Profy

Do you believe in the power of social media? Of course you do if you are reading this post now because people who read this blog are mostly related to the online crowd in this way or another. But the truth is that the mainstream media still make more difference when it comes to promoting a product (even if it is an online service like Twitter) or turning an online celebrity into a world-famous personality that everyone talks about.

Clever PR people do know about the power of social media and they do have bloggers on their distribution lists so that they could send the press releases to the relevant blogs to reach the online audience with the voices of respected bloggers that their readers frequently trust more than some TV anchor who is not even presenting their own opinion and instead often relies 100% on impersonal editors...Do you believe in the power of social media? Of course you do if you are reading this post now because people who read this blog are mostly related to the online crowd in this way or another. But the truth is that the mainstream media still make more difference when it comes to promoting a product (even if it is an online service like Twitter) or turning an online celebrity into a world-famous personality that everyone talks about.

Clever PR people do know about the power of social media and they do have bloggers on their distribution lists so that they could send the press releases to the relevant blogs to reach the online audience with the voices of respected bloggers that their readers frequently trust more than some TV anchor who is not even presenting their own opinion and instead often relies 100% on impersonal editors.

But does that mean that these very PR people have removed journalists working in traditional media (both p[...]

Last week the blogosphere in Russia discussed yet another interesting topic regarding the famous Apple’s device and a huge bill sent to one of subscribers of a local mobile carrier for some international exuberance. And since the summer full of vacations abroad is in full play, the story quickly got to be a very hot one though there’s nothing particularly special about it – nothing but the amount of the bill involved: $17 thousand from a cell phone carrier after a vacation abroad...

I know this may sound ridiculous and even unbelievable but the story has actually received huge attention in the Russian news sources and blogs – as it the story is actually true. I’ve checked, the news is not dated April 1st no matter how appropriate it could be for the day but the entire Russian blogosphere is now discussing how Russia now supposedly has a village named after a website – and a website that works in the frequently criticized and discussed in courts field of torrent tracking and p2p sharing...

If a person knows anything at all about internet business, they certainly know that those numerous web sites they visit every day are mostly supported by advertising - those flashy banners that are everywhere these days. But since no one ever clicks those "You are one millionth visitor, click here for your prize" banners, everyone in the online business knows there's one important thing about ads that actually makes them work: targeting...

It is quite obvious that the social networking boom of the recent years has resulted in abundance of social networks that probably cover all the niches of society. It is quite obvious that in some countries (like Russia where I live) this process is taking longer than it did in the US because all the trends arrive here with a noticeable delay. So while the US has social networks for everything already, in Russia we are now witnessing yet another novelty – a social network intended specifically for state officials...

If you have chosen internet as the place where you do business (no matter what business it is), you probably realize that some of the things that matter to you are hardly important for the rest of the world. You dream about things like getting to the front page of Digg or listening in person to Steve Jobs introducing their brightest shiny product to a huge audience or having 2,000 followers on Twitter, or whatever...

For quite a while I've been watching social networking booming in Russia and it has been a spectacular process here in the country with practically everyone now having a profile on at least one of the two major social networks - Odnoklassniki or Vkontakte. One economic effect of this boom has been obvious for quite a while: many office employees spent huge portions of their time chatting on the social networks with friends and flirting with strangers. It is no wonder that many companies started to ban such social networks in their offices...

Today quite a number of my Russian friends on Twitter are discussing terrible news: a Twitter account of a Russian politician (in fact, working right here in the city of Novosibirsk where I happen to live myself) has been suspended for what seems to be political reasons...

As some of you may have heard already, Posterous is currently having a switching campaign offering one new tool to migrate from other platforms and services a day for 15 days starting on the 21st of June. Posterous, which positions itself as 'the simplest publishing platform on the planet', is aggressively adding a ton of new services for new and existing Posterous users to be able to move their current blogs to this platform easily - and to stay there, of course. Today is the day of LiveJournal and I really think that people who get a chance to migrate should do so for a ton of reasons in LiveJournal as a blogging platform...