This is the recording from Third Thursday’s monthly meetup in Silicon Valley on April 19, 2007. This month’s discussion featured a great presentation from Elisa Camahort and Kathy Klotz-Guest called “How Storytelling is (Still) Critical to Communications in the Blogosphere”. There are really some wonderful insights here that get at the heart of [...]

Thanks to tech journalist Mathew Ingram for flagging a post by Ethan Kaplan that laces into the received wisdom about DIY media, “user generated content” and big media’s attempts to adapt to this new environment.
The essence of Kaplan’s argument is that thinking about media created outside of the corporation as “user generated content” presupposes, and [...]

Been a tough and busy few days, but today is going to rock (though losing the earlier version of this post was not the highlight I hoped for). Tonight in San Francisco Karen O’Brien and I are leading a discussion on connecting with our communities - how to find them, how to determine where [...]

Maybe it’s time for Blogspotting to change it’s name. In the Newsweek online column of that title, Heather Green takes a closer look at numbers provided by Dave Sifry at Technorati. The numbers, first reported early this month in Sifry’s State of the Live Web, suggest that the practice of blogging has plateaued.
Picking up threads [...]

This month’s meeting was held in conjunction with the Web 2.0 Social Networking meetup. Thanks to Brett and Peter for making us feel welcome.
This wasn’t a typical NYC Social Media Club meeting, which is good. It is useful to have meetings to see product/company pitches, especially local companies in the Web 2.0 space. There was [...]

Bits and pieces this morning from around the world of social media.
First, in the wake of the mysterious end to the MySpace/Photobucket war, comes an interesting quick piece by one of my favorite bloggers, Andrew Chen, entrepreneur in residence at Mohr Davidow Ventures, on the subject of monetizing widgets. Widgets=ad networks, Andrew argues. And that [...]

Saw a Tweet from Jeremiah Owyang giving a nod to his boss John Furrier for standing up for his team, and then saw Robert Scoble’s post at the heart of it all, telling people he was going to hang out in the hallway at Microsoft’s Mix 07 Conference since he did not have a [...]

The blogosphere is full of cynics. And there’s plenty of cynical response on the Net to Forrester’s report on adult social media behavior. The report, which is geared to helping marketers integrate social media into business strategies, proposes a “participation ladder” as a metaphor, with six rungs stepping up from “inactives” at the bottom to “creators” [...]

Great video from Lee and Sachi LeFever working to craft a better explanation of RSS for everyday folks. Good idea, and something we want to see more people trying to do - coming up with their own stories explaining the real value they get from their tools and how they use them. It [...]

Chris asked on a Twitter when social media would cross over into the mainstream.  I think this will not happen until there is either a compelling business case or a compelling social case. From my own work, I think the social case will come first.  I am working with two not-for-profits who want to use [...]

The digerati’s first impressions of MySpace’s social news venture, which launched in beta yesterday, was anything but positive. Well undercooked was the general consensus, even for a beta launch.
No one was more harsh, or more scatological, than Rex Dixon who called MySpace News nothing more than a clipping service linking the kind of of generic [...]

StumbleUpon founder Garrett Camp spent yesterday afternoon denying rumors that StumbleUpon had agreed to an acquisition by eBay.
If that purchase, or one by any of StumbleUpon’s other rumored suitors, goes through its implications for social search will have been predigested. It’s funny and fascinating, seeing out pundits reacted to the reported price of $40 to [...]

Reports coming in from the National Association of Broadcasters offer an interesting look at the evolving relationship between traditional media and DIY media. On the one hand you had David K. Rehr, CEO and President of the NAB, kicking off the conference by suggesting that broadcasters are being challenged by the Internet not because anything [...]

I’m privileged to be speaking on a panel at the Westchester Association in White Plains this coming Thursday, April 19th, at lunchtime. Apparently the online registration is closed but there is still room for walk-ins. Or, you can contact the woman mentioned on the page. I’m looking forward to helping people understand Social Media and [...]

Coverage of yesterday’s horrific massacre at Virginia Tech was hardly a showpiece for semi-pro and citizen journalist.
Contrary to the reports of boosters, like Amy Gahran at Poynter Online who called it “Another Sad but Seminal Day for CitJ,” those who would denigrate the whole idea of citizen journalism got plenty of ammo from bloggers who [...]