54 pm

  William Darrell “Billy” Mays, Jr. was a TV direct response advertisement salesperson most notable for promoting OxiClean, Orange Glo, and other cleaning, home based, and maintenance products. His distinctive beard and impassioned sales pitches made him a recognized television presence all around North America. Billy Mays understood that nothing convinces a customer to buy a product than actual demonstrations of the product. Video demonstrations are a savvy strategy for online retailers and wholesalers (e.g. bulk material handling)  because the number of online video viewed has…

• Celebrity Style News

  Damian Davila Rojas

  12 Mar 2010 | 1:40 pm

  Robert Pattinson. Kristen Stewart. Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart Dating! You may or may not have an opinion about this. However, if you’re in the online marketing business you should definitely start paying more attention to the celebrity entertainment industry. Celebrity Style news  are a strong  source of Internet traffic. Let’s review the impact of using keywords related to the celebrity entertainment industry. Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart Dating Using Google Trends, here is the Search Volume Index of the keywords  “robert pattinson” (in blue) and…

• Good and Bad Birthday E-mails

  Damian Davila Rojas

  9 Mar 2010 | 1:28 pm

  Yesterday was my birthday. Yay! I received gifts! Yay! I received one great birthday gift via e-mail and I felt like the kitty going “nom nom nom”. I received one terrible birthday gift via e-mail and I felt like the kitty going “nooo it are my birthday”. Here’s the story of one company that sucks at doing birthday themed e-mails, and another company that got its stuff together. The Bad Birthday E-mail Hey, nice cake picture! So nice that Macy’s remembered! FREE SHIPPING! That rocks! Until you read the fine print: Due to size and/or weight, certain items…

• Why People Follow you on Google Buzz

  Damian Davila Rojas

  5 Mar 2010 | 1:30 pm

  Google Co-founder, Sergey Brin You signed up for Google Buzz. You had the option to start following the people that you e-mail and chat with on Gmail. You used Google Buzz for a while. Then something happened. People you never heard about, started following you. And following you more. Why? Here are some unedited responses from actual Google Buzz users to the question: Why are you following me on Google Buzz? I noticed you were following me, so I looked at your profile, checked out some of your posts/discussions and watched for little while. I found I was interested in what you had to Buzz or…

• 

  Scobleizer

• Adobe smacks back Apple over iPad, again

  Robert Scoble

  10 Mar 2010 | 2:36 pm

  There’s a ton of chatter on Techmeme today regarding iPad and Flash and HTML 5. Again. In particular don’t miss posts from ReadWriteWeb regarding Flash vs. HTML 5 speed and PC World’s comparison of HP’s new Slate vs. the iPad and how the focus will be on Flash. Yesterday I sat down with top execs from Adobe’s Flash team. I filmed two videos: 1. A video demo of a variety of things Adobe announced at the Mobile World Congress, including a new Flash player for Android and Palm Pre (I played with it yesterday, very nice). 2. A response to Apple about Flash’s…

• The Revolution at Work (the industry reacts to Salesforce’s moves)

  Robert Scoble

  10 Mar 2010 | 2:10 pm

  Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, has been using the bully pulpit over at Techcrunch to tell everyone that how we work together is about to radically change to be more like how we are able to share photos and fun things with each other over on Facebook. He’s right, but I’m not sure yet Salesforce is really going to be the one to lead us into this new world. He recently told me what Salesforce is trying to do with its entry into this space, Chatter, and I got a separate demo of Chatter’s newly shipped beta on video. You should watch both of those to get up to speed on what…

• Check in on this: can location-based services get any hotter?

  Robert Scoble

  10 Mar 2010 | 12:52 pm

  If you’ve been reading Techcrunch or Techmeme lately you know just how in love tech bloggers are with location-based services like Foursquare. Just yesterday Facebook announced its intention to check in on this hot market. Even the major players, like Gowalla, know that they must innovate to stay relevant. Gowalla’s CEO, Josh Williams, told me yesterday in a video interview that everyone knows that the check-in gesture will be a commodity pretty quickly, if it isn’t already (even Yelp added the “check in” gesture). Gowalla and Foursquare this morning checked in…

• Augment your SXSW reality (News: first indoor AR app released)

  Robert Scoble

  9 Mar 2010 | 12:07 pm

  No, no, I’m not talking about going to the Diggnation party and downing a couple of drinks. This year there’s some geekier ways to augment your reality while you walk from panel to panel or event to party. Here’s a few. 1. Win $1,000 by using SXSW version of the Junaio augmented reality app. The game is called ScavengAR and you can get details on the game here. Sorry, only for iPhone 3GS users. If you see me at the Rackspace Revolution party on Monday night (I’ll be working the door so should be easy to find) I’ll be wearing one of the T-shirts that can help you…

• Do we need a new tech literacy? (Behind the “big data” services like Twitter, Facebook use)

  Robert Scoble

  5 Mar 2010 | 9:06 am

  The technology that lies underneath the services we use every day is complex and changing quickly. Technologies like Hadoop, MapReduce, are changing how developers and architects build these services. As I was talking with Mike Olson, CEO of Cloudera (a company that builds technology to help developers deal with these larger-than terabyte databases) I realized that by learning about the technology underneath these services I was better able to understand why these services can’t give me some of the features I want. Anyway, he talks me through some of the changes in the database world…

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  PR, Social Media, and Marketing Mentor ?

• An Unrelenting Passion to Make the World Better

  Today is Beth Kanter’s 53rd birthday. I have met Beth in person several times and have always (not so secretly) wanted to work with her on a project. She is a complete inspiration, one of my heroes, a person whose excitement and enthusiasm for using social tools to help a good cause never wanes. In [...]

• Client Sutter Medical Center Castro Valley’s Social Media Program Wins a 2009 SNCR Award for Excellence in New Communications

  An animated fly-over video of what the new Sutter Medical Center Castro Valley hospital will look like when completed in 2013. Produced by The Devenney Group, the architecture firm for the new hospital. Posted also by Cassandra Clark, Project Communications Director, on the Sutter Medical Center Castro Valley blog site. Sutter Medical Center Castro Valley is still [...]

• Society for New Communications Research Honors Award Winners for Innovation and Success in Their Use of New Media

  For Immediate Release Society for New Communications Research Honors Award Winners for Innovation and Success in their Use of New Media Winning Social Media and New Communications Case Studies Published by SNCR San Jose, California, U.S.A. — November 12, 2009 — The Society for New Communications Research (SNCR), a global nonprofit research and education foundation and think [...]

• Society for New Communications Research Issues Call for 2010 Fellows

  For Immediate Release Society for New Communications Research Issues Call for 2010 Fellows November 11, 2009 — San Jose, California, U.S.A. — The Society for New Communications Research, (SNCR), a global nonprofit 501(c)3 research and education foundation and think tank dedicated to exploring the latest developments in new media and communications and their effect on business, media, [...]

• 2009 SNCR Excellence in New Communications Awards Submission Deadline Extended to Thursday, September 10th

  Each year, the Society for New Communications Research presents the prestigious SNCR Excellence in New Communications Awards. The deadline for application submissions for this year’s awards has been extended from September 7th to Thursday, September 10, 2009, to allow applicants who are away for Labor Day Weekend to finish and submit their applications. These awards honor [...]

• 

  Social Media Explorer

• What Bloggers Should Know About PR And Advertising

  Jason Falls

  15 Mar 2010 | 6:28 am

  I was dumbfounded when I read a recent New York Times article about mommy bloggers that indicated a conference session topic at an event called Bloggy Bootcamp was how to let public relations firms know you don’t work for free. A few months ago, I reached out to a prominent mommy blogger on Twitter to let her know that I had a client whose products she might be interested in – not a pitch, just a light toss that indicated I may pitch her down the road. She responded by saying, “I’ll be happy to work with your client. My fee is $125 per hour.” I was stunned. It…

• Collaborate With Me On Collaboration

  Jason Falls

  12 Mar 2010 | 3:00 am

  Collaboration, though vague in definition, seems to be one of the more powerful end results of successful social media efforts. Whether it’s collaborating internally to improve business processes and efficiencies or gang-tackling a product improvement with your own customers, social media tools seem to tear down silos and connect people across disciplines for the betterment of the company. I’ve been asked to participate in a live web-TV show next week on collaboration for BusinessWeek. New Tools for Collaboration – Best Practices for Building a Competitive Advantage will be…

• Conference Productivity Tips For SXSW

  Jason Falls

  10 Mar 2010 | 3:00 pm

  South by Southwest Interactive begins in ernest tomorrow as geeks from everywhere descend upon Austin, Texas. If you’ve heard of “South by,” you’ve probably been told it’s an amazing experience that is largely defined by parties and networking. Conference productivity is often tossed by the wayside at these things, but if you don’t plan for business success while attending them, then why are you going? Conferences of any kind are only as productive as you make them. You can to to every session and learn a lot. You can go to none and do the same. If…

• Sysomos Offers Location Based Monitoring Service

  Jason Falls

  9 Mar 2010 | 3:00 am

  Social media monitoring firm Sysomos is launching a free location-based monitoring service today it’s calling FourWhere. The tool mines publicly available Foursquare data (tips) and mashes them up with a Google map of the location you’ve entered. There’s no sign-up or account required. It’s just clever link-bait and enthusiasm-building from one of the emerging players in the social media monitoring market. My first reaction to this was, “Can’t you just search for a location in Foursquare and get the same thing?” Apparently not. Foursquare seems to…

• Get Ready For Firefly Funnel Cake Fandango!

  Jason Falls

  8 Mar 2010 | 3:00 am

  Some of you know my dad, Chillie Falls, owns a funnel cake trailer. He even blogs about his adventures selling cakes all over Virginia and elsewhere. You also probably know that I’ve been known to put on a party or two in my time. And yeah, sometimes they sound like an odd combination of locations and themes, but we always wind up blowing the roof off the joint. When Dad joined Twitter and started chatting with all the freaks and geeks in Internetland, he said, “I’d love to go to one of these conferences and meet all these folks.” Well, get ready, Dad. Big Red, Dad and…

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  The Social

• Rival parties square off at SXSWi

  Caroline McCarthy

  16 Mar 2010 | 8:56 am

  It was a big game of showmanship as Foursquare and Gowalla threw their rival parties at the annual Austin, Texas festival on the same night.

• Is Twitter aiming at Facebook Connect?

  Caroline McCarthy

  15 Mar 2010 | 1:59 pm

  With its @Anywhere technology launched as part of SXSWi, Twitter is trying to make its presence spread even further across the Web.

• Twitter CEO unveils '@Anywhere' platform

  Caroline McCarthy

  15 Mar 2010 | 12:41 pm

  The company's big announcement at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival was its new way to integrate Twitter data into partner sites.

• A waterfall of Pepsi at SXSWi

  Caroline McCarthy

  15 Mar 2010 | 10:34 am

  The beverage giant has reached out to the social-media crowd like nothing else. So what does it hope to get out of its SXSWi marketing blitz?

• Mog's music service comes to iPhone, Android

  Caroline McCarthy

  15 Mar 2010 | 9:49 am

  Already a subscription service on the Web, the company will launch radio- and playlist-focused apps for the iPhone and Android platforms this spring.

• 

  Online Community Report

• Social Marketing Compensation Research

  Bill Johnston

  9 Mar 2010 | 2:40 pm

  The Social Marketing Compensation Study was initiated in December of 2009 as a joint research project between the Online Community Research Network and WOMMA. The intention of the study was to get a broad look at the emerging field of social media marketing, and specifically, to explore issues related to compensation and satisfaction in the area of social marketing. Forum One released a report based on the study this week. We received approximately 224 responses. Participants represent a wide swath of the types of organizations participating in online community building activities, including:…

• Developing a Social Strategy: Research Project Open for Participation

  Bill Johnston

  1 Mar 2010 | 12:01 pm

  The next Online Community Research Network project is open for participation. In January, OCRN members discussed and prioritized a long list of topics, and the issue that made top of the list was “Developing Social a Strategy”. The OCRN chose to study how social media strategy is developed, communicated and implemented because, frankly, so many organizations are actively struggling with the topic. We hope that by getting real-world feedback, advice and experiences from practitioners (read: the folks ACTUALLY doing the work), we can all gain insight in to this important topic. If…

• Back to Basics: Ecosystem Research – Find Your Community

  Bill Johnston

  17 Feb 2010 | 2:25 pm

  This post is part of an ongoing series about developing an online community strategy. As a reminder, all posts are being tagged #ocb2b. In my last post, “Want to Know What Community Members Need? Just Ask” I discussed the importance of asking your members what they need from you as a community host, and what they need from other community members, as part of your extended community. In this post, I will discuss the methodology for conducting a discovery exercise of the relevant parts of the social web to find out where your community (or potential community) is already working and…

• Online Community Expert Interview: Jordan Williams, REI

  Bill Johnston

  17 Feb 2010 | 9:46 am

  This month’s Online Community Expert interview is with Jordan Williams, Manager of Digital Engagement at REI. In this role, Jordan is responsible for creating deeper customer engagement through the creation of content and community touch points on REI.com and throughout the social web. Though firmly planted in the digital world, Jordan is a believer in well-roundedness and previously led REI’s national advertising and marketing strategic planning programs. Prior to REI he was Director of Collegiate Marketing at Red Bull North America and worked on the agency side creating experiential…

• Online Community Unconference East 2010 – A Report Back

  Bill Johnston

  16 Feb 2010 | 4:53 pm

  Forum One hosted the Online Community Unconference East last Wednesday, February 10th in NYC at the Digital Sandbox. Most of the attendees were able to make it despite the snowy conditions. Moving Forward, Together Although it was cold and snowy outside, we had a warm and cheery group to kick off the morning. I ordered extra hot chocolate to further brighten the mood. We felt like this event was particularly well-timed. Boosted by recovery from the great recession, interest in online communities and social media is at an all time high. Most organizations are actively developing or refining…

• 

  @NowSourcing.Com » Blog

• Chicken Suits, Killer Dust Bunnies & Branding: Why Good Content Is Crap

  Brian Wallace

  1 Mar 2010 | 6:33 am

  Arianna Huffington, Jason Calacanis, and Michael Arrington (to name a few) got filthy stinking rich by using one important tool. Sadly, most website owners have it and never use it. Instead, many site owners hide their Excalibur (or light saber, if that’s more your thing) in a dark corner somewhere and rarely bring it out into daylight. But, if you’re brave enough to fight off the spiders, bats, and killer dust bunnies, you’ll be able to expand and grow your business far beyond its current expectations. (Credit) Where Businesses Go Wrong I love writing and I love working…

• Social Media From Across the Pond

  Justin Parks

  24 Feb 2010 | 8:53 pm

  Guest post by Justin Parks – He’s Northern Irish and a big time advocate of social media stuff and making sure its done right.  Loves a pint of the black stuff from time to time and tends to swear a lot.  You have been warned!   He hangs out on twitter and on his social media blog Justinparks.com. There is no question that social media is hitting the mainstream. It is evolving into a major part of the Internet, developing hordes of devoted users and advocates who are raising their hands in the air and creating virtual Mexican waves* with their ability of share information…

• Bang For Your PPC Buck

  Don

  18 Feb 2010 | 9:18 pm

  We all like to save money, and even though I’ve mentioned in the past how you can lower CPCs, I thought I will share a couple quick and simple ways you can make the money you’re spending on search work a little harder. Paying By Credit Card: Most people try to get on an invoicing plan with the search engines whenever they can, but I try to stick to credit cards as often as possible.  Why?  Because the credit cards I use pay me in points, and those points can be used for all sorts of other work expenses.  If you’re budgets are big enough those points could even pay for…

• 10 Reasons People Aren’t Commenting on Your Blog

  Brian Wallace

  8 Feb 2010 | 7:18 am

  If you read my blog, there is a good chance that you have a blog yourself, or that you’ll have one someday soon.  As you know, blogging is a lot more work than you might initially think.  One of these factors is the amount of time spent on commenting: approving comments, responding to comments, and commenting on other blogs.  What if they aren’t commenting on your blog, though? Here are some reasons that might shed some light on the subject: (credit) 1 – You’re boring. Ok, maybe boring is a strong word, but if you are just putting something very general, late (we…

• Social Media Responsa to the Great ROI Debate

  Brian Wallace

  29 Jan 2010 | 10:17 am

  If you’ve ever spoken to me personally, you probably know by now that I’m not a big fan of ROI. (My response to Samir’s post may give you a bit more insight on some of my ROI thoughts.) In general, I feel that ROI can be manipulated to include / exclude the projects that people want to move forward with. Issues in ROI did not start in the realm of social media – egregious hourly rates used in ABC costing and cost avoidance phantoms have plagued many. (Credit) It’s fine to track the path to sale of social media users on your website. And that may get you a pretty…

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  Social Media Marketing

• Inspiring Video For Your Business

  Naomi Trower

  13 Mar 2010 | 12:46 pm

  Share this on del.icio.us Digg this! Share this on Reddit Buzz up! Stumble upon something good? Share it on StumbleUpon Share this on Technorati Share this on Mixx Share this on Facebook Tweet This! Email this to a friend? Share this on Linkedin Share this on FriendFeed

• Attend Networking Events In Your Community

  Naomi Trower

  5 Mar 2010 | 1:32 pm

  Attending events in your local community is a great way to meet new contacts and potential clients.  Just how many of us are involved with this great business potential activity? It is definitely one of the number one ways that we have grown our business whether it is via online webinars or live events. Here are a few upcoming events that are on my calendar. I would love to meet any of you at any of these events. Social Media For Real Estate My friend, Mirna Bard will be speaking at this event. I originally met Mirna at the LA Twitter Conference last year.  She surprised me by asking if I…

• Mortgage Revolution San Francisco May 2010

  Naomi Trower

  26 Feb 2010 | 3:58 am

  As you know, I love to share events and I “plan” to be an event planner in my next life. This video shares the recap of Mortgage Revolution #mrev Atlanta. I was unable to attend in January but I’m already looking at flight information for the San Francisco event. The exact dates will be finalized in the coming weeks but it will be either early or mid May. Keep up with the latest information on their Facebook fan page. Naomi Trower Real Estate Broker Social Media Strategies Social Media Real Estate Marketing “Teaching Professionals Social Media” Share this on…

• The Niche Report – Resident Social Media Strategist – That’s Me!

  Naomi Trower

  25 Feb 2010 | 12:05 pm

  Can I tell you how excited I am? The president of The Niche Report reached out to me to be their resident social media strategist for their mortgage blog! SWEET NIBLETS! Ok, I’ve been listening to Hannah Montana a bit too much but that’s what happens when you have kids that are obsessed with The Disney Channel. But I digress… The Niche Report is a highly targeted mortgage finance trade magazine nationally circulated every month to 20,000 (with a reach of over 50,000) originators. There is a print magazine as well as an e-newsletter. I’m very excited to share with you…

• OFFICIAL LAUNCH! Real Estate Marketing Ebook

  Naomi Trower

  17 Feb 2010 | 1:37 pm

  Social Media Ebook For Real Estate & Mortgage Click Book Below To Purchase or Click Here for FREE Chapter! “Social Media Marketing for Real Estate & Mortgage”… The Complete Marketing System That Will Find You More Clients, Build Your Business and Create Life-Long Raving Fans Secrets To Unleash the Power of Social Media to Energize your Real Estate & Mortgage Business! “I have seen so many people leaving our industry during the past 3 years, so that prompted me to look at alternative cost effective strategies to market our business,” Naomi explained. “The past 2 years…

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  FactoryCity

• The social agent, part 3: Follow

  Chris Messina

  16 Mar 2010 | 4:24 am

  This is the third part of the five part Mozilla Labs Concept Series on Online Identity. This post introduces and examines the “Follow” verb as a more modern and flexible approach to “subscribing” to information — information of any kind: people, sites, social objects and anything with a stream or feed. Other entries in the concept series include: Part 1: The Social Agent and Part 2: Connect. Also take a look at the rest of my mockups (view as a slideshow) or visited the project overview. Recently I stopped by my neighborhood Whole Foods looking to pick up fixin’s…

• The social agent, part 2: Connect

  Chris Messina

  12 Mar 2010 | 10:21 am

  This is the second part of the five part Mozilla Labs Concept Series on Online Identity. This post introduces and examines the verb “Connect” as the foundation of a more personalized browser — which I outlined in Part 1: The Social Agent. Also take a look at the rest of my mockups (view as a slideshow) or visited the project overview. When was the last time you created a new username and password so that you could make use of some website? Do you remember what username you picked, or which email address you used to sign up? Probably. But what about that support forum that you…

• The social agent

  Chris Messina

  11 Mar 2010 | 10:35 am

  Late last fall, from late November through December, I worked with Mozilla Labs to envision what the future of a more social browser might look like. Working with the team, I produced a series of mockups and written pieces that were designed to first layout a future scenario for what I call “pop computing” — an era when computing is cheap, abundant, and a part of the everyday environment. Thus, this is the first of a five part series that re-imagines the browser as a “social agent” — and defines how it can do more to facilitate various social behaviors by supporting three…

• Google Buzz and the fabric of the social web

  Chris Messina

  10 Feb 2010 | 9:07 pm

  When I joined the company a month ago, I was baited with the promise that Google was ready to get serious about the social web. Yesterday’s launch of Google Buzz and the fledgling Google Buzz API is like a downpayment on what I see as Google’s broader social web ambitions, that have been bubbling beneath the surface for some time. Understand that Buzz is not entirely an end unto itself, but a way for Google to get some skin in the game to promote the use and adoption of different open technologies for the social web. In fact, I’d argue that Buzz is as much about Google…

• Designing hashtags for emergency response

  Chris Messina

  18 Jan 2010 | 3:52 pm

  I’ve been moved by the devastation wrought by the Haitian earthquake. It’s simply impossible to fathom, with death toll estimates hitting 200,000. In comparison, the Indonesian tsunami of 2004 killed nearly 230,000 people — placing it fourth among the world’s deadliest earthquakes. To give some perspective to those numbers, the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 killed 80,000 people instantly. These are numbers that I simply can’t grasp. And this disaster still unfolds, with scores pitching in — many turning to the social web and social media to facilitate…

• 

  Shannon Paul's Very Official Blog

• Making the Introduction or Closing the Deal: How Do You Use Twitter?

  Shannon Paul

  8 Mar 2010 | 12:00 pm

  Someone recently invited me to participate in a social media conference in a DM (direct message) on Twitter. I said I would be interested, but would need to get approval from my employer and provided my email address in hopes I might use details provided to vet the opportunity. I never did receive an email, but I did receive a subsequent DM asking if I knew others who might be interested in participating as a panelist. I provided three different contacts that were deemed suitable for the event’s objectives. I still never received an email, and to be fair, I never nudged for follow-up. I…

• 4 Things the Grateful Dead Can Teach You About Social Business

  Shannon Paul

  2 Mar 2010 | 6:09 pm

  It doesn’t matter whether you love or hate their music, the Grateful Dead might just provide one of the best case studies on fan cultivation and word of mouth marketing ever. Although their success pre-dates widespread use of the Internet and social media, the lack of tools and focus on people, passion and evangelism should inspire anyone looking to leverage positive word of mouth online or offline with little to no reliance on traditional advertising and media. The answer lies in an approach to the band as a business, a fan-centric business, perhaps one of the most fan-centric…

• Shannon In Real Life

  Shannon Paul

  16 Feb 2010 | 5:59 pm

  Shonali Burke, Shannon Paul and Kami Huyse This is just a quick post to let you in on a couple of the places where you’ll be able to find me in the coming weeks. Social Media Club Chicago I’ll be on a panel as a guest of the Chicago chapter of the Social Media Club next Thursday, February 22, 2010. The topic is How Social Media Makes Financial Sense and will be dedicated to exploring the special needs and considerations of integrating social media communications into companies operating in the financial sector. I’m pretty excited to be on a panel with Kunal Kapoor and Leslie…

• The Missing Ingredient in Most Social Media Strategies

  Shannon Paul

  14 Feb 2010 | 10:39 am

  What is the missing ingredient in most strategies I’ve seen? Actual strategy. However, before I can really show you what a strategy is, it helps to understand what a strategy isn’t. What a Strategy Is NOT Strategy is not a plan Strategy is not a timeline Strategy is not a goal Strategy is not what tactics you will use to achieve your goal Perhaps the confusion is a result of the fact that many of the above elements are included in the overall strategy document or presentation. However, skipping or skimping on the actual strategy piece is never a good idea. What Others Say Rather…

• Forget Common Sense: Social Media Communicators Must Have Empathy

  Shannon Paul

  31 Jan 2010 | 7:57 pm

  Life on the social web has taught me just how important it is to have a flexible mind — to have empathy for others with little or no context. This requires the ability to imagine a set of unknown circumstances to help explain others’ point of view with little information. Some may come by this trait naturally, but others might need to develop it over time. Understanding Empathy in Terms of Culture “Who we are cannot be separated from where we are from — and when we ignore that fact, planes crash.” – Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers In Outliers, author Malcolm…

• 

  ManagingCommunities.com

• How Have You Tried to Make Money From Your Online Community? I Still Want to Know!

  Patrick

  15 Mar 2010 | 10:30 am

  photo credit: f_trudeau Back in January, I asked you how you made money with your online community. This was for an upcoming series of articles on all of the different ways to monetize an online community. I’m happy to say that this series is coming along beautifully. I’ve talked to a number of different people, including [...]

• When Should I Lift a Temporary Ban Early?

  Patrick

  11 Mar 2010 | 9:30 am

  photo credit: me and the sysop When I called out to you for topics to write about, Alex asked me to touch on “the liberation of banned users before the appointed time.” If they have an appointed time, it has to be a temporary ban. I’m not a huge fan of those, but I already [...]

• Why I’ve Never Liked Temporary Bans

  Patrick

  7 Mar 2010 | 10:30 am

  photo credit: Dawn Endico I’m just not a temporary ban kind of guy. I was reminded of this while pondering the question asked by Alex (which I will be answering soon!). I’ve never utilized them, never wanted to and likely never will, unless I start running a community for someone else or something like that. I [...]

• What Would You Like Me to Write About?

  Patrick

  4 Mar 2010 | 3:40 pm

  photo credit: bionicteaching I was just pondering what I wanted to write about today and I thought it’d be a good idea to ask you: what would you like me to write about? What would you like my thoughts on? What can I help with? I want to know. Please let me know in the comments. [...]

• Censor Block and the Most Efficient Use of Your Forums’ Word Censor Feature

  Patrick

  28 Feb 2010 | 8:15 am

  photo credit: Eddi 07- Free Stock Most forum software in existence features a word censor. This is a valuable feature that allows you to block certain words, terms, URLs/links and other text content from being posted on your community. The most common ability that you are given is the choice to turn a word into [...]

• 

  Collective Thoughts

• What the Winter Olympics Teaches on Social Engagement during Events

  notifyneal

  4 Mar 2010 | 6:25 am

  The Olympic television viewing activity, recorded by Nielsen, finds people are online while global events are broadcasted. Marketers may find it lucrative to engage their user base on social media networks during event broadcasts. I engaged communities prior and during the Super Bowl with a client microsite and had fantastic results. Neal Rodriguez is Managing Director of Shovecom, a full-service hybrid New York interactive agency specializing in driving a sh-tload of traffic to enterprise websites. Neal is a contributor for PBS and the Huffington Post. You could see Neal interview some of…

• The Power of Reconnection

  Brian Wallace

  10 Feb 2010 | 12:58 pm

  Building one’s network is no easy task.  I cannot stress this enough: you must love what you do in order to make that work.  If you don’t, you really should have someone doing it for you.  There are different ways of networking: some prefer pure online interactions, others like to meet in person at events, small group/one-on-one meetings – really a mix of all of these should get you the furthest toward your goals. Something I don’t like about networking meetings in particular is the superficiality of it all.  Your goal in life isn’t just to accumulate…

• How to Attract Your 1,000 True Fans

  Glen Allsopp

  26 Jan 2010 | 9:00 am

  Ever since the concept of gaining your 1,000 true fans was talked about, there have been a lot of discussions on the topic. I’m personally a big fan of the idea; especially in a time where people are more focused on follower numbers and subscriber counts than how they can really help an audience. In all honesty, I’ve never tried to attract my 1,000 true fans. Yet, I’m at the stage where I can launch a product and garner almost 700 sales, so I like to think I know quite a bit when it comes to building a loyal audience. Because, at the end of the day, that’s what your…

• Stumbleupon? What about Spamupon?

  N. Hamilton

  12 Jan 2010 | 10:48 am

  I am one of the few people who didn’t throw a huge fit when the new version of Stumbleupon left beta. I admired the simplicity of the new interface and, as with most new things, decided to give the overhaul a fair shot before voicing my concerns about its limitations. In many respects, it’s much changed from the Stumbleupon the community had grown to love. The developers at Stumbleupon attempted to make the site more social, adding in a bit of Facebook, a  bit of Twitter, and some minor changes to the navigation options of your home page. The most important of these new…

• Social Music

  Jamie Mack

  7 Jan 2010 | 1:07 pm

  Internet radio has been around for some time now–at least since the mid nineties actually (earlier, if you count it’s infancy)–and it has most certainly evolved from those early days of streaming into the smooth and ubiquitous service that we take for granted today. Odds are you have used, or use, streaming audio and/or video and haven’t really given it a second thought. That’s good, and once again we have social media to thank for changing the nature of the game even here. Enter social music. Internet radio with a healthy social networking aspect thrown in. A…

• 

  Community Guy - Jake McKee

• SXSW Survival Guide 2010

  Jake McKee

  10 Mar 2010 | 6:35 am

  It’s that time of year again! This is a rehash of last year’s version, but that’s OK. It’s the same advice I’d give this year too! So with that, here’s some SXSW tips I’ve found over the years… 1. It’s casual, baby. Austin is one of the most laid back cities on Earth, and with it being a college town there’s not much need for the suit jacket. The event is pretty low key – upscale weekend wear. Don’t show up in your car wash shorts, but you’ll be fine in jeans and a t-shirt. Been dying to show off that new Threadless…

• We The Practitioners

  Jake McKee

  9 Mar 2010 | 9:02 am

  When Sean and I started Ant’s Eye View almost exactly a year ago, we had a pretty clear dream. We wanted to build a company that was based on senior talent, doing in-depth work with clients who were rolling up their sleeves and diving into social media and customer engagement with force. A year in, we’ve achieved exactly that. Our team is an amazing group of geniuses. Our clients list is amazing and we’re helping them develop and implement some impressive programs and internal changes. And we’ve grown to 11 people and 2 offices. 11 people and 2 offices. Never in our…

• Apps vs. Widgets

  Jake McKee

  2 Mar 2010 | 6:44 am

  Are apps just the updated version of widgets? Today Peter Kim asks that very question: Remember widgets? In the early days of corporate social media (i.e. 2005 – 2006), widgets were all the rage. They were light and viral; the minimal effort to support them post-lauch made them more attractive to brands than blogs or podcasts. What also made them attractive to brands was an ability to fairly easily reformat existing content. This meant they could “be social” without much additional work. Thing is, widgets were a pain in the ass. If you weren’t a fairly skilled nerd,…

• The mind of a Community Manager

  Jake McKee

  8 Feb 2010 | 6:00 am

  During a recent hotel stay at the wonderful Hotel Zaza in Dallas, I noticed two quotes written on the wall of my room. Both struck me as being particularly relevant to explaining the mindset a successful community manager has to own in order to do their job. The test of a first rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise. - F. Scott Fitzgerald I’ve talked about how the Community Manager role is the…

• Friday Fun Thoughts

  Jake McKee

  29 Jan 2010 | 6:21 am

  I got the list of random thoughts below via a forwarded email. It’s OK, it came from the one friend who actually sends over funny stuff. This is a fun read. MapQuest really needs to start their directions on #5. Pretty sure I know how to get out of my neighborhood. While driving yesterday I saw a banana peel in the road and instinctively swerved to avoid it…thanks Mario Kart. Nothing sucks more than that moment during an argument when you realize you’re wrong. I don’t understand the purpose of the line, “I don’t need to drink to have fun.” Great, no…

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  123 Social Media

• Social Media Recruiting: Webinar with the Wall Street Journal

  Barry Hurd

  15 Mar 2010 | 8:38 pm

  Social media and recruiting? A lot of companies are trying to understand how enterprise organizations are using social media to create benefits in department projects. If you are trying to understand how social media, digital reputation, and listening strategies tie into the recruiting model: I am pleased to announce a webinar I will be holding with the Wall Street Journal’s FINS recruiting team on Thursday March 25th from 2:00 to 2:30 P.M. EST. While this webinar focuses on recruiting, it will be an action packed thirty minutes that covers both strategic insight and actionable items.

• Your Online Reputation, top articles to read

  Barry Hurd

  15 Mar 2010 | 10:58 am

  One of our niche blogs is over at SocialMediaReputation.com, a repository of insight from our team regarding reputation and brand insight articles. If you are interested in applying metrics to online reputation or how it affects your professional model, here are a few of the top articles to read according to our user stats: Reputation Toolbox, tools for online professionals : this is a treasure trove of resources for professionals wanting a crash course on personal branding. It includes several PDF resources that you can print and use to help define your digital footprint as a professional.

• Influencer Analysis, offering new connections

  Barry Hurd

  23 Feb 2010 | 12:24 pm

  I am really happy to announce that the service team at 123 has been developing our solutions into more robust offerings every day, the latest being our new Influencer Analysis consultative service. What is Influencer Analysis? In a nut shell, it is the ability to notate what individuals or groups are ideally placed to affect certain conversations. These conversations can be product or industry specific, ranging from corporate bloggers to consumer reviewers. Our staff believes that influencers affect far more than just product sales. Influencers could be internal to your company or may…

• 5 Social Media Events: Olympics, Superbowl, State of the Union, Grammys and Oscars

  Barry Hurd

  15 Feb 2010 | 2:21 pm

  As technology and life intertwine, we are beginning to see more instances of large scale events integrating the live experience with the digital audience. Understanding the cross-over points between the real world and digital world all of us now live in helps connect us as individuals and as groups. We encourage you to look at the five case examples below, each using a variety of methods to collect audience generated information and leverage it as a digital asset. We wanted to highlight the following events: 2010 Winter Olympics 2010 Superbowl 2010 State of the Union 2010 Grammys 2010 Oscars…

• Microsoft BING Maps, why we love the net

  Barry Hurd

  12 Feb 2010 | 11:38 am

  Just yesterday, Microsoft BING Maps was unveiled at the TED Conference. Once you get used to the controls, the detail and user experience exceeds similar services such as Google Maps and excels in “placing you there” Microsoft is clearly making improvements around concepts of using digital cloud data (the images for BING Maps come mostly from Flickr) and integrating all the data into a worthwhile experience. Take a look, let us know what you think.

• 

  Brian Solis

• Brands Must Become Media to Earn Relevance

  brian

  15 Mar 2010 | 5:19 am

  What follows is the complete version of my recent post on Mashable, “Why Brands are Becoming Media.“ One of the greatest challenges I encounter today is not the willingness of a brand to engage but its ability to create. When blueprinting social architecture and the engineering that connects people to other people strategically, enthusiasm and support typically derail when examining the resources and the commitment required to rhythmically produce, distribute, and support content. Indeed, we are programming the social web around our brand hub and as such, we’re required to…

• The Brand Dashboard: Bringing Conversations to Life

  brian

  12 Mar 2010 | 4:20 am

  Perhaps the most difficult aspects of Social Media to embrace are the changes in our behavior and overall philosophy it necessitates in order to earn relevance and ultimately prominence in consumer hearts, minds, and markets. Simply put, Social Media makes us vulnerable and officially ends an era of perceived control threaded by the illusion of invincibility. Everything we thought we knew and valued is now in dire need of reassessment. We are entering into a time when we are affected by voiced sentiment in the public spotlight and backchannels of the social Web. What we hear, see and observe…

• There’s an I in Twitter and a ME in Social Media

  brian

  10 Mar 2010 | 4:07 am

  As we’ve learned time and time again, there is no “I” in team. Instead of focusing exclusively on “what’s in it for me,” we’re encouraged to contribute to the greater collective of groups in order to accomplish wonderful things – those usually unattainable by any one person. Of course, this headline is a play on those words, but it also opens the door to an interesting conversation – one that explores a global network of connections weaved from both relations and relationships and bound through action and reaction. I recently asked aloud…

• News: Twitter Changes Updates to Tweets

  brian

  9 Mar 2010 | 11:32 am

  In the grand scheme of things, this news seems a bit insignificant in light of other current events However, it is significant in the world of Social Media. As mainstream audiences embrace new media, every subtle nuance introduced from here on out reverberates across the social landscapes that define, shape, and dictate its evolution and its pace of adoption. Today, Twitter changed its “update” button to a verb that will only gain in prominence, “Tweet.” Thanks to good friend @Orli for her observation and also for capturing the screenshot. It should be noted, that…

• 10 Steps for Optimizing the Brand for Social Search

  brian

  8 Mar 2010 | 4:38 am

  Facebook recently overtook Yahoo as the second most visited site in the United States. And in doing so, Facebook along with other social networks set the stage for a confluence of social and search that fundamentally changes who we, as a society, discover and share information, and in turn, where our attention is directed and driven. Source: Mashable Make no mistake, attention is shifting away from traditional destination sites and instead, it is fixated on personalized attention dashboards that funnel social feeds, the activity and focus of social graphs into one clickable view. It is, for…

• 

  ::HorsePigCow:: marketing uncommon

• Cogaoke Case Study: quality wins over quantity

  Tara Hunt

  1 Mar 2010 | 12:44 pm

  I’ve spoken before about whuffie deposits and withdrawals before. I’d like to think I deposit a lot into my whuffie account. I help people out with their campaigns, vote for them when they ask and generally follow links, photos and blog posts I see and RT, comment and pass along when necessary. I also spend a good amount of time helping friends out with advice, time and encouragement as well as spending a good amount of time on giving stuff out in general for free (posting links from my research, writing blog posts like this one, working for a large percentage of time on movements…

• Personal RFP: attention airlines!

  Tara Hunt

  26 Feb 2010 | 10:32 am

  So…in case you missed it, I’m breaking up with Delta Airlines: For many years, I have been struggling with ’settling down’ with an airline that would treat me with the same love I give to it. I would marry Virgin America tomorrow if it would only fly out of Montreal (or even Toronto, because I also love Porter). There really is no other airline that has consistently made me feel like I matter…even when I’m flying cattle class (aka Economy). And to note, this experience with Delta wasn’t the first let down. I had a series of snafus from them (lost…

• Why I’ve Fallen in Love with the Nexus One

  Tara Hunt

  20 Feb 2010 | 10:50 am

  Last week, I was fortunate enough to be part of the large group of attendees at TED who received a free Nexus One Worldphone from Google. Being a loyal longtime iPhone user, I was excited, but skeptical. I’d spent some time with the Blackberry, Palm Pre and various cool Nokia products, only to run back to my iPhone’s open arms. All of these phones are great in their own way, but nothing could compare to my iPhone experience and the overall usability. But the Nexus One is different. And it is different mainly because of my heavy Google property usage. That is to say, if I…

• Discouragement and Faith

  Tara Hunt

  19 Feb 2010 | 2:18 pm

  Sometimes I think that the only qualification that puts me in front of an audience rather than in the audience when I’m speaking at conferences is faith. Faith that I belong there. Faith that I actually have something to say. Faith that the organizers knew what they were doing when they hired me. And somehow I continue to be asked to speak in front of more and more audiences. I now have over 80 conferences under my belt and within the next 6 months, that will go into the triple digits. In fact, I speak at so many conferences these days that I had to stop consulting (about a year ago or…

• What the World Needs is…these TED Talks

  Tara Hunt

  19 Feb 2010 | 11:41 am

  I have several favourite TED Talks from over the years, such as Elizabeth Gilbert, Barry Schwartz, Alain De Botton, Shashi Thooror, Chimamanda Adichie, Phil Zimbardo, Jonathan Haidt, Sir Ken Robinson, Helen Fisher and more…and even the worst TED talks seem to be more thought provoking than the best of most conferences I go to. But there was something about this year that just popped for me. It wasn’t necessarily a single talk – though there were many that made me stand on my feet crying in joy – it was more the thread. It all started when Chris Anderson said,…

• 

  Social Media Globetrotter

• Top 10 People to Follow in the Enterprise 2.0 Space and Why (Pt 1)

  Jacob Morgan

  14 Mar 2010 | 11:39 am

  There are a lot of great thinkers and practitioners in the Enterprise 2.0 space whom I follow for ideas, information, and advice.  The space as a whole is still fairly new and there really aren’t THAT many folks involved in Enterprise 2.0 initiatives, especially when you compare that to the number of “social media experts.”  Why?  Well, quite frankly Enterprise 2.0 is a more challenging and strategic space which is precisely why I am so interested in it.  In fact, at the tender age of 26, I’m pretty sure I’m the youngest person in the Enterprise 2.0 space. …

• Rapportive Takes a Stab at SCRM with Gmail Integration

  Jacob Morgan

  12 Mar 2010 | 5:18 am

  I recently came across a plug-in for Gmail called Rapportive which I think is a great step in the right direction for Social CRM.  In the past, when I send or receive emails from people, I have often wished that there was some sort of automatic way for me to find out where that person exists in the social web and to see what conversations that person is involved in.  For example, it would be great to see if that person has a Twitter or LinkedIn account that I could access directly from my email.  Well, now I can.  Here’s an email interaction I had with Jeremiah Owyang and how…

• Implementing Enterprise 2.0 at Vistaprint Part Four: The Future and Lessons Learned

  Jacob Morgan

  10 Mar 2010 | 12:06 am

  This is the forth and final part in the Vistaprint Enterprise 2.0 series.  Today, we’re going to wrap things up by discussing the future of Enterprise 2.0 at Vistaprint as well as some of the lessons that Vistaprint has learned thus far.  Just to re-cap, they implemented two key Enterprise 2.0 initiatives: the Brainstorm (ideation) platform by Intuit and the Media Wiki; both used to power internal collaboration and knowledge sharing. The future of Enterprise 2.0 over at Vistaprint looks to be quite interesting.  Daniel and Jay (the folks responsible for much of what Vistaprint has…

• Implementing Enterpise 2.0 at Vistaprint Part Three: Operational Impact

  Jacob Morgan

  7 Mar 2010 | 8:41 pm

  This is part three in a series of four posts on how Vistaprint has been implementing Enterprise 2.0 at their organization.  Today we continue the discussion with more information on change management followed by a focus on the ideation work. There were two key organizational changes that happened as a result of their E2.0 implementation efforts.  The first was the creation of a full-time innovation management position.  The purpose of this position was to ensure that the right ideas got in front of the right people.  This position was also used to make employees aware of the successes…

• Report on 18 Use Cases for Social CRM

  Jacob Morgan

  5 Mar 2010 | 6:47 pm

  Jeremiah Owyang and Ray Wang from Altimeter Group released their report today on the 18 use cases for Social CRM and provide some ideas and guidelines for how to move forward within the space.  They included quite an impressive roster of experts and vendors to help them compile their report.  However, keep in mind that what they created is just a starting point.  I just finished re-reading the report again and I think what they have put together is a great document but I do have some ideas, thoughts, and notes on what they put together. Let’s start with this image that depicts the 18…

• 

  Geek Girlfriends

• The Giveaway Continues!

  Christina Tynan-Wood

  12 Mar 2010 | 11:22 am

  Looking for the HP TouchSmart Giveaway? You found it! Click here, read to the end of that post, and comment there to enter. (You can comment on this post, too, but that won’t enter you in the giveaway.) For all of you who have already thrown your comments in to win the HP TouchSmart that HP is giving away here, I have bad news. Don’t get me wrong. I love reading all about the computers you have, why you want this one, and who in your life will benefit from this lovely entertainment hub. You are a funny and generous group and I’m happy to be a part of it. But I’m not…

• HP TouchSmart 600 Giveaway!

  Christina Tynan-Wood

  4 Mar 2010 | 1:40 pm

  I got an email from HP a couple of weeks ago asking if I would like to review the TouchSmart 600 Entertainment Hub ($1510.99) here on my blog. Sure, I thought, that’s interesting.  But then came the payoff: HP wants to give away - to one of you, my fabulous readers - this very same, slim, all-in-one Windows 7 computer, Blu-Ray player, media viewer, and entertainment system. “Heck yes!” I said. “I’m in.” So they shipped me one to try. (That’s a video of many of its features above. Check it out to whet your appetite. The touch-enabled applications are…

• Money, Meet Peeps. Peeps, Meet Money

  Christina Tynan-Wood

  26 Feb 2010 | 3:11 pm

  Since I first covered Mint.com here last year, I have become a devotee. (The video above explains how it works in a nutshell.) This financial site (now owned by Intuit) gathers all my financial transaction from all my accounts, loans, and credit cards into one place so I can see in a glance what’s happening in my entire fiscal universe. Since I set it up, I’ve check in on my money almost as obsessively as I check in with my social networks.  Every day, at least once, I hit Facebook, Twitter, then Mint.com to see what my peeps and cash are up to. Not only do I have a budget and a…

• Don’t Get Mad. Get Even.

  Christina Tynan-Wood

  19 Feb 2010 | 12:36 pm

  A study came across my desk this week that I feel compelled to share. I’ve never really liked the term “feminist” (or the sensible shoes) but this study makes we want to shout something at someone - and maybe carry a pissed-off sign. I no longer show up every day at a job. (I prefer the self-boss scenario.) And, frankly, the sort of data this study exposes is one of the big reasons why. Oh, the tales I could tell. But I won’t. You’ll have to buy me a glass of wine for that. Still, I doubt any of you will be surprised by these findings. The study —…

• Facebook and Love

  Christina Tynan-Wood

  15 Feb 2010 | 12:42 pm

  Have relationships gotten more complicated in this era of Facebook, Twitter, and Match.com? Since it’s the day after Valentine’s Day, be sure and check out this retro dating advice video created by the folks at Big Fuel. You’ll laugh. But you might also pick up a couple of pointers. I mean, what girl hasn’t wanted to start a hate group about a guy who dumped her? (Apparently this is childish?) And the temptation to post those photos he asked you to take of him trying on your underwear may be universal but is, again, a tad immature. Enjoy!

• 

  Dan Zarrella

• Data Shows Articles with Digits May be Shared More on Facebook Than Those Without

  Dan Zarrella

  9 Mar 2010 | 9:03 pm

  More new Facebook data, continuing this series. The next Facebook sharing data point I analyzed is the presence of numbers (in digit form, 1 through 9) in titles. In a wide range of marketing arenas digits have been shown to perform very well. They tend to help conversion rates in the form of prices and on social news sites like Digg “Top 10″ style posts have always done well. The difference isn’t huge but according to my data, articles with digits in their titles tend to be shared more on Facebook than stories without digits. I found that most articles in my data set…

• Data Shows: Articles Published on the Weekend are Shared on Facebook More

  Dan Zarrella

  7 Mar 2010 | 9:33 pm

  When I started posting my new series of Facebook data points, one of the most requested graphs was the days of the week (and times of day, which is coming soon) that are best to publish on to get lots of Facebook shares. What I found when I looked at days of the week is at first a little unexpected, but upon further thought fairly logical. While I found less articles posted on the weekends (notice the gray bars at the bottom of the graph which indicate volume of URLs analyzed for each day), those stories that were published on the weekends tended to be shared on Facebook more, on average,…

• Data Shows that Facebook is Better for Video Marketing Than Twitter

  Dan Zarrella

  2 Mar 2010 | 10:47 pm

  Continuing my series of Facebook sharing data (if you’re curious about my methodology, read the first post), I looked at articles that had the word “video” in their titles. It turns out that those stories that indicated they contained videos were shared more than the average story on Facebook, while they were actually shared less than the average story on Twitter. This is likely because the Facebook platform makes it easy to embed multimedia content into updates while Twitter does not. The takeaway here? Facebook may be a better platform for your videos to go viral than…

• Data Shows: “Twitter”-Centric Stories are Not Heavily Shared on Facebook

  Dan Zarrella

  28 Feb 2010 | 10:16 pm

  A couple of weeks ago, I started collecting a new dataset and I’m really excited about it because it’s the first time I’m collecting data from the mother-of-all social media sites: Facebook. I’ve begun by capturing links posted to social media sites from 10 extremely popular news outlets. Some of the top blogs, both mainstream and geeky, as well as a handful of the most web-enabled newspapers of record. Then I’m counting the number of times those links are shared on Facebook (in three different ways) and on Twitter (through good old ReTweets). I then find the…

• Are you a Social Media Snake Oil Salesman or are you a Scientist?

  Dan Zarrella

  24 Feb 2010 | 8:25 pm

  If you’ve read about social media or been to social media conferences, you’ve probably heard tons of advice like “love your customers,” “engage in the conversation,” “be yourself” and “make friends.” I like to call this kind of stuff “unicorns and rainbows.” Sure, it sounds good and makes you feel all warm and fuzzy, but it’s not actually based on anything other than “truthiness” and guesswork. It’s the modern day equivalent of the witchdoctor or snake oil salesman. A couple of time-honored adages…

• 

  Emily Chang - Designer

• Sliding labels

  Emily Chang

  16 Mar 2010 | 12:27 am

  I twittered this link a while back but wanted to post it here as well. CSSKarma has a nice example of sliding labels for form fields using jQuery. Rather than have the label vanish onclick in the field, it slides to the left to continue providing context. Get the code and see the version 2 demo or view the original post.

• Turntable DIY Prototype

  Emily Chang

  16 Mar 2010 | 12:05 am

  I do wish this turntable was made out of biodegradable foam, but nonetheless, I appreciate the minimal design aesthetic and the low-cost, do-it-yourself approach.

• Gorgeous Day in SF

  Emily Chang

  13 Feb 2010 | 4:37 pm

  After a month and a half of rain and overcast skies, it looks like the sun is back for the next week in SF. Refreshing.

• Emily Chang in Forbes’ 20 Inspiring Women on Twitter

  Emily Chang

  9 Feb 2010 | 3:03 am

  Halle Tecco’s piece at Forbes, 20 Inspiring Women To Follow On Twitter, highlights ”women with a skill for putting their hearts and complex issues into 140 characters.” Of Ideacodes co-founder, Emily Chang, she says: “@EmilyChang is a designer and entrepreneur in San Francisco. Her twitter stream is full of fascinating and creative links to all things design–giving followers reasons to think outside the box.”

• Time Machine 020507

  Emily Chang

  7 Feb 2010 | 12:21 am

  While backing up 1,274,742 items to Apple’s time capsule via time machine, I thought of the original The Time Machine by H.G. Wells and re-found this quote: Few people realise the immensity of vacancy in which the dust of the material universe swims.

• 

  Beth's Blog: How Nonprofit Organizations Can Use Social Media to Power Social Networks for Change

• A Few Reflections from SXSW Crowdsourcing Panel

  Beth

  16 Mar 2010 | 10:50 am

  CrowdsourcingView more presentations from Beth Kanter. I was honored to design and facilitate a panel at SXSW on Sunday called "Crowd Sourcing Innovative Social Change."  The panelists were Holly Ross, Amy Sample Ward, David Neff, and Kari Dunn Saratovsky. We were also very lucky that Claire Sale volunteered to be our Twitter advocate who monitored the Twitter stream and verbalized important points and insights.   We addressed two content areas: The art and science of crowd sourcing for social change Next practices in integrating social media for program delivery that leads to social…

• Zoetica Iphone App and More Thoughts On Nonprofit iPhone Apps

  Beth

  12 Mar 2010 | 11:33 am

  I'm happy to announce that our Zoetica iPhone application, is now live on the iTunes store.  It provides a complication of nonprofit tech and social change blog feeds. So, now you read a great collection of nonprofit, social change, and social media content your iPhone (download now). Content feeds on the application include: The Zoetica Link Feed The Case Foundation Blog Chronicle of Philanthropy Give and Take Great NonProfits Allison Fine's Blog Social Edge Blogs Care2's FrogLoop Britt Bravo's Have Fun, Do Good Blog Working Wikily Kivi's NonProfit Communications Blog IdealWare Blog…

• Cause Marketing that Leads to Real Social Change by Zoetica Co-Founders

  Beth

  12 Mar 2010 | 10:04 am

  Credit: Fence photo by Tim Tolle, from Flickr The following is a joint post by Kami Watson Huyse, Geoff Livingston and myself. Social media is in is toddler hood, especially as it applies to cause-based corporate giving campaigns and CSR initiatives. Due to the very public nature of pioneer campaigns, we are able to peer into the box to gleen the strongest approaches towards social media and avoid the weaknesses. At Zoetica, we have been examining social media-based cause campaigns in depth and would like to offer some thoughts on how corporate social responsibility is evolving in the 21st…

• Guest Post by Kira Marchenese: What Happened When We Introduced 350 Staff to Social Media

  Beth

  10 Mar 2010 | 7:13 am

  Find more photos like this on So You Think You Can Do Social Media Note From Beth:  Since 2007,  I've been using, adapting, and remixing the Social Media Gamesocial media workshops for nonprofits.  In fact, just last month, I took it to India.  Last year, I facilitated a version of the Social Media Game for Packard Grantees as part of a convening on Network Effectiveness in Washington, DC.   Dave Witzel was a participant in the workshop and thought the game could be adapted as apart of training on social media at the staff retreat.  The big challenge with training is the challenge of…

• Congrats to Megha Bhagat, Winner of HP Laptop/Printer Bundle Theory of Change Contest

  Beth

  9 Mar 2010 | 7:00 am

  Congrats to Megha Bhagat, Winner of HP Laptop/Printer Bundle Contest that I ran on my blog last month.  To enter the contest, readers had to share their "Theory of Change."   Megha is a passionate human rights advocate in India and also lawyer.  Her blog is here.   Here's her theory of change and social media: Social Media was at one point of time just about what we read or saw in news or heard over the radio. Then came in social media as an effective mechanism to be able to catalyse change.Maybe the attention its got is relatively new but no denying that its become today such a strong…

• 

  Debbie Weil's BlogWrite for CEOs

• Memo to Tom Peters From the Department of Punctuation!!!

  debbie.weil@gmail.com

  11 Mar 2010 | 11:10 am

  I have a confession. I’m having a great time dipping into Tom Peters’ new book, The Little BIG Things: 163 Ways to Pursue Excellence. Neat concept. A book built, more or less, out of Tom’s blog posts (edited and re-organized). But the EXCITABLE punctuation (which includes randomly bolded words, HEADLINES in the middle of paragraphs and EXCLAMATION POINTS galore!!) is DIS-CON-CERT-ING. It makes me feel, well, jumpy. Like I can’t settle down and concentrate. Then again, I’ve never been able to read Wired Magazine because the layout and fonts make me dizzy. I wonder…

• Sweets and Tweets Celebrates One-Year Anniversary With Anil Dash and Expert Labs

  debbie.weil@gmail.com

  11 Mar 2010 | 7:13 am

  Thanks to everyone for the great turnout at the March 10, 2010 Sweets and Tweets and to tech celeb and friend Anil Dash for his terrific presentation on Expert Labs and how the social Web can connect ordinary citizens to Washington policymakers. It was the fourth in my continuing cupcake salon, making it the one-year anniversary. The event features DC’s smartest geeks talking about the impact of social media on government and business. And of course it’s a chance for DC’s digerati to rub shoulders and to eat cupcakes at the very cool Baked and Wired in Georgetown. I am sorry…

• Did You Know You Can Read a Kindle E-Book on an iPhone or Blackberry?

  debbie.weil@gmail.com

  9 Mar 2010 | 1:32 pm

  I just figured this out. Turns out you can read Kindle e-books on your iPhone or iPod touch or Blackberry, no Kindle required. In other words, you don’t need to own a Kindle to read Kindle e-books. Here’s how to do it: browse to the Kindle store on Amazon via your computer and purchase a Kindle book. Then download the free iPhone or Blackberry app and, magically, your smartphone syncs with your Kindle account. Whatever books you’ve purchased are now on your phone. You can also transfer the free book samples to your smartphone.   Hey download the free sample of the…

• The Value of Twitter for Real-time Crowdsourcing

  debbie.weil@gmail.com

  8 Mar 2010 | 6:06 pm

  Last night I was watching the Academy Awards along with 40 million other people and who knows how many Twitterers. In the midst of critiquing the dresses and hairstyles of the actresses (yes, that is what women do - I couldn’t decide if I liked Sandra Bullock’s long,  straight hair) I realized I needed an eye-popping 125 X 125 animated GIF for an ad to appear on Mashable’s home page. And I had less than an hour until the midnight Sunday deadline for the beginning of Mashable’s one-week ad runs. The ad badge points to the just published Updated Edition of The…

• What’s New in the 2010 Updated Edition of The Corporate Blogging Book [Kindle]?

  debbie.weil@gmail.com

  8 Mar 2010 | 11:07 am

  Glad you asked. This is my first bold step into Publishing 2.0. As the publisher of this new e-book edition I’ve had a blast commissioning a new cover as well as working with e-book guru Joshua Tallent who formatted the manuscript for Kindle. So far, I’m pleased with how easy it is to use Amazon’s DTP (Digital Text Platform) although it was a bit frustrating at first. The Kindle Operations team, presumably made up of real people, acts like a black box. You exchange "form" emails in order to prove you have the rights to publish. But the DTP people don’t sign…

• 

  Rajesh@Blogworks

• Blogworks.in revamp - call for proposals

  5 Mar 2010 | 10:54 pm

  UPDATE: We found the ideal partner for the project and have decided to go ahead with them. Thank you all for the interest show in the project. Some of you have written to me over email and I intend to write back to you over the next couple of days - haven't been able to do so already as I have been traveling. Given that our business and offerings have evolved, we are looking at an immediate revamp for both http://blogworks.in and http://blogworks.in/blog. The task, other than enhancing technology, tools and aesthetics, also involves moving the site/s from Movable Type to Wordpress, while…

• Enjoy!

  23 Feb 2010 | 1:51 am

  We've always used "Informal, not casual" to describe the personality of our little organisation, in essence saying that we may not wear a tie to meetings or may sit atop a table to work, or work from Lodhi Garden, but are never 'casual' in work we do. The result is best captured in words that that people have often used to describe our work and team - 'passionate' and 'fantastic' being just a couple. Prompted by an experience yesterday, this morning I gave my team (and myself) an internal mandate of 'Enjoy'! And make it extend beyond work, to life. Can work be fun? Can we make working upon a…

• If I were Cafe Coffee Day today; Follow through on #ccdsucks episode on Twitter

  5 Feb 2010 | 9:29 pm

  I spent the afternoon yesterday working out of the Cafe Coffee Day, Adchini next to our office even as the #ccdsucks thread unfolded on Twitter, after a shop manager at a Chennai outlet, allegedly, asked for a cover charge from some guests who'd gathered for a tweet-up. Here are 10 tips for the #ccd team to take a look at that I just posted as Tweets. I will write more about this later, if I get the time. Please add yours: #1 Pause: Take a deep breath. Something happened, don't just react #2 Take a step back: Find out what really happened? Get to the facts, quickly #3 What's the stated…

• भगवान् बचाए...

  4 Feb 2010 | 2:24 am

  "हम एक character बनायेंगे; सब जगह पर अकाउंट बना दो - twitter, facebook; एक ब्लॉग होगा...फिर advertising करेंगे टीवी पर, सब जगह!" "ओह हो, यह तो बड़ा chakar है यार, ये कस्टमर्स अपने प्रोब्लेम्स क्यों लिखते हैं? सारा मज़ा ख़राब कर दिया!" And you and I thought social media is about listening to the voice of the customer to resolve…

• IndiaSocial™Case Challenge is now live - time to see the depth of social media work in India.

  3 Feb 2010 | 1:52 am

  It's amazing how much time working out details of 'seemingly' easy things can take. Finally, after a couple of weeks of 'in-the-making' the IndiaSocial™Case Challenge that we've been busy coordinating is now 'live'. My sincere thanks to exchange4media and impact Weekly for partnering with the initiative. Open from 3 February 2010, through 28 February 2010 (IST), the IndiaSocial™ Case Challenge invites submissions of their social media work in India, from brands, private and government organisations, not-for-profits, media bodies, celebrity brands... Top 3 cases, as selected by the judging…

• 

  Rahaf Harfoush » Blog

• Well Played: Ikea Facebook Campaign

  Rahaf

  16 Mar 2010 | 12:13 pm

  I recently saw this video of a Facebook campaign created around the launch of a new store in Malmo, Sweden in late 2009.  What Ikea did was very simple, easy, and smart. They created a Facebook photo album with 12 showroom pictures. Whoever tagged the product first got to keep it. The campaign quickly went viral as the online enthusiasm spread to users’ facebook profiles and newsfeeds. Watch them explain the campaign in their own words: Why I love this campaign: 1) Use what you have: There was no need to develop a fancy application or create a complicated web presence. They used two…

• How to conquer your social media fears and avoid common mistakes

  Rahaf

  11 Mar 2010 | 2:40 pm

  I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Dan Schawbel’s Personal Branding Blog about business strategies for social media and my book “Yes We Did.”  I also speak about the common mistakes businesses make when it comes to their digital strategy and how to conquer your fear when evaluating these tools. A small highlight: In your opinion, what are the most common mistakes businesses and organizations make when it comes to social media and branding? The most common mistake I see are businesses who think they need to be doing every new thing. They are all over the place simply…

• The Canadian Business Leadership Forum

  Rahaf

  8 Mar 2010 | 2:41 pm

  An interview with Canadian Business about corporate social media strategies.

• Good Reads: Six Pixels of Separation by Mitch Joel (Part 2)

  Rahaf

  25 Feb 2010 | 6:17 am

  A long, long time ago (October 2009) I attempted to turn my endless hours on planes into something more productive: Kindle Book Reviews! My first Foushy Read was my friend Mitch Joel’s book “Six Pixels of Separation,” that I reviewed in Part 1. After finishing it, I had quite a few questions and Mitch was kind enough to answer them for me. So, despite the, obnoxious, long delay, I’m happy to finally be able to share this interview! On how personal brands impact businesses: Q: Your book chronicles the rising importance of the personal brand as a way of establishing a…

• Davos 2010 - A quick hello from the mountains of Switzerland

  Rahaf

  29 Jan 2010 | 2:19 am

  Hi everyone! Just a quick update from Davos. It’s been a great annual meeting so far. More details to come after, but I thought I would share this brief cameo I made on a German news program discussing what the Forum’s Global Partnership to Assist Haiti’s Economic Development, a partnership we’ve launched with the Clinton Foundation and the UN.

• 

  SOMEWHAT FRANK

• Watching James Fowler speak about social networks and...

  15 Mar 2010 | 1:34 pm

  Watching James Fowler speak about social networks and connectivity at

• In a taxi with @noreaster ready to rock @techcocktail SXSW:...

  14 Mar 2010 | 4:03 pm

  In a taxi with @noreaster ready to rock @techcocktail SXSW: Blackout Sunday presented by @BizSpark & @Volusion

• Tony Hsieh on TWIST at SXSW talking about Delivering Happiness...

  13 Mar 2010 | 3:43 pm

  Tony Hsieh on TWIST at SXSW talking about Delivering Happiness (cc @Zappos @Jason @dhbook)

• TWIST Live at SXSW

  13 Mar 2010 | 3:38 pm

  TWIST Live at SXSW

• Playing with cool mobile Internet devices at @Intel brunch.

  13 Mar 2010 | 9:40 am

  Playing with cool mobile Internet devices at @Intel brunch.

• 

  Soshable

• How Will Twitter Generate Revenue

  Evan Britton

  15 Mar 2010 | 2:31 pm

  It has been widely reported that Twitter will soon be unveiling a monetization solution. Speculation has been rampant with several blogs making predictions on what they think the solution will consist of. Twitter certainly has many ways to go about revenue generation. At the end of 2009 – Twitter inked deals with Google and Bing to syndicate their Tweets to those respective engines. It was reported that Twitter was paid a bounty for this data. And, more recently, Yahoo inked a deal to publish Tweets on their network of websites. While these deals can bake in a revenue stream for Twitter…

• Where Will Users Go For Real Time Searching?

  Evan Britton

  8 Mar 2010 | 2:45 pm

  In December of 09’, Google implemented real time results into their website. This can benefit the user because if you happen to be searching for a hot topic – you will usually see real time results streaming on the results pages at Google.com. However, Google is just mixing in real time results sometimes, and there are a slew of real time search engines , such as Sency, which are completely focused on real time results. So where will users go for real time searches? One take-away from the headaches that came with Google Buzz is that while Google is trying to get users to interact insider…

• How Fortune 100 Companies Leverage Social Media

  JD Rucker

  7 Mar 2010 | 5:11 pm

  While there’s something that can be said about “size doesn’t matter” in social media, there is one case in which it definitely does. The larger companies of the world have always had an advantage in resources over their smaller competitors but are finding that social media is more about strategy and proper use of engagement and conversation than sheer budget. Now in 2010, many of the social media woes of the past are starting to be rectified. Larger companies are realizing that throwing a ton of money at social media without a strong strategy is foolish. As a result,…

• Digg Now a Top 100 Site Worldwide Thanks to… Pakistan?

  JD Rucker

  3 Mar 2010 | 6:35 pm

  Digg.com has been in the top 100 sites in the US for some time, but they have finally gone global. According to Alexa, they are #99 worldwide in Traffic Rank. After a rough run through 2009 that ended strong, they have surpassed their strong 2008 levels. While recent financial success, integration with Twitter and Facebook, and a renewed focus on social news has helped Digg increase in importance and visitors over the last year, a look at their importance in different countries points east. In Pakistan, Digg ranks 18th in traffic rank, while in nearby India Digg ranks 32. Bangladesh is 3rd at…

• A Major Difference Between Twitter and Facebook

  Evan Britton

  3 Mar 2010 | 1:58 am

  For entrepreneurs, one of the best features of Twitter is it’s API. Twitter allows developers to tap into its stream of 1 billion monthly tweets to create new applications and websites. This Twitter API has spawned several unique applications and projects that have benefited internet users in a variety of ways. This API has also spawned several real time search engines, such as Sency, which tap into sources such as Twitter to offer real time results for internet users. A result of this API is that Twitter’s real time data is syndicated across the web. So, even if you are a not a user of…

• 

  Brains On Fire Blog

• I’m sorry.

  Robbin

  16 Mar 2010 | 5:13 am

  I was driving home from hot yoga on Sunday morning and I passed a billboard from a regional bank that is not doing so well these days. In my humble opinion they made some poor choices. Their stock is now… a bit low. And their employees seem to have lost that swing in their step. I imagine shareholder meetings aren’t very friendly. Anyway this billboard proclaims in typical bank speak: Time to Talk to our Business Experts. Hmmm. Well it crossed my mind that a better, more honest set of words might simply be: We’re sorry. Now I know there are most likely all sorts of lawyers that would…

• Preach it Brother Edelman

  Robbin

  15 Mar 2010 | 6:24 am

  Photo via Clif Wright Photography via Flickr altered by Justin Gammon. There’s been a lot of chatter about the Edelman Trust Barometer. And I’m a little late to the party. I love David Armano’s post from about a month ago. Smart guy. Here’s one of the most thought provoking points he makes: Who are our friends that we have chosen not to hide in Facebook—who are the people whose phone calls we take and whose e-mails we read right away? It’s an important question. If there is a company that has totally nailed the algorithm in this, I’d invest in it because I think there is…

• Do you trust you?

  Robbin

  12 Mar 2010 | 6:47 am

  Photo via flickr via Carolina I make decisions daily. We all do. Big ones and little ones. We are often in meetings where we ask our clients to make really important decisions, often as a group. Yesterday I sat in on a meeting with a new client who flew in for a presentation. And there was a decision that needed to be made quickly. A lot of the solutions we presented felt right to them. So the team did one of my absolute favorite things to do in a meeting. We passed out the orange index cards. And said.” Before we discuss this any further. Write down your gut reaction. We won’t hold you…

• Would you choose social media or engaged employees?

  Eric

  11 Mar 2010 | 8:45 am

  “If you had to choose social media* or 100% engaged employees for your brand, which would you choose?” I recently asked that on Twitter and the responses were pretty interesting. The question forces a choice, which many of the people who responded had a hard time making. One person even called it down-right ’silly.’ Generally, people wanted both - engaged employees who use social media. Fair enough, but not a singular answer the question begs. If you’re having a hard time with the answer, this might be a good gut-check. You see, the answer gets at a deeper…

• Alexis on Exploring

  Robbin

  10 Mar 2010 | 8:58 am

  Photo of Alexis’ super cool boots (I have boot envy) via The Doddfather “Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump, on the back of his head, behind Christopher Robin. It is, as far as he knows, the only way of coming downstairs, but sometimes he feels that there really is another way, if only he could stop bumping for a moment and think of it.” A. A. Milne, Winnie the Pooh We all seem to have that instinctive thought, the same feeling as Edward Bear that there has to be a better way. When I’m standing in line at the DMV for 45 minutes, on hold with the…

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  McBuzz Communications

• Social Media and Social Transformation via the Internet: The Cluetrain Manifesto

  mcbuzzler

  4 Mar 2010 | 7:25 pm

  On the “Reading Social Media” Book Club Blog, Veronica Sopher and Maya Bisineer have posted my summary and review of The Cluetrain Manifesto. The Cluetrain Manifesto is a social media classic that was written before the term “social media” even existed: way, way back in 1999-2000. It says everything that’s now familiar to us social media types. But it’s not written as a book on marketing or business; it’s about the Internet and its implications for the way humans – mainly humans in corporate America, but really all humans living in…

• What is Universal Search? How Do I Optimize for Universal Search?

  mcbuzzler

  7 Feb 2010 | 7:19 pm

  Several readers have asked, What is Universal Searchand how do I optimize for it? Click to enlarge Universal Search, also called “Blended Search”, refers to the search results offered today by Google and others on their search engine results pages (SERPs) – pages like the one at right. Rather than simply listing links to web pages as they did four or five years ago, SERPs now display results for other media. These can include Image results, News results and Video results. Optimizing for Universal Search means doing things (ethical things) to get your links to rank highly for…

• WordPress Security: Create a New User and Delete the Default “admin” Account

  mcbuzzler

  3 Nov 2009 | 5:02 pm

  This post tells you the simplest way to improve security on your WordPress website or blog. Recently there was a big security scare for WordPress users. A “worm” (a form of automated malicious software) was traveling around the Internet trying to break into unsuspecting WordPress users’ sites. Even high-profile bloggers like Robert Scoble were caught without adequate file and database backups in place. Scoble lost a bunch of posts, and said he felt less certain of WordPress as a result. But the fact is, Scoble should have backed up his site. At the very least, he should have…

• Is Yahoo! Determined to Remain a Web 1.0 Company?

  mcbuzzler

  27 Oct 2009 | 6:17 am

  Yahoo! announced in April that it would shut down its free website service, GeoCities, despite the fact that collectively GeoCites websites get over 10 million unique monthly visitors. This week it made good on the promise. The decision to shut down GeoCities rather than sell it or do something more creative like partner with another business to keep it going is short-sighted, and, in my opinion, sends the message that Yahoo! is willing to put profit before customer satisfaction. It’s probably driven almost completely by the desire to show a profit in the short term. That would explain…

• WordPress, Premium WordPress Themes, and the General Public License (GPL)

  Mark McLaren

  13 Oct 2009 | 12:07 pm

  Of the millions of WordPress users, I’d bet that less than 20% understand the significance of the General Public License (GPL), especially when it comes to premium WordPress themes (custom themes that you pay for). I say this with confidence because only recently did I get a clue myself. This is an excellent video made from a series of interviews with WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg. Matt Mullenweg gives an overview of the GPL and how it benefits WordPress, why WordPress is licensed under the GPL, how the GPL fosters innovation, affects themes and plugins, and creates value. Here is a…

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  a thousand cuts :: adam cohen's blog

• Why Companies Should Leverage The Community Roundtable

  adam

  1 Mar 2010 | 6:34 am

  Over the last couple of years I’ve been fortunate to get to know the founders of the Community Roundtable well.  Jim Storer and Rachel Happe are two talented community practitioners with tons of experience.  When Jim told me about his idea for TheCR (as it’s known in short), I was intrigued from day one.  While there are many social media practitioners, blogs and community platform companies to leverage out there, TheCR provides at least two unique differentiators as part of its value proposition: The Community Roundtable is a peer network of social media practioners and…

• How Social Media Has Changed My Job

  adam

  26 Feb 2010 | 10:27 am

  TK479: "They told me it was less boring than looking for droids on random planets." TK455: "I have a bad feeling about this." In the last 2 years of blogging I’ve been able to share my own views on social media, interactive marketing and other topics.  During that time my day job at Rosetta has evolved from working with exciting companies like Coach and Borders to leading our Search and Media practice.  I’ve had the fortunate experience of working with talented teams and innovative clients, with an agency leadership team who was willing to help me launch our…

• Donation Connect: Text Some Good

  adam

  30 Jan 2010 | 11:24 am

  The devastation in Haiti has struck a chord in individuals and organizations around the globe. I’m going to shamelessly plug this app since it’s a great way for our agency to contribute to the cause.  What started off as a project to showcase Rosetta’s mobile team skills turned into something better - a useful app which allows people to look up charities that accept donations via SMS and click to donate.  It’s a simple directory service with buttons to send a text message right from your iPhone. Donation Connect also allows you to promote your donation and the app…

• The Ultimate Location Based Service

  adam

  8 Jan 2010 | 7:20 am

  With all the buzz about geolocation and geo-tagging services, I still can’t find a service that: …allows me to see where my friends are right now, especially if they are near me …allows me to forecast where I’ll be and when, if I want to …allows me to see if my forecast lines up with my friends (maybe even suggest a common place to meet?) …provides really easy tagging of photos, audio or other posts by location, including favoriting or voting on most relevant/interesting for that location (and reporting spam if necessary) …recommends places of interest to me based on my…

• A Free eBook for Marketers: Learning in 2010

  adam

  7 Jan 2010 | 11:19 am

  I virtually met Ellen Hoenig Carlson several months ago through Twitter. As I have continued to work on social media initiatives in Rosetta’s Healthcare practice, Ellen’s blog has continually been a tremendous resource to gain insight on the subtle (and often not so subtle) intricacies of marketing in healthcare and pharma. Ellen reached out to me to be included in her ebook for Pharma marketers, entitled “The Gift of Learning for Pharma and Healthcare Marketers in 2010.” First, I’m very grateful to be able to contribute and be included.  But second, my…

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  Tantek Çelik

• Thanks #sxsw #opensci participants and panelists @drkiki @arielwaldman @jessykate @nataliaenvy for a great panel!

  Tantek

  15 Mar 2010 | 8:41 am

  Thanks #sxsw #opensci participants and panelists @drkiki @arielwaldman @jessykate @nataliaenvy for a great panel!

• #sxsw: come to Open Science 9:30am ACC 3rd fl 10AB! I'm moderating. The panelists: four women scientists #opensci

  Tantek

  15 Mar 2010 | 7:00 am

  #sxsw: come to Open Science 9:30am ACC 3rd fl 10AB! I'm moderating. The panelists: four women scientists #opensci

• great #sxsw sessions today: @progrium on WebHooks, @silona on @microformats for Government, @brucel on #HTML5.

  Tantek

  14 Mar 2010 | 5:18 pm

  great #sxsw sessions today: @progrium on WebHooks, @silona on @microformats for Government, @brucel on #HTML5.

• #realtimeweb @robdolin asked how to de-dup syndicated updates? my answer: inline embedded permashortlinks like -> (ttk.me links on my syndicated updates in Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed etc. all provide unique IDs / URLs for each update)

  Tantek

  13 Mar 2010 | 9:59 am

  #realtimeweb @robdolin asked how to de-dup syndicated updates? my answer: inline embedded permashortlinks like -> (ttk.me links on my syndicated updates in Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed etc. all provide unique IDs / URLs for each update)

• "serve as an example, don't try to own everybody. competition is best thing for all of us." - Brett Slatkin #realtimeweb

  Tantek

  13 Mar 2010 | 9:45 am

  "serve as an example, don't try to own everybody. competition is best thing for all of us." - Brett Slatkin #realtimeweb

• 

  Studio Notes by Shai Coggins

• Style Studio: Blues and Florals

  Shai Coggins

  16 Mar 2010 | 5:14 am

  Well, I’ve promised another Style Studio installment, so here we go. It feels like ages ago since I last did a self portrait. I haven’t really had much chance to do much photography lately. In any case, here are my style and photography notes: Style Notes: Navy Blue Halter Dress – This one’s an oldie but goodie. It’s a custom-made dress that I asked a seamstress in the Philippines to make for me some 10+ years ago. I chose the fabric and I sort of designed the dress (based on another dress I saw in a magazine), if I remember correctly. It was actually a maxi…

• On Being Erica and Life’s Regrets

  Shai Coggins

  15 Mar 2010 | 1:20 am

  So, I just spent approximately 10 out of the last 24 hours of my life watching the first 13 episodes of this Canadian TV show called “Being Erica” (Season 1) on DVD. In a nutshell, it’s about a 30-something single woman called Erica Strange (Erin Karpluk) who had everything going for her — except, her life hasn’t turned out to be quite like what she hoped. Unable to keep even a dead-end job, even unable to maintain a good relationship, and with a lot of other baggage, she ended up meeting a mysterious, quote-loving, philosophical “Dr Tom” (Michael…

• Homemade Classic Chocolate Chip Cookies Recipe

  Shai Coggins

  14 Mar 2010 | 12:10 am

  Crunchy on the outside, chewy on the outside. That’s what these chocolate chip cookies are like! They are just so yummy-licious. When I first started baking during home economics class in highschool, one of my first projects included making cookies. And, even though I wasn’t quite as pleased with my efforts back then, some of my former classmates still seemed to love my cookie creations. I couldn’t quite fathom why! Perhaps, the thing with homemade cookies is that they’re almost always better than the packaged variety. In any case, if you’re looking for a simple…

• 10 Ways to Get Out of a Rut

  Shai Coggins

  11 Mar 2010 | 5:31 am

  Do you ever find yourself feeling stuck in a rut sometimes? I know I do. Even though I may have gazillion ideas and projects going at any given time, there are days when I feel like I’m just stuck. Like I go in circles in spite the inspiration. I end up going nowhere, in spite the drive and the passion. When such things happen, these are some* things that I try to do to get out of that rut — pronto! 1. Do something completely different. If I’m obsessing about writing, I paint or draw or doodle. If I’m anxious about crafting, I journal or play music or cook. If…

• South African Trip { Dec ‘09 – Jan’10 }

  Shai Coggins

  10 Mar 2010 | 3:58 am

  It feels like ages ago – The Big Trip. That’s why it feels a bit odd blogging about this now. But, I promised to blog about it all, so I’m delivering on that word (whether you like it or not ). Looking at these photos still make me smile though, no matter how long ago this may seem to be. Anyway, since we spent almost four weeks in Johannesburg, South Africa, a day-by-day recount of our trip is definitely out. Let me just share with you some of my favourite memories and highlights from my fifth South African trip (this is my boy’s 3rd trip, and my li’l…

• 

  Bare Feet Blog

• Hawaii Tsunami Proves Social Media Power Again: Information is a Tonic

  Roxanne Darling

  27 Feb 2010 | 7:23 pm

  How do you explain the calm and cooperation that was everywhere in evidence during the wind up to the Hawaii tsunami alert? Social media has earned a spot alongside our government planners and traditional news media. The user-generated messages supported both of those organizations on a second by second basis. If you think about the mechanics of panic, it largely stems from a lack of information and and abundance of misinformation. When we leave things to people’s imaginations, it tends to bring unfettered “awfulizing” and a survival-based focus on worst case scenarios. Here…

• Nonprofits Getting Started with Social Media

  Roxanne Darling

  17 Feb 2010 | 1:09 am

  I participated in a panel on social media for nonprofits today, hosted by the Hawaii Community Foundation. It was held at the beautiful Hawaii Convention Center, and I was joined by colleagues Christine Lu, Chris Noble, and Olin Lagon. Local newscaster Dan Cooke was our social media-savvy moderator. We made a last minute decision to live-stream the presentations, which were held in the morning and afternoon sessions. This may sound crazy, but I can feel a palpable energy boost in the room when I am live-streaming. The attention of the extended audience “out there” on the internet,…

• Social Media Club Hawaii Celebrates Ma Ka Hana Ka ʻIke

  Roxanne Darling

  4 Jan 2010 | 11:01 pm

  About a year ago I founded the Hawaii Chapter of the Social Media Club. It is part of a international nonprofit organization of social media practitioners and exists to develop and share best practices and ethics on the social web. One of the first goals we had was to get the word out in the community about our organization. My fellow volunteer and Program Chair Tess Staadecker came up with the idea to hold a contest and offer six months’ support to local nonprofit. We would walk them through the stages of setting up the social web assets. About the Contest It was a great idea! We had…

• Using Social Media to Differentiate

  Roxanne Darling

  16 Dec 2009 | 1:04 am

  I was invited to speak last week at the Sales and Marketing Executives meeting here in Honolulu, which featured Governor Linda Lingle as the keynote speaker. The topic was “Using Social Media to Differentiate.” I have posted my presentation file at Slideshare and also uploaded the five video episode snips I created to represent a few of the many case studies in the talk. You can view the slide show here. You can download a PDF of the slides here. David Jones v Microchip Watch the original video from David Jones. Watch the original video from Microchip. Blendtec Listens to &…

• Executive Overview of Social Media for the C’s

  Roxanne Darling

  4 Dec 2009 | 6:38 pm

  I had an opportunity to speak with the “c”s at a leading Hawaii company today. That’s shorthand for the CEO, the CFO, the CTO, the CLO, etc. As is standard practice, I do not disclose our consulting clients unless the client wishes to do so. They shall remain anonymous for now. I love doing this type of session – one and half hours of touring the social web and discussing the implications for marketing, customer service, new lines of business, technology, and of course the ever-present legal and HR concerns. Plus I enjoy working with smart people whose questions help…

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  Social Media Marketing

• The Rich Are No Different Than You & Me

  Scott Monty

  8 Mar 2010 | 8:27 am

  Well, except for that money thing. They want the pretty much want what we all want from social networks: to connect with people they know and trust, spend some time unwinding, and share content.   The key difference is this: affluents don't want to friend a brand on Facebook - they prefer to check out fan pages. [Then again, I feel the same way. Hmm. Maybe I qualify to be rich? I can haz affluence, plze?]   What they do prefer is a user experience on the company's website that addresses their needs. Easy navigation, helpful information, perhaps even the availability of a live chat…

• How Ford Uses Social Media [VIDEO]

  Scott Monty

  4 Mar 2010 | 8:24 am

  At the risk of giving away too much of what we do (not really - everything we do in social media is in the public, so you just need to pay attention or search around to find out), I'd like to share with you a little bit about Ford Motor Company's approach to social media.Here's a great video that WebPro News did when we were at Blog World Expo last October. It captures a lot of what Ford is doing in the space.I keep a clipsheet of coverage of our social media efforts (using Profilactic), which is helpful when speaking to reporters or digital media and they're looking for…

• Social Media Marketing Spending Spirals Up

  Scott Monty

  3 Mar 2010 | 8:36 am

  When you start hearing about social media taking up more budget rather than having to struggle for dollars and attention, it's clear that the practice is gaining in legitimacy.    Remember the days of having to gently introduce the concept, or of having to prove that in fact it's something that's a coming trend? We had to deal with skeptics - the same type of people, who maybe less than 10 years ago, doubted that the Internet was going to catch on. And we've had to deal with a struggling economy and limited funding.    Things are a little different now. In fact, you might…

• Email - the Silent E

  Scott Monty

  2 Mar 2010 | 9:37 pm

  A rather unlikely suspect has been making the rounds lately. And while you may have come to know this blog for covering the cutting edge communications and marketing tools, it may seem odd that this suspect is rather old school.That's right. Good old email is making a comeback. But it shouldn't be a total surprise - it's not like I didn't warn you.Every indicator I've seen lately indicate that people still use email as a primary method of sharing interesting news, keeping in touch, and notification - not to mention that it's usually the price of entry for belonging to a social network. In…

• Study: Most Effective B2B Social Media Tactics are IT ‘Lite’

  Scott Monty

  1 Mar 2010 | 1:20 pm

  Guest post by Ben Hanna, VP of Marketing for Business.com, the Web’s leading portal for business owners. According to a new study involving more than 1,700 small business leaders, companies marketing to small businesses would be well advised to focus on social media tactics requiring little IT investment, such as webinars, podcasts and establishing a presence on top social networking sites, before pursuing more IT resource intensive initiatives such as creating a company-managed online community. The study, conducted by Business.com, finds that that four of the top five most effective…

• 

  The Relationship Economy

• Are “Social” Business Intentions Fake?

  Jay Deragon

  16 Mar 2010 | 3:00 am

  The word “fake” is a term used to describe or imply something which is not real.  Something or someone  creating something to appear like it or they are something they or it are not. Just because a business is using social to imply something doesn’t mean it is the something it tries to be by s imply using social media. The growth of social media is being driven by two dynamics: 1) human interaction, social and 2) use of media.  It is the combination of 1 & 2 that exposes “fake” attempts to imply something that is not real. In the past individually and…

• Is Social Capital The Whole?

  Jay Deragon

  15 Mar 2010 | 3:00 am

  With the increase use of social media everyone seems to categorize its use into one dimension or another. Some categorize the value equations as social capital, reputation capital and a host of other names which are attempts to define the emerging value proposition. These attempts reflect emphasis on the parts rather than the whole. You’ve heard the expression “the whole is greater than the sum of the parts” which, in my humble opinion, should be how we view all the related knowledge gains being created by all this social stuff. Brian Solis writes Social Capital: The…

• Accounting for “Social” Assets

  Dan Robles

  14 Mar 2010 | 1:00 am

  Wall Street will often reward a company that has a large backlog of orders. This can appear in the eyes of most observers as an asset. After all, who would not want a backlog of orders? However, in the world of social media, a huge backlog causes a serious problem – it represents commitments made that have not yet been delivered. An unfulfilled promise in a social network is a liability and not an asset. By extension, a backlog in an innovation economy is a liability and not an asset. Today we talk of all the problems that should be solved but have not; health care, global warming,…

• Where’s The Humility?

  Dan Robles

  13 Mar 2010 | 2:42 am

  Many companies are flocking to Social Media as the great new tool for pitching products. The results have been mixed; there are winners and there are losers. At first, there was no clear path toward certain success but now the differences are becoming increasingly clear. Humility is rewarded and arrogance is punished. If “Nice guys finish last,” is the mantra of the old world, then “The last will be first,” is the motto of the new. To understand why humility works in social media, we need to understand what humility is. Cashing the Reality Check Humility does not mean looking down on…

• Knowledge Cost by the Hour?

  Jay Deragon

  12 Mar 2010 | 2:30 am

  A prospective client asked “what do you charge by the hour?”. My response…”I don’t”.  The prospect then asked “then how do you determine how much to charge me?”. My response “By the value you desire me to deliver using my knowledge”. Knowledge needed to ring up sales at a cash register is different than knowledge needed to engage more customer that will ring the cash register or reduce lost productivity which improves business efficiency. Which has more value? If your business is wasting time, effort and energy “producing…

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  Ignite Social Media

• Writing Web Content for a Living - Notes from SXSW

  Jeremy Griffin

  14 Mar 2010 | 12:16 pm

    I got excited about his panel because it seemed to speak to me specifically, and sure enough, it really delivered. The panel concentrated on two aspects of web writing, first is to explore writing web content, and secondly how to write web content for a living. For the purposes of this post, I'll be concentrating on the first aspect because it is a little more applicaple to our audience. Webwriting vs. Copywriting I'm a "copywriter," but today I learned what I really might be is a web writer. Web writing and copywriting are different things. A web writer is responsible for…

• Social Media and China: It's Not What You Think: Notes from SxSW

  Jim Tobin

  14 Mar 2010 | 11:19 am

  Many of the brands I work with are extremely interested in the Chinese market. With a burgeoning economy and a billion people, it's easy to understand why. In fact, one of my clients got back from China just in time to fly to Austin for this conference. Her description of the differences was fascinating. So if we're going to want to look at social media marketing for the Chinese market, we need to understand social media in China. That's why I attended "Social Media and China: Different than You Think" at SxSW. The panelists included: Jacqui Zhou from Dell Benjamin Joffee from Plus…

• Taking Your Brand Mobile with an App: Notes from SxSW

  Jim Tobin

  14 Mar 2010 | 9:42 am

  One of the standing room only panels at SxSW was called, "Extending Your Brand: There's an App for That."  With mobile and mobile social growing in popularity, the appeal for brands was obvious.  For this, panelists include: Rob Girling, Artefact Adrian Ho, Zeus Jones Shiv Singh, Razorfish Brian Morrissey, Adweek The panelists noted that the iPhone and Android are just the beginning, and Windows 7 Phone is actually a major step forward. Singh expects that platform, combining so many elements of your lifestream into a functional mobile device, from lifestreaming to phone to…

• Content Strategy is Much More than Web Copywriting: More SxSW Notes

  Jim Tobin

  13 Mar 2010 | 2:10 pm

  There's a big difference between being a web writer and being a content strategist, according to Christina Halvorson, the CEO of Brain Traffic and author of "Content Strategy for the Web", whose company does nothing but content strategy. She hosted the session, "Content Strategy FTW" at SxSWi. The problem, as she sees it, is that the web writer is often disconnected from the rest of the web development team. Where there should be content strategy and SEO strategy, we're often on projects where we're focused much more on target audience personas, design standards and…

• Can the Real-Time Web Be Realized? Notes from SxSWi

  Jim Tobin

  13 Mar 2010 | 9:36 am

  One of the more interesting panels I was able to attend at this year's South by Southwest Interactive Festival was called "Can the Real-Time Web Be Realized?" As status updates (via Twitter, via Facebook, via Foursquare) become increasingly important, the ability to figure out what's happening increases. As long as we can organize that data. But beyond that searching for products to buy, and being able to see if it's in stock near you, up to the minute, would be equally important (particularly around Christmas, when this year's version of "Tickle Me Elmo" is being fought…

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  SocialButterfly

• Quote of the Week: Failure Happens (and One Way to Avoid It)

  Alex

  15 Mar 2010 | 9:16 pm

  This is not a boggy-too sad to read post. This post is about failure, yes, but it’s also about what can be learned from it. This week’s quote comes from Sarah Ragsdale over at the Walking the Path blog: “Failure happens.” However, Sarah doesn’t mope and pity in the eye of failure–instead she offers insights into why failure happens based on the text Marketing in Public Health. Sarah reviews four types of common failures when it comes to communications interventions: Strategy failures occur when external barriers exist in the community that cannot be…

• Behind the Scenes of NBC’s Parenthood Project

  Alex

  9 Mar 2010 | 6:54 pm

  In the midst of reflecting on Pepsi Refresh, Disney and other CSR efforts, I received an email about another project with a social message–NBC’s Parenthood Project that worked in conjunction with the Boys and Girls Club. Curious–I responded to the email asking if I could interview someone behind the campaign to learn about the interworkings of business doing good. Enter Cathy Goldman, NBC Vice President, Promotion & Brand Management. Cathy was kind enough to answer my questions. And while NBC didn’t answer all my questions, I find the answers fascinating. What I…

• Quote of the Week: From Declaration to Implementation

  Alex

  8 Mar 2010 | 7:54 pm

  Continuing this new series, I’d like to highlight a great, young mind–Akhila Kolisetty. Currently a student at Northwestern University, Akhila shares a unique willpower that refuses to be distracted and instead, stays committed and focused on international human rights. If you want to get back in touch with what motivates you to do good, get to know Akhila. She writes with a focused idealism about how things should be–and doesn’t accepts things as they are. In Akhila’s recent post, “The 21st Century Approach to Human Rights,” Akhila writes: “We…

• Quote of the Week: A Call for More Marketing

  Alex

  1 Mar 2010 | 8:02 pm

  I’m going to try out something new called the “Quote of the Week.” To kick-off this new series, I’m starting with the best, Beth Kanter. In Beth’s recent blog post, one of the questions she asks us is: “Can solving complex social problems be done by popular vote?” In explaining her stance on this question, Beth shares: “Let me say this. If brands want to be authentic in their social media for social good effort, they need a fusion approach that balances marketing with social change. I think there is a hybrid option for crowd sourcing–and…

• Tonight: Live Chat About Empathy, CSR, American Idol and More

  Alex

  24 Feb 2010 | 8:52 pm

  Quick note: Tonight is our Read4Change Book Club chat via Twitter at 8pm EST. To join us, just follow @read4change or follow the hashtag #read4change. Book: Wired to Care Special Guest: Co-Author Pete Mortenson Topic: Empathy + CSR as an Approach to Change From Chase Bank to Pepsi to now–American Idol, many are integrating social media into their corporate social responsibility and/or their cause marketing efforts. Join us to discus what’s working and what’s needed–could it be more empathy? Co-author Pete Mortenson joins us to share his insights and the lessons gained…

• 

  HorsePigCow

• Cogaoke Case Study: quality wins over quantity

  Tara Hunt

  1 Mar 2010 | 12:44 pm

  I’ve spoken before about whuffie deposits and withdrawals before. I’d like to think I deposit a lot into my whuffie account. I help people out with their campaigns, vote for them when they ask and generally follow links, photos and blog posts I see and RT, comment and pass along when necessary. I also spend a good amount of time helping friends out with advice, time and encouragement as well as spending a good amount of time on giving stuff out in general for free (posting links from my research, writing blog posts like this one, working for a large percentage of time on movements…

• Personal RFP: attention airlines!

  Tara Hunt

  26 Feb 2010 | 10:32 am

  So…in case you missed it, I’m breaking up with Delta Airlines: For many years, I have been struggling with ’settling down’ with an airline that would treat me with the same love I give to it. I would marry Virgin America tomorrow if it would only fly out of Montreal (or even Toronto, because I also love Porter). There really is no other airline that has consistently made me feel like I matter…even when I’m flying cattle class (aka Economy). And to note, this experience with Delta wasn’t the first let down. I had a series of snafus from them (lost…

• Why I’ve Fallen in Love with the Nexus One

  Tara Hunt

  20 Feb 2010 | 10:50 am

  Last week, I was fortunate enough to be part of the large group of attendees at TED who received a free Nexus One Worldphone from Google. Being a loyal longtime iPhone user, I was excited, but skeptical. I’d spent some time with the Blackberry, Palm Pre and various cool Nokia products, only to run back to my iPhone’s open arms. All of these phones are great in their own way, but nothing could compare to my iPhone experience and the overall usability. But the Nexus One is different. And it is different mainly because of my heavy Google property usage. That is to say, if I…

• Discouragement and Faith

  Tara Hunt

  19 Feb 2010 | 2:18 pm

  Sometimes I think that the only qualification that puts me in front of an audience rather than in the audience when I’m speaking at conferences is faith. Faith that I belong there. Faith that I actually have something to say. Faith that the organizers knew what they were doing when they hired me. And somehow I continue to be asked to speak in front of more and more audiences. I now have over 80 conferences under my belt and within the next 6 months, that will go into the triple digits. In fact, I speak at so many conferences these days that I had to stop consulting (about a year ago or…

• What the World Needs is…these TED Talks

  Tara Hunt

  19 Feb 2010 | 11:41 am

  I have several favourite TED Talks from over the years, such as Elizabeth Gilbert, Barry Schwartz, Alain De Botton, Shashi Thooror, Chimamanda Adichie, Phil Zimbardo, Jonathan Haidt, Sir Ken Robinson, Helen Fisher and more…and even the worst TED talks seem to be more thought provoking than the best of most conferences I go to. But there was something about this year that just popped for me. It wasn’t necessarily a single talk – though there were many that made me stand on my feet crying in joy – it was more the thread. It all started when Chris Anderson said,…

• 

  Technosailor.com

• The Most Expensive Question

  Aaron Brazell

  4 Mar 2010 | 7:32 am

  The most expensive question you can ask a consultant is, “What else do you recommend?” This seems like a simple thing. At least if you’re a consultant. Potential clients approach you and they know they need something done. They may have a good idea of what that something is and they may even be able to provide a wish list of things to get done. However, for all that preparedness they ruin it all for their budget by asking, “What else do you recommend?” Now some consultants do business this way. They are paid to help the client understand their needs and map out a…

• Threadsy Aggregates Email, Facebook and Twitter (plus invites!)

  Aaron Brazell

  2 Mar 2010 | 12:51 pm

  TechCrunch 50 startup and runner-up Threadsy reached out to me earlier to look at their service. I’m not usually one to do that but I had some time and their street cred seemed legitimate (TC50, etc). The service is an aggregation tool that pulls email accounts (Gmail, Yahoo, even IMAP to name a few) together. I couldn’t get my IMAP email account functional but that could just be me. It’s been awhile since I had to configure email addresses manually. My Gmail account imported successfully without any special configuration. In addition to email accounts, Threadsy also…

• Your SXSW Survival Guide

  Aaron Brazell

  1 Mar 2010 | 1:18 pm

  Next week begins the 2010 edition of South by Southwest (SXSW) with the Interactive and Film festivals. This will be followed in the following week by the legendary music festival. As a veteran of SXSW (This will be my fourth year), let me share my tips from a Pro standpoint. Mind you, these tips are an aggregation of lessons learned over the years. Many new people come every year, and most have no idea what to expect. You can review my SXSW power tips from last year. Parties SXSW is known less for it’s sessions and more for its parties. For better or for worse, the best networking and…

• How to get a Great Tech Job

  Sandy Smith

  16 Feb 2010 | 8:55 am

  This post is a guest post from Sandy Smith, a hiring manager and PHP developer at Forum One Communications in Alexandria, VA. It was originally an email to a mailing list in response to a job ad posted by a recruiter. The job requisition was worded in such a way to make it sound like the recruiter wanted someone with every web-tech skill and a “mastery” of it for about $75,000 (USD), a salary that is extremely low in the Washington, D.C. area. His response was so good that I asked if I could reprint it. He obliged. Follow Sandy on Twitter at @SandyS1 or at his blog. So, random…

• Buzz Kill

  Aaron Brazell

  11 Feb 2010 | 10:22 am

  By now, if you follow the technology world at all, or if you use Gmail, you’ve probably noticed a new thingy released by Google in the last few days. The thingy is called Google Buzz and it is billed to be a “status update” tool to allow your friends to know what you’re up to? Sound familiar? Yeah, it’s supposed to be going after Twitter or some nonsense like that. I enabled Buzz on my Gmail account and then promptly disabled it (you too can disable it, if it’s already turned on for you, by clicking on the “turn off Buzz” link in the footer of…

• 

  The Harte of Marketing

• The Dichotomy Issue: “Social Media Marketing” vs. Classic Marketing

  Beth Harte

  15 Mar 2010 | 6:38 am

  I have the honor of being a part of the new Social Media Council of Advisors for the Marketing Executive Networking Group (MENG) and last Thursday we had our first Q&A webinar with MENG members. Other council members include: Amber Naslund, Mack Collier, Drew McLellan, Joe Pulizzi and Paul Dunay. Last Thursday we had a Q&A webinar with MENG members. There were a lot of great questions, but one question really struck me and I wanted to share it here because it speaks to why integrated marketing and communications is critical.  “All of the panelists agree that social media are…

• Walking the Talk: I Am Joining the Serengeti Communications Team

  Beth Harte

  24 Feb 2010 | 6:35 am

  This year I re-launched my blog focusing on Integrated Marketing Communications because it’s the only thing I know as a marketer. Fortunately, I have been part of integrated departments and teams for the past 15 years. Anyone who has experience with IMC knows that the reward of a strategically executed and successful campaign is, well, marketing nirvana.  As I have said, social media isn’t drastically changing marketing, communications or PR… it is just forcing us, as practitioners, back to our roots. For me, it’s about being true to all three, while consistently challenging…

• Sales-Oriented Versus Market-Oriented Companies

  Beth Harte

  10 Feb 2010 | 8:22 pm

  Tonight on #IMCchat (the Integrated Marketing Communications chat on Twitter) we discussed the definition  and focus of sales-oriented and market-oriented companies and the advantages/disadvantages of both. Typically  when people hear “sales” and “market” they equate it to sales and marketing…and the unfortunate contention that often seems to exist between the two. Before we go down the path of sales versus marketing, let’s take a look at the characteristics of each type of orientation.   Sales-Oriented Characteristics:  Heavy reliance on promotion…

• Getting Management Buy-In For Integrated Marketing & Communications

  Anna Barcelos and Beth Harte

  4 Feb 2010 | 4:41 pm

  There are a lot of marketers out there that understand that integrated marketing and communications (IMC) is a preferred way to do business because it is an outside-in approach. If an organization isn’t integrated, what are the best approaches to getting management buy-in? Anna Barcelos and I wanted to share nine key ways to provide management with the value of IMC. Sales-Oriented Vs. Market-Oriented – Which Are You? It’s often been said that the mindset of “If we build it, they will come” is not viable for long term business. To understand why, let’s look at the difference…

• Integrated Marketing & Communications, Redux

  Beth Harte

  19 Jan 2010 | 5:50 am

  The hiatus is over! For those who have been loyal readers of this blog, Happy New Year! And I thank you for hanging in there with me while I took the time to consider where to head next.    For a long time I focused on marketing, PR and social media, but rarely the integration of them all. The focus of The Harte of Marketing for 2010 (and perhaps beyond) will be integrated marketing & communications. While integrated marketing communications (IMC) is nothing new, the embracing of social media surely puts IMC back in the spotlight as its principles are similar to long-standing IMC…

• 

  The Original Smart-erotti

• AUDIO: Actual Debt Collectors Violating the Fair Debt Collections Practices Act

  11 Mar 2010 | 2:49 pm

  Debt collectors violate the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDPCA) all the time. It’s time to name and shame a couple of them. Of course I reported these to the Federal Trade Commission (www.ftc.gov) but to date the FTC hasn’t done diddle about them. First we have “Agent Washington” of UCB (United Collection Bureau) claiming to be a law enforcement officer, claiming to have paperwork in the Bulloch County State Attorneys Office. First off credit card debt is a civil matter, not criminal. Everything about this phone call are multiple violations of the FDCPA. Listen…

• NOT FUNNY - Acer Passes DELL in Computer Shipments – Dell is Now Number 3 – DELL Sells Poor Quality Computers

  11 Mar 2010 | 2:00 am

  You want to know the real reason why Dell is shipping less computers? It’s because of the poor quality of their computers and consumers are spreading the word. That and Acer as well as other computer manufacturers make better quality PC’s. At one point a good many years ago DELL made great, near trouble-free personal computers. In the last coup0le of years the DELL’s quality has suffered and I am assuming it is due to trying boost profits, rather than ship good computers. I as a consumer have had many problems with the quality and workmanship of Dell Pc’s, workstations and servers. I…

• Beware of calls from 206-337-9266 – Big Money ATM Scammers

  11 Mar 2010 | 1:08 am

  I hate automated messages left on my answering machine. Last night I received a call from 206-337-9266 asking me if I needed money now. The message left by the scammers smelled all too much like a typical get rich quick scam. In the message they left a domain name (Big Money ATM .Com – i put spaces in it to prevent accidently hyperlinking). I pulled the domain registration for the domain and of course it is a private registration that hides the owners true identity. If the caller and owner were legitimate the domain “who is” record would display the actual owners. the scammers use…

• Inside ARM takes exception to my reward for proof of illegal debt collection policies

  8 Mar 2010 | 12:47 pm

  Inside ARM, a magazine dedicated to the debt collection industry, and in my opinion a mouthpiece for ACA International, the lobbying "organ” (insert your own joke here) for the collection industry to congress, has taken exception that I and my “small” magazine are offering cash rewards for written/documentable proof that collection agencies have policies that authorize and encourage illegal debt collection. Read the story at Inside ARM (opens in new window) for yourself. Mr. Patrick Lunsford is referring to my article entitled, “Debt Collection Employees – looking for Debt…

• The Ad Blocking Blame Game

  8 Mar 2010 | 2:22 am

  Lately I have been reading stories and numerous blog posts about consumers utilizing ad blocking software. The stories are much the same, viewers are sick of annoying and bothersome advertising. Because of this website owners are suffering financially. Quite frankly, I have no sympathy at all for them. Truth be told, it isn’t the website visitors fault at all. If you want to blame anyone, then blame the advertisers that created increasingly annoying advertising to gain a couple of click-throughs. Also blame the website owners for allowing third party advertising to run on their…

• 

  Marketing Roadmaps

• Blog with Integrity news

  Susan Getgood

  4 Mar 2010 | 7:50 am

  Between the book, travel and work, my blogs have been a bit neglected this year. So, I’m really glad that I can finally take the wraps off the Blog with Integrity projects we’ve been working on since the beginning of the year. Advisory Board: We are honored to welcome Liza Barry-Kessler, Gwen Bell, Isabel Kallman, Lisa Stone and David Wescott to the team as members of the Blog with Integrity Advisory Board. New website: We’ve updated the website with more information about the team, our mission and upcoming events. We also added an Organizational Pledge so companies can show…

• Emptying the bit bucket: books, pitches and too fat to fly?

  Susan Getgood

  16 Feb 2010 | 8:25 am

  Heard on Twitter about a big brand: Apparently the brand is using multiple word of mouth agencies on blogger outreach programs for the same company initiative. Some of the agencies are offering compensation for posts, others not. Here’s the kicker though: some bloggers are getting both sorts of pitches. For the same program. Ouch! And before you ask: yes I know who it is, no I am not telling, and I’d appreciate it if my readers do not “out” the brand in the comments either. I’m telling this story to make a point, not to embarrass anyone. Here’s the lesson.

• Blogging Survey for Professional Blogging for Dummies

  Susan Getgood

  15 Feb 2010 | 1:48 pm

  This Friday, I will be moderating Got Strategy?,the opening panel of the professional track at Mom 2.0. The panelists — Isabel Kallman, Joanne White and Mir Kamin – will share lessons learned, good and bad, in building their professional blogs. I’ll also be sharing some of the results to-date of the blogger survey for my book, Professional Blogging for Dummies (Wiley, July 2010). If you write a personal, small business or independent professional blog (ie not associated with or for a big brand), please take a few minutes to add your experiences with your blog to the survey.

• BlissDom, Disclosure, Super Bowl ads and a new survey

  Susan Getgood

  8 Feb 2010 | 1:44 pm

  Apart from my rather hectic return North on Friday (which you can read about on Snapshot Chronicles Roadtrip), BlissDom was absolutely great, and I wish I could have stayed longer. BlissDom and Disclosure As promised, here is a PDF of the complete slide deck from the “You Should Know Better” general session on Friday morning. Kristen Berman from Intuit covered best accounting practices, Liza Barry-Kessler gave an overview of the legal issues facing bloggers in their small businesses, and I talked about disclosure as a best practice and the FTC guidelines on endorsements and…

• A refreshing change from Super Bowl ads – the Pepsi Refresh Project

  Susan Getgood

  5 Feb 2010 | 5:01 pm

  cross posted to Snapshot Chronicles The Super Bowl is pretty much the only athletic contest in the world where the television advertisements during the event get nearly as much media coverage as the event itself. Likewise the run-up and hype of the commercials. Will the network will sell all the space? Who will run ads, how much will they pay and what will they promote? Before the ads even run, the pundits are postulating and after, they dissect them. It’s a bit obscene really — and full disclosure, I’ve played the game on my blog in past years. This year, though, the real…

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  VisInsights

• The Truth about Tigers… and Reputations

  Blake Cahill

  2 Mar 2010 | 9:27 am

  “A good name, like good will, is got by many actions and lost by one.” – Lord Jeffrey Lord Jeffrey’s adage from the 19th century rings true today, particularly in the timely case of Tiger Woods, the golfing hero turned shamed adulterer. Since news broke of Tiger’s multiple extramarital affairs in the end of 2009, conversation [...]

• How Social Media Helped Me Through the Hawaiian Tsunami Warning

  Mike Spataro

  1 Mar 2010 | 3:28 pm

  I have been part of the social media generation – professionally and personally – for a number of years, but last week was the first time I found myself social networking in the midst of a potential crisis situation – the Hawaiian Islands Tsunami Warning while vacationing in Maui. Being jarred out of bed at 6 [...]

• The Latest Disclosure Recommendations for Social Media Marketing

  Blake Cahill

  24 Feb 2010 | 3:21 pm

  As member of the WOMMA Membership Ethics Committee for the past year I have had the privilege of working with and shaping some of recommendations and best practices for marketers, brands, and agencies who are active in Word-of-Mouth Marketing. Recently, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued some guidelines concerning “The Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in [...]

• Listening to the Future

  Mike Spataro

  2 Feb 2010 | 1:03 pm

  Sometimes instead of talking it pays to step back and listen to what’s going on in your business and industry, especially when you work in the consumer listening space. That’s what I did for awhile and I learned a lot over the past several months by paying close attention to what our clients and other [...]

• We’re Tracking Social Conversions for GRAMMYs!

  Blake Cahill

  19 Jan 2010 | 10:26 am

  I’m excited to announce that Visible Technologies is helping this year’s 52nd Annual GRAMMY Awards (airing live on CBS January 31from 8 – 11:30PM ET/PT) go social in a big way through our amazing partnership with TBWA\Chiat\Day. At the heart of the GRAMMY’s advertising campaign is the Web site www.wereallfans.com launched today by TBWA\Chiat\Day Los Angeles [...]

• 

  Emily Chang - Designer

• Sliding labels

  Emily Chang

  16 Mar 2010 | 12:27 am

  I twittered this link a while back but wanted to post it here as well. CSSKarma has a nice example of sliding labels for form fields using jQuery. Rather than have the label vanish onclick in the field, it slides to the left to continue providing context. Get the code and see the version 2 demo or view the original post.

• Turntable DIY Prototype

  Emily Chang

  16 Mar 2010 | 12:05 am

  I do wish this turntable was made out of biodegradable foam, but nonetheless, I appreciate the minimal design aesthetic and the low-cost, do-it-yourself approach.

• Gorgeous Day in SF

  Emily Chang

  13 Feb 2010 | 4:37 pm

  After a month and a half of rain and overcast skies, it looks like the sun is back for the next week in SF. Refreshing.

• Emily Chang in Forbes’ 20 Inspiring Women on Twitter

  Emily Chang

  9 Feb 2010 | 3:03 am

  Halle Tecco’s piece at Forbes, 20 Inspiring Women To Follow On Twitter, highlights ”women with a skill for putting their hearts and complex issues into 140 characters.” Of Ideacodes co-founder, Emily Chang, she says: “@EmilyChang is a designer and entrepreneur in San Francisco. Her twitter stream is full of fascinating and creative links to all things design–giving followers reasons to think outside the box.”

• Time Machine 020507

  Emily Chang

  7 Feb 2010 | 12:21 am

  While backing up 1,274,742 items to Apple’s time capsule via time machine, I thought of the original The Time Machine by H.G. Wells and re-found this quote: Few people realise the immensity of vacancy in which the dust of the material universe swims.

• 

  The Social Customer Manifesto

• iPhone App Case Study: Natalie Maclean

  Christopher Carfi - Cerado, Inc.

  28 Feb 2010 | 3:27 pm

  A great three-minute segment on CBC featuring wine writer Natalie Maclean,  who talks a bit about her approach to making a mobile experience available to the 110,000+ members of her customer community of oenophiles.  Three key takeaways: Use mobile to provide access to the breadth and depth of information that's available to customers; plus, Simplify the experience to make it easy to navigate; and, Always ensure it's available, not just when customers are in front of their computers As a wine journalist, it's interesting to see how Natalie is leveraging the capabilities of mobile to…

• The Customer in Personal, Public and Business Realms

  Christopher Carfi - Cerado, Inc.

  25 Feb 2010 | 1:22 pm

  "Some corporations will attempt to maximize the business value of each individual worker, stripping out all the extraneous human factors. Chinese walls will be erected to keep the outside from the inside, the personal from the business, and the public from the private. But when you put messaging and communications tools into the hands of people they will find ways to talk to each other— about work, life, play, the project, and the joke they just heard at the water cooler." - Cliff GerrishThe line above is from a brilliant post by Cliff Gerrish, touching on CRM, VRM and the rise of…

• The Fatal Flaw in the Google Buzz Interface

  Christopher Carfi - Cerado, Inc.

  10 Feb 2010 | 3:10 pm

  Is "fatal flaw" too strong a term?  Maybe.  Then again, maybe not. First off, what is Google Buzz?  It's Google's new shot-across-the-bow to Facebook and Twitter, an attempt to integrate real-time web interactions with the well-known and widely-used Gmail interface. However, Buzz does two things that will simply make it unusable. It shows threaded conversations and strongly highlights the initiator of those conversations, and makes the comments subservient to the initial post. It takes posts that have "new" comments and immediately bumps those…

• Offtopic: Who Chases Google With Desires Fork?

  Christopher Carfi - Cerado, Inc.

  10 Feb 2010 | 8:24 am

  More here.

• Social Customer Case Study: OK Labs Hits 150% of Customer Community Target

  Christopher Carfi - Cerado, Inc.

  5 Feb 2010 | 6:34 am

  A nice article from CRM Magazine about the work we did with OK Labs. -cfc A Social Strategy That's A-OK OK Labs forgoes traditional marketing in favor of a community-based Web 2.0 approach. By Marti Konstant, vice president of marketing for Open Kernel (OK) Labs, as told to Lauren McKay• Tell us about your organization. Open Kernel—OK Labs—is a three-year-old start-up that was born in Australia and is now headquartered in Chicago. My role when coming on board was to build up the brand and, most importantly, create awareness among the technical developer community who work on…

• 

  Broadcasting Brain

• The best bloggers are world builders

  markdykeman

  16 Mar 2010 | 4:04 am

  All the best bloggers are world builders. So are science fiction/fantasy writers, politicians, entrepreneurs, architects religious leaders, non-profit organizers, teachers, and coaches.  Oh, and movie directors/producers, too (George Lucas and James Cameron didn’t just make movies – they made entire worlds.  Or even galaxies.) What?  You say that all they do is move pixels, letters, numbers, and the occasional image?  How could bloggers possibly be world builders? First of all, relax on one point: I’m not saying that bloggers are not planet builders.  I don’t know…

• Thoughts from Jason Falls of Social Media Explorer

  markdykeman

  15 Mar 2010 | 4:00 am

  The gentleman in today’s installment of Thoughts From is one of the few social media folks that I’ve actually met in person.  However, the five minutes we spent chatting at a Third Tuesday meetup over two years ago had a big impact on my own blogging and social media presence.  Jason Falls is the founder and principal of Social Media Explorer, LLC and has been active at his Social Media Explorer blog for years.  Jason has a background in public relations and is a well known and respected voice in social media circles.  He’s a smart thinker who’s not afraid to zag…

• Reader Recommendation Friday

  markdykeman

  12 Mar 2010 | 4:02 am

  Just for a change of pace, I want to turn the podium over to you (in the Comments section, of course).  What’s out there that YOU would recommend to the readers of Broadcasting Brain? This isn’t about Foursquare (despite the photo included in this post) or #FollowFriday or anything like that. I would really like to see you all recommend a good blog post, website, or other online content that you think would be valuable to all Brainiacs who read this blog.  Maybe it could be something light hearted.  Or, it could be something more substantial or meatier that we might want to…

• The BASIC frustration post

  markdykeman

  11 Mar 2010 | 2:00 am

  It doesn’t always come easy.  Sometimes it comes very, very hard. No, I’m not talking about a bowel movement, although you might be forgiven for thinking that. It’s the writing.  The blogging.  The whole “coming up with new ideas” thing.  Getting words down in a sensible order that makes a point, informs, or entertains. Frustration is the feeling of thwarted ambition.  Sometimes the thwarting is just a temporary derailment of will and purpose and, with time and effort, you can get back on track and steam toward your destination.  (Hurray for railroad…

• Concept development via airplane design

  markdykeman

  10 Mar 2010 | 2:48 am

  Something different for a change of pace:  a video showing the evolution of the design of the Airbus A380-800 aircraft, all in drawings: In a world of one draft blog posts, it’s quite intriguing to see something go through so many design changes. According to Wikipedia.org, this airplane has 530 km (330 miles) of wiring in each aircraft. Can you imagine how freaking complex and hard it is to make one of these airplanes? Maybe we should all reflect on this the next time we’re struggling with a website or a blog post. Most Commented PostsSocial media blog post ideas for desperate…

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  MarketingProfs Daily Fix Blog

• ‘The Basics’ May Be Enough To Make You Great

  Paul Williams

  12 Mar 2010 | 7:14 am

  Taking your business from good to great to remarkable can seem a daunting task. But, it may be easier than you think. The bad news from a customer perspective is that companies aren’t doing the basics properly, let alone getting to remarkable. Customers hopes are high, but expectations low. This bad news is good news for your company. With expectations so low, simply doing what you’re supposed to do (the basics)  may set you apart from the competition.Breaking it down to basics, you’ll realize customers are looking for: • The product/service they want, • with the right…

• The Boring Web Content Challenge: Reviewing (…yawn!) Submissions

  Ann Handley

  11 Mar 2010 | 10:15 am

  Yesterday, I spent the morning reviewing submissions for the Incredibly Boring Web Content Challenge. The Boring Web Content Challenge, as I wrote about a few weeks ago, encouraged companies to submit their most lifeless, incomprehensible bit of web writing (a web page, or press release, or email, or whatever) to win a chance to have a free makeover from our friends at Captains of Industry. Submit they did (in spades!) and yesterday we plowed through all of them, searching for the worst of the lot. I mean “plowed” almost literally, by the way: Because reading through all the…

• Don’t Abandon Traditional Marketing Methods: Integrate and Interact

  Christine Perkett

  10 Mar 2010 | 8:33 am

  The popularity of social media in marketing and PR continues to grow at a rapid pace, with more businesses taking this form of communication seriously every day. From restaurants to fashion, technology to travel, you can find information, special deals and customer care from your favorite brands online across Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, Google and more. But wait, there’s more! While social media is an important element to business marketing and PR, it’s not a replacement for additional, proven forms of promotion. With its low cost, easy barrier-to-entry and seemingly widespread reach,…

• Make A Referral Week: What’s Your Idea?

  Ann Handley

  9 Mar 2010 | 7:57 am

  My friend John Jantsch invited me (and a bunch of other people you probably know, including David Meerman Scott, Guy Kawasaki, Rohit Bhargava and Chris Brogan, Ivan Misner, Bob Burg, Ben McConnell, Dan Schawbel, Anita Campbell, Lisa Barone, Scott Allen, Scott Ginsberg, Janine Popick, and Pam Slim) to participate in his second annual Make a Referral Week, which is this week (March 8 through 12). What’s Make a Referral Week? The goal is dead-simple: To give 1,000 referrals to 1,000 deserving small businesses across the country. I love this idea. Here’s how it works: Make at least one…

• Home Sweet Home Brands

  Steve Woodruff

  9 Mar 2010 | 7:53 am

  In recent days, I’ve been struck by how powerful the sense of “home” can be. Home is familiar, comfortable, irreplaceable. There’s an undeniable “belongingness” that can’t be replicated. Stepping off on a hike last fall in New Hampshire, I was overwhelmed by the sense that I was back home in New England. No matter that I’d spent seven years in Tennessee, and a quarter-century in New Jersey. I’m a Connecticut boy, and the New England woods are home. Driving in and around Mystic CT last week, the trees and stone walls and topography and…

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  BrianOberkirch.com

• Hell, The Fall Will Kill Ya

  Brian Oberkirch

  4 Mar 2010 | 3:32 pm

  In one of my favorite flicks, Butch & Sundance are cornered, yet Sundance is hesitant to take the only escape route available (leaping off a cliff into a river below).  Butch wants to know what’s the hangup, and Sundance admits that he can’t swim.  Butch laughs his face off and says:  hell, the fall will kill ya. When I see handwringing over privacy, user expectations & geolocation services, this is always the image that comes to mind. We’re at that stage in the story when the earlybirds have banged on the system long enough to spot holes in things.  Andrew Hyde,…

• We Can Use That To Our Advantage

  Brian Oberkirch

  21 Dec 2009 | 8:16 am

  The other day I sent out a link Ernie turned me on to — a vid of Chase Jarvis preaching his best available camera rap.  I’m including it here because I think 1) he seems like a neat guy you’d want to pal around with 2) I like the philosophy of using what’s at hand to reshape and enhance our experiences 3) I’m turning into a freak for iPhone photo stuff and 4) I really like one of the segments in it where he talks about the shutter speed of the iPhone. One of my aesthetic/philosophical lucky pennies is the dialogue between what is given & what is made.  It…

• Zack’s Bike Shop

  Brian Oberkirch

  19 Dec 2009 | 7:37 am

  “The Mission is the new South Park,” Veen said.  In addition to Small Batch (makers of Typekit & incl. messrs Veen, Mason, Veen the Younger, Ryan Carver & other whiz kids they bring to the fold), the Mission has Dolores Labs, Kiva, Stamen.  I’ll save it for another post, but there is something to investigate about the dynamics of real neighborhoods to anchor our ecosystems, however digital our work is. The Mission also has Mission Bicycle Company, a bike shop created by Zack Rosen & pals. On the way out of the building, we stuck our heads in to say hello (I had…

• Faving Your Life

  Brian Oberkirch

  17 Dec 2009 | 1:51 pm

  Taylor & I went to W.I.N.O. for lunch because Andrew said they had these yummy, big, cheap sandwiches.  Which was true, but hardly the whole story.  It’s one giant wine tasting machine.  It’s where Gary V (who was here in NOLA last night) should have had an event.  Talk about a place to nerd out on wine & try new things. You get a card and then sample any wine you want, one oz at a time. Which leads us to a data discussion, right?  We start grilling the owner about what data he collects, how he can parse it, what he re-presents via the Web, etc.  We’re trying…

• Down with O.P.P.

  Brian Oberkirch

  17 Dec 2009 | 7:23 am

  Other people’s places.  As Nate Bolt points out, the honeymoon period with new location services will soon end.  This burst of mosoloco-cocoa puff apps is marvelous.  Fun.  Instructive about where we’re going.  Now, you kids start playing together nicely.  Remember how Twitter got traction by being agnostic about the on/off ramps people used?  Well, there you go.  Location’s too critical a component of context for any of you to own it outright.  Sometimes I’ll want to 4Sq, sometimes GoWalla. Sometimes use Buzz’s handy geoloco component of Birdfeed. …

• 

  Digital Trends

• Metro 2033 Lands on Xbox and Windows

  Geoff Duncan

  16 Mar 2010 | 11:07 am

  Wanna run around Moscow's subway system blasting mutant monsters and carving out a future for a post-apocalyptic human race? Welcome to Metro 2033.

• Intel X25-V Aims to Make SSDs Affordable

  Geoff Duncan

  16 Mar 2010 | 10:51 am

  Intel's X25-V 40 GB SSD is priced at just $125...and Intel is touting it as a serious performance boost for PCs.

• Google Brings Nexus One To AT&T, Canada

  Geoff Duncan

  16 Mar 2010 | 10:29 am

  Google has unveiled a new version of its Nexus One phone...and it works with AT&T's 3G network, as well as Canada's Rogers Wireless.

• Crowd Science: 39 Pct of BlackBerry Users Would Go iPhone

  Geoff Duncan

  16 Mar 2010 | 10:06 am

  A survey finds 39 percent of BlackBerry users would buy an iPhone next...but fully a third would go for an Android phone.

• Get Ready for Twitter Everywhere…Er, @Anywhere

  Geoff Duncan

  16 Mar 2010 | 9:18 am

  Twitter's @Anywhere will let sites embed Twitter functionality right on their site...so the service will be even more inescapable.

• 

  Janet Fouts

• Social Media- Merging On and Offline Activities

  Janet

  11 Mar 2010 | 5:36 pm

  I heard about this amazing project in Detroit called Loveland on NPR. You can hear the full story here but here it is in the compressed version. Jerry Paffendorf bought a relatively useless plot of land in Detroit and then portioned the entire thing up into 10,000 square inch plots of land. He sold the plots to people (inchvestors) who wanted to own a piece of Detroit. Technically they don’t “own” anything. They don’t get to vote in Detroit or pay taxes, but still the sense of ownership is real. There’s a Facebook page, a Twitter page, Vimeo channel, Google maps…

• SXSW and NTC- Got your conference plan yet?

  Janet

  2 Mar 2010 | 9:22 pm

  I’ve got two large conferences coming up in the next two months and I’m busy planning so I can get the most out of these opportunities possible. The first conferences is South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi)and although I’m not speaking at this one I’m still very excited about being there. Why? Are you kidding? This is one of the hottest conferences for Film, Music and Interactive media around.. Even though I am attending mostly the interactive portion of the event it’s an amazing opportunity to learn about the film and music industry and get to know a lot of my…

• Blogging and the FTC

  Janet

  2 Mar 2010 | 8:27 pm

  Whether you are an amateur blogger or a professional blogging for a company you need to clearly understand the FTC’s rules for bloggers or suffer the consequences.Like up to $11,000 in fines! Scary? Well it’s supposed to be, but quite honestly if you abide by good old common sense and treat people honestly in the first place this probably won’t be that big of an issue. That said I’m not a lawyer, so downloading the rules and reading them for yourself is a very good idea! Here’s a link to the code FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION 16 CFR part 255 (PDF) Here’s a quick…

• What About the Million Follower Question?

  Janet

  26 Feb 2010 | 12:17 pm

  Cathy Taylor moderated this panel at OMMA Social in San Francisco a bit ago and I found myself in a discussion with Michael Lazerow about which is more useful to a brand- “a million followers without any idea of what you’re going to do with them” or a “kick ass strategy with zero”? Michael says “I’m of the opinion that having a million followers and fans with no idea of what you’re going to do with them in the future is the single best thing you can do from a marketing perspective….Would you rather have a million people on your email list…

• Bite Sized Social Media for Nonprofits

  Janet

  23 Feb 2010 | 8:45 am

  I’m working on a new project and if you work with nonprofits and social media I’m asking for your help. I was talking with my wonderful publisher Mitchell Levy about how much I like working with nonprofits and the challenges nonprofits face in getting on board with social media and understanding how it all comes together–much less getting their management on board. Nonprofits can benefit so much from this stuff, but adoption and a real understanding of what to do can be a challenge. Being a publisher, Mitchell thought I should write a book and he’s right. But I’m not…

• 

  SocialTimes.com

• Game Review: More “City” and Less “Social” In Playdom’s Social City

  Neil Vidyarthi

  16 Mar 2010 | 11:13 am

  Just as farming games like (Lil) Green Patch, Farm Town and Farmville once surged in popularity, the city-building genre is rapidly gaining players.  Playdom’s new Social City has gained 5,600,000 users in 2 weeks and is an excellent example of a city building game; it has great graphics, a pleasant interface and some great social features.  On the other hand, the game seems to be more about the “City” and less about the “Social”.  We review the game below. Title: Social City Genre: City Building Game Developer: Playdom Game Publisher: Playdom Released: March…

• GDC & FGS 2010: Career Opportunities In Social Gaming

  Raj Dash

  16 Mar 2010 | 10:36 am

  With Flash Gaming Summit (FGS) and Game Developers Conference 2010 (GDC) now over, we’d like to take the opportunity to reflect on some of the key takeaways. One of the most discussed areas was career opportunities in the gaming industry, particularly in the area of social gaming. Here’s a few of the opportunities gleaned from various sessions, panels and interviews last week. Entrepreneurial Track. If you want a career in social gaming, how much experience do you need? According to the panel of speakers of “Why Are Gaming Veterans Flocking to Social Gaming?” at GDC…

• Farmville Meets Texas Hold ‘Em In Zynga’s New Poker Blitz

  Neil Vidyarthi

  16 Mar 2010 | 9:37 am

  Zynga just launched their newest title, Poker Blitz for Facebook, and from our early looks it seems to be Texas Hold ‘Em meets Farmville.  The game is a simplified version of texas hold’ em poker with cutesy graphics and powerups that affect gameplay.  The game seems to be inviting new demographics to enjoy the game of poker, and my first impressions say that they’ve succeeded. The game starts with a great tutorial, and as you play you gain levels which allow you to participate in more elements of the game.  For the early levels, you can only bet $1, and your only real…

• 5 Social Media Stories We Didn’t Cover Yesterday

  Raj Dash

  16 Mar 2010 | 7:44 am

  While we’re always trying to cover the latest news in the social web economy, sometimes it simply isn’t possible to get all of our stories out. That’s why once in a while we will provide a roundup of some of the more interesting social media stories from around the web. Below are some of the more intriguing stories that took place yesterday. Twitter Celebs Attract Hackers and Criminals? John Dunn of TechWorld/ PCWorld brings up a very interesting tidbit about the motivations in the recent increase in Twitter spam and phishing attacks. According to a report by Barracuda Labs…

• ICQ Is Back And It Uses Facebook and Twitter

  Neil Vidyarthi

  15 Mar 2010 | 9:44 am

  Do you remember ICQ (”I Seek You”)? It was one of the first desktop download chat applications and was sold to AOL for $400 million in 1998. Strangely, it fell off the map after the acquisition, but has since resurfaced as a type of community-based social network that leverages Facebook and Twitter. We take a look below. ICQ has expanded its range to include a community based web page that allows you to log in, view your friends information, chat and customize your profile. For all intents and purpose, it is a new social network. That said, the latest version of the desktop ICQ…

• 

  Webware.com

• Is Google Wave getting Buzzed?

  Tom Krazit

  16 Mar 2010 | 4:00 am

  In 2009, Google Wave was Google's vision of the future of communication. With the debut of Google Buzz in February, that vision has competition. Originally posted at Relevant Results

• Opera Mini 5, Opera Mobile 10 graduate to stable

  Jessica Dolcourt

  15 Mar 2010 | 11:00 pm

  Operas mobile Web browsers shed their beta status and stand in as the new stable versions. Originally posted at The Download Blog

• Is Twitter aiming at Facebook Connect?

  Caroline McCarthy

  15 Mar 2010 | 1:59 pm

  With its @Anywhere technology launched as part of SXSWi, Twitter is trying to make its presence spread even further across the Web. Originally posted at The Social

• Chrome to ditch unique ID, sort of

  Seth Rosenblatt

  15 Mar 2010 | 1:01 pm

  It's mostly sizzle and not a lot of steak, but Google plans to remove the unique ID that had been annoying data privacy advocates after the first update check. Originally posted at The Download Blog

• Twitter CEO unveils '@Anywhere' platform

  Caroline McCarthy

  15 Mar 2010 | 12:41 pm

  The company's big announcement at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival was its new way to integrate Twitter data into partner sites. Originally posted at The Social

• 

  BIZ GROWTH NEWS

• 7 ideas for developing your business blog content plan

  Krishna De

  15 Mar 2010 | 7:45 am

  How do I get inspiration for my business blog so that I know what kind of articles, videos or podcasts to post is a question I am often asked. One of the great ways is to read other peoples business blogs – and not always blogs in your own business niche as you can be inspired to develop content learning from others. So here are seven ideas that might help you develop a content strategy for your business blog: 1. Get ideas from your RSS feeds – remember to model not copy articles respecting the copyright of the original site where the content is posted and always give attribution…

• John Demartini in Dublin: 5 Free Tickets for 10 March 2010 Event

  Krishna De

  10 Mar 2010 | 12:43 am

  Yikes I almost forgot to let you know that I have kindly been offered 5 free tickets for an event with author and star of The Secret John Demartini. His event is called ‘Bringing Balance to Life and Purpose to Work’. This is short notice so please leave a message for me over on my Facebook Page and I’ll be delighted to give the first 5 people who respond the ticket. Please make sure that you let me know your email address so I can connect you to the event organisers. The Event takes place in the D4 Ballsbridge Inn (Former Jurys Hotel, Ballsbridge) on Wednesday 10 March at…

• Lottery.ie iPhone App Review: In conversation with Deirdre Waldon of Agency.com

  Krishna De

  24 Feb 2010 | 2:38 pm

  Today I was at a conference hosted by The Brain Food Store where there were some great speakers – check the Twitter hash tag for the conversations and insights shared by people at the conference – #bfs10. As usual however, one of the great things about attending conferences is the opportunity to meet interesting people and one of the people I connected with today was Deirdre Waldon of Agency.com. In our conversation I discovered that their agency had developed the iPhone App for the National Lottery in Ireland and I also learned that they had had a significant numbers of downloads…

• Forum on Public Procurement Promoting Recovery Through Public Procurement: Attend the conference at no cost

  Krishna De

  22 Feb 2010 | 10:46 pm

  I have just received an invitation to a conference that might be of interest to you if you want to tender to the public sector in Ireland. I can not attend the conference but read on if you want to know how you could receive my ticket to attend at no cost – the value of the ticket is €375 plus vat. The Forum on Public Procurement, which represents many Irish public sector buyers and suppliers, proposes to open a debate on how small but significant changes in the public procurement process can assist in restoring economic confidence, generate economic activity and offer innovative…

• Your Country Your Call and Ballygowan Pink: 360 integrated marketing programmes and blogger outreach in Ireland

  Krishna De

  19 Feb 2010 | 5:54 am

  This last week there have been a a couple of notable business projects reaching out to connect with bloggers and using new media as part of an integrated campaign of 360 marketing that have caught my attention. REVIEW OF YOUR COUNTRY YOUR CALL ‘Your Country Your Call’ is a new project and is a countrywide competition to identify and reward two proposals that, when implemented, they can help to secure job creation and a prosperous future for Ireland. There will be two competition winners and the winning proposers will each receive a cash prize of €100,000. Both winning proposals will…

• 

  Techipedia | Tamar Weinberg

• Advice for a New Internet Marketer (or How to Spot Internet Marketing Snake Oil)

  Tamar Weinberg

  10 Mar 2010 | 5:23 am

  I met her during my freshman year of college, though she was two years my senior. We’d exchange greetings when we passed in the dormitory hallways. Nine years later, we met again when we were assigned to the same tables at a local luncheon. She told me she worked in Internet Marketing, which I was quite excited to hear given that there was no marketing discipline taught at all in our alma mater. We started talking about the last few years and our dreams for the years ahead. We then got into the nitty gritty of business. With Internet Marketing, there are many ways to go, from affiliate…

• How a Small New York City Hotel Put Itself on the Map through Social Media

  Tamar Weinberg

  4 Mar 2010 | 5:39 am

  Did you know that New York City offers more opportunities than the standard tourist attractions? Did you know that there are other hotels beyond the Hyatts, the Hiltons, the Omnis, the Sheratons, and the Marriotts of the world in NYC? I know when my parents come to NYC, they go to what’s familiar. When you go to a conference in Manhattan, you probably seek out hotels that you’ve also heard of. Face it, it’s a competitive landscape out there, especially for tourists who flock to familiar names but perhaps do not realize that there are other options in the city. How does one…

• 11 Characteristics of Highly Influential Blog(ger)s

  Tamar Weinberg

  23 Feb 2010 | 5:20 am

  A few weeks ago, I posted about the seven characteristics of highly effective online video. Taking this theme a little further, I decided to branch out into the blogosphere, but using the number seven this time around was a tad too limiting. There are at least ten characteristics off the top of my head that make blogs and bloggers successful. These characteristics give the blogs mentioned below fame, fortune, and loyal followings. Want to build your blog and following? Here are some key ideas and takeways — as well as inspirational bloggers you might want to follow — who can help…

• Why You Should Have a Secondary Twitter Account

  Tamar Weinberg

  16 Feb 2010 | 5:47 am

  As we know, Twitter is an incredibly powerful platform and enables businesses and individuals to build strong relationships with customers and peers. I, too, find that Twitter has been incredibly powerful for me to connect with real life colleagues, readers of Techipedia, family, and everyone in between. I consider my current @tamar network, though, either quite knowledgeable or clueless and inactive (as in the case of my family — I still love them but they’re not the target audience for my Twitter account, which is rather social-media focused). I’m not sure there’s…

• Blogging Etiquette in the Face of a PR Pitch: What Miss Blogging Manners Would Do

  Tamar Weinberg

  10 Feb 2010 | 5:56 am

  As a blogger, I’m sure you receive a fair number of emails pitching you with products. As someone who does public relations for companies, I’m sure you carefully pick your bloggers for the pitch. We both have difficult jobs. Bloggers have to weed out the crap and PR pros need to find the right people for the job. The job of someone who does blogger outreach can be difficult. They’re tasked with contacting bloggers about different initiatives, sending out story ideas and “press releases” (hopefully with a social component, since those are preferred by many…

• 

  Stay N' Alive

• Twitter Launches Facebook Connect Competitor, @Anywhere

  Jesse Stay

  15 Mar 2010 | 12:49 pm

  I’ve long talked about the MVC model of the Building Block web.  Data Repositories like Amazon Simple Storage, Facebook Data Store, Google Data, and others comprise the Model of this new platform.  APIs like the Twitter API, the Facebook server-side APIs, or other REST-type APIs compose the Controllers of this web.  Then you have the View – something pretty much only Facebook and OpenSocial/Google Friend Connect have covered thus far.  The View enables developers to easily integrate and access code from a user’s Client, the web browser.  Today Twitter added their entry…

• I’ve Been a Little Rough on Google Lately

  Jesse Stay

  13 Mar 2010 | 6:37 pm

  For having posted just less than 1,000 posts, this blog has gotten a lot of attention in just the last one or two years.  It used to be when I posted something I would get few comments (I still wish I had more), little traffic, and I knew it was only going to perhaps a few hundred eyes at most in an RSS Reader somewhere.  But it took off.  I’m not saying this to gloat, and I accept that I’m nowhere near a TechCrunch or a Mashable in terms of readers or traffic, but I’ve quickly learned that some times when I say things here it seems to have a lot of influence. Some times…

• BoomStartup Brings TechStars-like Seed-Capital and Mentoring Program to Utah

  Jesse Stay

  12 Mar 2010 | 12:15 pm

  I’ve talked often about Utah’s tech scene.  While it doesn’t always get the publicity it deserves, there is an incredible booming tech scene happening here in the Salt Lake City area right now.  Just last Wednesday I attended a Launchup event, where about 100+ entrepreneurs, investors, and bloggers all conjoined in this monthly meeting to hear 3 other startups have their claim to fame.  Kynetx, Simler, and iActionable were all given advice and free help from those 100+ peers hoping for them to succeed.  With a very tight-knit environment, coworking spaces like BetaLoft…

• Brazen Careerist Launches Site for Job Seekers That Gen-Y-ers Can Actually Enjoy

  Jesse Stay

  11 Mar 2010 | 2:35 am

  Generation Y, those that grew up with the web and many of which probably know of no life without it, is prime target for those looking for fresh blood in the Job Marketplace.  It is this generation that is just entering the marketplace, and which Employer after Employer is fighting to gain access to.  These are the founders of Facebook, the latest entries to the Google workforce, and the future of Microsoft.  These are those that will shape the ideas of our future.  Just recently, Brazen Careerist, a site targeted towards Job Seekers, became one of the first to jump at this market by…

• Please Do Twitter a Favor and Join SocialToo

  Jesse Stay

  8 Mar 2010 | 3:19 pm

  Today we announced on the SocialToo blog that we’ve enabled our phishing protection for all 60,000+ SocialToo users (and many, many more to come). This project means a lot to me, as it means the more people that use it, the fewer phishing DMs will be received, links won’t be clicked, passwords won’t be shared, and accounts won’t be compromised. The more I can help prevent this from happening, I think the better for the web in general. In total, SocialToo has blocked near 200,000 total spam DMs sent to our users, and over 25,000 of those were malicious, phishing, and…

• 

  Social Media Mom

• Modest Mama - Nurturing in an Overly Effectionate Society

  morahmommy

  16 Mar 2010 | 9:30 am

  Textile modesty is not an unveiled topic for American families.  Even before I was a mother, I was wary of celebrity ‘fashion‘ and its effect on the general populace, especially children.  I think most parents would agree to the distasteful way some eight-year old girls wear ‘hottie’ across their bottoms or that ten-year-old boys have been seen wearing shirts with the ‘Playboy’ logo, but there seems to be distinct divide among parents on the topic of sensuality and the human body. Credit. I was not raised with physical modesty, though I practice it…

• Rob Me, Pretty Please

  MrsCohen

  11 Mar 2010 | 6:56 am

  (Credit) Please Rob Me is the name of the site, and they literally list all vacant homes via Twitter and FourSquare updates.  People actually want you to know that they are not home – a pretty scary thought, especially with the open nature of the social web. This sweet website has undertaken the responsibility of making people more aware of what they are doing.  And now they are ready to take it to the next level.  PleaseRobMe.com is offering their website to a professional organization that specializes in online privacy awareness, issues, and solutions. Burglars are now tapping into…

• 5 Tips For How NOT To Run A Social Media Contest

  ryan

  8 Mar 2010 | 8:06 am

  (Credit) We all fall on our faces sometimes.  Sometimes it hurts real bad. But it’s those failed experiences that teach us the lessons we need to learn to become better. Recently I had one of those major FAILs.  I helped run a social media contest for a new site called The Trendy Purse where the winner would get a $500 handbag of her choosing.  Sounds enticing, right? Well, the contest totally flopped.  I think we got a grand total of 6 submissions.  Certainly not the 100 submissions we were aiming for.  The good news is that we learned some important lessons for the next…

• The Selfish Balancing Act

  MrsCohen

  4 Mar 2010 | 8:08 am

  (Credit) I recently came upon a blog with a substantial amount of video posts, and it made me think -  am I the only sucker that actually watched the videos all the way through? I can’t say the video was boring.  It flowed, she can actually express herself verbally, and seems to be a funny person.  The content was another story.  She calls herself ‘Selfish Mom,’ and I must commend her on such honesty, brutal, not all of us are capable of that. So, how do we determine what is selfish? Do we think twice before we do anything? I know I don’t.  I also know that I need…

• Comic Relief - Children's Videos At the Tip of Your Fingers

  morahmommy

  1 Mar 2010 | 10:52 am

  As with radio, and then television, and several social networking sites, youtube.com is just too open-ended for parents not to be concerned when their children use the site.  In fact, Youtube recently made a mandate on their site that only viewers over the age of 13 were welcome. Credit. In the mornings, when my coffee hasn’t yet kicked in, but my son is hungry for breakfast, I often Youtube children’s videos for him to watch in his highchair as I serve him breakfast.  At nine month’s old, I’m not concerned that he could chose the SNL 10 year Anniversary version of…

• 

  Quick Online Tips

• Download Internet Explorer 9 Platform Preview: Test IE9 Now

  QuickOnlineTips

  16 Mar 2010 | 10:21 am

  Want to test drive Microsoft IE9 and see the new features in the next version. You can download Internet Explorer 9 Platform Preview right now and play with the next generation browser features. Go to the IE9 Test drive area and you can demo several modern features Speed Demos – Take full advantage of your hardware with background compiled JavaScript HTML5 Demos – Deliver rich interoperability with the next generation of Web standards Graphics Demos – Create next-generation experiences with GPU-powered HTML5 graphics Why is it called platform preview? Internet Explorer…

• Buy IPL Club Lounge VIP Tickets: Get IPL Nights Party Invites

  QuickOnlineTips

  16 Mar 2010 | 5:21 am

  The best way to enjoy IPL 2010 cricket matches is to buy DLF IPL Club Lounge package tickets for a VIP experience, which includes post match IPL Night party invites which lets you meet up with top celebrities and dine with them. The VIP Club Lounge package gets you the Match Ticket which  includes match pass, hospitality pass, customized food and beverage menu, match day program / brochure. But what is unique here is you get anOfficial Post Match Party ‘IPL Nights’ invite – This lets you Wine and Dine with cricket celebrities and other celebrity guests. It also includes invite to…

• Facebook Beats Google: Now Most Visited Website in US

  QuickOnlineTips

  16 Mar 2010 | 4:46 am

  You thought no one could beat Google in terms of traffic. Facebook has topped Google yet again to become the most visited website for the week in the US! Hitwise says “Facebook.com recently reached the #1 ranking on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and New Year’s Day as well as the weekend of March 6th and 7th.” If you see the merging graphs, it seems clear Facebook traffic has clearly overtaken Google traffic in the US and is set to rise further. Learn Google Website Optimizer at Seminars for Success Google Website Optimizer Workout Contest Winners Google Analytics Tracks Website…

• Play IPL T20 Fever: Official IPL 2010 Facebook Cricket Game

  QuickOnlineTips

  16 Mar 2010 | 4:13 am

  Have you played the IPL 2010 Cricket Facebook game? Now visit IPL T20 Fever by Indiagames, labeled the official game of the Indian Premier League and get a realistic, entertaining experience of IPL T20 cricket online now. Of course you need a Facebook account to get started and then you can create your own DLF IPL T20 Team by selecting your facebook friends as a part of your team. You can also buy professional cricket players to make your team more powerful and enjoy the IPL experience! You can submit your High score and win cool prizes every week (Grand winner gets an Apple iPad!) This video…

• Godrej GoJiyo: SecondLife Comes to India

  QuickOnlineTips

  16 Mar 2010 | 3:20 am

  Godrej will soon launch GoJiyo, which seems like a SecondLife version for India. Go Jiyo features interesting promos which will introduce people to “a world where flying, teleportation and time travel are routine”. Here is the promo video for GoJiyo going live now A countdown on the site shows Go Jiyo will launch in about 5 days. How Godrej plans to integrate their brand products with social media tools and GoJiyo will be interesting. Will GoJiyo replace SecondLife as prefered virtual destination for the Indian youth? … wait for a few more days to find out. See more videos…

• 

  Take A Peck

• Interview With AthletixNation CEO Davyeon Ross

  Jason

  15 Mar 2010 | 3:50 pm

  AthletixNation is a sports content platform that delivers Division I college video highlights and sports applications to websites and mobile devices. They essentially make it easy for websites and media companies to add highlights and other interesting sports applications to their sites, to engage fans, drive traffic and monetize their content via sponsorships and advertising. I met their President/CEO, Davyeon Ross, last March at the 2009 IEG Sponsorship Conference. I had a great time chatting with him and we have stayed in touch since then. I think the AthletixNation platform is very…

• 3 Reasons I’m Moving to Arlington/DC

  Jason

  2 Mar 2010 | 2:37 pm

  On Saturday, I’ll be moving to the Arlington/DC area. If we’ve spoken in the last few months, you already know this. But if not, now you know. I’ve been in Raleigh, NC my entire life (minus college at UNC/Chapel Hill and studying abroad in Italy for a summer). I’m one of the few people I know who were born here and are still living here. Raleigh is an awesome place to live. I love the city, the people and being around three hours away from the beach and the mountains. I’ve been fortunate to meet and know some awesome people, watch a ton of UNC football and…

• Video Interviews from Social Fresh Tampa

  Jason

  10 Feb 2010 | 1:43 pm

  On Monday, I attended Social Fresh Tampa, a social media conference that brought marketers together to discuss the business applications of social media. The conference itself was awesome, but just getting to chat with some really smart folks between sessions and at night was probably even more valuable. If you’d like to see my notes from each panel, you can see them here. While the event and speakers focused on more than just sports, I did get some interesting sports insights. For example, I learned that MLB teams don’t have full control over their Facebook pages. The league can…

• Interesting Mashups of Twitter and Sports

  Jason

  2 Feb 2010 | 7:47 pm

  I found two excellent examples of how companies are using Twitter for specific initiatives to add value to sports fans’ experiences of events. I wanted to share them with you and would love to hear what you think. Sony Ericcson Twitter Cup The Sony Ericcson Twitter Cup is a really interesting mashup of Twitter and the World Cup. It’s a well-known fact that sports fans like to show pride for their teams, and like to think that they have more pride/support than fans of other teams. And soccer fans are some of the most passionate fans in the world. Sony Ericcson has created the…

• 2010 UF Sports Law Symposium

  Jason

  17 Jan 2010 | 5:31 am

  It’s been awhile since I’ve written about any sports events, but I wanted to share this one on behalf of my friend Darren Heitner. On January 29 sports agents, litigators, salary cap analyst and sports law students will meet at the University of Florida Levin College of Law for the 2010 UF Sports Law Symposium. The 2010 UF Sports Law Symposium, “Discussion: Bargaining Collectively,” presented by UF’s Entertainment & Sports Law Society, will bring together sports law experts and representatives from the National Football League, National Basketball Association and Major…

• 

  PR-Squared

• Rip-Snortin’ Rodeo-Rider #CowboyTodd at SXSW: Update

  Todd Defren

  15 Mar 2010 | 7:58 am

  I can’t say I was surprised to see #CowboyTodd have a better time at SXSW than I would have had I gone. After a brief scare in which the gunslinger was misplaced by the deliveryman, causing him to miss out on the shenanigans at the Funnel Cake Fandango, the Cowboy proved himself to be a “stand-up” guy for the rest of the event. The fella knows how to party.  Here’s a sampling of the fun… Here’s #CowboyTodd making his mark with the ladies… Here’s the Carboard Cowboy getting into trouble with David Armano… … And crashing Chris Brogan’s speaking gig — with a little…

• How Cable News Works

  Todd Defren

  12 Mar 2010 | 5:55 am

  The inimitable Onion News Network reveals just how hard it is to fill 24-hours worth of stuff (contains some NSFW language): This topic strikes home for me.  It was literally the subject of my very first blog post at PR-Squared, about 6 years ago!  It was also covered recently — briefly but pointedly — by Matthew Yglesias of ThinkProgress and Kevin Jones of Mother Jones Magazine.  Here’s Drum: Hardly anyone watches cable news. Even in prime time, Fox has a couple million viewers — that’s about 1% of American adults — and the other (cable news) operations have a…

• SXSW’s Biggest Star: “Cowboy Todd”

  Todd Defren

  11 Mar 2010 | 5:44 am

  While I can’t be at SXSW in-person this year, I’m sending a proxy.  Literally. If you are headed to Austin, allow me to introduce you to … “Cowboy Todd.” Inspired and designed by my friend David Alston and his crew at Radian6, this 6–foot tall cut-out will be making the rounds of the party circuit, “Flat Stanley”-style. David’s committed to taking Cowboy Todd to the AllHat2 event, Jason Falls promisesto have Cowboy Todd serve you a funnel cake at his Funnel Cake Fandangoand my pals Aaron Strout, C.C. Chapman, Richard Binhammer, and Kyle Flaherty have committed to serve as…

• Social Media in Corporations: Pros & Cons of Organizational Models

  Todd Defren

  10 Mar 2010 | 5:30 am

  I dove into my “Big Thinking” folder recently and emerged with a slide from the “Social Media Trends for 2010” deck created by Jeremiah Owyang of the Altimeter Group, discussing organizational models for corporate adoption of Social Media. Who is in control of this Social Media stuff?  What are the best practices? These questions come up a lot, particularly amongst large brands. Imagine: you have THOUSANDS of employees, who are not asking for your so-called permission to hang out on Facebook or Twitter; who may be blogging (with or without full transparency); who are likely…

• SHIFT Wins Quiznos – “MMMM…Toasty!”

  Todd Defren

  9 Mar 2010 | 5:34 am

  Although the work’s already started, it’s only now that I can tell ya’ll about a recent Big Win for the SHIFT team. As noted in a recent PRWeek article (sub. req’d), SHIFT was recently named as the Consumer Agency of Record for Quiznos. We’ll be handling both consumer PR and Social Media assignments for this well-known, edgy brand. We’re delighted by this hard-won victory.  The Consumer AOR piece is significant to us: while Quiznos joins other large brands like Bing, J&J and Wells Fargo on the SHIFT roster, these mega brands tend to retain us for distinct…

• 

  that canadian girl

• SXSWi: Connecting Community Managers

  Vero

  14 Mar 2010 | 1:46 pm

  Do you work as community manager? Fancy meeting a few others who work on the front line representing their company? After meeting a few other company bloggers, customer care people and other community folks at South by SouthWest this week, we thought we’d arrange a little informal gathering before the week ends. It’ll give community managers who work for companies, big and small, a chance to meet others who play that role. Join us (Ros Hodgekiss, Kelly Rusk and myself) on Tuesday 16th March at 3:30pm at Iron Cactus on 6th Street for a drink and a chat. Hope you’ll join us…

• South by SouthWest Interactive: Take 3

  Vero

  10 Mar 2010 | 8:30 pm

  It’s Wednesday night. Well, no. It’s Thursday morning 4:30am in my head & body. But it’s Wednesday night in Austin, Texas. I’m at South by SouthWest Interactive for the third year running, having arrived, via far too many security gates and angry Customs people, a couple of hours ago. Tomorrow should be fairly laid back, but Friday, everything kicks into high gear for 5 days of intense conference presentations and panels, evening parties and non-stop meeting new people and seeing old friends. As old Ottawa friend and Austin roommate Kelly suggests, no need to…

• My new pal Alfred: Mac quicklaunch application

  Vero

  3 Mar 2010 | 5:21 am

  The past few days have been just a bit of a mad ride, following the launch of our Mac quicklaunch application, called Alfred, which garnered +2500 users in its first 48 hours. We created the Alfred App to fill our own need: A quicklaunch tool that can search your local computer as well as the web, that is fast, looks good and, most importantly, doesn’t chew through memory like a hungry hyena. After some intense development weeks, we launched it on Sunday night, while watching the Canada-USA Olympics hockey final (wooh!). With the intention of sharing it with a few friends for a…

• Sainsbury’s self-checkouts fail on so many level

  Vero

  27 Feb 2010 | 1:36 pm

  Not so long ago, having had a pretty good day at work, we managed to leave the office at a reasonable hour. We popped down to Sainsbury’s to quickly pick up food for a few days. Before we knew it, our shopping trolley was full! When it came to pay, the very few cashiers were busy. A smiley young staff waved us over to the self-checkouts. Hesitating, we pointed at our full trolly, but she laughed and said “I’ll be there to help!” Sure you will… It was an experience, to say the least. We were held hostage by the constantly unhappy self-checkout, which seemed to be…

• Facebook Fan Pages: Redirect the Spotlight Onto Passions

  Vero

  17 Jan 2010 | 8:14 am

  Recently, I seem to have had this conversation time and time again with businesses, individuals and consultants who are beginning to take Facebook seriously as a place to peddle their wares, so I thought I’d immortalise it here for future reference. Facebook started as a way to network students of a single college together, with a firmly teen-to-early-20’s audience. In recent years, my mom (and probably yours too) has joined and the average age of Facebook user is on a steady increase. It can no longer be dismissed as “kids’ stuff” by businesses who have a direct…

• 

  The Responsible Marketing Blog

• Is it time to rethink your mission statement?

  Patrick Byers

  11 Mar 2010 | 11:22 am

  We’ve reviewed a lot of Mission Statements over the years—it’s one of the ingredients we consider when we’re developing a Positioning Statement. Most Mission Statements I’ve seen have been filled with big words but left me asking “where’s the mission?” Dan Heath, co-author of Made to Stick, offers up why bad Mission Statements happen to good companies in the following video: You can also check out the associated article, How to Write a Mission Statement that Doesn’t Suck. Take a look at your Mission Statement. Is it something you can rally…

• The Pepsi vs. Coke social good smackdown

  Patrick Byers

  4 Mar 2010 | 10:17 pm

  When Coke and Pepsi start being judged by their social responsibility as much as their taste (and their ads), you’ll know Responsible Marketing has arrived, right? Well, that time has come. The Huffington Post recently ran an online poll pitting Pepsi’s Refresh Project Vs. Coke’s Live Positively campaigns. The associated article does a great job laying out the differences between the campaigns, then left it up to readers to choose which campaign they preferred. For marketers wanting to reach the younger generation, this makes sense: This “conscious capitalism”…

• On Facebook, racial profiling and the mob

  Patrick Byers

  3 Mar 2010 | 9:37 pm

  If you’re on Facebook (and who isn’t) you’ve probably noticed the “Suggestions” section on the right side of your feed. Basically, the wizards behind the curtain have developed a way to recommend fan pages based on similar characteristics. A few examples will make how it works pretty obvious: Looks pretty good, eh? Well, here’s a headscratcher: Which dots are being connected to suggest someone that’s a fan of Chase Community Giving might possibly have an interest in Mafia Wars? Is JP Morgan Chase a backer of Zynga or just connected to the mob?

• Interns Wanted: Dead or Alive

  Patrick Byers

  20 Jan 2010 | 4:42 pm

  This is a real picture of a former Outsource Marketing intern. No, he’s not dead. He’s drunk. Okay, we’d prefer our interns alive—and sober. Besides, dead interns would be irresponsible, wouldn’t get much done and would start to smell after awhile. Come to think of it, same goes for drunk interns. Seriously though, if you or someone you know is interested in learning about doing marketing responsibly, here are the gory details: PositionMarketing Internship (Unpaid) SchedulePart-time, approx.15-20 hrs/weekschedule flexible but regular—hours must be during…

• Don’t cut corners on creativity

  Patrick Byers

  17 Jan 2010 | 11:03 pm

  I’ve said it a million times: It takes creativity to break through the clutter. Here’s an ad that does just that: View on YouTube 2009 was rough year, and a lot of companies have dramatically cut their marketing budgets. A lot of brand advertising budget has been moved to sales promotion. You gotta do what you gotta do. But whatever you do, don’t cut corners on creativity. Bland and boring never sells. Subscribe to this feed Via illegaladvertising.com

• 

  Web Strategy by Jeremiah

• Altimeter Report: The 18 Use Cases of Social CRM, The New Rules of Relationship Management

  jeremiah_owyang

  5 Mar 2010 | 10:02 am

  18 Use Cases That Show Business How To Finally Put Customers First Social and CRM: How Companies Will Manage Their Social Relationships Over the last six months, I’ve been working closely with Ray Wang who is well known in the CRM space as an expert.  Coupled with my focus on social technologies we did a deep dive on how our worlds are colliding into the trend to Social CRM.  In our opening webinar when we announced our joining of the firm, we made it clear we’re looking at the holistic business, across multiple business departments –not silos or roles. Companies are unable to scale…

• Roadmap: Make Your Corporate Websites Relevant by Integrating Facebook, Google, MySpace, LinkedIn, or Twitter

  jeremiah_owyang

  1 Mar 2010 | 7:23 am

  Finally, your corporate website can be relevant again Over the past few weeks, I’ve been conducting research to measure how different social networks allow for integration with corporate websites and their assets. Over 3 years ago, I wrote a piece on how corporate websites are becoming irrelevant, due to trusted decisions between prospects and customers taking place off the corporate site. This piece, which still gets traffic has been translated into over a dozen languages –the market recognizes that corporate sites can no longer operate as silos when customers have left.

• A Sense of Scale: Social Networking By The Numbers (Video)

  jeremiah_owyang

  28 Feb 2010 | 1:04 pm

  JESS3 / The State of The Internet from Jesse Thomas on Vimeo. Numbers are powerful, but only if they provide context to the changes in our life. This above embedded video (if you don’t see it, click here to the blog post) has been created by agency Jess3 and was embedded on Technorati’s blog. They give a comparison of the sheer volume of content created on email systems and social networks, which I’ve stated in the past are going to end up being intertwined. For the most part these stats are accurate, but being one who tracks them carefully, I know that the FB stats are…

• Developing a Social Strategy: Slides and Webinar Recording –Share It

  jeremiah_owyang

  25 Feb 2010 | 7:05 pm

  Yesterday, we had the second in a three part webinar series about social strategy. The first, which you should listen to, focuses on understanding customers though socialgraphics. The following slides and recorded webinar (a bit faint, so be sure turn it up) are intended to be the foundation for companies of all sizes to develop a strategy based on business objectives –not the latest technology. We believe in Open Research and encourage our knowledge to become the foundation for growth of ideas, and encourage you to learn, share on your blog, and put into educational materials. Those…

• People on the Move in the Social Media Industry: Feb 24, 2010

  jeremiah_owyang

  24 Feb 2010 | 4:31 am

  Lots of changes, in particular, many of my former colleagues from the Forrester Research interactive marketing and marketing leadership teams that I used to work closely with have moved on. Forrester hires top minds, so when I run across an alum, it’s like a reunion of graduating class at a university. There’s a strong camaraderie stemming from common way of thinking, writing, and approaching tough problems.   Forrester attracts and breeds excellent thinkers, and I wish my former colleagues best of luck as they return to the field. In an effort to recognize the changes in the…

• 

  Jon Burg's Future Visions

• being a social dad

  Jonathan Burg

  3 Mar 2010 | 8:42 am

  I love being a Dad.  I love my son expecting me to get him out of bed in the morning and then plop him down on top of my still sleeping wife.  I love my son running to me when he is scared and trying to win my affection by acting like a goofball.  I love our little rituals, like playing Billy Joel on the piano with my right hand on octave higher so he can sit on my lap.  And by the way, he is probably the only 2 year old that can sing Matisyahu's One Day.There is a lot of love about being a Dad.But to be honest, I'm never quite sure how much of this is appropriate to share with the…

• I'll take "one" please

  Jonathan Burg

  1 Mar 2010 | 2:43 pm

  Guy drives up to a McDonalds drive-through and says, "I'll take one."  Then he pulls around to the other side, and is handed a coffee.  This happens night after night.  Eventually he decides that this is his last time going to Mickey Ds.  Every time he asks for a burger he gets a coffee!As ridiculous as this sounds, this is more or less how many, many brands, consultants and agencies are approaching social.  Most social projects (RFPs etc) looks pretty similar.  Give me a Facebook/Twitter/Blog/Community strategy.  Give me a proposal for…

• you might be a social extortionist if

  Jonathan Burg

  23 Feb 2010 | 11:59 am

  Yesterday I wrote a post on extortionist social influencers.  Some of the commenters (including my wife) asked where I draw the line.  Because to be honest, I have pulled rank and mentioned this blog in dealing with poor customer service representatives.  So where is the line?  At what point does a mention of influence become extortion?  Honestly, I'm not totally sure.  But I would like to propose the following guidelines.  I would LOVE to get your thoughts and feedback.You might be a social extortionist if: You threaten to use your audience in order to gain unfair or super-standard…

• when influencers become extortionists

  Jonathan Burg

  22 Feb 2010 | 5:51 pm

  Note: All of the actions below have occurred in real life.  I have read the complete transcripts and email records.Dear Social Extortionists,By now, many smart brands are familiar with the game you play.  You call and you threaten.  You harass and then you post.  On the one hand you claim to be "the voice of the customer" while on the other you expect preferential treatment because you're supposedly more important.  So all pigs are created equal but some pigs are more equal than othersDo you think you're special?  Do you think you're gifted?  Do you think your 1K+ followers on…

• wishes and dreams : google's big social play beyond Buzz

  Jonathan Burg

  17 Feb 2010 | 8:34 am

  Buzz isn't the be all and end all.  It's a product, a tool in Google's growing tool belt.  At some point these tools are going to come together to create something fantastic.Below are three utilities that will bring Google's personal and social platforms to a new level. Identity - I want to see login with Google buttons everywhere.  Tight integration into existing Google tools like chat, gmail, voice and buzz.  I want to see Facebook Connect on steroids. Portability/API - I already have conversations on Twitter.  I want to see Seemic and TweetDeck with full Buzz integration.  I want to…

• 

  Crenk

• Palm Launches New Ad Campaign That Needs To Drive More Sales

  Steven Finch

  16 Mar 2010 | 12:26 pm

  Palm has finally launch an ad campaign that looks professional and a less creepy. Palm really need this new ad campaign to give sales a little boost, because they are quickly losing marketshare to the likes of Apple and RIM. Let us know what you think of the ad. Microsoft’s New Bing TV Advertisement for the UK First TV Advertisement for Bing.com from Microsoft Apple iPad Commercial Debuts During Oscars Google TV Ad: Tiger Woods Are You Feeling Lucky? Toshiba Release 3D TV SuperComputer

• How Do I Unfriend Someone on Faceboook?

  Steven Finch

  16 Mar 2010 | 10:26 am

  There are a lot of reasons why someone might want to unfriend someone on Facebook. Here is a step by step guide on how to unfriend someone on Facebook. First, know their name. Then type it into the search box: That’s found her. Click on her name then press Return to make the search… Now scroll down and look on the left side of their profile page. Some ways down you’ll see a bunch of useful options: Click on “Remove from Friends” and you’ll see a confirmation box: Yup, sorry, you’re off the list. Confirm with “Remove from Friends” and…

• AnalyzePal: Free Analytics Tool For PayPal

  Steven Finch

  16 Mar 2010 | 8:46 am

  AnalyzePal is a free Adobe-AIR application that provides an easy way to measure your PayPal sales, performance & customer tracking. It doesn’t require any PayPal username-pass or API information as AnalyzePal works in an offline way with the transaction logs that can be downloaded from PayPal. The application displays a snapshot of your last 3 months activities with charts or you can view the revenue for any given period. AnalyzePal is also great for browsing past transactions quickly as it works offline. Besides the free version, it has paid & more-featured versions that can…

• Microsoft MSN Video: Watch Free TV In UK Without Downloading Any Software

  Steven Finch

  16 Mar 2010 | 6:59 am

  Microsoft has just launched their new MSN video player in the UK.  The video on demand service competes directly with recently-launched SeeSaw in offering a range of commercial TV shows for viewers to watch for free in their browser. The service is monetised using 30-second preroll ads. Unlike SeeSaw, Microsoft appears to have done deals with independent TV production companies as opposed to TV stations. As a result, MSN Video Player can’t claim to have a full range of Channel 4 or 5 shows, but what it does have is certainly presented in a much more appealing way than SeeSaw.

• Vimeo Launches Video Stats Suite

  Steven Finch

  16 Mar 2010 | 6:53 am

  Vimeo is one of the major players in the online consumer video space. Vimeo has just recently rolled out a suite of advanced analytics features dubbed Vimeo Plus Stats. Currently the new stats package is only available to Vimeo Plus users. With Plus Stats you can track plays, loads, finishes, comments and likes for all of the videos uploaded on your account over any time period you define. You can break down plays and loads by country, and you can see how many embed loads and plays occur at each domain — Tumblr or Facebook, for example. You can even break it down by high definition and…

• 

  Confessions of an eBiz Junkie

• Where You @?

  Len Devanna

  15 Mar 2010 | 1:59 pm

  Greetings from my first visit to SxSW. Talk about a whirlwind of activities, conversations and provocative technology. I'll definitely be back. As impressive as the collective intelligence assembled for the event is, the feat or actually pulling off something of this magnitude is equally incredible. Show organizers deserve considerable credit, as does the enormous army of volunteers who apparently assemble from across the globe to make the event a success out of sheer passion. A view from the SxSW Bloggers LoungeAmong the things that I'll take away is the widespread use of geo locating apps…

• It's back! The EMC World 2010 Bloggers Lounge

  Len Devanna

  1 Mar 2010 | 10:42 am

  EMC World 2010 is right around the corner. Haven't signed up to attend yet? No problem, there's still plenty of time to get in on the goods. Last years show was a blast, with music from the Gin Blossoms, piles of cool technology, a night at Universal Orlando and so much more! Just look at last years video wrap up and you'll get a sense of the whirlwind of activity during this event.This years show looks to be bigger and better than ever, and that includes the return of the Bloggers Lounge. I suspect last years blogging attendees will attest - there is no better place to relax weary feet,…

• Enterprise 2.0 - Now Comes the Hard Part

  Len Devanna

  5 Feb 2010 | 8:43 am

  When I'd first heard the term, I thought Enterprise 2.0 meant the complete transformation of the enterprise to a new, more agile entity. Rather, it references the social software that's quickly becoming commonplace in the business world.According to popular definition, I believe we've successfully deployed 'Enterprise 2.0'. Our internal community, EMC|ONE, continues to gain momentum and has become a pillar for internal collaboration at EMC. It's helped us achieve a degree of proficiency in the social web, and has helped us extend our reach outside the firewall with the EMC Community Network,…

• I'm Blogging Because I Can

  Len Devanna

  1 Feb 2010 | 9:55 am

  I'm an airline loyalist... Sticking with a carrier in the interest of accumulating miles that I never seem to use anyways. It may be time to switch tho. I'm currently over Utah at 37k feet aboard a Virgin America flight. I decided to give them a go given all of the recent press and their promise to 'make flying fun again'. So far, this has indeed been fun. Some of the perks have become the new norm. In flight satellite TV, a surplus of MP3's and on-demand content are almost expected in this day and age. But it's the availability of wifi that has me trying out a new carrier. Especially for…

• Celebrating 20 Years of Web

  Len Devanna

  19 Jan 2010 | 3:33 pm

  The latest edition of ON Magazine is a must read for anyone who's interested in the evolution of the web. It takes a refreshing look back at the history of the Web, and contains fascinating perspectives from some of the biggest names in the biz. Coincidentally, my love for the online world started exactly 20 years ago... A bit of a 'right place, right time' scenario. Of course, in 1990, there was no Web browser, per se. Usenet was all the rage and everything was completely text based. Things got really interesting when NCSA Mosaic hit the stage. At the time, I was working in a call center…

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  Chris Saad - Paying Attention

• Missed opportunities in Publishing

  Chris Saad

  21 Feb 2010 | 8:08 am

  MG Siegler over on Techcrunch yesterday wrote a story about how the AP is tweeting links to its stories. Those links, however, are not to its website. Instead those twitter links lead to Facebook copies of their stories! Here’s a snippet of his post: The AP is using their Twitter feed to tweet out their stories — nothing new there, obviously — but every single one of them links to the story on their Facebook Notes page. It’s not clear how long they’ve been doing this, but Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan noted the oddness of this, and how annoying it is, tonight. The AP…

• [Audio] ET Conversation 4: Buzz’s Mixed Focus of Content Creation and Collection

  Chris Saad

  15 Feb 2010 | 7:20 pm

  Over on EdgeTheory Conversations Louis Gray and I discuss Buzz and Google’s missed opportunity to be a pure aggregator. Head on over to the site and check it out.

• Google Buzz = FriendFeed Reborn

  Chris Saad

  9 Feb 2010 | 12:02 pm

  FriendFeed was dead, now it is re-born as Google Buzz. I’ve not been able to try the product yet, but philosophically and architecturally it seems superior to FriendFeed. Here are my observations so far: Consumption Tools Buzz is better than FriendFeed because Google is treating it as a consumption tool rather than a destination site (by placing it in Gmail rather than hosting it on a public page). FriendFeed should have always been treated this way. Some people got confused and started hosting public discussions on FriendFeed. That being said, though, I’ve long said that news…

• Facebook and the future of News

  Chris Saad

  4 Feb 2010 | 5:03 pm

  Marshall Kirkpatrick has written a thoughtful piece over on Read/Write Web entitled ‘Facebook and the future of Free Thought‘ in which he explains the hard facts about news consumption and the open subscription models that were supposed to create a more open playing field for niche voices. In it, he states that news consumption has barely changed in the last 10 years. RSS and Feed Readers drive very little traffic and most people still get their news from hand selected mainstream portals and destination sites (like MSN News and Yahoo news etc). In other words, mainstream users do…

• EdgeTheory Conversations

  Chris Saad

  24 Jan 2010 | 11:36 pm

  Louis Gray and I have been doing some recorded conversations lately. Here are the first two. Conversation 1 – Twitter Suggested User List Conversation 2 – iSlate Week: Apple’s Closed Approach in an Open World

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  Managing the Gray

• Finding Value

  C.C. Chapman

  4 Mar 2010 | 6:02 am

  Managing the Gray continues to be an outlet for me to constructively share what is on my mind and the recent wave of conversation online around charging for content and value is obviously on my mind because I sat down to discuss something else and started talking about this instead. I talked about a bunch of different posts, topics and sites. Here they are so you can check them out. Third Tribe Marketing Chris Brogan’s post that started it all. His follow up is great as well. The Whuffie Factor J.C. Hutchin’s post My SXSW Profile Dan Patterson Jack Rice Make sure you don’t…

• Amazing Things Will Happen

  C.C. Chapman

  1 Feb 2010 | 5:34 am

  February is here. The first month of 2010 is behind us, so it felt like the perfect time to check in with you on how your goals are going so far this year. Managing the Gray is here to help give you the kick when you need it in the right direction. I referenced the Conan O’Brien farewell speech and if you haven’t seen it you can watch it here. Also, I mention my good buddy and super talented musician Matthew Ebel as well. Also, I’d love you to learn more about Wediko since I’m passionate about getting the word out there about all the great things they do for children…

• What 2010 Holds

  C.C. Chapman

  12 Jan 2010 | 6:11 am

  A new year and a new decade is upon us and my plan is for Managing the Gray to help you not only get through the year, but prosper in it. I’m not big on lists, but a listener asked what trends or predications I had for the new year. Rather then spouting off possibilities I’d rather focus on reality and when you listen to the show you can hear what I had to say. After you listen to the show be sure to check out the new Lego Click site. It isn’t every day that an idea like that gets into my head so fast. I’m really curious to see how it goes for them and I guess…

• Ron Ploof Interview

  C.C. Chapman

  30 Dec 2009 | 11:34 am

  The holidays got in the way of getting this out as soon as I wanted to, but I’m excited to share with you an interview with my good friend and author Ron Ploof to discuss his new book Read This First: The Executive’s Guide to New Media-from Blogs to Social Networks. Ron granted me the first interview about his book and any chance to catch up and chat with him is a good thing for me. I’m honored to call him a friend and am psyched for people to get out there and read this book because I think it is better then most of the ones I’ve seen and read about social media.

• Rule 53

  C.C. Chapman

  9 Dec 2009 | 4:43 am

  I recently was asked to take part in the Rule 53 podcast. Rule 53 is a cross-generational podcast that  focuses on leadership, business, technology, and professional development.  Each episode features one twentysomething student or recent graduate and his or her experienced counterpart.  The goal is to help define “Rule 53″, a curriculum for tomorrow’s leaders ad change agents. I am sharing this directly with the Managing the Gray feed because I was so excited about the concept of the show and how the interview turned out. Plus, how could I not when all three of us on the phone are…

• 

  Robin Good

• Website Usability Testing: Guide To The Best Professional Usability Testing Tools And Services

  Daniele Bazzano

  15 Mar 2010 | 2:27 am

  Website usability testing is a troubleshooting methodology that helps you discover specific ambiguities, pitfalls or issues in your website design and interface that spoil the effective use, legibility and navigation of your web pages. If you want to improve the user experience on your website, in this MasterNewMedia guide you can find all the best paid-for commercial website usability testing tools now available on the market. Heat map of Google homepage At a very basic level, website usability testing does not require any special equipment or software. In fact, you just need someone (a…

• Social Media Research: Blogs And Twitter Use Trends Inside US Corporations

  Nora Ganim Barnes and Eric Mattson

  12 Mar 2010 | 3:27 am

  Do top US corporations use social media? Is the business world leveraging new media technologies to engage customers? The answer is definitely positive according to a new research study on 2009 Fortune 500 companies and their use of social media tools, like blogs and Twitter and authored by Nora Ganim Barnes and Eric Mattson. Photo credit: Kheng Ho Toh and Dmitriy Shironosov Each year Fortune Magazine compiles a list of the largest US corporations, which are named the Fortune 500 given their size and wealth. Due to the hugely influential role that these companies play in the corporate world,…

• Online Publishing Strategy: What Robin Good Suggests

  Teemu Arina

  10 Mar 2010 | 3:37 am

  Online publishing is in many respects the new frontier for those who have a voice, a business, a desire to communicate or change things for the better. It potentially enables any individual connected to the net to be a two-way communication hub capable of sending out information and equipped with technologies to listen and respond. But to transform such revolutionary opportunity into a truly effective marketing vehicle, or into a sustainable online business resource, takes a lot more than what we are told on blogs or on the many sites promoting how easy and fast it is to become a successful…

• Website Usability Testing: Guide To The Best Free Tools And Services

  Daniele Bazzano

  8 Mar 2010 | 5:53 am

  Website usability testing identifies a precise methodology devoted to uncover specific bugs, idiosyncrasies and ambiguities in the way that website design impacts the effective use, legibility, navigation, and user experience of your website. In this MasterNewMedia guide you can find the best free website usability testing tools available out there. Heat map of MasterNewMedia homepage created with Feng-GUI Website usability testing is indeed a critical component of any effective online publishing strategy. When properly utilized, usability testing allows you to effectively scan and rapidly…

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  Metz, The Social Concept

• Sales 2.0 Chat: Miller Heiman's Richard Blakeman on Strategic Selling & The Social Customer

  Adam Metz

  9 Mar 2010 | 2:56 pm

  “The behavior that [a consumer brand like] Abercrombie wants is ‘who’s gonna want it where, by when’ If [they] don’t have that framework, then all of the social data is noise.” – Rich Blakeman, Miller Heiman About a year ago, I lost a consulting bid proposal that I made to a small apparel company. My dad , a management consulting veteran, took a look at my 13-page whopper of a proposal, and said, “Adam, your proposal format is way too long. What’s your sales strategy, here, anyway?” I realized, at that point, that I didn’t really have…

• Sales 2.0 Chat: Salesforce's Brett Queener On How SMEs Might Have To Embrace Social Cust Mgmt

  Adam Metz

  9 Mar 2010 | 12:12 pm

  “If you have a screwed-up customer process and you deploy Salesforce, all you do is screw your customers faster,” he said. Brett Queener is, admittedly, not the “guru” of social customer relationship management at Salesforce. He bestows that title on SVP Product Marketing Kraig Swensrud and Chuck Ganapathi , SVP of Sales. (I’m not a fan of the “guru” label… “don’t follow leaders, watch the parking meters,” right? But somehow the term always ends up in my interview questions…gotta drop that one…) I got the chance to…

• Sales 2.0 Day Two: The Notion Of Social Enablement

  Adam Metz

  9 Mar 2010 | 10:54 am

  “Sales 2.0 is still reactive – we need to go into a proactive mode.” – Gerhard Gschwandtner, Selling Power. The Sales 2.0 Conference kicked off its second and final day at the Four Seasons San Francisco today, with a rock-solid keynote by OracleCRM’s Mark Woollen . I’ve packed my Sales 2.0 has been packed with briefings and long-form interviews. In the last 24 hours alone, I’ve sat down for extended conversations with InsideView’s Umberto Miletti, Miller Heiman’s Rich Blakeman, Hoovers’ Linsday Duran and Salesforce’s product…

• What To Read Before You Hit The (Sold Out!) Sales 2.0 Conference Tomorrow

  Adam Metz

  7 Mar 2010 | 12:58 pm

  I’m about to head to Chinatown for an afternoon of chilling and reading, but before I take off, I wanted to share a quick reading list for what you’ll want to digest before heading over to the Sales 2.0 conference. If you can’t print out and read these bad boys today, you may find yourself struggling to catch up a bit at the conference. I’ll be posting interviews on the MetzMash blog all day long, Monday & Tuesday. 1. What Is Sales 2.0 & Why Should You Care? Pt.. II – Selling Power’s founder/publisher Gerhard Gschwandtner takes you beyond the basics…

• Why The Social CRM Strategies For Business Seminar Is A Lot Like The Velvet Underground's Albums

  Adam Metz

  22 Feb 2010 | 10:00 am

  Brian Eno once said that even though hardly anyone bought the Velvet Underground’s albums at the time they first appeared, almost everyone who did formed their own band. The sCRM Summit in Washington DC had a similar vibe. The small conference took place at a snowed-in Westin, a few blocks from the DC airport. I spent three days, shoulder-to-shoulder, in a small ballroom with 67 other experts in the subjects of customer relationship management, social media, sales 2.0 and demand generation. This conference was truly the real deal, as it gave teeth to the customer-centric ethos corporate…

• 

  Des Walsh dot Com

• Best Job in the World Campaign Story at Social Media Club Brisbane

  Des Walsh

  14 Mar 2010 | 9:47 pm

  Tourism Queensland’s Chris Chambers and Sarah Whyte at Social Media Club Brisbane I’m looking forward to the first meeting for the year of Social Media Club Brisbane, especially as it will feature an “inside story” briefing on Tourism Queensland’s hugely successful Best Job in the World campaign, promoting the islands of the Great Barrier Reef. Our special guest speakers for the evening event will be Chris Chambers, Director of Digital Marketing at Tourism Queensland (TQ) and his colleague Sarah Whyte, Marketing Manager, Digital at TQ. Widely considered as the…

• Stephen Collins, Social Media and TEDx Canberra

  Des Walsh

  14 Mar 2010 | 5:43 pm

  Leading Australian thinker on social media in business and government, Stephen Collins on Des Walsh & Friends I’m sure consistency is valuable for building an audience for a podcast program, such as my Des Walsh & Friends program, but last week it was rather pleasant not to have to rise at 5 am as I usually do for my 6 am (Australian eastern time) show. The bit of indulgence was because my guest was fellow Australian, Canberra-based Stephen Collins, one of the most prolific thinkers and doers I know in the social media space. It made sense, as well as being mutually convenient,…

• links for 2010-03-11

  Des Walsh

  11 Mar 2010 | 2:02 am

  Chris Chambers to Speak at Social Media Club Brisbane, March 30, 2010 Social Media Club Brisbane (Australia) special guest speakers on March 30, Chris Chambers, Digital Marketing, Tourism Queensland (TQ) and Sarah Whyte, Manager Digital Marketing at TQ, will share insights into and results of TQ's award-winning Best Job in the World Campaign (tags: tourism, social-media-club, Brisbane, Tourism-Queensland, Great-Barrier-Reef)

• Julia Stewart, Coach and Trainer of Masterful Coaches

  Des Walsh

  10 Mar 2010 | 5:19 am

  Julia Stewart, President, School of Coaching Mastery, Guest on Des Walsh & Friends Show Last week, on my Des Walsh & Friends show on BlogTalkRadio, I had the great pleasure of catching up with an esteemed coaching colleague, Julia Stewart. Julia is a coach, coach trainer, and seminar leader, who uses her creativity and humor to expand people’s thinking and inspire them to work brilliantly. She is passionate about the power of coaching to transform the world and is committed to helping coaches forge positive change with the help of powerful coaching skills. Julia is a founding member…

• Discussing Social Media with Xeequa CEO Axel Schultze

  Des Walsh

  7 Mar 2010 | 12:55 am

  Social Media in the enterprise: speaking with Axel Schultze on Des Walsh & Friends Axel Schultze, CEO of Xeequa and Social Media Academy, was my guest recently on my Des Walsh & Friends show on BlogTalkRadio. The recorded session can be accessed via the player below or the link at the end of the post. One of the early advocates, users and experts in the social media space, Axel recently initiated Social Business One, a community focused on how businesses are adopting social computing to engage with customers, improve employee productivity and create a competitive advantage. As one…

• 

  Zac Johnson: Inside the secret life of a super affiliate

• You Don’t Want New Business that Badly?

  Zac Johnson

  16 Mar 2010 | 10:25 am

  I was recently searching around for a specific freelancer and wanted to utilize their services. I came across their web site and found that they had no “contact” page. They had an “about me” and “portfolio” page, but no means of contact. Also listed on the site was their Twitter feed… the next best solution, right? It would have been but, the user hadn’t made a tweet for several months, and they also disabled their “direct messaging” feature. So I eventually said, forget that! The bottom line is, if you are an online business or…

• Building Your Own Outsourced Empire

  Zac Johnson

  8 Mar 2010 | 10:50 am

  Running a business is like creating an Empire! You may be the king of your castle (company), but you can’t run an empire on your own. Everyone living inside the castle has their own job or requirement to make it stronger, how will you build your castle on your own? The answer is outsourcing! Outsourcing is good for many reasons, the major ones being that is takes the stress and workload off yourself, and that you can focus on bigger projects that make more money. Outsourcing is available everywhere, and for nearly anything you can think of… but finding quality work and reliable…

• Researching Your Next PPC Niche Market

  Zac Johnson

  4 Mar 2010 | 6:12 am

  It happens all the time… you just came up with a great idea for a new site or ad campaign, and can’t wait to get started. You register a domain, throw a site together and are working like crazy. The only problem is, you didn’t do your research first. I’m sure we are all guilty of doing this at some point, and I still even find myself getting excited over a new project prematurely. In the end, it always comes down to doing the necessary market research and finding what works in your niche. Search any generic phrase on Google and you will likely see a ton of advertisers.

• Top Wordpress Plugins Every Blog Should Have

  Zac Johnson

  3 Mar 2010 | 4:26 pm

  I’m always working on new projects and half of them are new blog sites, usually in niche markets. When setting up a new blog, I have a separate folder I use for uploading all of my important wordpress plugins. I’m always on the look out for ways to improve spacing, loading times and reader interaction, and many of the plugins do just that. Here is my breakdown on wordpress plugins that every blog should be using. Stop Spam with Akismet This one is a given, but it’s still a necessity. Without Akisment, managing your blog and comments would just be a pain. The bigger your site…

• ShoeMoney System: One Month Later & Why It Works

  Zac Johnson

  1 Mar 2010 | 11:05 pm

  The first launch of the ShoeMoney System was crazy. Everyone was pushing emails, writing blog posts and getting on the ShoeMoney mailing list. Before the day was over, nearly all spots in the ShoeMoney System were locked up. Once again, Jeremy has opened the gates. If you missed out the first time, you got lucky… because now the program is even better. Ok, I admit it… I was curious about the ShoeMoney System, so I actually paid the $197 a month to see if the program could live up to all of it’s hype. The first few weeks were pretty slow and introductory. I didn’t…

• 

  Chad Barr

• Chad Barr Interviews Omar Khan

  Chad Barr

  12 Mar 2010 | 3:00 am

  In this fabulous podcast interview, I had the chance to chat with Omar Khan, founder and senior partner of Sensei International and author of several books. We discussed some fascinating topics: What is a global consultant, how do you become a successful one and how do you get started. We also talked about his international company, building and sustaining remarkable relationships, how to succeed in this economy, his blog and the book he co-authored with Dr. Alan Weiss, The Global Consultant. Click below for podcast to start and now also on iTunes…

• Chad Barr Upcoming Speaking Schedule

  Chad Barr

  11 Mar 2010 | 1:41 pm

  Below is my upcoming speaking schedule for various and exciting events. To reserve your spot, contact the individuals below. Hope to see you there. 1. Million Dollar Consulting® College – Newport, RI, Wednesday, March 24, 2010 Alan Weiss, PhD P: 401-884-2778 Alan@SummitConsulting.com 2. Society for Advancement for Consulting – New York, NY, Tuesday, April, 6, 2010 Alan Weiss, PhD P: 401-884-2778 Alan@SummitConsulting.com 3. Greater Los Angeles NSA Chapter – Saturday, April 17, 2010 Lori Akina Executive Director P: 866-416-7252 lori@tjmanagement.com 4. NSA KY Chapter,…

• Chad Barr Interviews David Meerman Scott

  Chad Barr

  10 Mar 2010 | 4:15 am

  This is a great podcast interview I just did with David Meerman Scott, author of The New Rules of Marketing & PR and World Wide Rave among other books. In this interview we discussed: Viral marketing and thought leadership strategies, the new / old rules of marketing, best practices for consultants, where do ideas come from, how to best leverage social media and much more. Click below for podcast to start and now also on iTunes http://www.chadbarr.com/chad-barr-interviews-david-meerman-scott/ Click Here for entire podcast series table of contents

• Testimonial from Libby Wagner

  Chad Barr

  9 Mar 2010 | 5:56 pm

  During my recent trip to London to get certified in Alan Weiss’s Mentor Mastery program, I was fortunate to receive this amazing video testimonial for my dear friend, colleague and client, Libby Wagner. President of Libby Wagner & Associates and Influencing Options. http://www.chadbarr.com/testimonial-from-libby-wagner/

• World Class Consultant, Chad Barr, Interviewed by Seth Kahan

  Chad Barr

  9 Mar 2010 | 4:19 pm

  Below is an interview I did with Seth Kahan, author of www.freelancefortune.com In this interview we discussed: How I maintain a strategic point of view Breakthroughs in my practice resulting in dramatic business growth Tactics I have used for improving revenue The power of working with trusted advisors How I have grown my organization My upcoming book which focuses on using technology to achieve higher levels of success Reflections on breaking the $1,000,000 revenue mark Click below for podcast to start and now also on iTunes Here is the original interview as published on Seth’s site.

• 

  Social Gears

• YouTube #Fail

  Stephen Fells

  24 Feb 2010 | 12:15 am

  It seems even YouTube, the second largest search engine in the world, has problems from time to time:

• Do You Know How Many Tweets Are Made A Day?

  Stephen Fells

  23 Feb 2010 | 12:30 am

  50 million! That’s an average of 600 tweets per second or about 1.5 million a month. That’s a lot of tweeting tweets. According to the twitter blog: “tweets from accounts identified as spam have been removed” which makes the number even scarier. In 2007 the number of tweets was at 5,000 a day. By 2008 that number had grown to 300,000 and by 2009 it was at 2.5 million. What we don’t know is how many people this represents, a far more useful number. Any guesses on what the number will be at the end of this year? The winner gets a thumb replacement op. courtesy of…

• Google AdWords: 3 Steps to Keyword Success

  Stephen Fells

  22 Feb 2010 | 12:10 am

• Your Facebook Status – Be Careful What You Post

  Stephen Fells

  17 Feb 2010 | 12:20 am

  Learn by other’s mistakes! A quick translation for the first one; a ‘P45′ is the British equivalent of a pink slip and a ‘wanker’ is a jerk.

• How To Create A Facebook Business Page In Less Than A Minute

  Stephen Fells

  15 Feb 2010 | 12:30 am

  As a follow up to Friday’s post “Understanding Facebook Terms – How To Avoid Having Your Facebook Account Deleted” this video shows how to create a Facebook business page in less than a minute. It also shows simple customization and promotion techniques.

• 

  Jeff Pulver

• SXSW 2010: The days twitter became less relevant

  jeff

  15 Mar 2010 | 8:45 am

  At South By Southwest 2010 (SXSW), a strange thing happened on the way to Austin. A community of twitter faithful shifted from sharing everything about everything on only twitter (and maybe Facebook) and changed their habits to rely on learning about what was happening and where things were happening by using Foursquare and Gowalla instead. In the year since SXSW, a number of my friends became passionate and dependent on using Foursquare and/or Gowalla as the platform to share where they were and what was happening around them. Here at SXSW, this has been taken to a new level. It turns out…

• A Call for Speakers (and Characters): The 140 Characters Conference: July in Tel Aviv

  jeff

  11 Mar 2010 | 6:10 am

  The 140 Characters Conference: Exploring the State of NOW (#140conf) will be returning to Tel Aviv in early July. The event will be taking a look at the effects of the emerging real-time internet on business and systemic changes the worldwide adoption of twitter is having on: Celebrity, The Media, Music, Advertising, Politics, Comedy, Education, Communications, Public Diplomacy, Fashion, Design, Public Safety and more. The deadline for speaking proposals is: Thursday, April 15th. Please send speaking proposals to: jeff@pulver.com. My hope is to once again attract a diverse gathering of people…

• I've seen the future of the real time web, and it's GyPSii

  jeff

  10 Mar 2010 | 3:59 am

  During my recent trip to Barcelona to host #140conf Barcelona, I also had the opportunity to attend the 2010 Mobile World Congress. While there I had the chance to meet with an Internet pioneer in the real time web, Dan Harple. Dan has been at the root of the real time web, and, he's been at it for over 18 years. His latest effort is a company called gypsii.com. He started gypsii upon moving from the US to Amsterdam, where, as he puts it, riding a bike changed his view on what the web should do for us: how it should be real time, more personal and relevant, more mobile, and more “here and…

• Thinking in the shower - Takes aways from my talk at the Bird Brain Conference

  jeff

  9 Mar 2010 | 9:02 pm

  Rena Reich was in the audience when I spoke at the first “Bird Brain” conference at Afeka College on March 2nd. In her blog post: Thinking in the shower she shares the following: “Here are some of my favorite take aways from Jeff’s talk: - You can’t outsource fun – There are so many things that can be outsourced so that we can truly live our lives. Fun is not one of them. Why would it be? Don’t take fun for granted and make sure that you know why you’re doing what you’re doing. Fun is a very important part of life. - You can’t compete with fun - And why would you try? If…

• Anthony Massucci interviews Jeff Pulver about #140conf NYC:

  jeff

  9 Mar 2010 | 8:44 pm

  For more information about #140conf NYC, please visit: http://nyc.140conf.com Tags: 140conf, social media, 140 Characters Conference, twitter, NYC, Jeff Keni Pulver

• 

  brandflakesforbreakfast

• what could bacon do for you?

  16 Mar 2010 | 4:05 am

  Bacon. The magical, mystical food that no human can resist. FreshBooks put bacon to work on the streets of Austin, TX at SXSW. To promote their online invoicing product, they got right to the point: Freshbooks can make you bacon. Forget social media. Or search. Bacon is the new, must-have marketing tool that can sell your product to anyone with a tummy. Yummy. This, and more SXSW fun on the official Brand Flakes for Breakfast SXSW Edition.

• search that listens to you

  16 Mar 2010 | 3:44 am

  Siri is a new search and "getting things done" tool for your magical iPhone. Whatever you need, just say it outloud, and Siri gets you on your way. Like a personal assistant in your pocket. Not sure if "fill out my expense reports" will work, but if it involves search, Siri is there for you. From @mtlb & @thebeancast

• posting in lite mode

  15 Mar 2010 | 5:57 am

  The world-class Brand Flakes for Breakfast blogging crew is at the SXSW interactive festival, so BrandFlakes will be in BloggingLite mode today and tomorrow.Keep up with the details on the Brand Flakes SXSW Edition, and find all of the cool Humongo people to follow in this post. We've also been interviewing interesting marketing geeks, and have some awesome videos to share later in the week.In the meantime, enjoy this 8 bit map of Austin, TX. Just because you needed it, and 8 bit is all the rage.

• not going to austin? fake it.

  12 Mar 2010 | 3:33 am

  Plenty of interactive geeks from across the land are on their way to Austin, Texas to partake in the SXSWinteractive conference. (We're covering our adventures, in a SXSW edition of BFFB.)Maybe your boss wouldn't approve the budget. Or you're afraid of Texas. Or you have work to do.If that's the case, SwissMiss has started a #VirtuallyAttendingSXSW hashtag, and will be tweeting away. And there's plenty of other people who have joined in on the fun.If you're more of a lurker, and less of a tweeter, we suggest that you keep an eye on @tsand's Twitter stream. He's been known to create his own…

• We're heading to SXSW!

  11 Mar 2010 | 8:13 am

  The Humongo crew is headed to Austin, TX for SXSW, the annual music, film and interactive super festival. We'll be attending the geekiest portion of the conference - SXSWinteractive.Stuck at home? Not to worry. We'll be doing our best to share our experience. And we're also producing a series of videos interviewing interesting people that we believe you might be inspired by.Check the Brand Flakes for Breakfast SXSW Edition for the latest from all of the Humongo superstars (and friends): Darryl Ohrt: That's me, the official Prime Minister of Awesome at the world's greatest agency.Chris Spada:…

• 

  COMMETRICS

• Why social networking groups fail

  Urs E. Gattiker

  9 Mar 2010 | 4:00 pm

  Below we outline the four steps required to nurture and maintain a group’s momentum on any social networking site, making the effort worth the time spent (see also 3 golden rules for best practice: LinkedIn and Xing). Me, Inc. Almost 12 years ago, management guru Tom Peters came up with the idea that each of us is CEO of Me Inc. Each individual has a personal brand to build up and promote and with a third of the US workforce being self-employed, and increasing job insecurity, people believe self-promotion is required to stand out from the rest. Further discussion by Nils Montan on…

• Social media trends: Pepsi’s charity contest

  Urs E. Gattiker

  3 Mar 2010 | 4:00 pm

  The number of contests on social media that raise money for charities have increased significantly in the last year. This is partly due to companies and non-profit groups learning how best to use Facebook, Twitter and other online tools for marketing and fundraising. But this causes new challenges. For instance, December 2009 JPMorgan Chase & Company fumbled its online contest to award millions of dollars to 100 charities. In fact, some groups publicly stated that Chase changed the contest rules to ensure those who do not fit its image would not reach the top 100. This post will focuses…

• Toyota: How to commit brand and reputation suicide

  Urs E. Gattiker

  24 Feb 2010 | 4:00 pm

  Toyota’s worldwide recalls are devastating the firm’s reputation with customers, as well as its bottom line. Some have suggested that any further botching of the message to consumers could throttle the brand. Vehicle recalls are grim, and tend to be announced on a Friday to minimize attention. Until now, Toyota has enjoyed a shining reputation for quality and reliability. This image has been hit by mass-recalls involving defective accelerator pedals and out-of-position floor mats, which can jam accelerators and have been linked to several fatal accidents. US sales tumbled 16…

• 4 ways to success: Pepsi and Coca-Cola

  Urs E. Gattiker

  16 Feb 2010 | 5:00 pm

  Strategy and new media experts cannot seriously answer management’s question of whether ’social media works’ without first asking themselves some more fundamental questions about what the company should be doing with social media and what it should leave alone. Pepsi, Coca-Cola and Dell have deep pockets when it comes to social media marketing. Hence, this makes it difficult for smaller companies to copy their strategies (Social media: What is so special). At the recent iStrategy 2010 Conference in Berlin (9 – 10 February), Michael Donnelly talked about ‘Online…

• Using the right blog metrics

  Jay Baer

  9 Feb 2010 | 6:00 pm

  If you are blogging for business, and not about your cat, baby, fashion addiction, or celebrity-crush, you need to set some success metrics. Without a statistical measure of your blogging progress, adding content to your blog on a regular basis can be an incredibly lonely proposition. Is anyone out there? Does anyone care? However, even in the business blogging world, there are a wide variety of potential measures to gauge your momentum. It is imperative that you select the most relevant ones that match with your blog’s purpose and intent. What’s the point? The first step in that…

• 

  Six Pixels of Separation

• The White Canvas

  Mitch Joel

  15 Mar 2010 | 7:13 pm

  We all have the same opportunities. We all have the same channels. We all have access to the same people. It's what we do with them that matters most. Like an artist, all of our collective canvases start off as a white, blank space. It can be the blank screen of your Blog writing platform, it can be a empty Twitter box waiting for you to answer the question, "What's happening?", it can be a hot microphone just waiting for you to rant and publish a Podcast with, or it can be the moment before you flip on your Flip video cam. How you fill your space is going to determine your level of…

• Sharing, Stealing And Other Nefarious Acts

  Mitch Joel

  14 Mar 2010 | 5:30 pm

  Let people steal your ideas. That was one of the thoughts I perpetrated (just a little bit) in my first business book, Six Pixels of Separation. The intent of that statement meant to say that if someone does steal your ideas, the search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc...) will be the best defence possible (that is if you had already Blogged, Tweeted or published your thoughts for all to see). Someone can try to cop the "Six Pixels of Separation" thing, but a quick search online will easily demonstrate where (and when) that idea originated. Sure, it's not a court of law and no,…

• Bloggers As Evangelists

  Mitch Joel

  14 Mar 2010 | 5:27 pm

  You are going to be reading a lot of Blogs in the next little while where the Blogger is either being paid or given free product to shill some wares in their own personal space. That's one of the big things that happens when a big interactive conference like SXSW takes place. In fact, Media Hacks co-host, author of both Trust Agents (along with Julien Smith) and Social Media 101 business books, and all-around good guy, Chris Brogan, just posted, Nikon Just Let Me Use a New Camera, to his Blog. It's interesting to read his perspective on Blogger outreach... "First, I'm telling you, 'Hey,…

• The New (And Newer) Rules Of Marketing And PR

  Mitch Joel

  14 Mar 2010 | 8:01 am

  Episode #194 of Six Pixels of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast is now live and ready for you to listen to. If you're looking for the new rules of Marketing and PR, look no further than the guy who wrote the book on it - literally! David Meerman Scott is not only one of the nicest guys out there, but he had the vision, back in 2006, to write a book titled, The New Rules of Marketing and PR. The book took off like a wildfire and still sits at the top of most business and marketing books best-seller list. The success of this book led to a re-release (with lots of rewrites and updated…

• Boring Brands

  Mitch Joel

  12 Mar 2010 | 5:52 pm

  There is no trick or luck in being successful. In fact, success can be created and summed up in two words: be remarkable. Easier said than done, right? Whether it's being a musician, selling helicopters or developing the next online sensation, the ones that rise to the top are the ones that are remarkable. They are the great ones, the ones that people talk about, and the ones we all wind up cheering for. Seth Godin wrote the perfect business book about this, Purple Cow, and it's an idea that is not lost on best-selling business book author, Tom Peters, either. Peters has a new book out next…

• 

  Chris Pirillo

• Keep Track of Your Life Online

  Chris

  16 Mar 2010 | 12:12 pm

  Keep Track of Your Life Online is a post from Chris Pirillo Add to iTunes | Add to YouTube | Add to Google | RSS FeedDuring Gnomedex last August, we had an open-mic session where attendees could come up on stage and share their favorite websites, Apps and tools with the audience. Ayush wanted to share two of his life-saving websites with us.Skittlr allows you to put your own little bar on your website that you customize to fill with the sites you visit the most. The bar can be moved around on the page, and makes it so much easier to get to your intended sites quickly. Of course, this is also…

• Twitter Announces the @Anywhere Platform

  Chris

  15 Mar 2010 | 9:23 pm

  Twitter Announces the @Anywhere Platform is a post from Chris PirilloEven though many people walked out during the SXSW keynote today, delivered by Evan Williams, there was a very interesting announcement made. The new platform will allow publishers to integrate Twitter deeper into their site and recreate the “open, engaging interactions” their readers expect from using Twitter “without sending them to the Twitter website itself.”Using the new platform, users can identify and follow Twitter users on third-party sites without ever leaving that site. Some of the ones…

• Improve Your Website

  Chris

  15 Mar 2010 | 8:28 pm

  Improve Your Website is a post from Chris Pirillo Add to iTunes | Add to YouTube | Add to Google | RSS FeedDevir has created another excellent screencast for all of you. This time, he took a trip back in time to show you how my website looked back in 2002. It’s a TAD different these days, I know. The point is to show you how much website building has changed over the years. Devir is going to give you several tips in this screencast for tools you can use to improve your website!The first tool is called Wufoo. Wufoo is a web application that removes the inefficiency and tediousness out of…

• Social Media Updates for 2010-03-14

  Chris

  14 Mar 2010 | 2:05 pm

  Social Media Updates for 2010-03-14 is a post from Chris PirilloAll this energy at #SXSW makes me wonder why the Pacific Northwest doesn't have something truly similar? #Icons for the multi-touch world: http://gesturecons.com/ [via @amalucky] #"Oh good, the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders are here. Because lord knows how much geeks love football." [@violetblue #sxsw] #Hanging with family today – my brother, Ben (and nephew, Zander). They are NOT on Twitter. #OH at #sxsw: "No, I'm sure it's argumentative reality – like you're really there." #I…

• I’m a Douchebag?

  Chris

  13 Mar 2010 | 12:44 pm

  I’m a Douchebag? is a post from Chris Pirillo Add to iTunes | Add to YouTube | Add to Google | RSS FeedI’m a douchebag, this I know. For the button tells me so.

• 

  Common Craft

• Common Craft - NOT a Viral Video Company

  leelefever

  15 Mar 2010 | 6:39 pm

  I've been really excited to see the feedback about the new Web License. Asking people to pay to embed a video has raised questions and responding to them has been an interesting experience. If nothing else, it's eye-opening to see what people are assuming about our business. For example, Mike Masnick at Techdirt wrote an article called "Viral Video Producers Want To Charge You to Embed Their Videos."  Then, Steven Hodson at Inquisitor follow up the Techdirt article with "Common Craft Seems to Forget What Makes Viral Video... Well Viral." Both these articles assume (mostly incorrectly) a…

• Amit Asks: Will You Pay to Embed a Video on Your Website?

  leelefever

  11 Mar 2010 | 9:53 am

  Amit Agarwal at Digital Inspiration has been a fan of Common Craft for a while and we've always enjoyed his thoughful analysis of our videos and business.  The news yesterday about our Web License prompted him to write about it - and question the business case for paying to embed videos.  We welcome this kind of analysis.  He writes: The good old YouTube days are over as Common Craft has created a new “web license” for their videos that would require bloggers and websites to pay a monthly subscription fee for embedding videos on their site. And this is not a small…

• Introducing Our New "Web License" and Partnership with Wistia

  leelefever

  9 Mar 2010 | 9:14 pm

  For a while now, we've heard a common request from potential customers.  They want an easy way to license and share Common Craft videos on their website. Today we're announcing a new partnership with video sharing company Wistia that will help us serve this need with our new "Web License." A Little Background... We license our videos to individuals and organizations. Two of our most popular licenses (Individual and Site) are for offline use. Customers download video files for use on intranets/extranets, training programs, classrooms and presentations. The videos are really useful…

• Explainer Network - Animated Explanations Wins Platinum Seal of e-Excellence

  leelefever

  4 Mar 2010 | 9:26 am

  A big congrats to Instruxion (the company behind Animated Explanations) for being awarded the Platinum Seal of e-Excellence in Europe, which recognizes companies who have a track record of innovation. Of course, we see this recognition as further proof that video explanations are a valuable and productive element of marketing and education. Animated Explanations is based on Brussels, Belgium and a member of our Explainer Network of video producers. Here's the description of the award from the award website: The European Seal of e-Excellence rewards ICT and Digital Media companies with an…

• What Pitchman Ron Popeil Can Teach Us About Explanation

  leelefever

  3 Mar 2010 | 6:46 pm

  If you've been reading for a while, you've seen us write that a secret to a strong explanation is putting the subject in the context of someone's life.  Don't just talk about what it does, talk about how it fits into their world - how it takes away pain or makes something easier, faster, better. Recently I've been reading the Malcolm Gladwell book What the Dog Saw and Other Adventures, which is a collection of his past articles from the New Yorker. One of the articles is called The Pitchman and focuses, in part, on Ron Popeil of Ronco.  You may recognize his name from late-night TV,…

• 

  Reality Overlaps

• Mommy, I've gotta go online!

  19 Feb 2010 | 6:08 am

  Internet connectivity is essential. It’s as simple as that. You need to find Internet periodically, just like you need to eat and use the toilet periodically. You might be able to go without it for a day or two, but basically, let’s face it, Internet access has become a fundamental human need.Unfortunately, with the spread of 3G and mobile Internet, it's getting harder to find Wifi, and even more difficult to find free WiFi in major cities worldwide. When you are traveling, roaming costs are too high to make that a practical option.I lugged my laptop around London all day while there with…

• The State I Found You In

  8 Feb 2010 | 2:29 pm

  Outside Victoria Station in London, I met my friend AJ Pape. It was exciting, because this is the first time I've met someone from p5y.org face to face, though I've been volunteering for almost a year now. I am in communication with several people from the organization per week, by voice, video and email, but I've never met any of them in person. Neither I nor AJ lives in London or even in the UK, we just happened to incidentally be in the same city at the same time. So it was just a genuine thrill to finally meet AJ. And it was kind of chaotic, both the planning and the meeting itself.Early…

• You've Got a Friend

  6 Feb 2010 | 1:21 pm

  It's our fourth night staying at Susie's home in London.As we were on the bus coming here for the first time, my son asks "How far is it to your friend's house?""I don't know, I've never been there," I answer, suddenly thinking about the choice of words. I don't actually know Susie either, she isn't exactly my friend. I mean, I've seen her in class, and she's seen me, but is she my friend? I asked her to help me find a place to stay this week, to save on costs, as the Landmark Forum for Young People, plus the flights, was already quite a stretch financially. And she simply offered to have us…

• It's Nothing Personal

  18 Jan 2010 | 1:05 pm

  It was going to happen sooner or later. My personal e-mail address has gotten to the point where there is practically no truly personal mail in my inbox. We haven't migrated from dead-tree and ink letter-writing to electronic letter-writing. We have migrated to no letter-writing.Why would you bother anyway? If someone wants to know what's going on with you, they can just check your status, online photo albums, and tweets.That's not to say my inbox is empty. Far from it. I get updates from groups I belong to (several weekly inline-skating updates, 2 different religious organizations, team…

• Consumption Reports

  1 Jan 2010 | 1:03 am

  Facebook and twitter are constant reminders of what a loser I am. I know in real-time exactly what parties I'm missing, what fancy restaurants I'm not eating in, where I'm not vacationing, and the beautiful weather I'm missing by being inside.At first, I felt pretty good about all the parties and events I was invited to, and all the friends that I can prove I have. After a while, though, it became clear that my friends were throwing and attending more parties than I am, eating fancier food than I am, and visiting places I wish I were visiting. To top it all off, a lot of my friends have more…

• 

  Data Mining

• PEW: The State of the News Media - Interactive

  Matthew Hurst

  15 Mar 2010 | 9:18 am

  The PEW Project for Excellence in Journalism has an interesting interactive presentation reviewing the content and attention of news media in 2009. Users can select news sources (e.g. NPR, Cable TV, etc.) and view and compare the topics that these sources focused on in 2009. Even better, you can embed the charts. Compare, for example, NPR and Talk Radio.

• MSN Gets Hyperlocal

  Matthew Hurst

  11 Mar 2010 | 10:30 pm

  Briefly, MSN is now surfacing hyperlocal blog content (originally found in the Local Lens application on Bing Maps) in the Local Edition area of the site. Currently this is only available in the ten cities that Local Lens covers, but that will change...

• Seeing a Web of Data

  Matthew Hurst

  4 Mar 2010 | 7:28 am

  TEDi master Flake gives a dynamic overview of the Live Labs Pivot demo.

• Bing Maps Updates Hyperlocal Application

  Matthew Hurst

  17 Feb 2010 | 9:52 pm

  Today we pushed out a modest update to our hyperlocal application Local Lens. Users won't see a huge difference, but behind the scenes we have improved our text mining systems which recognize and map entity names (e.g. restaurants, museums, coffee shops) and addresses. In addition, some other changes will have improved coverage in a few areas (such as Capitol Hill in Seattle). Below, in a post from SF Appeal's The Alley, we pull out one of the more complex address expressions. With the tight integration between Bing map apps and the full mapping platform, clicking on the address…

• Apps are great, but Ecosystems are better

  Matthew Hurst

  14 Feb 2010 | 9:01 pm

  By now, everyone is pretty much on the same page with apps on mobile devices. The popularity of these programs, which range from simple widgets to full applications, is not surprising given a) the model has been in existence for years (i.e. 'applications' running on PCs) and b) the simplicity of putting together a website or service which backs what is, in many cases, a simple rendering of the data. However, something really special happens with these apps live not in the flat world of the operating system as most do, but in ecosystems. In this case, by ecosystem, I mean an…

• 

  The Marketing Minute

• Trends shaping 2010: Dang it, we're getting old!

  Drew McLellan

  15 Mar 2010 | 3:00 am

  Back in December, I wrote about some of the trends that would be influencing all of our businesses in 2010.  I thought it might be helpful to look at some of these trends a bit more closely. Let's dig into the trend that we've actually been anticipating for the past several years.  After all, we've known that the baby boomers are such a huge group -- there's no way their crossing into the 65+ category wouldn't throw our society a curve.Look at these facts: By 2020, people over 65 worldwide will outnumber children under the age of 5 for the first time. By 2020,…

• Father knows best by Clickfuel's Denise Cautela

  Drew McLellan

  12 Mar 2010 | 11:14 am

  Drew's Note:  As I try to do on many a Friday, I'm pleased to bring you a guest post.  Meet a thought leader who shares her insights every day. So without further ado...Denise Cautela. Again, enjoy! Father Knows Best: Online Marketing Best Practices from a Small Business Owner An entrepreneur, my father owned and managed two local retail chains in the 1980s and 1990s.  I grew up in the family business and credit my father with teaching me important customer service, business ethic and product quality values that extend into my current role helping companies manage…

• Are you hitting all the stepping stones?

  Drew McLellan

  10 Mar 2010 | 12:23 pm

  I don't know who started the concept, but many authors attempt to sell their books by giving away their books.  Charles Sheehan Miles did it.  Wicked author Gregory Maguire did it.  Cory Doctorow did it.  And of course, Seth Godin did it.  (Click on their names to find out how you can get your copy!) Crazy?  I don't know.  But smashLAB's Eric Karjaluoto is giving it a shot.  His new book, Speak Human, can be bought on Amazon for about $20 or you can download it for free (a chapter at a time) by visiting this site. So how does giving…

• Do you inspire customer service tales?

  Drew McLellan

  9 Mar 2010 | 3:44 am

  Everyone loves to tell a good story.  Stories teach, they inspire laughter and the bring about change.  As consumers, we love to tell stories about the people we buy from -- good, bad or ugly.  If I stopped 10 of your clients/customers today and asked them to tell me a story about your company's customer service -- what story would they tell? Would it be as compelling as this story about Frank? (E-mail and RSS feed subscribers, click here to watch the video) If after watching the video, you had to honestly answer no -- ask yourself this:  What could I do on a…

• Social Media Cheat Sheet

  Drew McLellan

  5 Mar 2010 | 3:40 am

  As I speak to conference audiences across the country about social media, one of the questions I always get asked is... how do I know which social media sites to use? Of course... there is no single, magic or easy answer to that question.  It all depends on your goals, your overall marketing strategy, your resources and your industry.  It's not a cookie cutter sort of thing. However...there's nothing wrong with a little cheat sheet to help you determine which sites are best for: Customer communication Brand exposure Driving traffic to your site SEO Which is why the cheat…

• 

  The Steve Rubel Stream

• Instapaper: Now Even More Useful with Email

  13 Mar 2010 | 2:56 am

  I love services I can interact with via email. I can post to my Facebook page via email and I can do the same here. One of my favorite services is Instapaper. I use it to bookmark and save articles to read later, which I often do in bulk on long plane rides.Earlier this week it quietly added a killer new feature. You can now email in URLs or newsletters and it will save them to your Instapaper account for perusal later. I find this invaluable.  Kudos to Marco Arment for continuing to build out a killer product. This is by far the most valuable service I have added to my arsenal over the…

• What URL Should You Emphasize? For Me, It's All About Relationships

  13 Mar 2010 | 2:47 am

  For the last four years I had two URLs on my business card - my employer's web site and my blog. But recently, when I went to order a refill, I changed the plan. I of course kept the link to EdelmanDigital.com. However, with space limited, rather than directing people to yet another web site (this one) I indicated where they can find me on the sites where I know they are already spending time, Twitter and Facebook. So far, I am glad that I did. Blogs aren't dying anytime soon. In fact, the New York Times today has an article today about how they are great personal branding…

• How Google Approaches Social Media As A Team Sport

  12 Mar 2010 | 12:18 pm

  Photo credit: Karen Wickre via Danny Sullivan The following was cross-posted on the new Edelman Digital web site.  Another month, another visit to Silicon Valley – my home away from home – and, with it, another visit to the Googleplex in search of insights. This time I chatted with Karen Wickre, who oversees Google’s growing armada of blogs and Twitter embassies. Google, perhaps more than any other company, has a culture of openness. Often a company’s culture shapes its communications strategy. And that’s certainly the case with Google. So…

• Ads Drop Dot-Com URLs in Favor of "Facebook Us"

  1 Mar 2010 | 2:25 am

  The following is also my March Forbes.com column. Today it seems that many marketers are literally tripping over themselves to invade social networks in force. There's almost a land grab underway as businesses rush to set up hubs on the "big three": Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. You can definitely sense that we've passed a tipping point. All at once, businesses large and small are increasingly recognizing that they need to go where the people are. And with 100 million Facebook users in the US who spend an average seven hours on the site each month (Nielsen), it's surely a no-brainer. When…

• Bringing the Stream to Facebook

  28 Feb 2010 | 5:29 am

  I am making a slight shift in my content strategy. My Posterous-powered site will continue to feature insights, observations and essays about emerging technologies. It will include any content - text, photos, videos - where some degree of depth is required. This includes my AdAge and Forbes columns. I have also renamed it the Steve Rubel Stream to better reflect its mission. Now I am also adding a Facebook Page that will feature everything that's posted here plus exclusive content for those of you who opt in and become a fan. It's very similar to how I approach Twitter - which…

• 

  The Center for Social Media

• Public Media 2.0 Field Report: New Muslim Cool: Engaging Stakeholders in the Filmmaking Process

  socialmedia@american.edu

  15 Mar 2010 | 7:32 am

• Society for Cinema and Media Studies’ Statement of Fair Use for Media Studies Publishing

  socialmedia@american.edu

  24 Feb 2010 | 12:59 pm

  Members of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies--film and media studies professors--defined how fair use applies to their research practices. This document concerns fair use in quotation for illustration or proof of argument or to stimulate discussion, whether in text, multimedia, or as media bundled with text. More information is available at the SCMS website

• Society for Cinema and Media Studies Statement on Fair Use for Teaching Film and Media Educators

  socialmedia@american.edu

  24 Feb 2010 | 12:57 pm

  Members of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies--film and media studies professors--defined how fair use applies to their teaching practices. This document concerns fair use in classroom situations, in broadcast, repurposing within new works, and in online distance education. More information is available at the SCMS website.

• Impact Outside of the Box: Assessing How Digital Video Can Engage and Influence Publics

  socialmedia@american.edu

  27 Jan 2010 | 6:56 am

• Pull Focus: Pamela Yates and Paco de Onis

  socialmedia@american.edu

  16 Dec 2009 | 11:50 am

• 

  Gravity7: Social Interaction Design by Adrian Chan

• Eleven tips on how to apply social interaction design thinking

  adrian chan

  10 Mar 2010 | 10:31 am

  One of the key social interaction design deliverables is the social interaction design requirements document. Like the market requirements document, this spec covers social needs and requirements. Social needs of the product, of users, and of course, the business served by each. And its value applies equally to social media startups, campaigns, enterprise applications.Writing a social requirements spec, much like the MRD, involves organizational and company goals. What are your business interests in social media? What kind of audience are you assembling — and how? What's the engagement…

• Social dynamics and agile social design

  adrian chan

  9 Mar 2010 | 8:45 am

  The launch of any new social tool is a moment of high anticipation and anxiety for any development team. Try as they might, through internal use and limited alpha testing, engineers and designers must hold their collective breath for what happens when their product goes live. There's nothing like the real world for final proof of concept.As pregnant as this moment is for the vendors and creators of the full spectrum of social applications — blogs, wikis, communities, apps, games, you name it — it need not be filled entirely with speculation alone. And it would be a poor reflection…

• From followers and game mechanics to more valuable social functionality

  adrian chan

  2 Mar 2010 | 12:45 pm

  Some interesting perspectives appeared this week on game mechanics in social media and the corrupting devaluation of social systems, user experience, and metrics that seems to accompany follower counts, foursquare check-ins, and other numerical incentives to use.I just want to throw in my two cents from a social interaction design perspective. I agree that the simplicity of incentive models predicated on growing your numbers (and status) exist. (What I've called the apparency problem in social media: the apparent appearance of social status and relevance.)But I think these are systemic…

• When social search gets personal: ChatRoulette, Peerpong, Aardvark

  adrian chan

  26 Feb 2010 | 11:26 am

  A couple of items in the news this week got me thinking about the social search space. But not from the usual angle. We have all heard about ChatRoulette by now, and of the random acts of human exhibitionism that take place there. Well, apparently some of those random encounters were too good to let go of. And so some visitors have taken to the a new Missed Connections to find people they met on ChatRoulette.Cue "I still haven't found what I'm looking for." Yeah, by U2. And maybe that should be "I still haven't found who I'm looking for."This is a great example of unintended social outcomes,…

• 50M per day, or pushing the envelope at 600 tweets per second

  adrian chan

  24 Feb 2010 | 4:48 pm

  Twitter is now reporting that 50 million tweets bleep through the grid every single day. It's a staggering number, 600 per second, of which "approximately 83 tweets per second contain product or brand references (20%)" according to coverage in Readwriteweb. Alongside metrics reported for Facebook (60 million status updates per day) and Youtube (1 billion videos per day) I'm inclined to run for cover in anticipation of some great resounding social sonic boom.No need to do that however as the metricians have yet to find proof that there is a social equivalent of the sound barrier out there to…

• 

  Social Media Club

• #SMCEDU Chat: What do you think of the No Child Left Behind overhaul?

  Yong Lee

  16 Mar 2010 | 10:11 am

  Social Media Club Education Connection (aka #SMCEDU) is a national initiative whose goal is to unite educators, students, and professionals to further the development of social media curriculum in our schools, enabling a wider network of learning and workforce preparedness. #SMCEDU is a part of Social Media Club, a nonprofit organization that is working to promote media literacy and connect people to share what they are learning about social media. With the combination of spring break, SXSW, and busy mid-semester schedules, it was a slower-than-usual day with #SMCEDU chat. We still tackled a…

• SxSW Daily Recap Show from Social Media Clubhouse

  Chris Heuer

  11 Mar 2010 | 11:07 pm

  Each day during SxSWi we will be hosting a livestream daily recap show you can watch over on the Social Media Clubhouse blog featuring Chris Heuer, Amanda Coolong from Techzulu and Ewan Spence, from… well, from Scotland. In this video shot overlooking Lake Austin with downtown in the distance, Chris and Amanda discuss what we will be doing each day for our livestream.

• SxSW Panel Rejected? Here’s a second chance

  Chris Heuer

  10 Mar 2010 | 7:48 am

  There are a lot of reasons panels get rejected by SxSW. Some don’t even make it into the panel picker, while others just aren’t ‘pimped out’ hard enough to garner sufficient votes.  Some are really, really fantastic ideas, but miss the mark regarding timing.  Some are just bad (note: if it’s bad, you have no second chance unless you rework it). Whatever the reason your panel was rejected, here is your second chance to present your talk with your panel on the afternoon of Tuesday March 16, 2010. So submit your panel to us in the comments below (make sure…

• #SMCEDU Chat: Converting Non-Technical Educators

  Yong Lee

  9 Mar 2010 | 5:22 am

  Social Media Club Education Connection (aka #SMCEDU) is a national initiative whose goal is to unite educators, students, and professionals to further the development of social media curriculum in our schools, enabling a wider network of learning and workforce preparedness. #SMCEDU is a part of Social Media Club, a nonprofit organization that is working to promote media literacy and connect people to share what they are learning about social media. With today’s #SMCEDU chat, I wanted to brainstorm with our community on ways to encourage non-technical educators to explore and learn about…

• MD/DC/VA: SMCEDU Information Gathering at George Washington University – March 11, 2010

  Yong Lee

  4 Mar 2010 | 11:02 am

  As SMCEDU interest grows in the DC area, interested individuals are invited to an information gathering at George Washington University. The event, hosted by GWU’s Andrea Genevieve (@andreagenevieve), welcomes all educators, students, and professionals that have a stake in improving social media education at the university level. The event will take place on Thursday, March 11, at 5:30pm at George Washington University in the School of Media and Public Affairs building, 4th floor conference room. If you’re thinking about starting an SMCEDU chapter at your school, or want to share…

• 

  Robin Good: Social Networking

• Social Media Research: Blogs And Twitter Use Trends Inside US Corporations

  Nora Ganim Barnes and Eric Mattson

  12 Mar 2010 | 2:27 am

  Do top US corporations use social media? Is the business world leveraging new media technologies to engage customers? The answer is definitely positive according to a new research study on 2009 Fortune 500 companies and their use of social media tools, like blogs and Twitter and authored by Nora Ganim Barnes and Eric Mattson. Photo credit: Kheng Ho Toh and Dmitriy Shironosov Each year Fortune Magazine compiles a list of the largest US corporations, which are named the Fortune 500 given their size and wealth. Due to the hugely influential role that these companies play in the corporate world,…

• Disruptive Innovation: How To Facilitate, Identify And Enable Bottom-Up Creativity Inside The Organization

  Paul Michelman

  3 Mar 2010 | 11:30 pm

  Does your online business use a disruptive innovation approach? In other words: have you ever considered getting a huge advantage over your competition by developing a business strategy that is a completely different way from what everyone else in your field does? Photo credit: Kheng Guan Toh Disruptive innovation is a term used in business and technology literature to describe innovations that improve a product or service in ways that the market does not expect, typically by being lower priced or designed for a different set of consumers. (Source: Wikipedia) Disruptive innovation happens…

• Becoming A Brand: The Experience Of Robin Good

  Teemu Arina

  26 Feb 2010 | 2:06 am

  How do you build a personal brand around yourself? Can one really create a business online simply by sharing her knowledge online? Photo credit: Robin Good A couple months ago I was invited by Nokia to join, together with Teemu Arina, a discussion and review session with their online publishing and social media teams focusing on how to improve and steer the future strategy and direction of Nokia online communication strategy. This one-day long event that took place at Nokia's headquarters, just outside of Helsinki, remains a pretty memorable day for me, not only because it was my very first…

• How To Create, Design And Deliver Your Email Newsletter

  Daniele Bazzano

  22 Feb 2010 | 2:04 am

  Although many web publishers consider email newsletters an old-fashioned way to update their readers and customers, in my opinion, email messages remain THE most familiar, intimate, direct and effective way to communicate with anyone you know. As such they represent one of the most powerful means to create and share value online and one of the few effective methods to start the "conversations" we keep hearing more and more about when it comes to marketing and community building. Photo credit: mipan But, how do you create, design and deliver an effective email newsletter? Is it better to use…

• Viral Marketing: How To Trasform Content Into A Meme That Spreads Like A Virus Online

  Henry Jenkins, Xiaochang Li, Ana Domb Krauskopf with Joshua Green

  19 Feb 2010 | 7:08 am

  Viral media is a flawed way to think about distributing content through informal or "ad hoc" networks of consumers and the harsh reality is that advertisers completely fail to understand the process whereby a content is redistributed over the web. Thus, and in sharp contrast with what they claim, advertisers are completely clueless about how to build a viral marketing campaign and completely ignore what metrics should be deployed to measure their viral campaigns effectiveness. Photo credit Kheng Ho Toh Nevertheless, advertisers are so fascinated by the "concept" of viral marketing, that they…

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  Buzz Marketing | Personal Branding | Personality Marketing

• How-to Leverage & Opportunity Filter

  contact@deanhunt.com (Dean Hunt)

  11 Mar 2010 | 3:49 am

  I just got back from a two week trip to Sydney, Australia. I have many embarrassing stories (and photos) for you, but today, I wanted first to share with you the two biggest “ah-ha” moments from my trip, so that they can benefit you and your business. Ah-ha Number One: Leverage If you are going to [...]

• The Internet Marketing Threesome

  contact@deanhunt.com (Dean Hunt)

  2 Mar 2010 | 5:11 pm

            Dean Hunt, James Schramko, Peter Parks What happens if you take three top Internet Marketers and put them in the same room? SuperFastBuzzPunisher is what happens. James Schramko and his “Super Fast” brand… Dean Hunt the “Buzz” marketer, and Peter Parks, the affiliate “punisher”. Download the MP3 or the PDF of this Internet Marketing threesome below: Super Fast Buzz Punisher [...]

• Be Unique Be YOU!

  contact@deanhunt.com (Dean Hunt)

  24 Feb 2010 | 5:12 pm

  It seems like everyone is copying “gurus” these days, but what they don’t realise is that the way to be truly unique is to be yourself. Ok, sounds a little cheesy I admit, but think about it, in the entire history of the universe, there has never, and will never be another person just like you. [...]

• How to NEVER Get Anything Done

  contact@deanhunt.com (Dean Hunt)

  17 Feb 2010 | 5:56 am

  Total reading time: 8 – 10 minutes (1,449 words) Do you find that there are too many distractions online? Perhaps you start projects and never finish them, or feel overwhelmed? In this article I am going to share with you a secret that I recently implemented that has helped move me away from recovering procrastinator to hyper-focused. Step [...]

• Market Me Tweet Twitter Tool

  contact@deanhunt.com (Dean Hunt)

  15 Feb 2010 | 2:46 am

  Market Me Tweet has arrived, and it has some very interesting features. This video below is a great introduction to Market Me Tweet and what this Twitter tool has to offer. Go see for yourselves via this link: Market Me Tweet Twitter Tool Enjoy. Dean

• 

  The Buzz Bin

• PR has Social Media “Buffet” Problem

  Michael Whitlow

  15 Mar 2010 | 6:06 am

  I heard a great analogy this weekend in a discussion about the online theft of music versus the continuing propensity of Boomers and Gen-Xers (almost alone in this) to still pay for their music in the form of CDs or iTunes purchases. The remark went something like this: “Just because you’re able to observe my behavior at an ‘all-you-can-eat’ buffet, your so-called research has no value in predicting my order in a fine dining restaurant.” People will sample a lot, but they won’t always buy what they sample. Buffet or Fine Dining? It go me to thinking about…

• SxSW Vibe: Enough Social, What’s Next?

  Geoff Livingston

  15 Mar 2010 | 1:29 am

  by Geoff Livingston This year’s SxSW had an interesting flavor to it (image by marcatsworld). You get the strong feeling that conversations and panels about social media have hit the wall. There’s an air of autumn to the conversations, and a consistent undercurrent revolving around what’s next. Everyone knows that organizations are still rapidly moving towards adoption and there are still, MANY, MANY best practices to be adopted. Yet, there’s no longer a newness to the dance; rather an acceptance that it must be learned or a conversation about continuing to refine…

• Seven Ways Hospitals Can Address Facebook Criticism

  Jenn Riggle

  11 Mar 2010 | 3:00 am

  By Jenn Riggle Photo courtesy of Stacy Bass Honesty may be the best policy – but sometimes it can hurt. While social media allows organizations to engage in honest conversations with their customers, it can also provide a forum for angry customers to voice their concerns. How you respond to these comments says a lot about you and your organization. Online comments don’t just impact organizations – newspapers are learning how to handle them as well. The Washington Post recently wrote a story about how people are hesitant to be quoted in articles because they’re afraid of negative…

• Is Trust In Twitter Misplaced?

  Geoff Livingston

  8 Mar 2010 | 2:53 am

  Now that Twitter hype is starting to cool off a bit, marketers need to take the time to evaluate the real value of this social network. First of all, Twitter offers a great place to talk with technologists, marketers, journalists, select stars and cause-activists. However, it’s not that great of a social network to reach buyers (h/t Valeria Maltoni). Delving deeper, social media whiz Jeremiah Owyang recently compared Google Buzz, MySpace, Facebook and Twitter. His analysis compared the networks from a perspective on where customers already are. His one liner on Twitter, “Has…

• The Trust Veneer Problem in Social Media

  Michael Whitlow

  5 Mar 2010 | 9:32 am

  Yet another trip. Yet another lost bag. Finding Trust Amid the Crowd I am increasingly aware of the challenges businesses face in earning real trust, and this week I was left (without a change of clothes) to ponder yet again just what is going wrong in this regard. My airline can’t get me and my luggage to the same place at the same time. My car has a mind of its own about braking and acceleration. My bank sees the issuance of credit cards as an opportunity to get in my pocket for more fees. Can the fall of capitalism be far behind? I used to feed empowered by Tweeting about such…

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  Greg Verdino's Marketing Blog

• See and be seen on the SXSW scene... on southby.tv

  Greg Verdino

  11 Mar 2010 | 10:38 pm

  I'm posting this from Austin where I'll spend the next few days working out of the Powered home office and catching as much of the SXSWi experience as I can swing. I haven't planned out a schedule of sessions and have only rsvp'd to a handful of parties. So I'll basically go wherever the wind -- or one of those scary pedicab peddlers -- takes me. But if you're in town for the festival and would like to connect you can hit me with an email or a direct message, track my whereabouts on foursquare or just look for my shining bald pate in the Convention Center hallways, in and around the blogger…

• Catch #socialmedia #sm49 on-demand

  Greg Verdino

  2 Mar 2010 | 11:36 am

    Earlier today, I moderated a lively hour-long tweetchat for #socialmedia.Nearly 400 twitterati participated as we debated the promise of and problems with marketers' focus on the next big thing.If you missed the live event, you can catch the chatlog on the #socialmedia site.

• Mark your twalenders: it's time for tweet chat times two

  Greg Verdino

  24 Feb 2010 | 7:17 pm

  Next week I'll be co-hosting two (count 'em, two) tweet chats. If you haven't taken part in a tweet chat before or flat out aren't even familiar with the concept it's pretty simple: a bunch of tweeps interested in a specific topic all tune into Twitter at the same time and, using a designated hashtag to keep track of what everyone is yammering on about, engage in a rollicking joyride of realtime discussion.Here's what you need to know about next week's events. First:#socialmediaWhen: Tuesday, March 2nd / Noon EasternHashtags: #socialmedia, #sm49Topic: The Next Big Thing is So Last Year In the…

• Get an education about social media in education

  Greg Verdino

  2 Feb 2010 | 4:40 am

  If you're in New York for Social Media Week and plan to hit some sessions, be sure to check out The Future of Social Media in Education at noon on Friday Feb 5th at the McGraw-Hill building. It's a panel session hosted by McGraw-Hill and their GradeGuru startup, featuring GradeGuru's Yianni Garcia, Mashable's Adam Ostrow, Jatched.com's Mary Casey, a few others and of course me. Here's a summary of what we'll cover during our two-hour discussion: How is social media changing the way college students learn? How are digital applications changing how professors teach? What are the most…

• The social media deadzone: why only tools focus on tools

  Greg Verdino

  27 Jan 2010 | 6:54 am

    This morning I happened across the above graphic in an older Center Networks post and it triggered a quick thought on a familiar theme. I have often chided marketers for focusing too much on specific tools, platforms, sites and shiny objects. You know what I'm talking about. Your boss meanders into your office and casually asks you about some sexy social media thang that they saw mentioned in this morning's Wall Street Journal or the latest issue of BloombergWeek. Or your agency arrives to present -- iPhones, Androids and tablets in hand -- and they're all atwitter with talk about some…

• 

  Invisible Inkling

• When all I have left is my Fun folder, I win

  Ryan Sholin

  6 Mar 2010 | 10:19 am

  If you don’t use Google Reader or Bloglines or some other feed reader, you can stop reading now. OK, still here? Months ago, after at least a couple years of just throwing all my feeds in Google Reader and sorting by newest, reading from the top down and marking all as read when I felt full of information or short on time, I went back to folders. Back to the folders with the sort of labels I used when I first started with Bloglines in 2005, which predated my use of Newsgator, which predated the existence of the great and powerful, albeit Buzz-infected as of late, Google Reader. Labels…

• Back to the Internet’s Future

  Ryan Sholin

  24 Feb 2010 | 4:32 am

  Once in a while, I take a look through some of the links I’ve been saving, sharing, and publishing in the sidebar of my blog, Twitter, and a few other places, and try to scrape the pixelly cream off the top to immortalize (until the links break, anyway) a little bit of the Web, hung in blog post with care, framed neatly by a theme. This is one of those onces in a while. If you like what you see here, follow me on Twitter to get ‘em while they’re fresh. The Internet? Bah! Published at Newsweek on February 27, 1995. Clifford Stoll’s 1995 predictions included…

• Epistemology and sources

  Ryan Sholin

  2 Feb 2010 | 7:16 pm

  Back in the excellent philosophy class I took in high school (Hi Mr. Lutness!), epistemology was simply explained as How You Know What You Know. And different philosophers said you know what you know for different reasons. George Berkeley, for example, had this whole “seeing is believing”thing, for example. If he didn’t perceive it with his own senses, it might as well not exist. No retweets for him, I suppose. No newspapers. I seriously doubt he would have trusted cable news had it existed in his day. (Scholarly friends: I am aware that Berkeley took the above given as step…

• Five

  Ryan Sholin

  1 Feb 2010 | 4:45 am

  When I started this blog, in my first week as a Mass Communications graduate student at San Jose State, it was called “Big Silver Robot,” it was hosted at Blogspot, and it was anonymous. That lasted for about a month. Pretty quickly, I signed up for a free WordPress instance at Blogsome, where I enjoyed a bit more freedom to learn html and css by fiddling with the files in the WP admin. It was ryansholin.blogsome.com, and I’m pretty sure that was the point where I started calling it “Ryan Sholin’s J-School Blog.” Straightforward enough, right? Of the early…

• A Newsstand for the Tablet that might work

  Ryan Sholin

  29 Jan 2010 | 4:59 am

  “Newsstand” by triin on Flickr. Mario Garcia probably believes the lifespan (halflife?) of print newspapers will stretch out ever so slightly longer than I believe, but I’m constantly inspired by his original thought about the problems associated with sustaining any version of the existing structure of journalism, assuming for the moment that it’s a good idea. And of course, he’s thinking about the Tablet. (I’m going to try to avoid focusing on any single product here, instead using the word “Tablet” as code for: multitouch slab of glass with…

• 

  SocialFish

• Let’s all go SocialFishing…

  Maddie Grant

  16 Mar 2010 | 9:00 am

  So you may have noticed something interesting happening over here on the SocialFishing blog. Yes, it’s official, every Wednesday is now TEAM SOCIALFISH GUEST BLOGGER DAY! Whoo hoo! And just to be clear, anyone that we work with who helps us do what we do for our association/nonprofit community can be part of Team SocialFish. Now, we’re diligently working behind the scenes (with our fab developer Dave Sabol) to create a “proper” Team SocialFish blog author page that will show off properly what each of these cool folks are all about, but in the meantime, here’s a…

• Cool tools in my social media arsenal

  Maddie Grant

  15 Mar 2010 | 8:53 am

  So I’m inspired by Joe Flowers’ recent video of some cool tools in his social media arsenal, and while I am not quite as adept as he is for creating a video of this, I thought it had been a while since I listed any tools I use that you might not know about. As you might suspect, as a self-described “shiny new toy addict” I have tried probably thousands of tools and these are the ones that are rising to the top for me – mainly because they are simple and they work, and all are free, or started out free and are so awesome that I upgraded to the low cost versions.

• Water Cooler Chat 3/12

  Maddie Grant

  12 Mar 2010 | 8:00 am

  Please join us for our Water Cooler chats, hosted in conjunction with Engage365, on FRIDAYS at 12 pm CST/1 pm EST. That’s today!! We’ll be talking a lot about all the various interesting issues around using social media at events… but as usual, we’ll also talk about anything else that’s on your mind. So come armed with serious questions / topics / issues / problems or just drop in to shoot the breeze on Friday afternoons. Can’t wait to chat with you! Last week, we discussed how people might enjoy some of ASAE’s Great Ideas conference virtually, if…

• Great Ideas: Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose

  Maddie Grant

  11 Mar 2010 | 5:33 pm

  I’m back from ASAE’s Great Ideas Conference and have a lot of thoughts swirling around my head about what to include in a recap for you. Here’s a few quick links of the obvious stuff. Check out the full Twitter transcript in chronological order. I wanted to do a “#ideas10 in 140 characters” post pulling out my fave tweets over the last few days, but it got overwhelming and impossible – but skimming though this will give you a GREAT sense of what it was all about.  If the direct link doesn’t work after a while, go to What The Hashtag and search for…

• Facebook Groups And Facebook Pages – Everything You Need To Know

  johnhaydon

  10 Mar 2010 | 5:00 am

  This is the first guest post by awesome nonprofit social media rockstar John Haydon.  John will be providing tactical tips here on SocialFishing on a monthly basis.  Can.Not.Wait.  Whoo hoo! You’re curious how a Facebook Group can compliment your Page. Or, you may have a Group and want to “move your fans” over to your Facebook Page. Many nonprofits find Facebook confusing so don’t get down on yourself if you are lost. Pages, Groups and Profiles Facebook created Pages, Groups and Profiles – three separate applications – to help individuals and organizations achieve three…

• 

  Global Neighbourhoods

• Toyota, Apple, Google & End Userism

  shelisrael

  9 Mar 2010 | 8:27 am

  In the past weeks, I’ve been critical of Toyota, Apple and Google. Not only are these companies who I’ve traditionally respected, but I have used many of their products and I have done so for a great many years. I expect I will continue to do so. These are also companies who have a lot of loyal users, some of them passionately so. I admit, that my recent blog post in which I called the Apple iPad and Google Buzz a pair of “ugly puppies,” was a bit over the top. My confession was that I stumbled accross the photo and could not resist using it. OIt inspired the headline.

• Why Universal Translation is a Holy Grail

  shelisrael

  7 Mar 2010 | 11:30 am

  [Tower of Babel. From Logoi.com] A while back, my friend  David Feng tweeted in Chinese that he was tweeting while riding under Beijing in a subway car. I used Google Translate to see if I could figure out what he said. It came out something like “I’m using my digits on myself with a bird in the Beijing belly,” and he and I had a good laugh I remembered that this morning I saw a few tweets with my name in them. Two were in Chinese and one in Arabic. I used Google Translate to try to read in English what was written in these two languages that I don’t speak. The…

• Apple, Google & their ugly puppies

  shelisrael

  6 Mar 2010 | 8:23 am

  It is very early in the game but it seems to me that both Apple iPad and Google Buzz are ugly puppies. No matter how cute the marketers try to make them look, people just aren’t going to want to cozy up and play with them. You’d think that these two brilliant product companies would know better. I did.  expected more out of an Apple slate and Google’s first real foray into social networking. I’ve even tried to love–or even like- Buzz and the iPad but I don’t. These are companies whose design teams have understood product simplicity and elegance. They have…

• The Age of Face-to-Forehead

  shelisrael

  2 Mar 2010 | 3:24 pm

  I had fun last week at the Brainfood Store Digital Festival in Dublin, Ire. My talk went pretty well and while I was up on the dais, I realized I was seeing the faces of most attendees. In Ireland, people at digital conferences, for the most part are not live tweeting or blogging. They are not checking email or texting to any great degree. They are sitting and listening for the most part. When you speak to such an audience, you see their eyes, their smiles and frowns. You know when they are on your side or not. You can see them either nod or nod off. This is in striking contrast to many of my…

• Having to Pay for It

  shelisrael

  2 Mar 2010 | 10:12 am

  A long, long time ago, when the online world was new and small and driven by idealistic developers, someone came up with the idea that giving online content away for free was a good thing. The idea, at first, was to get popular with freeware, then after people appreciated the value of your original content, you could introduce a premium version and then you could charge. For the most part, it didn’t turn out that way. So many people produced so much quality content–content which almost always overlapped with other sources — that it seemed unlikely that anyone could charge…

• 

  CHRISTOPHER S. PENN

• Ninja Mind Control Trick

  Christopher S. Penn

  15 Mar 2010 | 4:58 am

  So much of what we perceive is defined by subtle cues and clues. Ever heard the cliche that clothes make the man? Like many cliches, it’s mostly true. The clothes you wear do indeed change the perceptions of others, controlling at least the initial impression, the blink, that you make. That’s just the tip of the iceberg, though. Even more control can be exerted by controlling what your nonverbal language says. Watch how different people do seemingly mundane actions – opening doors (do they hold doors for others? if so, how?), shaking hands, sitting down in chairs. Does their…

• Weekend Foodblogging: Hotel Ceviche

  Christopher S. Penn

  14 Mar 2010 | 9:04 am

  A recent tweet from CC Chapman at SxSW about his hotel room having no amenities for preparing food (fridge or microwave) got me thinking: what’s the best food you could prepare in such conditions, assuming you had access to a local grocery store but not much else, and you didn’t want to buy a ton of stuff that you’d either have to ship home or abandon? The answer: ceviche. Ceviche is a South American cold fish dish, “cooked” by using an acid to denature the proteins in a meat as opposed to using heat. It’s light, very refreshing, tasty, healthy, and very…

• How to do blog re-runs intelligently

  Christopher S. Penn

  12 Mar 2010 | 4:29 am

  How many of you knew me in 2008? In 2007? Far fewer of you than today, I’m sure. There’s a lot of good stuff on this blog – and on your blog – that you’ve undoubtedly missed if you’re a relatively new friend. Let’s talk today about how to intelligently do re-runs of your blog or other content. First, you have to have an idea of what to re-run. Fire up your statistics package of choice. I’ll be using Google Analytics. Now, go to Content > Top Content. In the filter, type in the earliest year that you’ve got content for – in my example…

• How do you value brand and reputation?

  Christopher S. Penn

  11 Mar 2010 | 5:11 am

  Here’s a question for all the folks who say that brand and reputation are important. How do you value brand? How do you value reputation? How do you know when your efforts at branding and reputation are paying off? This is something that folks who are community managers like Amber Naslund and DJ Waldow struggle with daily. What value do companies need to put on their efforts? Here’s a relatively simple (and remember, simple != easy) way to get started in measuring the impact of brand in financial terms, in hard numbers that you can wrap your head around. First, you need to know…

• What photography can teach you about marketing focus

  Christopher S. Penn

  10 Mar 2010 | 4:28 am

  Take a look at this photo of the coffee stand here at the office: It’s bland. It’s boring. It tries to cram everything relevant into one picture so that customers don’t miss anything. It’s taken by someone who knows little to nothing about photographic composition, so it’s shot square on with no sense of depth, perspective, or anything. It is, in other words, a typical photo. That photo is your standard, typical marketing campaign. This is what most marketing is – a long feature list of stuff, much of which may not even be helpful if you don’t already…

• 

  Web Apps on Go2Web20

• BetaEasy: Customer Feedback & Beta Management Service

  15 Mar 2010 | 5:00 pm

  BetaEasy collects all feedbacks in one place, enables to form the community of users, allows to vote on bugs and features, etc. This service can be easily integrated with any website/software/web application regardless of programming language. Learn more http://www.betaeasy.com Brought to you by Go2web20.net - The web applications index

• Kooaba: Make Smart Visuals

  15 Mar 2010 | 5:00 pm

  Your digital images turn into smart visuals with kooaba’s image recognition services. Using Smart Visuals enables you to explore, share and organize the things you see. Learn more http://www.kooaba.com Brought to you by Go2web20.net - The web applications index

• Plupper: Live chat service and Feedback Widget

  15 Mar 2010 | 5:00 pm

  Live Chat, Email, Feedback System, FAQ. All needed communication channels in one simple interface. Connect using Google Talk, Pidgin, Adium, iChat, Psi, Miranda, Trillian, IM+, Meebo or with any of XMPP/Jabber client and start chatting with your website visitors right away. Learn more http://www.plupper.com Brought to you by Go2web20.net - The web applications index

• Buzzuka: Create and Share your Pitch

  15 Mar 2010 | 5:00 pm

  Buzzuka is the place for people, companies and groups to create and share their powerful 30-second elevator pitch. When your pitch is ready to go, Buzzuka also helps you get the word out, on your social networks, in an interview...whenever opportunity knocks! Learn more http://www.buzzuka.com Brought to you by Go2web20.net - The web applications index

• Donutchat: Social Chat Room for your Online Community

  15 Mar 2010 | 5:00 pm

  Donut chat provides media-enabled chat rooms for your online community. It fully works on iPhone/iPod touch. Web-based with no install. Free. Learn more http://donutchat.com Brought to you by Go2web20.net - The web applications index

• 

  Socialmedia.biz

• Real-time web dictates change in industries

  David Spark

  15 Mar 2010 | 3:23 pm

  With serendipity and humanity we’re able to connect people’s digital souls At SXSW, I bumped into Jeff Pulver and asked him to talk about his passion around his 140 Conference. It’s not a conference about Twitter. It’s a conference about how the real-time conversations are motivating behaviors and telling industries what they can and can’t do. Jeff Pulver is insanely passionate, and he gives a fantastic rant on how the speed of real-time information is changing all ecosystems. Watch the video over on Tweetshare. This is one of many videos I’ve been shooting for Tweetshare at SXSW.

• Cause marketing motivated through challenges

  David Spark

  15 Mar 2010 | 9:47 am

  Joe Jaffe explains how our desire to game with each other can be a useful marketing tool At the Diggnation party at SXSW, I caught up with author and social media maven, Joe Jaffe of Jaffejuice and Jaffejuice.tv. Joe had actually interviewed me a year and a half ago regarding an article I had written for Mashable about social media mistakes made by social media gurus. Friday night was our first in person meeting. I asked Joe to return the favor and let me interview him, and we talked about the rise of cause marketing. Specifically, he focused cause marketing’s success not pulling at our…

• Embarrassing childhood stories from Diggnation’s host (and his mom)

  David Spark

  14 Mar 2010 | 8:06 am

  Set fire to a house and you too could grow up to be a top podcast host After Alex Albrecht's rocking performance at the live Diggnation show at South by Southwest, I asked his mom, Cathy Albrecht, if she could dish up any good embarrassing stories about her son. She tells a story of him setting a fire to the neighbor's house, and then Alex jumps in, fesses up to that and also getting doused with milk. Watch the video on Tweetshare. I'm shooting tons of videos at SXSW for Tweetshare. Catch all of the videos on the SXSW fan page on Tweetshare. If you like a video, please comment and join in the…

• Making sense of conversations on Twitter

  David Spark

  9 Mar 2010 | 9:46 am

  Launching today, Tweetshare lets you have Twitter conversations around any piece of content The annoying aspect of Twitter is that it's really difficult to follow conversations. There's nothing inherent to Twitter that makes it easy for you to backtrack a conversation. What many people use for conversation tracking is hashtags, and then searching on the hashtags. Problem with hashtags is they're not threaded so you can't see specifically how one person responded to another. Nor can you see the beginning of the conversation. One service I've used before that's a good solution is Twitoaster,…

• End of the resume, rise of the super user

  David Spark

  8 Mar 2010 | 5:48 pm

  View more presentations from David Spark. Or see presentation on SlideShare. Whether you're looking to get hired, or you're looking for A+ talent, you want to be seen as or want to be looking for super users. This 14-minute live presentation was given at the Dice event at The Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif. In the presentation I explain the super user model and give examples of how companies have found, built relationships with, and hired super users. What do you think? Do you think the 8 ½ x 11 paper resume has any future in the age of social media? If you want to get…

• 

  Gauravonomics Blog

• How to Design a Reputation System: It’s All About Karma

  gauravonomics@gmail.com (Gaurav Mishra)

  16 Mar 2010 | 11:53 am

  Randy Farmer (@frandallfarmer) and Bryce Glass (@soldierant) share some insightful tips on designing web reputation, or karma, systems: - Karma is user reputation within a context - Karma is useful for building trust between users, and between a user and the site - Karma can be an incentive for participation and contributions - Karma is contextual and has limited utility globally. [A chessmaster is not a good eBay Seller] - Karma comes in several flavors – Participation, Quality and Robust (combined) - Karma should be complex and the result of indirect evaluations, and the formulation…

• Seven Lessons For Social Interaction Design From Social Gaming

  gauravonomics@gmail.com (Gaurav Mishra)

  16 Mar 2010 | 11:37 am

  Neil Vidyarthi (@neilvidyarthi) lists the seven elements that should be included in every social game: real friends, gifting, leaderboards, challenges, messaging, teams and customization. The most important feature of a social game is a user’s real-world friends list. So when I invite friends to play, or look at the leaderboard, I should be able to see my personal friends in my social network. This is one of the main aspects that make today’s “social games” different than social games of the past. It’s not like today’s social games are the first to use buddy lists and social…

• Open Thread: Noteworthy Posts on Social Networks and Online Communities From India

  gauravonomics@gmail.com (Gaurav Mishra)

  16 Mar 2010 | 4:31 am

  You might have noticed that I’m linking out a lot from my blog, but not really to Indian authors, and I really want to. So, if you have recently read an insightful post on social networks or online communities from an Indian author, share a link in the comments below. These posts can be about tips, ideas, analysis, case studies, or best practices, but I am not really looking for news release rehashes. If I find the post insightful, I’ll link to it on my blog (3000+ subscribers), and tweet about it (5500+ followers) with a hat tip to you.If you liked this post, you should check out…

• The 2020 Social Engagement Architecture Framework For Designing Social Platforms

  gauravonomics@gmail.com (Gaurav Mishra)

  15 Mar 2010 | 11:17 am

  At 2020 Social, we use a simple Engagement Architecture framework for designing social platforms, including online communities. The framework has seven elements — 1. Three types of Social Objects: lifestyles, interests, causes. 2. Five types of Social Dynamics: consumer generated content, conversations, collaboration, community, collective intelligence. 3. Three elements of the Social Graph: profiles, activities, relationships. 4. Seven types of Social Roles (related to profiles): lurker, learner, connector, moderator, organizer, teacher, super-user. 5. Seven levels in the Ladder of…

• Nine Themes in Enterprise 2.0

  gauravonomics@gmail.com (Gaurav Mishra)

  15 Mar 2010 | 8:47 am

  Susan Scrupski (@itsinsider) – The 2.0 Adoption Council and MIT’s Center for Digital Business will be co-producing a series of case studies that explore the modern dynamics driving the 2.0 phenomenon in a sampling of large enterprises. We’ve identified the following themes that are present in most initiatives: * Innovation: Leveraging collaboration and social activity to spur discovery, idea generation, and breakthroughs for the organization or customers * Time-to-Market: Accelerating the time to bring products/services to market by collapsing artificial silos/boundaries and time…

• 

  OnDemand Beat

• CloudShare Democratizes The Cloud

  Ameed Taylor

  12 Mar 2010 | 9:17 am

  One of the more eagerly adopted cloud services thus far in 2010 has been CloudShare Pro. CloudShare Pro is a “light” version of CloudShare’s Enterprise level product and is aimed at individuals and small teams who want to quickly set up training, sales or testing environments in the cloud and share copies with other colleagues. Free during its beta period; CloudShare Pro allows user to create up to six Linux or Windows VM’s, each with its own internal IP and outbound access to the internet. CloudShare Pro also allows users to create snapshots of their environments (the…

• OnDemand Speed Links 23 February 2010

  Ameed Taylor

  23 Feb 2010 | 7:36 am

  SAP Launches 12Sprints Beta SAP launches its Cloud Based Collaboration tool, months (and in some cases years) behind similar tools by IBM , 37 Signals and  a host of other cloud providers Cloud Computing Revenue Predictions Interesting article from Linda Leung that estimates revenue from Cloud Computing operations for a few major cloud providers The IPad and Desktop Virtualization How the IPad could become the must have thin client for Desktop Virtualization in 2010. Private Cloud Adoption Models EMC Global Marketing CTO Chuck Hollis describes the 3 primary adoption models he has seen…

• Red Hat OpenSource Cloud Computing Forum

  Ameed Taylor

  11 Feb 2010 | 4:29 am

  Below are three of the more interesting/promising presentations from the recent Red Hat sponsored OpenSource Cloud Computing Forum. . . .

• Oracle + Sun Cloud and Virtualization Strategies

  Ameed Taylor

  28 Jan 2010 | 12:54 pm

  The tech industry has been abuzz the past week now that the Oracle acquisition of Sun has cleared the last hurdle from the European Union and is officially complete. Oracle and Sun executives have begun addressing a number of questions about how Oracle will integrate Suns various hardware, system and software stacks into the Oracle ecosystem. Two areas of integration that hold quite a bit of interest to this blog’s readers are Oracle + Sun’s Cloud and Virtualization Strategies. In the following prerecorded videos Richard Sarwal SVP of Product Development and Edward Screven; Chief…

• IBM rolls out Beta Cloud to Developers

  Ameed Taylor

  21 Jan 2010 | 3:42 pm

  IBM last month rolled out its Beta Cloud to the general public. The Beta Cloud is IBM’s dynamically provisioned runtime environment that includes tools to develop and test application code on IBM software. With this new offering on the market it will be interesting to see who dominates amongst Amazon, IBM, Rackspace, Microsoft Azure and Force.com as the environment of choice for Cloud development. The following video shows developers how to create environments on the Beta Cloud.

• 

  GigaOM

• The Challenge for Network Operators in Mobile Web 2.0

  Colin Gibbs

  16 Mar 2010 | 10:00 am

  Presence-enabled communities will be the “primary market driver” behind mobile demand for Web 2.0 applications and services that will generate $18.9 billion in 2014, according to figures released this morning from Juniper Research. Carriers will have a chance to tap into that market if they can effectively evolve beyond their traditional role as network operators. As loosely defined by Juniper, mobile Web 2.0 features the web as a platform for applications and the user as both creator and consumer of content. That broad definition includes offerings such as mobile Skype as well as…

• Video: How the iPhone Helped Make Game Startup Unity a Winner

  Om Malik

  16 Mar 2010 | 9:31 am

  It goes without saying that timing is everything. You can be like Friendster and show up too soon to the social networking party and then blow it. Or you can be like the iPod and make a splash despite being a late entrant to the MP3 player market. Unity Technologies, a 3-D gaming platform, has seen this movie from all sides. After struggling for nearly six years, the company’s gaming platform took off when Apple released iPhone and iPod touch. With a platform that lets developers build lightweight, online 3-D games — perfectly suited for the iPhone OS-based devices — Unity…

• Lessons in Phone Marketing, or Why the Nexus One Is Sucking Wind

  Stacey Higginbotham

  16 Mar 2010 | 7:30 am

  When it comes to selling a lot of a new phones in a fairly short amount of time, an educated customer base, a pre-holiday launch and picking a carrier with a huge subscriber base are essential, according to an analysis released today by Flurry. The provider of high-end handsets app analytics looked at the first 74 days of sales for the iPhone, the Droid and the Nexus One to see how each had sold in that time frame. It chose 74 days because that’s how long it took Apple to sell 1 million of the original iPhones. To the Flurry team’s surprise, however, even more Droids were sold in…

• Why Microsoft Should Allow Third Parties to Sell WinPhone Apps

  Colin Gibbs

  16 Mar 2010 | 7:02 am

  Microsoft has said that it will require applications developers for its upcoming Windows Phone OS to sell their apps exclusively through the company’s official storefront, reversing a long-held strategy of allowing a host of third-party retailers to sell Windows Mobile offerings. It’s a move that’s sure to destroy some of the developer goodwill Microsoft has worked so hard to build up in recent weeks. WinMo users have long been able to download apps from distributors such as GetJar, PocketGear.com and Handango in addition to Microsoft’s Windows Marketplace for Mobile.

• UPDATED: Twitter’s @anywhere: Not a Bang But a Whimper

  Mathew Ingram

  16 Mar 2010 | 6:42 am

  Updated: Twitter founder Evan Williams was widely expected to announce an advertising platform at the SXSW conference, but while he announced something with dozens of major media partners, it wasn’t an ad platform — it was something called @anywhere. And what is @anywhere? Good question. In fact, that’s just one of the many good questions that attendees hoped in vain would be asked by Umair Haque of Harvard Business Review, whose interviewing skills received less-than-critical acclaim during and after the keynote. The official Twitter blog entry about the launch of @anywhere…

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  The Virtual Handshake: Opening Doors and Closing Deals Online

• Seeking Interns for Launch of New York Internet Startup

  David Teten

  12 Mar 2010 | 12:25 pm

  We are seeking 1-3 volunteer interns (graduate or undergraduate) who would like to be part of the founding team for an Internet startup. This is an ideal project for a current or recently graduated student who is interested in learning more about social media, Web 2.0 technologies, and how to build a startup. The role is part-time (5-10 hours/week), you can be located anywhere, and your hours are flexible.   The research is led by David Teten, a New York-based investment banker ( http://www.Teten.com ), advisor to venture capital funds, serial entrepreneur, Harvard MBA, and author of The…

• Make a Referral Week 2010 Is March 8-12

  Scott Allen

  8 Mar 2010 | 10:43 pm

  I won’t quote you a zillion studies – let’s just accept it as fact that for most businesses, referrals are both the least expensive and most effective source of new business. Referrals are also the best source of leads for job seekers and employers. There are customers and jobs and employees out there – referrals dramatically accelerate the matching process. With that in mind, last year my friend John Jantsch created Make A Referral Week, a week-long event designed to educate people on making and encouraging effective referrals, and to drive people to action by making…

• Recruiting with Social Media – talk by Fred Wilson

  David Teten

  2 Mar 2010 | 7:14 pm

  I attended tonight’s Social Recruiting Meetup, and heard a talk by venture capitalist Fred Wilson on "Recruiting with Social Media" .  This was a highly condensed version of his presentation at the Social Recruiting Summit (video available on that site).  Social Recruiting Summit View more presentations from fredwilson.   My brief notes: Social web has vastly connected the number of people you can connect with every day.    I got into VC in the mid 80s.   At the time we would seek out investments by going to conferences, walking halls, collecting…

• Writing Great LinkedIn Invitations

  Scott Allen

  15 Feb 2010 | 11:55 pm

  Great LinkedIn invitations? Are they really that big a deal? Sure, canned messages are lame, but inviting someone to connect via LinkedIn (or any other social networking site) is just a simple matter of record-keeping. What’s wrong with just, “Hey, let’s connect?” That’s one way to look at it. But consider this: every communication you have with someone in your network is an opportunity to move that relationship forward, to make it stronger. It’s not that there’s anything “wrong” with treating a LinkedIn invitation as a simple mechanical…

• Launch of Track.com, a market for independent Wall Street research

  David Teten

  29 Jan 2010 | 8:42 am

    Four days ago, a team of Wall Street veterans launched Track.com, a new marketplace for independent research providers.  I met with the management team today.  Ironically, they’re sharing offices with Tracked.com, another NY startup.  John Frankel, the Founder, said that the people at Tracked like the domain name Track so much that they bought Tracked.com.   Track.com offers independent research providers a platform to distribute their intellectual property.  Buyers pay subscriptions for access to the pool of content. Similar to Value Investors Club, the…

• 

  Brent Csutoras

• Delicious: Past, Present and Future

  Brent Csutoras

  22 Feb 2010 | 5:55 am

  Delicious, or del.icio.us as it used to be, was founded in 2003 by Jason Schachter. After growing in popularity relatively fast, it was purchased by Yahoo! in 2005. For the following 3 years, nothing really changed at Delicious and it quickly became known more as a sensible bookmarking service than anything particularly cutting edge. Shadowed by [...]

• GE Sponsors Digg’s Entire Health Section

  Brent Csutoras

  20 Feb 2010 | 4:24 am

  Digg is one of the first social media communities to really take sponsorships and advertising to the next level. They were the first to allow users to rate ads shown on the site, have sponsorships for events like Digg Dialoggs, and even combined banner and background campaigns targeted to specific categories or submissions. If you happen [...]

• Google Gets Into the Social Game with Google Buzz

  Brent Csutoras

  10 Feb 2010 | 4:55 am

  Did anyone else see the news about Google Buzz and feel a massive sense of closure? The lack of a comprehensive social networking tool always felt like a huge hole in Google’s armoury, but it was only a matter of time before they entered the arena. Rumours were flying round the web earlier this week about [...]

• Imgur: Stolen Content and Social Media’s Double Standard

  Brent Csutoras

  8 Feb 2010 | 7:05 am

  For those of you living under a rock, Imgur is a site that allows users to upload and share images very quickly and easily. It’s grown massively in popularity over the last 6 months and has left similar services in the dust. It was created by Reddit user, MrGrim (Alan Scaaf), for other Redditors and this is [...]

• Digg Hacked or Clever Advertisement?

  Brent Csutoras

  3 Feb 2010 | 11:47 am

  It appeared today as if Digg had been hacked. If you visit Digg.com and view the page source, you will see the following in the code. However, if you notice the url near the bottom, http://hellisnigh.com points to a page which is advertising Dante’s Inferno, an EA game to be released shortly. Which makes you wonder if [...]

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  Sphinn: Hot Topics

• Affiliate Marketing: Choosing The Best Model For You [infographic]

  15 Mar 2010 | 12:08 pm

  Choosing the affiliate marketing model that works for your site can be tough. For a publisher website, you will need to weight pros and cons of CPM vs CPC vs CPA and find out which model will work for your site audience and provide the highest return. Advertisers on the other hand, need to figure out which model will work for the type of product/site they are attempting to promote. Each model offers different benefits but come with drawbacks. Take a look at the chart below for great explanation of various payment and advertising models, and find the right one for you.

• Meet The 25-Year-Old Who Saved “SEO” From Being Trademarked

  15 Mar 2010 | 7:52 am

  Back in April 2008, a man began his attempt to trademark SEO, his name was Jason Gambert. Today I learned, Gambert’s claim to register a trademark on the term “SEO” was formally blocked. It may come to a surprise to you that this trademark application was blocked only because of the help from a few individuals in the SEO industry.

• Taking stock of the SEO mindset

  15 Mar 2010 | 7:03 am

  If you’re a search geek that’s curious, a blogger looking for hot topics or even a search conference looking for topics of interest; hang in for the ride while we see what is really going on in the space ...

• Ruud Questions: Arnie Kuenn on Link Building

  12 Mar 2010 | 2:01 pm

  I enjoyed this conversation between Ruud Hein and Arnie Kuenn on link building. Think you will, too.

• Jason Calacanis: Screw You Google, Now I'll Sell Links Too

  12 Mar 2010 | 9:10 am

  Apparently it wasn't enough that Jason kept snubbing his nose at Google with the other forms of Mahalo spam, now he has started selling links from there as well.

• 

  E-consultancy

• New Pew data: newspaper pay walls will likely fail

  Patricio Robles

  16 Mar 2010 | 8:31 am

  A number of prominent newspapers, including the New York Times, have publicly committed to setting up pay walls as they struggle to find new sources of revenue. But according to the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism "State of the News Media 2010" report, newspapers planning to erect pay walls could be in for a rude awakening.Pew found that only 35% of online consumers in the United States have a favorite news website. Of this group, a whopping 82% said that they'd turn elsewhere if their favorite news website put up a pay wall. In short, of the consumers who actually…

• How not to use Twitter, by Rentokil

  Kevin Gibbons

  16 Mar 2010 | 4:29 am

  Social media marketing isn’t always easy to get right, especially when it comes to rapidly developing and changing platforms such as Twitter. However, it is very easy to get wrong, as UK pest control giant Rentokil found out this month.To give Rentokil its due, it tries hard. The company has a fairly decent blog,  ‘deBugged’, written with the search engines in mind while trying to retain a sense of humour, which is no mean feat when your business is destroying bugs. Admittedly, it’s not the most personable blog out there, but it’s a vast improvement on what most large firms are…

• Q&A: Adam Parker and Daryl Willcox demystify online press release distribution

  Michelle Goodall

  16 Mar 2010 | 4:04 am

  Press release distribution is something that we are consistently asked about on our training courses and PR and social media related events. A growing number of commercial news distribution services and free services offer different ways to boost press release and related content visibility to media, through search and social media. So how can you tell which press release distribution services count? What is a social media news release? What are the opportunities and potential pitfalls for businesses and agencies disseminating their news in this way?I asked Adam Parker from RealWire and Daryl…

• How Google detects language

  Julian Grainger

  16 Mar 2010 | 3:20 am

  There were some very good discussions late last year about geo-targeting neutral domains, focusing around pointing Google Webmasters at multiple XML sitemaps and country specific folders. The next problem is how to target multiple languages in the same country for a multi-lingual website. I think I have found the answer...For those unaware the consensus is to get a neutral domain like a .com domain, set-up country specific folders and create separate country specific XML sitemaps for the each folder. So example.com targeting Ireland and the UK would have example.com/ie/sitemap_IE.xml and…

• PayPal plans better micropayment solution

  Patricio Robles

  16 Mar 2010 | 2:11 am

  Much has been made about the market for micropayments over the years, but for the most part, billing for small transactions remains a challenge for online merchants, especially small and mid-size publishers who sell content and virtual goods. PayPal, however, hopes to provide some relief later this year with a new offering that makes it easier for online merchants to process micropayments cost-effectively.BusinessWeek details how the new offering will work: PayPal will let companies accumulate so-called micropayments until a certain volume is reached, at which point PayPal will charge…

• 

  Convince and Convert Blog: Social Media Strategy and Social Media Consulting

• 7 Reasons Not to Put All Your Eggs in the Twitter Basket

  Jay Baer

  16 Mar 2010 | 4:53 am

  Are you too Twitter-obsessed in your social media approach?Twitter’s role as a conduit for the Zeitgeist is unrivaled, and it has almost single-handedly ushered in the era of real-time search, and social CRM. But, it’s the online equivalent of HBO – important more because of who uses it and the media’s infatuation with it, rather than the actual size and impact of its audience.Don’t get me wrong. I advocate participating in Twitter, and I’ve certainly grown my own audience via that channel, and it should be part of almost every company or business professional’s social media…

• Staggering Social Media Insights – The Best of Twitter 20 eBook

  Jay Baer

  10 Mar 2010 | 3:12 am

  I’m very proud to launch my new ebook that chronicles the best moments from my Twitter 20 series of live interviews on Twitter. You can download it free below. AND, you can win a hard copy (only 50 exist) FedExed to you. Just Retweet this post, and 5 retweeters will be randomly selected this Saturday and will win a copy.The Best of Twitter 20 From the forward:I’m sitting in a ballroom in Indianapolis in September, 2008 watching Joseph Jaffe give a masterful presentation on social media transforming corporations, when I come upon the idea to interview him on Twitter. So many of his…

• Are You Taking Social Media Shortcuts?

  Jay Baer

  9 Mar 2010 | 3:24 am

  Are you treating social media like a checklist?A recent study by Econsultancy called “The Value of Social Media” shows that companies are overwhelmingly using the “Big 4″ of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Linkedin for their social media efforts.And while I don’t have any issues with those sites (in fact I wrote about Facebook marketing in-depth here), but is treating social media like a checklist really the best possible solution for your company?There’s More Out There if You Look For ItEvery day, 22 million Americans eat at McDonald’s. But, there…

• How to Match 10 Key Success Metrics to Your Blogging Strategy

  Jay Baer

  4 Mar 2010 | 3:54 am

  If you’re blogging for business, rather than blogging about your cat, baby, fashion addiction, or crush on Taylor Swift, you need to set some success metrics.Without a statistical measure of your blogging progress, adding content to your blog on a regular basis can be an incredibly lonely proposition. Is anyone out there? Does anyone care?However, even within the business (non cat) blogging arena, there are a wide variety of potential measures to gauge your momentum. It’s imperative that you select the most relevant ones that match with your blog’s purpose and intent.What’s the…

• 6 Critical Services Agencies Must Provide to Stay Relevant in Social Media

  Jay Baer

  3 Mar 2010 | 3:12 am

  Is there a future for agencies in a social media world?Yesterday, I gave a presentation in Tempe, AZ to Agencyside, a conference of advertising and PR agency owners. I emphasized that to remain relevant, agencies must differentiate themselves by providing advanced social media services, not just the basics. An Enormous OpportunityThe huge (and expanding) reach of social media, and its relatively low cost (at least from a production fees perspective) makes it an incredibly attractive proposition for marketers.Forrester Research shows that from 2009-2014, U.S. corporate expenditures on social…

• 

  Future Changes

• Make Time for Collaborative Work

  Stewart Mader

  16 Mar 2010 | 9:44 am

  Euan Semple, at the Henley (UK) KM Forum: If your organisation says that social networking is too time consuming, ask why their meetings go on all day and they spend so much time writing 40 page reports that no-one reads. (Via VMaryAbraham)

• Magazines as Wallpaper

  Stewart Mader

  15 Mar 2010 | 2:57 pm

  A wall made of magazines at Stockholm advertising agency Oktavilla (swedish). Created by architecture and design firm Elding Oscarson. (Via Curved White)

• FCC Plan Would Make U.S. High-Speed Internet a Common Medium

  Stewart Mader

  13 Mar 2010 | 1:21 pm

  The Federal Communications Commission will submit to Congress on Tuesday a 10-year plan that aims to make high-speed Internet the dominant communication medium in the U.S.: The blueprint reflects the government’s view that broadband Internet is becoming the common medium of the United States, gradually displacing the telephone and broadcast television industries.

• iPad Handles Content More Like Paper, Less Like Computer

  Stewart Mader

  12 Mar 2010 | 9:50 pm

  Cameron Daigle of Griffin Technology, on iPad: Here’s a (possibly tremendously important) thought: the iPad is a portrait-oriented personal computer. Everyone has been so caught up with the touchscreen, whiz-bang look, and thinness (of Jobs and iPad both) that they’ve failed to be properly stunned at the realization that Apple is about to release the first natively portrait-oriented personal computer to hit the market in decades. Another thought: The New York Times viewed on an iPad is arguably closer to print design than web design. Landscape (widescreen) is good for video, and…

• UT Dallas History Course Uses Twitter as Study Aid

  Stewart Mader

  11 Mar 2010 | 2:52 pm

  Kim Smith, a graduate student in emerging media and communication at UT Dallas, produced this case study of Twitter use in Dr. Monica Rankin’s US history course: Students find themselves checking the feed after hours because the public trail of Twitter chatter doubles as an excellent study aid. As one student from Rankin’s class put it, “The significant terms that we’ve talked about in discussions, we’ll tweet that, and you can [go] back [to] that, and it’s a pretty good study aid.” This, in turn, keeps Twitter on their minds, fueling the cycle of involvement. In Some…

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  Feverbee

• The Real Threat To Every Online Community

  Richard Millington

  16 Mar 2010 | 2:07 am

  Television is the biggest threat to your community. There are also lots of productive things that people can do instead of participating in your online community. If you want to win the battle of your audience’s time, don’t focus upon content. Television, books and other media will always win that battle. Focus on the psychological highs of participating in a community. Emphasize the aspects that television can’t offer. These include: Real-time interaction with people. An opportunity to have power and feel important within a group. Working with others to achieve a goal/mission. A place…

• Making Things Happen In Your Community

  Richard Millington

  15 Mar 2010 | 4:00 am

  If you’re struggling to get your community to do something, it’s probably because you’re telling them to do it. This doesn’t work too well. It relies too heavily on your influence over the collective influence of the community. If you want members to take an action, begin small. Reach out to a group of people and persuade them to start doing it. This doesn’t have to be an influencer group, just members that believe in it. Soon others will join in. In short, you need to show them, not tell them. For example, if you want members to share their best pictures of …. You reach out to 10…

• Veterans

  Richard Millington

  12 Mar 2010 | 4:25 am

  Science Daily is wrong. Burning through community members is not a decent approaching to keeping your community active. It’s the worst thing you can do. You only develop transient relationships at best and, eventually, you run out of fresh blood. It’s like a bad pyramid scheme. The best indicator of an online community’s survival is how many active veterans you have. How many members have been participating for 5 years? A single active veteran is worth 100 newcomers, maybe a 1000. Takes actions today that will develop active veterans three years from now. Spend more time responding to…

• Naming Your Community

  Richard Millington

  11 Mar 2010 | 3:03 am

  Your community name is a powerful symbol. Don’t waste it. Picking the wrong name can do real harm. Picking the right name can do wonders. A member should feel a sense of affiliation and familiarity with the name of your community. It should identify why the group feel they are special. They should be proud of the name. They should be happy to wear the t-shirts. Virgin Media Pioneers is a bad name. It’s a brand enforced-name upon a group which probably, until now, has very little connection with Virgin Media. If you need to put a brand name to get sponsors, then be my guest – but don’t…

• Targeting Strong Connections

  Richard Millington

  10 Mar 2010 | 1:55 am

  This is an online community for Germans over 40. Hmm, over 40… I’m not sure that’s old enough to have an affinity with other members. Over 90, certainly. Over 80, perhaps. Over 70, possibly. Over 60 – probably not. People over 40 don’t feel a strong connection with others over 40. Over 40 and in high-level jobs, might work. Over 40 and without families might work. But over 40, alone, probably not. When you start an online community you need to target a group of people that would feel a strong connection with each other. As a rule of thumb, the total size of the audience is probably…

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  Daily Blog Tips

• 22 Ways To Find Advertisers For Your Website

  Daniel Scocco

  16 Mar 2010 | 4:38 am

  Selling advertising deals is one of the most profitable ways to monetize your website. Some time ago I wrote an article titled How to Find Advertisers for Your Website, where I covered the pros and cons of using this method, what you need to have in place before getting started, how much you should charge and so on. The most difficult part of the process, however, is to actually find the advertisers. I included some places where you can look for in that article, but I felt that it would be useful to have one post listing all the ways you can use to find advertisers for your website. That is…

• The Marketplace for Websites is Heating Up

  Daniel Scocco

  14 Mar 2010 | 9:45 pm

  I always keep an eye on the sales of websites and domain names, and it looks like the marketplace is heating up. The first evidence comes from Flippa. Sometime ago a reader sent this question to the Q&A section: Where And How Can I Sell My Blog?. As you can see from that post, one of the places I recommended was Flippa. Some readers argued in the comment section that Flippa lacked big buyers, so that it was not suitable for selling big websites. I mentioned that this was not the case, and this week we got some hard proof. The Retweet.com website was listed for sale there. The auction…

• How To Increase Your Blog Traffic With Article Marketing

  Guest Author

  12 Mar 2010 | 7:00 pm

  This is a guest post by Henri Junttila. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guidelines here. Do you want thousands of new subscribers and lots of traffic sent to your blog virtually overnight? I’m sorry to say this, but it’s not going to happen. I do have something else for you though. It will require hard work, but if you plan it right, you’ll reap the rewards. The title may have given it away, but in case you haven’t figured it out yet, I am talking about article marketing. I’ve practically built my online income with article marketing, which has allowed me to…

• Got Blogging Related Questions? Ask Away!

  Daniel Scocco

  12 Mar 2010 | 10:33 am

  This post is part of the Friday Q&A section. If you want to ask a question, just write a comment below. It is Friday, and as usual I was going to write the weekly Q&A column. I went to check my backlog of questions today, however, and I found that I had cleared it, so it is time for more questions. If you have one, just write it as a comment below. The title says “blogging related” questions, but you reality you can ask about anything related to blogging, Internet marketing, SEO, web publishing, and so on. You can even ask personal questions if you want, provided it is…

• Business Idea: Copyright Protection For Web Publishers

  Daniel Scocco

  11 Mar 2010 | 8:14 am

  I am quite passionate about the Internet, and as such I am always coming up with new ideas for websites and online businesses. At the same time I know that focus is vital if you want to achieve success, and I already have a couple of projects going on, so most of the time I just let those ideas site on the back burner. Thinking about it, though, I figured that it could be interesting to post the ideas on the blog. If nothing else we’ll discuss about business models and making money on the Internet. There is also the chance that someone will like the idea and implement it, or adapt it…

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  Poetslife

• Poetry, Pure Poetry

  Poetslife

  12 Mar 2010 | 10:29 am

  Poetry Lab, part of The Soundry in Vienna, Va, is highlighting good poetry, especially experimental poetry. Try them out.At the Poetry Lab is a poetry series run by Saul Rosenberg called Poetry, Pure Poetry.It is a reading and video series within the Poetry Lab where Saul films poets reading their work and (with their approval) uploads their work to YouTube...in a professional way. How great is that!I went there recently and read three poems (This Broken Silence, Future Dust, and Screaming Like a Banshee). Saul filmed them and uploaded them to YouTube here.

• Open Angel Forum Unfreezes Capital

  Poetslife

  19 Feb 2010 | 3:39 am

  Jason Calacanis, Unfreezing Capital, and the Open Angel ForumAmerican capital markets right now are often, sadly, like the window in this photo... frozen. But also right now, Americans like those at the Open Angel Forum (OAF), being /Americans, areunfreezing that capital every day. Here is the OAF Facebook link.Jason Calacanis, founder of Open Angel Forum, is one of the bright stars of that unfreezing. Read below for his recent post about how to secure capital from his investment network. If you are a small startup with a useful product, drive, good ideas, moxy and grit...and an American…

• Free TED Talks

  Poetslife

  16 Feb 2010 | 5:28 pm

  2010 Free TED talks are now available. Everything from art to DNA to microbiology to money to technology...to...well, there are 600 "riveting talks by remarkable people" to hear. To take one talk, George Whitesides addresses "A lab the size of a postage stamp." He is a pioneer in microfabrication and nanoscale self-assembly. In this talk he describes how he is fabbing a diagnostic lab on a chip. Expand your mind, enjoy the rush of intellectual stimulation, experience the thrill of learning new ideas, have a peak experience...listen to a TED talk, if only for half an hour on your lunch…

• U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center

  Poetslife

  30 Jan 2010 | 10:53 am

  My oldest brother Hank has tried to get me to visit the U.S. Army Heritage and Education CenterUSAHEC) in Carlisle, PA for years. On January 27, 2010, I finally visited him and we went to see what we could of the USAHC(260 years of American military history) in a few hours. It's impressive. The USAHC tells the story of the American soldier. It consists of:U.S. Army Military History Institute - Archive and research center documenting the evolution and art of the American way of war.Army Heritage Museum Visitors and Education Center - Repository of U.S. Army military historical documentation, a…

• Merry Christmas and Thanks Troops

  Poetslife

  15 Dec 2009 | 6:26 pm

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  Context Over Dogma

• America’s Navy – A Social Media Force For Good?

  Kristin Mattera

  5 Mar 2010 | 12:33 pm

  In a previous blog post covering the basics of social media, I discussed a few major goals of social media (Creating community through two-way communication, creating and providing the opportunity for content that can be shared, responded to and evaluated, and finally, being personalized/customized). To better explain these goals, I decided to profile an organization that has dived in head first –pardon the pun – the U.S. NAVY. For full disclosure, I am a proud NAVY sister, and I have found the branch’s use of social media beneficial for keeping connected to my brother, as well…

• RedBull Stratos: Record-Breaking Marketing?

  Matt Peters

  23 Feb 2010 | 4:10 am

  So here’s how it works: Put dude in fancy new space suit Put dude in a little box Hook box to a super-cool weather balloon and let go Watch as balloon floats towards space Once the balloon is 23 miles above the earth, dude opens box and JUMPS OUT! Dude falls back towards earth and (hopefully) becomes the first person to break the sound barrier with his body (this is the important one) Dude survives That is the RedBull Stratos project in a nutshell. Visit the website for more details, or even better, check out the trailer they made for it: So why am I talking about this? Because I think this…

• Social Media Context vs. Dogma: What is it and Why Use it for Marketing?

  Kristin Mattera

  9 Feb 2010 | 12:50 pm

  Social media has been one of the leading topics in the marketing industry for a few years now, but people seem to have difficulty defining it and determining how it can be best leveraged for marketing purposes, i.e. doing “social media marketing”. (Note: There is a difference between the phrases “social media marketing” and “social marketing.” Please refer to our previous post “Social Marketing vs. Social Media Marketing” for more information). This is our unique perspective on the social media basics, as a company that has executed hundreds of…

• Before You Jump: Know the Dangers of Social Media

  Lisa Wigetman

  16 Dec 2009 | 8:06 am

  Where are you Jumping? Thanks to social media, we are now able to connect to the world in ways we never thought possible. Whether you are writing on your friend’s wall on Facebook, texting or tweeting, there is always a way to communicate and most of us don’t think twice before doing so. However, did you ever consider that you may not be communicating with the right person or that what you are tweeting may be used against you at work next week? Unless you have experienced the dangers of social media firsthand, these thoughts have probably never crossed your mind. The Dangers Of The Public…

• Augmented Reality Marketing

  Kristin Mattera

  11 Dec 2009 | 4:30 am

  Sci-Fi technology may impact your marketing sooner than you think In the last few years, the physical and virtual worlds have been coming together in new and interesting ways. Virtual information can be overlaid on top of physical, real-time information, creating a mixed reality. “Augmented reality” (AR) is the broad term used to describe this blending. Some older examples are simpler in nature. For example, AR has been used in sports broadcasting, such as the comet-like tail of a hockey puck for NHL games, or the yellow first down line in football games. AR in smart phones has the…

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  Nate Ritter

• Top 20 Undergrad Business Schools

  nate

  14 Mar 2010 | 11:44 am

  Since we like to rank things, here’s a list of the best 20 undergraduate business schools in the United States ranked by BusinessWeek magazine. If you’re interested in getting your business degree, a good place to start is by learning more about finding the right business school. University of Notre Dame (Mendoza) University of Virginia (McIntire) Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Sloan) University of Pennsylvania (Wharton) Cornell University University of California – Berkeley (Haas) Emory University (Goizueta) University of Michigan (Ross) Boston College (Carroll)…

• Different Business Degrees

  nate

  13 Mar 2010 | 7:25 pm

  What are some different business degrees, you ask? I received my undergrad business degree from a state university, and it’s served me well so far. Of course, I’m an entrepreneur, and that’s just not for everyone. Regardless, going to business school opens doors, both for networking (it’s not what you know, it’s who you know, right?) and for the education itself. It also leads to a bigger pay check if you’re interested in sticking it out in the corporate world. Here’s a few concentrations you could think of checking out. Undergraduate Business Majors…

• How to Write an Executive Summary

  nate

  3 Jan 2010 | 12:00 am

  Many venture capitalists and other investors never read your whole business document. They read the executive summary and (if you’re lucky) skip to any other section they’re interested in – usually the financial parts. So, the executive summary is the most important part of whatever you’re writing for them. It is the first (and sometimes the only) thing they’ll read and the last thing you should write. It is simply a brief summary of the document. Here’s your step-by-step guide: Write everything else about your document. If you haven’t done this, stop…

• Building a Viable Business Online

  nate

  14 Dec 2009 | 9:07 am

  Recession? What recession? In the fifteen years I’ve been developing web sites and applications I’ve never seen more business than in 2009. It’s been a banner year for my businesses (probably because the recession has created thousands, if not millions of new entrepreneurs with nothing to lose now), and I know I’m not the only one who’s had such a year. But, even at the end of this great year I’ve been refocusing my efforts. I run a few profitable online companies now, which I’m very proud of. But the great part about working on Perfect Space is that…

• iPod Tube Speakers = Awesome

  nate

  17 Oct 2009 | 11:13 pm

  DICE iTPA-220 iPod Tube Amplifier System This, friends, is one amazing iPod docking station with speakers. It uses tube amplification, which is pretty old-school, but I absolutely love the merger between old and new. iPod Tube Speakers from Dice (iTPA-220) I mentioned something like it from Hammacher Schlemmer way back in the day, but that bad boy costs $4k. I’m way more apt to spend the money on that Dice system above considering it’s about the price of a used iPhone right now. That’s good stuff right there.

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  sarahintampa

• Tracking Mobile Trends? Some Posts to Read

  sarahintampa

  23 Feb 2010 | 12:21 pm

  Part of my job at ReadWriteWeb is tracking mobile trends. If you follow this subject too, you may be interested in the following posts, aggregated below. If you’re interested in subscribing to my ReadWriteWeb RSS feed containing just my articles, you can do so here. Android Usage Increased 200% Over Past 3 Months According to new data from ChangeWave Research, both usage and consumer sentiment towards Google’s mobile operating system Android has increased over the past several months. As of December 2009, the research firm’s survey shows that 4% of all smartphone owners now use…

• Can You Get Paid to Tweet?

  sarahintampa

  23 Feb 2010 | 12:06 pm

  It annoys me when I write a big post that doesn’t get read. I’m reposting here for those who might find the time. Comments are closed on this post. If you want to respond, please visit ReadWriteWeb for either Part 1 or Part 2. Here’s a little secret about Twitter that you may not know: some people are getting paid to tweet. We don’t mean it’s their job to Twitter as the PR front-end for some large corporation, either. They’re actually getting paid to post advertisements to their Twitter stream. When their followers click though, the end result is cold, hard cash.

• SkyDrive vs. "GDrive"

  sarahintampa

  23 Feb 2010 | 12:00 pm

  Recently, Google announced an update to their Google Docs solution which now allows you to upload any type of file, not just office documents. Many are calling this “GDrive” after the long-rumored service which is supposedly a cloud-based storage solution from Google. Although the news got a lot of coverage from the blogosphere, few sites bothered to compare Google’s latest offering with SkyDrive, Microsoft’s service which has been around for a couple of years now. SkyDrive wasn’t always the robust service it is today – over time, it has grown in both size and features. And it’s…

• Adding God Mode Shortcuts to Your Windows 7 PC

  sarahintampa

  23 Feb 2010 | 11:42 am

  In January, CNET broke a story that had everyone talking about the hidden “god mode” in Windows 7 (It was discussed on Channel 9 here, too). This secret mode is actually just a hack that lets you access Control Panel tools and settings all within one folder and group them by type (Administrative Tools, Autoplay settings, etc.) It’s definitely handy for those of you who aren’t fans of the default Control Panel layout and want a slightly geekier look-and-feel for these settings. If you found god mode useful, you may be interested in adding it to your taskbar or context menus, too.

• Garmin-Asus M10: Windows Mobile 6.5.3 with Built-in Navigation

  sarahintampa

  23 Feb 2010 | 11:40 am

  The new Garmin-Asus M10 is the second-only Windows Mobile 6.5.3 device to hit the market (the first being Sony Ericsson’s Aspen). As the name implies, this phone’s best feature is its built-in navigation software. However, the M10 does more than just simple turn-by-turn directions – it integrates location-awareness into several of the phone’s frequently-used applications, including the calendar, contacts, email, internet browser, and messaging. The phone’s hardware includes 512 MB RAM and ROM, 4 GB of storage, a 3.5-inch touchscreen, full QWERTY keyboard, HSDPA wireless and 802.11…

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  louisgray.com

• The SXSW Keynote With Ev Williams You Had Hoped to See

  15 Mar 2010 | 7:19 pm

  This afternoon, as most of you know, Ev Williams, CEO of Twitter sat down for a much-anticipated and heavily-attended keynote interview at the South By Southwest conference in Austin. After thousands of Twittering geeks and quasi-geeks alike had settled in to the packed exhibition hall and overflow rooms to hear the latest updates delivered straight from Twitter's leader, their excitement soon turned to boredom and finally, severe annoyance, as the interview's pace, tone and content fell well below expectations. After an hour's time, the halls in Austin were more than half empty, and an…

• GMail's Invite Marketing Coup Was a Myth

  14 Mar 2010 | 6:24 pm

  For the last six years, marketing teams and Web services have pointed to GMail's invite-only approach as on of the most successful examples of driving user demand in a time of scarcity. At one point, GMail invites were so sought after that account-holders were selling off their spare invites on eBay. In fact, that's where I bought mine, as well as a never again used account ID for Orkut, way back in 2004. Today, at SXSW, we learned the move to make GMail an invites-only platform was not a marketing strategy, but instead one driven by fear from engineering, who thought they might not be able…

• Gmail Failures, Crazy Ideas and Wave's Leapfrog

  14 Mar 2010 | 6:23 pm

  On the Web, there is a lot of confusion over where Google Wave fits alongside the recently-introduced Google Buzz, or even if Wave is supposed to be a companion or competitor to Gmail - which could potentially cannibalize the company's extremely visible (and profitable) e-mail business. Today at the SXSW conference, the team leading Gmail said the company has to take risks, learn from mistakes, and yes, even sometimes build products that are in conflict and may replace one another - in the name of keeping competition from doing it themselves.As it was described this afternoon, Google Wave,…

• On Monday, the Users Will Strike Back Against Products

  14 Mar 2010 | 2:13 pm

  Although I covered a pair of panels from the South by Southwest conference in Austin yesterday, I didn't go deep and explain why I chose to return to the event, which I first participated in and attended last year. Thanks to work at home and with Paladin, I almost opted out of SXSW in 2010, but after being offered the opportunity to speak on behalf of users everywhere and talk about how we may be losing the battle against products that are poorly designed or don't have our input, I had to accept - and therefore, I am spending the weekend in Austin. Tomorrow, in a core conversation, where I…

• Users vs. Companies: Conflicts over the Real-Time Web?

  13 Mar 2010 | 5:46 pm

  If 2009 was the year of real-time Web, with practically every major service finding ways to bring content to its users instantly, 2010 is about optimizing the new real-time world, expanding interoperability between sites, finding more ways for users' content to be discovered, and taking the potential of real-time out of the status world and into the real world. Today, at the South by Southwest Interactive event in Austin, Texas, one panel asked if we were making serious progress in this vision, and if companies, feeling increased competitive pressures, are short-changing users in the…

• 

  SheGeeks.net

• Man-tasking For March Madness: Who’s In?

  Corvida Raven

  11 Mar 2010 | 4:40 pm

  Before I begin my SxSW festivities, I wanted to give you the heads up about a skill better known as man-tasking. Yes, man-tasking. What on earth is man-tasking? It’s the ultimate combination of being a sports fan and an MVP multitasker.  You already have friends in this bracket. They’re the people that streams sports online, watches multiple games on the TV at the same time, tracks scores, follows brackets all while managing several fantasy teams. And they don’t bat an eyelash at the gadgets they use to multi-task on this level. As March Madness month rolls around, a lot of men…

• 8 Mobile Tools To Keep Up At SxSW With Like A Pro

  Corvida Raven

  10 Mar 2010 | 3:14 pm

  Tomorrow I’m flying out to Austin, TX this year to speak again at SxSW 2010! I’m proud to be having a Core Conversation on Your Online Identity After Death and Digital Wills.  Before heading out though it’s important for me to be armed with the proper mobile tools to get around easily and quickly. SxSW will be busy, huge, and exciting. There won’t be time for a lot of things and tons of changes will be made. As I pack and double check my mobile weaponry, I thought I’d share some tools you can use to keep up with all the hype. So you’re getting ready to go to SxSW…

• 6 Twitter Tools That Schedule Tweets For Later

  Corvida Raven

  10 Mar 2010 | 9:05 am

  Though you’ve heard numerous success stories about Twitter and created an account, you may not be very active. Using Twitter can seem like one big time suck. You give the bare minimum attention to Twitter, lurking more than anything. You wish you had the time to do more. You may not have it, but you can certainly make it without biting off more than you can chew by scheduling tweets. Here are 6 twitter tools to help you schedule tweets for the future: Twuffer        FutureTweets           TwAitter    …

• How A New Era Of Smartphones & Apps Will Change The Way You Shop

  Corvida Raven

  1 Mar 2010 | 12:03 pm

  Two weeks ago a good friend of mine grilled me about the Motorola Droid. She wanted to make sure it had GPS, a native maps app, Twitter, Facebook, and Myspace like the iPhone. She wanted to surf the web “all pretty and stuff” and shop online. Her last requirement helped me understand how smartphones and apps are changing the way we shop. Can I Help You? Yes, Is There An App For That? So what are these smartphones you speak of Corvida? They would include: Apple iPhone Motorola Droid* Google Nexus One Nokia N900* Palm Pre (Verizon) (Sprint) * * = Amazon Affiliate Links The list certainly…

• How Putting Your Music On The Web Can Pay Off Big Time

  Corvida Raven

  25 Feb 2010 | 12:29 pm

  Not everyone is a fan of music streaming sites. We’ve seen Imeem get eaten by Myspace, Pandora on life support for, and I haven’t seen Ruckus since my freshman year of college. But at least they pay in cash right? Music on the web pays in many ways. Here are a few that I hope labels and artists will consider this year: Image Credit: Ken Yeung Music Options Beyond Radio Ask 5 people what they’re favorite radio station is and they may throw out the only station they know. Not everyone has a car, and we aren’t spending a lot of time in one. Yet cars seem to be the only place that people…

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  TheDreamInAction.com

• Corporate vs. Startup: #2 Trust

  Ryan Graves

  11 Mar 2010 | 8:34 am

  I’ve been thinking about how my new startup adventure is going to be different than my role with GE and a few things have risen to the surface. So, I’ve decided to do a series of posts on those topics. You’ll be able to follow the series under the tag ‘corpvsstartup’ here When I joined GE at the very end of 2007 I had expectations of what opportunities the job would provide. I had just finished reading US News & World Report about how GE had the absolute best training opportunities in the country and it was the best place to start a business career. Since I had interest in…

• Apple vs. Square, iPhone payment systems

  Ryan Graves

  6 Mar 2010 | 11:48 am

  This week I had back to back experiences with iPhone payment systems. I figured I’d document it here and show the differences between the two. Also I’ll shed some light on which, in my opinion, will win. First, above is the image I took after signing my iPhone based receipt generated by Square. I had a delicious coffee at Sightglass Coffee in SOMA, SF. Just like at Starbucks I order my over-priced (it is SF) Latte and she whipped it up. Then when asked cash or card, I obviously said card and she pulled out a wifi enable iPod touch. The iPod had a funny little…

• Me and Jeff Bezos…

  Ryan Graves

  2 Mar 2010 | 10:27 pm

  …we seems to have a lot in common. In this short interview of Jeff Bezos, now CEO/Founder of Amazon.com, he talks about how he decided to leave his safe cushy job for a startup, Amazon.com. I’ve shared many of his exact thoughts in the process to leaving my safe cushy job at GE to join a startup, UberCab. I really dig his outlook on the decision and his ability to simplify the decision making process. No matter what your doing, in order to invest well you must be able to look past the immediate to see the future potential return. Luckily for me the decision to join a very early…

• Corporate vs. Startup: #1 Be Bold

  Ryan Graves

  22 Feb 2010 | 12:05 pm

  I’ve been thinking about how my new startup adventure is going to be different than my role with GE and a few things have risen to the surface. So, I’ve decided to do a series of posts on those topics. You’ll be able to follow the series under the tag ‘corpvsstartup’ here. The first that I want to discuss here on the blog is the need to be bold. In a corporate environment things are usually pre-determined. Processes exist that you have to follow and the challenge can usually lie in just following those pre-defined processes. Aligning resources (PEOPLE) and…

• Where Google failed at the email based social network, Flowtown succeeds.

  Ryan Graves

  17 Feb 2010 | 1:38 pm

  Flowtown is a new service that will let you submit the email address of any person and be presented with a list of all the social networks that individual is a part of. It is just as they put it on the site: it will let you “turn an email address into a social profile”. That sounds familiar doesn’t it. It’s because Google just launched a service called Buzz that tries to do the same thing, turn an email social network into a twitter-friendfeed-flickr-facebook-ish type of social network. They’re going to need to do some serious pruning in order to get that product fun and…

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  Everyone's Blog Posts - PitchEngine

• Is Social Capital the Whole?

  Jay Deragon

  With the increase use of social media everyone seems to categorize its use into one dimension or another. Some categorize the value equations as social capital, reputation capital and a host of other names which are attempts to define the emerging value proposition. These attempts reflect emphasis on the parts rather than the whole. You've heard the expression "the whole is greater than the sum of the parts" which, in my humble opinion, should be how we view all the related knowledge gains being created by all this social stuff. Brian Solis writes Social Capital: The Currency of the Social…

• 4 Things That Reveal You

  Jay Deragon

  Every time we converse, post and respond on-line and off we reveal ourselves. The word reveal means to make known, disclose, divulge, to lay open to view, display or exhibit. When something or someone is revealed each of us decides whether what or who is revealed has any relevance to us. Many of us don’t realize how we reveal ourselves. What we reveal are the things that attract others to us or us to others. Whether an organization or an individual what we reveal are common characteristics that bring us together or separate us. These common characteristics are transparently revealed in…

• Is Scoail Media a Bank?

  Jay Deragon

  If social media were an organization in the traditional sense it would be bankrupt. Yet organizations use it to try and create revenue. If social media platforms continue to rely on advertising to support them they will be bankrupt. If social media wasn't "free" it by itself would be bankrupt. So how do users insure that social media doesn't go bankrupt? The answer lies within developments that will enable social technology to become an exchange and creation of higher value. The Social Value Chain A value chain represents related processes linked together and each process iteration increases…

• Measuring Social Moments?

  Jay Deragon

  The obsession with measuring all things social is indicative of thinking inside rather than out. Inside thinking focuses on justification of time, energy and efforts all aimed at creating results. Outside thinking focuses on learning market needs and intents. Do you measure market needs and intents? The irony of measuring all things social is that the measures are put for the moment. Given the dynamic nature of how people use social technology, how suppliers are advancing the technology and the subsequent dynamics everything is but for a moment. If things are in a dynamic state then measuring…

• This Social Moment is Gone!

  Jay Deragon

  Numbers drive organizational decisions. Numbers are used to try and determine what and how one can improve a result. In the world of social media everyone has become obsessed with the numbers. The irony of collecting and measuring social media data is that the moment of measure changes by the dynamic developments that happen every moment. Conversations are dynamic, numbers are static. Knowledge is dynamic and contained within each person. Our experiences, our conversations and relevant relations changes our knowledge. That is if we approach people with a willingness to learn what they know or…

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  THINKing

• Creativity 2010 - Week #11

  Harry Hoover

  15 Mar 2010 | 4:57 am

  Here’s week 11’s installment of creativity links. 16 Creative Ways To Supercharge Your Presentations Enthusiasm - The Key To Creativity & Innovation Creativity Tool: Google Sets Blog Post Idea Generator Creativity Block #5:  Being Disorganized bookmark to:

• Show Up For Success

  Harry Hoover

  12 Mar 2010 | 7:49 am

  Your minister of the church of marketing has some words for you to ponder today: if you want to succeed you must show up. Woody Allen has often been quoted - incorrectly - on this subject. What he really said was, “80 percent of success is showing up.” He was not talking about making a cameo appearance or a movie walk-on. He was suggesting that being there fully focused, giving your best effort and doing it on a consistent basis is the formula for success. Allen knows that most people just try to phone it in. And even then they don’t follow through every time, nor give it…

• Please, Please Me

  Harry Hoover

  10 Mar 2010 | 9:36 am

  Gave a social media presentation last night to a group of about 45 small business owners as part of Bank of Commerce’s School of Commerce program. I was one of two presenters. While looking at the evaluation forms, I was struck again by how there are always one or two people who don’t get their expectations fulfilled from presentations. For the sake of transparency, I’ll give you my numbers from the 23 evaluation forms that were completed: Overall, the course was Excellent/Very Good - 17 attendees; Good - 5 attendees; Poor - 1 attendee Harry Hoover was Excellent/Very Good -…

• Top 5 Posts

  Harry Hoover

  9 Mar 2010 | 7:52 am

  Here are the Top 5 Posts From THINKing this month, in case you missed one. Let us know which is your favorite. The Rule Of Reciprocity Twittering Journalists Say What You Mean, Mean What You Say Creativity 2010 - Week #7 Face Time bookmark to:

• Creativity 2010 - Week #10

  Harry Hoover

  8 Mar 2010 | 6:31 am

  Here are our creativity links for week 10 of 2010: Three Enemies of Innovation - If innovation’s such a good thing, a good idea, the secret of success, then why isn’t everyone doing it? The Levity Effect - Having fun with innovation.  How far should you let people peek inside your creative process? - Should your creative process be transparent? Does Stress Limit Creativity?  - A relaxed attitude boosts creativity. Actions To Increase Your Creative Thinking -  Draw a picture, daydream: these are a couple of things that can help move your ideas along. bookmark to:

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  Social Marketing

• Firebelly Marketing's Upcoming Speaking Engagements

  Firebelly Marketing

  16 Mar 2010 | 5:45 am

  I wanted let everyone know about some speaking engagements that Duncan Alney and I have coming up over the next few weeks. They should be educational and entertaining and we hope you can join us!March 17th Are You Ready For The Social Revolution? Duncan Alney Construction Financial Management Association Central Indiana  Indianapolis, IN  March 23rd  Content, Conversation, Community - Building The Social Media Mullet*  Duncan Alney Social Media Optimization Summits  Dallas, TX  *use promo code DUNCAN for $100 off conference registration  March 23rd  Using Social Networking To Grow…

• 2 Social SEO Stories You Need To Read This Week

  Firebelly Marketing

  12 Mar 2010 | 2:57 pm

  Helping our clients optimize their websites, content, social media assets and brands for social search results - call it Social SEO or Social Media Optimization (SMO) - is something we do everyday at Firebelly. Below are two a good articles on the topic this week by Brian Solis and Lee Odden that I thought our readers would enjoy. 1. 10 Steps for Optimizing the Brand for Social Search By Brian Solis Facebook recently overtook Yahoo as the second most visited site in the United States. And in doing so, Facebook along with other social networks set the stage for a confluence of social and…

• Conversation: Out of the IUPUI classroom and into YATS

  Firebelly Marketing

  11 Mar 2010 | 2:07 pm

   A few weeks ago, Duncan (President of Firebelly in case you didn't know) was invited to one of the new media classes at IUPUI as a guest speaker. The goal being to share with the students the importance of personal growth and finding life direction based on their core values.  As part of the presentation, he presented the concept of personal branding, and finding a path in life that works with your values, interests, and lifestyle. Students that participated actively were invited to have lunch with Professor Brian Benedict and Duncan at Firebelly client (of course) YATS on…

• Fans With Benefits: Add Value On Your Facebook Page

  Firebelly Marketing

  11 Mar 2010 | 5:30 am

  One of the questions people need to ask when considering setting up a Facebook Page for their business or organization is How can I add value?People are on Facebook to primarily interact with their family and friends - not your brand. They will, however, if you give them a reason to do so and add value to their lives and online experience. Providing exclusive content, promotions and discounts, in addition to asking and answering questions to identify and solve problems or concerns is a great place to start. Use Facebook Insights to monitor and measure how people are responding to your…

• The New Dork - Entrepreneur State of Mind

  Firebelly Marketing

  9 Mar 2010 | 1:12 pm

  “Yeah, Now I’m in the Blogosphere. Now I’m in the Twitterverse. Fans get so immersed. But I’m a nerd forever.” These are the opening lines by a very clever video by Pantless Knights ,the makers of Grasshopper.com, in tribute to entrepreneurs all across the Internet. The video The New Dork-Entrepreneur State of Mind is a spoof of Jay-Z and Alicia Keys’ song Empire State of Mind, but with a particular spotlight on the world of social networking. The song is filled with clever lyrics throughout, making some special references to the social networking sites that we have all grown to…

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  ConverStations

• Social Media Artists on the Rise at Panera West

  Mike Sansone

  12 Mar 2010 | 12:57 pm

  One of the core beliefs I have about Social Media is that it gives everyone the potential of an equal voice or platform. It's no longer necessary to have an agent or publisher or gallery to get a foothold (though if you're good, those will become necessary to continue climbing). One of the ways to get a foothold is by using Social Media to connect, collaborate, and communicate what's working and what's not online. We'll have free Wi-Fi and who knows…maybe a workshop breaks out.Starting on March 23rd, and on the 3rd Tuesday of each month, Panera Bread at 4150 Westown Pkwy, West Des Moines,…

• Who's Your Favorite Comedian and What are You Learning From Them?

  Mike Sansone

  11 Mar 2010 | 6:44 am

  Comedians can be sometimes be the best conversation coaches. Especially in terms of behavior and body language.   Here's a series from Presentation Zen-meister, Garr Reynolds with some poignant picks from The Comedian Quotes & Lessons from "Comedian"View more presentations from garr. Who are some of your favorite funny folks?

• Brunch B4 Breakfast w/ LXD

  Mike Sansone

  10 Mar 2010 | 4:40 am

  Posting this video for two reasons: It's awesome and inspiring (okay, 3 reasons) As a modeling of how to embed video from YouTube to your blog Knowing how to embed video onto your site is a great way to share great content from others with your audience (create value) and also for your own video creations to get wider reach.

• The Immutable Law of Social Media

  Mike Sansone

  7 Mar 2010 | 3:30 pm

  Seriously.  Sometimes by our experiences and experiments, we find gold.

• 3 C's of Business Balance: Since Chalk on a Rock

  Mike Sansone

  7 Mar 2010 | 1:49 am

  Conversational community has been built around content since the days of drawing images on the walls of caves and hills of sand. And we will always have a conversation going on around and about the content we produce and consume.Content and Community.  And Commerce. What, all those drawings were just a hobby?  Even if it started out that way, if there was value in what was being said -- the community would praise and pay for the continuation of the output. But what now? What's the natural progression for someone who has been creating and producing in this age of conversational media and…

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  RyanSpoon.com

• Foursquare Traffic Sources: Facebook 33%, Google 22%

  Ryan Spoon

  16 Mar 2010 | 12:13 pm

  As you can tell from recent blog posts, I have been spending time looking at traffic sources for various sites (Facebook, Huffington Post, Perez Hilton, etc). New data from Hitwise reveals that one-third of Foursquare’s traffic comes from Facebook: Top traffic sources for Foursquare 1. 33% Facebook 2. 22% Google 3. 08% Twitter In total, nearly two-thirds of Foursquare’s traffic arrives from three sources (one search and two social). A few things pop out: - Facebook’s referral traffic has steadily grown on a relative basis… and considering that Foursquare’s SEO…

• Facebook Represents 7% of all Internet Visits

  Ryan Spoon

  15 Mar 2010 | 2:03 pm

  According to new Hitwise data, 7.07% of all internet visits go to Facebook. Google is the second largest at 7.03%. And Yahoo is a distant third at 3.67%. Equally impressive is how quickly Facebook has gained on Google – since January, they have jumped from ~6.5% to ~7.1%. Much of that acceleration happened in the last thirty days. Just a year ago, Facebook represented ~2.5% of visits. This data comes a few weeks after Compete released their January report where Facebook surpassed Google in aggregate visits. Furthermore, if Facebook now represents greater internet share by visits, you…

• Follow McDonalds on Facebook, Are you Sure?

  Ryan Spoon

  12 Mar 2010 | 12:49 pm

  Several social media best practices – particularly on Facebook – come from big consumer brands: Dunkin Donuts, Starbucks, Rockstar, Vitamin Water, etc. McDonalds is arguably the biggest brand, but…. Go to McDonalds.com and notice prominent links to follow them on Facebook and Twitter. There is more real estate dedicated to each of these than, for instance, to their restaurant locator: Click on Facebook and a shadowbox pops up that asks, “are you sure you want to leave?” It’s almost as though McDonald’s wants to promote Facebook / Twitter… but…

• If Gilt = Fashion, Does Gilt Man = Travel?

  Ryan Spoon

  11 Mar 2010 | 10:49 am

  Gilt Group made its name around high fashion at low prices. In their words, “Gilt Groupe provides access, by invitation only, to Men’s, Women’s and Children’s coveted fashion and luxury brands at prices up to 70% off retail. Each sale lasts 36 hours and features hand selected styles from a single designer.” It is interesting how different the ‘inventory’ between Gilt’s vertical offering is (Gilt for women and Gilt Man for men). For instance, true to their early success, Gilt.com currently has seven offers… all of which are fashion related. There are…

• Farmville Defaults to Facebook Credits

  Ryan Spoon

  10 Mar 2010 | 6:56 pm

  I encourage you to read Eric Eldon’s piece on InsideFacebook about how Facebook’s most popular game, Farmville, now defaults to Facebook Credits and Payments. As location and geo dominate the blog headlines (Twitter, Foursquare, Gowalla), Facebook Credits has managed to stay relatively under the radar… but Facebook’s payments platform is important as it is going to be very big. And, despite being young, Facebook Credits is now exposed to Farmville’s 84,000,000 monthly actives… that’s quite the launchpad.

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  New Marketing and Interactive

• UPA Boston – Agile UX, Yes We Can! with Alla Zollers

  dean@deanwhitney.com (Dean Whitney)

  15 Mar 2010 | 8:42 pm

  Agile Methodology is the process behind the best and brightest web applications coming companies ranging from internet start-ups to Google and Yahoo!. This month at UPA Boston’s March Meeting:... An early pioneer in interactive media, sought after speaker and leading expert on search and social media marketing, Dean Whitney is the Founder of Dean Whitney Interactive.

• MITX: 7th Annual Technology Awards

  dean@deanwhitney.com (Dean Whitney)

  15 Mar 2010 | 6:29 am

  The deadline is coming up soon for innovative technology companies to submit entries to the MITX Technology Awards. This is the 7th year running and every year we see some amazing new companies and... An early pioneer in interactive media, sought after speaker and leading expert on search and social media marketing, Dean Whitney is the Founder of Dean Whitney Interactive.

• The best approach to user experience (UX) design

  dean@deanwhitney.com (Dean Whitney)

  10 Mar 2010 | 6:29 am

  There are many approaches to designing the user experience (UX). The challenge for teams is how much time and effort should be invested in the formative stages. An early pioneer in interactive media, sought after speaker and leading expert on search and social media marketing, Dean Whitney is the Founder of Dean Whitney Interactive.

• Fidelity iPod App Screen Shots

  dean@deanwhitney.com (Dean Whitney)

  24 Feb 2010 | 3:40 pm

  Screen-shots of Fidelity's new iPhone app. A well executed example of a robust mobile application. An early pioneer in interactive media, sought after speaker and leading expert on search and social media marketing, Dean Whitney is the Founder of Dean Whitney Interactive.

• Calculator: Prioritizing Content Creation

  dean@deanwhitney.com (Dean Whitney)

  10 Feb 2010 | 12:47 pm

  Whether you are writing for yourself or helping a client manage an editorial calendar most digital professionals are trying to manage content creation. This calculator helps you prioritize. An early pioneer in interactive media, sought after speaker and leading expert on search and social media marketing, Dean Whitney is the Founder of Dean Whitney Interactive.

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  Direct Marketing Observations

• 18 reasons a social media snake oil salesman might want out

  marc meyer

  16 Mar 2010 | 7:24 am

  Last week I wrote a post that got a tremendous amount of love from the folks over at social media today and rightly so, it was all the reasons why I love social media. But what if you were sick of it? What if you were a snake oil salesman trying to cash in on the social media phenomenon and you were starting to realize that this social media stuff sucked? What might be your reasons for getting out and jumping into real estate short sales or something? Your excuses, er reasons might look something like this: 1) You didn’t realize how much work it took 2) You realized that people…

• 10 more social media sites, links and posts you might have missed this week

  marc meyer

  12 Mar 2010 | 7:03 am

  Ok so the dust settles on some crazy posts that were rattling in my head this week and then poof, you have to wake up and keep going.  Yesterday consisted of a killer pitch for a very large SEO project in which the client said afterward that they had never received such a detailed proposal before, and yet… that’s the way all of my proposals are. I was taught well. That’s all good, but  I have more important things for you at the moment, and that’s a list of valuable social media links, posts and sites that will help you do what you do, better. So let’s get to…

• Anger, Denial, Acceptance in a Digital Agency

  marc meyer

  11 Mar 2010 | 7:50 am

  I’m so thematic. The flow of my blog posts have gone from one extreme to another. But for good reason… Anger at clients for parting ways with me. Denial of the fact that clients are not paying me and now acceptance. Acceptance that though I indeed love what I do and know how to do it well, it may be time to do it for someone else. Though having your own digital agency is cool and fun and certainly sexy, it also presents its own set of unique challenges. In fact, there have been instances over the past 2 1/2 months or so where I have gone through every stage on this graphic. It…

• 15 reasons to love social media

  marc meyer

  9 Mar 2010 | 1:37 pm

  My last few posts have been about the darker side of social media and thus I wanted to clear something up.  I am the biggest champion of social media that you will find and here’s why. I may get a little spicy sometimes, but that doesn’t diminish all the “good” things about this crazy space and all that it delivers to us daily. So get a gander at these 15 reasons and when you’re done reading them add your reason to the mix. 1)  Today I have a very large network of close and semi-close contacts that I can reach out to at a moments notice. Chances are, you do…

• The dark side of good work in social media

  marc meyer

  5 Mar 2010 | 7:47 am

  So last week I wrote about how I was bummed about the possibility that it was time to part with one of my favorite clients. You will be pleased to know that in an 11th hour brainstorm I came up with a new strategy wrapped around search and their existing UI and we are going to continue the relationship. But let’s talk about another client. Clients come in all shapes, sizes, issues and challenges. Especially the start-up ones. Calling yourself a start-up doesn’t really allow you certain rights and privileges.  Nor does it allow for you to not pay your bills. No matter how cool,…

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  The Engaging Brand

• Show 288 - Reinventing Business

  Anna Farmery

  15 Mar 2010 | 3:01 pm

  Show 288 of The Engaging Brand leadership and marketing podcast is ready just for you. To subscribe or listen on your PC now - both for free, you don't need to download anything - all explained at the end of the post and brought by our sponsor: GotoMeeting  Hold your meetings online for just $49/mo. Try GoToMeeting FREE for 30 days. On today's podcast I talk with Nilofer Merchant who is a " leading authority on creating business strategy to win markets. Having worked inside and outside major corporate brands like Adobe, Apple, Nokia and others..." Nilofer's latest book is called The New…

• My Number 1 Pet Hate in Business

  Anna Farmery

  10 Mar 2010 | 10:20 am

  I have always hated organisation charts...can you have a orgchartphobia! If so I have it...:)I was reminded today of my dislike when a group of managers in a coffee shop were having a "strategy discussion" about how get people more motivated and working closely together and in the middle of their table...their only reference guide were organisation charts!!Couple of points I have always felt would make the standard chart more honestHave the top names squat at the top of the paper surpressing any creativity Have barbed wire instead of straight lines for the boxes Have the word 'problem' placed…

• Show 287 - The Riddle of Human Existence

  Anna Farmery

  9 Mar 2010 | 11:20 am

  Show 287 of The Engaging Brand leadership and marketing podcast is ready just for you. To subscribe or listen on your PC now - both for free, you don't need to download anything - all explained at the end of the post and brought by our sponsor: GotoMeeting  Hold your meetings online for just $49/mo. Try GoToMeeting FREE for 30 days. On today's podcast I talk with MIchael Meacher who has been a Member of Parliament for 40 years in the UK and has just written a book called Destination of the Species - The Riddle of Human Existence.  We talk about The riddle of human existence How to create…

• Why I love uncertainty

  Anna Farmery

  8 Mar 2010 | 12:19 pm

  Business is uncertain, we live in uncertain economic times, our lives are uncertain. The paradox it seems to me is that as human beings we seem to dislike uncertainty to a certain extent and without that uncertainty we probably wouldn't have our work.Business thrives on helping or supporting customers with uncertainty, business makes profits from uncertainty. Grabbing a drink on the go at a premium because we don't know when we will get the chance of another drink, insurance for future risks, ipods so that we can be more certain of having our music when we want it etc etcWhen we start to…

• The Connected World

  Anna Farmery

  3 Mar 2010 | 11:58 am

  I keep thinking that there is a rush towards connectivity, to a constantly 'on' life which creates a greater interaction with machinery rather than people. We keep talking about the power of the internet, new technology, new gadgets...the things that you use, which bring the connectivity. Yet I cannot help thinking that we are still only at the start - it is an evolution to a revolution.Why?Because 24 hrs a day connectivity, communicating through things rather than people, a truly global marketplace, a generation of gamers coming into the workplace, a new language even to master....We will…

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  Going Social Now

• SxSWi 2010 in Quotes, What's yours?

  Shiv Singh

  16 Mar 2010 | 6:49 am

  Great slideshare from Valerie of some awesome quotes at South by Southwest Interactive. What's your most important takeaway from SXSWi? Which of these do you like the most?2010 SxSWi in Quotes

• Does the NYT iPhone App live upto its promise?

  Shiv Singh

  14 Mar 2010 | 8:04 pm

  I really like The New York Times. Visiting its website for the latest news and commentary is a part of my daily morning ritual. It has been for a while and will probably be for a long time. However, when it comes to the NYT iPhone application, I'm left a little disappointed with the revenue model and functionality. Here's why.Being able to access the news on my iPhone anywhere is powerful. In fact, it is so valuable that I'd be willing to pay for it (especially if I don't have to see those pesky advertisements that take up precious real estate). I cannot understand why the NYT never…

• Digital Media takes over Print. What this means

  Shiv Singh

  7 Mar 2010 | 9:48 pm

  This was a long time coming and now the moment has arrived. Spending on digital media has taken over print advertising for the first time. A study by Outsell as reported in Forbes reveals that U.S. advertisers are spending more this year on digital media than on print. This is largely thanks to a 9.6% boom in digital advertising in 2010. Of the $368 billion marketers plan to spend this year, 32.5% will go toward digital; 30.3% to print. Digital spending includes e-mail, video advertising, display ads and search marketing.Now it is hard not to share these statistics without at least…

• Digital Agencies get back to Business

  Shiv Singh

  7 Mar 2010 | 5:21 pm

  Few people know that I spent a lot of time last year working with a client to help launch a new business, develop its first product and market it. That business was Bundle Corporation and their first product launched at the end of January. So much time on it that for a while I worried my son's first word would be "Bundle"!It has been an exhilarating experience working in a semi-startup environment (the company was incubated within Razorfish with the idea originating out of Citibank) and running the product and marketing functions while the company extended its management team. Being…

• How to Bring Social Influence Marketing to Life

  Shiv Singh

  28 Feb 2010 | 5:44 pm

  Social influence marketing (SIM) campaigns achieve success in the long term. Here are some tips that will help your SIM campaign flourish during its lifespan:Participate where your customers want to participate and be active in the customer communities you create. Remember that your customers are your equals.Architect your SIM efforts so that customers are motivated and encouraged to form tribes, bringing others into the fold and engaging with one another.When planning outreach programs, recognize that the "A" list influencers may not be as helpful as the long tail of the other influencers.

• 

  Stage Two's blog

• Pogoplug Launches Game Console Media Streaming and Offsite Backup

  TeamS2

  16 Mar 2010 | 9:00 am

  At Showstoppers, during this year’s CES, Pogoplug announced that soon users could stream all their digital media to their televisions through their Xbox 360 or PS3 using the Pogoplug system. Today this feature, along with enhanced data backup, goes live. Starting today, your Xbox 360 or PS3 automatically sees Pogoplug connected drives you’ve chosen for this feature and the contents of other shared Pogoplugs. This means you can not only stream your videos from your hard drive on to your television, but you can also stream home videos of family and friends in the same way, no matter…

• Why Companies Are Catching On To Social Media

  Ken Yeung

  8 Mar 2010 | 11:09 am

  Twitter’s attraction in the past year or so has been quite intriguing. For most companies, there’s probably still some confusion as to what it’s good for to generate leads, sales, profits, etc., but this number is slowly dwindling as the months go by. And in a sure sign of Twitter’s growing popularity, a study conducted by the Society of New Communications Research (SNCR) found out that in 2009, companies listed in the Fortune 500 were eagerly signing up and jumping on the Twitter bandwagon. It seems that these large brands like General Motors, Exxon Mobil, US Steel,…

• Client News: WorldMate adds Executive Talent, Looks to Expand Partnerships

  TeamS2

  2 Mar 2010 | 9:18 am

  20 year wireless industry veteran, Jean Tripier, joins WorldMate as CEO today. Jean comes most recently from Good Technology, where he was Chief Strategy Officer and Chief Operating Officer and built the company’s OEM business from the ground up. Before Good, Tripier was Vice President of Corporate Development at international mobile giant Vodafone, overseeing the entire Asia Pacific region. Jean will lead discussions of co-branded deals, with travel brands looking for a quick-to-market mobile app. WorldMate recently signed one such deal with Virgin Blue. Founding CEO Nadav Gur, remains…

• Client News: Share your VUDU viewing via Facebook and Twitter

  David

  2 Mar 2010 | 6:20 am

  VUDU, in the wake of their acquisition by Wal-Mart, is continuing to innovate and improve their streaming movie service.  The company has announced as of this morning a new social feature baked right into their user interface, specifically the ability to share a recently viewed movie (and how much they liked the movie) via a tweet or a Facebook status update.  Friends of the VUDU  customer who follow their updates in a given service will see an update that the viewer watched the movie in VUDU, and see how well they rated it (out of 5 stars).  If you happen to see the tweet or the Facebook…

• It’s Easy To Make A Video, But Takes A Lot To Make It Viral

  Ken Yeung

  1 Mar 2010 | 9:19 am

  Last year, I was very fortunate enough to attend the Inbound Marketing Summit hosted by Chris Brogan and Justin Levy. It was there that I was first introduced to Tim Street, a video producer and social media marketer – perhaps better well known for French Maid TV. It was there that he brought up the topic of how to create a viral video. You know about a lot of them – you’ve probably seen them and also passed them along to your friends and family. They’re the ones that really catch on – like the one featuring Susan Boyle from Britain’s Got Talent –…

• 

  The Common Sense Web... An Entrepreneurs' Blog

• 2010 SXSW, Location based services, Austin Restaurants, etc.

  Chris Treadaway

  12 Mar 2010 | 5:50 am

  A few quick thoughts this morning as we near the event of the year, Austin's SXSW Interactive.  It just keeps getting better every year.Location-based <fill in the blank> is bound to dominate the landscape this year.  Think back even five years ago -- I think a lot of folks in 2005 would've been spooked by any service that collected and revealed the location of users.  But it's another one of those areas where people have relaxed their privacy standards to points unthinkable in recent times.Overall, I think the buzz/reality quotient is very high right now.  The major…

• Hal Varian on newspaper economics

  Chris Treadaway

  9 Mar 2010 | 11:26 am

  Interesting blog post from Hal Varian, Google's Chief Economist, on newspaper economics.http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2010/03/newspaper-economics-online-and-offline.htmlHal points out a few things that I 100% agree with: special interest local advertising was the bell cow for the newspaper business, people consume news and information on social nets, mobile devices, etc. more and more today, experimentation is key to helping newspapers survive and thrive in the 21st Century. Google has been demonized by folks in the newspaper business for making audiences mobile and destroying…

• Entrepreneur Traits

  Chris Treadaway

  2 Mar 2010 | 8:44 pm

  I caught up this past weekend with an old friend who is most certainly *not* an entrepreneur.  This friend is a corporate guy through and through.  He's so corporate, he just doesn't understand the life of a startup person or why someone would forsake a promising corporate job in exchange for long hours, a small salary (if you're lucky), and the trouble of the early-stage routine.Anyway, he asked me to share with him the traits of someone who would be a good entrepreneur.  I'm not sure if it was a curiosity thing for him or if he really wanted to understand.  Anyway,…

• Looking to meet .NET startup-friendly folks in Austin

  Chris Treadaway

  1 Mar 2010 | 9:54 am

  Howdy everyone -- quick departure from the norm here.  We happen to be one of those rare Austin startups that run primarily on Microsoft technology.  Most Austin startups are built on Rails or Open Source technology.  It makes sense... the open source stack is relatively easy to get into, there is a huge community of helpful developers out there, and developers can learn as they go.  For us it wasn't a religious decision, but it was the background of our CTO, Robert Starek.  Technical leadership does tend to drive these decisions.Anyway, we've gone to a few events and reached…

• "Qualified" Candidates

  Chris Treadaway

  24 Feb 2010 | 9:35 pm

  Once you advance beyond the point of being an individual contributor in business, you henceforth have to keep your eyes open to assess people who may be able to join/advance your team.  You should always have a pretty good idea of gaps in your team, and you should always be on the lookout for people who can fill those gaps.  Sometimes those gaps exist at a senior level -- executives, board members, etc.  Other times, those gaps are in specific operational areas.What makes people "qualified" for roles in our business?  Here are some high level thoughts on how I generally assess…

• 

  A New Marketing

• Everyone Knows That, Right?

  Matt

  16 Feb 2010 | 6:54 pm

  This is some eye-opening stuff. In one of his recent posts, Mitch Joel showcases a video from Google where they go out in the Jay Leno “Jay Walking” style and ask people on the street a (seemingly) simple question. In this case the question is: What is a browser? That’s kids table stuff, right? Everyone knows that, I’m sure. It’s not like we’re asking about dynamic style sheets or to explain the QDF piece of Google’s algorithm. Just watch. Sheesh. Like Mitch says, maybe this explains why we get blank stares when we try to explain how Twitter fits into…

• Social via Antisocial (Zeus Jones Preso)

  Matt

  12 Feb 2010 | 11:14 am

  Wow this is great stuff. View more presentations from Zeus Jones. One thing this got me thinking about was the fact that to be “social” doesn’t necessarily mean you have to tweet or have a Facebook page. If you offer services or technology that works with, augments, or improves inherent social behavior, you can have more of an effect than any number of tweeted links.

• Over (Inter)Active

  Matt

  11 Feb 2010 | 10:44 am

  As I tweeted this morning, Alan Wolk more-or-less read my mind today with this post titled Interaction Burnout. He gets into what I call “bad metrics” here Much of this unnecessary patter is due to the unrealistic expectations brands (and the agencies and consultants that enable them) have for social media. Where, in a misguided quest for easily understood metrics, success has come to mean x number of Twitter followers or y number of Facebook Fan Page updates each month This is something that drives me nuts. Social media marketing is, at its core, marketing. It’s goal is to…

• The Platform Is The Process

  Matt

  11 Feb 2010 | 10:12 am

  Faris Yakob put some really good thoughts together in his post about Google’s Superbowl advertising spot. His main point is that the ad wasn’t necessarily about Google Search, but more of a proof of concept for their advertising (which includes search ppc, television, etc.). Google has been trying for years to help advertisers think about the relationship between Superbowl [or any TV spots] and search and online video, [...] and that the proof of any new platform requires big brand case studies and support, and that having your own is always useful when talking to agencies….

• Community and Stubborness: Original Xbox loses Live

  Matt

  5 Feb 2010 | 10:46 am

  Well, it’s official. As of April 15th, Microsoft will be discontinuing the online Xbox Live service for the original Xbox. My first response: Really? People still play games on the first Xbox? In a message on the official Xbox blog, Marc Whitten wrote: There’s no greater example of the power of the Xbox LIVE community than the “Halo” franchise. “Halo 2” has had an amazing run on LIVE, with a dedicated community more than five years after launch and well into the next generation of consoles. It has fundamentally changed the way we play video games. And while it’s difficult to…

• 

  Altitude Branding

• Getting Real About Creating Change

  Amber Naslund

  11 Mar 2010 | 4:00 am

  I wrote a while back about social media and culture shift. I continue to believe that the biggest obstacle to social media adoption and integration is a culture shift, not an operational one. But there’s a subtle point to be made. The culture issues that exist in these companies have been years – even decades – in the making. So, social media didn’t cause the culture disparities. They’ve been there all along. But the new expectations for responsiveness, accountability, personality and human focus as a result of the potential and visibility of new…

• The Pitch That Worked

  Amber Naslund

  10 Mar 2010 | 10:36 am

  I tweeted the other day that I got a really great pitch via email, and dozens of folks immediately wanted me to share it. But I won’t, partly because I don’t have permission, but mostly because it shouldn’t matter. Writing a decent email pitch isn’t complicated. And I know some folks are looking for the Almighty Template (to you, I say sternly and a bit impatiently: quit looking for shortcuts and learn for yourself). But here’s my assessment of why this pitch worked, and a bit of a tricky bit at the end that is really the linchpin of the whole thing. Concise We…

• Influence, Perspective, and Emily

  Amber Naslund

  10 Mar 2010 | 4:00 am

  You want to uncover influencers, right? Find those people that can carry your message, get heard, cut through the noise and get people’s attention? The ones with the most eyeballs, the most leverage, the strongest voice, the most accumulated “social capital”? Let me tell you a story about Emily. Emily was a donor to a non-profit organization I used to work for. She wasn’t an especially notable donor, but she was a consistently, quietly loyal one. She sent precisely $100, twice a year, to our annual giving campaign. By most fundraising “standards”, that put…

• 

  NTEN: The Nonprofit Technology Network

• Guest Post: Next Generation of Donors Meet the Next Generation of Nonprofit Leadership at NTEN

  Brett

  16 Mar 2010 | 9:45 am

  Tad Druart, Convio Anecdotally and intuitively, you know that changing demographics and technology are driving a shift in your engagement with donors, volunteers, event participants and other people your organization relies on to fulfill your mission. That's one of the reasons you soak up all NTEN has to offer about technology and engagement. Do a Google search and you can find a great deal of research on virtually all aspects of interests, attitudes and aptitudes for Gen Y, Gen X, Boomers and the Matures. What has been missing is information that how different generations learn about, engage…

• 5 Questions: Data Data Everywhere: Drowning in a Sea of Analytics (Part 2)

  Holly

  16 Mar 2010 | 8:54 am

  Ed. Note: As we prepare for the 2010 Nonprofit Technology Conference, we wanted share a wee bit of the wisdom our speakers will be serving up, so as not to overwhelm you when you get to Atlanta. We're asking them all to share their answers to five very important questions. Speaker: Marissa Goldsmith, Beaconfire Consulting Session: Data Data Everywhere: Drowning in a sea of Analytics 1. What's the most important trend in nonprofit technology for 2010? Analytics integration and interpretation. A web site is no longer your only (and in some cases, primary) presence on the Internet. To measure…

• 5 Questions: Data Data Everywhere: Drowning in a sea of Analytics

  Holly

  16 Mar 2010 | 8:50 am

  Ed. Note: As we prepare for the 2010 Nonprofit Technology Conference, we wanted share a wee bit of the wisdom our speakers will be serving up, so as not to overwhelm you when you get to Atlanta. We're asking them all to share their answers to five very important questions. Speaker: Dan Michel, Feeding America Session: Data Data Everywhere: Drowning in a sea of Analytics 1. What's the most important trend in nonprofit technology for 2010? Integration. All nonprofits have had presences in many different tools serving different audiences. The next step is to integrate all tools and strategies…

• What the Third Sector Can Learn from the Public Sector

  Holly

  15 Mar 2010 | 9:41 am

  Flickr Photo: h.koppdelaneyTransparent. Participatory. Collaborative. Those are the values President Obama cited last December in his Open Government Initiative. Are those words you usually associate with your government? Even non-conspiracy theorists would likely have a hard time summoning up "transparent" as one of the top three adjectives to describe our government. We would all likely agree that it's a shame: our government should be transparent. Now let's think about our sector.  Transparent. Participatory. Collaborative. What do you think? Do those words describe the…

• 5 Questions: Anatomy of a Video

  Holly

  12 Mar 2010 | 10:53 am

  Ed. Note: As we prepare for the 2010 Nonprofit Technology Conference, we wanted share a wee bit of the wisdom our speakers will be serving up, so as not to overwhelm you when you get to Atlanta. We're asking them all to share their answers to five very important questions. Speaker: Michael Hoffman, See3 Session: Anatomy of a Video: Confessions From Organizations Big and Small  1. What's the most important trend in nonprofit technology for 2010? The widespread adoption of social media is clearly the most important trend for nonprofit technology in 2010. While there are still complications…

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  PsyBlog

• 8 Studies Demonstrating the Power of Simplicity

  Jeremy Dean

  16 Mar 2010 | 6:53 am

  Psychological research on cognitive fluency shows why easy to understand = more profitable, more pleasurable, more intelligent and safer. Which of these would you say sounds like the more dangerous food additive: Hnegripitrom or Magnalroxate? The majority of people say Hnegripitrom sounds more dangerous. It turns out that the word 'Magnalroxate' is easier to think about than 'Hnegripitrom', probably because it's more pronounceable, and people equate simplicity with safety (actually both words are made up). This is one example of psychological research on meta-cognition: thoughts about other…

• What Alcohol Does to Your Mind: Attentional Myopia

  Jeremy Dean

  11 Mar 2010 | 5:49 am

  Alcohol makes us attentionally 'short-sighted'—this helps explain its popularity and its variable effects. We tend to think of alcohol as primarily a disinhibitor, but this can't really explain its varying effects. Sometimes it seems to make us loud and boisterous, sometimes quiet and contemplative, sometimes sad and depressed, along with all the shades and combinations of these, and other emotions. Similarly psychologists have found that alcohol can have all sorts of counter-intuitive effects. Studies have even shown that after drinking people can become less aggressive and less likely to…

• Does Playing Hard to Get Work?

  Jeremy Dean

  8 Mar 2010 | 2:10 am

  "Easy things nobody wants, but what is forbidden is tempting." ~ Ovid Back in the 60s and 70s, before the sexual revolution had really taken hold, the standard dating advice for women was play hard to get. In some quarters it still is. Like the Roman poet Ovid 2,000 years earlier, social scientists in the 1960s accepted the cultural lore that women could increase their desirability by being coy. When interviewed, men seemed to agree: they said that hard to get women were probably more popular, beautiful and had better personalities. Unfortunately every time psychologists used an experiment to…

• PsyBlog Now on Facebook

  Jeremy Dean

  2 Mar 2010 | 2:54 am

  PsyBlog is now on Facebook, right here. If you're so inclined, you might like to add yourself as a fan. You might also feel a sudden burst of generosity towards me and spread the word about PsyBlog to your friends on Facebook. The Facebook fan page for PsyBlog will contain the same updates that you can already receive by RSS or email and through PsyBlog's Twitter account. If you're not a Facebooker and/or hate it, there's good news: the next post will have absolutely no mention of Facebook! » Positive psychology workbooks - intelligent self-help - download now.

• Can You Trust a Facebook Profile?

  Jeremy Dean

  18 Feb 2010 | 6:40 am

  Do people display their actual or idealised personalities on social networking sites? There are now over 700 million people around the world with profiles on social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace. In the US 75% of those between 18 and 24 who have access to the internet use social networking sites. And over the past four years, across all adult age-groups, their use has quadrupled. But do these profiles tell us anything about people's real-life personalities? Online it is very easy to display an idealised version of the self to others so surely the temptation to exaggerate or even…

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  Usability Counts | User Experience, Social Media

• If You Want To Send Out Viruses, Hire A Graphic Designer For Your Spam

  Patrick Neeman

  11 Mar 2010 | 2:25 pm

  So funny. So funny.Similar Posts: Cool Website Tuesdays: Caller Complaints Silly Saturdays: Floating Heads Silly Saturdays: Micromachine Man QuickTip Sundays: BobTheChiropractor.com Silly Saturdays: You Tube In 1985

• Cool Website Tuesdays: Every Person In New York

  Patrick Neeman

  9 Mar 2010 | 12:00 pm

  This guy is sketching everyone in New York City. All 8 million of them. Very cool.Similar Posts: Cool Website Tuesdays: New York Times Cool Website Tuesdays: New York Times Photojournalism Consultant Thursdays: Travelling For Work Isn’t A Vacation The Linked In Edition: What Kills Site Conversion? QuickTip Sundays: Being A UX Team Of One

• Why I Dislike Flash

  Patrick Neeman

  5 Mar 2010 | 1:00 pm

  There’s been some hubbub going around about how Flash won’t be included on the iPad, mainly because Steve Jobs considers it a memory hog and unneeded once there are other ways to play online video. While he did claim that Flash would drain the battery of an iPad from 10 hours to 1.5 hours with Flash on, here’s an interesting stat: Battery life on newer MacBook Pros has been as shrinking by over an hour with Flash active, although the faster processors and added memory help absorb some of the performance concerns. Outside of playing video, run of the mill HTML with…

• Mobile Social Networking Up For Everyone Except for MySpace

  Patrick Neeman

  3 Mar 2010 | 4:41 pm

  From comScore: The study found that 30.8 percent of smartphone users accessed social networking sites via their mobile browser in January 2010, up 8.3 points from 22.5 percent one year ago. Access to Facebook via mobile browser grew 112 percent in the past year, while Twitter experienced a 347-percent jump. “Social networking remains one of the most popular and fastest-growing behaviors on both the PC-based Internet and the mobile Web,” said Mark Donovan, comScore senior vice president of mobile. “Social media is a natural sweet spot for mobile since mobile devices are at…

• How To Increase Conversion: Red Buttons

  Patrick Neeman

  2 Mar 2010 | 12:00 pm

  This became an inside joke I at the Online Marketing Summit, one of my clients. I was doing the drinking thang (networking, talking with attendees), and I always have one gimmick that I go with at an event as an icebreaker. The joke was, “so how do you increase conversion?” “Red Buttons.” I’m sure Red Buttons the comedian didn’t know he was going to be the punchline for a user experience jokes. “I’m here on Tuesdays, tip your waitress, next up They Might Be Giants…” But… That’s not always the case, as stated in this great…

• 

  Blonde 2.0

• GarageGeeks Session: Crowdsourcing

  blonde20

  11 Mar 2010 | 8:53 am

  Next Monday, March 15th I am organizing a crowdsourcing session at the famous GarageGeeks venue in Israel. We have four different companies presenting their own view of what crowdsourcing is all about and how they utilize crowdsourcing in their own companies. We have four speakers: Doron Reuveni, CEO of uTest - Doron will discuss how online communities are disrupting many industries; will compare the differences between a mob, a crowd and a community; will provide a sneak preview of a live demo of a not-yet-launched version of uTest’s software testing platform. Yael Elish, VP Product…

• Interview with Saul Singer, Author of Start-Up Nation

  blonde20

  7 Mar 2010 | 1:09 pm

  Often time when I am traveling abroad, people ask me: “Why does Israel have so many startups? What is it about Israel that makes it so innovative and strong in the hi-tech industry?” Saul Singer together with Dan Senor have researched that question and have written a whole book about it. They believe the Israeli model can be copied elsewhere in less innovative regions and that other nations have much to learn from Start-Up Nation. Here’s my interview with Saul at JVP’s Medialectica 2010 event:

• Fotobabble Launches New iPhone App: Talking Photos Bring Memories to Life

  blonde20

  24 Feb 2010 | 8:52 am

  (Guest post by Dorine Sinigaglia) Fotobabble launched its new iPhone app today, allowing people to add voice to the photos they send and share with friends and family via Email, Twitter, Facebook or an iPhone. With the new Fotobabble iPhone app, users can easily create talking photos within seconds with a few clicks on a Web browser or their iPhone. The possibilities of what one can do with talking photos are simply endless, since adding life to photos is a tool truly everyone can enjoy and benefit from. As if the experience of sharing photos is not fun enough, knowing I can add my voice to a…

• JVP’s Erel Margalit Tells Startups: “We Do Early Stage Now!”

  blonde20

  16 Feb 2010 | 10:38 am

  Last month I had the honor of organizing Medialectica 2010 event together with JVP (Jerusalem Venture Partners). The concept of the event was a simple one: Allow entrepreneurs to network and also set up one on one meetings with any of the event’s sponsors: IBM, france telecom, Publicis [Incubator] and of course JVP. At the event entrepreneurs had the chance to pitch their companies to the mentioned sponsors and get their feedback and advice. The first speech of the event was given by Erel Margalit, Founder and Managing Partner of JVP who told startups: “We Do Early Stage…

• The Top Five Reasons Brands Fear Social Media

  blonde20

  9 Feb 2010 | 8:39 am

  I’ve been in the social media space now for quite a few years and I meet with at least 5 companies each week who have understood the importance of utilizing social media for their businesses but are still afraid of entering their brands into the new media age. What are they worried about? Here are the top five concerns that I’ve heard from executives and my response to them: 1) They’re afraid they’ll lose control of their brand and open themselves up to negative feedback – When you open a business and start marketing your services and exposing your brand to…

• 

  soho-life.com

• If the phone was ringing…?

  Kathie Thomas

  21 Feb 2010 | 3:13 pm

  Put it this way. If the phone was ringing would you let it just ring out, thinking you’ll answer it tomorrow? Email is another form of communication but unlike the phone can’t make the urgent sound that demands you answer it immediately.  So it amazes me how many business people (including banks and large corporations) don’t actually reply to emails, even ones that are relatively urgent) till days or weeks later.  Why is that? I believe it’s because they don’t have staff regularly monitoring their email and that’s a poor thing.  It’s a legitimate form of…

• NAB Phishing Alert

  Kathie Thomas

  20 Jan 2010 | 7:30 pm

  This is a laugh! Just got this email with an attachment which no doubt has some script installed in it.  What makes it so funny?  Well, apart from the obvious things like not addressing it personally to me (I don’t even have a NAB account), spelling errors, etc, it talks about paying me in Euro – from an Australian bank?  Doh! I have notified the real NAB of the new phishing/spam email doing the rounds.  To date I’ve received 3 copies in less than half an hour. Subject: Reward 20 Euro (31 AUD) ,take our survey jurney Dear NAB Credit/Debit card Holder, For better…

• And now for something special

  Kathie Thomas

  7 Dec 2009 | 6:46 pm

  Thank you to all the readers this year who have helped make this blog worth writing.  I know my posts have been less than in past years but I expect if you know what’s taken place in my life you’ll know that’s not unexpected. I’m hoping to pick things up for the new year.  In the meantime, read on, I have something special for you – or for your kids. At this time of year we think about our kids and what will delight them, surprise them, and make them happy. I recently became aware of a great service that shows a photo of Santa in your own home – so your…

• In a Social Media tug-of-war?

  Kathie Thomas

  2 Dec 2009 | 6:20 pm

  Then this useful tool might just help sway your thoughts to what you should and shouldn’t be participating in.  I thought it very interesting to watch and it will probably open a few minds and eyes.

• When something needs to give…

  Kathie Thomas

  25 Nov 2009 | 1:40 pm

  I’ve just had a liberating moment – well, more than a moment, quite a few minutes really. But I feel like I’ve just freed up some of my time and will most likely fill it with something else. What am I talking about?  My Google Reader. It had become too full with over 1,000 posts I haven’t even read or skimmed through.  It became overwhelming and I decided to cull the list of blogs I was subscribed to.  I got rid of all those which haven’t updated for months – although that didn’t cull the 1000+ new posts I haven’t yet read. And then I went…

• 

  Bret on Social Games

• Gravity Bear Gets It All Wrong: 5 Common Mistakes of Traditional Game Developers Entering the Social Space

  Bret

  12 Mar 2010 | 8:45 pm

  I must be in a critical mood, I apologize in advance to Gravity Bear who did make a well-polished game and doesn't deserve to be my whipping boy. This post is more directed at the wave of traditional game devs who have been entering the social space for a while and having their boats smashed against the rocky shores of Facebook. Gravity Bear simply makes the same mistakes, which are numbered below.I just played Battle Punks (http://apps.facebook.com/battlepunks/) for the first time, I had been watching Gravity Bear since they announced their formation. 1. Early Press release. I always…

• Thank You, Jameson Hsu: Mochi Media Acquired for $80 million

  Bret

  11 Jan 2010 | 11:39 pm

  For the first time in about a year have I been inspired to write a post. It's not for lack of ideas or analysis, those nuggets have been going to my employer, Zynga. However, this is the first story in a long time that I really felt was important. On both a personal level and an industry level.You'll have to discern the importance to the industry here: http://www.techcrunch.com/2010/01/11/mochi-media-acquired-by-shanda-games/Here's the personal and this speaks to the reason why I'm so happy for Jameson Hsu (CEO of Mochi Media):Jameson is the reason I'm still in Silicon Valley.And he probably…

• Scrabulous (oops Lexulous) offers a mobile version

  Bret

  16 Jan 2009 | 5:57 am

  Mobile is hot. And the movement of social to mobile is even hotter. But I did not expect Lexulous to offer a mobile version. And I did not expect that mobile version to be incompatible with iPhone and Blackberry.Here's the scoop as stated on the Lexulous app:And I'd never expect them to incentivize invites. The Agarwalla Bros have always been scrupulous about obeying the letter and even more the intent of FB's platform policies. I am correct in thinking that offering a mobile version for inviting 30 friends is an incentive, right?

• iPhone Current Demographics - Gender

  Bret

  13 Jan 2009 | 5:01 am

  There's a pretty strong data (albeitly indirect) that most current iPhone owners are men 25-35. However, if you take a look at the current traffic to buyiphone.apple.com (Apple's info portal for buying an iPhone), you'll see that 48% of the visitors are women (according to Quantcast).Tracking back 6 months, I found that Hitwise did a similar analysis and found the traffic was nearly 50/50. I haven't been able to find any good current demographic data regarding gender on the iPhone, if anyone has a good link, let me know.I'm not sure if I find this data conclusive, but I suspect that with the…

• I'm Back, and so is Scrabulous!

  Bret

  9 Jan 2009 | 6:06 am

  Hey all.Then blogging break extended further, but I'm emerging from the darkness to note that Scrabulous is back as Lexulous. It's currently at 38,000 DAU.As many of you know, Hasbro dropped their lawsuit against Scrabulous a couple of weeks ago. Will Scrabulous/Lexulous get back its 600,000+ DAU? Doubtful. It's much harder to stand out from the noise on the Facebook platform nowadays. I'm guessing that it'll hit 100,000 DAU by March 15. That's a total gut call. It's still the best Scrabble game on Facebook, it'll get much of its audience back.However, the gameplay has been altered slightly.

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  Kumail.H.T`s Blog

• Creative ways to destroy your website

  kumailht

  15 Mar 2010 | 3:41 am

  Use those “professional” stock images You know the ones with “business professionals” shaking hands! or the lady with the headset? don’t forget the globe for your homepage! This will really make your site POP! This will make you and your 2 business partners who work from the coffee shop look like a real corporate company. My advice: Stay clear of stock websites until absolutely needed. Hire your own photographer instead, its not as expensive as you think. Stop trying to be someone you are not! Read this article by Seth Godin to get some perspective on how small…

• Do we really need a #container to center CSS layouts? I think not!

  kumailht

  11 Jan 2010 | 1:11 am

  From the very beginning, I was taught that a container div should be used to center layouts. Apparently, the body element can itself be used to center the layout removing the need to use an extra wrapper. Here is how we currently center layouts: #container { width:990px; margin:0 auto; } but the container is not required at all so why use it? Here is how I center layouts: body { width:990px; margin:0 auto; } As for the Background image, you can use the “html” element for that. Check out the working example. There has to be a valid reason for not using the body tag. Having learnt…

• Just ReDesigned my blog

  kumailht

  10 Jan 2010 | 10:10 am

  Can you spare a minute to offer some feedback? I would really appreciate it

• The ultimate list of really amazing design related lists

  kumailht

  1 May 2009 | 9:10 pm

  It is very common to see Top 10 this list, Top 10 that list, They all are very informative and heavy on content and give you the strongest urge to bookmark. These lists when combined form the epic bookmark so what are you waiting for, Ctrl + D to bookmark. Next, I am planning on making a list of lists that list amazing lists confused? so am I. Well, I wont waste any more of your time, start surfing and bookmarking as this should take some time. Typography Free Fonts 40+ Excellent Freefonts For Professional Design 22 Most Used Free Fonts By Professional Designers 20 Free Handwritten Fonts And…

• Amazing Ubuntu Linux themes, Icons & Walls to give your desktop a Fresh Look!

  kumailht

  30 Mar 2009 | 11:39 pm

  I couldn’t stand using Windows 7 because of the reasons stated here (which I installed because of photoshop in the first place) any longer, I am sick of adobe for being so bloated and dumped photoshop for Inkscape and Gimp which I have come to love. Only chance I use photoshop again is if I buy a mac or if adobe provides a Linux version, until then I am a Linux Designer! One of the biggest issues with Ubuntu on the front end is its theme, which is an easy fix. Installing a theme is as easy as changing your wallpaper in Linux, it really is! (easy install) - This shows that you can…

• 

  Media Culpa

• Using social media to promote handball

  kullin

  7 Mar 2010 | 1:12 pm

  In February 2007 I registered the domain socialamedier.com which is the Swedish translation of "social media". Back then, the term was fairly new, but today there are literally thousands of self proclaimed social media experts out there, giving advice about how to be successful on blogs, Twitter or Facebook. It has come to the point where "social media guru" is almost seen as an invective.So if you can't stand to hear one more social media evangelist tell you about how they will end starvation and bring world peace through social media, instead you might want to read this blog post from a…

• Samsung-gate spreading outside Sweden?

  kullin

  17 Feb 2010 | 6:35 am

  I blogged the other day about how a "viral agency" had been posting nice reviews in Swedish online forums on behalf of Samsung, but without disclosing their true identity. The scam was revealed and in a comment to the marketing blog Adland, Samsung said that the procedure was out of line and that they had put an end to it. However, it seems that this undercover operation to get a buzz going may not be limited to Sweden. In an article today on the UK computer forum Computeractive.co.uk, Deputy Editor Tom Royal, writes that someone has started threads on the forum, promoting Samsung products…

• Media Culpa celebrates six years of blogging

  kullin

  16 Feb 2010 | 11:40 pm

  On Feb 4, 2004, Mark Zuckerberg launched his Harvard student social network Facebook. At about the same time, I was goofing around with this new thing web log, and on Feb 17, I published my first blog post. Six years later Zuckerberg is a billionare and, well, I'm not. Either way, I'm happy that I have managed to keep this blog running for six years today and during that time I have published in excess of 1,400 posts.During the years, the number of visitors peaked during the tragic Asian tsunami, in late December 2004, much thanks to a number of links from some mainstream media sites. Another…

• Samsung caught in fake Swedish viral campaign

  kullin

  12 Feb 2010 | 2:09 am

  Samsung has been caught with their pants down in an attempt to create a buzz in Swedish online forums for their LED tv sets. A Swedish agency called the Viral Company has been posting comments and questions to numerous forums about the best LED tvs, pretending to be an ordinary consumer. With fake identities the Viral Company tried to get the word going in forums about gaming, movies, home electronics, outdoor life and so forth. But they did a major mistake when they added a smiley to the posts with the purpose of tracking conversations, since the URL for the smiley icon went to a domain name…

• Vodafone gained Twitter followers after bad tweet

  kullin

  6 Feb 2010 | 10:43 am

  Companies that manage an issue or crisis well may often come out stronger on the other side. As a follow up to my post yesterday about Vodafone and the obscene tweet, I thought I would check in on the number of followers to Vodafone's Twitter account. In my view, the company handled the indicident well and I almost expected that they would gain a number of followers from the attention. As you can see from the graph below, that is exactly what happened. We can see a sharp increase in number of followers for VodafoneUK since the unfortunate tweet was published, almost twice the amount than on a…

• 

  B.L. Ochman

• Links for 2010-03-14 [del.icio.us]

  MailBigFile.com | Pro Account : Faster Uploads - Send Big Files - More Downloads - Encrypted Transfer - Address Book - Download Alerts BBC News - The top 100 sites on the internet Social What's posterous - Social Media Stories und Neuigkeiten aus dem Web 2.0 Universum excellent aggregation of posts about social media

• Dear Delta Airlines: Nothing Else Matters if Your Customer Service Sucks

  BL Ochman

  14 Mar 2010 | 3:55 pm

  Dear Delta Airlines: Delta's customer service sucks, and therefore, nothing you do in social media, advertising, PR or marketing matters one bit. Here's a hint: Instead of being concerned about your next M&Ms flavor, you need to be concerned about your customers. Your customer service rep IS Delta Airlines A little while ago, a Delta customer service rep hung up on me when I asked her name. That was after she told me "we don't make seating arrangements over the phone." And after she couldn't answer a simple question about how to print a boarding pass on your website. It doesn't matter if…

• Five Reasons Why Companies Should Not Block Employee Access to Social Networks

  BL Ochman

  7 Mar 2010 | 5:38 pm

  Last week, a client told me that they don't allow employees to access YouTube at work. "Do your employees carry cellphones?" I asked. The answer was "yes," of course. Well then, most of them already have access to YouTube - right in their pockets. The fact is, resistance to social network access at work is futile. The Economist, in a special report on social networking, notes that a survey of 1,400 chief information officers conducted last year by the recruitment firm, Robert Half Technology, found that only one-tenth of them gave employees full access to such networks during the day, and…

• David Pogue's iPhone Song

  BL Ochman

  7 Mar 2010 | 5:37 pm

  All true! But i got me an iPhone and I love it. As many times as I've heard Pogue do this song, it never gets old. Most recently, he sang it at Ragan Communications' Social Media for Communicators conference in Atlanta, Ga. And hey, who knew Pogue could sing?!! He sang it first on The New York Times website in 2007. All content copyright B.L. Ochman, Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, with the attribution: By B.L. Ochman, What's Next Blog, and a link to the post

• Reebok's naked workout video: just a bare attempt to create buzz?

  BL Ochman

  28 Feb 2010 | 7:14 pm

  Is it fake, like the infamous fake Puma ads simulating oral sex back in 2003? Or is the Reebok video featuring a naked Chuck Liddell and his girlfriend, Heidi Northcutt, working out in nothing but Reeboks an off-color joke produced by the company itself. The goal of this type of advertising is to find a way to get people to talk about your brand in today's mind-bogglingly crowded media landscape. The usual next step in the game (dubbed sub-viral marketing way back in 2002) is for the company to demand that those who spread the word cease and desist. Sub-viral strategy: risky at best It's a…

• 

  Regular Geek

• NoSQL Job Trends – March 2010

  Rob Diana

  14 Mar 2010 | 6:38 am

  In the past, I have posted about job trends for traditional programming languages as well as Web 2.0 programming languages. This is really just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to skills that jobs may require. In this installment, I wanted to look at a current hot topic, NoSQL data stores. With the current state of the internet, RDBMS-alternatives are being sought due to the amount of data being generated and the various ways this data needs to be accessed. As was done for the previous job trends posts, I looked at the trends from Indeed and SimplyHired to see what technologies were…

• Are You Treating The Symptom Or Solving The Problem?

  Rob Diana

  11 Mar 2010 | 11:51 am

  A few months ago, I wrote about process rarely fixing the real problem. I remembered that post because of an issue that was reported to me, and Tac Anderson wrote a timely post about the same idea. He phrases the question a little differently by asking if you are solving problems or fixing problems, and he includes an interesting definition of both: Solving a problem is what people do when they figure things out for the first time. When you solve a problem you create a solution. The next time you solve a problem you’re applying the solution to the problem to fix it. Tac’s post is…

• Are You Managing Resources Or Building Knowledge?

  Rob Diana

  7 Mar 2010 | 5:47 am

  Today I am going to write about a topic that has always bothered me. I had not thought that I would write about it, but a post this morning by Seth Godin really triggered this post. His post is really promoting his new book Linchpin (Amazon Link), but it starts with an excellent quote by Andrew Carnegie: Carnegie apparently said, “Take away my people, but leave my factories and soon grass will grow on the factory floors……Take away my factories, but leave my people and soon we will have a new and better factory.” I have no idea when Andrew Carnegie said this, but it is…

• Google Aligning Its Stars And Its Applications

  Rob Diana

  5 Mar 2010 | 1:00 am

  Earlier this week, Google announced that they were adding the ability to “star” search results. This was added and SearchWiki was removed from the search results so that there was not duplicate functionality. The basic idea is that people like the concept of saving good search results, but really could not be bothered with changing the ordering of the results. However, stars on search results are more integrated with the overall Google experience: You don’t even have to remember whether or not you starred something. Simply perform a search and you’ll rediscover your…

• Web 2.0 Programming Language Job Trends – February 2010

  Rob Diana

  1 Mar 2010 | 5:01 am

  At the beginning of this month, I compared the job trends for traditional programming languages like C++, Java and others. That was initially done because of TIOBE releasing their yearly language rankings. I also noticed that is was approximately 6 months from my last job trends posts. At that time, I wrote a second post regarding Web 2.0 programming language job trends. In this post, I have changed the list of languages a bit. First, Objective C is now in the traditional programming list so it is not included here. In order to make the list a little larger I have added Flex and Groovy to the…

• 

  Measurement Matters

• Lord Ashcroft, BBC News and Metrica

  5 Mar 2010 | 6:17 am

  When I'm not doing my day job as part of Metrica's social media team I blog about politics. This has given me the opportunity to talk about current affairs and the media on radio and TV. Last night I debated one of the issues of the day, Lord Ashcroft's donations to the Conservative Party, on the BBC News Channel.

• Is the BBC's strategy Review significant?

  4 Mar 2010 | 9:18 am

  This week the BBC announced the results of its Strategy Review, with the headline grabbing closure of two digital radio stations, 6Music and Asian Network, and a reduction in, online content. Does this signal the start of a period of significant change to the UK’s media landscape or is this simply tinkering on the fringes that most consumers won’t notice?These changes have been announced as a wider debate rages about charging for online content, with speculation that The Times will do so from 1 May, the future of media regulator Ofcom and the ongoing struggle for print…

• Social media strategies, implementation and measurement

  1 Mar 2010 | 12:33 pm

  The video below is a great (and short) interview from the excellent MyRagan (an online PR community generated by Ragan Communications, a US based PR consultancy). It features Adam Brown, Coca-Cola's Group Director of Digital Communications, discussing the PR strategy and benefits of 'Expedition 206' - Coke sending three of their brand advocates to all 206 countries in the world where their product is for sale. Watch it in the video clip below, or if you are reading this update via email, then head over to MyRagan's website directly to view.   It…

• What makes people share news?

  25 Feb 2010 | 2:04 am

  The socialisation of media has made sharing online news second nature. Some items go viral while others get left alone. A study of stories appearing on the New York Times website has attempted to show what motivates people to share news. Why do some stories spread their wings across our inboxes and others stay rooted to their homepage and quietly disappear?Pennsylvania State University researchers Jonah Berger and Katherine Milkman have suggested that readers most want to share articles that inspire ‘awe’. The study argues that awe encourages virality because “awe…

• Something for nothing? The London Evening Standard to begin charging again

  16 Feb 2010 | 9:56 am

  It has emerged that the Evening Standard is to charge again, for newspapers sold in the outer suburbs of London, having been free since August 2009. Is this a minor distribution shift or does it signal the end of free evening newspapers in the capital? London’s streets were littered with celebrity focused free-sheets every evening between 2006 and summer 2009. This resulted from a “war” between Rupert Murdoch’s News International, incarnated by thelondonpaper and Associated Newspapers’ LondonLite. This phenomenon ended after Associated sold the Evening…

• 

  mizz information

• Yet Another Rant on the New York Times Mommy Blogger Thing

  Maggie

  15 Mar 2010 | 5:32 pm

  First I wasn't going to blog about this because I realize that the last two posts I've written have been about a similar topic. Then I remembered why I blog: because I want to, and why I don't blog for money: so I don't have to answer to anyone else about what I want to write about. Which means that if I want to write three posts in a row about the same topic I can. Anyway, lots of dust swirling in the blogosphere over the last few days about the topic of blogging for pay--in particular, mom bloggers blogging for pay. Yesterday there was an article in the New York Times called Honey, Don't…

• How Much is a "Day of Your Time" Worth?

  Maggie

  3 Mar 2010 | 4:31 pm

  A few days ago I blogged about how mommy bloggers undervalue themselves; today Chris Brogan told the world that he charges $22,000 for a day of his time. This may be sacrilege but I can't help but think of the (awesome) HBO show, Cathouse, when Chris talks about how much he charges for "a day of his time". (NOT safe for work so I'm not even putting a link to it, lest you click it then blame me when you get fired.) The show is about the Bunny Ranch...which, if you don't already know, is a brothel. Those girls make some serious coin. My favorite concept on that show is "the girlfriend…

• Who Needs Money When You Can Work for "Prizes and Rewards"?

  Maggie

  1 Mar 2010 | 6:38 pm

  I was so excited to see Beth Harte's post about Nestle's "special offer" to join their digital think tank because it confirmed that I'm not crazy thinking mom bloggers are getting shafted. For a while now I've wondered if I'm just bitter or crazy for thinking that mom bloggers are being totally exploited by big brands and agencies. As far as I can tell, this is the dynamic: the new gospel for brands is that moms are the new influencers and the ultimate marketing coup is to get mom bloggers to work their magic for your brand. So brands spend thousands on third-parties in charge of wrangling…

• What if Facebook Becomes the Next Monsanto?

  Maggie

  28 Feb 2010 | 4:07 pm

  I love nothing better than a good "what if?" So when I saw this news about Facebook patenting the news feed, I couldn't help but think of the movie I'm now obsessed with, Food, Inc. Specifically, the part about my worst nightmare company, Monsanto, and how they are systematically suing farmers who don't use their genetically-modified--and patented--soy beans. If you haven't seen the movie, you need to--if for no other reason than so you can tell me if I'm crazy for thinking that there's nothing stopping Facebook from doing the same thing to rival social networking sites that Monsanto is doing…

• Is The Age of the Troll Over?

  Maggie

  25 Feb 2010 | 3:50 pm

  There was a really interesting article in the New York Observer a few days ago about the new trend towards  civility. Don't get me wrong--there are still plenty of haters out there--but this point in particular struck a chord with me: With all due respect to the Internet, it has not often been described as a "lovefest"; indeed, it has been better known as a forum for fire-breathing, semi-literate personal attacks. But suddenly, wide swaths of the Web have become bastions of support and earnest civility, where community-members "retweet" or "reblog" each other's bon mots, promiscuously…

• 

  THE BLOGGERS' BULLETIN

• How to Have a Blog

  Phyllis Zimbler Miller

  15 Mar 2010 | 3:42 am

  The answer to how to have a blog first depends on why you want a blog. (The word blog comes from combining web and log, as in a log of what you’re doing).

• A Review of Copyright Information For Authors (Especially Business Bloggers!)

  Chris Franklin

  12 Mar 2010 | 11:00 pm

  This post consolidates the links to the entirety of Intellectual Property Attorney and TBB Author, Nils Montan's, recent 6-Part, Legal Ramifications series on Copyright Law. If you as a business blogger need a brief review of Copyright Law, then you should read the following:

• Trouble With Twitter? Maybe A Few Of Our Past Posts Will Help

  Chris Franklin

  11 Mar 2010 | 11:00 pm

  The last thing you want is some kind of trouble with Twitter, right? I mean, as a business blogger, you probably have enough to deal with already. The following are links to 38 posts TBB Authors have written to date focused solely on Twitter, or otherwise briefly touching on Twitter in a manner you may find beneficial:

• Articles On Facebook To Date At “TBB”

  Chris Franklin

  10 Mar 2010 | 11:00 pm

  The following lists articles on Facebook that we at TBB have written in the last 7 months; several of these articles discuss using Facebook, but as part of a larger, cohesive marketing strategy for your business, including your blog:

• A List of Social Networking Sites And The Questions It Made Me Ask About Twitter

  Chris Franklin

  9 Mar 2010 | 11:00 pm

  The following is a recently updated list of social networking sites derived from Experian's Hitwise.com, main data center page: "Top 20 Social Networking Websites -- ranked by visits (for the week ending 2/27/2010)

• 

  Twitter / jonpetersen

• jonpetersen: PW: ECPA Teams w/ NetGalley to Offer Christian Publisher eGalleys http://bit.ly/924ivD book reviewers service www.netgalley.com #publishing

  1 Mar 2010 | 11:25 am

  jonpetersen: PW: ECPA Teams w/ NetGalley to Offer Christian Publisher eGalleys http://bit.ly/924ivD book reviewers service www.netgalley.com #publishing

• jonpetersen: CP: James Dobson, 73, says final farewell today to Focus on the Family he founded 33 years ago http://bit.ly/crqkse starting "Family Talk"

  26 Feb 2010 | 8:11 am

  jonpetersen: CP: James Dobson, 73, says final farewell today to Focus on the Family he founded 33 years ago http://bit.ly/crqkse starting "Family Talk"

• jonpetersen: Adweek: Are Demographics Dead? http://bit.ly/aUWlsw study sez looking at ‘life stages’ could yield greater insight for #marketeing

  25 Feb 2010 | 12:31 pm

  jonpetersen: Adweek: Are Demographics Dead? http://bit.ly/aUWlsw study sez looking at ‘life stages’ could yield greater insight for #marketeing

• jonpetersen: BBCNews: http://bit.ly/dndveQ Johnny Cash’s Guess Things Happen That Way is the 10 billionth track to be sold at the ITunes online store

  25 Feb 2010 | 10:52 am

  jonpetersen: BBCNews: http://bit.ly/dndveQ Johnny Cash’s Guess Things Happen That Way is the 10 billionth track to be sold at the ITunes online store

• jonpetersen: Apple announces new device sized between laptop and smartphone to be called an iPad. http://CNN.com/Live

  27 Jan 2010 | 10:53 am

  jonpetersen: Apple announces new device sized between laptop and smartphone to be called an iPad. http://CNN.com/Live

• 

  Matt Singley | Social Media Optimization

• Mediagazer Aggregates Today’s Must-See Media

  Matt Singley

  8 Mar 2010 | 10:27 am

  I’m been looking over a new media aggregation site called Mediagazer.  My initial thought was, “great…another aggregator that will simply clutter up a lot of content and put it in a needle-in-the-haystack format”, but those thoughts were dismissed as soon as I really started looking at it closely. Mediagazer is a new effort from the uber-popular tech sharing community Techmeme, and is their first news vertical in almost four years. It bills itself as a site, “which will focus on the content production and distribution business, organizing topics as wide as…

• How RFPs are Born [Video]

  Matt Singley

  5 Mar 2010 | 12:11 pm

  A big hat tip to @acmackie for sending this over…absolutely hilarious!  If you work in agency land, this requires no further explanation.  If you aren’t in agency land, let me set this video up for you. An RFP is a “request for proposal”.  People at various levels of responsibility that work at marketing and creative agencies get a lot of these, and they are usually at the last minute.  When multiple agencies are working in unison to try to piece something together for a client, well…it gets a little crazy.  Countless hours of phone calls and a seemingly…

• Renewing The Line Between Public And Private

  Matt Singley

  25 Feb 2010 | 9:51 pm

  I’ve been thinking about the ever-increasing blurry line between public and private lives now that social media is mainstream.  I’ve personally been opening myself up to the world for about a decade; I started blogging by developing my own (very basic) blogging platform before the term “blog” was popular…and I haven’t looked back since then. There have been a couple of times that I was alarmed by what people are capable of thinking or doing.  A few years ago I started getting anonymous comments on various videos of my children, asking me to pose them in…

• Tweetdeck Update Brings Welcomed Improvements

  Matt Singley

  8 Feb 2010 | 1:00 pm

  Tweetdeck, the Adobe Air desktop app that I use for the majority of my online communication,published an update to version 0.33.00 today. They have included a lot of media previewing in the new release including media support for platforms like Flickr, Twitgoo and mobypicture.  My favorite new feature? Without a doubt a new way to delegate API calls.  Instead of being limited to 150/hour the new rate (thanks to OAuth authentication) is 350 calls per hour! In plain speak, this means that it is far more likely that you can make it through the day without seeing the dreaded “rate limit…

• Vodafone Gaffs On Twitter: What Happened?

  Matt Singley

  5 Feb 2010 | 11:55 am

  Since I oversee or run large corporate social media accounts and the company I work for is responsible for dozens of Fortune 500 brands, stories like this make me cringe. Earlier today, the very large, very well known UK mobile company Vodafone posted an incredibly inappropriate tweet on their official company Twitter account.  It said VodafoneUK  ”is fed up of dirty homo’s and is going after beaver“. Ummm…. Needless to say, this is not something that any company would want published on their behalf.  I don’t know if Vodafone runs their social programs…

• 

  Sharing at Work

• Stop treating your remote contributors as second-class citizens

  Daniel J. Pritchett

  11 Mar 2010 | 7:30 am

  Image via Wikipedia If you work in a multinational corporation like mine, you regularly work with people who don’t live in your area.  If you’re a contractor or self-employed, this will be even more familiar.  You’ll see them on mailing lists and dialed in to meetings from time to time.  We might not realize it, but often we leave these dial-in employees out of important team functions. Maybe you’re having parties and meetings without informing the remote teammates.  Maybe your meetings feature photocopied handouts that the dialed-in folks never see. Keep your…

• Context switch: Mailblogging via Posterous for a while

  Daniel J. Pritchett

  5 Feb 2010 | 1:46 pm

  I have been quiet on the enterprise collaboration front for the past few weeks. Lately I’ve been brushing up on public-facing web app development using PHP (and sometimes Ruby/Rails). I’ve been blogging in quick spurts about the sort of tasks I’m putting myself through over on my Posterous mailblog. Recent topics on the mailblog: Test driving Munin service statistics on a LAMP virtual machine Learning more about CakePHP and git rollbacks Get up and running with a Turnkey LAMP server

• Do your employee incentives encourage productive behavior?

  Daniel J. Pritchett

  13 Jan 2010 | 11:35 am

  Image via Wikipedia Reward programs gone horribly wrong I think we’ve all seen examples of reward systems leading to counterproductive behavior.  My favorite example is working for a fast food joint when I was in college  and having a “seventy second drive-through time” contest.  Our goal was to keep the average time between customers leaving the drive-through menu (presumably having just placed an order) and customers leaving the drive through window (presumably having just received their food) below one minute and ten seconds – for an entire week.  The reward for…

• Salesforce announces the latest “internal Facebook”. Is this Facebook cofounder’s enterprise spinoff still coming?

  Daniel J. Pritchett

  18 Nov 2009 | 11:00 am

  Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz is still working on his own business collaboration startup, Asana Today’s announcment of Salesforce “Chatter” as a SaaSy enterprise Facebook product adds another option to the red-hot market for enterprise social platforms modeled on Facebook.  Regular readers will remember that I called out  ”Internal Facebooks” as the #1 collaboration trend for 2009 in a post last month. We’re still waiting to hear from Asana, the business collaboration company started by Facebook cofounder Dustin Moskovitz after he resigned from…

• Presenting at tomorrow’s BarCamp Memphis!

  Daniel J. Pritchett

  13 Nov 2009 | 10:55 am

  @BlakePalmer presenting for @Lunaweb at last year's BarCamp Memphis The second annual BarCamp Memphis is finally here! Tomorrow I’ll be heading to the MASE building to listen in to soome good presentations, panels, and wide-open discussions (“core conversations”) about technology development, new media, and entrepreneurship. My two scheduled sessions are: “Social Tools in the Enterprise” with Ryan Hinricher.  Ryan and I are going to get into the how and why of using collaborative software to improve team work.  Ryan’s perspective is that of a realtor…

• 

  Samir Balwani

• 5 Reasons Online Metrics Matter

  Samir Balwani

  9 Mar 2010 | 7:00 am

  Don’t understand online metrics? Then you don’t understand online marketing. There are too many marketing experts that just simply don’t know how to navigate or use metrics softwares. It’s a tragedy… The greatest advantage online marketers have over their traditional counterparts is the ability to track and measure almost every interaction digitally. Being able to justify cost increases, new contracts, and resource allocations is what makes online marketing attractive to brands. If you think you can get away without knowing online analytics inside and out,…

• The Slow Death of Display Advertising…

  Samir Balwani

  24 Feb 2010 | 6:15 am

  The online marketing landscape is ever evolving. Today, we use an integrated approach that includes, search marketing, SEO, display advertising, and many more. But, as consumers change so do our marketing strategies… We often see marketing tactics gain and lose power as users become more aware of them or consumer intent changes. It seems as if we’re at a marketing crossroads again. There’s been a recent trend, showing that social media marketing has been growing, while display advertising has become less effective. What is Display Advertising? Before exploring how display advertising…

• This Blog is Evolving: Are You?

  Samir Balwani

  17 Feb 2010 | 6:30 am

  Some of you may have noticed that this blog has slowly changed over time. First starting as “Left the Box”, then moving and rebranding, next a new theme, and now a new direction. I’ve been working on a blog post tentatively titled “Do you have marketing tunnel vision?”, and it made me realize that I, myself, had fallen for marketing tunnel vision. credit I and this blog have become so much about social media that I’m losing sight of the other marketing disciplines and how they could all work together. There are harmonies between display campaigns, search…

• Are You Marketing or Advertising?

  Samir Balwani

  2 Feb 2010 | 7:28 am

  Lately, I’ve been thinking about how social media has been a part of our overall marketing program. I started to realize that our definition of marketing and advertising is slowly evolving. In my mind advertising was the driving force of a marketing campaign. The idea was to create something interesting and broadcast it with advertising. credit Advertising was more important than the actual campaign. If you spent enough money and as long as it was marginally interesting, you could be successful. Nowadays, there’s seems to be a tip in the scales. Marketing is becoming more…

• This is How You Measure Social Media ROI

  Samir Balwani

  28 Jan 2010 | 6:45 am

  More talk about social media ROI and measurement? You know it. This time Mitch Joel of “Six Pixels of Separation” wrote a post about measurements and metrics. As much as I like Mitch (his articles are great and I highly recommend his blog), I really disagreed with his take on social media ROI. credit He states that… “Thinking about business objectives instead of ROI makes the whole strategy that much workable and doable. In the end, instead of looking for the ROI in Social Media, maybe the smarter thing to do is to focus on what the business objectives are, and then figure out if…