HAS SOCIAL MEDIA GONE THE WAY OF THE FAX MACHINE?
When I started speaking about social media in 2005, I used to joke that someday, conferences discussing social media will be about as relevant and well-attended as conferences on the business uses of the Fax machine. I’m wondering if that day has come. About a month ago I attended TC Disrupt, one of the biggest startup conferences and one dedicated to…
WHY SM CONSULTANTS ARE COMING IN FROM THE COLD
Wherever I turn, it seems one of my many friends who work as independent social media consultants are either looking for fulltime jobs or have recently taken one. I’m not talking about superstars like Chris Brogan. Nor do I include the out-of-nowhere self-proclaimed social media “experts” who usually turn out to be ” know-nothings.” The people I’m talking about are…
WHY I THINK EMPIRE AVENUE IS A WINNER
When Scott Monty sent me an invite to play Empire Avenue, the social media world’s hot-product-du-jour, I groaned. Why do I need another distraction to distract me from all my other social media distractions, I asked him. He answered with tweeting brevity. “It’s fun,” he said. “It does what Klout is supposed to do, but we rate our own friends. Both statements interested me. We can…
SM PIONEERS: JUSTIN HALL, THE 1ST BLOGGER
[NOTE: Formerly, the SM Global Report, this column has interviewed people all over the world who have extended social media in interesting or useful directions. For the next several months it will focus exclusively on people who will be covered in my next book, Social Media Pioneers. Your feedback will influence how extensively I cover people. If you can think of…
PIONEERS OF SOCIAL MEDIA–INTRODUCTION
[NOTE: I use social media tools to help me write books. I get insight and feedback from people on this blog, on Twitter and on Facebook. I’ve done this twice before and the result has been a much better book without the help from so many friends. There’s a process. I turn to readers for suggestions on who to write…
EGYPT, THE NY TIMES & BRAIDED JOURNALISM
The tweet post went up this morning from the New York Times: ”If you’re in Egypt, or in contact with someone in Egypt, we’d love to have photos and video from the scene. Send to: pix@nyt.com.” It is a fresh example of a concept that I call “braided journalism.” It is the idea that professional and citizen journalists will merge resources to…
IS “SOCIAL” THE NEW BLACK?
I was on a Social Media Club panel in San Francisco when I ad libbed a forecast that “2011 will be the year in which the word ‘social’ is inserted in front of all other words.” It became my most retweeted comment of the night. While some still complain that the term “social media” is inaccurate, it seems to me that…
TWITALYZER: HOW DOES IT MEASURE UP?
A few weeks back I met with Klout’s Joe Fernandez. I went in to the session skeptical and walked out respecting what the Klout team has achieved and where the company is trying to go. That being said, I still harbor more than a few concerns. This week I had a similar experience with the senior guys at Portland-based Twitalyzer, another social analytics…
SM GLOBAL REPORT: KD PAINE ANALYZES MEASUREMENT
I had only met KD Paine once previously when we were slated to debate at a software publishing conference in the middle 1980s. Our topic was whether or not public relations could be measured. At the time, I was a PR operative and she had started a PR measurement firm. I expected it would be a slam-dunk to win the…
MY PREDICTIONS FOR 2011
Well it’s year-end, once again. And a bunch of people are about to embarrass themselves making predictions for the coming year. These predictions usually fall into two batches: the blatantly obvious and the ones that can be explained away when they do not happen. The thing about the future is it’s filled with surprises and those surprises will changes apparent…