Looking for a way to knock the argyle socks off your geeky lover this Valentine’s Day? Skip the computer programmer-themed porn and try gifting your nerdy loved one some HTTPanties or “Tweet Me” Sweethearts candy. The Huffington Post tracked down thirteen geeky gifts that scream “I love you, nerd face.” Full geeky gift list at Huffington Post. Get your geek on. Permalink | Leave a comment »
Selected by khalilaleker
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Holy Kaw!
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13 geeky Valentine’s Day gifts
9 Feb 2010 | 12:33 pm -
Google Buzz's official demo [video]
9 Feb 2010 | 11:25 amGoogle has just unveiled its latest attempt to become more relevant in the social media space—Google Buzz. The product is integrated within Gmail and will be rolled out gradually to all of the webmail service’s users over the next few days. While this development is still unfolding, you can check out Google Buzz’s two-minute demo of Buzz in action both online and via mobile. What are your initial reactions? Another soon-to-be-forgotten Google product like Wave, or a Facebook/Twitter killer? Full story at Mashable. Total Google coverage. Permalink | Leave a… -
Darth Vader’s original wimpy voice [video]
9 Feb 2010 | 11:15 amImagine a galaxy far, far away where Darth Vader sounded like any other British bloke strolling down the corridors of the Death Star. Before James Earl Jones provided the menacing voice of the Dark Lord of the Sith, English actor and bodybuilder David Prowse delivered the lines from inside the Darth costume. While George Lucas never intended for Prowse’s voice to make the flick’s final cut, it’s weird to imagine how different Star Wars would have been with a different Vader voice. Full story at Huffington Post. Tons of Star Wars tidbits. Permalink | Leave a… -
7 things you didn’t know about condoms
9 Feb 2010 | 10:14 amRubbers. Raincoats. Inconvenient. Whatever you call 'em, condoms remain a must-have in the safe sex tool box. Long before the days of Durex and Trojans, men used animal intestines to protect their willies (that sounds lovely, eh ladies?) and still to this day use lambskin condoms for latex allergies and supposed extra sensitivity. Want to learn even more fun facts about condoms that will surely impress your friends and potential lovers? Check out Asylum's seven things you probably didn't know about condoms that includes tantalizing tidbits like: Vaseline + condoms = Disintegrated rubber and… -
Horror flick mirror scare mash-up [video]
9 Feb 2010 | 9:25 amHorror movies love to rely on cliches to scare the bejeezus out of us, but does it really surprise anyone that the axe murderer is going to pop in the reflection of a mirror? Ok, yes, it still totally sparks a few pee-in-pants moments. Check out this mash-up of mirror scare moments (fair warning: don’t watch alone in a big, dark, scary house): Full story at Four Four. Boo! Tons of scary and not so scary movie news. Permalink | Leave a comment »
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TechCrunch
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TED: Now with More Elitism?
9 Feb 2010 | 12:33 pmLet me say upfront: I have never been to TED, mostly because I have never been invited and I can’t imagine a world where I justify paying $6,000 for a conference. But I live in Silicon Valley so every year leading up to the star-studded event, I have to hear about it from nearly everyone I know: People who love it and people who hate it. For the last few years, these conversations have gotten ugly. What I’ve seen and heard from the outside depicts the sad transition from what used to be an inventive, elite industry conference that cross-pollinated experts from the worlds of technology,… -
Microsoft Slams Google Buzz
9 Feb 2010 | 12:20 pm“Busy people don’t want another social network, what they want is the convenience of aggregation. We’ve done that. Hotmail customers have benefitted from Microsoft working with Flickr, Facebook, Twitter and 75 other partners since 2008.” – Microsoft statement on Google Buzz. When one of the big guys launches a new product, competitors generally just sit it out and let the press do its thing. But Microsoft made a point of reaching out today with the quote above, criticizing Google Buzz as “another social network” and noting that Hotmail has aggregated Flickr,… -
Yahoo Not Pleased With Google Buzz’s Buzz
9 Feb 2010 | 12:18 pmGoogle officially unveiled Buzz, their major step into social statuses through Gmail today at an event held at 10 AM PT. Within the hour, Yahoo PR was set in motion to let everyone know that they actually did this first, almost a year ago. Here’s the humorous email that was sent out: It’s been almost a year and a half since we first launched Yahoo! Updates – a social feature that lets people share their status, content and online activities and stay connected to what their friends and family are doing on Yahoo! and across the Web – and we wanted to share the latest on what’s… -
Sergey Brin Used Google Buzz To Write His NYT Op-Ed On Google Books
9 Feb 2010 | 11:54 amDuring the Q&A session today following the Google Buzz event, Google co-founder Sergey Brin revealed something both humorous and interesting. When asked a question about practical uses for Google Buzz, Brin noted that he actually used the service to help him write his op-ed about Google Books that ran in the New York Times last year. Brin noted that he was having difficulty with the article because it’s just his one point of view. So he put out his draft on Google Buzz (which Google was testing out internally within the company at the time), and quickly got dozens of comments. Brin… -
Screenshots: Google Buzz In Action
9 Feb 2010 | 11:17 amNow that the Google event is over, the company has started turning on Buzz for Gmail users. Here are some quick screenshots of it in action. CrunchBase InformationGoogle BuzzInformation provided by CrunchBase
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Mashable!
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5 Ways Airlines and Hotels Can Drive Revenue with Social Media
9 Feb 2010 | 12:18 pmShashank Nigam is the CEO of SimpliFlying.com, an award-winning blog on airline branding. He tweets at @simpliflying.Social media is no longer the “new” thing, especially for airlines. JetBlue has over one an a half million followers on Twitter. Lufthansa allows passengers to update their Twitter or Facebook status about where they are in the sky. AirAsia drives buzz about its new destinations through custom micro-sites. However, most airlines (and airports and hotels) are still struggling to earn direct revenue from their social media efforts.Yet if Dell can make $6.5 million from… -
Google Buzz: The Official Demo [VIDEO]
9 Feb 2010 | 11:08 amGoogle has just unveiled its latest attempt to become more relevant in the social media space: Google Buzz. The product is integrated within Gmail and will be rolled out gradually to all of the webmail service’s users over the next few days.We’re still digesting all of the implications of Buzz (and will have more coverage throughout the day), but in the meantime, here’s the two-minute demo of the product in action both on the Web and via mobile that Google showed off during today’s press conference:This video from Google looks specifically at the mobile features of Buzz:What are your… -
BREAKING: Google Goes Social with Google Buzz
9 Feb 2010 | 10:21 amIt’s official: Google has just announced Google Buzz, its newest push into the social media foray. This confirms earlier reports of Gmail integrating a social status feature.On stage revealing the new product was Bradley Horowitz, Google’s vice president for product management. While introducing the product, Mr. Horowitz focused on the human penchant for sharing experiences and the social media phenomenon of wanting to share it in real time. These two key themes were core philosophies behind Google Buzz.“It’s becoming harder and harder to find signal in the… -
Facebook Kills Lexicon, Focuses on Analytics for Page Admins
9 Feb 2010 | 10:20 amFacebook has removed its Lexicon analytics app, blogger Steve Rubel noticed last night.Don’t know what Lexicon was? That’s OK, a lot of people didn’t; it was announced very quietly, but it was a neat tool. You could use Lexicon to see how frequently, and when, certain terms were trending in status updates, just like you can use Google Trends to do the same with search terms.For example, our own Stan Schroeder was a bit perplexed a couple years back when the word “sex” had a massive spike in usage on May 30, 2008. It was the launch day of the Sex and the City… -
7 Ways to Promote Your Offline Event Using Social Media
9 Feb 2010 | 10:10 amSusan Payton is the President of Egg Marketing & Public Relations, an internet marketing firm. She blogs at The Marketing Eggspert Blog, and teaches marketing courses at Marketing EggSchool. Follow her on Twitter @eggmarketing.We all know about Tweetups and online events, but what about events that you didn’t specifically invite the Twitterati to attend? Conferences, meetings and parties are all events that might not have started online, but which can definitely benefit from online promotion and mention.Leverage your offline event with some smart social media marketing. Here are…
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ReadWriteWeb
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Can Google Buzz Succeed Where FriendFeed Couldn't?
9 Feb 2010 | 12:20 pmGoogle just launched Google Buzz, the company's new social networking service which will be tightly integrated with Gmail. There can be little doubt that Google Buzz looks a lot like FriendFeed, the social aggregation service that was acquired by Facebook in August 2009. Today, FriendFeed's developers are Facebook employees and aren't likely to continue to improve the service in any meaningful way, while the active user community on FriendFeed continues to shrink rapidly. Given the similarities between the two services, we can't help but wonder if Google Buzz will be able to succeed where… -
How Google Buzz is Disruptive: Open Data Standards
9 Feb 2010 | 11:31 amGoogle rolled out a social stream service today called Buzz. It looks on the surface like Facebook, FriendFeed and other stream reading and writing services. It will compete with Facebook and Twitter. Under the covers, though, this major product was built by a team of people taking a radical new approach to online publishing: Buzz is all about open, standardized user data. Google Buzz data can be syndicated out to other services using the standard data formats called Atom, Activity Streams, MediaRSS and PubSubHubbub. That couldn't be more different from Facebook. Google has taken open data… -
Mobile Health: Will Network Applications Help Us Get Healthy?
9 Feb 2010 | 11:30 amLast week, we were at the mHealth initiative conference in Washington D.C. The keynotes were all about the impact mobile health applications are having in shaping the future of the health care system. Nothing demonstrates that more than the iPhone. In the 18 months since it was released, it has been perhaps the biggest thing to happen to health care electronic records, which has seen billions of dollars worth of investment in past decades. Mobile and wireless health applications directly impact the individual's health and have the promise of ensuring that when a patient leaves a doctor visit,… -
Foursquare Partners with Zagat, New York Times
9 Feb 2010 | 11:17 amFoursquare has come out strong in recent weeks with partnership deals that look to put it at the top of the location-based app game. Last week, it announced a partnership with Bravo, the style and fashion-centric television network, and today it has come out with a partnership with Zagat, the restaurant guide, and the New York Times. As we wrote last week, Foursquare is competing in an increasingly crowded space. These partnerships may help it attract a whole new audience and remain competitive against other services like Yelp that are just joining in the location-based arena. Sponsor… -
Live Blogging from Google: Launch of Google Buzz
9 Feb 2010 | 11:11 amThis morning, Google is announcing some exciting new features for two of its most popular applications. Team Red, as we affectionately call ourselves, is present at the Googleplex in Mountain View, and we'll be live blogging the event, giving you, dear reader, a fascinating play-by-play. Stay tuned for updates! The event will begin at 10 a.m. Pacific (UTC -8). Just refresh this post to see new content as events unfold. Additional on-the-fly research and images from RWW journalist Frederic Lardinois. Sponsor 11:11: The event is over! Time to chase people down and ask some more pointed…
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Building43
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Boxee: Entertainment in the Age of Democratized Content
9 Feb 2010 | 8:00 amChances are if you watch building43, you aren’t just plopping on the sofa and watching countless hours of mind-numbing TV by yourself. Modern entertainment allows us to share videos on YouTube, hunt for great tunes on Pandora, and catch the latest episode of “Lost” on Hulu. Fortunately for us, there’s Boxee. Boxee is a centralized control panel for the media you consume online. Users can easily switch between GeekBrief.TV, the latest episode of Jon Stewart, and the Flickr pics they took on their latest Europe trip. It delivers a similar experience you’d get with… -
9 Quick Tips Learned While Raising $33 Million In Venture Capital
9 Feb 2010 | 6:54 amAs the market improves, my guess is that many of you will likely be thinking about raising funding for your company. With my latest startup, I’m now a venture-backed startup founder (I’ve raised $33 million in three rounds of capital for my marketing software company). So, I’ve got some direct experience with the process. Several of the companies I’m an angel investor in or otherwise involved with have also been in the fund-raising process. So, along the way, I’ve learned a few things, and I’d like to share them with you. There’s already lots of great content on the… -
The Anti-Bullet Test
8 Feb 2010 | 1:39 pmI’m sick of generic feature/benefit bullet points. They’re just too easy to make fun of. Here’s a sampling from a website that will remain nameless to protect the guilty: Easy to use Robust features Innovative systems Really, it’s easy to use? As opposed to what, difficult and temperamental? Robust, huh? Great, because it looks tenuously held together, the slightest breeze threatening to crumble its delicate construction, so it’s good to know that, actually, it’s robust. Oh I’m sorry, its features are robust, whatever that means. If you want to not… -
Gillmor Gang 02.05.10
7 Feb 2010 | 10:31 amThe Gillmor Gang — Andrew Keen, Danny Sullivan, Kevin Marks, and Robert Scoble — talk smack about Flash. Recorded live Friday, February 5, 2010. Audio only (right click to save to your computer) -
A new personal assistant on your mobile phone
4 Feb 2010 | 9:01 pmThe ultimate personal assistant allows you to find task-oriented information on the go, by connecting to the best services around the Internet, Siri is not a search engine; it is a do-engine. The app works by pairing your spoken request with the best services available by connecting you to these services to fulfill any request. The application takes a request, and breaks it down into parts. The user can tell Siri they want to go on a date consisting of an Italian dinner for two and a movie, a comedy. The application will then return movie times for comedy selections; Italian restaurants near…
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Social Media Today
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Google, Gmail, Relevance Filtering & the Future of Social Media
9 Feb 2010 | 2:43 am[This blog post was cross-posted with my new blog on the Forrester Blog for Interactive Marketers: http://blogs.forrester.com/marketing/2010/02/google-gmail-relevance-filtering-the-future-of-social-m... -
China and Feeling For Stones: a Conversation with Zhang Hai Hua
9 Feb 2010 | 2:25 amAuthor of Think Like Chinese on Des Walsh & Friends show The other week on my Des Walsh & Friends show on BlogTalkRadio, I had the pleasure of speaking with a woman of great accomplishment and busi... -
Forresters Blogging patch
9 Feb 2010 | 12:46 amI have never been a fan of Forrester Research – but they produce a lot of good research. By the way, have you noticed a lot of the research firms have been acquired or are merging of late. So, ... -
Splitting Up the US – How About the Rest of the World?
8 Feb 2010 | 12:05 pmThat’s the map of the US based on Pete Warden’s analysis of Facebook profiles. So I live in Socialistan – of well, I grew up in a Communist country, if this is Socialism, I can handle it But wha... -
User-review sites, when shills go wrong
8 Feb 2010 | 10:35 amUrbanspoon, the user review site and social network for foodies, has been running a contest to find the "most romantic restaurant" in cities across America. Great idea with Valentine's Day coming up, ...
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ProBlogger Blog Tips
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Blog Like a Cartoonist – Six Stunning Secrets to Help You Break Through Bloggers Block
9 Feb 2010 | 11:24 amAnd now for a guest post with a difference from Cartoonist Mark Anderson from Andertoons.com who created this comic to illustrate the writing techniques he uses to create his cartoons, and how they can help bloggers push through writer’s block. Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger. Blog Like a Cartoonist – Six Stunning Secrets to Help You Break Through Bloggers Block Share This -
Have a 37 Minute Coffee Break with Me [Audio Interview]
9 Feb 2010 | 5:43 amIf you have a spare 37 minutes today to grab a coffee with me (or at least are doing something that will allow you to listen to something for 37 minutes in the background) check out this interview I did with Robb Sutton late last week. Robb’s also transcribed it for those who prefer to read. In the interview Rob asks me about a whole range of stuff including: my background in blogging my philosophy on lots of sites vs focusing upon a single (or just a few) sites the process of going full time (and my wife’s six month ultimatum) my shift in focus to e-books and membership sites a… -
What Is Your Blogging Goal for February?
8 Feb 2010 | 6:22 amA few days back I asked readers a question: What Have You Been Putting Off and What’s Holding You Back? Some of the responses to the question in comments (and via email and Twitter) revealed a lot of bloggers really wanting to step things up and get what they’ve been putting off done. So – lets set some goals – what do you want to achieve by the end of February? I’m not going to be calling you up to check up to see if you’re meeting your goals – but hopefully in putting them down publicly you’ll find yourself a little more spurred on to reach… -
9 Tricks I Used To Triple My AdSense Earnings In 30 Days
7 Feb 2010 | 6:34 amGuest post by Daniel Scocco from Daily Blog Tips. I have been using Google AdSense to monetize my blogs and websites for as long as I remember. In fact it was the first method I ever tried (I made a whooping $15 on my first month… back in 2005). Over the years I migrated to other methods (e.g., direct sponsors and affiliate marketing), which made AdSense become merely an inventory filler. I was still making around $1,000 monthly from it, but whenever I could I would use other methods over it. Then some months ago I started noticing an upward trend on the CPC of my sites, and I figured that… -
How I Got Some Paying Sponsors Without Really Meaning To
6 Feb 2010 | 6:21 amA guest post by Josh Hanagarne. World’s Strongest Librarian was about four months old when I got interested in sponsors. I’d read the articles about how to do it, and none of them sounded that plausible for me and my situation. For one, my traffic wasn’t impressive, certainly not to the point where sponsors were approaching me. And, while my blog has become slightly more focused in its first ten months, it wasn’t targeted at any group of readers in particular, so I wasn’t sure how confident niche advertisers would be. It’s a little more focused now, but I can’t really think of a…
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Logic+Emotion
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We Are The Media. Do We Trust Media?
9 Feb 2010 | 9:22 amFirst, an informal disclaimer. While I work for the firm (Edelman) that conducted the 2010 Trust Barometer, the following opinions expressed are personal and I was not involved with the research or creation of the report. That said, I wanted to express a few non data based thoughts around the the specific finding that there is less trust in a "person like yourself".Now, let's get into why this is worth discussing. Based on comments and conversation which I've seen in industry publications and elsewhere there seems to be a concern that this finding flies in the face of social conventional… -
The Unofficial SXSW Survival Guide
6 Feb 2010 | 12:07 pmHaving passed on my slot to the folks at Dachis Group, I will not be speaking this year at SXSW (interactive) but I will be attending. It will be my second time, and I'm happy to share that there will indeed be a sequel to the sleeper hit event last year known as "Allhat". This year we are going with "Allhat II: Return of the Cattle", and it's sure to be even better complete with local live music thanks to the support from Edelman Digital. That said, there were several things I learned from surviving SXSW, and you might want to take some of them into consideration.Go With The FlowSXSW can… -
Why I'm Not Writing a Book (Right Now)
31 Jan 2010 | 8:17 pmThere's really nothing like a book—they are portable, intimate, useful, influential and the good ones tend to go "viral" in the sense that you share them with people you know. And of course today we have new ways to digest them: from audio to Kindles to iPads etc. A question I've been getting a lot lately is:"When are you writing a book"?I've had some interest—from publishers you've heard of. But the answer is:"Not right now".My logic is simple. One cannot serve two masters—and serve them well. Either my full time job or the book would suffer. So the time is not now. I've got things to… -
Six Ways to Find Social Media Talent
29 Jan 2010 | 6:40 pmMore articles on Harvard BusinessAs organizations move their social media strategies from theory to practice, they discover a difficult truth they must confront: Finding the "perfect" social media talent is practically impossible. To start, the field is flooded with thousands of self proclaimed "experts" who have reinvented themselves to take advantage what looks like a growing business opportunity. Maybe they do know social media, but many don't. They need to be vetted. More broadly, most candidates for social media positions fall at the ends of a spectrum. On one end is the person who… -
The 5 Reasons You're Failing In Social Media
21 Jan 2010 | 1:28 pm1. You really don't want to engage directly with customers, employees, etc.—you just want them to hear what you have to say. 2. You're not ready to create new roles, update process, re-distribute resources and budgets, re-train people, and revise old policies. 3. Social media actually threatens how you make money—but you pay lip service out of fear.4. Politics.5. You see it as a career advancing opportunity as opposed to a significant business transformation.Reverse any of these, and you've likely improved your chances of succeeding in a business environment that's becoming increasingly…
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chrisbrogan.com
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Earn Your GED- Find Success Tomorrow
9 Feb 2010 | 1:30 amNo, not your General Equivalent Degree. The GED to which I refer is “guest experience design.” What the heck am I talking about? I’ll tell you. Old words: customer service. New words: guest experience. Disney, where I am this week, has a concept called a Moment of Truth. A moment of truth is “any time a guest comes into contact with any aspect of a business, however remote, is an opportunity to form an impression.” Note that it’s “an impression.” It can be good; it can be bad. Why “guest?” Because guest is much more hospitable than… -
Pursue the Goal Not the Method
8 Feb 2010 | 1:30 amIn the back of a town car hired to take me to the Kansas City International airport, talking to Jeff, a driver with two kids, self-proclaimed ADD, and a history of quitting rote sales jobs every few months, I realized something of importance to the story of what’s brought me to this place: I am a seeker of the goal, not the method. Now, to unpack. The Method Is What We’re Taught to Pursue We learn our times tables. We learn the 50 states (in the US, at least). We are taught all these rules, these patterns, these systems, these methods. Musicians learn their scales. Painters copy… -
Your Blog From the Prospect’s Point of View
7 Feb 2010 | 7:34 amWhen you use your blog to complain or report sideways about the industry at large, what message is that sending to your potential new clients? If you’re spending your time analyzing what other people in your space are doing, citing why they’re wrong, and providing your commentary about all the things they’re doing, what does your next potential customer come away thinking? Is your negative commentary helping them make a buying decision? I’ve rarely seen the tactic work in traditional advertising. You can graze them a little bit. For instance, I’m a bit fond of… -
Just Lucky I Guess – Kitchen Table Talks
6 Feb 2010 | 1:46 pmIn this Kitchen Table Talks video, I just want to address all the nice folks who call me lucky, or who think I’m just sitting around being handed my lot in life. Can’t see the video? Click here. Direct link to the video “Lucky” is absolutely what I am. Here’s what I do to earn my luck: Write a blog post or two a day. Write a newsletter every week. Comment and connect with others daily. Answer and send hundreds of emails daily. Read voraciously. Work with the best clients I can find. Reach into new markets weekly. Travel extensively. Seems lucky to me. People… -
Some Of The Third Tribe Conversations
6 Feb 2010 | 1:02 pmI’m really enjoying participating in the forums at the Third Tribe site. I was just adding my two cents to a handful of forum postings, and thought that I’d show you what some of the topics we’re talking about are, so you’d have a sense of what’s going on. We don’t really share the contents, because the people participating there like having the chance to speak openly/candidly about their marketing challenges, but I don’t see the harm in sharing a few of the topic titles. Here they are: Favorite copywriting and marketing books? Third Tribe Blogroll? 2…
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Bokardo
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Five User Experience Trends
9 Feb 2010 | 5:22 amSince my blog has been broken a lot recently I missed this excellent overview of Five User Experience trends by Gene Smith. I can’t help but agree with all of them: Services as Software – Gene is one of the first people in the UX industry to admit that good enough, fast and cheap tools like usertesting.com will have a real impact. While most people still feel the need to argue “User testing is important”…the market is moving past that. “How fast can you measure?” is as important as “Did we find everything?” User Experience Analytics… -
Google: Forms & Landing Pages are Key
8 Feb 2010 | 10:01 amA fascinating post by Googler Gavin Doolan: If you are considering making changes to your website design, take a moment to consider the potential revenue impact of your redesign. (This graph) shows a theoretical overview of the ROI impact of various parts of your website. I love that: “theoretical overview”. In other words, they really have no idea. But, if this is true, think about how it would rewire the way the design world works. Almost all money is pushed into technology and branding. Homepage, site redesigns, and custom CMSes are the cash cows of the design… -
Dreamers of Day
7 Feb 2010 | 8:25 amI recently posted this quote on the 52weeksofUX site, but I like it so much I’m going to post it here as well: “All men dream; but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds Awake to find that it was vanity; But the dreamers of day are dangerous men. That they may act their dreams with open eyes to make it possible.” T. E. Lawrence (aka Lawrence of Arabia) -
On the Origins of Avatars
8 Dec 2009 | 4:47 amUpdated: Thanks to several commenters, I’ve updated the piece to cover some more early references to avatars. As I sit looking at Tweetdeck this morning, looking over 40 avatars of people I know and don’t know, I wonder how much of my interaction is influenced by what a particular avatar looks like. Am I more willing to converse with someone who has a realistic avatar? A smiling avatar? Does the offbeat, non-human, text-based avatar inspire better communication or worse? I have my hunches, and will write them up after I have done more research on the subject. In the meantime, here… -
The Most Important Feature of a Multi-Device Web: Syncing
19 Nov 2009 | 6:24 amAs the ecosystem of devices proliferates, with the iPhone and Android platforms coming into their own (along with the ever-impending iTablet), we’re seeing a single feature become the most important and critical piece of new technology: syncing. If you sync seamlessly across devices, people will love you for it. It’s why I love the Apple ecosystem. I add a calendar event to my desktop, iPhone, or web app, and it automagically appears on the others. All of my mail is synced in all of these places so I never have to worry about missing email or knowing whether I replied or having to…
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Brian Solis: Social Media Expert - PR 2.0
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The State of Social Media Around the World 2010
8 Feb 2010 | 3:09 amIf you were to look at Social Media the United States and many other parts of the world, you would believe that the world of Social Media was flat, dominated by social continents including Facebook, Twitter, blogs, YouTube, and Flickr. As we zoom in, we visualize other established and emerging social services that depict provinces and outlying settlements of our social atlas.Upon publishing the original Conversation Prism, which was the culmination of a year’s work documenting and organizing the social web by usage and conversational patterns, the world responded by creating… -
The Roles of Facebook and Twitter in Social Media Marketing
5 Feb 2010 | 4:14 amSocial Media marketing is rapidly earning a role in the integrated marketing mix of small and enterprise businesses and as such, it’s transforming every division from the inside out. What starts with one champion in any given division, be it customer service, marketing, public relations, advertising, interactive, et al, eventually inspires an entire organization to socialize. What starts with one, a domino effect usually ensues toppling each department, gaining momentum, and triggering a sense of urgency through its path. And, it also marks the beginning of our journey through the ten… -
Mobile Internet Market to Eclipse Desktop Internet
3 Feb 2010 | 4:42 amSounds like a sensationalistic headline, but if you read Morgan Stanley’s latest series of reports on the Mobile Internet, you’ll walk away with the same impression.Morgan Stanley’s global technology and telecom analysts documented the rapidly changing mobile Internet market to provide a framework for emerging trends and direction.To set the stage, Morgan Stanley forecasts that the mobile Internet market will be at least 2x the size of desktop Internet when comparing Internet users to mobile subscribers.According to the report, Apple’s iTunes + iPhone/Touch ecosystem… -
The Human Algorithm: How Google Ranks Tweets in Real-Time Search
1 Feb 2010 | 4:57 amIn 2009, Google struck a deal with Twitter, rumored at $15 million, to integrate tweets into keyword related Google searches. And last month, Google also integrated real-time search technology to surface blog posts and news content as they hit the Web – dramatically improving the previous five to 15 minutes its spiders would take to crawl the Web. I should also note that Collecta also offers the ability to search the real-time Web, but its results also include popular networks within the social Web. Between Google and Collecta, Twitter Search is starting to show its age.The opportunities… -
Who is the ME in Social Media?
29 Jan 2010 | 4:11 amGood friend Stowe Boyd recently shared a quote by Gabriel García Márquez, “Everyone has three lives: a public life, a private life, and a secret life.”Indeed, quite simply many of us live life allowing specific, trusted individuals to know us in one or more of our personae. Our moral compass as well as outside influences affect how we balance our three lives. The size and permeability of our personal dividers vary in the separation of each life and resemble doors that open and close based on our desires. We nurture each individually with slight coalescence, but concentrate on…
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Social Media Marketing Strategy, Tactics, and Tools
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How Comcast Approaches Social CRM
9 Feb 2010 | 12:28 amSince I’m speaking on the topic of Social CRM at the New Comm Forum in April, I decided to reach out to a few folks to get their ideas and impressions on what’s going on in the space. One of the people I reached out to was Frank Eliason from Comcast (many of you may know him on twitter as @comcastcares) to find out how they were approaching Social CRM. I chatted with Frank for over an hour and here’s what he had to say. Comcast monitors pretty much every social media channel that is relevant to them. In other words, they exist where their customer and conversations… -
Forrester to Analysts That Have Their Own Blogs: Umm, No
6 Feb 2010 | 3:23 pmAccording to Sage Circle, Forrester is telling all of their analysts that have their own personally branded research blogs that they must either take them down or re-direct them to the Forrester site. Apparently Forrester feels like they can provide more value to their clients if they aggregate all of the content into one space, that place of course being Forrester’s site. My favorite comment on this issue came from Dave McClure who said: “What is the downside for Forrester? Likely not much unless there is a big stink in the blogosphere…” Seriously, do you think that’s the… -
The Social CRM and Enterprise 2.0 Experience Continuum
4 Feb 2010 | 1:53 pmI’m a big fan of the work that Esteban Kolsky has been doing with Social CRM and he recently stated that he is going to be branching over towards the Enterprise 2.0 space. Social CRM and Enterprise 2.0 efforts need to work in conjunction with one another and that’s what this whole post is about. Dion Hinchliffe recently wrote an article stating that Social CRM is Ground Zero for Enterprise 2.0 and I couldn’t agree more. This is why I have been working with Esteban Kolsky on thinking through some of these ideas and developing frameworks around them. Esteban and I are… -
Introducing Social Business One
3 Feb 2010 | 12:50 amTowards the end of last year I was approached by Bob Thompson from Customer Think and Axel Schultze from the Social Media Academy to be a part of a new type of community that just debuted a few days ago called SocialBusinessOne. SBO was designed to be a home base for everything from Enterprise 2.0 to Social CRM (anything social business related). There are plenty of other sites such as The Social Customer, The Customer Collective, and Social Media Today that all aggregate content and build a community around their specific topics. However, none of the other sites have as strong of a… -
Don’t Forget About the Enterprise
2 Feb 2010 | 10:28 amYesterday I had the pleasure of writing another post for Marketing Profs which I hope will get more people to think about social media and collaboration WITHIN the enterprise. Here’s an excerpt from the article: “Oftentimes when we refer to social media we refer to how a brand can engage with customers or prospects to build relationships. These relationships are external facing; meaning brand to consumer, and are used for functions such as product development, customer service, increasing sales, and marketing. Through social media companies seek to understand and do things…
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PR-Squared
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Social Media Abhors A Vacuum
9 Feb 2010 | 8:07 amOne of the issues that large brands must worry about — especially franchise brands — is IF and HOW local affiliates and employees decide to participate online. For example, take a look at a well-known brand like real estate giant Century 21. In addition to the official @C21realestate handle managed by Corp Comms in Parsippany, there are over 350 Century21 employees and/or franchisees on Twitter. Their Twitter handles range from @C21_SUNBELT to @Cntury21, from @Century21Seller to @RealtorToCall (and any number of @firstnamelastname combinations, i.e., no C21 affiliation). Some of these… -
Guess Who’s Talking: Social Media Ethical Dilemmas
8 Feb 2010 | 6:00 amContinuing our series on Social Media Ethical Dilemmas, this post is about the guidelines related to agencies who help client contacts to identify and engage, via commenting, on industry/influencer blogs. The goal is to insert our clients’ executives and perspectives into industry conversations; to help them build up their credibility, and ultimately to create valuable relationships with influencers. How do you do this? How can you effectively inform and educate busy clients while also cultivating the bloggers’ goodwill in an authentic way? Here’s the general process… The Agency… -
Will RSS Fall to Apps?
5 Feb 2010 | 9:15 amSeveral of my friends have launched iPhone apps recently. (I am lookin’ at you, Brian Solis, Chris Brogan, Tamar Weinberg and C.C. Chapman.) This is getting easier and easier to do, thanks to emergent services like Mobile Roadie and Motherapp. On the one hand, yea, I admit it, I smirked at each new announcement. Felt a little too self-reverential. Even Mitch Joel — no shrinking violet — called them “Golden Calf” apps. But I parleyed with C.C. about it, and read his post carefully. His point is not lost on me: RSS is a tool of the elite; most folks surf their Bookmarks… -
SHIFT’s NYC PR Agency Debuts!
3 Feb 2010 | 2:12 pmLast Thursday was a banner day for SHIFT, as we cut the ribbon at the opening of our NYC office. We celebrated in style, ‘natch, with a party that included everyone from SavvyAuntie Melanie Notkin, to reporters from the Wall Street Journal, PRWeek, MediaBistro and RealSimple, to venture capitalists, and many more friends and colleagues. Full-house. Raucous and fun. David Parmet of Marketing Begins at Home probably did the best job of capturing the “real me” — an unmatched combination of goofiness and ego. I half-drunkenly stumbled out onto our NYC… -
Trail of Breadcrumbs
1 Feb 2010 | 4:20 amA new survey conducted by Cision and Don Bates of The George Washington University’s Master’s Degree Program in Strategic Public Relations found that “an overwhelming majority of reporters and editors now depend on social media sources when researching their stories.” Specifically, “89% said they turn to blogs for story research, 65% to social media sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn, and 52% to microblogging services such as Twitter.” Per the news release: While the results demonstrate the fast growth of social media as a well-used source of information for mainstream…
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Web Strategy by Jeremiah
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Quicktake: What Google Buzz Means
9 Feb 2010 | 11:26 amGoogle launches status update features Google launches Buzz, which is similar to Friendfeed, which is now part of Facebook. Content will be aggregated, and then prioritized based upon the people you already email with, Harry McCracken and I call this a social graph based on history, “Historical social graph” or HSG. Secondly, this Google Buzz feature will rate and rank content based on activity and interaction within your social group. Users can choose to publish the Buzz in public, which will display on the Google Profile page. They also announced the ability to input this data… -
Register For Webinar: Developing a Social Strategy by Objectives
8 Feb 2010 | 10:11 amLeft: There are four main categories of social strategy, yet with over 20 subset objectives, which we’ll discuss at a high level. Organizations that focus on social technologies suffer from the symptom of ‘Fondling The Hammer‘ . True social strategy stems from business objectives –not the latest technologies. So often, companies develop social tactics based on the latest tool that’s sprung forth. Yet, so far and few in between to organizations develop an actionable plan based on business goals. This second in our no-cost webinar series is coming up on the… -
People on the Move in the Social Media Industry: Feb 4, 2010
4 Feb 2010 | 8:31 pmThe submissions are defintly picking up, I’m seeing more submissions than before. Why? I attribute this to the start of the new year when many folks change up jobs, and the slight uptick we’re starting to see in the economy. In an effort to recognize the changes in the social media space, I’ve started this post series (see archives) to both track and congratulate folks who get promoted, move, or accept new exciting positions. Please help me congratulate the following folks: Congrats to Jeannette Gibson (Twttier) who has moved to corporate marketing to run social media at… -
Matrix: Companies Should Factor ‘Social Influence’ Into Total Customer Value
3 Feb 2010 | 6:00 amCase Study: An Influential Mom Blogger Caused Mainstream Crises Popular blogger, Heather Armstrong (@dooce) was dissatisfied with her non-working Maytag appliance. Following protocol, she called their support number, yet her issue was not solved. Stonewalled, she argued/warned the support staff that she was on Twitter, yet didn’t receive special assistance. Escalating further, she then flexed a muscle and told them she had over 1,000,000 Twitter followers –yet the support rep did not budge. Finally, she blogged and Tweeted against Maytag, initiating a boycott by her… -
List of Corporate Social Media Strategists, Corporate Community Managers in 2010
30 Jan 2010 | 9:36 amAs an industry watcher, I look at trends, data, spending, technologies, yet what’s really important is watching the trend of professionals as they grow into these roles managing disruptive technologies. Update: Brian Hayashi has created a spreadsheet of this with additional info –like Twitter handles. We’re staying coordinated so the data is matched, follow Brian on Twitter. [Connecting with customers using social technologies is deceptively challenging, as most outsiders don't recognize the leadership to change internal cultural. Now, in public, let's recognize those who…
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The Steve Rubel Lifestream
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Facebook Pulls Lexicon Analytics Tool
9 Feb 2010 | 2:04 amFacebook has taken its promising Lexicon tool down from the site. Perhaps this happened when they pushed their new redesign. Lexicon, like Google Trends, provided limited yet interesting data on site-wide trends. You can read more about it here. From the Lexicon site.... "Thank you for your interest in Lexicon. We are removing the Lexicon product from Facebook for the time being. We may bring components of Lexicon back in the future, but we are focusing development on our analytics tools for Page owners, advertisers and Platform developers." Analytics remains a major focus… -
Trust in Friends Declines, Trust in Experts Rises - Social Media and PR Still Win
8 Feb 2010 | 10:52 amLast week Edelman, my employer, published our tenth annual Trust Barometer study. You can read the full report here. One of the more juicy statistics that Advertising Age and others noted is that trust in peers surprisingly dropped dramatically from 47% to 27%. Tom Foremski says this is bad for PR: "This is bad news for PR agencies because social media has been the ‘point of the spear’ for so many firms. This is what brings in new business." While he's right that social media has been a big business driver, I respectfully disagree with Tom that this is bad news for the PR… -
Facebook Will Centralize the Social Web
8 Feb 2010 | 7:31 amMichael Arrington laments about about the decentralized nature of social content on TechCrunch today... "The online social landscape today sort of feels to me like search did in 1999. It’s a mess, but we don’t complain much about it because we don’t know there’s a better way. You might be sick of hearing this from me, but strongly believe that Facebook is the next Google. It took me a while to "get religion," but now I have it. Just as Google brought a simple way to search the web, my observation is that Facebook is poised to do the same for organizing and -… -
Facebook Could Eat the Web
4 Feb 2010 | 11:54 amPhoto credit: mastermaq Like almost everyone else on the planet, it seems, I am spending more time on Facebook than any other site. The lone exception is Google. The reason I know this is that Safari, my browser, lists Facebook as my most visited site when I access its top sites feature. In addition to using Facebook to check in on what my family, friends and colleagues are up to, I have been using it as a newsreader for months. The screenshot below is my reader. This is something that the company suggested everyone do here. Although I suspect that most users haven't taken the steps… -
Go Big, Get Your Employees on the Bus or Go Home
3 Feb 2010 | 9:10 amThe following is also my column in next week's issue of Advertising Age. Go Big, Get Your Employees on the Bus or Go Home Photo credit: Traffic by scottpowerz The single biggest challenge that marketers face over the next ten years is attention scarcity. Bank on it. According to Andreas Weigland, Amazon.com's former chief scientist, more data was generated by individuals in 2009 than in the entire history of mankind. Human attention, however, is finite - and arguably, it shrinks as we age. The end result is downright ugly. It's like 25 lanes of traffic trying to squeeze through two…
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Feverbee
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Open Question
9 Feb 2010 | 6:21 amIt’s simple. In the comments below tell us which branded online communities are your favourite (and why). You might be the founder (feel free to plug), a member or simply an admirer. We might all learn something. The more examples we have of successful branded communities, the better. -
Spend Less Time On Design, More Time On Spirit
8 Feb 2010 | 3:48 amA great community spirit can overcome a terrible community design.A great community design can't overcome a terrible community spirit.When you're planning your online community, spend the bulk of your time planning how you're going to develop a great community spirit (not a great community website). You get a great community spirit by doing things that bond a community. You need to give members real control over your community. Solicit personal contributions. Plan group events. Document the community history. Highlight in-jokes and milestone moments. Create… -
Don't Start An Online Community For Any Of These Reasons
4 Feb 2010 | 11:30 pmThere are many things online communities do very well. They help retain customers, increase sales margins, develop a competitive advantage, generate great feedback, recruit future staff, cut advertising spend, crowdsource work and improve the way your company does business. But most businesses that want an online community, don’t want any of these. They want an online community for one of the following: Attracting new customers. An online community is a bad platform to attract new customers. It's not impossible, you can always encourage your existing members to invite newcomers for… -
Light A Fire, If At First You Don't Succeed...
3 Feb 2010 | 11:30 pmCreating an online community is very similar to lighting fire. You sometimes need a few matches. Many branded communities fail because the creators only try once. They invite a lot of people, they get a group together, but nothing really becomes of it. This happens, quite often. By why only start one group or only try one time?If you’re creating an online community, you would do well to start several groups or be prepared to try several times/ You might collect the details of 50 people and give them a place to chat. That’s group 1. You might do that with another 50 people. That’s… -
Time Isn't As Important As You Might Think
2 Feb 2010 | 11:30 pmThe amount of time it takes to run an online community is misunderstood. It doesn't matter how many hours you work. Many of the best online communities are ran by people working just an hour or two a day. What really matters with time is which hours you work and what you do in those hours. 1) Which hours should you work? If you work from midnight to 8am, you’re probably not going to be an effective online community manager. All your members will be asleep. It’s better to work when your community is most active. If your community is…
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The Engaging Brand
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Why you should be lazy!
9 Feb 2010 | 12:19 pmI remember Dad giving me a great piece of advice when I was trying to think of a way of redesigning our customer service offering...he said "Think and be lazy!""What, why be lazy?" "Because customers want simplicity, they will pay a premium to people who make their life easier, simpler"In the social media age, I think this is even more true and should be at the core of your offering. When I give presentations at speaking events the best thing I can hear is "You make it sound so simple", that means that I have created value.So how can your businessSimplify its structure to allow everyone to be… -
Show 283 - Social Media and Customer Retention
8 Feb 2010 | 6:49 amShow 283 of The Engaging Brand leadership and marketing podcast is ready just for you. To subscribe or listen on your PC now - both for free, you don't need to download anything - all explained at the end of the post and brought by our sponsor: GotoMeeting Hold your meetings online for just $49/mo. Try GoToMeeting FREE for 30 days. On today's podcast we talk to the brilliant Joseph Jaffe. He was written a fabulous new book called Flip the Funnel and we talk about Motivation behind flip the channel How retaining the customer should be at the core of your business strategy The need to fuse… -
4 Steps to Recovery
5 Feb 2010 | 12:28 pmFollowers in twitter or facebook will know that I broke my foot this week - and I have to say I am not the best patient there has ever been! I was thinking that businesses could learn a lot from my experience.When your strategy is "broken" or your business needs "mending" then try a C.A.S.TC = Create a culture which diagnoses the problem quickly. Realizing the problem too late just makes the recovery so much harder...create warning systems to diagnose quickly - trend reporting, constant conversation, constant challenge, listening for pressure pointsA = Articulate simply the recovery process. -
3 Ways to Tap into People's Emotions
3 Feb 2010 | 3:46 amThe social in the phrase social media gives you a clue on what people are looking for....When people get their social media strategy right, they tap into the emotional element of people's lives.But how can you tap into that emotional element? I think there are 3 key ways with social mediaTap into memories. Memories can be long term or short term. There is a huge difference in selling say 'Basic finanical training' and 'Ever looked at a set of numbers and thought I have no idea what they mean?'. Your product is the solution to a fear or an experience which that existing or potential customer… -
Your brand is social whether you like it or not!
1 Feb 2010 | 1:40 pmThe web has many conversations about brands each day. I often have conversations with people who say "I fear social media, I fear the negative aspect for the brand"What I think is important, is that brands realize that the web is social by nature......and if you don't give your customers something to share, or if you don't give them something to talk positively about.......then your brand still remains talked about, but with you on the outside of the conversation. Your inactivity does not stop the social web, it may even increase the negative aspects of the social web...because people feel…
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danny brown
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7 Days to Turn Your Blog Into a Social Media Hub – Day 3: Building Blocks
8 Feb 2010 | 5:50 pmThis is the third part of a seven part mini-series looking at how and why to turn your blog into a social media hub. You’ll be able to find the complete series here. Last time we looked at decluttering your social networks, for the simple reason that having too many spreads you too thin. Being spread too thin dulls your impact, and to use social media for your goals (and meet those of your customers) you need to have impact at every touch-point. Think of it like a flashlight in a power cut. All your current networks are lights, and too many lights blind and confuse, especially if… -
Introducing DANgerous Liaisons
6 Feb 2010 | 10:29 pmOkay, so first, apologies again for the no-show of part three of the Social Media Hub series. I’ve been snowed under with a lot of 12for12k stuff, so I apologize sincerely and promise that the remaining parts will be consecutive all this week. Now… on to some juicy stuff (hopefully). I recently wrote a guest post over at Sarah Robinson’s blog about the Bounceability of Craptastic. It was a bit different from the normal topics here, and a nice change of pace if you like. Which set me thinking. Obviously my “niche”, if you like, is social media, marketing, business… -
A Slight Intermission on Blog Comments Respect
3 Feb 2010 | 5:53 pmHi guys. So today was meant to be the third part of the 7 Days to Turn Your Blog Into a Social Media Hub series. This will appear tomorrow, as something’s been chewing on my mind today (and apologies to anyone who was expecting the Hub post). When I write a blog post, it’s obviously my point of view. Once it’s in the open, though, it then becomes a shared point of view with you, the readers – and your point of view is what builds the discussions around a post. Sometimes you’ll agree with me; other times, not so much. And that’s what makes the comments after… -
7 Days to Turn Your Blog Into a Social Media Hub – Day 2: Decluttering
2 Feb 2010 | 9:47 amThis is the second part of a seven part mini-series looking at how and why to turn your blog into a social media hub. You’ll be able to find the complete series here. Yesterday we looked at why you need a social media hub, and why your blog is the ideal platform. There were some great comments left on why a website should be your hub, and the blog just another spoke. While websites are still used and useful I prefer the blog approach, as outlined in my response to Mark W Schaefer’s valid comment: I guess I view websites as the storefront for the business relationship that’s built… -
7 Days to Turn Your Blog Into a Social Media Hub – Day 1: Defining Your Hub
31 Jan 2010 | 9:59 pmThis is the first part of a seven part mini-series looking at how and why to turn your blog into a social media hub. You’ll be able to find the complete series here. Social media. It’s all the rage. Pepsi is pinning its Super Bowl hopes on it. Ford’s social media strategy, led by Scott Monty, helped regain trust (and profits) after the Detroit Big Three Meltdown last year. Barack Obama used it wisely to help his overall campaign in winning the White House race. Marketers are allocating more of their budgets to social media marketing and advertising in 2010. So, yeah –…
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The Lost Jacket
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You Have Nothing to Hide...Unless You Do.
9 Feb 2010 | 6:35 amToday's Guest Post is from Tadeusz Szewczyk alias “Tad Chef” of onreact.com Suchmaschinenoptimierer is Germany’s most notorious white hat SEO, assaulting outdated SEO practices since 2004. He messes with the Internet since 1997 though and therefore has all the scars of a web developer and not only online publisher after more than 10 years of advanced nerdism. The single biggest obstacle for businesses that deal with social media or even the Internet is that companies try to hide as much as they can. When the metaphor of the global village was first introduced it was more of a joke but… -
Building and Measuring Cool
2 Feb 2010 | 8:12 amMetrics are sexy. The key is knowing how to present them and make them experiential. How do you do this? Here's a hint: Not with a pie chart. Metrics have never been able to compete with advertising because of the mediums involved. How can you compare James Cameron's Avatar to the sales numbers of orange juice for the third quarter? The answer: You actually can. It's just the way in which you present and house the information. After all, didn't Avatar start out as raw data? It was only when it was refined and organized that it became the visceral experience it is today. It's with this… -
Smart Social Marketing: Segment, Analyze, and Follow the Money
1 Feb 2010 | 7:21 amAndrew Swenson is marketing strategist in St. Louis. He is a believer of youth in biz, lover of indie rock, and blogger at wordpost.org. Consider the fact that while 59% marketers will spend more on social media this year, some 75% of them haven't been able to demonstrate concrete returns. If 2010 is the year of social media measurement, the year when we finally gain the experience we need to prove ROI, then we must focus our decision-making on what social relationships are doing for our bottom line, not some empty rhetoric about ROI as "return on influence." In short, we must focus on our… -
Why People Hate Your Viral Marketing
26 Jan 2010 | 9:10 amViral marketing doesn't exist unless your content actually goes viral. This is contrary to what countless advertising, production or guerrilla marketing companies will tell you. (Sorry guys.) When a piece of marketing does go viral? It will either burn out fast and furious or enjoy infamy and adulation from its many fans. What separates the two makes the difference between success and failure. After all, the message that your company sucks may go viral, but it doesn't make you successful and will end up hurting you. How can you avoid the pitfalls and dangers inherent with widespread… -
The Wikification of Business
19 Jan 2010 | 5:30 amWhat is the average weight of a male orca? How many years did Charles I of England reign? What is the definition of a wiki? Wikipedia and the proliferation of wiki resources from both external and internal communities have served as open source organization for the internet. Put simply? It's the fastest and most efficient means to build a base of knowledge about a particular subject by tapping into a general collective. It institutionalizes knowledge for a particular category. Want to know the answer to a random question? You'll probably find it on Wikipedia. What implications does the…
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Communicate Value
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You Can’t Serve Everyone: Clarifying Your Niche for Better Marketing Results
7 Feb 2010 | 5:01 pmBefore you even start implementing any marketing strategies, it’s important to be crystal clear about whom it is you are trying to reach. Some of the questions you should be able to answer around this include: What is your niche? Who is your target market and what is it that they want? What is your message to them? Often, small business owners are afraid to narrow down their target market for fear that this will limit them. Countless times I have heard people say “my target market is small business owners” or “my niche is really anyone who needs what I… -
Managing Your Connections with Twitter Lists
4 Feb 2010 | 5:02 pmLists are one of the newer features that have been added by Twitter. They are also one of the best ways to leverage strategic connections with your followers. Lists are important because they allow you to closely track and respond to specific people—which starts to become imperative once you are following more than a couple hundred “tweeps.” I like using lists to leverage my time and energy in order to make influential connections across different groups. For example, I created my own list of entrepreneurs that I admire so I could see all of their tweets in one place if I want… -
4 Ways a Mentor Can Help Transform Your Business
28 Jan 2010 | 5:11 pm<—My coach Alicia Forest and I at our retreat last weekend in NY. For the past several years as I have built my business, I’ve made sure to surround myself with people who help both my business and myself grow. Whether this is a mastermind, a mentor or a coach, these people propel me forward in a way that I doubt I could do as easily on my own. Building a business isn’t easy, but you don’t have to do it alone. Here are four ways I’ve benefited (and continue to benefit) from having someone like this in my corner. Shortcuts I have always been a big believer in not reinventing… -
How to Easily Get Started on YouTube
27 Jan 2010 | 3:08 pmYouTube is still the most well known video site and the one with the widest reach. It’s actually the number #3 most-trafficked website on the Internet behind Google and Facebook! Incorporating video into your marketing is a smart idea because it can be done rather inexpensively and it’s an effective way to get yourself found in the search engines. However, many people are still not sure how they can actually use YouTube and video to help boost their online presence. The first step is to actually have a video to upload of course. Not Ready For Your Close-Up? If you are new to… -
6 Steps Social Media Group Coaching Starts 1/26!
18 Jan 2010 | 1:48 pmI’m excited that registration for my 6 Steps to Kick Start Your Social Media Success System(TM) Take Action Group coaching program is now open! This 8-week program kicks off January 26th at 8pm Eastern. I am offering $100 off so you’ll want to get all the details right away: http://communicatevalue.com/6steps/ The 6 Steps System teaches you online marketing strategies and processes combined with social media to create a real-world, proven system for consistently bringing in new clients and customers using the Internet…and it’s the EXACT system I still use every day in…
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Social Media Rockstar
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The Dangers of Social Media Imbalance
25 Jan 2010 | 4:57 pmSocial media is quietly forcing an integration of “work” vs. “play” into the mainstream business culture. Networking and socializing used to be quarantined into special times and locations – like conferences, power lunches, and parties. But now virtual cocktail hour and watching cool videos have been integrated into our desktop, inbox and phone with apps and constant reminders that keep us distracted connected. Social media is forcing an integration of work and play, in business. image: Mike Oleveri & Rev. Xantos Some companies, consultants and HR… -
VIDEO: A Brief History of Social Media
28 Dec 2009 | 1:36 pmHere’s a video of a short presentation I did on the history of social media. It traces the evolution of social media back from phone phreaking in the 1950’s, to the BBS’s and online services of the 80’s, to the real-time mobile web and social collaboration tools of today. If you’d be willing to take a second to rate the video on YouTube, I’d really appreciate it! -
3 Core Principles of Social Media Productivity
22 Dec 2009 | 2:38 pmThis is a guest post by Chris Goddard from Affilorama.com – an affiliate marketing training site. Technology has a habit of embedding itself in our lives – so much so that we start working by its schedule, rather than by our own. Unfiltered, social media can be too much to handle! image: theVanCats There isn’t a single application or service that, in my mind, does an excellent job of aggregating multiple social feeds into one manageable interface. (Sorry FriendFeed fans… but I’ve never been satisfied with you!). Hopefully one day there will be, but for now we have to rely on… -
Why Narcissistic Personality Disorder Loves Social Media
8 Dec 2009 | 7:04 pmSpend any length of time in the social media scene and you’ll almost certainly encounter a person with a severe character flaw called Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD). The psychiatrists’ DSM manual describes it as “a pervasive pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration, and a lack of empathy.” Narcissists (NPD people) are excessively preoccupied with personal adequacy, power and prestige. Everyone has some need for attention, but NPD people are pathologically obsessed with it. Joe Pesci’s character in Goodfellas is a perfect example of malignant… -
11 Ways to Get More RSS Subscribers
16 Nov 2009 | 6:48 pmOne year ago, I started this blog with the goal of improving my writing skills and also my connections in the social media world. I also wanted to practice creating viral content. Out of 48 posts, 12 of them (25%) went viral and got over 200 retweets. Near the end of my first year I had about 2000 RSS subscribers – a modest number. There were an average of 9900 monthly unique visitors, with a peak in April of 16,894 unique visitors. While some people have figured out how to get blog subscribers much more quickly, I was more successful than with my other blog – which only got…
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Forbes.com: Managing news and reports
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The New Guerrilla Philanthropy
9 Feb 2010 | 2:43 amHow do you give away $100 ''creatively''? -
Taleo: Managing During Uncertainty
28 Jan 2010 | 9:00 amHow Taleo's Michael Gregoire kept his employees focused and customers buying. -
Why We All Need More Design Thinking
14 Jan 2010 | 1:09 pmA conversation with Tim Brown, CEO of the design and innovation firm IDEO. -
The Path To Successful New Products
7 Jan 2010 | 12:07 pmBusinesses with the best product-development track records stand apart from their less-successful peers in three crucial ways. -
Mergers Re-Emerging
5 Jan 2010 | 8:25 amCompanies planning to IPO could get snatched up at the last minute.
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HarvardBusiness.org
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The New Economics of Business (Or, the Case For Going Great-to-Good)
9 Feb 2010 | 12:17 pmIt's like a neon sign blaring: "EXIT." A gigantic global economic meltdown, possibly leading to a second Great Depression, should illustrate with finality: business as usual is no longer the road to riches. That's the small answer to the question many of you asked after reading the Great to Good Manifesto: "Wow, cool — but how come going from great to good is, well, profitable?" Here's the big one. The real-world case for going great-to-good isn't just compelling. For more and more organizations, it's simply irresistible. Why? The new economics of business. Hypercompetition — and… -
The Non-Deal Between Japan Airlines and Delta
9 Feb 2010 | 10:38 amJapan Airlines has chosen to stay hitched to American Airlines and not bolt to Delta. In a way, Delta may still come out a winner. Though the details are not yet out, Delta's courting may well have forced American and its Oneworld allies to pay upwards of $1.4 billion just to hold on to their existing partner in Japan. Neither American nor Delta is flush with cash. To see them fall over each other to partner with a bankrupt Japanese airline speaks volumes about the importance of business partnerships in airlines and many other industries. Delta knew that it could both strengthen its hand and… -
What We All Lost When Business Lost Respect
9 Feb 2010 | 9:46 amI want to explore the growing malaise around business, in particular in widely-held, publicly traded corporations. I believe we have migrated — quite by accident — to a set of conditions such that in order to operate their corporations, senior executives are pressured toward a form of existence that is substantially inauthentic. And in the course of leading inauthentic business lives, they lose their moral compasses and play games that make them feel ever more inauthentic. This will take several posts, so bear with me while I lay out the first tranche of the argument. At our core,… -
How Working at a Nonprofit is Like Working at the NFL
9 Feb 2010 | 9:45 amThe last of the celebratory confetti has been cleared from the stands in Sun Life Stadium in Miami. But watching the game brought to my mind some interesting parallels between working at nonprofit organizations and working in the NFL — probably because I've experienced both. (Sadly, I didn't play. I worked in the physically safer confines of the front office.) A sense of mission is critical. The nonprofit world is driven by purpose and mission. People see and seize on opportunities to create positive changes that are bigger than themselves. In this year's Super Bowl, many fans —… -
One More Look at Layoffs During the Great Recession
9 Feb 2010 | 9:19 amHere's a brief update on some research we've been doing on layoff practices. For a decade we tracked who was likely to be fired in Europe during an economic downturn. Surprisingly, it was not generally the least productive managers. Over 40% of European managers said they would layoff an older manager even if that manager was a high performer. Twenty eight percent said they would fire younger workers even if they were cheaper or better performers than others. Less than a third of the Europeans surveyed since 1999 said they would fire the employee we called the "weak link," the older,…
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Seth's Blog
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TEDthink
9 Feb 2010 | 3:00 amCan you factor this? If you're like most people, you get a little queasy at the thought. And when you were in tenth grade, you surely wondered why they were bothering you.(the answer is (x-2) times (x-2), in case you were curious.)It turns out that the real reason you needed to do this work was to be able to play with numbers in your head. Abstract numerical thought is an important skill among educated people.Which brings us to TED, a conference held every year in Long Beach. It's going on right now. Watch a few TED videos and try to get ahead of the speaker. They have an idea...it's probably… -
Frightened, clueless or uninformed?
8 Feb 2010 | 2:57 amIn the face of significant change and opportunity, people are often one of the three. If you're going to be of assistance, it helps to know which one.Uninformed people need information and insight in order to figure out what to do next. They are approaching the problem with optimism and calm, but they need to be taught. Uninformed is not a pejorative term, it's a temporary state.Clueless people don't know what to do and they don't know that they don't know what to do. They don't know the right questions to ask. Giving them instructions is insufficient. First, they need to be sold on what the… -
The least I could do
7 Feb 2010 | 3:35 amOne way to think about running a successful business is to figure out what the least you can do is, and do that. That's actually what they spent most of my time at business school teaching me.No sense putting more on that pizza, sending more staff to that event, answering the phone in fewer rings... what's the point? No sense being kind, looking people in the eye, being open or welcoming or grateful. Doing the least acceptable amount is the way to maximize short term profit.Of course, there's a different strategy, a crazy alternative that seems to work: do the most you can do instead of the… -
iPad app of my dreams: the digital talking pad
6 Feb 2010 | 8:10 amHere's the spec. If you build it and it's great, I'll use it and I'll blog it.A while ago, I posted about the talking pad and a modern version of it.I think there's a killer app version of this for the iPad, and I hope someone will build it. The talking pad is an interactive presentation tool for smart people.OverviewIt's a very simple concept: a collection of pages (slides, images, type, let's call them pages) that are easy to navigate in a non-linear way. Along with the standard zoom features, I'd like to be able to write on any of them in real time using my finger. I can also call up, on… -
The relentless search for "tell me what to do"
6 Feb 2010 | 2:26 amIf you've ever hired or managed or taught, you know the feeling.People are just begging to be told what to do. There are a lot of reasons for this, but I think the biggest one is: "If you tell me what to do, the responsibility for the outcome is yours, not mine. I'm safe."When asked, resist.
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ManagingCommunities.com
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Fair Use for Forums (and How to Explain to Your Members That They Can’t Quote Entire Articles)
7 Feb 2010 | 8:34 amphoto credit: Horia Varlan It’s important to be proactive on matters of content theft and copyright infringement. A large part of this is text quoted from other sources. With some exceptions (public domain works, works by the Federal Government, works released under alternative licenses to copyright, and more), you can’t allow your members to post [...] -
Poachers Are the Bad Guys (or “Poaching Community Members is Like Building Your Community on an Ancient Burial Ground”)
3 Feb 2010 | 6:46 pmphoto credit: Gusjer You’ve got a brand new community on basket weaving. You badly want people to come to your site. So, you go to the largest basket weaving community on the internet and start discreetly inviting members. Maybe you instant message or e-mail them off site, so that the people running the established community [...] -
Video: “The Art of Responding to Feedback From Your Community” Presentation at South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive 2009
31 Jan 2010 | 1:57 pmAt last year’s South by Southwest Interactive (see my recap), I gave a solo presentation titled “The Art of Responding to Feedback From Your Community.” The basis of this talk was a blog post made on this site in January of 2009. The presentation is based around my three steps for responding to feedback. In short, [...] -
I Speak at Conferences and Events
29 Jan 2010 | 8:22 amphoto credit: BuzzShift For what seems like forever, I’ve been working on my just launched about and speaking pages. Probably the biggest reason I did it was because I’m hoping to speak more. Since finishing “Managing Online Forums,” I’ve done 11 engagements at 7 different events. While this doesn’t make me a veteran, it means I’m not [...] -
ManagingCommunities.com Turns Two Years Old!
27 Jan 2010 | 9:04 amphoto credit: kiewic It was two years ago today that I launched ManagingCommunities.com. Once you reach a certain age, time just seems to fly by! In light of this milestone, I wanted to take a moment to thank all my loyal readers. I appreciate your support and your contributions. I hope that I’ve provided value to [...]
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Ries' Pieces
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Super Bowl Ads 2010
8 Feb 2010 | 12:49 pmBest ads of the game Google: Google transformed how we think about search and now Google has transformed how we think about Super Bowl ads. Without any celebrities, special effects or juvenile jokes, Google did what Google does best. It showed us in a simple clear how Google had changed the world. The ad is unlikely to win any creativity awards but unlike most ads I think it made a powerful, lasting impact in the mind on consumers. Doritos: Who needs a fancy award-winning agency when you can hold a contest and get your ads for free? Doritos showed us again that there are a lot of aspiring… -
Verizon and its Atomic Bomb
27 Jan 2010 | 11:02 amMarketing wars are fought with lots of words, but wars are won when you combine your words with a visual. We have seen several epic marketing wars: The Cola War of Coke vs. Pepsi, The Beer War of Budweiser vs. Miller, The Mouthwash War of Listerine vs. Scope and The Battery War of Duracell vs. Energizer. But they all fail in comparison to the money and firepower currently being expended in the Cellphone War between AT&T and arch-rival Verizon Wireless. -
Domino's Should Apologize
12 Jan 2010 | 10:53 amEverybody knows the rule. When you do something wrong, you say you are sorry. As a society we love to scold but we also love to forgive. And the simple act of just “saying” sorry goes a long way in righting many wrongs. But how, when and why you say you are sorry also matters. Say it too often and nobody will believe you anymore. Detroit has been begging for forgiveness for decades. Say it with advertising instead of PR and it looks phony. JetBlue… -
It's what Tiger does next that counts
8 Dec 2009 | 2:02 pmTiger Woods was a rare breed. A phenomenal athlete who delivered consistent record-shattering victories on and off the course with style, grace and integrity. In an intense game like golf, Tiger built his reputation by performing under pressure. And like his idol Jack Nicklaus, Tiger transcended from being one of the best athletes ever to being one of the best celebrity brands ever. The latest Forbes Celebrity 100 list put Tiger at number five just behind Angelina, Oprah, Madonna and Beyonce. And ahead of… -
Under Armour: Too Big for its Shirt?
4 Nov 2009 | 12:19 pmIt's amazing how many of the world's most successful entrepreneurs quickly forget what made them famous. The latest example is Kevin Plank, CEO of Under Armour. What made Under Armour famous? It wasn't a Super Bowl ad. It wasn't a massive marketing campaign. It wasn't ego or hype. What made Under Armour famous was "performance apparel" a new category Kevin created and carefully nurtured. As an ex-Maryland football player, Kevin Plank was sick of wearing…
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You're GREAT, but?
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business changed in the noughties
12 Jan 2010 | 5:13 pmThis is a truly great article by Kevin Ellis over at PWC that captures poignantly the changes we saw in business in the noughties…in summary, they are; 1. The rise of the customer-centric organisation Businesses have been transformed and reassembled themselves around the individual customer. 2. Search, and the rise of the knowledge manager Search engines have delivered the sum of all human knowledge to the fingertips of anyone and everyone. 3. The Eastward migration of economic power and influence China is engaging and facing the outside world for the benefits it brings its own… -
The Most Influential Brands in 2009?
6 Jan 2010 | 5:56 pmIf you haven’t had a look at Klout, and you are intrigued by ‘influence’ and who has it (or not) online – then it could be worth having a look at their latest Lists of 2009 Klout analysze the content posted on Twitter, and analyse the trends, producing lists such as ‘The most Influential Companies in 2009′ This list is a capture of all the conversations around the related brands…and not all of it is good. As noted by the team at Klout “AT&T made the list through other means–by consistently aggravating the… -
Digital Detox
20 Dec 2009 | 2:15 amChristmas is almost upon us, and 2010 approaches! Every now and then, the family and I retreat to the country. This year, we will be heading up to our 10,000acre farm in Central Queensland to enjoy some much needed rest and recovery. The children love the space and adventure, and my wife and I enjoy the tranquility… One of the other benefits (if you see it this way) of the remoteness of our property, is that we have nil internet (we have satellite internet, but the price makes its use prohibitive for anything other than emergency). So how am I going to cope? In a way, I am looking… -
Merry Christmas
18 Dec 2009 | 5:54 pmWishing you all a very Merry and safe Christmas… Thank you to everyone for your support and friendship in 2009. Here’s to a more social and successful 2010… Posted via email from being social Bookmark It Hide Sites -
Gus the Boxer…keeping social media REAL
4 Dec 2009 | 1:40 pmAustralia’s leading brands may be (or not be) using social media well, but what about the host of (soon to be leading) Australian brands creating some real magic using social media? Take for instance Gus the Boxer (@gustheboxer) Gus has been featured on the front page of major newspapers, hangs out with celebrities, and now even has his own calendar?? For Gus, life is pretty good…hanging out at Haul in Melbourne (He has even put his creative talents to use, helping Haul create a stunning range of recycled dog collars), meeting celebrities, and doing press…
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The BrandBuilder Blog
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Back by popular demand: Is Your Social Media Director Qualified?
8 Feb 2010 | 7:57 pmYou guys asked for me to re-post this piece, and your wish is my command. Share this with hiring managers, your CMO, and everyone looking into considering either creating or filling a position requiring Social Media management skills: Tip #1: Social Media Directors should know how to do their jobs without having to ask for help every five minutes: So I look down and the (twitter) DM reads: “Hey, can you help me out? Not sure how to do this. How do I use Twitter to gain traction for my company? Thanks!” I stare at it for a while and decide to blow it off for now, not because I have… -
My Ode to Nutella – Part 2
4 Feb 2010 | 10:21 pmIf you missed Part 1, click here. In honor of World Nutella Day (today is #NutellaDay) and by special request, here is some completely unauthorized Nutella-inspired nonsense. For extra credit, see if you can figure out what brands those ads were originally for. And last but not least… Have a great World Nutella Day, everyone. Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: nutella -
Where Do Brands Go To Die? Part 2: The Diagnosis
27 Jan 2010 | 4:01 amIn Part 1 of this series, we looked at what it takes for business managers and CMOs to come to accept that their brand is in trouble. We also discussed why it is often difficult for them to admit that they need help, and how to get over that fear-driven reflex. Today, we are going to look at the next step in fixing a broken or distressed brand: Diagnosing the problem – which usually involves hiring a specialized firm, agency or individual with the skills, insight and experience to help you navigate through this crucial step. (If you screw this one up, everything that comes later is… -
Where Do Brands Go To Die? Part 1: Accepting Reality
25 Jan 2010 | 4:26 pmFrom Brand Building to Brand Rescue: What to do when things go very wrong. Back in late 2008, Valeria Maltoni posed a great question on Conversation Agent: What happens when brands die? It was a fascinating question, and one that frankly doesn’t get enough coverage. Even now, in the middle of a global recession that may have already cost us several: Saturn, Circuit City, and perhaps even Saab, for starters. As companies continue to bleed jobs, sales, profits, liquidity and funding, perhaps this is as good a time as any to start discussing the topic of… well, the specter of brand… -
Bringing operational wisdom to Enterprise 2.0. Maybe.
18 Jan 2010 | 9:21 amJacob Morgan and I want to bring our wisdom and know-how to the #e2conf in Boston this spring, but we need your help. To be clear, there’s really nothing in it for us: I speak at conferences pretty regularly, so I don’t need the exposure, and as far as I can tell, #e2conf doesn’t pay its session speakers, so Jacob and I aren’t looking for a payday. We want to be there because we feel that what we already teach companies behind closed doors is well worth sharing with the enterprise community at large, especially in the context of enterprise business planning. Not being…
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Influential Marketing
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Twiangulate Lets You Follow Your Followers' Followers
9 Feb 2010 | 12:12 amLet me go on the record to say that if you happen to be a vendor of some type of social networking solution or software that would be useful for an agency like Ogilvy, hands down one of your most effective methods of advertising has to be to target the Ogilvy network on Facebook with a customized ad. I have seen several ads like this for solutions and find myself always clicking on them - not because they say Ogilvy but because I presume that someone has done their homework and identified that whatever they are promoting is particularly relevant for someone who works at an agency like ours. -
The Emasculated Man, Super Bowl Ad Themes & 5 Best Strategic Ads
8 Feb 2010 | 7:31 amFor several years now, I've taken the slightly different approach to doing a recap post of Super Bowl ads and instead of focusing on which ones I thought were the best or most entertaining, I try to break them down from a marketing point of view to share some lessons for anyone in marketing who may not have been able to afford the $2+ million dollar price tag to experiment on the Super Bowl on their own (ie - most of us!). This year, there were lots of examples of what NOT to do, as there usually are. So to start, here are a few major themes across this year's Super Bowl ads, including a… -
The 52nd Grammys Offer Hope For The Future Of Music
31 Jan 2010 | 10:01 pmLast night was an unlikely stage to unveil the future of music. The 52nd Annual Grammys were on the last Sunday in January as they have been many times before ... only this time they were up head to head against the NFL Pro Bowl being played for the first time in the week before the Super Bowl instead of the week after. Add to that the continued financial woes of the music industry and perception of recording studios as relics of a time past and you had the perfect recipe for a show that was at best mildly entertaining, and at worst completely irrelevant. That's what I might have thought a… -
The Undiscovered Marketing Potential Of A USB Stick
26 Jan 2010 | 3:58 amMy laptop doesn't have a CD-ROM drive. Like many owners of smaller notebooks, I don't see the value of having that piece built into my computer as I would rather save the space and have a lighter and smaller machine. As netbooks become more and more popular and the rumored tablet becomes a reality (either from Apple or other manufacturers), larger computers with built-in CD-ROM drives will be less and less common. Despite this shift, most content you can purchase today is only offered in two forms of distribution. You can either download something off the web, or you can buy a physical disk… -
Social Media & The Axe Murderer: How Privacy Is Evolving Online
25 Jan 2010 | 10:30 amEveryone knows there are certain pieces of information that you just don't share online, right? What if you used Twitter or Foursquare to broadcast your location at a bar, and an axe murderer was reading your stream? You just signed your own death sentence. Or how about sharing details about where you live and or pictures of your family vacation, or even your innermost thoughts and emotions? All are things that are getting easier and easier to share online, both purposefully AND inadvertently. Combine this with a new generation used to a different standard of privacy and you have a recipe for…
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Guy Kawasaki
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How to Avoid Gullibility
8 Feb 2010 | 3:45 pmWe’ve all been sucked into doing something stupid, right? Fortunately, Steven Greenspan has written a book called Annals of Gullibility. In its conclusion he explains how to avoid gullibility, and I’ve provided a synopsis for you. Read the full story at the American Express Open Forum. More on psychology if you need the advice. -
How to Be Empathetic
4 Feb 2010 | 10:24 pmBy definition, good marketers are empathetic. That is, they have a capacity to understand and care for the needs of others. Bruna Martinuzzi explains how to be empathetic over at the American Express Open Forum. -
How to Not Be Annoying on Twitter
4 Feb 2010 | 10:19 pmAmber MacArthur explains how to not be annoying on Twitter over at the American Express Open Forum. Sage advice for you to develop a great reputation and following on Twitter. More Twitter tips. -
The Elements of Guyle: British Blogging
27 Jan 2010 | 10:06 pmWant to make your blog classier? You should blog like a Brit. I explain how to do this in ten easy steps. -
How to follow the Apple announcement
27 Jan 2010 | 7:56 amFollow the Apple announcement at Apple.alltop. We aggregate over 200 sources there.
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Make the Logo Bigger
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9 Feb 2010 | 12:15 pm
9 Feb 2010 | 12:15 pmI WAS TOO DISTRAUGHT TO EVEN FILE A REPORT LAST WEEK. THIS WEEK THOUGH, OLD JACK GOT RIGHT BACK ON THE HORSE. DID YOU SEE THAT SHIT? NOT ONLY DOES MY UNDERCOVER PARTNER SHANK ME, BUT I RIP IT OUT AND TAKE OUT A HOSTILE IN THE THROAT—FROM ACROSS THE ROOM. THEN I TAKE OUT ANOTHER. SO I GO BACK AND CONSOLE HER. HER! AND I WASN’T EVEN PISSED THAT SHE STUCK ME. THAT’S HARDCORE. UNLESS I’M GETTING SOFT.BAUER, OUT.*Self-doubt, the first sign?TAGS: JACK BAUER24PUT DOWN YOUR WEAPONJACK BAUER MEANS DEATHKIEFER SUTHERLAND GRAVITAS, JACK BAUER FACTS -
And CBS passed on this?
9 Feb 2010 | 11:30 amShocking. I mean, Super Bail has a catchy tune and a family-friendly kid. Fox would’ve run it. -
Old Spice Kills. Owns. Rules.
9 Feb 2010 | 11:10 amAnother Super Bowl spot that wasn’t? Attacking the genre of mens’ healthcare products yet again, Old Spice would’ve cleaned up if they had actually run this during the game. Next to Dos Equis’ Most Interesting Man, there’s no better Real Man™ spoof campaign running. (Doritos giving the *pros* a run for their money? HA! Yeah. Whatever.)(Via.) -
Before the Super Bowl, under the radar, over the hype.
9 Feb 2010 | 10:45 amAnother ad that *technically* could pass for a Super Bowl spot even though it ran just before the game. Paying homage to the classic Jordan v. Byrd battles of years past, McDonald’s updated the campaign with LeBron James and Dwight Howard. Did it hold up? Not sure. The banter between them felt more real than the old stuff, but the cgi... er, jams felt a little too anything but. If you watch enough dunk competitions, there are only so many dunks you can try. Not that Jordan’s “Over the river...” scenario was believable, but in that context, the absurdity works. Here, focusing only on… -
You’re a quart low.
9 Feb 2010 | 10:05 amArla ecological cottage cheese has virtual cow udders. I guess it beats going door to door squirting people with a real cow. Now, go have fun.(By Perfect Fools.)
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Buzz Marketing for Technology
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B2B Marketing: Trust + Community = ROI
9 Feb 2010 | 8:34 amTrust is not a new thing when it comes to marketing and communications as evidenced by one of the most awaited studies in the communications world is always the annual Edelman Public Relations Trust Barometer. Trust is not a new thing in the world of sales either – its a fact that people enjoy buying from people that they trust and in B2B Marketing part of our job is to shorten the time spent building trust so sales can have an easier time and focus on selling. Social Media changes that and elevates Trust to the individual level. This is actually good news for the B2B Marketer. We get… -
B2B Marketing Content: Lure or Lasso?
4 Feb 2010 | 8:43 amI picked this saying up from Gary Vaynerchuk’s new book called Crush It. I really liked the idea of content having dual purposes and not just the purpose of posting to your website or blog. The lure part is really about a steady stream of content that is consistent in its frequency which is why as people come to depend on it brings people back to your site time and time again. You can call it Inbound Marketing (like the folks at HubSpot do) or you could call it Content Marketing (like the folks at Junta42 do) but whatever you call it its the basis for all your online activity. The lasso… -
Social Media is not a campaign it’s a commitment!
2 Feb 2010 | 8:47 amA while back I created a post called – There is no “campaign” in Social Media because when marketers use the word “campaign,” it tends to suggest an initiative to get a message out to a targeted group of constituents. It also implies there will be a beginning and, somewhere down the road, an ending. And I still believe that is the case … And despite a number of comments I got about that post both positive and negative – I think I stopped short of really nailing the issue which is – social media is more than a campaign it a commitment! Its a commitment… -
Influencers vs Advocates in B2B Marketing
28 Jan 2010 | 8:35 amAccording to Wikipedia – Influencer Marketing is a form of marketing that has emerged from a variety of recent practices and studies, in which focus is placed on specific key individuals (or types of individual) rather than the target market as a whole. It identifies the individuals that have influence over potential buyers, and orients marketing activities around these influencers. In my own words – Influencers are individuals that write about Avaya but they also write about Cisco and Siemens in social media or otherwise. They are non partial and therefore they write about many… -
Why is Google Scared and What it means for B2B Marketing!
26 Jan 2010 | 8:23 amAt a recent dinner with a buddy of mine from Microsoft (who helped launch Bing) – I learned a lot more about the search market and a very important trend that can effect the future of B2B Marketing. When you think about the search behavior of the average person online – we are mostly conditioned to search in very routine ways like pulling up a Google search page, using the toolbar in your browser etc. And we tend not to stray from that behavior now. It’s almost an unconscious choice for most of us. But when it comes to search on a mobile device we mostly use very specific…
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The Internet Strategist
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Drive Blog Loyalty – How to Get Repeat Traffic
25 Jan 2010 | 1:00 amclick hereto retweet Anyone who pours sweat and tears into their blog, and actually succeeds in getting new readers as we discussed last week, should make sure it's not all wasted by finding ways to get those readers to come back! You can only do so much to build a solid, consistent and growing readership by constantly chasing new readers – you have to make sure you're keeping the old ones. Of course that starts with having good content, and many of the techniques we discussed for getting new readers will also help you keep the old ones because some of your existing readers will be found in… -
Top 13 Ways to Drive Blog Readership
14 Jan 2010 | 11:05 amclick hereto retweet If you have a blog then you know that the biggest challenge next to content is readers. How do you get your audience, who are bombarded by hundreds (thousands?) of messages per day, to focus on your messages? Of course your first responsibility is providing content your audience will actually find relevant and useful. Your second responsibility is to tell them, often, that your content exists. If it sounds simple, that's because it is. There's no magic trick to building blog traffic if your content is good (and sometimes even if it isn't!) But it *is* time consuming –… -
13 Must Have Blog Techniques & Tools
30 Nov 2009 | 1:00 pmclick hereto retweet Last week we talked about basic blogging tools and techniques you should pretty much always have. But when you think of maximizing what your blog can do for you there are some other tools you'll want to make sure you have. Blogging can be awfully time consuming and I want to help you blog smarter not harder. While there are a many many ways you can get the most out of your blog, some ways are simpler and more universal than others. Here are 13 of the simplest yet important tools and techniques you should be using to maximize the value of your blog: SEO support – if you… -
8 Basic Blogging Features You'll Actually Use
24 Nov 2009 | 8:33 amclick hereto retweet Blogging tools are designed to be easy to use. They generally don’t provide all the advanced features of a complex content management system, but rather do one task — publishing a blog — very well. To this end, they can help you: Create posts. Since the purpose of a blog is to be able to post new text or information to the site frequently, creating posts is usually quick and easy. Upload or embed pictures and multimedia. Pretty much all blogs allow you to upload pictures to your posts. Some will also enable you to upload video and audio/mp3/podcasts. One significant… -
Blogging for Coin
16 Nov 2009 | 5:00 pmclick hereto retweet In my last few posts we covered what a blog is, and the benefits of blogging as a technique to boost your business. For any blogging initiative you'll need at least three things: what are you going to blog about (covered in my last post) how will you set up your blog (software & hosting) how will you market your blog Last time we began the discussion of blogging software, focusing on ways you can build and maintain your blog for free using services like WordPress.com, Blogger.com, or Blogher.com. The key with free blogging software is knowing what you're getting. Here are…
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Conversation Agent
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How I Participate in Social Networks
9 Feb 2010 | 4:00 amI'm borrowing a page off the Communicatrix blog to lay out how I participate in social networks. Why? Because we all have a different strategy to how we spend our time and energy to be social and to achieve our goals and since we have a strategy, in the spirit of social, we should make it transparent. [hat tip to Skip Shuda for suggesting it]I've been getting more than many requests from several people in many networks lately. Requests to friend, requests to tweet, to forward, to bookmark, to stumble, the list goes on. Being online for the best part of my day makes me very accessible. That I… -
Are You Customer-Averse?
8 Feb 2010 | 4:00 amWe all know the story of how Comcast went from customer-averse to customer-friendly. It started online with a person, and it's making its way to the rest of the organization. You will agree with me that Comcast went from this episode, to this action, to this thinking. They went from customer-averse, to customer-friendly. It didn't happen overnight, still it did. Competition helps, too, so we keep our fingers crossed on any one company getting too big to care.Businesses continue to look for more ways to get new business either from new or current customers -- usually both, in this order. Shiny… -
Trust in Media Down, Good News for Experts
7 Feb 2010 | 4:00 amTrust in business and Government has gone up in the last year, while trust in media seems to be declining across the board -- this is the latest finding of the latest annual Edelman Trust Barometer survey. Take a look at the executive report and see that:Trust in traditional media is trending downward: TV news dropped by 20 points radio news dropped by 17 points print news dropped by 12 points Trust in digital media is still pretty low, and although corporate communications are trending higher than social networks, they're still not that high.We've all witnessed the decline of stretched news… -
The Future Online is Subscription-Based: Why I Joined Third Tribe
5 Feb 2010 | 4:00 amClearly, the title left out a few pieces of information. I believe there is still a future online for free, but increasingly, the way to get things done, to go from conversation to agent, is subscription-based. Why? Accountability, resources, self-selected network, and opportunity to syndicate service, for a fee.The service for a fee model interests me most. That's why I joined Third Tribe as a member this week. The whole velvet rope community concept should make brands pay attention. This is not just a build a community to push your products, or just engage customers in your stuff kind of… -
We Still Get Things Done Through Search
4 Feb 2010 | 4:00 amWith all the talk about social networks and engagement, when it comes to getting things done, we rely on search. The image above was part of the set I used last Fall at the Inbound Marketing Summit when we talked about the importance of creating content for sharing.There was another interesting study I did not mention at the time that confirms a few of the following statements on social media as content delivery mechanism to: help conversions connect to value build relationships extend to influentials engage via education They are all outcomes I've had the opportunity to experience and…
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Brian Solis: Social Media Expert - PR 2.0
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The State of Social Media Around the World 2010
8 Feb 2010 | 3:09 amIf you were to look at Social Media the United States and many other parts of the world, you would believe that the world of Social Media was flat, dominated by social continents including Facebook, Twitter, blogs, YouTube, and Flickr. As we zoom in, we visualize other established and emerging social services that depict provinces and outlying settlements of our social atlas.Upon publishing the original Conversation Prism, which was the culmination of a year’s work documenting and organizing the social web by usage and conversational patterns, the world responded by creating… -
The Roles of Facebook and Twitter in Social Media Marketing
5 Feb 2010 | 4:14 amSocial Media marketing is rapidly earning a role in the integrated marketing mix of small and enterprise businesses and as such, it’s transforming every division from the inside out. What starts with one champion in any given division, be it customer service, marketing, public relations, advertising, interactive, et al, eventually inspires an entire organization to socialize. What starts with one, a domino effect usually ensues toppling each department, gaining momentum, and triggering a sense of urgency through its path. And, it also marks the beginning of our journey through the ten… -
Mobile Internet Market to Eclipse Desktop Internet
3 Feb 2010 | 4:42 amSounds like a sensationalistic headline, but if you read Morgan Stanley’s latest series of reports on the Mobile Internet, you’ll walk away with the same impression.Morgan Stanley’s global technology and telecom analysts documented the rapidly changing mobile Internet market to provide a framework for emerging trends and direction.To set the stage, Morgan Stanley forecasts that the mobile Internet market will be at least 2x the size of desktop Internet when comparing Internet users to mobile subscribers.According to the report, Apple’s iTunes + iPhone/Touch ecosystem… -
The Human Algorithm: How Google Ranks Tweets in Real-Time Search
1 Feb 2010 | 4:57 amIn 2009, Google struck a deal with Twitter, rumored at $15 million, to integrate tweets into keyword related Google searches. And last month, Google also integrated real-time search technology to surface blog posts and news content as they hit the Web – dramatically improving the previous five to 15 minutes its spiders would take to crawl the Web. I should also note that Collecta also offers the ability to search the real-time Web, but its results also include popular networks within the social Web. Between Google and Collecta, Twitter Search is starting to show its age.The opportunities… -
Who is the ME in Social Media?
29 Jan 2010 | 4:11 amGood friend Stowe Boyd recently shared a quote by Gabriel García Márquez, “Everyone has three lives: a public life, a private life, and a secret life.”Indeed, quite simply many of us live life allowing specific, trusted individuals to know us in one or more of our personae. Our moral compass as well as outside influences affect how we balance our three lives. The size and permeability of our personal dividers vary in the separation of each life and resemble doors that open and close based on our desires. We nurture each individually with slight coalescence, but concentrate on…
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Remarkablogger
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How to Increase Blog Traffic by Over 100% In 3 Days
9 Feb 2010 | 4:16 amThis guest post is by Dan H., the founder and editor at Maciverse.com. Maciverse is a Mac Help website with tips, tutorials, and news for Mac users both new and old. Follow Dan on Twitter: @Maciverse. Maciverse.com is a website that covers everything about Apple’s Mac computers. It has been almost 2 years since we started the website and we are now really hitting our stride. We currently average 70,000+ monthly unique visitors, but that wasn’t always the case. In fact, most of our success has come during the last year. Twelve months ago we average 12,000 monthly visitors; we’ve… -
Social Media Marketing May be about Driving Behavior, not Conversation
7 Feb 2010 | 9:48 amOn February 1st, I attended the Burlington Social Media Breakfast in Vermont, where Adrian Ho of Zeus Jones gave a really smart presentation on social media marketing. The video is below. If you can’t see it in your email or reader, come on over to the blog to watch it. I think you’ll find watching this well worth your time. I’d take notes if I were you. UPDATE: Looks like the embed didn’t work for the video. Sorry about that. You can watch it at Digalicious, the site of Rich Nadworny (one of the BTVSMB organizers). Click here to watch the video. What did you take away… -
Open Discussion: What are You Measuring?
4 Feb 2010 | 9:15 amThey say that what gets measured, gets improved. So what are you measuring? Because if you’re not measuring, you’re not paying attention to the forces that affect your traffic, influence, and income. And how can you expect to succeed in marketing your business if you’re not doing that? Here’s where you come in: what are you measuring, how are you measuring it, and what do you do with the information? Tell us in the comments! Bonus question: what do you think you should be measuring? And if you’re not, why not? Email this to a friend? Tweet This! Share this on… -
Social Media Marketing Done Right
3 Feb 2010 | 1:58 pmI recently had an interesting social media encounter with Eric Romer of HeadBlade, whose history is a great modern social media and internet marketing success story. To see what happened, watch the video below. If you don’t see it in your email or reader, you can find it by visiting the blog. I think Eric has set a great example for us to follow. What do you think? How are you using social media along with blogging to market your business? Email this to a friend? Tweet This! Share this on Facebook Stumble upon something good? Share it on StumbleUpon Share this on Mixx Post this to… -
7 Things (and 3 Questions) Professional Coaches Must Know Before Starting to Blog
2 Feb 2010 | 5:44 amThis is a guest post by Christine Livingston. So, you’re a coach and you’ve started to hear about blogging and social media. You see other coaches – me, for example – embracing this weird new world, and you wonder whether it’s really something you need to be getting into or not. Here’s a run-down on how social media can help you. And some health warnings to consider before jumping in. Advantages Keeps you ahead of moving trends Social media is not the future, it’s the present. In the business world Wordpress, an internationally used blogging platform;…
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Twitter Status
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Reason #4132 for Changing Your Password
2 Feb 2010 | 3:43 pmAs part of our ongoing efforts to monitor our user base for odd activity, we noticed a sudden surge in followers for a couple accounts in the last five days. Given the circumstances surrounding this, we felt it was best to push out a password reset to accounts that were following these suspicious users. Then we started doing some digging and, given what we found today, we felt it important to share this information. An outline of what appears to have happened follows … Torrent sites aren’t exactly “new”; however, this is one of the first times that we’ve seen an attack that… -
Working on Tweet delivery delays
27 Jan 2010 | 9:57 amWe are investigating the source of tweet delivery delays this morning. Update (10:51a): We’ve temporarily disabled lists and local trends as we further diagnose the delay problem. Update (11:10a): The delivery issue has improved and lists, local trends and name search remain temporarily disabled. Some users will also not receive delivery of tweets via SMS. Update (11:36a): Local trends and lists have been re-enabled and we are working on the SMS delivery issue. Update (12:27p): SMS delivery has been re-enabled. Update (2:00p): Systems are back to normal with the exception of tweet delivery… -
Flash widget disabled
22 Jan 2010 | 1:21 pmWe’ve been notified about a vulnerability in our Flash widget and out of an abundance of caution we’ve disabled access as we assess the situation. Please note that the javascript widgets are unaffected and are a good alternative for those of you who had been using the Flash version. We haven’t heard of any accounts affected by this vulnerability. If you’re concerned that your account could have been affected in some way, feel free to contact us, accountsafe [at] twitter.com. -
Extremely high volume of whales
20 Jan 2010 | 4:22 amWe are experiencing an outage due to an extremely high number of whales. Our on-call team is working on a fix. Update (5:18a): We are recovering from this incident. A sudden failure coupled with problems in switching to a backup system produced a high number of errors for around 90 minutes. This made the site largely inaccessible. No data was lost or compromised during this outage. -
SMS delivery temporarily disabled
12 Jan 2010 | 9:27 pmWe have temporarily disabled the SMS delivery of tweets. We are continuing to work on a fix for the misdelivery problem noted earlier and will turn the service back on as soon as this is resolved. Update (11:47p): This issue has now been fixed. Both updating from SMS and receiving messages via SMS should work as expected.
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Facebook Developers News
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Updates to the Facebook Home Page
Over the past several months we've tested a number of different designs of our home page to make navigation easier and to surface the most interesting content to users. Today we're starting to roll out the latest design to users. Learn all about the product changes on the Facebook blog. Here are the changes that you will want to pay close attention to as a developer: Dashboards Along with the changes to the home page design, we're introducing new features to make it easier for users to discover and re-engage with your applications via the Games and Applications Dashboards. We announced these… -
New Terms for Advertising Providers on Facebook Platform
Over the past year, we've focused on providing an environment for developers that rewards high-quality, third-party advertising and monetization practices. Through this process, it's become clear that while you are working hard to monetize your applications in a safe and reliable manner, it isn't easy to ensure that ad and offer providers are following the same terms and guidelines that you adhere to. To meet this need, we are introducing a set of terms for all ad and offer providers and related services that operate on Facebook Platform. The terms are similar to the terms of service to which… -
HipHop for PHP: Move Fast
One of the key values at Facebook is to move fast. For the past six years, we have been able to accomplish a lot thanks to rapid pace of development that PHP offers. As a programming language, PHP is simple. Simple to learn, simple to write, simple to read, and simple to debug. We are able to get new engineers ramped up at Facebook a lot faster with PHP than with other languages, which allows us to innovate faster. Today I'm excited to share the project a small team of amazing people and I have been working on for the past two years; HipHop for PHP. With HipHop we've reduced the CPU usage on… -
Preparing for the Launch of the Games and Applications Dashboards
We're launching the Games Dashboard and the Applications Dashboard in the coming weeks to make it easier for users to interact with your applications and provide you with new communication channels accessible to all users from the home page. Later today, we're updating the Dashboard API and opening up the Applications Dashboard sandbox and the Games Dashboard sandbox so that you can begin integrating your applications to ensure that your users will see personalized and interesting content from you in their dashboards when they go live. Get started populating the dashboards by visiting the… -
Communicating Directly with Your Users via Email
Facebook Platform has evolved since its launch in 2007, providing developers with a number of different communication channels to interact with their users. In October 2009 we announced a roadmap for developers that outlined a number of improvements including direct and simplified communication between developers and users. Today we're delivering on this commitment by providing a simple way for users to share their email addresses with you via a process designed to reduce friction and empower application and Facebook Connect developers to manage their relationship with users. While we're…
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Facebook Blog
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The Importance of Thinking Before You Post
8 Feb 2010 | 10:10 pmToday is Safer Internet Day in the European Union, a day that promotes safe and responsible use of the Internet and mobile technologies among young people. We asked Childnet International, a member of Facebook's Safety Advisory Board, and its CEO Will Gardner to share more about this year's theme and how the organization is working with young people on Internet safety. When young people discuss the future of the Internet and new technologies, a central theme is keeping safe. Many see it as a right. At Childnet International, we saw this reaction firsthand as part of the recent Youth IGF… -
Faster, Simpler Photo Uploads
5 Feb 2010 | 2:57 pmFacebook is the largest photo-sharing site with over 2.5 billion photos uploaded to Facebook each month. In order to make sharing photos even easier, today we are announcing a new and improved photo uploader. Recently we've received feedback that people struggle with our current photo uploader due to various technical issues, while others are confused by the installation process. In this new version of the photo uploader, we have solved many of those problems and developed a fast, stable and simple experience for sharing photos on Facebook. The new uploader will be rolling out gradually over… -
Introducing Your New Navigation
4 Feb 2010 | 6:46 pmOver the past few months, we've been testing several different designs of the home page to improve navigation to and discovery of commonly used features. Today, we started rolling out the most recent navigation updates to help you find what you are looking for on Facebook. Now from the top and left menus you can quickly get to what's new and important. Stay Updated from the Top Menu In the top menu, you will find your newest notifications, requests and messages. For example, when you receive a Facebook notification about someone writing on your Wall or tagging you in a photo, you'll see a red… -
Six Years of Making Connections
4 Feb 2010 | 5:41 pmToday we're celebrating our sixth birthday, and this week there will be 400 million people on Facebook. Just one year ago we served less than half as many people, and thanks to you we've made great progress over the last year towards making the world more open and connected. Facebook began six years ago today as a product that my roommates and I built to help people around us connect easily, share information and understand one another better. We hoped Facebook would improve people's lives in important ways. So it's rewarding to see that as Facebook has grown, people around the world are… -
Connecting with... Sam Gosling: Facebook Psychologist
2 Feb 2010 | 12:56 pmAt Facebook, we're constantly connecting with interesting people—from experts in their field, academics and researchers to celebrities or visitors to our office. Occasionally, we'll share these conversations on the Facebook Blog in our "Connecting with...." series. I had the opportunity to speak with Sam Gosling, professor of psychology at The University of Texas at Austin and author of "Snoop: What your stuff says about you." He recently published research that found that people are expressing their real personalities on social networks like Facebook, rather than inflated takes on…
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Inside Facebook
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Mobile First Moves into Virtual Goods Payments
9 Feb 2010 | 10:39 amSeven year-old Mobile First is the latest payments company to enter the social gaming market. It is launching a mobile payments service today that competes directly against a range of other mobile payment providers, including Boku and Zong. Like its rivals, the company is letting developers install a simple widget that lets users can choose a set amount of virtual currency to purchase with their cell phone. Users provide their cell, number, Mobile First sends a text message to their phone containing a confirmation PIN number, then users enter that number in the widget to complete the… -
Celebrities, Politicos, the Super Bowl and The Bible in This Week’s Top 20 Facebook Pages
9 Feb 2010 | 9:24 amThe predictable mix of celebrities, movies and politicos — and The Bible — round out this week’s list of Top 20 Facebook Pages. This week’s list, from February 1 to 8, shows influences from the Grammys and the Super Bowl, as well as the presidential election in the Philippines. Top Gainers This Week Name Fans Gain Gain, % 1. Texas Hold’em Poker 10,315,265 +1,141,668 +12.45 2. Mafia Wars 8,188,138 +1,014,916 +14.15 3. Lost 1,702,202 +490,041 +40.43 4. Pepsi – Refresh Everything 503,509 +203,129 +67.62 5. Official Avatar Movie 1,330,237 +102,784 +8.37 6. Barack Obama… -
Dove Tackles Men’s Cosmetic Market With Facebook Campaign, Super Bowl Commercial
9 Feb 2010 | 8:59 amHealth and beauty product manufacturer Dove is taking aim at the male market, with a marketing campaign that is combining the brand’s Facebook presence with a variety of other media. Dove has been pushing the “Men+Care” line for a while on its Facebook page, but recently took a huge step towards speaking to male consumers in a more direct manner with a commercial that aired during the Super Bowl. Dove has almost 113,000 fans of its Facebook page, most of whom are women. The company has been pushing its men’s line of products for a while through wall posts and some… -
Black History Month Makes a Minor Appearance on Facebook
8 Feb 2010 | 6:14 pmFebruary is African American/Black History Month in the U.S. and is commonly celebrated in many different institutions here that remember the accomplishments and contributions of African Americans to this country. A look at how celebrations of Black History Month have translated to Facebook shows that such holidays don’t really have the cache to make it big on the social network, versus other holidays such as Christmas or Valentine’s Day. This may be attributable to how popular the celebration is overall, or a lag between migrating content from web sites to Facebook, as Black History… -
Facebook Provides Users With App Dashboard Privacy Controls
8 Feb 2010 | 12:01 pmOne of the more interesting features within the new Facebook dashboards is the ability to see which applications and games the people in your friend list have been using. Although this is a great way to discover new apps, there were privacy concerns around having so much information visible to friends automatically. Facebook took the first step to address this last week with the introduction of a privacy control at the developer level. Now, application developers can decide whether their app or game will appear in a user’s friends dashboards or not. This is useful for application types that…
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All Facebook
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Google Declares War On Facebook With Google Buzz
9 Feb 2010 | 11:26 amWhile it was expected that Google would use Gmail accounts as the center of users’ social graphs, the new Google Buzz makes it pretty obvious. Will Facebook eliminate Twitter or Facebook with this new service? Definitely not, however it’s clear that the new product is aimed squarely at Facebook. With Gmail, Calendar, and a location aware stream, Google is on the offensive. Read the rest of this entry on Social Times» -
Facebook Officially Kills Lexicon
9 Feb 2010 | 7:46 amA couple weeks ago we began wondering what happened to the company’s lexicon product as it was no longer providing useful data. It appears that the company has decided to shutter the year and a half old product, as Steve Rubel points out. When you visit the Lexicon page it now says “We are removing the Lexicon product from Facebook for the time being.” The page also suggests that the resources focused on the Lexicon product have been shifted to building out the Page and Application analytics tools. We recently wrote about the need for deeper analytics within Facebook Pages. -
Facebook Releases New Statistics: Sharing Quintuples In 6 Months
9 Feb 2010 | 7:29 amFacebook has updated their new statistics page and the most significant statistic is that sharing has increased 500 percent in only six months. The total number of users on the site has less than doubled in the same amount of time, growing from 250 million users to 400 million. That means the average user is sharing over 12 pieces of content each week. As Kim-Mai Cutler points out, Facebook users don’t appear to be increasing their volume of status updates though: Facebook users are also posting 60 million status updates a day or 50 percent more than they were in September. However, the… -
Facebook Lets Users Opt-Out From Dashboard App Stories
9 Feb 2010 | 6:52 amFacebook has developed what they believe to be a sufficient solution to the dashboard privacy flaw that we’ve covered over the past few weeks: an application activity privacy setting. With the new layout, Facebook users can visit their applications privacy settings and change a new setting that lets you “Control who can see your activity in the Friends’ Recent Activity, Friends’ Applications and Friends’ Games sections” of the application and games dashboards (pictured below). This Isn’t A Transparent Shift When we listed out the options that Facebook… -
Can You Get More Facebook Fans Than A Celebrity?
8 Feb 2010 | 1:26 pmWhether it’s pickles, onion rings, sausages, or purple monsters, the latest Facebook meme attempts to drive more fans to Facebook Pages than to celebrity pages. While this tactic has been used for Facebook groups for some time, the volume of new Pages dedicated to arbitrary objects that have successfully attracted hundreds of thousands or a million fans has increased dramatically in the past couple days. Two weeks ago, the creator of the page “Can this purple monster i made on paint get more fans than the president?” reached out to us about his Page. At the time, we thought…
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Why Facebook?
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How To Add A Custom Landing Tab To Your Facebook Fan Page
20 Jan 2010 | 11:05 pmLet’s assume you have your Facebook Fan Page up and running now. (If not, see FANtastic Fan Pages for ideas and help). Some of the basics include adding a custom graphic, installing apps – particularly Static FBML, adding custom content including a landing tab, and ensuring you’re adding relevant, quality content on a regular basis. I’ll be covering all of these subjects and more on this blog and also on SocialMediaExaminer.com. If you have visitors to your Fan page and they are not yet fans, I call them non-fans, you ideally want those visitors to be directed to your custom Welcome… -
Thinking Of Running A Contest on Facebook? Think Again!
8 Nov 2009 | 11:44 pmIMPORTANT UPDATE: November 13, 2009 from CNET News: Last week, the massive social network announced that brands, advertisers, and marketers that want to run contests or sweepstakes on its platform have to go through an approval process first Getting that approval could be a new revenue stream for Facebook: according to multiple sources in the marketing industry, they’re being told that running a promotion in a Facebook application or "fan page" requires buying ad space too. It’s pricey. The minimum ad buy is $10,000 for 30 days, using Facebook’s self-service… -
Social Media Examiner: Your New Guide Through the Social Media Jungle
12 Oct 2009 | 5:17 amIt’s a social media jungle out there!! Yes, there are many bona fide sources of excellent social media blogs, websites, resources, products, services and service providers. However, in the exploding social media industry, there is certainly room for additional trusted sources. Especially sources focused purely on the business element of social media marketing - and this is where the hot new online magazine, Social Media Examiner, comes into its own. I’m proud and honored to be a part of my dear friend, Michael Stelzner’s, “Social Media Dream Team” behind the… -
Tips, Tricks & Tools from 140 | The Twitter Conference
26 Sep 2009 | 1:26 pmI had the great pleasure of speaking at the recent 140 Twitter Conference on a branding experts panel (Growing Your Brand on Twitter: Strategies and Tactics from the Trenches) with @Starbucks @mprasad @msuster @andrewblair, moderated by one of my favorites in the socialmediasphere, @guykawasaki. The panel was fun and informative! We talked about building community, what to tweet about, how to tweet, whether to auto follow or not, how to measure ROI, how big brands can engage their followers and more. [Pic: @msustermarismith & @guykawaski in background. Photo credit: @ErkChristiansen… -
Facebook News Feed and Wall: How To Control Privacy
24 Aug 2009 | 9:34 amUPDATE: January 4th, 2009 - Facebook’s latest Privacy settings are much more limited… despite the fact they say we have more control. Please refer to this post for updated Facebook News Feed and Wall info. I’ll be adding to my whyfacebook.com blog shortly too. Original post follows: A Facebook friend recently mentioned she was intentionally responding to new Facebook friend requests late at night as she didn’t want to clog up her friends’ feeds. Thing is, there’s a setting in your Facebook Privacy to control exactly what gets published on your Facebook Wall…
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Google News Blog
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Starring stories in Google News
1 Feb 2010 | 2:00 pmPosted by Jude Britto, Software Engineer, Google NewsA couple of months back, we launched the Custom Sections Directory feature in Google News to allow users to set up sections on topics of their interest, and to share them with other users.Today, we are giving users even more options for following stories. Users can mark a story cluster by clicking on the star next to it, like they can with messages in Gmail and items in Google Reader. When you star a story in Google News, it's one way to let us know that you're interested in that subject. When there are significant updates, we will alert… -
Google News Comes Back For More
25 Jan 2010 | 11:53 amPosted by Andy Golding and Kiran Gunda, Software EngineersIf you read news online, you've probably noticed that articles aren't static. They often change over time, to reflect things like typo fixes, shifts in emphasis, new information or corrections of previous mistakes. Sometimes they even switch URLs, or become unavailable after a certain period of time. As a human being, reading at most a few dozen articles a day, this is no big deal.But if you happen to be, say, a news search engine that crawls hundreds of articles at thousands of sites every minute, this presents a unique set of… -
Fast Flip now available on Google News homepage
8 Jan 2010 | 4:23 pmPosted by Jack Hebert, Matthew Watson and Corrie Scalisi, Software EngineersToday you may notice a change to the Google News home page: Near the bottom, we're now displaying stories from Google Fast Flip, the article-reading service we launched in September. Fast Flip is still in Google Labs, so we'll continue to experiment with the format. But so far we've found that the speed and visual nature of the service encourages readers to look at many articles and, for the ones that catch their interest, click through to the story publishers' websites.In December we added more than 50 newspapers,… -
More great news sources to discover in Fast Flip
16 Dec 2009 | 1:11 pmPosted by Jack Hebert, Software Engineer[cross-posted from the Official Google Blog]Three months ago, we launched Google Fast Flip, a service that seeks to make reading articles online as fast and simple as flipping through a magazine or newspaper. It's still early in this experiment, which is why Fast Flip remains in Google Labs. But so far our initial thesis has held up: If you make it easier to read news online, people will read more of it. Users have told us they like being able to browse content so quickly, and we've been pleased with the amount of time they have spent reading articles… -
The holiday season and Google News Archive Search
15 Dec 2009 | 10:42 amPosted by David Smydra, Google News Online TeamCrowded shopping malls, radio stations pumping songs about sleigh bells and chestnuts, inclement weather from coast to coast -- all signs point to one explanation. We're smack in the middle of the holiday season.Whichever holidays you observe, you might be surprised to learn of another one to add to the roster. Two hundred eighteen years ago today, the founders ratified the Bill of Rights, which the United States officially celebrates every December 15 as U.S. Bill of Rights Day. We have President Franklin D. Roosevelt to thank for officially…
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Google Investor Relations
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Google Announces Fourth Quarter And Fiscal Year 2009 Results*
21 Jan 2010 | 11:39 am -
Google to Announce Fourth Quarter 2009 Financial Results
12 Jan 2010 | 1:31 pm -
Google and On2 Agree to Amend Merger Agreement
7 Jan 2010 | 4:29 am -
Google Offers New Model for Consumers to Buy a Mobile Phone
5 Jan 2010 | 10:31 am -
Google to Host Educational Webcast
3 Dec 2009 | 10:49 am
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Copyblogger
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Does Writing for People Work for SEO?
9 Feb 2010 | 8:16 amHang around web writing circles for any length of time, and the inevitable “write for search engines or write for people” debate comes up. It’s a bit strange, really. Last time I checked, it’s people who use search engines, not some other life form. So you’re always writing for people. Obviously, the debate stems from the fact that search engines are powered by computer algorithms. But as search engines have gotten smarter, writing that pleases people and satisfies spiders is not that far apart, if at all. Let’s look at four factors that work well for SEO and see how well they… -
The Art of Shameless Self-Promotion
8 Feb 2010 | 7:49 amI’ve found it just doesn’t pay to crow too much about what I’ve accomplished. Sure, I celebrate when things go well. But I’ve found that talking too much about my achievements leads not only to criticism, but to disappointment. There’s always going to be someone who’s done more or worked harder. And until they carve my name into the side of the moon, I see no reason in puffing myself up. The minute you get a big head is the same minute that reality smacks you and you realize that you aren’t as cool as you think you are. So self-adulation is something I try to stay… -
Five Areas to Focus On for Effective SEO Copywriting
5 Feb 2010 | 8:51 amWhen I first started Copyblogger in 2006, I was almost militantly against on-page search optimization. Seems strange, since I’d been a successful student of SEO since 2000. It was because I saw all these people fretting over keywords like it’s 1999, and yet they had no links. Their content was weak. Their sites weren’t trusted. You can’t optimize something that’s dead in the water. So my initial goal was to get people to focus on content that attracted attention and links first. Only then do you have something you can make better (that’s what optimize means, naturally). Fours… -
Landing Page Makeovers 2007-2009: Where Are They Now?
4 Feb 2010 | 6:46 amThis is another addition to our ongoing series of tutorials and case studies on landing pages that work. It occurred to me late last year, as I was readying yet another Landing Page Makeover, that the end of one year and the beginning of the next was a good time to do a “Where are they now?” post. So first things first, I went back and contacted all makeover participants from the very beginning of the series. Of the more than 20 contacted, I learned that one is no longer in business, MagicPumpkinArt.com (Makeover #14) and two are in the midst of developing new products or revising… -
Does SEO Copywriting Still Matter?
3 Feb 2010 | 8:28 amIf there’s any one thing that can be said about SEO with certainty, it’s that it manages to cause a lot of confusion. For example, it seems like many people’s idea of SEO was formed 10 years ago, and hasn’t bothered to change with the times. Even an online veteran like Robert Scoble is completely clueless about modern best practices for search engine optimization. So, before we go any further, let me answer the question posed by the headline . . . Yes, SEO copywriting still matters. Here’s why. Search is still the biggest game in town “Pick your survey, search remains one of the…
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John Chow
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Last Chance To Become A Blogger For $1.00
8 Feb 2010 | 10:43 pmFor those who haven’t taken advantage of this yet, you have until midnight tonight to sign up to Become A Blogger for only $1. After tonight, Yaro and Gideon will close the door on their six month course. After the doors close, you won’t be able to get in for at least another six months. And apparently, the price may have increased by then as well. The price has already increased once, so why miss out again and pay more later? Yaro and Gideon are the real deal. You can prove it to yourself by doing a simple Google Search of their course, and you’ll see what other people are… -
How To Do Paid Social Media Marketing Right
8 Feb 2010 | 3:20 pmAn increasing number of social media websites are finding that the only real way to structure advertisements so that they have any significant ROI for sponsors is to integrate them into the social nature of the website itself. StumbleUpon did this through the use of “paid stumbles” where they charged $.05 a visitor from the StumbleUpon toolbar and Digg rolled out a similar program soon after showcasing “sponsored stories” amongst the other submissions on the home page. If you are going to pay to advertise on social media websites, this is the way it is to be done. This is the only way… -
Porsche Unveils 911 Turbo S with 530 HP of Happiness
8 Feb 2010 | 10:58 amThe engineers at Porsche have developed a range-topping sports car designed to deliver the finest in terms of power, performance and driving dynamics: the 911 Turbo S. The heart of this exclusive high-performance athlete is the six-cylinder boxer engine boosted by two exhaust gas turbochargers with variable turbine geometry. The flat-six engine has an increase in power over the 911 Turbo by 30 to 530 hp and maximum torque is a most impressive 516 lb-ft. Despite its significant increase in power and dynamic performance, the new 911 Turbo S does not consume any more fuel than the Porsche 911… -
How To Go From Domain Name To Live WordPress Blog In 15 Minutes
7 Feb 2010 | 10:42 pmLast night, I was at a Chinese New Years party at West Van Baptist Church. During the party a few people asked me how hard it was to set up a blog and how long it would take. As luck with have it, I just happened to have my Macbook with me and decided to give a little demo on how to register a domain name, set up a new WordPress blog and have it all live on the Internet in 15 minutes. Twelve year old Ifan Yang is the son of one of the church members. I decided to use him for the demo. The goal was to show everyone how easy it was to get a blog up and running. Here’s the step by step… -
DirectCPV Review and Case Study
7 Feb 2010 | 2:21 pmI have seen DirectCPV advertising on this blog for awhile, and decided I would try them out. Overall I oversee thousands of dollars per month spent on CPV through my accounts and those I manage, but really Media Traffic is the primary company used as they seem to be the most stable and well priced. I decided to give DirectCPV a run for their money, so I dropped $100 into my campaign (their minimum deposit), and forgot to enter my $30 coupon code (JCH30) to give my total $130. This was stupid on my part so I kindly sent them a support request asking if they could add the coupon to my account,…
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Blogging Tips
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Think You have Nothing to Say, Think Again.
8 Feb 2010 | 4:37 pmI’ve been blogging for seven years. Over that time I have talked with many people about blogging. When I talk to people who are even slightly interested in blogging for themselves I inevitably run into the same argument. “But, I have nothing to write about.” I personally think that is a terrible argument. Everyone has something that they are truly passionate about and could talk for days about that subject. To prove that you can blog about anything and still provide value I submit this example of a perfectly good blog post on the topic of saving money. My wife and I started… -
Remember That You Get What You Pay For
7 Feb 2010 | 11:51 amSince I’ve been working at optimized blogs and articles, I’ve noticed there are a few distinct patterns that you can count on when you’re looking through the people that want to hire you to ghost write for them, and there are several red flags and promises that you’ll want to watch for as well as other tip offs that the people who you are dealing with will be great business partners. First of all the web content business is like any other business in that you get what you pay for. I’ve had offers that work out to one penny a word and while the people that offer that kind of… -
4 Tools For Managing Your Tasks and Projects
6 Feb 2010 | 6:00 amIt can be hard to work from home, especially if you have various tasks that you need to get done each done; I know from first hand experience. If you’re working on a group/team project and do not work together in the same location, that can make things even more difficult. If you get distracted easily, it’s also common to waste a lot of time doing non-important things (like playing around on Facebook or Twitter), and before you know it a few hours have flown by. So, all 4 of these tools should be great for helping you be more productive and manage your time wisely. LogMyTask Being… -
Clean up Your Twitter Feed with TidyTweet
5 Feb 2010 | 6:00 amEveryone seems to be joining Twitter now and with the increase in users, we also see an increase in spam, inappropriate posts/tmi (too much info) and just things you don’t want to read about. Sometimes I find that it’s more of a chore and pain to read through my Twitter feed to weed out the good stuff but, this is where a site like TidyTweet comes into play. TidyTweet filters out the clutter that you don’t want to read in your Twitter feed by letting you personally customize what you’d like to see in that feed. You will first need to signup for an account, which only… -
Putting My Blog on a Diet
4 Feb 2010 | 1:36 pmEarlier this week, I decided that I needed to put my main site on a diet. Simply put, the loading time of the site was nowhere near my personal standard and, though no one had complained about the time it took to load, I wasn’t pleased with the numbers I was seeing and even Google Webmaster Tools was providing less-than-subtle hints I needed to improve. So I set my mind to do just that. I took an afternoon to research the problem and try to devise a solution. Fortunately, I didn’t need the entire time or even a quarter of it. In fact, after about 30 minutes of research and just…
