Social Media Club Blog named to Top 100

According to Tom Pick, Virtual Hosting Blog has picked the Top 100 Social Media and Social Networking Blogs for 2007, and SMC was one of them. (I can’t confirm this as Virtual Hosting blog is having an error on that page at the moment.)

Lots of credit to Chris Heuer, for setting this whole deal up and writing some great stuff, to Jason Chervokas, who wrote some excellent pieces for us this year, and of course, Francine Hardaway, Connie Reece, Kristie Wells, and everyone else who contributed to making the SMC blog a useful source of information in the field.

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A Social Media Thanksgiving

This was the best Thanksgiving ever! Not only was I with my  blood family (mother and two daughters, though we also have five stepchildren and three former foster children), but I was with all my Twitter and Facebook friends all over the world.

This was the first time I Twittered the making and eating of the turkey with so many others who made and ate turkey, as well as with people from other countries who didn’t know what Thanksgiving was all about and were curious. We all talked to teach other, educated each other, and kept each other company through happy or stressful holidays. I even saw a photograph of Dave Winer’s turkey.
For the first time, too, I followed my Facebook newsfeed to learn that Nov,22 was also the date of the Kennedy assassination. It was a reminder of a very important date in my life that has lately been ignored in the MSM, but is fresh in the minds of some people my age on Facebook (where last year there probably were NO people my age, including me).

Social media has enlarged and upgraded my world. I find myself connected to the most wonderful people, whose lives I follow, and who contribute joy and energy to my own life.

I hold out great hope for peace through understanding, coming soon to a neighborhood near you through social networks.

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New Media Jim Chats Up Twitter in DC

Social Media Club’s DC Chapter is kicking into high gear. “New Media” Jim Long, one of the most popular voices on Twitter and a top video blogger, will give a fireside chat on Twitter to Washington DC Members of Social Media Club on November 29. Twitter continues to evolve as the leading microblogging platform, far outpacing its competitors the Google acquisition Jaiku and Pownce. Hear Jim’s experiences and thoughts on best practices within Twitter, and bring your own, too.

The chat will be held at Viget Labs (the company that built Squidoo) on November 29 in Falls Church from 6:30 p.m. until 8:00 p.m. All the directions you could ever want: http://www.viget.com/contact-directions.html. Here’s a link to the Google Map.

This event is almost closed (capped at 60 attendees), but to register, email Geoff Livingston at Geoff@livingstonbuzz.com or visit the Social Media Club DC’s community site on Facebook. Image credit to debs.

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Social Media Club Phoenix

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Bar Camp Phoenix December 8!

BarCamp Phoenix is a month away, and the organizers are trying to drum up interest to help ensure a good turnout. Social Media Club Phoenix is, of course, supporting BarCamp Phoenix, which will be held on Dec. 8th at the University of Advancing Technology. I think the best thing people could do right now is to add their names to the barcamp.org wiki at http://barcamp.org/BarCampPhoenix

This would help give the organizers a better idea of likely attendance, and (ideally) having more names on the wiki will encourage others to join in. If you have a subject you’d like to see discussed or one you would like to discuss, show up!

Thanks!

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Glasnost: Social Media Style

On Tuesday we had a packed house for the Austin Social Media Workshop, sponsored by Dell. One of the attendees, Kara Soluri, was brand new to the whole concept of social media. She had attended our regular monthly meeting as a guest of her neighbor, Austin cofounder Kelley Burrus, and enjoyed it so much she signed up for the workshop. After the workshop Kara was so excited that she felt compelled to write about the experience. ~ Connie

Sung (in Russian) to the tune of Frere Jacques:

I know nothing, I know nothing
Nothing I know, Nothing I know
I know that I know nothing
I know that I know nothing
Good. Good.
My high school Russian teacher taught us this silly song in advance of our 1989 goodwill student ambassador tour of the Soviet Union. Back then I figured the lyrics would come in handy on my trip to Moscow, assuming… let’s say… I found myself being interrogated by KGB. I had a hunch knowing how to say “I know nothing” was key to my survival, but it wasn’t until today at the SMC workshop, that I recognized why.

When it comes to social media, I know nothing. Thankfully, I discovered I am in good company. Shel Israel, Chris Heuer, Connie Reece, Kami Huyse, and the Dell digital team stepped in front of us boldly admitting to taking risks, figuring things out in real time, and (shut your ears, corporate execs and school boards) allowing for failure.

What refreshing honesty in a culture constantly seeking the one right answer via standardized testing, obsessive polling, or its habit of flocking to the next big thing. SMC panelists used the term open to describe technologies over which markets have little control, and reminded us that control is an illusion anyway. Their good news? Openness is a human trait, not a technological one.

Flash back to my 80s world (minus the big hair, please). Mikhail Gorbachev used the Russian word for openness – glasnost – to describe a new policy of starting conversations with the West. As a result, an oppressive government lost control. Assuming my basic understanding of social media is correct, oppressive corporations face a similar fate. Chris Heuer says he wants to do away with war analogies used by marketing, PR and advertising firms. As authentic conversation grows, I imagine the lexicon changing on its own. When authenticity happens, the walls tumble down peaceably, whether those walls separate East Berlin from West, or, as Dell’s leadership demonstrates, the customer from the corporation.

During my month in the USSR, I never had to sing I Know Nothing to a KGB interrogator. Still, I was awash in ignorance of a culture I’d long studied, and my new Soviet friends felt the same. I wish I could have blogged about experiences like the one I had with a Kiev hotel manager when he heard me complain about “bugs” in my room. After 10 minutes of plodding through cultural and language barriers (to him, bugs were listening devices; to me, cockroaches), we laughed like crazy and became fast friends. If an audience of thousands had witnessed the human connections made by hundreds of American and Soviet youth, conversation might have gotten the credit for ending the Cold War, and we’d be in a more peaceful place today.

Thanks, SMC members for (re)starting conversation. Go ahead and poke, twitter, and ping me to your hearts’ content. I know nothing, and I know that is good. Connie, can you twitter me? Do I need that blackberry thingy? Do your thumbs really hurt? Please fill me in so I can become an early adopter too. Or is it adapter?
Kara

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Facebook’s New Social Ads: No Way

I just read a post by Jeremiah Owyang, a man I truly admire, on today’s announcements at AdTech about Facebook and Myspace’s new social ads, and I think he is wrong. In fact, I think he’s so wrong about whether this will be successful for Facebook that I not only commented on his blog but decided to post this to my own and the Social Media Club’s — despite the fact that the Second Annual Arizona Entrepreneurship Conference is only two days away and I have plenty of “better” things to do. I even think I know WHY he is wrong. He hasn’t spend 35 years in marketing. He looks at it from Facebook’s perspective, and not that of a consumer brand marketer. First, let’s give a little. For MySpace, this has potential. Maybe I am jaded, but I don’t think this will work for Facebook as well as for MySpace. MySpace has a demographic of younger consumers who are more open to peer pressure. This will work for certain types of ads on Myspace: skate and surfboards, music, cosmetics, etc. But Facebook has moved in exactly the opposite direction, going for a more sophisticated and increasingly older audience. As an “adult,” I can’t think of a single brand I would “friend.” Not even BMW or Cartier or Chico’s, or Garnier Fructis, all of which I either use or have used, own or have owned. And if “friending” them meant I would have to see their ads, I’d de-friend them even if I like them, because the presence of the ads — not why I go to Facebook — would deter me. I have other places to look at those ads. Not to mention all the marketers who will pay people to friend their brands, and start groups that game the system. I see great potential for abuse. I don’t like this new idea. And believe me, I know somebody has to support social media companies. And I know marketers are struggling to get to these eyeballs. So let’s talk about what I DO like. I DID like an ad I saw earlier this week for leggings from American Apparel. Why did I like it? 1)I wear leggings. 2) The ad was bright-colored, and actually stood out on the Facebook page (most Facebook ads don’t) 3)It went away after a while. And I did like a Facebook Flyer from Charlene Li, a person I know, asking me to respond if I noticed the flyer. While I’ve been writing this post, I’ve been also trying to figure out what brands this could work for on Facebook. Maybe Apple? J.Crew? It will be a limited buy for the marketer, and many marketers, anxious to get into social media, will stub their toes on this one. As John Wanamaker said, 50% of his advertising dollars were wasted, but he was never able to tell which 50%.

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