A blog exploring The Social Web – Learn. Explore. Profit.
Twitter is fast becoming a way of life. It’s living with an active “publicity policy”. It’s friends, Romans and country people the world over, engaged in timely snippet conversations that fit into 140 character chunks. Those great people at CommonCraft have released a video which explains what Twitter is and how it can be used. Great Stuff!
Fantastic video “blending” two personal favourites, Blendtec and Seth Godin. The end result is a fantastic promo video for Seth’s new book. Genius!
Nick Carr being interviewed about his great new book, The Big Switch. Grab a copy of one of the most important books of the year.
The following video is doing the rounds at the moment. Are we headed for another bubble burst? I think “small bubbles” are bursting everyday, we just don’t hear about the startups. Enjoy the video, it made me laugh.
As part of my research, I’m always trying to find new ways of explaining Web 2.0 technologies to small firms. Especially in a clear, confident and easy to understand manner. I’m specifically trying to engage them, into giving some of the technologies a trial run. One of the problems I find is that, most people tend to look lost when I mention ‘RSS’, or ‘blog’. These are words that most people still do not understand. Though, their understanding is rapidly changing.
Explaining Social bookmarking, RSS, social networking and wikis is not easy. Therefore, when faced with a situation of conveying the benefits of this stuff. I try to apply, ‘the mother principle’. In order words, would my mum understand it? I figure, that if I can explain it to my mum, then explaining these technologies and their benefits to small firms should be a piece of cake!
I came across the following Common Craft videos, which do a great job of explaining the above. I’ve linked to the Social Bookmarking one already. However, I’ve add the other ones now too. If you need to get a key decision maker up to speed with Web 2.0 technologies. A quick viewing of these videos should make your life a little easier.
As for my mum? She’s just signed up to del.icio.us after watching the first video! I reckon I can get her blogging before Christmas!
Social Bookmarking in Plain English
Social Networking in Plain English
RSS in Plain English
Wiki’s in Plain English
I came across a CNET interview video with Matt Mullenweg, co-creator of WordPress and founder of Automattic, the company that runs the blog host service WordPress.com. As you might expect, Mullenweg has an well-formed perspective on blogging. So what’s the state of the blogosphere? He sees the field as “nascent,” despite the presence of large and influential blogs that are well on their way toward challenging incumbent media
He offers some interesting insights about blogging, freedom of speech, and how candidates’ blogs in the U.S. are usually not much more than platforms for “pre-canned ideas.”
Also in this interview: how to make money from blogs (hint: Google), ICanHasCheezburger, how big the blogosphere can get and what could stop it, the potential integration of Twitter-like services into WordPress
Mullenweg is interesting to watch. He’s outspoken, articulate, and has a great perch to see this medium emerge.
The video below is rather old now, circa 2003 and charts Windows from its origins to what it should have really delivered today. Even though the video shows Longhorn concepts, many of the features were pulled over the years.
What might have been. Its only software after all… (Apologies for the dire music)
Waaaayyy off topic – Ze Frank, on procrastination