Category Archives: Social Networks

Joseph Jaffe goes off on Sprint, Sony, T-Mobile, Target and Starbucks

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I find myself detatching myself from every pitch, commercial, sales and marketing push and looking at it from what was the goal of the company that is trying to reach me. Why or what is their thinking. Do they know me? Do they care? What demo do they think I am if I am viewing or receiving the message?

If you watch Joseph Jaffe’s video rant here to the Association of National Advertisers’ Integrated Marketing Conference, nothing aggravates uber-blogger Jaffe more than marketers that employ fakery, manipulation and heavy-handed lawyers in their social-media interactions with consumers.

Yes these are the social media mistakes of large marketers, but it can be easily done on any level..check it out. But..my question to you is, shouldn’t large marketers have the resources in house to GET IT?

 

 

Can Twitter and Plurk co-exist?

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Anybody remember the Hatfields and McCoys? Check out this picture and read what you can of the sign:

Civil war conflicts, romantic entanglements, family oriented discord, property disputes, mixed with mountain pride…. Yeeeeehaaaaa. Mabel, git my gun!

Ok..so the guy on the left is Twitter and the the feller on the right is Plurk.. The guy on the left looks like he’s tolerating the guy on the right, doesn’t it? It’s sorta the way I’m seeing whats happening right now between the 2 currently. The golden child versus the upstart. Ali versus Frazier, Firefox versus IE, Kirk versus Khan? Leno versus Letterman.

I know I’m stretching the relationship a bit, if you want to call it a relationship but….really, it’s a situation where eventually you are going to end up in one of two camps but not both…  At the least, they are labor intensive, don’t you think? As I have alluded to in a previous post, social networking is hard work, and that includes the likes of micro blogging using  the aformentioned Twitter and Plurk.

This topic stems from a LinkedIn question I have currently active in which I asked Do you Twitter? If so why? and if not, how come? For now I’d like to pull from some of the tremendous answers I received from some really really smart people that speak to the duel that is heating up thanks to the Twitter outages of the past few weeks.

 Here’s a quick thought maybe Twitter and Plurk could hang together like..

.

 Ben and Jerry?

Those scarry 70’s mugshots notwithstanding, we might as meld the two micro-blog sites together and create another entity called Twurk? Plitter? Plutter? Let me digress, before I lose you and share with you some thoughts and links about what others have to say about Twitter and Plurk.

First off, Daniel Schutzsmith provided a great link to a post he wrote called 20 things I learned using Twitter, it’s informative, has a ton of links and makes sense.(nice glasses btw, Daniel)

Next, although this person did not specifically chime in on her love or hate for Twitter, I still liked her post, Melissa Chang, tells me why she likes Twitter, bumps and all…

Beth Harte of OnPath technologies supplied not only some great observations but also 3 great links to 3  great articles that speak to exactly what is good, bad and ugly about Twitter and Plurk. the first is by Mack Collier titled, Getting individuals excited while trying to create a community, I like Mack, and he brings up some great points about Plurk.

Beth’s next suggestion was to read a post by Jason Falls, titled 5 reasons Plurk is better than Twitter and vice versa, who by no coincidence, was recommended to me by Todd Defrens in response to my top 30 social media experts, and 17 thought leaders posts. Jason has some thoughts as well about Plurk you might find interesting.

Lastly, she mentioned a post by Frank Martin  called The question of Plurk, which lays It all out pretty succinctly, screen shots and all. I highly recommend it. He seems to be a champion for the Plurk cause, but it’s cool, it’s all good. Ultimately, I think Twitter and Plurk can co-exist just like:

Why not? What sayeth you?

LinkedIn has got it’s act together

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Yep, LinkedIn does have its act together…Except for today, since they have been down for over 2 hours. But having said that, I’m sure the 23 million plus members will let them slide. Especially since it has now been valued at over $1billion! Watch this video and listen carefully. You may understand the thinking that goes into investing in some of the hottest social media companies out there today.

With 23 million members in 150 countries, more than half overseas, LinkedIn has said it could generate as much as $100 million in revenue this year from premium subscriptions, blue-chip advertisers, job listings and corporate services. It’s all part of a massive shift, dubbed Enterprise 2.0, as corporate America increasingly turns to the Web for software and services.

LinkedIn boasts that it averages a new user every two seconds. Research firm Nielsen Online reports that LinkedIn is pulling in 146% more unique visitors year over year.

In May, it was the fourth-most-popular social network, with 7.7 million U.S. visitors. Its audience stats are the kind that impress advertisers as well: The average user is 41 years old and makes about $110,000 a year.

 

Twebinar: Where twitter meets webinar

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Next week, Thursday, the 26th, some of social media’s best and brightest come together to wax poetic about all things social in the form of a twebinar, which is essentially a webinar and Twitter mash-up. The conversations take place in real-time before, during and after the webinar, on Twitter.

To enter the Twebinar

 

  1. Make sure you have a twitter account, don’t worry it’s simple. Next, Sign-up for a webinar on a topic that interests you.
  2. On the day of the webinar, watch the presentation from your computer and receive information visually and verbally from the presenter(s).
  3. During the webinar, a parallel conversation takes place as participants comment, ask questions, and/or discuss the webinar series on Twitter. Follow the webinar participants on Twitter and join the conversation.
  4. Gather ideas and/or resources from a community of people with interests that are similar to yours.
  5. The result? Ta Da…. A twebinar!
  6. Learn some things about yourself, others, your industry, and perhaps how it all comes full circle in social media.

How social networks might make money, virtual goods.

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Will selling goods be the answer for social networks?

Brian Oneill says that If you take a look at social networks in Asia, they are all monetizing their sites primarily through social goods. For instance, 51.com, which recently raised a $50 million round, earns 70 percent of their revenue through virtual goods.

I’ve written in the past about monetizing social nets and the challenges that the smaller players will face. Unfortunately, I’m afraid that if your revenue models are tied into advertisers, you may be looking at a light at the end of the tunnel attached to a train. So we talked about this over a year ago, and it’s been written about a lot back then, and still. So what has changed? Nothing.

Social Nets have to sell something other than subscriptions and ad space.  So what is it? Virtual Goods,

Susan Wu, a principal at Charles River Ventures says that people spend real money on virtual objects for  four major reasons:

Virtual objects aren’t really objects – they’re services

Virtual objects create real value for people

The cost of buying objects can be cheaper than “earning” them and lastly, and the most important,

You can make money off of virtual objects.

I would suggest all  those who are “thinking” of  jumping into the social media tech start up game to read the full article by Susan, though it came out roughly a year ago to the day, it is now more relevant than ever before. 

 

17 social media influencers and thought shapers

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 Butch Cassidy: “I couldn’t do that. Could you do that? Why can they do it? Who are those guys?”

I promised that I would follow up the top 30 social media experts post I did with a few more people who’s work I admire, who’s thinking is forward, and who’s ideas of what culture and technology should be, are wide open.  You have no idea how many bookmarks and sites I have saved that I try to read and digest and actually think about. No wonder my eyes are always bleeding on the way home from work? Easy..I’m kidding..

It’s these types of people that will provide the basis of how we will view our interactions in a technological environment as we go forward. If you are unfamiliar with some of these people, that’s ok. Pretty soon you won’t be. Of these 17, feel free to offer up your peers for review. We currently have a listing of 51 social media experts, luminaries and standouts! I’d love to add more and I know they’re out there. Beware though, if you email or tweet that you’re an expert, then you’re not.

Todd Defren

Neil Patel

Lee Odden

Richard Binhammer

John Cass

Maggie Fox

David Alston

Chris Heuer

Sam Lawrence

Mike Manuel

Steve Lubetkin

Dave Parmet

Pete Blackshaw

Kris Smith

Kami Watson Huyse

Joseph Thornley

Clay Shirkey

Stowe Boyd

I would suggest setting aside some time to really go through the list, as there is quite a bit to digest here, but it’s all good and so so very relevant today!

13 Random Links for Tuesday

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Sometimes when I’m stuck, I go back to see what I’ve bookmarked over the past few days and weeks.  it’s an interesting compilation.

BuiltWith is a website analysis tool, providing technical analysis and SEO optimization information to further your website’s marketing, sales and navigation effectiveness. It seems pretty cool, though, if you want a really neat web tool check this one out website grader

Clay Shirky is a pretty interesting person who has a new book out that I have on my “got to get” list it’s called, Here comes everybody, I read an excerpt and it was really really good.

I have Mike Stopforth’s web site bookmarked, he’s is an entrepreneur, writer and speaker who heads up Cerebra, South Africa’s leading social media company, I thought it best to see what others across the world are doing with social media.

Check out Utterz when you get a chance. With Utterz, you can instantly share your news by creating a multi-media posting in voice, video, picture and text, right from your mobile phone, or online. It works with every phone, on every carrier, which is interesting.

I struck up a conversation with Paul Chaney a few weeks ago and this is his company Bizzuka, I added Paul to my 4 more social media experts post

Here is a great post on…alas.. Taking a class in social media.

I’m always on the lookout for a good solid analytics package other than Urchin, and this one was referred to me the other day, check out Mint.

And lastly, I’m talking with these people tomorrow Ecairn, I’m looking forward to giving it a test drive.

 

 

What did we do before the conversations started?

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You know, I have never had some many great meaningful discussions on so many relevant topics in all the years I have been in tech. I attribute alot of this to the buzzword of the latter part of this decade and that is the conversation. The emergence of the conversation between people wanting to work together, the collaboration of people working towards a collective goal. The customer finding his voice and the company finally listening with humility.

Mental Note: Be sure to write a piece about listening with humility. Who does that?

 Which led me to think. What the hell did we do before? What did people do with all of this great input, insight, knowledge and wisdom before, but with no real vehicles to share it. Did they write books about conversations? Not really,  Although, I know of one book where the conversations are rich and plentiful and thats the age of conversation edited by Gavin Heaton and Drew McLellan.

Tell me this isn’t a great time to be talking and sharing? I know these are hard times in some respects, but from a technology, innovation, and entrepreneuial standpoint, there has never been a more optimal time make a difference and actually do a lot with what we have right now! Here’s someone that all of you should follow. Ironically his blog is called How to change the world, once you get there if you have not heard of him, it won’t take you long to appreciate what he does with his time.

Another person that really enagages in some great discussions about, well conversations is Chris Brogan, your day should consist of stopping by Chris’s blog to see what he is thinking. In fact he has a post that I’m sure we all could relate to called, Be Sexier in Person. Not that Chris is blogging about sexy he is in person, just read the post.

 

 

 

 

 

You know who else I like, who else engages in light but interesting and thought provoking conversations? Mack Collier. he lays it out there in a way thats easy to digest. In actuality there are A LOT of conversations going on out there that I would like to take part in, but my god, would I ever get anything done?

 

I think whats important to keep in mind is that we all love to talk, or we wouldn’t be blogging but you tell me what do you want to get out of your next conversation? Are you into what you can contribute or what you can take away from it? What is your favorite blog and why?

Suffice it to say, I’m glad we’re in the age of the conversation and excited about where we are headed, wherever that may be.

Last thing. While I was writing this I had Pandora on in the backround and heard the most riveting acoustic version of “One”. The song originally sung by U2 was being sang by Warren Haynes at Bonnaroo, Check it out and tell me what you think.

 

Social Media Dumbed Down

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Common Craft is a two person, husband and wife company that makes videos that are short, simple and focused on making complex ideas easy to understand.  One of those ideas/videos that I absolutely love is about social media. It’s “dumbed down” to levels that even the most stubborn, stodgy, old school, CEO can understand. They use a whiteboard-and-paper format that is designed to cut out the noise and stick to what matters. See what you think and share with others!