The Social Media CES?

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It seems like a long time ago when the blogger first came en masse to CES.  Before 2006, it was a trickle of largely editorial bloggers, mostly parts of traditional media empires of refugees from them.  Then came the Blogger Lounge and BlogHaus and suddenly being a blogger was hipper than working for CNN.

In 2007, we witnessed (and participated in) the somewhat surreal phenomenon on numerous bloggers covering CES from CES without ever leaving their cozy laptop lounge (and they came here from Des Moines and fought the cab lines and convention food – why?).  I even experienced the quite surreal phenomenon of sitting in a Motorola press conference with my laptop and watching a live video blog of the press conference as it happened.  Pundits even wondered if the blogosphere’s real-time virtual coverage of the technology world would quickly spell the demise of such mega-fests as the Winter Consumer Electronics Show in Sin City.

Fear not:  if you can’t lose to them, join them.  This year promises to be the most social media centric CES of all time (thus far…), with an entire day devoted to a social media pre-show (Social Media Jungle), social media sessions during the Digital Hollywood conference within CES (including mine), and blogger parties galore (see our CES Party List for a complete rundown).  Plus more tweets and Tweet-ups around CES already (and the show floor doesn’t open for two more days) than perhaps existed in all of Twitterdom a year ago.

We will be running updates and observations throughout the show.  As always, we encourage your comments, updates and opinions.

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by MTerpin | January 6, 2009 | conferences, social media

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Is the Economy Going to Desimate Social Networks?

Today, LiveJournal, laid off 20 of it’s 28 employees. According to Valleywag:

The company’s Moscow-based management has told employees it blames the “global economic downturn” — the kind of pat excuse every boss is giving for layoffs, even when mismanagement or a bad business plan is really to blame. The brutal, abrupt cuts suggest something different: That Sup founder Andrew Paulsonpaid an estimated $30 million for LiveJournal a little over a year ago, has realized his expensive mistake in buying at the top of the bubble.

Leading Valleywag to say that “The bubble in social networking has burst, decisively.”

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by Tabitha Smith | January 6, 2009 | social networks

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Twitter Experiencing Phishing Scams

According the Twitter Blog several phishing DM scams have gone through today. According to the Twitter Blog:

It looks as though this particular scam sent out emails resembling those you might receive from Twitter if you get email notifications of your Direct Messages. The email said, “hey! check out this funny blog about you…” and then provided a link. That link redirected to a site masquerading as the Twitter front page.

If you didn’t look at the URL of this false Twitter page, then you might not have noticed that it was actually just a page on the domain access-logins.com which was also faking Facebook’s front page. We immediately reported the offending domain (and warned our friends at Facebook). The site is now on OpenDNS’ and Google’s reported phishing lists.

As always, be sure to be very careful where you put your passwords!

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by Tabitha Smith | January 3, 2009 | twitter

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Ya Ya Embargo Is Dead…

In yet another way to say “Go to Hell” to the PR industry, Arrington wrote a post recently that caused blogosphere that I “live” in light up with a firey response. “Death to Embargo” http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/12/17/death-to-the-embargo/ outlined where and why PR in general should go.

Here’s the thing, while the posts that were popping up left and right after the debut of this bit of “news” (self-manufactured, imho), not one of them reminded the bloggers, journalists and writers in general that even if they think they don’t need PR people, they do.

Does anyone know how difficult it is to get a quote from a CEO at some companies?  Or how convoluted the companies descriptions, news items and announcements are before PR people make them nice and shiny?

Its different than just marketing - it’s about understanding what is newsworthy and reaching the right people with it, before it breaks. And its about larger trend pieces from the inside that we’re observing as a company and would like to share with the world.

Without the Embargo, stories would be thrown up on the wire and no-one gets to “Break” the story except for PRNewswire, MarketWire, etc.

Fight on ReadWriteWeb, and the rest of the blogging sites with scruples… http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/we_will_respect_your_embargoes.php

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by Jessica Hasson | December 18, 2008 | Public Relations

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Yes, Virgina there are People Out There Who Don’t Like Social Media?

In case you’ve been living in a social media bubble, you probably know that there are individuals and groups out there who are entirely anti-social media.

These people don’t see the point or feel that social media is a waste of their time and energy. According to my philosophy of social media (social media is simply sharing life online) they’re wrong, but then again, I’ve been wrong myself.

So the question is. What do you say to people who downright -hate- social media? Or should you say anything at all?

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by Tabitha Smith | November 25, 2008 | social media

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Make it Work - Social Networks Are What You Make It

How many times in social media have you heard these phrases:

“10 Twitter rules you MUST follow…”

or “Myspace only works if you…”

or “NEVER do this on Facebook…”

When anyone starts issuing ‘rules’ or tossing around the word ‘only’ I start to worry. I’ve seen verbal fist fights online over how to navigate a social site! And, in my opinion, it’s ridiculous.

tim_gunn.jpg

If you’re a fan of Project Runway you’ll know Tim Gunn’s trademark “Make it work”. The idea is the designer needs to make his or her concept work in the dress no matter what apprehensions Tim has. Bring it all together and make it work. There’s no place on earth that this is more true than on Social Networks. Let’s explain what ‘make it work’ means for you.

Recently there’s been a lot of talk on Twitter about how people follow/unfollow other users. Now, I follow anyone who follows me. Unless you’re someone awesome like Wil Wheton, I only follow people who follow me. I use the service Qwitter to alert me when someone unfollows and I immediately unfollow them back.

Why? Because for me Twitter is about mutal conversation. I’m a dipper into the Twitter stream. I don’t read everything that everyone posts, but I do engage my list (@’s mostly) and join in discussions (#).

That’s how I make Twitter work for me. My friend @PodcastJunky does it slightly differently. She perfers someone to @ her when they add her - that way she only adds people who are her friends or are ‘real’ people.

Still another friend only adds people he 100% knows.

Whose right? We all are, because we made Twitter work for us. We are all different people, we have different priorties and we interact with people differently.  Now, where the conflict comes is when my ‘make it work’ clashes with your ‘make it work’. But that should -never- cause the tpe of petty bickering I’ve seen online. If you’re one of those people who expect me to follow you just because you’re awesome, you’ll have to understand that’s not my ‘make it work’ - and if I think you’re awesome and you don’t follow me back, I have to understand that’s not how your ‘make it work’ works.

In the end social media is real life online. It’s about relationships, friendships, and all the other enjoyable thing that makes sharing our stories together enjoyable. If we over bicker or push rules and standards on people, we wind up focusing on all the things that drive us apart, instead of the things that bring us together.

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by Tabitha Smith | November 16, 2008 | social media

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Why Twitter?

It’s a fundamental question. Why do you Twitter? Recently a friend of mine on twitter lost a follower who said that they enjoyed my friend’s twitter but wasn’t getting any marketing or business value out of my friend’s twitters!

That really threw me and made me mad. If you are enjoying someone’s twitters, why unfollow them? So I figured I’d ask my friend’s list why they Twittered. And boy did I get a lot of responses!

I thought I’d share them here as graphics. If you haven’t started Twittering, this might give you an idea of WHY you should start (or if you should start). If you are on Twitter, you may find your own reasons reflected here. Thank you to my friends for sharing their reasons!

What’s the most telling? All of these reasons (with the silly ones aside) are about connecting. Connecting with people - which is the root of Social Media.

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by Tabitha Smith | October 27, 2008 | twitter

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How You Can Help End the Problem of Blogs With Great Content and No Readers

Chuck is a man on a mission (of course this sounds too much like my favorite TV series Chuck but that’s beside the point).

There’s a ton of great blogs out there, with amazing content, but no one is reading. So Chuck has decided to remedy this problem.

How?
Here’s what Chuck said:

  1. Gather some nice bloggers who believe in helping good content rise. The more the merrier. This becomes our group for the project.
  2. A good, lesser-known blog is chosen. Everyone in the group will read that blog for two weeks.
  3. At the end of the two weeks, the group moves to another blog to read.

So I’m going to be reading. And you can too! Get all the details here.

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by Tabitha Smith | October 23, 2008 | media

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Don’t Vote: Capturing the Viral Video

Yesterday the “Don’t Vote”, non-partisian PSA rocked with a large viral launch. The video, created by Leonardo DiCaprio’s production company (Appian Way), features a Whose Who list of celebrities [Amy Adams, will.i.am, Jennifer Aniston, Kevin Bacon, Halle Berry, Kate Bosworth, Kevin Connolly, Courteney Cox, Ellen DeGeneres, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jamie Foxx, Jonah Hill, Dustin Hoffman, Anthony Kiedis, Ashton Kutcher, Adam Levine, Laura Linney, Eva Longoria, Tobey Maguire, Demi Moore, Natalie Portman, Giovanni Ribisi, Ethan Suplee, Kyra Sedgwick, Michelle Trachtenberg, Usher, and Forest Whitaker].

Now why does this video work?

1. It’s funny. A big component of viral video is having an element of humor involved. Think about the past 5 things people forwarded to you (other than work email). Usually they are all humor-related.

2. It has recognizable stars. There’s a great cross section of age, ethnicity, and TV/movie celebs that target different demographics in this short video. While I was excited to see Michelle Trachtenberg and Ashton Kutcher, my parents loved Kyra Sedgwick (because of the Closer).

3. It has a call to action. Actually it has two, one of them being sharing the video the other being to register to vote before the deadline passes.

4. The message is repeated. While some people might have problem with the continued repeating of information, it helps clue viewers (who are normally passive) to take action.

5. It’s sharable. They have a great memorable URL (youtube.com/5friendsvote) and it’s on YouTube, which makes it easy to add the video to blogs, Myspace, Twitter, etc.

In conclusion? Don’t vote. Unless you care.

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by Tabitha Smith | October 2, 2008 | viral marketing, youtube

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Get the Whole World Talking: Interactive Contests

A couple days ago, the internet web series, Doctor Horrible’s Sing Along Blog, announced a contest based on their series. The Evil League of Evil (which is just what it sounds like) announced they were taking applications for new members. To apply you need to create a video and upload it to one of the social video sharing sites (like YouTube).

Such as this one:

What does the winner(s) get?

The best applicants, as determined by the League or its designated agents, will be included on a special DVD commemorating our most recent member.

This is a fantastic way to get fans involved and have hundreds of viral videos promoting your series. A lot of YouTube users will be used to this idea - video responses, who can hold a note the longest, etc. So if you’re thinking of a way to get people talking, you might want to do a video challenge.

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by Tabitha Smith | September 30, 2008 | New Media, viral marketing, youtube

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