Source Fueled by a combination of popularity, curiosity, necessity, strategy, and trendiness, marketers are embracing a new recipe that injects a proactive, social approach to outbound communications and engagement – with or without all of the answers before they jump in. This approach, while courageous, has required faith, conviction, and champions who didn’t necessarily have access to metrics and case studies at the SMB and enterprise level. Many of the most and also least effective campaigns were implemented as a…
Facebook Now 200 Million Strong
Mark Zuckerberg Not to be outdone by the news of Twitter’s astronomical growth, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg announced that the popular social network has hit a noteworthy milestone, the welcoming of their 200 millionth user. To celebrate the moment, Zuckerberg commented, “When we built Facebook in 2004, our goal was to create a richer, faster way for people to share information about what was happening around them. We thought that giving people better tools to communicate would help them better understand…
The End of the Innocence?
Source The Social Web is maturing at a blurring pace, packing thousands of years of behavioral and social evolution into the span of ten years or less. Social Media has amplified our individual voices and introduced an infrastructure that connects us contextually across a myriad of social networks. We’re conditioned to participate and engage genuinely and transparently in order to foster meaningful conversations and ultimately relationships. I’d like to explore the other side of the discussion that rarely sees the…
Twitter Traffic Surges to 10 Million: The Demographics Driving the Growth
Twitter continues to defy all those who question its relevance. Exploding from 6 million visitors at the beginning of the year, ComScore released its latest numbers that portray an almost vertical ascent through the end of February 2009, hitting an astonishing 10 million worldwide. Perhaps more interestingly, is the demographics that are fueling the groundswell. According to ComScore, the majority of visitors around the world were 35 years old or older, which match Nielsen’s assessment of those groups representing the…
Introducing MediaOnTwitter: Extending MicroPR to Improve Collaboration on Twitter
Last year, Stowe Boyd and I, in development with Christopher Peri, introduced MicroPR, an online service for Twitter that connects reporters, bloggers, event organizers, authors, among others, to PR representatives when they need help sourcing content or connecting with experts in Twitter time. To date, MicroPR is followed by over 5,000 communications and marketing professionals. MicroPR extends a tweet beyond the existing followers of the person asking for help to include those following the decicated PR channel. It amplifies the…
The Decline of Newspaper Revenue and the Promise of the Human Network
It’s not news that newspaper revenue derived from advertising and subscriptions is rapidly eroding. While Madison Avenue worries about the recession and its impact on advertising in general, numbers recently published by the Newspaper Association of America indicate online advertising only continues to rise. Perhaps most interesting is the impending intersection between the decline of a 200 year old institution and a new medium competing for the same precious ad dollars for only the last 15 years. According to this…
Frank Gruber on Putting the Public Back in Public Relations
Credit My good friend, Frank Gruber is one of the hardest working bloggers and new media professionals I know. By day, he’s a product strategist for AOL in the social networking group. His focus is on lifestreaming products, including AIM, Bebo and SocialThing. Frank Gruber is also a well known blogger focused on sharing his Web product expertise and analysis on Web 2.0, social media and emerging technologies in articles and videos online. His works have been featured in TechCrunch,…
Video Interview: How to Build an Online Community with Loic Le Meur
Part Two of my recent visit to the gorgeous San Francisco offices of Loic Le Meur and Seesmic. Loic and I spent some valuable time together that proved both refreshing and invigorating. We discussed digital photography, innovation at Seesmic, public relations and social marketing, and brand building in the era of the Social Web. The conversation evolved into a deeper discussion that tackled the subject of online community building. Loic wanted to capture and share the experience on Loic.tv, so…
The Conversation Prism v2.0
The Conversation Prism by Brian Solis and Jesse Thomas The Conversation Prism debuted in August 2008 to provide a visual representation of the true expansiveness of the Social Web and the conversations that define it. In this short time span, over one million people have crossed its path. When Jesse Thomas of JESS3 and I initially mapped “the conversation,” we recognized that the act of categorizing social networks within a visually rich graphic would be momentary at best, demanding endless…
Paul Gillin on Putting the Public Back in Public Relations
Paul Gillin at Blogworld Expo I’ve rigorously followed Paul Gillin over the years. Gillin is a long-time technology journalist who’s worked almost exclusively online since 1999. He was founding editor-in-chief of TechTarget, which was one of the most successful new media entities to debut on the Web. Before that, he served as editor-in-chief and executive editor of the technology weekly Computerworld for 15 years. In 2007, Gillin released The New Influencers and in 2008 he released Secrets of Social Media…
