In a new report by Gartner Analysts, they’re stating the obvious: social computing/social networking is a force to be reckoned with from a customer relationship management standpoint. Do companies really not know this yet?
I do have to rememeber to rein in my skepticism when I read things like the Gartner report and remember that I’m considered one of those early adopter types. I’ve been preaching the need for companies to use social networking for CRM, and brand building for approximately two years now.
The Gartner report predicts that more than 60% of Fortune 1000 companies will have a form of online …read more

Both Forbes and MediaPost’s Online Spin newsletter discussed the idea of a “social nervous system” or the concept of the Hive mind that the new social media world has created, and it really got me thinking. There is a palpable, frenetic energy associated with a lot of the social networking going on. There’s always something happening on one of the networks around the world.
orporations and businesses are only just starting to twig to the fact that they need to be involved in social media, on several fronts – not just blogging or twittering or having a facebook page. There needs …read more

Normally, planning an event can take months, sometimes as many as 12, but the Writer’s Federation and the Shabeen Club have teamed up to create an amazingly fun event in just two weeks.
That meant all of the traditional promotional methods were completely out of the question. So, instead, organizer Lorraine Murphy turned to Twitter to arrange everything. Crime Pays takes place Monday, March 16th at the Vancouver Police Museum.

“We had to do it on twitter because it all literally happened over two weeks, from getting the idea to holding the event.” said Lorraine.  “Papers need more notice than that; we …read more

This is a first in the social media world of firsts. Yesterday, the Mars Hill Church in Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood not only had the sermon broadcast on large video screens, but the congregation was Tweeting  and broadcasting on iPhones. Not only that, but they were encouraged to do it!
“How does the service impact them, what does worship feel like to them and its a good way for them to kind of tell their friends what church is about without their friends even  coming in the building,” said Kyle Firstenberg, Mars Hill Campus Administrator. [source]
The tweets were popping up on the …read more

It’s looking like YouTube is about to be made a star. YouTube is this close to signing a contract with the William Morris Agency which would give the company’s clients another screen to be on – the really small screen: made-for-the-Web productions.
Much like the music industry underwent changes to the distribution model when the dust settled and the internet became such a powerful force for music; this deal will underscore the ways the distribution models for television and movies on the internet.
There’s several actors and other celebrities are creating their own content for the internet, avoiding the red tape involved …read more

I spend a lot of time wandering about the interwebs and reading articles that interest me. It makes some sense – as a writer, I’ve got an insatiable curiosity about the world, so when I stumbled across an article titled  "The mother and son torn apart by web ‘cult’ that destroys families: Teenage follower of a controversial internet philosopher tells how he walked out on his family and why he now despises them" I was easily distracted and rather enthralled.
Turns out there’s a guy named Stefan Molyneux, who claims to be an Internet philosopher, who advocates, or perhaps just …read more

Given the fact that I’ve always considered the Air Force and the other military organizations as being pretty conservative, the fact that the Air Force has a well organized policy for social media interaction is totally impressive.
Not only do they have a Twitter account, a YouTube channel and Wigets and Podcasts as well as having Airmen proactively “counter-blog”, which is what they refer to replying to bloggers. They’ve got a complete, strategic flow chart for response, and of course have to be careful about what they reveal online.
I first found this through friends, but David Merman Scott also wrote about it …read more

There’s a ton of posts out there that talk about how social media will change in the upcoming year, what will happen with our communications and predictions for the year to come and looks-back at the year that was.
Me? Sure, I did the ranty (although, perhaps it was a little too ranty!) post the other day about the things that I hoped would just go away in 2009, and I’ve been looking aroung at the posts that try to predict 2009.
Twitter gained a major following this year and started to go mainstream, big time. Growth is off the hook, (I …read more

The New York Times is beating the bushes to generate more interest in their website, trying to get more eyeballs on the site in order to convince their advertisers that online really is a good thing!
I have to admit, the videos are pretty good. The site calls them “candid conversations with someone’s most interesting conversations about their passions, their lives and NYTimes.com”. They’re unscripted and are, for the most part, just pure fun. You can see them all here.
I think my favourite has to be the Ben Stein one, but that might just be because the dog is adorable.

I’ve been thinking about the whole traditional media/new media thing – everyone trying to figure out will happen to traditional media in the future. I’ve been mulling over thoughts around this for a while now, but haven’t been able to gather all my thoughts into one cohesive post. And then, I came across Chris’s post entitled All Tomorrow’s Armies and realized that Chris managed to coalesce all my thoughts!
Stay with the old at your own risk. All tomorrow’s armies are equipped and ready to embed. We don’t need to gather. We have our own dial tone. We connect and …read more