Pete Cashmore (big dog at Mashable.com) is giving away 5 free copies of the new book “Twitter Tips, Tricks and Tweets.” For a shot at one, post a tweet in reply to @mashable and be sure to add the hash tag #twittertip. Send off your best twitter tip and see if your twidbit rises to the top of the ranks. GOOD LUCK! Here’s mine:
[@mashable #twittertip - Useqwitter.com ... the Twitter equivalent of being offered a breathmint. Use it to 'get a clue.']
At a recent seminar I gave on the topic of Social Media, I made the comment that our daily tasks, networking, communication and work will be increasingly driven to our mobile devices. If you’ve been immersed in the world of SMS/texting you know what I mean. But even our more complex tasks like blogging will be performed on our phones.
Case in point; this post is my first from my iPhone … Sitting in a parking lot waiting for my sons to finish a Boy Scout meeting. Isn’t social media cool? Gotta go — I’ve got a Tweet to post now before I check out my FaceBook account!
I got a copy of David Meerman Scott’s newest book “World Wide Rave“ this past week and hunkered down to immerse myself in it over the weekend. I first heard David talk about his “Six Rules of the Rave” when he spoke at the New Media Marketing Summit so I was more than anxious to get all the skinny from the book in greater detail. David didn’t let us down with this much awaited follow up to his previous #1 seller, “The New Rules of Marketing and PR.”
As so often happens, you learn something new and then you can’t stop seeing ‘it’ everywhere. I think you’ll find this to be the case with all of David’s writing. On Saturday I read through most of the book, including rule #3, “Lose Control.” Then today I read several re-tweets on the new Skittles Social Media web site strategy (Go to the Skittles candy web site to check it out.)
What the Skittles web team has done is created a set of div layers that float above a web page and those pages are served up as the content of the site. This doesn’t sound too earth shattering until you realize that the links are to pages that OTHER people have created through social media sites … the content is NOT created by Skittles. For example;
Sadly, the Skittles legal team had their say by requiring users to enter their date of birth and that you know the content was not created by Mars Snackfood US, LLC. The idea, however, still truly conforms to David’s rule #3. Skittles has completely relinquished control of their web site content to the social masses. They trust their brand can weather any negativity seen in these other networks and that the benefit of participating in the networks will FAR outweigh the risk.
BRAVO SKITTLES! Your bravery makes you deserving of the Rave Wave you’re riding right now!
A friend of mine is, let’s say, challenged when it comes to anything computer or Internet related. If I throw any terms at her like wiki, podcast, RSS feed or social bookmarking, she looks at me like I have two heads. Now, thanks to Commoncraft.com there’s help for anyone struggling to understand these concepts.
Commoncraft.com produces short videos that can be found on YouTube. They take complex concepts and break them down into simple explanations. This husband and wife production company develops clever videos that creatively explain a robust subject in plain terms so the average person can easily understand.Â
I recently found one of their videos http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddO9idmax0o when doing research on Twitter. Each of their productions is fun with graphics that include a whiteboard and paper cutouts. The first one I saw made me laugh out loud it was so different and interesting the way it was put together. And, the best thing about it was that I really understood what I hadn’t been able to before.Â
Besides Internet concepts, they also cover other topics like: New Light Bulbs, California School Finance and the H&R Block Tango. They even have some in languages other than English.Â
So the next time my friend is befuddled with something computer related, I’m sending her to the URL for a Common Craft video. That is, once I explain to her what a URL is. Hmm… is there a Common Craft video for that?
The Star-Ledger, New Jersey’s largest newspaper, reports they’ll be forced to sell unless 200 non-union employees accept a buyout. Publisher George E. Arwady described the paper as being “on life support.”
NJ.com stated in their report of the announcement;
The offer comes at a time when the newspaper industry is reeling from plunging advertising revenues linked to a troubled economy and the growth of online media.
Other troubled businesses and industries you’ll want to keep an eye on (and the New Media forces causing their woes).
Maybe it’s time to short some stocks.
I procrastinated — ACK!. Although I started the planning almost a year ago, I didn’t put the date of PodCamp Boston 3 on my calendar. Realizing that it was coming up soon, this afternoon my business partner Richard and my lead developer Howard and I looked it up and found out that tomorrow/today (Wednesday, July 16th) is the last day to register and the event is this coming weekend. The thing is that I’m committed to several other personal obligations and although I tried (really tried) to justify getting out of most of them, I couldn’t. I - AM - BUMMIN’!
OK, so what does this say about the event?! It’s going to be a DOOZIE! If you have the opportunity to sign up and you’re available to hang out in Cambridge, MA with some of the world’s leading social media gurus, do it now!
If you make it there, tell Richard and Howard to take lots of notes … I’ll read them later through my tear stained eyes. WAH!
At the 2008 WidgetWeb Expo, I think all but just a few of the two dozen+ presenters felt compelled to give an explanation of what a widget is. Considering the audience was one of the most motivated group of widget developers/users/consumers on the planet, I thought this more than a bit odd. After a little bit of thought, however, I came to the conclusion that the explanations were clarifications of their own particular view … that the concept is far from clear and that there is no consensus on what exactly a widget is.
There are start page widgets, web widgets, social network widgets and even desktop widgets. They can be simple or complex. They can be coded in a myriad of programming languages.
Sooo, I decided to come up with my own metaphor for describing what a widget is to the average layperson. Here goes …
Let me start the metaphor by having you think of your business as a home-based business out in the suburbs. The house itself is your web presence. Got it?
OK, now think about how MOST businesses conduct marketing. They build billboards, they post flyers, they send postcards to people, they publish yellowpage ads, etc. All of these tactics are performed with the intent of motivating people (located elsewhere) to come to your place of business (your house - your web site). Getting people to get off their duffs to come see your wares is no small feat — especially on the web.
Now, consider the nearby small town or city. In our metaphor, these are social networks (MySpace, FaceBook, etc.). This is where all of the warm bodies are located. All of those people are milling about, doing their day-to-day tasks. Are they ripe to get an in-your-face advertising pitch? NO WAY! How about your well crafted billboard advertisement. Doesn’t work. It is, indeed, a marketing case of “water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink.” Tens of millions of consumers that are aggressively insulating themselves from marketing messages.
The way I see it, you have four options;
ONE — Build a new city. If you control the city and can get people to occupy it, you’ll have a ready and waiting group of people who might be consumers of your goods and services. But what a monstrous task that is!… building your own social network is NO small feat!
TWO — Continue marketing your services the old fashioned way. The tried and true marketing strategies of days-gone-by require no extra learning curve on your part but they still work … kinda.
THREE — Learn about the New Rules of Marketing and PR. Now we’re talking. Best use of the web and technology to make direct contact with the consumer.
But, there’s another way. Back to our metaphor …Â
FOUR — Pack up some (or all) of your business into a cart, take it into the city and park it on a street corner. Surrounded by millions of consumers, you’re sure to land sales you never would have made by waiting patiently back at your house. Are you ready? …. the cart is a widget!Â
Through widgets, consumers are exposed to your company (content, products, services, etc.) without having to leave the social networks, communities, blogs, web pages or even their own desktop. The cart … uhhh, I mean widget, provides the content conveniently and immediately. The widget makes it easy for them to spread the word about you virally to all of their friends, and the connections you make are facilitated by the networks and communities where the widget is placed.
The next logical question for you is, “what kind of widget can I make for my business?”  Good question … give me a call if you’d like to chat about that (888-825-3300)
It happens. You spend time and money to go to a great event and then, when you return, the real world smacks you square in the middle of the forehead and you let your ‘follow up’ slide.
It’s been three days since I returned from the WidgetWeb Expo and I’m just now getting around to doing a post. How sad … considering how fabulous the event was! Here’s a recap of just some of the highlights;
Josh Burnhoff, VP at Forrester and co-Author of Groundswell (yes, it’s on my “must read” list), presented a “Business case for Widgets” and tied many of the ideas from the book to the world of widgets. (That’s Josh pictured with me … clearly, I’m not a stalker or serial killer … inside joke)Because there were two channels, I was only able to attend half the sessions. I guess next year I’ll have to bring my alter ego.
I’m sitting in an outdoor terrace of a quaint little Turkish restaurant in Brooklyn, NY. While anxiously waiting for the of start tomorrow’s WidgetWeb Expo I’m relegated to connecting with the ‘outside world’ via my iPhone. What strikes me most, in the moment, is how NYC is really an amazing slice of the ‘real’ world … so rich in cultural diversity. What a shame it would have been to take a seat inside the restaurant and miss out on the people watching. This, in a way is like social media. If we sit alone, immersed in our own little lives, never looking outward, we’ll miss out on connecting with an entire world, even if it’s just connecting by observation.
Forgive me if I seem melancholic … I’m missing my boys on this Father’s Day.
It’s hard to blame a news organization formed in 1846 for being a little out of touch with what’s going on with social communication. BUT, when Irene Keselman, AP’s Intellectual Property Governance Coordinator, sent a “Digital Media Copyright Act” take down notice to the Drudge Retort on Wednesday, it should have been predictable what the blogoshpere’s reaction would be. Swift, severe and negative.
AP claimed that the Drudge Retort violated the definition of fair use because “…taking the headline and lead of a story without a proper license to be an infringement of its copyrights, and additionally constitutes ‘hot news’ misappropriation.”
That may be technically true, but consider;
If THIS is a violation of fair use, then I think the entire blogosphere is guilty of infringement and should be severely punished … OR, we should change the definition.
Here’s a GREAT post by TechDirt on the whole sordid affair:
AP Goes After Bloggers For Posting Article Headlines And Snippets
from the you’re-going-to-lose,-badly dept
Last fall, the Associated Press claimed that it was ready to change to face the new internet world — and that meant not just being a gatekeeper, but joining in the conversation. As we noted at the time, though, AP execs said all that, only to immediately follow that up with plans that looked like it was trying to become a new type of gatekeeper. [Read full article ...]
Important: Note that I used their full headline, full sub-headline and the first couple of sentences. My bet is TechDirt will NOT be sending me a DMCA take down notice because of my skirting of “fair use” of their content. In fact, I bet they actually appreciate that I’ve given them three inbound links to their article.
I would personally leave it up to the legal beagles to hash out the exact definition of “fair use”. HOWEVER, if the AP is going to survive in a global communication environment, they need to know when they’re biting the hand that feeds them. (And, I’m NOT talking about their pitch to sell content licenses to bloggers.)
What do YOU think? Is AP within their rights? Is this move intelligent?
Follow up to AP:Â If you’re listening, your “clue” can be found in the new book Groundswell, by Charlene Li and Josh Burnoff
