Archive for March 2010
Seton Hill University – Griffin Technology Advantage – iPads for EVERYONE!
Seton Hill University will give a new Apple iPad to every full-time student in fall 2010. March 30, 2010 – The iPad initiative kicks off the University’s Griffin Technology Advantage Program. This new program provides students with the best in technology and collaborative learning tools, ensuring that Seton Hill students will be uniquely suited to whatever careers they choose – even those that have not yet been created.
For more information on the Griffin Technology Advantage Program, please visit the website. www.setonhill.edu/techadvantage.
Facebook to scrap `become a fan of’ for `like’ – Yahoo! News
NEW YORK – Facebook is about to change the way it asks its users to connect to brands and celebrities on the site. Rather than ask people to “become a fan” of say, Starbucks or Lady Gaga, Facebook will instead let users click that they like the subject.
Facebook already lets people show that they like comments or pictures posted on the site, and it says users click that term almost twice as much as they click “become a fan.” Facebook says changing the button will make users more comfortable with linking up with a brand and will streamline the site.
Businesses use Facebook pages, which are free to create, to connect with their customers and promote their brands. Facebook makes money from the advertisements these companies often use to draw users to their pages. The average user becomes a fan of four pages each month, according to Facebook.
“The idea of liking a brand is a much more natural action than (becoming a fan) of a brand,” said Michael Lazerow, CEO of Buddy Media, which helps companies establish their brands and advertise on social networks such as Facebook. “In many ways it’s a lower threshold.”
But while it might seem to be less of a commitment to declare that you “like” Coca-Cola than to announce you are a fan of it, the meaning essentially would stay the same: Your Facebook friends would see that you clicked that you “like” a page, and such pages would still be listed on your Facebook profile for anyone to see.
The world’s largest online social network is known for constantly tweaking the way users experience the site. This often draws complaints, but Facebook continues to draw millions of new fans. More than half of its 400 million users log in every day.
Mark Guerra Photography … 2010 SXSW Austin Music Awards (Backstage)
Yes, this is the only picture the photographer got of me. If you want to see the rest go here: http://www.markguerra.com/ama2010/index.html
9 Social Media Topics that Need To Die | Brand Elevation Through Social Media and Social Business | Altitude Branding
Disclaimer: I’m annoyed. This post is probably crabby. Not my usual fare. Skip it if you like.
If you’re still here, can we, pretty please, talk to the people around us and do something to prevent these tragic conversations? Consider this a public service announcement or a rant, however you choose. But enough is enough.
1. Getting More Followers and Fans
Unless you can tell me what the hell they’re going to do for you, how you’re going to mobilize them, and what you’re going to give back to them that makes it worth their while to grant you their attention and continue to give it, who cares? People aren’t marbles, and you don’t get any points for collecting a bunch of staring eyeballs that are waiting for you to do something significant. Attention only matters if can move people beyond noticing, and into investing their time and energy.
2. Misdefined ROI
Google it. If you know what ROI really is, you’ll eventually figure how to do the work and connect the dots between your social media endeavors and your finances, your brand, or a combination of the two. You’ll find other metrics, too, that point toward success or lack of it.
If you don’t, quit bastardizing the term ROI and using cryptic, fluffy interpretations of it in order to avoid admitting that you don’t understand it, or to dodge the whole measurement and accountability issue altogether. If you’re using vague ROI arguments to stand in for what’s really a lack of a business case, you have work to do on explaining why you care about social media in the first place.
3. Entitlement to Free Stuff
The people on the web with knowledge, expertise, and information owe you none of it. Some will put it out there for free because they believe there’s value in contributing to the whole. But they don’t owe you a thing, and they can take it away or change the game anytime they want.
Whether they’ll be successful or not is for their potential customers to decide. But you are not entitled to a bit of it. Pay or don’t pay for what’s valuable to you personally, but quit with the naive notion that social media and money don’t or can’t go together, and that content creators are morally or ethically corrupt because they’re asking for compensation in return for making their knowledge and experience available.
4. Joining the Conversation
This was probably a great phrase at the emergence of all of this, but it’s become so diluted that it means little anymore. Join which conversation? For what purpose? With whom? And what then? Let’s start talking about the INTENT behind the conversation in the first place, and the underlying value of being present and engaged with the right people who give a rip what you have to say, not just anyone with a frontal lobe and an internet connection.
5. What’s The Next Whatever
We have all of the “new” we could possibly want, but we’re distinctly lacking in execution with what we have. Clamoring for the next big thing is looking for permission to be messy. It’s easier to latch on to something new and unproven, because then you’re not accountable. Instead, man (or woman) up, and get busy wrangling the things you already have at your disposal to do something worthwhile.
6. Content is King.
Like hell. Creating content is not what wins you the prize. It’s not enough to write something, or populate a blog, or create a video. Content is worth precisely ZERO until it’s being found, consumed, and then used to do something. It needs to drive people to action – sharing, buying, building, interacting.
And guess what, stargazers? If your content isn’t propelling people to act on something that eventually delivers something of value back to your business (provided you’re talking content marketing and not outright contribution for charitable purpose), it’s a time sink. That makes it decidedly less than king.
7. The Quest for Universal Constants
How many people do I need to manage social media? How many hours a day? How much budget? What should I put on my Facebook page? Do we need a LinkedIn Group? Where’s the case study?
Stop. There’s more than enough information out there to guide you toward the big picture constants. The rest you’re going to have to find out for yourself by actually doing something, and putting it all in context of your own situation. This is no different than anything else, ever. You still have to build your own sales strategy, HR plan, CRM approach irrespective of what’s been done before, no matter how long those concepts have been around. If you’re spending all your time building your cloned safety net based on other people’s situations, you’re already behind the game, and not focused on what your business needs.
8. Social Media Experts and Proverbial Snake Oil
Who cares? If you’re a business, do your due diligence the way you would with any other adviser you hire. Do some research. Ask hard questions about results, accountability, and strategies that can survive a shift in technology. Read the countless blog posts out there – like this awesome one by Jason Falls – about how to find a professional that knows what they’re doing.
If you’re a fellow contender in the space that’s crabby because other people are stealing your thunder or making a mockery of the profession you hold so dear, suck it up. Go work hard. Prove your substance through what you do. Let the idiots hang themselves on the empty, shoddy frameworks of “strategy” that they’re peddling to those that are so desperate for a social media success story that they’ll buy anything. Sympathy time is over for the gullible, and it’s time for you over there to run your own damn race.
9. Social Media Is Hype, Stale, Old, Whatever.
If you think it has potential but you think we could be doing more, put your money where your mouth is. Don’t just brag about unfollowing someone who didn’t meet your standards as some self-righteous stunt. Offer something constructive of your own. Do it better. If it has practical uses but there are misconceptions, correct them through illustrating the alternatives, teaching, doing.
Think it’s lame altogether? Tired of hearing about it? Convinced it’s hype and bunk? That’s fine. Then close your Twitter account, get off Facebook, stop blogging, and go do something else. It’s all optional. We’ll be fine without you.
There. I said my piece on those for now. That feels better. What about you? I know this isn’t particularly useful as a how-to, but sometimes even the most of constructive of us need to stomp and holler before we can get back to business.
Back to work, now. I’ll be bringing you more positive solutions and ideas upcoming. Feel free to add yours the comments, too. We’re all in this together. Maybe we’ll even learn a thing or two.
special note to the lovely Meg Fowler: I promise I’ll write more about awesomeness very soon. There’s plenty of good to share, too.
Microsoft Hands Out Free Windows 7 to 54,000 Russian Schools – Computerless and Time-Bombed!!!
By the end of the coming month, Microsoft will hand out an impressive number of free copies of the latest iteration of its Windows client to all schools in Russia, weaving off all installation limitations. According to the Redmond company, the plan is to send free installation DVDs with Windows 7 to in excess of 54,000 Russian schools, by the end of April 2010. Delivery of the Windows 7 media will be done through the mail, in order to ensure that even the schools without an Internet connection will be able to access the operating system.
“We decided to free delivery in the Russian school of Windows 7 because we consider really important to give our students and teachers the opportunity to learn and work on the most modern software,” said Nikolai Pryanishnikov, president of Microsoft in Russia.
The software giant indicated that the move was designed to illustrate its commitment to support scholastic organizations in Russia. In this regard, Microsoft is allowing for the free Windows 7 copies it is handing out to be installed not only on the computers belonging to the schools themselves, but also on the home PCs of teachers. Back in December 2007, Microsoft inked an agreement with the Russian Federal Agency on Education, which had the company offer schools in the country software and updates. The First Aid deal is scheduled to expire at the end of 2010.
Coincidentally, the free Windows 7 copies Microsoft will be sending to 54,000 Russian schools are time-bombed, and set to expire at the end of 2010. However, the free Windows 7 licenses were not a part of the initial agreement between Microsoft and the Russian Federal Agency on Education. The Redmond company did underline that the licenses associated with the free copies of Windows 7 were only valid until the end of 2010, when the First Aid agreement is set to expire.
Pryanishnikov did note that although much has been already done in order to ensure that students and teachers in Russian schools have access to the latest technology, efforts need to continue. The president of Microsoft Russia reveals that the Redmond company wants the momentum of its collaboration with the Federal Agency on Education to continue.
140 Character Conference
The 140 Characters Conference: New York City (#140conf) will be taking place April 20-21, 2010 at the 92nd Street Y. This event is shaping up to being the largest worldwide gathering of people interested in the effects of the real-time Internet on both business and “we” the people.
If you are thinking about attending #140conf NYC, now would be a great time to secure your seat. With the ticket costing only US$ 140 for the two day event, register NOW to guarantee yourself access to the event. Based on the strong demand for the “early bird” tickets, we are now on a pace to sell all of the available tickets before mid-April.
The #140conf events provide a platform for the worldwide twitter community to: listen, connect, share and engage with each other, while collectively exploring the effects of the emerging real-time internet on business.
The format at the #140conf events is unique. Individual talks 10 minutes, keynotes are 15 minutes and panel discussions are no more than 20 minutes. During the course of the two days more than 140 people will share the stage at the 92nd Street Y in about 70 sessions. To get a feel of the energy you may experience in April, click here to review the videos from the 2009 #140conf NYC.
At #140conf NYC we will be taking a hard look at something Jeff Pulver calls “The State of NOW” and the continued effects the worldwide adoption of social communication platforms such as twitter is having on a number of industries including: Celebrity, “The Media”, Advertising, Politics, Education, Music, Television, Comedy, Real Estate, Public Policy and more.
The take aways from this event will provide the attending delegates knowledge, perspectives and insights to the next wave of effects twitter and the real-time internet will have on business in 2010 and beyond.
David Spark interviews @jeffpulver with his take on #140conf and the Real-Time web while at SXSW 2010
Windows Phone 7 Destroys The iPhone (Well, Its Foursquare App Does)
There’s no denying that Windows Phone 7 (or Windows Phone 7 Series, or whatever awful branding was chosen) looks to be a huge improvement from the previous iterations of Windows Mobile. And there’s even some talk that it may be able to compete with the current golden boy of the smartphone industry, Apple’s iPhone. If an early look at the new Foursquare app for Windows Phone 7 is any indication, it just may.
As shown off by Windows Phone team member Anand Iyer on his blog this morning, Foursquare for Windows Phone 7 looks amazing. In fact, it looks much nicer than the recently-revamped version of Foursquare for the iPhone. As you can see in the screenshots, the app has a simple elegance to it, with most of the app being made of different color text against a black background (just about the opposite of Foursquare for the iPhone). Also nice is the maps (Bing, naturally) implementation on the check-in pages, venue pages, and individuals’ profiles.
The Windows Phone 7 version also has two killer features that the iPhone version of Foursquare does not: directions within the app, and a new “Society” area. The directions element is great — it seems like daily I’m looking at a Foursquare venue on a map in the app that I’m trying to get to, but would love access to step-by-step directions. To get that on the iPhone, I have to exit the app and open the Maps app. On Windows Phone 7, it’s all integrated into the app.
The new Society area, meanwhile, uses Foursquare’s firehose of data to show the hottest areas in a given city. It does this by showing you a heat map indicating where the most check-ins are taking place. You can then see pins showing the different venues in that area. And below that is a list of the venues and tallies for how many people are checking-in there.
Obviously, this is just one app, and we’re still a long ways away from Windows Phone 7 launching (next Fall). But consider that Android has been out for a year and a half now, and there are still no Twitter apps for the platform that can touch the top five or so iPhone Twitter apps (though Seesmic is finally getting close). If the first attempt at Foursquare for Windows Phone 7 trumps the iPhone version, that would seem to be a good sign. Of course, it must be noted that third-party developers make the Twitter iPhone apps, and have also made this Foursquare app for WP7 — meanwhile, it was Foursquare that made its own iPhone app. That said, there are others making Foursquare apps for the iPhone now, but none come close to being as nice as the WP7 one shown here.
Grading SXSW Interactive | Digital Savant
Grading SXSW Interactive
By Omar L. Gallaga | Monday, March 22, 2010, 01:30 PM
Everyone’s South by Southwest Interactive is different based on the panels you choose to attend, the parties you’re able to get into (did you remember to RSVP?) and the unplanned encounters you have along the way. It can be magical if you balance work and play, planning and going-with-the-flow, but it can also be frustrating if the festival stars don’t align quite right for you.
For 2010’s festival, the record attendance could have made the event a crowded disaster, but somehow, that didn’t happen. Instead, the fest felt busier, but also more varied and spread out. If the festival isn’t careful, it runs the risk of sprawling out and diluting its best parts, but you can bet organizers are already considering this for SXSW 2010.
So, with the understanding that my SXSW 2010 probably differed greatly from everyone else’s, here’s my grading on different parts of Interactive:
Panels: B+ — I complained before the fest (in a graphic, no less), that some tropes of panels seem to happen again and again and are noticeable to those of us who attend every year. Panel names frequently have attention-grabbing, curse-word-laden titles, include overly provocative speakers (say, porn stars), or rehash themes that come up every year and are never resolved. But attending the actual panels, I found more hits than misses and I left fewer panels out of boredom than any previous years. Smart panel organizers included good visuals in the presentations, opened up the floor early for questions from the audience and wisely used their expertise. That being said, I heard of several high-profile panels with audio problems and I attended at least two sessions featuring solo speakers who addressed big, empty halls (more on that below under “Organization”). But overall I found the panel programming to be more useful and varied this year.
Keynotes: C — The Ev Williams keynote was worse than a trainwreck: it was just boring. And despite her obviously gigantic brain, keynoter Danah Boyd was mostly preaching to the choir with obvious examples of privacy breaches by Google Buzz, Facebook and Chatroulette. I didn’t attend Daniek Ek’s keynote, but it sounds like it went well and Valerie Casey’s plea to keep the fest sustainable did draw attention. But Ek was at the fest to promote a service that isn’t available in the U.S. yet and which may be hurt instantly if Apple decided to offer a music streaming service. He was a good choice for a Tuesday keynote as the Interactive fest yields to Music, but his company, Spotify doesn’t feel like a slam dunk for the U.S. market. Casey of the Designers Accord seemed like a great keynote choice and seemed to have been greeted positively. So, overall, the good balanced out the bad, but it sounds like there was no knockout keynote like last year’s Tony Hseih talk or 2008’s emotional keynote from Post Secret’s Frank Warren.
Parties: A- — I couldn’t hit every big party, but the ones I did attend seemed to have fewer long lines and better attendance. The party scene seemed to have spread to a bigger variety of large clubs and to my eyes the lines seemed more organized and moved more quickly than, say, last year’s Facebook party or Mashable’s bash at Six Lounge. The stand-out for me was Scoot Inn’s Cog’Aoke and TechKaraoke at Six, both of which felt like the perfect combination of music (a live band served up karaoke at the latter), alcohol and geek energy. Less successful were parties like Gowalla’s fest at Belmont, which was packed uncomfortably indoors because of rain. Next year: less standing around drinking in crowded bars and more interactive events featuring live music.
Organization: B- — The 3 p.m. line to pick up badges the day before Interactive was a beast, but to everyone’s surprise, it moved quickly and efficiently. The new format of having panels in four different locations was a little less successful — while some events all the way over at the Radisson Austin did attract attendees, I found myself skipping anything that took me too far away from the Convention Center area during the day. Locations for panels sometimes seemed to make little sense: On at least two panels I saw a solo speaker address a cavernous exhibit hall with few people while a panel featuring speakers from CNN, MTV, Facebook and Mashable was packed to the gills with people. While I can’t imagine the logistics of organizing so much programming across so many rooms, some of the locations didn’t make a lot of sense and attendees and speakers sometimes suffered for it.
Weather: A+ / D — The first few days of the fest were gorgeous; the kind of weather that makes people move here (just don’t tell them about August in Austin). But Monday and Tuesday were rainy and cold. The Monday night parties in particular suffered as rooftops and outdoor patios were abandoned and the areas indoors were crammed with people. Venues that were only a few blocks away walking distance suddenly required a cab ride.
Official app / Web site: C- — I didn’t talk to a single person at the fest who was impressed with the official “my.SXSW” app. In fact, people told me they gave up using it before the fest when it wouldn’t function (it was soon fixed) or gave it up after the first day when they couldn’t find information about panelists on the app. The app didn’t include a built-in QR reader, requiring attendees to download a separate app for that only to find that the codes on everyone’s badge only led to the attendee’s profile on the SXSW Web site. Once there, there wasn’t an easy way to import that contact information on the go. In short, the app was full of problems. The Web site was much better than last year’s version, but there’s still something about it that feels clunky and difficult to navigate. Luckily the Web site’s search (for panels, speakers, etc.) works quite well. But every now and then you’d find a weird glitch (like keynotes not being listed under “panels”).
Unofficial tools: A — Sched.org was still great on the Web, but a mobile app wasn’t available on Apple’s App Store until the fest was ending (oops). Luckily, tools like sitby.us took up the slack as did FourSquare and Gowalla, which proved extremely useful at the fest, as did the multitude of Twitter apps that attendees used to post photos and Tweets during panels and parties.
Vibe: B+ — The most unscientific of these categories, but I found most attendees to be positive, friendly and ready to learn, engage and participate. It was a departure from the gloom and doom of years past. With the emergence of tablet devices, more mobile and the explosion of social networking, it felt like new energy has been breathed into the fest since 2008.
Overall: B+ — Despite potential landmines and an economy that’s still hasn’t completely rebounded, the fest was bigger than it’s ever been and several people who’ve been to the fest repeatedly told me this was their favorite so far. I don’t know if I’d go that far, but for a fest facing so much growth so quickly, it’s amazing the whole thing came together with few hitches. There’s room for improvement for 2011, but the fest organizers should be very proud of how much happened this year and how much enjoyment festgoers got out of SXSWi 2010.
Want to know what other people thought? Take a look at some of the responses I got on Twitter to my question of how you’d grade the fest. The responses seem to range from A- to B-.
Got your own grades? Post them in the comments.
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