Author Archive

Social Median has been opened up to a public beta now. Early adopter type that I am, I of course had to run right over and check it out. I’m still playing with it, but I have a few initial impressions about the overall service so far.
First, Social Median is no FriendFeed. If you were hoping for a replacement to FriendFeed like I was, this is not it. It has a few similar features, but in the end, it is [...]

I was under impressed with Microsoft's Live.com Live Search page when it first came out, and have largely ignored it since. When a few of the people I follow on Twitter gave the new feature release today bad one line Twitter reviews, I felt compelled to revisit it and see what they were bothered about.
Looking over the "big news" from Microsoft I see… hot spots and images? Is that it? Wait, the hot spots also have fly overs. So, we [...]

We had a fantastic Topics on Fire podcast last night on TalkShoe discussing the poverty gap and the internet and how social media could help bridge it. Because the audio recording had feedback issues, I'm doing a recap here in case we can't get that fixed. The conversation lasted an hour and will go into part two this coming Sunday, August the 3rd (and yes, I have enlisted the help of a tech for a backup recording of the next [...]

The latest trend in the Twitterverse seems to be one of rules, rules, rules. This trend toward a kind of social media home owner's association is driven in part by ego and part by a desire for control and power, and it goes against the grain of social media.
Social media and the internet it plays on is organic by nature. Organic concepts scare the pants off of people and companies, especially big enterprise. After so many decades of an economy [...]

Over the past 48 hours I conducted a poll of Twitter users. Unscientific? Absolutely. Generic? Of course. And yet I was surprised at the results. What did I ask on Thursday? “Which issue is bigger to you? Gender gap/social media, race/social media, poverty gap/social media or generation gap/social media.”
I must admit I picked a hard time to conduct a Twitter Poll, what with Twitter going down, but I still got a healthy number of responses. When I started the poll, [...]

I have to start with a confession: I am a die-hard Scrabble lover in real life, but a Scrabulous-only player online. Hasbro introduced a Scrabble FaceBook application after Scrabulous spent vast amounts of time wiping the floor with them by having theirs up first. Frankly, Hasbro, your application is too little, too late and not as much fun to play.
Scrabulous had to know this lawsuit was coming, though. Profy writer Cyndy Aleo-Carreria predicted this lawsuit as far back as January [...]

My session at PodCamp3 Boston was called Breaking Into the Conversation, Busting the Clique. It was about how to use social media to its fullest potential for you. Basically, how to be heard online and what social media tools are your best option.
So many people assume that to be a success when using social media, or to have it be productive for them, that they must follow the A-List or only vie for the attention of the top tier early [...]

There was one thing that surprised me at PodCamp3 Boston, and that was how overwhelmed by choices even the best and brightest in the new media, old media and social fields are right now. With a new social media platform, application or site popping up near daily, the constant question was how to choose what to use.
The answer is to use what works for you, and nothing more. Unless you are someone like myself, whose bread and butter depends on [...]

Throughout my weekend at PodCamp3 Boston, woven in amongst the learning, the collaboration and the intensely communal environment, were the marketers and monetizers. I have nothing against marketers, public relations people, and people who are all about making money by monetizing the social media arena, but in the context of the weekend, I watched the focus on ads eventually hamper every discussion.
Whether it was an impromptu, informal cafeteria session with Chris Brogan, myself, Paul Gillin, John Herman, John Coyne [...]