Last year, Robert Scoble and Darren Barefoot debuted the Social Media Starfish to visualize and document the rapidly evolving landscape for social tools, services, and networks. If you work in marketing, public relations, advertising, customer service, product development, or any discipline that’s motivated, shaped, and directed by customers, peers, stakeholders and influencers, monitoring and in some cases, participating in online conversations is critical in competing for the future. Over the last month, I worked with Jesse Thomas of JESS3, to…
SEC To Recognize Corporate Blogs as Public Disclosure, What This Means for Wires and Press Releases
Note: This post originally ran on TechCrunch, “SEC To Recognize Corporate Blogs as Public Disclosure. Can We Now Kill the Press Release?” Here’s the director’s cut, “SEC To Recognize Corporate Blogs as Public Disclosure, What This Means for Wires and Press Releases” For several years, Sun CEO, Jonathan Schwartz has lobbied the SEC to allow disclosure of financial information through corporate blogs. In a landmark announcement, it seems that Mr. Schwartz may indeed get his wish, and with it, a…
Comcast Cares and Why Your Business Should Too – The Socialization of Service
Bradley C. Bower for The New York Times Frank Eliason, digital care manager at Comcast There’s certainly no shortage of discussions in the blogosphere that examine and spotlight companies that are listening to brand-related conversations across the Social Web to improve customer service, retention, and loyalty. But, when the New York Times decides to profile the emerging and critically important trend of two-way dialog between company representatives and stakeholders, we actually begin the process of crossing the chasm into the…
Facebook Connects Your Brand Across the Social Web
I attended the Facebook f8 developer conference yesterday in San Francisco and I’m still recovering from the overwhelming experience. Thousands of developers flocked to the San Francisco Design Center to see their Social Sherpa in person and calibrate with his vision for the next year of propagating the social graph. It’s indeed a movement and his influence can not be underestimated. Comparisons to Steve Jobs were broadcast as freely as the ideas for new apps that were exchanged in almost…
New Communication Theory and the New Roles for the New World of Marketing
In the era of the “new” social Web, communications is actually evolving back to its origins of communicating with people, not at them. It may seem implied, but communications does not, for the most part, embody two-way discussions. Over the years, communications has evolved into a one-way distribution channel that broadcasts messages at target audiences. In the process, communications stopped being about communication, focusing instead on the marketing aspects of top-down message push and control, what we now commonly refer…
The Social Revolution is Our Industrial Revolution
Broadcast and print media and the services that support the creation and distribution of information are not dead and Social Media is not going to get indicted for holding the smoking gun. These powerful, influential, and age-old industries are however, undergoing some of their most radical transformations and metamorphoses in order to adapt to the elusive and rapidly shifting information landscape. Money is migrating away from traditional media as well as the industries and services that support it – from…
Sprout Adds Fuel to the Widget Economy
Sprout is a new, very cool service that lets everyday people create portable widgets for embedding on Web sites, blogs, and in social networks. I was originally introduced to the service at DEMO08 in January and was immediately blown away. We live in the widget economy and people today are empowered and compelled to lift and place encapsulated content and experiences from one place to another, however and whenever they’d like. With SproutBuilder, you can now build your own custom,…
The Essential Guide to Social Media Translated into French
Francois Ramaget of Aspect Consulting translated The Essential Guide to Social Media into French and has made it available as a free download here. Thank you Francois! The Essential Guide to Social Media is a “quick start” overview of how to listen and participate in social media and new media marketing. Last year, Yuri Aksyonov translated The Social Media Manifesto into Russian. You can find it here. If you haven’t already had a chance, be sure to read, The Art…
The Art of Conversation – It’s About Listening Not Marketing
Discussions and debates on the viability, necessity, and effectiveness of conversational aka social media marketing continue to roar across the Social Web. There are three sides to this equation: – New media pioneers and practitioners who defend and evangelize the art of conversations because they’re investing in people and their feedback and have the experience to showcase value and ROI. – Social Media marketers who embrace social tools and promote their use in corporate/brand marketing and Public Relations, learning in…
Chad Hurley on the Rise, Acquisition, and Future of YouTube
Social Media is our genre’s Industrial Revolution. It is the era of new influencers and the ability for everyday people to share their creativity, expertise, thoughts, ideas, and passions in order to participate in and build a community around common interests. People are taking their destiny into their own hands and evolving their online, personal or professional, persona and brands online. While there are many user-generated or people-driven social networks today, none generate the mainstream traffic or exposure possible at…
