Category: Social Media

I’m thinking digital this week…

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Thanks to my pal, Steve Clayton I’m off to Newcastle this week to attend the Thinking Digital conference. This is my first conference of the year and I’m really looking forward to it. 

The event takes on an eclectic range of technology-based topics that have (or soon will have) a profound effect upon the way we work and live: from the future of media and making far better use of technology, to our obsession with happiness and creating a cure for ageing.

The speaker line up is fantastic, highlight guest speakers include:

  • Greg Dyke , former Director General of the BBC.                                                                                                
  • Doug Richard , formerly of The Dragons’ Den on BBC2 and founder of Library House.  Doug is also the Chairman and CEO of Trutap, a great new startup in London. 
  • Ray Kurzweil, noted futurist & author of The Singularity is Near
  • The Fake Steve Jobs aka Dan Lyons, senior editor of Forbes Magazine & author of Options.
  • Steve Clayton, Microsoft’s Software + Services Lead and self confessed “Geek in Disguise.  I’m looking forward to seeing the first live public demos of Microsoft’s Live Mesh.
  • Tara Hunt, founder of Citizen Agency, San Francisco.

If you are attending the conference, ping me an mail and let’s meet up?   jas {at] thewebpitch {dot} {com}

Social Media advice from Chris Brogan

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A solid Social Media compendium from Chris Brogan and Alexa Scordato, which I have reproduced below. This is a great collection of Chris’s insights into social-media and is worthy of being a reference for you to return to when you are tracking down any related materials or seeking answers.

Check out Chris Brogan.com for some other great insights. I’m adding the blog to my Google Reader. I think you should too!

Community Development
Social Networks
Social Media
Twitter
Personal Branding
Making Media

Free Forrester Webinar on "Groundswell"

Who?

Josh and Charlene will be delivering a free webinar “Groundswell: A Framework For Using Web 2.0 For Business Advantage”  

What?

A “Groundswell Webinar : A Framework For Using Web 2.0 For Business Advantage.” They authors will be reviewing the core ideas laid out in the “Groundswell” book, going through the frameworks and strategies needed to approach and thrive in the groundswell.

Agenda:

  • What process should companies use to create social strategies?
  • What business objectives can be achieved with Web 2.0 technologies?
  • How should you get started?

When?

Friday, May 9th at 11:00 am EST / 5 PM Amsterdam / 4 PM UK

Where?

1. Go to: http://hosted.mediasite.com/hosted4/Viewer/?peid=15888d16e0824f0a88195984d2996dac

2. Enter the brief requested details & hit ‘Register’ (please use your business email address)

3. The presentation screen will launch and the webinar will start at the time announced

4. Please be sure to turn your volume on.

Test by viewing this presentation <http://www.mediasite.com/presentation.aspx?p=24570> Click on “View Presentation” and if you are able to see it and hear it (check your speakers), you will be able to log into the webinar.

Book Review: Groundswell – Winning in a world transformed by social technologies.

For many businesses who have still yet to venture into the world of social media. “Groundswell” is a must read. The book cites a number of case studies which illustrate how companies are gaining insights, increasing revenues, lowering costs and engaging their customers within today’s Web 2.0 world.

Forrester analysts, Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff have produced the most up-to-book on the subject and present their findings in a clear and easy to understand format. Both demonstrate their expertise as analysts and writers and provide numerous data examples throughout the book.

What is a Groundswell?

Charlene and Josh define the Groundswell as:

“…a social trend in which people use technologies to get the things they need from each other, rather than from traditional institutions”.

 

The authors discuss why it important to participate in the “Groundswell” and why the “Groundswell” is happening now. The book begins with an overview into what “social media” actually is, and discusses many of the successes and the pitfalls that a company can go through during its journey. The book then offers steps that a business should follow to implement a successful social media strategy.

The book essentially examines how such tools threaten institutional power, and how individuals can use them to empower themselves and their businesses.

Many businesses foolishly believe that participating in social media is as simple as creating a blog, or being active in Facebook. Groundswell does a great job at explaining that creating a successful social media strategy is probably one of the most difficult things that a business can do and takes time and commitment

Hopefully by reading this book the business person will be well on their way to mastering the new dynamics of social media.

Truly, a well presented and written book that is a must read for anyone who wants to learn and utilise Internet marketing, as it exists today and will exist tomorrow.

So much so, I would say this is the most important book to be released since The Cluetrain Manifesto and Naked Conversations.

Buy it!

Windows Live loves Facebook

Microsoft has announced a new partnership with five of the six most popular social networking sites. The partnership will allow users to more safely and easily share contacts with various Windows Live services.
Microsoft’s new partnership includes Facebook, Bebo, Hi5, LinkedIn, and Tagged. A notable absentee is MySpace. MySpace currently uses an older version of Microsoft’s Windows Live Contacts interoperability and will therefore likely be compatible at some point in the future.

Users of Microsoft’s Windows Live Messenger service can visit, www.invite2messenger.net, where they can invite contacts from Facebook to join Windows Live Messenger. (NB. Support for Hotmail, Bebo, LinkedIn, Hi5, and Tagged will be added in the weeks ahead).

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The Future of Social Networks

 

Charlene Li believes that in the future, social networks will be like air. They will be anywhere and everywhere we need and want them to be. And also, without that social context in our connected lives, we won’t really feel like we are truly living and alive, just as without sufficient air, we won’t really be able to breathe deeply.

There are four components of what Charlene calls the idea of “ubiquitous social networks”: 1) Profiles; 2) Relationships; 3) Activities; and 4) Business models. In the context of ubiquitous social networks, they will develop into the following: 1) Universal identities; 2) A single social graph; 3) Social context for activities; and 4) Social influence defining marketing value. For more detail on each of these components

The ubiquitous social network isn’t going to happen overnight – in fact, it’s going to take five+ years to come to fruition. This is part of the continued evolution of open platforms, starting with walled garden services like Prodigy, Compuserve, and AOL that evolved into the major portal aggregators like Yahoo!, MSN, and AOL. This gave way to the “search era” where Google et. al. made all of the Internet easily accessible. Today’s social networks are a throwback to those early closed platforms, and they will be opened up by new “entrants” into the social space – namely, Yahoo!, Microsoft, Google, and AOL – who will leverage their deep, daily relationships with online audiences.

In the end, there are two essential things that have to present for this all to happen. The first is technology — ubiquitous Internet access and the servers to enable real-time social graph access. Given the pace of technology development, I’m pretty sure this will happen. The second is much harder — trust has to be present, between people, between social networks, marketers, and developers. This is what is going take a lot of time, effort, and patience.

Check out her presentation below and forthcoming new book – Groundswell