Month: July 2009

“Interpersonal relations have had thousands of years to develop. Online, there’s been no time.

“There are people who tweet in a way that rubs you the wrong way. Marketers who build businesses that seem scammy to you, or build websites that feel wrong. I get plenty of email from people that just doesn’t feel right, whether it’s in ALL CAPS or just difficult in tone or approach.”

This is a really nice thoughtful piece about how people choose their social network avatar pics and what they say about them:

“”What we reveal mostly is our values, says John McArthur, a Queens University of Charlotte assistant professor of communications, and another expert on social media.

“The photo represents whatever that person is currently measuring success as,” McArthur says. If you pose with your baby, you’re sending a clear message about your current priorities. “Someone who is using Facebook as a dating tool will use a very flattering photo.””

Umair manages to hit the nail on the head about short-termism’s toxic effects on buisness, using newspapers as a prime example:

“An obsession with near-term profitability is how news destroyed itself. Managers shouldn’t make the same mistake twice. Yes, every business must profit. But a business obsessed with near-term profit is a poor shepherd of tomorrow — and news is a perfect example.”

“EVER wondered why the pundits who failed to predict the current economic crisis are still being paid for their opinions? It’s a consequence of the way human psychology works in a free market, according to a study of how people’s self-confidence affects the way others respond to their advice.”

“there are several simple steps we can all take to increase creativity, such as traveling to faraway places (or even just thinking about such places), thinking about the distant future, communicating with people who are dissimilar to us, and considering unlikely alternatives to reality.”

The first two of these 4 videos from Seth Godin – about blogging and social networking – are right on the money…

On blogging: “Blogging is free. it doesn’t matter if anyone reads it. What matters is the humility that comes from writing it. What matters is the meta-cognition of thinking about what you’re going to say. How do you explain yourself to your few employees or the cat or whoeevr is going to read it.”

Martin Well (The Ed Techie) writing a guest blog post on establishing an online identity of you are a home worker:

“I used to work on campus 5 days a week, but working at home more has coincided with the advent of blogs and twitter. My professional and personal profile on campus is now much higher than it was when I attended every day, but largely sat in my office, and occasionally ventured out for coffee. I have contact across many different units which are both professionally useful, but also more social and personal than they were previously. I am sure being a homeworker has meant that I have worked harder at establishing this online identity.”

Ed Techie ends up wth six social media principles, which are pure gold:

” 1. <embed> is the universal acid of the web – we should build around it.
2. Simple with reach trumps complex with small audience.
3. Sharing is a motivation to participation – so make it easy and rewarding to do.
4. Start simple and let others build on top
5. Providing limitations frames input (Cf twitter, 12seconds, etc)
6. Complexity resides in the network not the application”

Comment management system. Comes highly recommended…

“Disqus is a powerful comment system that easily enhances the discussion on websites.

“In minutes, connect your community with those of thousands of other websites.”

Umair on the economic fool’s good of charging for newspaper content:

“Profitability can’t be recaptured from a commodity. Newspapers used to be yesterday’s most profitable industry. Warren Buffett made his fortune by investing in newspapers, yesterday. Yet, today, business model innovation, aka “monetization,” is the surest, quickest path to self-destruction. Charging once more for the same old “content” — as argued for by David Simon, in an impassioned CJR article — will inevitably lead newspapers exactly where it led banks investment “banks” and automakers: into economic implosion.’

Moderation is a form of curation rather than damage control. I like this post about how newspapers should get better at doing that:

“In my post the other day, I said that authors need to tend to their comment threads. I still feel that way, but at scale, Krugman scale, they need help. Some of that help can come from interns and entry level employees who can wade through all of the comments using a moderation tool like the one Disqus will be rolling out shortly for publishers. The comment system itself should leverage community interaction to surface the best comments. Then the author can get delivered to them the best comments, via email, the web, or some other method, to respond, if they so desire.”

Nice collection of videos and tips for getting started with Twitter.

“In late 2008, MarketingSherpa surveyed social media marketers about the effectiveness of their practices. Large majorities rated social media marketing effective at influencing brand reputation, increasing awareness and improving search rankings and site traffic.”

some great throughts from Johnnie about complexity, following a (linked to) presentation from Dave Snowden.

UK government’s Department for Business Innovation and Skills 20-page document on how to use Twitter plus a blog post from its author. Really excellent stuff on many levels…

“The TED conference has been helping to blow people’s minds for many years now, and that’s in large part because they put videos of many of the TED talks online for anyone to watch, share, and spread for free. But there are a number of other conferences held each year around the world that also bring together visionaries, intellectuals, and luminaries from a wide variety of disciplines to discuss innovative ideas.”

A whole load of old TV Ads, free downloaded to iTunes
…

A video viz of the growth of Facebook to 250 million members…

“Today, we are going to look into various themes, plugins and tutorials to build your own WordPress Ecommerce website. Let’s look into this WordPress Ecommerce solution starter kits.”

Amusing and occasionally useful set of “New Rules” for living online, including such gems as “Don’t Blog or Tweet Anything With More Than Half a Milion Hits”, “Friend Your Boss, But Not Your Boss’s Boss” and “Remember, Online Conversations are Not About You.”

Really nice framework with visuals for thinking through your personal plans for the future:

“We live in uncertain times. Swine flu rages. Nukes proliferate. Bailouts beget bailouts. Heaven forbid you should have to make a big decision amid such turbulence. Thinking about a career change? Moving to a new city? Paying for a child’s education? Having a hard time deciding what to do?
Thought so. That’s why we asked Peter Schwartz, cofounder of the Global Business Network, to lead us through a tutorial on scenario planning. Schwartz typically does this for major corporations, but the technique works just as well for individuals. To be clear: Scenario planning is not prediction. The goal is to envision possible futures, which will serve as guideposts to the path forward. The payoff is a clearer view of what the future may hold and of the most advantageous route through it.”

Mojave have a helpful review of six social media monitoring systems they have tried out.

A profile of “lifecasting social media junkies”.

Yay – blow up the social media department! No more scribes!

Personal and corporate reputation management firm:

"Your reputation is everything – Brand Titan combines advanced knowledge of search engine optimization, public relations, and traditional branding to deliver consistent results for clients in need of professional grade online reputation management.

"Comprehensive Internet research methodologies and proprietary technology enable us to monitor, and take action against negative press, harmful blog posts, forum discussion topics involving your name or brand, and other online instances of damaging content."

Interesting discussion of "digital outputs" and how they affect online reputation for academics:

"Being invited, and giving, keynotes is often listed as one of the marks of esteem if you are seeking promotion. The reasons are twofold I believe:

Reputation – it demonstrates that you have gained significant standing in your field to be asked regularly to give a keynote talk at a conference.
Impact – if you are giving the keynote then everyone at the conference hears it, and you can therefore claim a significant impact in your subject.
The important element then is not the keynote itself, but what it signifies. If we start with this basis, then we can think of online equivalents. For example, if I give a talk and then put up a slidecast of that presentation, a certain number of views might equate to impact (how many people would hear a live presentation?). If the presentation is retweeted, linked to, embedded, then this might give an indication of reputation."

"ID fraudsters target Facebook and other social networking sites to harvest information about you. Sophos experts recommend you set the following Facebook privacy options to protect against online identity theft."

2007 Sophos survey shows: "Compiled from a random snapshot of Facebook users, Sophos's research shows that 41% of users, more than two in five, will divulge personal information – such as email address, date of birth and phone number – to a complete stranger, greatly increasing their susceptibility to ID theft."

Intriguing argument in favour of microsites, that says we should keep them alive to make them useful:

"For decades, we've been working with media that because of their nature made advertising transient and, like paper plates, sometimes useful but ultimately disposable. With the web, we can create ads that accumulate viewership over time in a way that pre-YouTube TV spots never could, and yet we are squandering the opportunity. Thinking of microsites as an investment that pays off over time instead of an expense line in a three-months campaign budget could be the first step."

This post includes a lovely video of Steve Bezos talking (presumably for Zappos people after the takeover):

1. Obsess over customers
2. Invent (don't accept either or, come up with something new)
3. Think long term – huge competitive advantage, as most people get pressurized into short term thinking.
4. It's always day one… there's always more to be invented, done etc…)

The official Twitter guide to business use of its microblogging service:

"Every day, millions of people use Twitter to create, discover and share ideas with others. Now, people are turning to Twitter as an effective way to reach out to businesses, too. From local stores to big brands, and from brick-and-mortar to internet-based or service sector, people are finding great value in the connections they make with businesses on Twitter."

A kind of "sPeak UR Branes" for Facebook. A whole lot of overshare going on…

Mark Ritson fisks the Superbrands approach:

"Imagine a world where the Ordnance Survey is a bigger brand than Disney. Not crazy enough for you? OK, how about the idea that the Royal Albert Hall's brand is twice as powerful as VW in the UK? Or how would you react if I told you that Mercedes Trucks' brand is twice as good as Tiffany? Still not convinced? Would you believe me that Royal Doulton is a more powerful brand in Britain than Tesco?"

Collection of BusinessWeek articles about innovation.

How Bono's private photos ended up available to everyone on the New York geographic network:

"IT security and control firm Sophos is warning Facebook users who are members of geographic networks to check their privacy settings after photos of Bono from U2 and a couple of bikini-clad girls were made available to the entire New York network."

Someone's story of what they did when they found that a photos of them (non-pornographic) had been posted on a porn site:

"There’s a US copyright law called the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, or DMCA for short, which protects you and I from having our copyrights infringed. If you ever find any of your photos being used without your permission, kinky or otherwise, then following these simple steps should help you get them removed…"

"Can we please have a moment of silence for the power of constraint? Kthx. The issue with recording and sharing in contemporary society is that is far far far too easy to go overboard. This is where we struggle to find balance. Just because you can share every detail doesn't mean you necessarily should. Just because you can record every moment of your day doesn't mean you should. Part of the problem is that the technology doesn't force you to think about your audience. When your mother brings out the photographs of your childhood, she can watch you squirm when you've had enough (usually after the third photo). She may ignore you, but she knows. But what does it mean that we are unable to see – and thus able to ignore – our audience online? When people bitch about folks sharing what they ate for breakfast, they're noting that this kind of sharing of minutia is clearly ignorant of the annoyed audience in preference for the ability to record everything."

"[LEGO] is releasing the almost ridiculously fitting Architecture series, beginning with the Frank Lloyd Wright Collection, six planned sets including the Guggenheim in New York and Fallingwater, the iconic cantilevered waterfall-house outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania."

Press release about PC monitoring software and the issue of cyberbullying.

A broadside against Josh Bernoff's view that digital advertising is inherently superior to offline:

"The fundamental problem right now is that most digital executions are weaker versions of their counterparts in traditional channels. They rely on intrusive media placement to get noticed, or they offer discounts to incentivize people to buy. Very few of them really engage people. And by “engage,” I mean encourage people to willingly devote time to the content. I willingly give my time to search results because I am actively seeking something of value to me. I do not give my time to pop-ups and similar ad formats because they hinder me from getting to the content I want to see. It is not that digital communication cannot be more effective than traditional media; it is simply that most of it is used as a blatant sales pitch that lacks personal relevance for most of the audience."

"The current system, albeit relatively clunky, could be purchased for as little as $350. Essentially it is made up of a webcam, a battery-powered 3M projector, mirror, phone and colored finger caps. But in 10 years – according to Maes, the period of time when this type of system might be fully developed – it could be one device and as small as a watch. Or indeed maybe even a brain implant."

Nice idea: "roll your own microblogging community."

Just incredible 3D projections on buildings… would love to see these up close…

It's creeping out of science fiction and beginning to present serious ethical, actually ethics is a little too abstract, major contemporary issues… As this article points out the debate may well follow the pattern of the GM debate…

Interesting quote: "“Something new has taken place in the past five to eight years,” Dr. Horvitz said. “Technologists are replacing religion, and their ideas are resonating in some ways with the same idea of the Rapture.”

The Kurzweil version of technological utopia has captured imaginations in Silicon Valley. This summer an organization called the Singularity University began offering courses to prepare a “cadre” to shape the advances and help society cope with the ramifications."

Interesting analysis, although mass location tech/mobile web access makes this very different the incredible versatility of twitter (a big reason for it's success IMO)….

"…in a definitive sign that Twitter has corporate users on its mind, the company yesterday launched a 'special guide' for businesses called Twitter 101.

"The guide provides an overview of Twitter written specifically for companies. It describes what Twitter is, how companies can get started, the Twitter lingo, best practices and a handful of case studies."

Um. Wow. (Via a personal branding interview with Robert scoble by dan scwabel…)

"Google is not liable for defamatory comments that appear in news articles, blogs and forums displayed in its search results, a high court judge in London has concluded in a landmark ruling for UK defamation law.

"The case, against Google's US and UK operations, had been brought by London-based Metropolitan International Schools.

"MIS runs distance learning courses in games development under the name Train2Game. MIS launched legal action over comments on the forum of a website that it claimed were defamatory and that appeared in Google's search results."

The Common Data Project in NYC analysed the privacy policies of 10 of the most popular websites and found some interesting recurring themes. For instance:

"Private Data Not Covered By Policy
Yes, that's right. In some policies, there is data collected through sites and services but not covered within the legal terms of any binding privacy policy. An example of this is the way third party advertisers will handle your data. In other words, any data collected by outside advertisers on a particular site isn't protected."

Presentation by Dr Michael Wesch – well worth watching – about anthropology and YouTube.

A technical, but understandable analysis and explanation of why browsing the web is never really private.

"It's pretty well-known that Hitler and his propaganda minister, Paul Joseph Goebbels, looked to American advertising for inspiration. What I didn't realize was how proud the advertising industry was about it. In its July 20, 1933, issue, Printers' Ink, one of the lead advertising trade journals of its time, speaks approvingly of Hitler's method…"

Great analysis of using the mighty SlideShare service:

"1. Sharing improves your own practice
"2. A new form of artefact is created – these aren’t just presentations, but a new type of artefact.
"3. Presentations are social objects
"4. The audience is distribute
"5. It’s a learning object/OER"

"Share your Spotify playlists with the world and discover new music."

Advertising industry hurts itself by not being transparent about its digital targeting approach:

" Over the long term, the stealth approach is a huge risk. A few high-profile missteps might get publicized, resulting in a public outcry. Or the mainstream media and blogosphere might demonize the practitioners of some of these stealthy approaches. Or governments might step in to regulate the new practices."

US government/military bods developing social media literacy:

"For his new job, Jones is learning terms such as Tweeting and "being on the blogs," he said, to connect with Army families and their support network through the broadcast text-messaging service Twitter. "Now that the department has opened access to go to some of those sites, it will be a tremendous opportunity to find those families and the people who support families," Jones said at a panel on personal and professional networking during Monday's Excellence in Government conference in Washington. The conference was sponsored by Government Executive Media Group."

"One of the first augmented reality apps to go live in the iPhone AppStore. Forget boring 2D tube maps! Try this amazing new application that tells Londoners where their nearest tube station is via their iPhones video function." Via delicious.com/ewan.mcintosh

Neville gives us the low-down on the Best Buy job story – it was stipulated that applicants for an emerging media marketing job should have a minimum of 250 followers on Twitter.

I'm besotted with SlideShare right now but this document sharing website looks pretty good.

"It may be time to approach social business by design. This means moving beyond our current definition of "social media" as a PR tool and thinking of it as something that can evolve the way we work, communicate, interact and collaborate at a core business level. If your organization has a Twitter account with someone practicing "transparent communications" while your entire ecosystem is siloed, then your existing system may be in need of a re-design."

Some really interesting uses of Facebook Connect out there. For a start FB Connect being integrated with a Blu-Ray disk is cool, but I'm particularly interested in the ways the FB Connect as your online identity is being used – e.g. the girls-only SN that uses it…

"A Facebook group created by staff at an Egyptian call centre, which used to work for Spinvox, includes a picture of one transcribed message containing what appears to be sensitive commercial information."

"What Abrams had envisioned was a portal to connect with a tight-knit group of friends. Now, he says, he accepts digital friendships from people he meets through work and from vague acquaintances out of guilt. He finally just …

"… threw up his hands and adapted. Facebook and Twitter are now his vehicles for promotion, not friendships."

"Fat Wheelz Digitales (FWD) is a mini-tribe of  mountain bikers that sends small expeditions into the bosomy hills of the South Downs in Sussex every week or two and occasionally further afield to places like Surrey and all that. Some of our roughneck posse are from the digital world. Some definitely aren't."

A brilliant artcle remembering David Ogilvy and some truths about advertising…

Fascinating analysis – acknowledging the data bias – of how people share things online. Marketers are often obsessed with Facebook as a *place* to engage, rather than as a network that distrubutes useful content:

"I think there is a pinch of salt required with this because I suspect the data is Addtoany’s alone, but it makes for interesting reading. If, despite my post yesterday about Facebook’s audience numbers, you thought Facebook was a pointless place to target any marketing activity, perhaps this chart will make you think again – and do so in a way which means any message you do put out are relevant, timely and appropriate."

Some useful thoughts on developing personal use of Twitter: "The value of that network to an individual is at least twofold – firstly, as a source of information, observations, news and feedback to you as the person at the centre of your own network; secondly as an amplifier of your own ego broadcast messages. (There are other benefits of course – like being able to see who is talking to whom about what.) You may also feel there is some benefit to just having a large number of followers, if only in the bragging stakes.

That is, the more followers the better, right? It's bound to be good for my reputation, if nothing else, surely…?

Well….. maybe not…?

Consider these two questions:

– who follows you? if I look at your followers what can I tell about you, from them?
– what is your blocking policy? who you block is just as much a part of the way you manage your network as the people you actively follow."

"There is some variation in the types of people who tend to use each of the top three social networks. Typically, MySpace users are more likely to be women, Hispanic or black, to have a high school education or some experience with college. The median age of a MySpace user is 27 years old.  Facebook users are more likely to be men and to have a college degree. The median age of a Facebook user is 26 years old.  LinkedIn users are more likely to be men, to be white and to have a college degree. The median age of a LinkedIn user is 40 years old."