Image credit For years, Facebook and Twitter have maintained a friendly coopetition of sorts, with neither one taking a firm stance against the other. However, if you believe that Mark Zuckerberg does not actively contemplate strategies for either acquiring Twitter or rendering it obsolete, please think about the landscape and monetization drivers that aren’t yet readily apparent to us as everyday consumers. This may seem like the “Social Media Summer of Love,” but in the end, there are billions of…
If This Headline Doesn’t Catch Your Attention, I Failed
Guest Post by Shannon Paul, Read her blog | Follow her on Twitter Image Credit: Gakuranman Content may be king, but it won’t ever get the royal treatment outside the confines of your company’s website unless its dressed for success with a killer headline and description to match. A lot of interest can be generated with great content and some proper positioning. Positioning, in this case means solid headlines and descriptions to accompany the content at a variety of access…
Breathing New Life into Virtual Worlds
Source And you thought Virtual Worlds were so passé…a new study suggests that virtual worlds may be getting a second life. In 2007-2008, many brands and companies flocked to Second Life to build a virtual presence, which spiked, peaked, and created somewhat of a backlash and ultimately a bit of a retreat in the process. By mid-2009, virtual worlds were realizing a comeback of sorts. In July 2009, virtual worlds consultancy kzero.co.uk reported that membership of virtual worlds grew by…
Active Listening on the Social Web; It’s Overrated
by Michael Brito Getty Images Wikipedia tells us that active listening is an intent to “listen for meaning”. Others suggest that active listening should “focus on who you are listening to, whether in a group or one-on-one, in order to understand what he or she is saying.” These are excellent definitions. But as it relates to customer interactions on the social web, active listening is only one half of the equation. Take for example, this brief illustration. A man gets…
Bloggers, Companies Must Assume Responsibility For Their Audiences
by Jason Falls Credit: NotSoGoodPhotography on Flickr Far be it from me to lament the ability for anyone to build or publish virtually anything now that the age of the consumer and age of information have intersected so gloriously. We are truly blessed to live in a day when, with a little time and instruction reading, even the tech-tarded can have their own blog or website and publish anything they want. The more adventurous and creative, or all-night code-bender freaks,…
Are You Talking to Me?
I’ve been spending a fair amount of time touring the world in support of my ideas and thoughts on the direction of new PR, branding, service, and marketing communications. My reward and inspiration to continue is sourced from each person I meet and the experiences and challenges they share. I’ve learned that our greatest hindrance to evolve is not our unwillingness to do so, our indoctrination in new media and communications is truly obstructed by the executives to whom we…
Everything You Never Knew About Facebook
Shot at SXSW While I’m currently in the midst of writing my next book, I stumbled across some very interesting and useful statistics that offer a glimpse into Facebook behavior and activity as well as the state of the Facebook platform. I believe that they reinforce many of our hunches and assumptions and also introduce facts that may alter the ingredients of your next Social Media initiative. General: Facebook has more than 250 million users 120 million users log on…
Full Disclosure: Sponsored Conversations on Twitter Raise Concerns, Prompt Standards
This is the unabridged version of my latest post on TechCrunch. This version dives much deeper into the challenges, pitfalls, psychology, and associated opportunities to more effectively navigate this complicated, but imminent issue. Source In light of the FTC’s recent scrutiny of Social Media practices and the activity that connects brands to influencers and ultimately consumers, we will soon see guidelines and corresponding penalties to serve as governance for future engagement. My views and opinions of how the FTC is…
New Media University: Twitter 101 for Business
Over the years, I’ve actively called for Twitter to contribute to its own culture and direction by leading instead of following. It would effectively serve as a source of inspiration and orientation for consumers and the businesses hoping to connect with them, which would ultimately increase the alarming 40-percent user retention pattern. I suggested that the company actively define user scenarios and offer a quick-start guide for the unique groups of users seeking guidance in order to not only increase…
TwitCam Lets You Host Live Video Chats in Twitter
Video on Twitter has offered a way for brands and spokespersons to visually share a more human side of the company with friends and followers. Up until now, 12seconds, Seesmic Video, TwitVid, Twiddeo, Twitc, TwitLens, and Tweetube, offered the most common and seamless bridges for connecting short (episodic) videos directly to the Twitter stream. In the last two weeks, we’ve been introduced to two new solutions video solutions for Twitter, that combine live video, Twitter streams and community interaction in…
