What follows is the unedited Director’s Cut of my latest post on TechCrunch, “Are Blogs Losing Their Authority To The Statusphere?” My definition of Statusphere. Source Depending on which numbers you source or believe, all reports agree that the blogosphere continues to expand globally. As the leading blog directory and search engine, Technorati maintains a coveted Authority Index which is considered amongst bloggers as the benchmark for measuring their rank and selling their position within the blogosphere. Authority is defined…
I Like You: The Emerging Culture of Micro Acts of Appreciation with Macro Impact
Source Like is the new favorite, which was at the time, was the new bookmark. This small, but important feature will no less, reinforce relationships between friends and followers and those who produce, interact with, and share content. Made popular by services such as FriendFeed, and now Facebook, the idea of liking an update is much bigger than merely bookmarking or favoriting (yes, it’s a new verb in the social web) updates from friends and contacts for later reference. The…
BackType Connects the Conversation Graph
I’m a strong supporter of BackType and the work of Christopher Golda since the debut of the highly valuable comments search engine last September. Listening effectively requires extensive and active monitoring of not only blog posts and Tweets on Twitter, but also blog comments and other active networks that define the Conversation Prism. It’s how identify active communities that necessitate not only responses, but ongoing participation. BackType brings blog post comments into the spotlight. Whether you’re managing an online reputation…
Facebook Swims Its Way into Your Lifestream: What the Facebook news means to you
Shot at Mark Zuckerberg’s 2008 F8 keynote This week Facebook hosted a blogstar-studded event to introduce a more people-focused platform for interacting around your Facebook statusphere in “Twitter time.” Let’s review what this news means to you as a user and as a new media enthusiast. After Facebook’s failed attempt at acquiring Twitter, the company seems to be on a b-line to unite people in an online social graph while connecting them through a dynamic and rapid fire conversation and…
Socializing the Social Media Release with PitchEngine
Over the past few years I have been a vocal and vigorous supporter of the Social Media Release (SMR) for one simple reason – it represented a new and promising opportunity to renew the dialog around improving the foundation for the communication of news, information, and events that left most immune to its overdue potential. It wasn’t a new tool to package the useless and hollow marketing “speak” that is prevalent in so many releases today. It was and is…
Media 2.0 Workgroup Announces Best Practices
As one of the founding members of the Media 2.0 Workgroup, I contribute to the greater collective of intellectual activity dedicated to advancing media and communication. Fellow members, Chris Saad and Stowe Boyd have been discussing the ethics and best practices around social media and social tools specifically with Eric Blantz and Khris Loux with specific regard to JS-Kit. Independently, I have also discussed and supported a more people-focused approach to connecting with courtesy of those companies that continually force…
Top Trends and Apps: How Do People Use Twitter?
My friends over at HubSpot released the latest market data that reveals which tools and services people are flocking to when communicating on Twitter. According to the research, most people interact on Twitter using Twitter.com from their browser of choice – almost half of all users in fact. Note to hubspot, would love to see that data broken out by browser. Second, and it’s a distant second, people are interacting on Twitter using downloaded or web-based desktop apps, which provide…
Facebook and the Future of User Generated Governance
Shot at Web 2.0 Summit 2008 Facebook is learning to listen. In the middle of February 2009, the company was yet again a “Beacon” for bad PR as it introduced an updated Terms of Service (Tos) for its entire community of users. We the people responded with defiance and vigor and the company retracted its new language, reverted to the previous ToS, and listened to the valuable feedback that poured in from the community. By all accounts, this was the…
The Ties that Bind Us – Visualizing Relationships on Twitter and Social Networks
Credit Bernardo A. Huberman, Daniel M. Romero and Fang Wu of the Social Computing Laboratory at HP Labs conducted an in-depth study of the relationships that power Twitter. The team recently released its report, “Social networks that matter: Twitter under the microscope.” The abstract: Scholars, advertisers and political activists see massive online social networks as a representation of social interactions that can be used to study the propagation of ideas, social bond dynamics and viral marketing, among others. But the…
Yelp Gets a Bad Review: Embracing a Crisis to Shape Perception
Source This post highlights the nuances associated with crisis communications and not the merit of either case. In the era of socialized media, brands and businesses are now vulnerable to a new era of influencers – their customers. But what happens when the community that championed consumer experiences is accused of exploiting them to extort advertising dollars from the businesses affected by the reviews? User generated reviews aren’t necessarily a brand new concept, epinions, Amazon, among any others have provided…
