Another Social Media Top 5, where I randomly pick a few topics that may loosely be associates with social media (or maybe public relations, because that’s what I do).

1. Google’s Chrome Browser: It’s new! It’s fast! It’s Google-rific! “Chrome” evokes, well…

   
   (* “Chrome car” photo by Jill Clardy)

   Ok, that’s not a modernist evocation, but I am still interested in trying it out. should I wait until it gets out of Beta?

   Oh, and holy smokes (and I know someone else pointed this out, I just can’t remember who) – The Google Chrome logo…
   

   …looks a lot like another icon of futuristic computing power: “Simon.”
   

2. A Synovate study points out that not everyone knows what a social network is.
   
   (Graphic from eMarketer)

   Ok, first, “no duh.” but on the other hand, the joyous pursuit of all things social media by people in my profession and its close cousins makes it sound like we need to be reminded of that periodically. And we do.

   My oh-so-short comment: If your audience is part of that demographic that is into social networks, dive in. otherwise, keep an eye on the early adopters and budget your brainpower to a little experimentation. The big battleground in “social media ROI” is being fought with guns that haven’t been invented yet; namely, “mass adoption.”

   To that end, the eMarketer article expects U.S. social network usage to approximately double from 2007 to 2008. Why? they’re not telling in the free article, but perhaps it is just the natural growth in awareness of new technology.

   Hat tip to Greg Verdino, who notes that his usage of many social networks has been falling off. It is the curse of early adopters to be forever out of sync with the masses?

3. Ah, politics. First off, this is the first presidential race in the Twitter era. That really hit home during the conventions, where people like me, who don;t necessarily discuss politics much in public, kept a running commentary. I try to balance snark– on both parties– with real pleas for substance from both parties along with other observations. People on my stream tended to be civil. My biggest political sparring partner shared with me a hatred of the New york Yankees, so all is good.

   Also, via Twitter, I was hipped to some Qik.com videos documenting some of the police action taking place with the protesters out the convention hall in St. Paul.

4. While we’re at it, B.L. Ochman has a nice post detailing how far ahead Obama is as a netizen. Does that translate to electoral victory? Probably not this year. It probably means that Democrats– and younger left-leaning folks in particular– may be ahead of their more conservative fellow Americans in embracing politics via the Web. What will B.L.’s charts look like in 2012?

   

5. Last, a nod to a nice series of posts by Brian Solis, titled “The Socialization of Your Personal Brand.” I have been very interested in the mesh of personal and professional brand for quite some time, and as usual Brian has some very detailed guidelines on how to develop and protect your personal brand.

   What is your personal brand right now? Heck, what is mine? i have an idea, but I always refine and redefine.

Technorati Tags: socialmedia, briansolis, blochman, google+chrome, prediential+campaign, conventions,

It must be summer– I have been delinquent for two weeks in getting out a Social Media Top 5, putting me at risk of becoming a snark-fader. But there is quite a bit to talk about in the social media world, isn’t there?

1. Bryan Person moves from Boston to Austin. Well, there must be five reasons why one of Boston’s most likable social media evangelists is leaving our fair city for Austin, the West Berlin of Texas (think a cultural and political equivalent of the Berlin Airlift and you get the idea).

   Boston is colonizing Austin. First Kyle Flaherty, then John Johansen, now Bryper (yes, I still use his abandoned handle. I’m sentimental that way). Slowly, the good city of Austin will bend to our will. We’ll start with the Red Sox (what, you have Rangers Fans there maybe? I highly doubt that), and pretty soon you’ll all be dropping your “R’s.” Yes, it’s a conspiracy.

   Ok, I could only think of one. Safe travels Bryan, and we shall see each other again before long right?
   So what else has been going on?

2. What’s the deal with this Cuil search engine? They got a ton of hype (nice PR), but the search engine itself was terrible. I suppose they could recover as their service gets better, but for now they are covered with builen (plural of buil, Dutch for “bruise” – don’t you love it when someone makes a joke they have to explain?)
3. Well, Hasbro/Mattel finally killed Scrabulous and put up their own weak version of Facebook Scrabble– which, of course, they should have thought of in the first place, one of several ways they could have avoided this mess. I think I’ll sit on my ideas for Bogulous , Battleshipulous and Riskulous until this all calms down.
4. Tech bloggers hate PR. Actually, that’s horseshit; that’s not really what the “>bloggers were saying (for the most part), though it seems some PR people hate PR. Here’s an idea; be good at what you do and people will respond. I know, I already blogged about this but it belongs in the social media top 5.
5. Speaking of PR, PRWeek has initiated a PR blogger popularity contest. I don’t understand this at all, beyond the fact that beauty/popularity contests can be fun– for the contestants. How about a contest about the best content– the best blog posts of the year, something that would actually give me some content to consider, rather than wondering if the Edelman-associated blogs can be pounded into dust due to some contrarian backlash (which seems to be the case the one time I checked)? Feh.

   *I should give a hat-tip to Peter Kim; it was in conversation with him that the “content as a better contest” idea sparked.

Technorati Tags: publicrelations, pr, socialmedia, scrabulous, austin, boston, prweek, cuil

For this week’s Social Media Top 5, I get to be the Social Media Jerk– at least to start:

1. 4,000 for 40. Nothing says “Social Media Jerk” like Shiny Object Syndrome, unless it’s “Round Number Mania.” For my 40th Birthday (June 28, 2008), I have decided to pester people in pursuit of reaching the 4,000 follower mark on Twitter. As of this writing I still have more than 250 to go, but in the end I will have gained hundreds more interesting people to speak with, even if I don’t make the goal in time. For new followers: I’m not usually annoying like that on Twitter, except during Red Sox games. For non-followers. Follow me?

   Of course, if Twitter can’t manage to make it to my 40th birthday (more outages as of the day before), this could all be (more) pointless.

2. Loren Feldman, Shel Israel, and everyone who cares. Please. Shut. Up. Especially Feldman. Enough with the puppets and character assassination. Enough with the Junior High School crap; after all, this is Social Media High School we live in– much more mature. Though Dave Winer thinks this is more of a Second Grade maturity level going on here (but it’s not just the Silicon Valley). Winer’s best line for me:
   

   Satire that’s based on hurting people stops being funny to most people pretty quickly.

3. Associated Press and the bloggers. Ok, this topic is already getting a little old in this short attention span society, but I thought this story was encouraging:
   

   AP to meet with blogging group to form guidelines

   By SETH SUTEL – Jun 16, 2008

   NEW YORK (AP) — The Associated Press, following criticism from bloggers over an AP assertion of copyright, plans to meet this week with a bloggers’ group to help form guidelines under which AP news stories could be quoted online.

   Jim Kennedy, the AP’s director of strategic planning, said Monday that he planned to meet Thursday with Robert Cox, president of the Media Bloggers Association, as part of an effort to create standards for online use of AP stories by bloggers that would protect AP content without discouraging bloggers from legitimately quoting from it.

4. Speaking of lifted content, if you are attending the Scott Monty farewell roast on July 11, please come with your own material (including white shoe jokes. Mine mine mine!)
   
5. CBS’ often hilarious Gil “Stanley Bing” Schwartz rebuts Andrew Cohen’s demonization of PR. Thanks.. I think. Unlike Kami Huyse, I’m not so troubled by the “secondary lies” bit, as Schwartz is laying on the shtick. I’m more concerned that this is the best CBS could do in rebuttal– very funny, but the PR industry still has a PR problem.

Technorati Tags: socialmedia, shelisrael, lorenfeldman, twitter, cbs, publicrelations, scottmonty, associatedpress, bloggers

Twitter’s frequent (enough) outages have caused some rumblings of mutiny among the Twitter community. Just listen:

While the Twitter Blog tries to explain the outages as the service tries to keep up with its increasing popularity, the community needs to take things into its own hands. So, I asked people, on Twitter of course, where they turn when Twitter goes down. Here are the top responses (weighted by my own editorial opinion, so there), with my comments:

• @pprlisa “I go straight to your blog, read your archives and think deep thoughts when Twitter’s down”
  (Obviously delusional, but i like her style)
• @geechee_girl: “I go… back to work/writing *laughs*”
  (“laughs?” Points for spelling the word out)
• @lizwebpage: I go to www.cuteoverload.com and stare blankly at kittens and duckies until twitter comes back. ;)
  (No. No, you don’t)
• @fairminder: returning to a previous activity or position (I made that up)
  (I’m confused, but I think you did that on purpose)
• @jljohansen: Twitter Down SM 5: 1 Check Twhirl settings, is it just you; 2 Plan tweet about outage; 3 Check facebook chat; 4 Catch-up on FF; 5 Cry
  (FF? French Fries? Fantastic Four back issues? Oh- FriendFeed)
• @spazcer: top 5? i guess id have to say Plaxo, FriendFeed, GMail, Facebook and Jyte
  (Plaxo= still creepy; FriendFeed= info firehose; GMail= no thanks; Facebook= what do we do with Facebook again?; Jyte= Jyte? Do I need an invite to that? Must..check…out…jyte)
• @susank: I just shut my computer off. J/K. Seriously, news sites, Facebook, Google reader, email and maybe eeks, I pick up the phone.
  (Phone? Phone is for Twitter! How would that help?)
• @jonathanfields: Lunch…then dinner! ;-)
  (You’re not accounting for a few hours’ activity here- or maybe not)
• @paulswansen: to the local bar, bowling alley, shopping, the mall, your hairdresser
  (Um… the mall? And my hairdresser’s identity is a secret)
• @csuspect: Top 5 sites to turn to when Twitter is down? Mine are Pownce, Utterz, Viddler, gmail and www.pheer.com
  (I think gmail doesn’t count. Isn’t email the enemy? I see a vote for Viddler but not YouTube. Cool)
• @andycaster: I’m sure Utterz is on your list..if it isn’t … it should be!
  (It is)

So, My 5 sites:

1. Utterz (but I link that through Twitter!)
2. Blogs (but I find out about the best posts through Twitter!)
3. News sites (blahblahblahblah Twitter!)
4. GMail (To catch up on new Twitter Followers!)
5. Seesmic (just kidding; actually, Facebook, which consists mostly of my Twitter updates — but I intend to check back in on the Seez soon)

My simpler take? I’m with Twitter until the people leave. patience among the community is starting to fray, but there is still plenty of headroom for the Twitter-folks to get Twitter stabilized before any real exodus occurs. Of course, the appearance of a tool that is as simple to use (or “stupid” as I like to say), as ubiquitous (i.e. mobile-accessible), and stats to draw enough of my crowd, there could be a more urgency. I don;t see FriendFeed as the solution yet, but anyone, feel free to prove me wrong.

*Photo by “Owlhere”, from Flickr

Technorati Tags: twitter, utterz, seesmic, facebook, gmail, flickr, socialmedia,friendfeed

Time for another Social Media Top 5. It has been a whirlwind week, but I am finding time to squeeze one in (or is it out?).

This week’s Top 5 is on the topic of customer service on Twitter: I have been hearing tell about a Comcast Rep committing acts of customer service via Twitter, and also Turbotax reps doing the same. The idea of using Twitter for instant customer service– a kind of public help chat window– is very intriguing, and has shown one way a more mass-popular Twitter can work for some businesses.

Now–what other customer service and professional communication possibilities could there be?

1. Major League Baseball. Can a manager be ejected for arguing balls and strikes calls via Twitter?
   • “How did you read my last Tweet when you can’t even see the strike zone?”
2. Self-dentistry: no doubt, the old Saturday Night Live sketch can be brought to life. all we needed was the Internet, and Twitter.
   • “Ok, it’s clear from your last Tweet that you missed the Novocaine step.”
3. Bomb squads:
   • “Did you remembered to turn vibrate off on your phone? Hello?”
4. Culinary services like Epicurious.com for real-time recipe help:
   • “That last tweet about yeast should have read ‘2 packages,’ not ’22 packages.’ Sorry, typo.”
5. The President could use it to get quick answers from the public to gnawing questions:
   • “Hey all, what do you think, should I call Putin ‘Pootster’ or ‘Bad Vlad?'”
   • “Thinking about a troop surge. DM me if interested.”

Any suggestions?

I’m making up less stuff this week, go figure. Good topics on the Interwebs though:

1) Loren Feldman of 1938 media, while not exactly trying to wipe (Shel) Israel off the map, has been focusing his peculiar (and admittedly, sometimes funny) brand of character assassination against the so-named social media mainstay and co-author of Naked Conversations. Shel was not amused, the rest of us were intermittently entertained.

Feldman snagged the inexplicably available www.shelisrael.com to showcase his diarrhea-of-the-wit puppet show, which I will call “Avenue F-U.” While this started as a criticism of Shel Israel’s initial Fast Company TV episodes, it’s hard to say what the end game is here.

Fortunately, this burst of attention-getting puppetry is showing the social media leaders in a great light, reflecting the seriousness of many social media endeavors (not).

It only hurts when I laugh. In this instance, I’m feeling fine.

2) From puppets to cartoons: Hugh MacLeod, of “Gaping Void” fame, has abandoned Twitter to concentrate on books and cartoons. Hmhm. By that logic, if I quit Twitter, I could probably push out the Great American Novel in a matter of days. Or at least read a couple.

3) Flickr Video. You can contribute videos up to, um 90 seconds. Score another one for Internet ADD.

4) Social Media pin-up Robert Scoble declares “Much of the new Web 2.0 software really is lame until you get at least 50 friends onto it.” That’s what I always said about high school. Just kidding, I was in Band.

Of course, there are more common thoughts out there about “How many is too many?” I separate the size of the network from the group of people I am talking with at the moment.

5) Fellow PR Blogger Todd Defren mused on broken conversations, something I have also thought about. Check my Facebook, LinkedIn, Utterz. Seesmic, Pownce, Jaiku, Twitter , MyBlogLog and/or Flickr account for my response.

Thanks to Twitter pals Todd Defren and Liz Page for help with topics this week, though the opinions and insults are all mine.

Technorati Tags: lorenfeldman, shelisrael, socialmedia, flickr, twitter, gapingvoid, todd+defren, Robert+scoble,

Time again for my Social Media Top 5, a series of observations, snarks and made-up stuff about social media. My items for this week, honoring Opening Day for the Inside Baseball season:

1) Steve Rubel wants to kill “Social Media.” Is the feeling mutual?

Seriously, the horse is out of the barn on the use of this term. If it were inaccurate and pure buzz, I might agree, but it is a commonly accepted term that is making inroads to the mainstream– and is a differentiating, defining term. Not gonna change.

2) New social media site: “FreudFeed.” Like FriendFeed, it aggregates all of your feeds, and those of your friends, in one place. But rather than the actual posting, FreudFeed posts a stream of what you and your friends are really thinking. I’m not sure I can post any hypothetical examples without getting into some real trouble, so use your imagination.

3) Social Media Breakfast 6 in Cambridge, Mass. Jeff Pulver co-hosts, bringing his home-made live-event “tagging” kits with him. Cambridge Police get into the act, tagging the cars of several attendees (fascists).

4) Gary Vaynerchuk instigates “Good People Day,” or “GPD08” on April 3. spend the day pointing out good people online? Nice idea that I simply didn’t have time to participate in that day. My consolation? I’ll just point out good people on an ongoing basis every day. Here are some alternate day ideas though:

GDP08: Point out people who are being productive, contributing to the Gross Domestic Product index

LOL08: Point out the funniest people. Who makes you laugh?

NMDB08: Shine a light on your favorite New Media (expletive)s

5) Best for last: new service Chacha launches. Move over Magic 8 ball, this is where all my ridiculous questions are going from now on. The top 5 questions I asked the service this week, with the real answers

Q: What is social media?
A: Social media describes a new set of Internet tools that enable shared community experiences, both online and in person.

Good answer, good start (aside from my early questions asking for obscure baseball facts, easily answered)

Q: Is Jessica Alba the hottest chick on the planet?
A: She may be to some. This is very much opinion though. Very few scientific studies can determine such a question.

Shakiest answer by far. Twitter friend Adrienne Doss alerted me to a scientific study that definitively proves Jessica Alba is the hottest chick on the planet.

Q: What is the meaning of life?
A: Life: spiritual existence transcending physical death

I bet all you geeky readers were expecting the answer to be “42.”

Q: Does anyone actually use Mahalo?
A: Mahalo is the world’s first human-powered search engine and sure, tons of people use it.

We’re talking about human-assisted Internet services here. I wanted to see if I could raise some competitive hackles here. No dice.

Q: Is Steve Rubel kidding?
A: I hope so, but I think he is being serious

Heh.

This week’s title inspiration: “Cha Cha Heels” by Eartha Kitt (with Bronski Beat)

Technorati Tags: socialmedia, socialmediatop5, gpd08, friendfeed, chacha, steverubel, socialmediabreakfast, smb6, cambridge, parking, Jessica+Alba,

Microblogging as replacement for blogging? Hogwash!
Those of you who know me, or at least have read this blog a fair bit, know I use Twitter. A lot. Twitter is commonly known as microblogging, which has begged the question often in the past year: will microblogging, specifically Twitter, replace blogging?

The answer, obvious to me, is no. Twitter messages (“Tweets”), limited to 140 characters, cannot convey the kind of detail a blog post or other medium can. Twitter can replace some of the more trivial, quickie posts that many bloggers write (Instapundit , though not a trivial blog, comes to mind), but it also serves as a linkway to the more substantial blogposts, be they our own or someone else’s. In fact, I call Twitter my “hub” for all my media.

If the words spill off the page, get a bigger book
This came up to me a few days ago, when I was trying to follow a conversation which took place across many Tweets– and kept going. The point was, I couldn’t follow it, prompting this from me:

“There comes a pt in Twitter conv’s where it makes more sense to put it all in a blog post & link. Equiv of stop email & get on the phone!”

Well, of course, the ever astute Beth Kanter asked me:

@dough have u written a post about when u stop twitter and blog it?

Erm, no. Until now.

The formula, however, is simple to me, and implied above; if you can’t fit your thoughts in 140 characters, introduce the topic on Twitter and link back to a blog post or other media.

What’s your take? Does Twitter replace blogs at all? Do you mix your media and link it all through each other as one? When does one medium become useless, making it time to move your conversation elsewhere?

1) Earth hour: Google leads the way in environmental conscientiousness by going to an energy-saving black homepage. I was so impresses I printed out 50 copies for my friends. Make that 36- I ran out of ink

2) The Great Tweeterboard Outage of 2008 leaves dozens of Twitter addicts unsure of where they stand in the community. The “forced conversation as a cheap way to gain social status” movement is dealt a serious blow.

3) The world is truly coming to an end: a search for the common word “dough” on Google turns up a Twitter page (mine) as the 5th result. Is that just plain nuts, completely useless, or both?

4) Bum Rush the Charts hits the memes again, as The Age of Conversation has attempted to climb the Amazon rankings today (March 29, 2008), with proceeds going to charity. What other Bum Rush campaign do I envision?

Bum Rickroll the charts: Game iTunes so that purchasers of the top 10 tunes all end up getting Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna give You Up.” Seriously, with all the “Rickrolling” going on lately, has Rick Astley benefitted? Let’s get that boy some royalties!

5) Taxes or WordPress upgrade? The blogging world is brought to a halt by the release of WordPress 2.5, causing an Internet stoppage more powerful than any denial-of service attack could even dream of.

While I’m at it: the “Our Hour” reference comes from “Our Hour (The Puppy Love Song)” by Spike Jones and his City Slickers.

Technorati Tags: rickroll, earth+hour, google, AOC, ageofconversation, bumrushthecharts, twitter, tweeterboard

Time for the weekly Social Media Top 5, a collection of japes, jeers, jerks, and general thoughts about social media, real and imagined.

1) First up, the big buzz at SXSW Interactive this past week was the keynote, in which Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was interviewed by BusinessWeek’s Sarah Lacy. Much of the crowd didn’t like how the interview went, and ended up revolting, expressing themselves vocally and through backchannels like Twitter.

(Photo is of a comparable event, the riot during the premiere of Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring”)

Judgements about the interview aside, I see a new trend developing: audiences changing interviews in real time. I dreamed up a few examples of how this mob-action could have changed a few notable interviews and speeches:

A heckling audience of kilted caber-tossers intimidatesThe Scotsman’s Gerri Peev into agreeing to leave Samantha Power’s “Hillary is a monster” comment “off the record.”

The backchannel during Dan Rather’s 2003 interview with Saddam Hussein causes the Internet to crawl to a halt for a full week.

British Prime Minister is heckled into changing his 1938 speech on Czechoslovakia: “Ok, not ‘peace in our time.’ Peace to buy time? No?”

Seriously, it will be interesting to see if audience empowerment extends to other types of conferences.

2) Love 2.0 Cards hit the web (hat-tip to Blonde 2.0).

These are nice, cute ideas turning screenshots from Digg, de.licio.us and other social media sites into love notes, such as this StumbleUpon bit:

However, I think they missed a few sites. My unsolicited contributions:

Twitter

Compete.com

3) Amazon.com launched a new Facebook application, in an attempt to give Facebook members a taste of services they can’t find anywhere else– except on the public Internet.

4) AOL buys social network Bebo. AOL, where venerable Web brands go to die.

5) The iPhone is ready for the enterprise. Executives will next force IT blessings on:

Hi-tech golf clubs
A Playstation 3 networked for play in against the West Coast office comptroller
Server-controlled humidors and wine cellars

Technorati Tags: socialmedia, sxsw, sarah+lacy, facebook, zuckerberg, neville+chamberlain, samantha+Powers, Twitter, Amazon, AOL, Bebo, iPhone, Playstaion+3

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