Social Media Now 11.15.08

Here’s what’s been going on in Social Media over the last week or so. Missing something? Email me or add your news in the comments section!

Louis Gray wonders Does Anybody Care About Non-Blog Commenting Anymore?

Francine Hardaway points out that Obama’s decision to put his weekly address out on YouTube might very well be a game changer, and of course everybody is talking about the website, Change.gov and how it will affect the way America reacts to politics. At the same time, Caroline McCarthy wonders if it’s time for a digital reality check.

Andy Sernovitz wrote about how to get bloggers to write about you, and Michael Martine tells PR people how to pitch to bloggers.

Jennifer Leggio contends social media will not kill PR, but it does expose industry weakness.

Media giant Gannet purchased social media development company Ripple6 for their social media technology and analytics. Ripple6 will continue to develop  communities, operating as an independent entity-according to VP of Marketing Rich Ullman.

The fires in California are still raging, and Paul Glazowski shows us how to get the latest news in real time or darn close, and many added their favorite resources to the comments.

Bright Shiny Objects:

• There was a lot of buzz when the rumor came out that TwitteRank was a hoax, set up to steal your login information for Twitter and do something dastardly with it. Although it turned out to not be true there may still be some security issues to think about with Twitter.
• CrowdStatus and Tweetworks offer ways to create smaller more focused groups of Twitter users to communicate with.
• Twitter/Readburner RSS -Tracks the most shared topics from RSS feeds and then posts them to Twitter.
• 12second.tv seems a like a Twitter version of YouTube, but there are people creating some pretty interesting channels already.
• Ever wonder what personality type is reflected in the voice of your blog? Typealyzer.com is your answer, just for fun.
• 29 Travels is a Google map generator that lets you color and highlight all the places you’ve traveled to. Go ahead, show your map off on Google Earth.

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Social Media Now 10.31.08

I’ve been doing these social media round-up posts every couple of weeks but there was so much good stuff this week I couldn’t wait. Did I miss something? Email me or add it to the comments!

• Jay Deragon wonders if social media ROI is really so important, read more posts on ROI from Jason Falls, Janet Fouts and Brad J. Ward, find some good tools and posts on the topic on Constructing Social.
• With all the focus on Social Media ROI, Amber Naslund wonders if every social media initiative has to succeed to be valuable.
• Pistachio gives her 2 cents on Magpie, a new scheme to monetise Twitter.
• Brian Solis discusses brand management and the social web..
• ReadWriteWeb added a jobs board to their site. In these times we all need a little extra info?
• Marc Meyer suggests we all quit talking to each other so much and talk to the clients instead.
• Beth Kanter writes about prioritizing your web marketing budget and social media’s slice of the pie.
• In typical Chris Brogan (and Bryan Eisenberg) style, a way to trick or treat on Twitter and raise $$ for a good cause. Go do this.

Bright Shiny Objects

• TweetGrid Create a Twitter search dashboard that updates in real time. It’s not sexy but if you’re a topic watcher it’s a wonder.
• Tweetburner Get reporting on the links you shorten and post to Twitter and Friendfeed.
• QikCom is another microsharing app for the enterprise.
• Docstoc Let’s you email a document to it for storage and sharing with your friends.
• What would Seth Godin do? is a new Wordpress plugin that helps you build your subscriber base.
• Firefox for Web Marketing Ninjas lists some ways to make your web marketing easier.
• Ever want to look fondly back on the early Twitter days? My First Tweet will show you the first Tweet of any user.

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Social Media Now 10.22.08

Here’s a quick round-up of some recent news in social media. Did we miss your favorite social media news story? Add it in the comments or email us to add it to the next post for social media now.

Shel Israel writes about not mistaking popularity for influence. There’s an interesting post on Mashable about top blunders from the social media gurus, with a little something we can all learn from. Chris Brogan reminds us that it’s not necessarily true the famous bloggers are the only ones with anything important to say, and to promote and encourage others to keep the conversations fresh. Blog Action Day showed how social media can help us raise our voices and awareness about critical issues and thousands of bloggers responded in their own ways. Nonprofit Bootcamp happened in San Mateo, and over 2000 people got the resources they needed to get down to business online. Nielsen online ratings showed huge traffic growth for several social media sites this year, especially Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin, while some other sites like Buzznet and imeem slipped a bit, and imeem may be doing some cutting back. FriendFeed announced their real-time API, so now you can keep up to date on your friends in real-time.

Bright Shiny Objects

• AppLoop is an iPhone friendly RSS reader that’s getting good reviews.
• Lijit search just added advertising to it’s bag of tricks.
• Twine can help you track your bookmarks and other content, and learns what you like the more you use it and then makes recommendations based on your usage.

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Social Media Now 10.4.08

Social media sites are growing at lightning speed, partly because it’s now so easy to implement your own network. Dan Farber points out Ning is about to reach 500,000 communities soon, and Peter kim lists 234 Social Media Marketing examples.

A pretty amazing example of the power of social media showed up in the stock market this week when CNN’s citizen-journalism site iReport reported Steve Jobs had a heart attack. A flurry of Diggs, cross posts and retweets later, Apple stock took a serious header until the story was disproved. Read Henry Blodget’s post on why Silicon Valley Insider ran the story.

Shel Israel posts his thoughts on how Twitter is changing the way we sell things online.

The first and only VP debate was a much anticipated event and viewers had a number of Twitter enhanced options. My hands down favorite is Steve Nelson’s Twitter feed into Capitol Hill in Second Life.

Giving bloggers everywhere hope, ,Johns Wu sold his blog Bankaholic to the financial information portal BankRate for a whopping $15 Mil. Read the story on Mashable.

Bright Shiny objects

• Quite few Tweeple seem to just ♥ Twitterkeys which allows you to easily paste special characters into your Twitter posts.
• A new music network popped up called JamsBio where you can share and discuss your favorite music.
• The Obama campaign’s iPhone App is creating quite a buzz. poll your personal network and see who they are voting for.
• What does your blog look like on an iPhone? WPTOUCH is a WordPress plugin that can help it look good.

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Social Media Now 09.22.08

Here are just a few of the interesting bits of social media goodness we read last week. Missing something? Add your own links in the comments, or email your favs for the next round of social media now.

Blog World 08 kept everybody hopping last week. See the Tweetstream at #BWE08 to see what people were/are tweeting.

Podcamp Montreal took place on the 20th and 21st in, you guessed it, Montreal. Dave Fleet posted a iGoogle dashboard of events here.

Technorati released their State of the Blogosphere / 2008 report with some fascinating info on blogs.

Adele McAlear wrtote about Yammer winning the TechCrunch 50.

Sarah Perez posted her thoughts on Socialmedian’s new “Replize” tab.

PodTech posted a video interview with Spencer Tall of Allegis Capital about what VC’s are investing in these days.

Bright Shiny Objects

• BudURL launched another link shortening service, but with a twist. This one can return “click stream” stats on your link.
• Dwigger launched a cross between Digg and Twitter. Post your links to Twitter from their site and get them “Dwigged”.
• Scribblar launched a new multi-user whiteboard and sharing service based in the UK.
• Guy Kawasaki’s Alltop got a spiffy new look and feel, making it even easier to find out what’s hot.

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Social Media RoundUp

I put a request out on Twitter earlier today asking for recommendations of the ‘must read’ articles that have been penned over the last week that focused on the use of Social Media tools.

You fine folks answered with the following:

• 5 ways to use Social Media to reach people who don’t use Social Media: by Marshall Kirkpatrick at Read/Write Web 
• 50 ways to take your blog to the next level: by Chris Brogan
• Are you conversationally tone deaf: by Connie Reece
• Disruption of cascading conversation: by Jay Deragon
• Growing use of Social Media Technologies in Businesses: by peopleperhour.com
• How Barack Obama Is Using Web 2.0 to Run for President, by Daniel Nations at About.com
• How to Use Yahoo Answers for your Social Media Campaign, by Vine at primaryeffect.com
  
• IBM’s Beehive social networking community: by Toby at Communitelligence
• Limiting, and watching, what children watch: by Lisa Guernsey at New York Times
• Twits on Twitter: by Rob Sellen
• Using Twitter for business: by John Jantsch
  
• You can do your job without Twitter: by Chris Brogan
  

Interesting tool found: flibfarb

Other: Collection of live streams by loremcast

Thank you to everyone who submitted an article to share with the community. We greatly appreciate your input and will start collecting these regularly to help spread the word about interesting conversations happening around the world.

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Social Media Now 09.06.08

Of course everybody has been talking about Hurricane Gustav, and a flurry of resources emerged to track the storm and communicate with friends and family. Sarah Perez at ReadWriteWeb created a fine collection of resources both for Hurricane Gustav and the next ones…

In a New York Times article, Clive Thompson
writes about “ambient awareness”, a term social scientists use to describe the effect that apps like Facebook, Tumblr, Doppler, Twitter and even Loopt on the iPhone have on society, helping us keep a a constant eye on our friends, where they are and what they are doing and how this is becoming a norm.

Jason Falls wrote a guest post on Conversation Agent about the future of social media and “the agency” (not the FBI).

The Forrester Groundswell Awards has a bunch of new entries. Every one is worth spending some time with and it’s not to late to add your own entry, the deadline is September 9.

Over at Mashable, Mark Hopkins just couldn’t resist pointing out that FriendFeed is suddenly showing some of the favorites you might not have wanted to share with the world. Apparently Vimeo changed the ID’s used in the feeds and refreshed their links, and all those savory tidbits you favorited years ago on YouTube  and forgot about are coming to the fore. Check your profiles folks.

Bright Shiny Objects
Status is a Microblogging app for the enterprise, allowing users to connect inside the enterprise just like Twitter, complete with archived messaging and can be accessed from a mobile, a desktop widget or online.

Several new monetization schemes popped up for Twitter.

Twittad replaces your background image with an ad.

Twittertise lets you schedule your tweets and then gives you back tracking and stats on who read it.

Adjix is a link shortener like TinyURL, but they insert a link that creates a small pop-up ad when your friends click on it.

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Social Media Now 08.26.08

Here’s a bit of what’s going on in Social Media of late. Feel free to add your own links in the comments section, or send us you suggestions for the next issue of Social Media Now.

Jeremiah Owyang shares his thoughts on how a you should look at Twitter before deciding to promote your brand there. Web Strategy: The Evolution of Brands on Twitter.

Valeria Maltoni wonders Are You Measuring Media by the Pound? and lays out some basic strategies for scaleability in your PR campaign.

Chris Brogan gives us a step by step plan in How to Listen for Opportunities on Twitter.

Marshall Kirkpatrick REALLY didn’t like SocialU. Did you?

Matt Dickman points out the vicious circle politeness can create in Social Media. And I’d just like to say thank you Matt.

Bright Shiny Objects
Tweetrush, is yet another app that shows estimated stats on Twitter usage. Is it possible to have too many analytics tools?

FriendFeed is getting even better with the addition of Friend Lists, Feed Sharing and photo hosting. Check out the blog to learn more.

Travel a lot and need to get oriented? OnionMap may interest you.

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Social Media Now 8.20.08

Here’s a bit of what’s going on in Social Media of late. Feel free to add your own links in the comments section, or send us you suggestions for the next issue of Social Media Now.

• Mike Sansone’s mantra is Reach with Intention, and he provides some great questions to ask yourself when considering the use of Social Media tools in your Marketing strategy. 
  
• Patrick Williams writes a nice article on How to write a Strategic Communications Plan. Having written a few of these in my lifetime, his 13-step  model feels pretty dead on.
• Mashable reports an interesting story this morning on a possible break in Gmail’s security if you use this service on a public hotspot. Thankfully, it is easily corrected by clicking on ‘Settings’, go to the ‘General’ tab and select ‘always use https‘ when accessing Gmail. Might run a wee bit slower for you then, but at least your data will be secure.
• Michelle Lamar just completed the White Trash Mom Handbook. Great use of her site to give me snippets of the content and dig into her blog to learn more. Thinking I know what to get my girlfriends for  Christmas now…
• Pandora is in trouble as the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) is looking to almost triple the licensing fees for web radio sites. Note that under the new plan Internet radio stations would jump to 2.91 cents per hour per listener, satellite radio stations would pay 1.6 cents per hour per listener and traditional radio stations would pay…nothing. Everyone agrees royalties are due, it just seems to me there should be a more fair and balanced fee structure. More info, and how you can help here.
• via @ciaoenrico, Arizona Highways is having a photo contest to capture images of their great state. Smart way to engage visitors and locals alike and keep them coming back for more.

Bright Shiny Objects
Ok, these are not really so bright and shiny, but they are three services I find I cannot live without.

• Dopplr -For the folks who travel a bit. Easy to use interface with a great social element to help you connect with your community while on the road.  Dopplr is a free service.
• iContact - If you send mass email communications (i.e. newsletters and such) this is a great service to help you manage your contact database. Disclosure: We were users, and believers, long before they became a Social Media Club Small Business Member. You can try them out with a 10-day free trial.
• Survey Monkey. There are a lot of polling systems out there, but I find Survey Monkey is the one I go back to time and time again. They do offer a free version that would work for many.

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Social Media Now 8.11.08

Social Media Now 9-11-08

Here’s a bit of what’s going on in social media of late. Feel free to add your own links in the comments section, or send us you suggestions for the next issue of Social Media Now.

Chris Brogan shares his