Social-media

February 07, 2009

Social media and health

I asked my Twitter friends about upcoming social media conferences that focus on health issues. It's more likely that health conferences have a social media track than the reverse.

Here are some upcoming events:

First Virtual World Otology Conference
March 25-27, 2009, online

Health Camp Philadelphia
March 28, Philadelphia

Health 2.0 conference
April 22-23, 2009, Boston Park Plaza Hotel

Society for Healthcare Strategy & Market Development | American Hospital Association
Sept. 17-20, San Francisco
(alas, another appearance by Andrew Keen, who has nothing of great value to offer the healthcare industry that I can see)

Here's my comprehensive list of 2009 social media and technology conferences.

February 7, 2009 at 01:59 PM in Social-media | Permalink | Comments (0)

February 05, 2009

Roundup: Journalists atwitter about social media

Roundup:

• Alana Taylor at PBS's MediaShift blog: Journalists Still a-Twitter About Social Media. Excerpt:

Twitter is popular not just because it allows journalists to crowdsource with thousands of people or because it's a fun way of amassing followers and inflating egos. It also gives reporters a chance to create a new system of reporting. In the past, journalists were confined to their words and research methods, all dictated by traditional routines. Now they can create new strategies, use different tools, brand themselves differently, and propose new ideas. Twitter has given them hope and direction to do this because it has given them a public forum in which to loudly speak their ideas. Twitter is hope for the future. It is promise of change. Twitter is journalism's Obama.

Alana's done some great reporting over there.

• Mark Glaser at the MediaShift blog talks with Rufus Griscom, founder of literate smut site Nerve.com and hipster parenting site Babble.com. In a down economy, Griscom managed to snag $2 million in venture funding for Babble and hopes to create SEO-friendly resource pages for parents to help it become the leading parenting site online.

• Julie Posetti at MediaShift: How Journalism Students Used Twitter to Report on Australian Elections.

• David Coursey at PC World: Five years of Facebook: A retrospective.

• David Sasaki at the IdeaLab blog: Protests in Madagascar and the Importance of Citizen Journalism Training.

• Dan Gillmor at the IdeaLab blog: Endow Newspapers? Wrong Question.

• I'm just getting grounded again after a quick trip to New York, so if you've tried to contact me in the past week without success, try again. You may have noticed I haven't been posting daily here lately. That's because I'm working on a relaunch of Socialmedia.biz — and it's a lot of work.

February 5, 2009 at 01:22 PM in Citizen media, New media, Social networks, Social-media | Permalink | Comments (1) | | (0)

January 18, 2009

Dell features Socialmedia.biz

I've been following the social media work of Bob Pearson, VP of communities and conversations for Dell, for some time (he's @bobpdell on Twitter).

So it came as a surprise when a friend IM'd to say, Hey, did you know Dell is promoting your blog? Well, no. But a look at their lead 58-second introductory video on Facebook about Dell's efforts with social media has Pearson showing off a blog about social media — this one.

Thanks, Bob! I've been aware of Dell's efforts to make social media more accessible to regular folks through its written guides and video screencasts, and I hope to highlight those in a new social media learning center I'm starting to put together.

You can join the Facebook group Social Media for Small Business, powered by Dell, here.

January 18, 2009 at 06:45 PM in Social-media | Permalink | Comments (2) | | (0)

January 16, 2009

A 20something on social media and today's news

Lauren on social media & modern news from JD Lasica on Vimeo.

Here's one of a series of interviews I'm doing on social media and the future of news and journalism. Those in the news business and journalism educators can learn a lot from Lauren of San Francisco, who sat down with me last month to discuss how she uses social networks and how she and her 20something friends are getting their news today. Young people's media habits are rapidly changing and traditional media organizations haven't kept pace. The video is 7 minutes long and was shot on a noisy street in San Francisco.

Watch video in H.264 QuickTime on Ourmedia
Watch video in Flash on Vimeo (embedded above)

January 16, 2009 at 05:24 PM in Media, New media, Social networks, Social-media, Youth culture | Permalink | Comments (1) | | (0)

January 13, 2009

Ford's CEO on social media and innovation

From JD Lasica on Vimeo.

At the Ultimate Bloggers Dinner on the opening night of the 2009 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last Wednesday, Alan Mulally, CEO of Ford Motor Company, took out time to sit down with a few bloggers for a live Webcast, a couple of cell phone interviews, and the interview above, which I captured with a Canon HV20 hi-def camcorder.

Chris Heuer of AdHocnium (and the Social Media Club) and I interviewed Mulally about how Ford is using social media to drive innovation and transformation inside the company. Chris and I both found Mulally to be incredibly personable and knowledgeable about the social forces swirling through the economy.

The video is 10 minutes long and a bit noisy because we didn't have a lavalier mic, but you can hear Mulally throughout.

Watch in H.264 QuickTime on Ourmedia (or download it)
Watch in Flash on Vimeo (embedded above)

Bonus: Flickr photo set of Mulally (at bottom) and others at CES.

January 13, 2009 at 04:18 PM in Podcasts & interviews, Social-media | Permalink | Comments (3) | | (0)

January 12, 2009

Harder to spin police violence in Web 2.0 era

Raj Jayadev, executive director of Silicon Valley De-Bug, a youth-serving community organization, in an op-ed in the San Jose Mercury News: Much harder to spin police violence in Web 2.0 era — a look at social media's response to the fatal shooting of an Oakland man by BART police on Jan. 1.

January 12, 2009 at 11:59 PM in Current Affairs, Social-media | Permalink | Comments (0) | | (0)

'49 amazing social media, Web 2.0 and Internet stats'

Adam Singer at The Future Buzz: 49 Amazing Social Media, Web 2.0 And Internet Stats. Excerpt:

1 trillion: approximate number of unique URLs in Google’s index.

Wikipedia

2,695,205 - the number of articles in English on Wikipedia

684,000,000 - the number of visitors to Wikipedia in the last year

75,000 - the number of active contributors to Wikipedia

YouTube

70,000,000 - number of total videos on YouTube (March 2008)

200,000 - number of video publishers on YouTube (March 2008)

100,000,000 - number of YouTube videos viewed per day

Blogosphere

133,000,000 - number of blogs indexed by Technorati since 2002

346,000,000 - number of people globally who read blogs (comScore March 2008)

900,000 - average number of blog posts in a 24 hour period

77% - percentage of active Internet users who read blogs

Twitter

1,111,991,000 - number of Tweets to date (see an up to the minute count here)

3,000,000 - number of Tweets/day

Facebook

150,000,000 - number of active users

170 - number of countries/territories that use Facebook

2,600,000,000 - number of minutes global users in aggregate spend on Facebook daily

100 - number of friends the average user has

700,000,000 - number of photos added to Facebook monthly

52,000 - number of applications currently available on Facebook

January 12, 2009 at 11:53 PM in Social-media | Permalink | Comments (1) | | (0)

Managing your online reputation

AOL's Switched: Your Online Reputation Is More Important Than You Think

If you are a relatively good person and are finding it impossible to get a job — or a date — you may want to Google yourself.
Approximately 70-percent of employers look up job applicants online. 50-percent admit information they have dug up on the Internet has resulted in them not hiring a person. The threat to your reputation and livelihood is real. Luckily, there are steps you can take to ensure that people find more good then bad when they type in your name. ...

January 12, 2009 at 08:12 PM in Search engines, Social-media | Permalink | Comments (0) | | (0)

January 08, 2009

P2P Media Summit at CES

Here's the thing about Macworld Expo (in San Francisco) and the Consumer Electronics Show (in Las Vegas) being held on the same week: It drives tech fanatics like me crazy because you only have time to record media and take in a handful of product announcements or interesting events because much of your time is spent socializing with friends, meeting new people, traveling and trying to navigate the logistics of a show, like CES, that is so physically draining.

I've been hitting a few of the high points over at Twitter (and actually made a number of new Twitter friends as well as met several folks, like Scott Monty and Joseph Jaffe, whom I've already been following).

I just remarked to @stevegarfield that this is the first conference I've attended where people are exchanging Twitter IDs rather than email addresses. Actually, that's not an insignificant shift.

After I arrived yesterday, I made straight for the P2P Media Summit organized by Marty Lafferty and the Distributed Computing Industry Association. The gathering brought together some of the thought leaders around digital media, but as I said on the panel, I get worried whenever I'm at a conference where the most frequently used terms are "distribution," "content," "consumers," "monetize" and "protection." If this were a drinking game, we would have all hit the sauce heavily.

I'll briefly mention the points I raised during our panel on Creating the Commercial P2P Ecosystem with Dave Ulmer of Motorola, Boh Dupree of Verizon Communications, Mike King of Abacast, Jonathan Lee of PiCAST Streaming Solutions and Neerav Shah of Verimatrix.

I suggested that rarely have we seen such a clear demarcation between eras as when the Obama administration begins in 12 days, and that new approach to politics and governing also applies to similar advances happening in social media, Web 2.0 and cloud computing. Echoing Ulmer's good point that the technology should be secondary to what the end user wants to accomplish, I suggested that the plumbing (P2P, Content Delivery Networks (CDNs), cloud computing) shouldn't determine a startup's choice of business models, and that the opportunities provided by the cloud dramatically reduces the cost of a startup when IT infrastructure costs are offloaded. The cloud holds out transformative possibilities in culture, commerce, public policy, national security and personal interaction.

The panel was cut short before I could make my prediction for 2009: that commercial interactions will begin to transform from impersonal experiences to more personal, social and contextual relationships that foster deeper commercial connections. Reputation and identity will begin to play a greater role (in addition to perpetual considerations like price and convenience) in online transactions.

Took some nice photos today, will see if I'll upload them Friday or Saturday.

January 8, 2009 at 10:14 PM in Social-media, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0) | | (0)

January 02, 2009

The Best of 2008 in Social Media

From Paul Gillin: The Best of 2008 in Social Media (though the images won't load for me).

January 2, 2009 at 10:33 PM in Social-media | Permalink | Comments (0) | | (0)

Guide to content tagging in social bookmarking

Jason Falls at Social Media Explorer: The Practical Guide To Content Tagging In Social Bookmarking. Principal points:

Keep It Simple

I would recommend using no more than 2-3 tags per piece of content and keep the words very generic. If it’s about social media measurement then maybe tag it “socialmedia” and “measurement”. If you’re ever tempted to get into monitoring, ROI, quantifying success, etc., default to “socialmedia” and “measurement”. And remember that tagging, especially in Delicious, is space sensitive. Thus “social media” will be tagged as “social” and then also as “media.” Be sure to eliminate the space and make it “socialmedia.”

Keep It The Same

Periodically Review

Don’t Bookmark Everything

January 2, 2009 at 09:50 PM in Social-media | Permalink | Comments (1) | | (0)

January 01, 2009

Who isn't a social media strategist?

TwistImage: Who isn't a new media/social media strategist?

If you look at many of the profiles found on Blogs and people's ultra-short/sharp bios on Twitter, you will notice something very interesting: almost everybody says that they are either a New Media Strategist or a Social Media Strategist. What, exactly, does that mean and how can you better understand just how good they are at online strategy? ...

BL Ochman and Chris Heuer were just talking about this earlier this week. It's interesting to see the proliferation of social media experts on Twitter. I guess it's nice to be in a field that's growing exponentially — after years when people would grasp you by the shoulders and say, "It'll be all right" when you tell them you're a journalist.

January 1, 2009 at 09:33 PM in New media, Social-media | Permalink | Comments (5) | | (0)

2009 conferences: Social media, tech, marketing (updated)

I published this a week ago but am republishing it now because it's quite timely on Jan. 1 and because I added several additional events to the calendar.

For the past two years I put together a calendar of some of the best social media, technology, media and marketing conferences for the upcoming year. Here's the list for 2009pologies, I had to leave out events outside the U.S. or the list would triple in size, and I left out newspaper conferences. This also doesn't include the many worthy BarCamps, PodCamps and Social Media Club gatherings around the country.

If you know of other must-attend events, please add them by posting in the comments at the bottom.

2009 conferences: Social media, tech, marketing

Conference	Date	Place
* indicates conferences I'll be attending or speaking at.
January
Macworld Expo*	Jan. 5-9	San Francisco
Apple says this will be the last Macworld Expo it will participate in. No Uncle Steve this year.
Consumer Electronics Show*	Jan. 8-11	Las Vegas
Still the largest electronics show on the planet. I'll be there as part of the Intel Insiders, and speaking at the P2P Media Summit there.
Agency of the Year	Jan. 20-21	New York City
OMMA's Agency of the Year Awards celebrates the agencies that were able to rise above the rest. MEDIA's Agency of the Year Awards pays tribute to the agencies that set the gold standard in the business of media planning and buying.
BlogWell Chicago	Jan. 22	Chicago
The second in a series of events exploring social media in the enterprise, put on by GasPedal and the Blog Council.
Social Media Conference	Jan. 22-23	Miami
The event focuses on business management for the social networking industry.
OMMA Social	Jan. 26	New York City
OMMA Social is designed to guide you through the terrain of social media and how it relates to your brand or web property. MediaPost organizes the Online Media, Marketing & Advertising (OMMA) events.
Teens in Tech*	Jan. 31	San Francisco
Smart young people talk technology and culture.
February
AlwaysOn: OnMedia NYC	Feb. 2-4	New York City
"Meet the disruptors of marketing, advertising, branding and PR."
O'Reilly Money:Tech	Feb. 4-6	New York City
Theme: "After the Goldrush: Financial Tools for New Times."
UGCX: User Generated Content	Feb. 9-10	San Jose
UGCX, a new mediabistro.com event, is the first conference and expo to bring together content-trendsetters and business leaders in various fields to examine how these worlds collide and what the future holds.
O'Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing	Feb. 9-11	New York City
A conference on emerging trends around digital publishing, including ebooks, digital printing, mobile content, new authoring tools, alternative business models for paid content, etc.
FASTforward '09	Feb. 9-11	Las Vegas
The largest business and technology conference dedicated to search-driven innovation, put on by Microsoft.
SMX West	Feb. 10-12	Santa Clara, Calif.
SMX West features three days of educational sessions, keynotes and access to the leading vendors in search marketing. Other events include SMX Social Media Marketing in New York, SMX Search Analytics in Toronto and SMX Advanced in Seattle.
Web Content: Tampa Bay	Feb. 17-18	Clearwater, Fla.
Industry leaders and experienced web professionals will deliver presentations, offer case studies and lead discussions designed to demystify the impact of social media on Web marketing strategies. Other conferences are scheduled for Chicago and Austin.
Public Media '09	Feb. 17-21	Atlanta
Put on by the Integrated Media Association, this may be the largest public media gathering of the year, with panels featuring representatives from NPR, PBS, et al.
edSocialMedia Bootcamp	Feb. 19	Montclair, NJ
A one-day in-depth introduction to social media technology for school leaders, administrators and teachers at the Montclair Kimberley Academy.
Future of Web Apps	Feb. 23-24	Miami
Speakers on the future of the browser, how to build community, how to use video and podcasting for increased success.
We Media Miami	Feb. 24-26	Miami
Engage with leaders and ideas shaping media, business, communication, technology, education and participation in the connected society.
March
Social Enterprise Conference	March 1	Cambridge, Mass.
The Social Enterprise conference at Harvard Business School brings together the nonprofit, private, and public sectors to work toward the common good. Conference site needs updating.
DEMO	March 1-3	Palm Desert, Calif.
More than 20,000 innovative technologies have been reviewed and 1,500 companies selected to launch on the DEMO stage over the past 18 years.
Emerging Communications (eComm)	March 3-5	San Francisco
The second annual forum dedicated to defining and profiting from the post-telecom era.
MediaXchange	March 9-11	Las Vegas
MediaXchange replaces Newspaper Association of America's Marketing and NEXPO, and the new gathering marks an increased focus on emerging digital platforms.
GoingGreen East	March 9-11	Boston
"Where green entrepreneurs take on Big Business."
O'Reilly Emerging Technology (ETech)*	March 9-12	San Jose
Since 2002, ETech has brought to light the disruptive yet important innovations that we see on the horizon, rather than the ones that have already arrived.
Mashup/Remix Culture*	March 12-13	Columbus, Ohio
I'm speaking at this two-day conference at The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law on "Mashup/Remix Culture: Law, Politics, Art and Society."
South by Southwest	March 13-22	Austin
This year's SXSW schedule: Interactive March 13-17, Film March 13-21, Music March 18-22.
New America Media LA*	March 14	Los Angeles
I hope to put on the first Social Media Camp workshop in conjunction with New America Media.
Media Summit	March 18-19	New York City
Over 1,200 of the country's top media, entertainment and technology executives are expected to attend this gathering to discuss broadband, wireless, advertising, TV, film, cable, satellite, publishing, news and other media.
New America Media SF*	March 21	San Francisco
We're targeting ethnic media publishers in San Francisco for our second Social Media one-day bootcamp.
Sex::Tech 2009	March 22-23	San Francisco
ISIS presents Sexual Health + Tech + Youth = Sex::Tech 2009
Tech Policy Summit	March 23-25	San Mateo, Calif.
The summit brings together prominent leaders from the private and public sectors to examine critical policy issues impacting technology innovation and adoption.
OMMA Global: Hollywood	March 23-24	San Francisco
This biannual conference and trade show for the business of Online Media, Marketing and Advertising attracts about 4,000 people.
Web 2.0 Expo*	Mar 31-Apr 3	San Francisco
Web 2.0 Expo provides insight into the new generation of services and opportunities offered by Web 2.0.
April
Politics Online*	April 7-9	Washington, DC
Roll your own conference panel.
eM9	April 21-22	San Francisco
The eMarketing conference brings together marketers from around the world in a sophisticated forum of presentations, networking opportunities and sessions.
Nonprofit Technology*	April 26-28	San Francisco
Nonprofit Technology Network (NTEN) kicks off with a Day of Service to give back to the community.
OnHollywood	April 27-29	Hollywood
Silicon Valley goes to Hollywood.
New Marketing Summit - SF	April 28-29	San Francisco
This new conference geared chiefly to marketers is being created by Chris Brogan, David Meerman Scott and Paul Gillin.
SMX Social Media Marketing	April 29-30	New York City
Internet marketers will learn to harness the power of user engagement from YouTube to Digg in this two-day gathering with a focus on real-life tactical advice.
May
SOBCon	May 1-3	Chicago
SOBCon09 is “Biz School for Blogging,” focusing on the ROI of relationships in the enterprise. The conference is designed to build solid action plans tailored to attendees' individual needs.
Digital Hollywood Spring*	May 4-7	Santa Monica
I've spoken at several sessions at Digital Hollywood, one of the nation's premier entertainment and technology conferences. Other Digital Hollywood productions, such as Advertising 2.0 New York and Building Blocks and Digital Hollywood Fall, will likely be held again in 2009.
Streaming Media East	May 12-13	New York City
Content owners, viral video creators, online marketers, enterprise corporations, broadcast professionals, ad agencies, educators and others gather to hear the latest on online video technology. Streaming Media West will likely repeat in September 2009 in San Jose, Calif.
Word of Mouth Marketing University	May 14-15	Miami
WOMM-U is a two-day comprehensive and interactive educational experience built around giving you the real-world knowledge you need to execute exceptional word of mouth marketing programs.
Media Relations Summit	May 17-19	New York City
Bulldog Reporter puts on a conference for PR and corporate communications professionals who want to learn skills and techniques that are transforming media and the PR profession.
Where 2.0	May 19-21	San Jose, Calif.
Where 2.0 2009 delves into the emerging technologies surrounding the geospatial industry, particularly the way our lives are organized, from finding a restaurant to finding the source of a new millennium plague.
Winning Media Strategies	May 20-22	Washington, D.C.
"Battling Competitive Economic and Market Forces," from the Kelsey Group.
NetSquared*	May 26-27	San Jose, Calif.
N2Y4 will be the can't-miss gathering of nonprofits and social change agents.
D Conference	May 26-28	Carlsbad, Calif.
The seventh edition of D, put on by the WSJ's Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg, will again features executives and thinkers driving the digital revolution.
New Marketing Summit - Dallas	May 27-28	Dallas
The third in a series of conferences geared chiefly to marketers.
June
Conversational Marketing Summit	June 1-2	New York City
Federated Media's CM Summit makes its second NYC appearance discussing how marketing and social media intersect.
Ypulse Youth Marketing Mashup*	June 1-2	San Francisco
YPulse, which tracks how youths use emerging media, will mark its fifth anniversary this year. YPulse will hold a second event in November 2009 in New York.
NewComm Forum*	??	Sonoma, Calif.
Hope to speak at the Society for New Communications Research. Date will be determined soon.
Connections	June 2-4	Santa Clara, Calif.
From Park Associates: Connections: the digital living conference and showcase.
New America Media*	June 4-5	Atlanta
I hope to put on a Social Media Camp workshop at the national conference of New America Media.
Supernova*	June 9-11	San Francisco
At Supernova, CEOs and bloggers, entrepreneurs and academics, practitioners and visionaries, policy experts and industry thought leaders share insights and build relationships.
Focus on Mobile & Enterprise Social Networking	June 11-12	San Francisco
Social networking in the enterprise.
OMMA Video & Publish	June 16-17	New York City
OMMA Video is designed for content producers, brand marketers and agency professionals to discuss the latest trends on online video advertising, content production, syndication and delivery. OMMA Publish follows on June 17 and OMMA Adnets on June 18.
Enterprise 2.0	June 22-25	Boston
E2 brings together the leading enterprise social software companies. Put on by the same folks who put on the famous Web 2.0 conferences, E2 is producing a tutorial dedicated to Media 2.0 at this gathering.
Digital Media	June 25	Northern Virginia
A gathering of digital communicators and content providers from the Washington, DC, region.
July
NewTeeVee Pier Screenings*	Summer	SF, NY, LA
NewTeeVee Pier Screenings are expected to return in summer '09.
Open Source (OSCON)	July 20-24	San Jose, Calif.
The premier open source gathering around.
Fortune Brainstorm Tech	July 22-24	Pasadena, Calif.
Fortune's "conference for the thinking person," held in Half Moon Bay last summer, moves to Pasadena.
BlogHer	July 23-25	Chicago
BlogHer's fifth annual conference will be held in conjunction with BlogHer Business.
Stanford Summit*	July 28-30	Palo Alto, Calif.
The annual tech gathering, introducing the new captains of industry, organized by AlwaysOn at Stanford.
August
Gnomedex*	??	Seattle?
Gnomedex, a top gathering of geeks, open source pioneers and cool kids, is generally held in the summer in Seattle.
September
TechCrunch50*	??	San Francisco
TechCrunch has not yet announced the date of its annual event. Last year it counterprogrammed against DEMO.
Social Capital Markets*	??	??
Social Capital Markets, which had a sensational kickoff in May 2008, is planning its second gathering for fall 2009 to bring together social entrepreneurs and other change-makers.
GoingGreen West	Sept. 14-16	Sausalito, Calif.
The second year of the green technologies conference organized by AlwaysOn.
Office 2.0*	Sept. 21-23	San Francisco
How to get things done at the office, at home and on the go — speakers, vendors and attendees suss out the future of online productivity and collaboration.
VON Conference & Expo	Sept. 21-23	Miami
VON: The Voice of Network Convergence showcases the best of the global IP communications world for service providers and large enterprises.
DEMOfall	Sept. 21-23	San Diego
The fall edition of the august tech innovation conference.
New Marketing Summit - Boston	Sept. 30-Oct. 1	Boston
The fourth in a series of conferences geared chiefly to marketers.
Creating Technology for Social Good	Sept. 30-Oct. 3	Tucson, Ariz.
Put on by Women in Computing, a program of the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology, this gathering is designed to advance the research and career interests of women in computing.
October
Online News Association*	Oct. 1-3	San Francisco
I just renewed at ONA for the next three years — it'll be nice to see this gathering of new media movers and shakers return to the West Coast.
BlogWorld & New Media Expo*	Oct. 15-17	Las Vegas
BlogWorldExpo and New Media Expo both put on trade shows last August. Problem solved: BWE acquired NME. The combined new show will move to October.
Web 2.0 Summit*	Oct. 20-22	San Francisco
Where tech luminaries gather.
Pop!Tech	Oct. 21-23	Camden, Maine
Pop!Tech is a newtwork of remarkable people, extraordinary conferences, powerful ideas and innovative projects that are changing the world. I attended one year — it's a remarkable gathering.
Social Networking World Forum - North America	Oct. 26-27	Santa Clara, Calif.
A conference dedicated to social networking with a focus on mobile social networking and social media.
Alliance for Community Media - West	??	??
ACM West will be held around October 2009. Past venues include Denver and Monterey.
November
Web 2.0 Expo NY	Nov. 16-19	New York City
The NYC edition of Web 2.0 Expo.
Interactive Local Media*	??	SF Bay Area
Date and location of the next Kelsey Group's ILM Conference to be determined.

You probably arrived here from a retweet on Twitter (or a Google search), so follow me here: http://www.twitter.com/jdlasica.

For an even more comprehensive list of all things geek, check out Robert Scoble's Upcoming events list. In addition, Conference Alerts seems to have a pretty good listing of 2009 academic conferences by subject category, including Politics (apologies to TechPresident and Netroots Nation for not including them in this listing) and Communications and Media.

Postscript: Anita Kuno is assembling a list of social media events in Canada. Canadian readers can forward event info to ay dot kuno at gmail dot com.

Update: Susan Mernit has a good list of 2009 women and technology conferences.

January 1, 2009 at 01:05 AM in Business use, Computing, Media, New media, Social-media, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (45) | | (1)

Embracing our social, microlocal world

Society for News Design: Embracing our social, microlocal world.

January 1, 2009 at 12:45 AM in Social-media | Permalink | Comments (0) | | (0)

December 31, 2008

Top Social Media Sites of 2008

TechCrunch reports on the Top Social Media Sites of 2008 from a report by ComScore. Excerpt:

What were the top social media sites of 2008? ComScore came out with its worldwide traffic stats for November a few days ago (so these don’t include December). They are a mix of social networks and blogging platforms. Blogger ... still rules the roost with an estimated 222 million unique worldwide visitors in November (up 44 percent from November, 2007). Facebook ... is on pace to pass it soon with 200 million unique visitors (up 116 percent). (Note, though, that this is more than the 140 million active users Facebook itself reports—go figure). MySpace is pretty steady at 126 million uniques. Wordpress is a close fourth and gaining with 114 million (up 68 percent). And Windows Live Spaces is down 22 percent to 87 million uniques.

ComScore keeps a list of what it calls “social networking” sites, but these include blogging platforms and other social media sites as well. While the audience for blogs is still showing healthy growth overall, Facebook stands out as the social gorilla taking share from not only other social networks but blogs and other social media as well.

Below are the top 20 sites on comScore’s social networking list. It is really more of a social media site list, which is what I’m renaming it for this post. It is not definitive, but it gives a good lay of the land. (Here is a similar ranking from 2007). ...

Top Social Media Sites

Blogger (222 million)

Facebook (200 million)

MySpace (126 million)

Wordpress (114 million)

Windows Live Spaces (87 million)

Yahoo Geocities (69 million)

Flickr (64 million)

hi5 (58 million)

Orkut (46 million)

Six Apart (46 million)

Baidu Space (40 million)

Friendster (31 million)

56.com (29 million)

Webs.com (24 million)

Bebo (24 million)

Scribd (23 million)

Lycos Tripod (23 million)

Tagged (22 million)

imeem (22 million)

Netlog (21 million)

(ranked by unique worldwide visitors November, 2008; comScore)

December 31, 2008 at 09:26 PM in Social networks, Social-media | Permalink | Comments (1) | | (1)

My top 5 social media tools of 2008

David Finch at Social Media Explorer: My Top 5 Social Media Tools of 2008 — three of them are Twitter apps.

December 31, 2008 at 08:52 PM in Social-media | Permalink | Comments (0) | | (0)

The year in search and social media: Predictions 2009

SearchViews: The Year in Search and Social Media: Predictions 2009.

December 31, 2008 at 08:37 PM in Search engines, Social-media, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (1) | | (0)

Highlights of the Web in 2008

Orli Yakuel whipped up this coolio 4-minute Animoto video running down highlights of the Web in 2008.

Dan Schawbel at Mashable: Top 10 Reputation Tracking Tools Worth Paying For.

MediaPost: Social Media Wins In Marketers' '09 Plans. Excerpt:

56% of marketing and publishing decision-makers plan to increase their content marketing spending next year, Junta42 found after surveying its community of corporate marketers and publishing/agency professionals.

What's more, a full 31% expressed their intention to increase spending on content significantly, while 25% said they planned to increase it slightly. ...

Alex Castro at Mashable: Peering into 2009: 10 Predictions for Online Video.

TechCrunch: YouTube Looks Back At A Year In Video; Hulu Brings in 2009 Live From New York.

Web 2.0 case study on Barack Obama's use of social media.

SearchEngineWatch: Will Social Networks Become the New Inbox? Part 1 and Part 2.

Social Media Today: 7 Social Media & Web Analytics Predictions for 2009.

David Armano: 10 Reasons Obama Should Continue On Twitter.

Todd Defren at PR Squared: Answering the Challenges of Social Media Adoption.

December 31, 2008 at 01:32 AM in Social networks, Social-media, Video, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0) | | (0)

December 30, 2008

Social media influencers' predictions for 2009

Social media roundup:

• Social Media Influencers Predictions 2009 By Trendsspotting on SlideShare (view small or full screen).

• Influencers On Mobile 2009 & 2020 Predictions By Trendsspotting

• Tracyphaup.com: Top 20 Social Networking Sites.

• Richard MacManus at ReadWriteWeb lists the Top 100 Products of 2008.

• You can now create video cards with Skype to send your own video greetings on Facebook.

• ReadWriteWeb: Top 10 Alternative Search Engines of 2008. Excerpt:

ChaCha, as a search tool, is human-powered, general, and mobile. There is no website, no search box, and no page witih a list of ten links. To use ChaCha, simply call 1-800-2ChaCha (1-800-224-2242) in the US, or send a text to 242242. When you call, leave your query just as you would any other voice-mail message, and hang up. Within 2 to 5 minutes, a human guide will have researched and texted you the answer. I used ChaCha with only my cheap cell phone when I was lost in New York City at midnight. And that's an important point: you can call ChaCha at any time with any question for any reason on any phone -- as long as that phone can receive text messages. And, aside from your carrier's incoming text fees, ChaCha is free.

I get that ChaCha is making a play for mobile search, but I don't get why I can't send them a much more precise and accurate email or instant message instead of having to leave a voicemail.

• Peter Kim's PDF roundup of social media influencers' predictions for 2009 is also available on SlideShare.

December 30, 2008 at 08:21 PM in Social networks, Social-media | Permalink | Comments (0) | | (0)

December 29, 2008

Chris Heuer on AdHocnium

Chris Heuer, founder of the Social Media Club, talks about our new venture, AdHocnium, in this new installment of BuzzLogic's the Vino Diaries. AdHocnium is a collective or network of marketing agencies and "unagencies" offering social media solutions to businesses.

December 29, 2008 at 06:21 PM in Amusing, Business use, Social-media | Permalink | Comments (0) | | (0)

December 26, 2008

Marketing in a Web 2.0 world

From the Wall Street Journal the other day: The Secrets of Marketing in a Web 2.0 World. Consumers are flocking to blogs, social-networking sites and virtual worlds. And they are leaving a lot of marketers behind.

Some top-level conclusions:

Don't just talk at consumers — work with them throughout the marketing process.
Give consumers a reason to participate.
Listen to — and join — the conversation outside your site.
Resist the temptation to sell, sell, sell.
Don't control, let it go.
Embrace experimentation.

All sound advice.

Sidebar: Recovering From Negative Reviews (video at left).

December 26, 2008 at 12:51 PM in Business use, Social-media | Permalink | Comments (0) | | (0)

December 22, 2008

Best social media podcasts

At Online Marketing Blog, Lee Odden runs down the best podcasts on social media. Yep, socialmedia.biz is one, with lots more to follow (they're in the Podcasts & interviews section), and I know about half the folks on his list.

December 22, 2008 at 08:18 PM in Podcasts & interviews, Social-media | Permalink | Comments (0) | | (0)

December 21, 2008

What is social media? A roundup

Brent Csutoras: What is social media? In plain English. A roundup of definitions.

December 21, 2008 at 02:14 PM in Social-media | Permalink | Comments (0) | | (0)

December 20, 2008

Will social networks become the new in-box?

Erik Qualman at SearchEngineWatch.com: Will Social Networks Become the New Inbox? Excerpt:

The "killer app" of the first part of the Internet boom was e-mail. Then came e-commerce, e-care, search, music, video, and now social media. E-mail has held on through the years as arguably the king of the Internet, used by the old and the young alike. However, the new inbox is shifting toward social media. ...

Paige Filler: Twitter IDs for The Top 100 Most Influential Online Marketers.

Adotas: “Choice” is the Killer App. "Powerful new social media tools are in the works that allow viewers to personalize the TV experience."

Suite101.com: How to Start a Social Media Campaign. First Steps for Businesses to Monitor and Engage Consumers Online.

Mike Sachoff at WebProNews: Social Media Influencing Purchase Decisions. "More than half (54%) of consumers say that information from a brand representative is more valuable than what is usually found on a company Web site, according to new study by DEI Worldwide.

MediaPost takes a look at SocialLight, a new tool developed by Publicis' Denuo unit that enables marketing agencies and advertisers to understand how, when and why someone makes a recommendation about a brand to someone else via online social media.

Smallbiztrends: Tell Us Your Most Outrageously Creative Money-Saving or Business Growth Tip.

December 20, 2008 at 11:34 PM in Business use, Social-media | Permalink | Comments (0) | | (0)

19 handy Twitter mashups and tools

Social media roundup:

Digital Labz: 19 Handy Twitter Mashups and Tools.

Jennifer Laycock at Search Engine Guide on getting started with Twitter.

Business Week: The Recession: My Facebook, My Therapist. In a time of growing unemployment, tumbling stocks, and rising foreclosures, people are finding comfort on social networking sites.

Robin at interactive iiG insights group: Superlist of what not to do in social media.

Mack Collier at Search Engine Guide: Which blogs should you be reading?

paidContent.org: Newspapers Suddenly Adapt To Socal Media; Nearly 60 Percent Offer User-Gen Content.

Wall Street & Technology: Financial Firms Turn to Social Media to Attract New Gen X, Y Clients.

December 20, 2008 at 02:14 AM in Social-media | Permalink | Comments (0) | | (0)

December 18, 2008

Web 2.0 animation: How JibJab uses social media

The creators of JibJab from JD Lasica on Vimeo.

You know JibJab, right? The wildly popular online animation site has been around since 1999 but became a global phenomenon with their 2004 animated hit This Land, which spoofed the campaigns of John Kerry and George W. Bush. The short has been streamed more than 80 million times.

The brothers Spiridellis — Evan, the head art guy, and Gregg, CEO guy — spoke at The Conversation, a gathering of filmmakers and new media types at the Pacific Film Institute in Berkeley in October. I snagged them for 5 minutes afterward before they had to run off for another appointment (which is why we had no choice but to live with the noise in the background).

In the clip, Gregg and Evan talk about how their business has evolved over the past nine years, what business models are working for them, and how their use of social media propels the site forward.

After trying about 20 business models, Gregg said, they found that their best business model was "working around social expression content," with a mix of subscriber-based premium content and some free, ad-supported digital content.

Web 1.0 was about ecards, Gregg says, but now it's about personalized cards that you become a character in and that you can share or post to your own site. "We've had 13 million heads loaded and put into our movies. People will pay for content that they can use to express themselves in their digital lives. They won't pay to watch a 2-minute funny video."

This holiday season you can upload your image to JibJab and put the image onto gifts, holiday e-cards, mouse pads, mugs and knickknacks.

But the most interesting thing about JibJab we'll be watching in the years ahead is how they use the power of social media to create relationships with their users and empower them to become co-creators.

Watch or download video in H.264 QuickTime on Ourmedia
Watch video in Flash on Vimeo

December 18, 2008 at 03:58 PM in Amusing, Podcasts & interviews, Social-media | Permalink | Comments (0) | | (0)

December 17, 2008

Review of 'Groundswell,' 'Reality Check'

Two of the best-known names in Silicon Valley have new books out: Charlene Li (twitter: charleneli) and Guy Kawasaki (twitter: guykawasaki). Both fall into socialmedia.biz's sweet spot, so here are quick reviews.

'Groundswell'

Groundswell: Winning in a world transformed by social technologies, by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff, is the definitive guide to how businesses are grappling with the social media revolution. The revolution is still in its early stages, and the old order still clings tenaciously to power — we're living in the throes of transformative change, which can be at once exhilarating and disorienting.

Li and Bernoff provide a framework for describing these fundamental changes, which they call "the groundswell," and they do so chiefly within the context of marketing rather than sociology or politics. While this is a book for businesses (brands) and the people who do their handiwork (marketers and consultants), anyone who's interested in better understanding the tsunami of social participation that is subsuming our institutions will find lots to absorb in these pages.

Written in accessible, no-nonsense prose, Groundswell breaks its narrative its three parts: what the social changes are all about; strategies for taking advantage of these changes, and an assessment of how these changes are transforming businesses.

Li and Bernoff, analysts at Forrester when this was written, offer dozens of rich examples of the groundswell at work. (Bernoff is still there. Li left to begin a social media strategy company, and I've known Charlene for years from the speaking circuit.) And it is through these concrete accounts that Groundswell shines most brightly.

There are the well-known horror stories, of course, like Jeff Jarvis dealing with Dell Hell and Dell's brilliant response. And Rob Master's masterful Dove Campaign for Real Beauty at Unilever.

But most of the lessons are less well known and thus especially relevant in informing a business's approach to social media: Josh Bancroft almost single-handedly moving Intel in a new direction with Intelpedia (see Business Week article). Intuit's wise decision not to create a software wiki or TurboTax wiki but a tax information wiki. Best Buy almost accidentally enabling employees to help each other — and in turn increase productivity — through its Blue Shirt Nation program.

Like top-tier analysts do, Li and Bernoff capably synthesize these and other lessons into handy bullet-point lists that businesses should laminate and pass out to every department head. For example, in the section "tips for successful blogging," the authors advise:

1. Start by listening.
2. Determine a goal for the blog.
3. Estimate the ROI (return on investment).
4. Develop a plan.
5. Rehearse.
6. Develop an editorial process.
7. Design the blog and its connection to your site.
8. Develop a marketing plan so people can find the blog.
9. Remember, blogging is more than writing.
10. Final advice: be honest.

By and large, that's a list that would serve any blogger well, not just corporate bloggers.

Groundswell deserves a wide readership, not just for explaining the social tsunami now engulfing us in down-to-earth terms but for presenting a loud and clear wakeup call to corporate America: Get with the program, before the swift, the nimble and the socially adept eat your lunch.

'Reality Check'

Realitycheck I've long followed the writings of Guy Kawasaki, the heralded Apple evangelist-emeritus-for-life. When we finally met at the recent Web 2.0 Summit, he surprised me by handing me a copy of his fresh-off-the-presses book, Reality Check: The irreverent guide to outsmarting, outmanaging and outmarketing your competition. So disclosure: I have a soft spot for authors who know how to leverage the blogosphere.

A reality check is exactly what the tech industry needs at this time of economic turmoil, and Kawasaki provides it in droves, spinning out bits of wisdom gleaned from 20 years as an industry insider and venture capitalist. Indeed, this is a book filled with bits, from the multitude of snappy 3-page chapters to the torrent of bullet points that rain down upon the Short Attention Span Generation.

Reality Check is geared chiefly toward newbie entrepreneurs who want to know the rules of the road in the Valley: the rules of how to put together a PowerPoint presentation, the rules of what to say (and not say) at a job interview or a VC meeting, the art of bootstrapping your startup, the art of creating a community or influencing people. Kawasaki has seen and heard it all, and while the book could have benefited from more anecdotes attached to real names, he offers enough advice in these 474 pages that even wizened tech veterans could glean some pointers.

The book is sprinkled with Q&As conducted with tech executives and thought leaders, and one wonders if some choices would have been different if the opportunity arose (for instance, I read the interview with the head of Yahoo!'s global human resource team on the day Yahoo! laid off 1,500 workers). But for every near-miss there are more than a few gems.

The author taps into the Zeitgeist of the Valley by reminding us that the founders behind many of the seminal companies of our time, like Google, started out by trying to solve a problem, not trying to launch a multinational corporation. Start small, stay simple, underhire, be conservative in your projections. It's at once Zenlike, lyrical and practical. Kawasaki is also a funny guy, lacing the book with wit and a liberal dose of the word "asshole."

While people running small companies, department heads, team managers and coders seem the most likely audience for Reality Check, big brands could take away a few lessons as well. Kathleen Gasperini, co-founder of Label Networks, observes smartly in one passage:

Millions of dollars are wasted only to result in brand backlash, which takes millions more to undo. Many large brands or agencies can't see beyoind the thirty-second TV pitch. "But how do I reach them?" they ask. There are so many ways. You can walk right past a big idea if you have your cultural blinders on.

These top-down companies are running with blinders on into a future that has a huge cliff. Grass roots and bottom-up is the most authentic way to go, and you can do this much faster than in the past, given the speed of communication and viral marketing. But you can't try to be cool and grassroots if it's not true and real. Grass roots takes being out in the marketplace—being there, in their lives, and relevant.

I could have used a time-travel version of Reality Check before negotiating options in my last startup venture. Kawasaki offers "guydlines" of what to look for in an options package for someone working in a startup that has raised a first round of venture capital of $1-3 million with 15 or fewer employees:

Senior engineer: 0.3-0.7 percent
Midlevel engineer: 0.2-0.4 percent
Product manager: 0.2-0.3 percent
Chief architect: 1-1.5 percent
Vice president: 1.5-3 percent
CEO: 5-10 percent

One bit of advice that I strongly disagree with appears in the chapter on blogging. "Think of your blog as a product," Kawasaki writes. Don't express "your spontaneous thoughts and feelings." Perhaps someone as high profile as Kawasaki needs to guard his public image, but for the rest of us in the blogosphere, honest and spontaneous is far superior to regimented and productized.

So, in summary: Planning to start a new venture or trying to reinvent a hidebound corporate culture? Read Reality Check to kick-start your sensibilities and heed Kawasaki's lifetime of business lessons distilled in these fast-paced pages.

J.D. Lasica was editor of the Sacramento Bee's Books section — back when it had a Books section.

December 17, 2008 at 12:00 AM in Books, Social-media, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (1) | | (0)

December 15, 2008

How social media changes the rules

Social media roundup:

Shannon Paul on how social media changes the rules.

I was wondering what had happened to my friend Amani Channel (above) of My Urban Report. Turns out he's now a senior producer at Visual Eye Media, a full-service video relations company providing media consulting and professional High Definition video production for individuals, non-profits and corporations. Here's a Q&A on WebProNews: Discussing Social Media with Twitterers.

CNET: Zannel brings media-rich geolocation-aware microblogging to iPhone.

Contentinople: Social Media Measurement Still a Mystery. Brotherton Strategies: Social Media Measurement Tools.

Attorney Kevin O'Keefe: Lawyers and social media.

Social media and social networking is the all the buzz in the lawyer marketing world. Every place I presented this year on 'Social Networking for Law Firms' told me they had the largest attendance, or close to the largest, they've ever had. And it's not my looks.

At the first few presentations I tried to cover a mindmap of social networking tools. I talk fast and that just got me talking faster. Covering 20 different social networking mediums is not the best use of an hour. And when I was catching my breath, a smart attendee would ask, 'If you were me, what 2 or 3 things would you make use of today and go to a law firm with?'

Good question. Obvious answer for me. Blogs. Twitter. LinkedIn. Use those three effectively and you can take over the world. ...

December 15, 2008 at 01:56 AM in Social-media | Permalink | Comments (3) | | (0)

December 14, 2008

Consumer Internet predictions for 2009

When I hear pundits suggest that social media is a fad, or it's "over," I just smile and shake my head. They don't get it. This is the new way that young people in particular expect to interact. In the years ahead, when Big Media grasps for a new business model, social media will still be with us.

Social media news roundup:

Jeremy Liew at Vator News: Consumer Internet predictions for 2009. From consumers seeking cheap thrills to the raised value of user-gen content.

Halfbloghalfamazing: A Q&A with the social media reps for the Detroit Pistons.

Komodo media: Download a pack of 23 social media icons, free for noncommercial use.

Three Minds: Is social media pulling us apart?

Public Library Association: Public Libraries need to look at Intel’s social media policy.

Personal Branding Blog: Create a Winning Social Media Strategy For Your Brand.

WebProNews: BusinessWeek's Most Influential Businesses List Influenced By Social Media, and Business Week: The world's most influential companies, or how to monetize the social graph.

LouisGray.com: Social Media and Your Friends: Oil and Water?

MediaBrains: Social media: Blurring the line between “business” and “personal.”

MarketWatch: Teen Social Entrepreneur Taps Social Media to Drive Volunteerism.

Vancouver Sun: London 2012 gets social media while Vancouver 2010 falters.

December 14, 2008 at 01:36 AM in Social-media | Permalink | Comments (3) | | (0)

December 13, 2008

'Social Innovation Camp: Changing the world one weekend at a time'

Chris Heuer at Social Media Club:

Last weekend in London, I witnessed what I would call a series of miracles that soon could be a part of our everyday waking lives, or at least the lives of my friends in the United Kingdom. The Social Innovation Camp hosted by The Young Foundation was a barcamp/startup weekend sort of event for social entrepreneurs, people looking to do good and make enough money to be sustainable. If what I saw was as indicative of the scene in London as I believe, this is perhaps one of the major epicenters of transforming the world into the better place that we all know it can be. There is a really great write up of the whole weekend over on the SI Camp Blog.

Besides meeting tons of brilliant people like, I learned a lot about how to facilitate these sorts of events, how to empower better team collaboration and the deep seated desire that so many people the world over have to engage in what I call The Noble Pursuit. I also confirmed that London is still one of the best cities in the world, and perhaps the only other city I would actually live in other than San Francisco.

I hope to work with a foundation or two in the Bay Area, along with my AdHocnium colleague JD Lasica to bring this sort of event to my home soon. ...

Oh, yes, lots coming, just around the corner.

December 13, 2008 at 12:17 AM in Social-media | Permalink | Comments (0) | | (0)

December 12, 2008

The Ultimate Social Media Etiquette Handbook

Tamar Weinberg at Techipedia: The Ultimate Social Media Etiquette Handbook.

December 12, 2008 at 01:25 AM in Social-media | Permalink | Comments (0) | | (0)

December 10, 2008

Users skeptical of corporate blogs

I took part in a webinar this morning, and Forrester Research analyst Josh Bernoff, co-author of Groundswell, mentioned their new research into the trust levels of various forms of media.

AdWeek: Forrester: Consumers Distrust Corporate Blogs. Newer forms of corporate social media didn't do well, either. Excerpt:

Traditional media, on a whole, still garners more trust from consumers than digital outlets, according to Forrester. The Yellow Pages are trusted by 48 percent of respondents, newspapers by 46 percent, magazines and radio by 39 percent and TV by 38 percent.

In contrast, newer forms of digital media fared worse. User-created wikis like Wikipedia were trusted by 33 percent, message board posts by 21 percent, online classifieds by 20 percent, personal blogs by 18 percent, followed by company social network profiles and blogs.

The silver lining: respondents who themselves are bloggers are much more likely to trust company blogs — and nearly all forms of information sources, Forrester found. ...

December 10, 2008 at 03:29 PM in Business use, Social-media | Permalink | Comments (1) | | (0)

December 09, 2008

AdHocnium: a talent agency for social media services

At Le Web in Paris earlier today, my colleague Chris Heuer — fellow creative catalyst and founder of Social Media Club — launched a site we had first discussed only last month: AdHocnium.

I'm not sure how Chris is describing it in his 15-second one-floor elevator rap — I heard him refer to it as an "unagency," and I like that, and on the site he calls it "an ad hoc agency of creative catalysts producing social chemistry between globally focused companies and the markets they serve." I chiefly see it as a talent agency that offers quick access to a host of really smart social media strategists. Some of us are consultants (and, yes, we do business consulting, not just talk about it), some are social marketers, some are independent publishers and advisors who know social media deeply, and some will be PR professionals who use social media in brand campaigns.

The initial cast of characters are me, Chris, Adriana Lukas, Tom Foremski, Adrian Chan and Brian Solis. As Chris says, within the next few weeks, we expect to be announcing many, many more.

AdHocnium won't be a destination site but rather a portal to people offering social media solutions. Hats off to Chris for pulling this all together on the fly — and on the road!

I'm currently working on relaunching socialmedia.biz and launching a sister site that will serve nonprofits and social causes. Hope to have them both live before the end of the month.

December 9, 2008 at 05:00 PM in Business use, Social-media | Permalink | Comments (0) | | (0)

35 tips for getting started with social media

Roundup:

• Mike Fruchter at Vator News: 35 concrete tips for getting started with social media.

• Peter Kim: A wiki of social media marketing examples.

• Lee Odden at Social Marketing Blog: Dell Social Media Interview with Richard Binhammer.

• The Inquisitr: Microsoft and the Business of the Social Media Web.

• Mike Sachoff at WebProNews: Using Social Media For Marketing.

• Gary Vaynerchuk: Want to get advertisers on your blog/vlog? Go and GET IT!

Three-part series from tomoates.tv:

• Lights! Camera! Now What? Part 1: Prepare your mind.

• Lights! Camera! Now What? Part 2: Get your appearance right.

• Lights! Camera! Now What? Part 3: Keep your composure.

December 9, 2008 at 02:38 AM in Business use, Social-media | Permalink | Comments (0) | | (0)

December 06, 2008

Top 50 marketing blogs to watch in 2009

2009topmarketingblogs

Evan Carmichael's blog: The Top 50 Marketing Blogs To Watch In 2009, starting with:

1. Seth Godin's Blog (natch)

2. Duct Tape Marketing Blog

3. Marketing Sherpa

4. ProBlogger

5. Dosh Dosh

December 6, 2008 at 11:24 PM in Social-media | Permalink | Comments (1) | | (0)

Top 10 tips to get your startup noticed

Some good primers here:

Marketingstartups.com: Top 10 Tips To Get Your Startup Noticed. Good, solid, concrete tips, including which directories to submit your site to.

Wendy Boswell at Mashable: How to get the most out of Friendfeed.

December 6, 2008 at 12:05 AM in Social-media, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0) | | (0)

December 04, 2008

Q&A with social media analytics guru

Lee Odden at Online Marketing Blog: An interview with social media analytics guru Shonali Burke speaking at PRSA.

TechNation Australia: Should we trust social media startups?

December 4, 2008 at 12:41 AM in Social-media | Permalink | Comments (1) | | (0)

December 02, 2008

8 free social media monitoring tools

Andy Beal at Marketing Pilgrim: 8 More Free Social Media Monitoring Tools You Shouldn’t Leave Home Without.

December 2, 2008 at 09:16 PM in Business use, Social-media | Permalink | Comments (0) | | (0)

How social media shared pain and rage of Mumbai

Commentary by Dina Mehta at CNN Asia: How social media shared pain and rage of Mumbai.

December 2, 2008 at 08:51 PM in Citizen media, Social-media | Permalink | Comments (0) | | (0)

December 01, 2008

Changing jobs, not focus

Yesterday was my last day with Ourmedia.org, the pioneering media hosting and sharing site I launched with Marc Canter in March 2005. The site will continue under the operation of Outhink Media with the hope that the Drupal community helps with its development.

It's been a wild ride, but after four years it's time to move on and refocus on what got me started on all this: social media.

So look for a relaunch of socialmedia.biz in the next few weeks — I'm thinking of moving over to WordPress — along with the launch of a new social enterprise to help nonprofits and cause organizations with their social media strategy.

Meanwhile, it's time for me to catch my breath, get to work on the 15 videos in my to-do queue, and read up on all the new gadgets I've been accumulating this year (Nikon camera, two Macs, HD camcorder, Nokia N96, iPhone, etc.).

December 1, 2008 at 01:48 PM in Ourmedia, Social-media | Permalink | Comments (1) | | (0)

November 30, 2008

Facebook aims to connect the social media cloud

Zuckerberg

Sunday NY Times: Facebook Aims to Extend Its Reach Across the Web.

Facebook, the Internet’s largest social network, wants to let you take your friends with you as you travel the Web. But having been burned by privacy concerns in the last year, it plans to keep close tabs on those outings.

Facebook Connect, as the company’s new feature is called, allows its members to log onto other Web sites using their Facebook identification and see their friends’ activities on those sites. Like Beacon, the controversial advertising program that Facebook introduced and then withdrew last year after it raised a hullabaloo over privacy, Connect also gives members the opportunity to broadcast their actions on those sites to their friends on Facebook.

In the next few weeks, a number of prominent Web sites will weave this service into their pages, including those of the Discovery Channel and The San Francisco Chronicle, the social news site Digg, the genealogy network Geni and the online video hub Hulu.

Facebook Connect is representative of some surprising new thinking in Silicon Valley. Instead of trying to hoard information about their users, the Internet giants have all announced plans to share at least some of that data so people do not have to enter the same identifying information again and again on different sites.

Supporters of this idea say such programs will help with the emergence of a new “social Web,” because chatter among friends will infiltrate even sites that have been entirely unsociable thus far.

A lot of us have been pushing for this kind of cross-site interoperability for years, so it's great that we finally have the ear of some of the major social networking sites.

November 30, 2008 at 09:37 PM in Social networks, Social-media | Permalink | Comments (0) | | (0)

10 social media strategies for educators

Christine Cavalier at Purplecar.net: 10 Social Media Strategies for The Ivory Tower.

The main problem with university social media branding strategy is this: There is no strategy.

Universities have not caught up yet. They are unaware of the benefits that a university-wide, coherent social media strategy can bring. A latin phrase, some colored logos, and Newsweek rankings seem to be the extent of the .edu’s marketing and community plan.

Here’s the current situation: Each department finds their own time, staff and money to design online social networking platforms their current students and alumni are requesting. If they don’t construct something (however haphazardly), students take it upon themselves to construct a Facebook group or a Ning for the department. No thought is applied to coherent design interdepartmentally or globally. Nothing is monitored, yet the university’s name is being employed and associated with these rogue websites (this makes lawyers quite nervous). ...

Christine goes on to list strategies for deploying social media on a university campus.

November 30, 2008 at 08:49 PM in Education, Social-media | Permalink | Comments (0) | | (0)

November 28, 2008

Why social media and marketing do mix

John Battelle at Open Forum deconstructs the myth that social media and marketing don’t mix. Excerpt:

As I’ve argued (over and over and over) social media “assets” don’t look like packaged goods assets, and neither should social media marketing. As McConnell rightly pointed out, you can’t barge into the middle of an intimate social situation, yell “buy my stuff!” and then leave. A brand that does that will certainly be remembered – as a clod.

And that’s the point. No matter how good the targeting, marketing in a social environment will not work if it fails to grasp the nuance of a particular situation. Algorithms do a great job of finding a target, but they fail miserably at deciding when to pull the trigger (see my rant on ad networks here). So far, there’s simply not an algorithm for understanding the nuance of conversations between humans, and conversations between humans are what drives social media. ...

So what do I mean when I say a conversational approach? Well, let’s break down what makes for a great conversation. First, all parties involved are in the conversation because they’ve chosen to be – not because they’re been tricked or cajoled into it. Second, there’s a strong value exchange – a give and take between parties which makes everyone feel like they are gaining something. Critical to this, of course, is the value of listening, internalizing, and responding. Third, each participant understands who the other participants are – there’s transparency and integrity in the conversation.

In order to market conversationally, then, a brand must not simply insinuate itself into the media others make ... but rather create [its] own valuable conversations, and/or underwrite organic conversations that contextually make sense for that brand to support. There are scores of examples I could point to where this is already happening (check out Intel’s PopURLs Blue, for example, or even this site, American Express’s Open Forum Blog, a longer list is here).

In The first law of social media, Terry Heaton at AR&D applies this to traditional media.

November 28, 2008 at 11:25 PM in Social-media | Permalink | Comments (0) | | (0)

How to use social media to brand yourself

Chief marketing officer/co-founder Jun Loayza at Future Delivery TV: How to use social media to brand yourself. Good, specific suggestions.

November 28, 2008 at 10:35 PM in Social-media | Permalink | Comments (2) | | (0)

November 27, 2008

How to use social media to get hired

• Jeremy Toeman at Live Digitally: How to Use Social Media to Get Hired.

• Share Marketing: 10 things to think about in social media.

• Share Marketing: What good is LinkedIn?

• Reem Abeidoh at ProBlogger last month: A Guide to Corporate Blogging with words of advice from HP, Intel and Cisco and steps Fortune 500 companies should take to create a blog.

• Blog Council staff: 13 Steps to Create a Blog at Fortune 500 Companies.

• Karen Snyder from August on how social media has evolved at HP.

November 27, 2008 at 02:49 AM in Business use, Social-media | Permalink | Comments (0) | | (0)

November 25, 2008

Overcoming corporate resistance to social media

A few social media pointers:

• Search Rank series, part 4: Afraid of Social Media? Excuse 4: Corporate Red Tape.

• Search Rank series, part 3: Afraid of Social Media? Excuse 3: We Do Not Have The Budget.

• Search Rank series, part 2: Afraid of Social Media? Excuse 2: No One To Monitor.

• Search Rank series, part 1: Afraid of Social Media? Excuse 1: Lack of Control.

• Jennifer Leggio at ZDNet blogs: Which firm really gets it? A social public relations survey.

• Mia Ridge in Open Objects: Social Media Statistics.

November 25, 2008 at 01:51 AM in Social-media | Permalink | Comments (1) | | (0)

November 24, 2008

Conversational Marketing Summit today

[Removed video player because of the heavy javascript calls.]

Today and Tuesday, the Conversational Marketing Summit will be held online. Above is a player to follow the live event.

What: At this online summit, experts will share information on trends in social media marketing, answer questions, and offer strategies and tips to business professionals. Among the topics the speakers will address are corporate blogging, search, social networking, mobile marketing, email marketing, and how to use Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and Twitter to start the conversation.

BrightTALK hosts live webcast summits each week around themes that matter to business professionals.

When: Monday and Tuesday, November 24-25, 2008

Who: Presenters at the Conversational Marketing Summit include:

Bill Hartzer, search engine marketing manager at Vizion Interactive
Brad Hanks, master instructor at Council of Real Estate Brokerage Managers; CEO of Brad Hanks Seminars
Chris Kenton, CEO of SocialRep
Dave Evans, CEO of Digital Voodoo
Edward Weatherall, managing director at Concept Ltd
Ian Lurie, president of Portent Interactive
James Miller, vice president, technology industry at BrightTALK
Jerry Hart, principal and vice president of sales and marketing for Power to be Found
Jennifer Carole, director of the worldwide teen lab at Alcatel-Lucent
Jennifer Jacobson, author of 42 Rules of Social Media for Business
Kate Brodock, principal at The Other Side Group
Laura Lowell, author of 42 Rules of Marketing; principal of Impact Marketing Group
Linda Pophal, owner and CEO of Strategic Communications
Loren McDonald, vice president of industry relations at Silverpop
Malcolm Friedberg, marketing automation expert
Mary Lou Roberts, instructor at Harvard Extension Program; author at DIY-Marketing
Michael Kurtzman managing director of mobile advertising at Sybase 365
Rajiv Parikh, CEO of Position2
Sundeep Kapur, online marketing strategist at www.emailyogi.com and NCR Corporation
Will Schnabel, vice president of international markets at Silverpop

Where: The Conversational Marketing Summit is available above or on brighttalk.com here.

November 24, 2008 at 02:07 AM in Social-media | Permalink | Comments (0) | | (0)

5 social media trends to watch out for

Social media roundup:

Jeremy Woolf at Public Relationships: Five social media trends to watch out for.

Bert Dumars on the half-life of a conversation.

Chris Brogan: Starting out in social media.

Scoble tells why he's now more obsessed with Friendfeed than Techmeme.

Advertising Age: Crashing Motrin-Gate: A Social-Media Case Study.

November 24, 2008 at 01:54 AM in Social-media | Permalink | Comments (0) | | (0)

November 22, 2008

Three social media principles for journalists

Alfred Hermida at Reportr.net: Three social media principles for journalists.

CBC Vancouver is holding is holding an all-day workshop on social media. The aim is to “find out how some of us use it to make our jobs easier, and how others can learn to tap into its power”.

The CBC is tapping into the wealth of talent in Vancouver on social networking, with a wide range of speakers, including Kris Krug and Megan Cole. ...

November 22, 2008 at 02:17 AM in Media, New media, Social-media | Permalink | Comments (0) | | (0)

Social media meets interactive TV

Today's social media news roundup:

MarketWatch.com: TV's Interactive Future Arrives Today, Combining Social Media With Personal Control.

For years I've been reading — and writing — about interactive television and the ability of users to finally control the camera angles we see. It's finally here, courtesy of Kevin Rose and the gang at Revision3.

Sarah Evans at Mashable: How to build your Twitter community.

Sarah Evans at Mashable: How not to build your Twitter community.

CMS Wire: The Social Media Minute: Yahoo, Google Go Beyond Plain Search.

November 22, 2008 at 02:14 AM in Social-media, Television, Video, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0) | | (0)