Social Media Alltop

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Purpose

We help you explore your passions by collecting stories about “all the topics” on the web. We’ve grouped these collections — “aggregations” — into individual Alltop sites based on topics such as environment, photography, science, Muslim, celebrity gossip, military, fashion, gaming, sports, politics, automobiles, and Macintosh. At each Alltop site, we display the headlines of the latest stories from dozens of sites and blogs.

You can think of an Alltop site as a “digital magazine rack” of the Internet. To be clear, Alltop sites are starting points—they are not destinations per se. The bottom line is that we are trying to enhance your online reading by both displaying stories from the sites that you’re already visiting and helping you discover sites that you didn’t know existed. In other words, our goal is the “cessation of Internet stagnation” by providing “aggregation without aggravation.”

Here’s how some other people have explained Alltop. First, Dan Roam, author of Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems with Pictures, used these two pictures to explain Alltop vis-à-vis Google. Second, here is a review by Sarah Perez in ReadWriteWeb.
Genesis

This is the true story of Alltop. If you hear anything else from us, it’s because we retroactively changed the story for marketing purposes. We are the creators of Truemors, a site that is “NPR (or CBC) for your eyes” in the sense that it contains unusual breaking news, stories, and rumors like what you’d hear on NPR. A bit after the site’s launch, our friend Thomas Marban included Truemors in his single-page aggregation of news and tech sites called popurls.

We noticed that popurls sends Truemors as much traffic as Google. Clearly, he was onto something: Aggregate and display a bunch of sites for people, and they will come. This got us thinking about other topics that (a) have a large readership and (b) hasn’t been aggregated in an elegant and efficient manner, and we came up with idea of a doing a popurls of celebrity gossip sites. Then one thing led to another: Why not other topics like gaming, sports, politics, Macintosh, fashion, etc.?

If we had stopped at just celebrity gossip, we could have stuck with one clever domain, but we had to figure out a way to gather everything together when we kept going. “Sugar” was taken, so we came up with “Alltop” as in “all the top” stories—you get it. Alltop is the main website that hosts all the subtopics like celebrities, fashion, egos, sports, and gaming.
About Nononina

Nononina is the company that owns Alltop. It is “two guys and a gal” in a garage—or more accurately, one guy in home office (Will Mayall), one gal on a kitchen table (Kathryn Henkens), and one Guy in United 2B (Guy Kawasaki). They’ve been working together since the previous century and are still friends.
FAQ for Everyone

1.

Q. How do the Alltop sites work?

A. We import the stories of the top news websites and blogs for any given topic and display the headlines of the five most recent stories (except Moms.alltop which has fewer headlines because there are so many feeds). When you place the cursor over a headline, we display part of the story so that you can decide if you’d like to read it. To read the story, click on its title. To go to the home page of the site, click on its domain name.
2.

Q. How often do you update the feeds?

A. Approximately every ten minutes.
3.

Q. What’s with the banner near the bottom of the page? Is that a bug?

A. You fail the test. We put the banner there on purpose. We wanted to flip convention on its head by reversing the positions of the header and footer. Our (tiny) header is everyone else’s footer, and our footer is everyone else’s header. We did this to emphasize that “content is the top priority” at Alltop, not our brand identity. Also, the translucent banner contains a pun: “We’ve got [topic] covered.” Get it? Though we never planned it this way, some people also use it as a page marker to keep track of where they are on a page since the banner remains stationary and you scroll the headlines.
4.

Q. How do you decide which sites and blogs are in a topic?

A. We use a patent-pending, semantic computational algorithm derived from the post-doctoral work of Guy at Stanford. Just kidding. We rely on several sources: results of Google searches, review of the sites’ and blogs’ content, researchers, and our “gut” plus the recommendations of the Twitter community, owners of the sites and blogs, and people who care enough to write to us. Let us declare something: The Twitter community has been the single biggest factor in the quality of Alltop. Without this group of mavens and connectors, Alltop would not be what it is today.
5.

Q. How do you decide on the order?

A. An even more complex algorithm:
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Some sites and blogs bring us credibility. For example, Politics.alltop.com has to display the Washington Post fairly near the top. If it were missing or far down the page, we’d expect a first-time visitor to question our quality.
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Some sites and blogs are relatively unknown but provide such high-quality information that we feel it’s our moral duty to tell the world about them. Newmedia Jim on Twitterati.alltop.com is an example of this; he’s only a NBC cameraman flying around the world on Air Force One.
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We like to shake things up and urge people out of their comfort zones. Hence, Aljazeera is early in the News.alltop.com topic, and we mashed together Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, and Hinduism together in Religion.alltop.com.
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We take care of our friends. If sites or blogs help us, we help them. In particular, we have lots of friends in Moms.alltop.com.
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We like to help out underdogs and undiscovered gems; for example, in Humor.alltop.com check out Stuff White People Like.

If you’ve gotten the impression that Alltop is not based on computer algorithms or popular voting, you’d be right. We are highly subjective and judgmental.
6.

Q. Some of my favorite sites are not included, how do I get you to add them?

A. Please send us an email, and we’ll consider them. Please note: if your favorite sites don’t provide an RSS feed, we cannot import their stories. And please, tell us what topic you hope to see them in.
7.

Q. Why does the order of feeds sometimes change?

A. If our server cannot get a site’s stories in a reasonable time, we skip it, and go on to the next one.
8.

Q. What if I want to customize what sites are displayed or the order of the feeds?

A. By clicking on the “x” next to the feed's name, you can hide that feed. If you want to get it back, click on “Restore” in the menu bar. We may make Alltop more customizable in the future, but we know that this is something a few people will ask for, and nobody will use.
9.

Q. Couldn’t I build my own custom aggregation using a feed reader, customizable home pages, Netvibes, etc?

A. Yes, you could—knock yourself out. While you’re at it, you could backup your hard disk, bake your own bread, iron your own shirts, floss daily, tune your own car, and bike to work.
10.

Q. How do I suggest an additional topic?

A. Please send us an email.
11.

Q. How can I advertise on an Alltop site or sponsor the whole thing?

A. Please send us an email.
12.

Q. What’s your business model?

A. See immediately above.

FAQ for Site Owners and Bloggers

1.

Q. How do I get an Alltop badge for my site or blog?

A. Our badges are located here. We particularly like "Confirmation that I kick ass."
2.

Q. How do I get my site or blog moved up the page?

A. Send us a persuasive email. FYI, telling your readers about Alltop, adding our badge, and blogrolling are particularly persuasive.
3.

Q. What if I want my site or blog removed from Alltop?

A. Because you have too much traffic? Sure, just send us an email, and we’ll take it off.
4.

Q. My feed was on Alltop and now it’s gone—what happened?

A. Several things could have happened. First, we “hide” feeds that have not updated in twenty-eight days. If you don’t keep it updated, we won’t display old stuff. Second, your feed address may have broken. This often happens when you switch to a different feedburning vendor. Try validating your feed here. Third, we may have decided that your feed no longer fits in with our topic.

Social Media

* Alltop home
* About Alltop
* Restore All Feeds
* Acknowledgments
* Site by Electric Pulp
* Inspired by popurls

socialmedia dot alltop dot com
We've got social media covered.

Perhaps we can interest you in our Egos and Twitterati topics.

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ReadWriteWeb
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Google Reader Now Lets You Share Selectively
13 Aug 2008 | 3:34 pm
The Google Reader team just announced that it has implemented more granular controls for who you share items with, including the ability to manage a list of friends within Google Reader that is kept separate from your Google Talk contacts. When Google first announced that Shared Items would now automatically appear in the Google Reader of all your Google Chat contacts, a lot of people were quite upset about the lack of control over who they were sharing with and the possible privacy implications of this. According to the announcment on the Google Reader blog, Google was aware of these privacy…
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Zapproved: A Lightweight Meeting Killer
13 Aug 2008 | 3:16 pm
Want to go to fewer meetings at work? By making group decision making faster, easier and more accountable, new app Zapproved may help you avoid hours of painful face to face drudgery or endless email loose ends and get back to work. Zapproved is a lightweight hosted decision making service, it's essentially like Evite for approval processes. Freshly launched this week, the four person company has a little bit of usability work it could do on its product and the possibilities for additional user interfaces (Blackberry, IM, etc) are many - but the service already looks quite useful. How it…
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WonderHowTo: How-To Videos in Your Sidebar
13 Aug 2008 | 1:15 pm
WonderHowTo aggregates and curates a large database of instructional videos from all over the Internet. It employs a number of editors who search the web for good how-to videos and then categorize them into 36 vertical categories. Thanks to this editorial process, the quality of these how-to videos featured on WonderHowTo is surprisingly high and topics range from Spanish pronunciation to surviving nuclear blasts. One of the most interesting features of WonderHowTo is its recently launched 'Related How-To Videos' sidebar for Firefox. Related How-To Videos in Your Sidebar The sidebar will…
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Data Portability Working Group Elects New Leadership
13 Aug 2008 | 11:42 am
The high profile but heretofore loosely organized Data Portability Working Group announced last night that it has elected its first group of Steering Group officers. The Working Group strives to help user data become freed for secure re-use across different websites and services. The first chair of the Steering Group will be Daniela Barbosa, who is a Business Development Manager, at Synaptica, a Dow Jones company. Can the Data Portability Working Group overcome some early shakiness caused by the perception that it's all hype and no substance? The group got big press when Microsoft, Google,…
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How To Lifestream From Your iPhone
13 Aug 2008 | 10:50 am
Recently, we took a look at the growing trend involving lifestreaming and how more people are choosing to go this route instead of establishing a more traditional blog. But outside of certain celebrity lifestreamers like Julia Allison, the streams belonging to "regular folks" may serve more as a personal collection of content for your own reference instead of a site that's meant to draw traffic or readers. There's nothing wrong with that, though, and you don't need any special software to "lifestream" in this way either…all you need is a platform and an app. And there are at least a few…

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Mashable!
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Social Surfing: 15+ Tools to Turn Firefox 3 into a Social Hub
Sean P. Aune
13 Aug 2008 | 3:37 pm
As the Internet becomes more social, it only makes sense that your browser should work to assist you to that end. With Firefox being one of the most customizable browsers with a large community of developers, it comes as no surprise that there are many tools to help you do just that. Here are more than 15 tools to turn your Firefox 3 browser into a social hub. From notifications about what is happening on your favorite social networks to simplifying the social bookmarking submission process, and more, it’s all here. Whenever we discuss numerous Firefox add-ons, we like to remind you…
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Film Lovers Unite at SocNet I Heart Movies (The Startup Review)
Paul Glazowski
13 Aug 2008 | 1:11 pm
Editor’s Note: This post is part of an ongoing series at Mashable - The Startup Review, Sponsored by Sun Microsystems Startup Essentials. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here. STARTUP DETAILS: Company Name: I Heart Movies 20-word Description: I Heart Movies is a movie based social network and DVD collection organization site. CEO’s Pitch: I Heart Movies is a movie and television based social network that at its core allows users to join and rate movies. The users can tag, categorize and mark films or TV shows as favorites to…
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Never Mind Social Media, How About Social Hacking?
Steven Hodson
13 Aug 2008 | 12:55 pm
One of the basic tools of any good hacker has always been the ability to utilize the concept of social engineering as made famous by people like Kevin Mitnick and the Badir Brothers. The idea being -– according to Wikipedia — that “All social engineering techniques are based on specific attributes of human decision-making known as cognitive biases. These biases, sometimes called "bugs in the human hardware," are exploited in various combinations to create criminal attack techniques.” While this type of ploy has been used to gain access to computer systems for various…
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Feedback Frenzy: 35+ Customer Service Resources
Doriano "Paisano" Carta
13 Aug 2008 | 11:18 am
Customer service and Web 2.0 have finally been formally introduced and have gotten rather serious these days. Because of this, it has become extremely easy to share an idea you have for new features or just complain about an existing one. Companies are understanding the value of centralizing valuable feedback. They’re also using this new platform to communicate with their user base to keep them informed about service interruptions (made famous by Twitter) and new updates. This appears to be a win-win relationship for companies and customers (sites and users). Here are a couple of the…
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Exclusive: Free Access to iPhone App DataCase (video)
Mark 'Rizzn' Hopkins
13 Aug 2008 | 10:46 am
Last night Kristen had a moment to speak with Chris Lynn from Veiosoft and get a demonstration of a new iPhone application that has the ability to turn your iPhone into a mobile storage and file-sharing device. It can act as a either a one way drop box or bi-directional shared drive on your network for the low price of $7. The iPhone app is compatible with both Windows and Apple computers. Kristen was able to get Chris to do a quick demonstration on how the system works. The application is available for both the iPhone and the iPod touch, and can be grabbed from the Datacase website. For…

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CenterNetworks
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Hulu Gets Choppin' and Dicin' With the Food Network
Allen Stern
13 Aug 2008 | 2:49 pm
Video hosting provider Hulu has announced a distribution partnership with the Food Network today. Actually the deal is with Scripps Networks who owns Food Network and will also include clips from Fine Living, HGTV and DIY. The initial batch of clips range from 2-4 minutes and most carry a 30-second pre-roll video ad. That's some ratio of content to ad! I actually had the opportunity to spend a week at the Food Network studios about two years ago. It's amazing the talent that they have - from the stars in front of the camera to the massive work behind the camera. If you think it's hard to get…
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An Insider's Look at Blogging in the UK; He Forgot The Most Important Element
Allen Stern
13 Aug 2008 | 10:22 am
Ashley Norris, former co-founder of UK blog network Shiny Media has a guest post on TechCrunch where he discusses the UK blogging scene. Ashley left the company last week to create another startup. The post is a good look into why Ashley believes blog media companies haven't experienced major success in the UK as of now. Ashley blames the following "external factors": Limited number of UK online eyeballs Lack of imagination in the ad industry Lack of UK media entrepreneurs Lack of VC support Too much competition The omnipotent BBC When I initially read the post this morning, the…
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Is The iPhone Sexist?
Hank Williams
13 Aug 2008 | 6:22 am
For those of you who have been following along, my mom was seduced by Steve Jobs' iPhone. This was and is an astonishing thing, since my mom is very far away from being a techie. On the day of the iPhone launch, she waited in line at an AT&T store (and I waited with her) to get her new phone. My mom loves her phone, but one issue came up which triggered an interesting thought. She had a hard time using the phone initially because of her fingernails. My mom does not have big garish fingernails, but they were longer than any man's fingernails, extending perhaps a quarter or a half inch…
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Zoho Sheet Offers Easy Visual Basic Macros
Allen Stern
13 Aug 2008 | 6:01 am
Office suite provider Zoho is announcing the launch of recordable macros in their Zoho Sheet application today. Basically creating a macro is as easy as clicking the start button, completing the actions you desire, and then clicking the stop button. Zoho then creates the Visual Basic code which you can pick up and modify as you like. The macro can then be applied to other spreadsheets. Here's a video overview showing how to create a macro in Zoho Sheet: In a chat with Zoho evangelist Raju Vegesna, he said outside of Microsoft Excel, Zoho Sheet is the only product to auto-generate Visual Basic…
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comScore Widget Metrix Report: 615 Million People Viewed or Interacted With a Widget
Allen Stern
13 Aug 2008 | 4:09 am
comScore will release their latest Widget Metrix report later this morning. From the report, "A total of 615 million people, representing 65% of the worldwide internet users, viewed or engaged with a widget in June 2008." While this number seems high, I would have expected it to be even higher. Nearly every page has a widget on it across the Internet these days. I'd wonder exactly what comScore defines as a widget. Must a widget need to be viewable by the user to be counted? Would script code used in analytics tracking be considered a widget? I still believe that widgets will…

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Tom Raftery's Social Media
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Windows Live Mail deleted ALL my email. Windows Live Email = EPIC FAIL
Tom Raftery
28 Jul 2008 | 12:37 am
I logged into my Windows Live email account yesterday only to find all my email deleted. Not even a single solitary spam message left. I should be livid. Should be tearing what little hair I have left out of my head. Instead I am simply moderately furious! Why? Well this is not the first time Microsoft decided to delete all the email from my (then Hotmail) account. So I learned after losing valuable email the first time, not to trust any important email to Microsoft. What makes it more annoying is that if Microsoft allowed POP access to Live Mail accounts, the way Gmail does, you would be…
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WordPress app for iPhone/iPod Touch launched
Tom Raftery
21 Jul 2008 | 11:52 pm
WordPress launched it’s long anticipated WordPress app for the iPhone and iPod Touch this morning. See http://iPhone.wordpress.org for more. I downloaded to my iPod and am writing this post using it. The write screen seems quite bare. I don’t yet see how to add links, emphasis or photos to posts. I am sure the functionality is there I just need to look around more. Ok there was some kind of bug when I was using this first and the bottom Menu bar was missing. I hit the Home button quitting out of the app and opened it again. This notified me that it had recovered a post (good, I…
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We are off to the beach!!!
Tom Raftery
5 Jul 2008 | 2:05 am
Photo Credit technokitten We have been in Spain for nearly two weeks now. Most of the boxes and bags are unpacked. We have a phone line, gas, broadband, mobile and electricity accounts in our names and we put a deposit on a car (a Prius). It has been busy. The most difficult thing to deal with has been the banks - both Spanish and Irish. Bank of Ireland have been particularly unhelpful and inflexible. My brother-in-law has a time share in Almeria he couldn’t take up this coming week so he offered it to us. This afternoon we are heading to the beach for a week! I’ll be the one…
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Goodbye Cork blogger’s dinner
Tom Raftery
14 Jun 2008 | 3:34 am
Photo of a previous blogger’s dinner in Proby’s Conor O’Neill has very kindly decided to organise a goodbye Cork blogger’s dinner in honour of my imminent departure for Spain. Conor is calling it the Hasta Luego Blogger Dinner (Hasta Luego is Spanish for Goodbye, in case you didn’t know)! If you would like to join us for a bite to eat, a few drinks and a good time the dinner is this Tuesday the 17th in Probys bistro (afaik) at 7pm. Head on over to Conor’s blog post and leave a comment there so he has a rough idea of numbers to book, but given that it is a…
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Lisbon Treaty exit poll
Tom Raftery
12 Jun 2008 | 3:22 am
I voted in the Lisbon Treaty this morning. Probably my last time voting in this country (as I am moving to Spain next week!). I’m curious, if I run a poll here and enough people respond truthfully, we should get an accurate exit poll! So, if you voted in the Lisbon Treaty, how did you vote? How did you vote in the Lisbon Treaty? ( surveys) [Update] Apologies, I accidentally closed the poll earlier when trying to make it legible in IE6!!! Open again now. [Disclaimer - obviously this is totally unscientific but it will be fun to compare the answer here with the final answer tomorrow]

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ProBlogger Blog Tips
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How to Choose a Topic for Your Next Blog Post
Darren Rowse
13 Aug 2008 | 7:19 am
Today I’d like to talk about choosing topics for blog posts as part of our series on how to craft a blog post. Image by devorocks81 Choosing the right topic to write about on your blog is vital if you want to write a post that engages your reader. Rushing the choice of topic can set you off in the wrong direction and end up wasting both your time and that of your reader. While sometimes the idea for a post hits you and needs little adaption - I find that many (if not most) times the first idea that comes to me for a post needs a little molding (or marinating) before it’s just…
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BlogMastermind Blog Coaching - 6 Student Reviews
Darren Rowse
12 Aug 2008 | 12:01 pm
It has been two weeks since the launch of the BlogMastermind blog mentoring program and today I thought I’d ask some of those that I referred to the program to review it for me. While I think it’s a great resource I wanted to give actual participants in the program the opportunity to have their say. Last week I emailed all of those that I’ve referred to BM and invited them to submit a short review. What follows is the mini-reviews of those that responded. All have links, except one who preferred to remain anonymous. I’ve not edited or left out any responses and…
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5 Methods to Enhancing Page Load
Darren Rowse
12 Aug 2008 | 7:02 am
‘How do I make my page load faster?’ - it’s a question I get a bit so I thought I’d ask Aaron Brazell from Technosailor to tackle the question and offer some suggestions around enhancing page load times. “The internet is dying.” This phrase, though probably a bit sensationalist, is also not far from the truth. As we all now understand, thanks to U.S. Senator Ted Stevens, the internet is a series of tubes and the more stuff you put into the tubes, the more it gets clogged. Trust me, the Senator from Alaska was probably more dead on than most give him credit…
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Interview with Jack Humphrey
Darren Rowse
12 Aug 2008 | 3:06 am
This morning I got on the phone with internet marketer Jack Humphrey as part of his webside chats series of interviews. It was an enjoyable 45 minutes which you can listen into here: Jack also has some other great interviews in his series - check them out here. Share This
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How to Craft a Blog Post - 10 Crucial Points to Pause
Darren Rowse
11 Aug 2008 | 7:06 am
It hits you like a TON of BRICKS! It’s an idea for that KILLER blog post that is just bound to bring you all the traffic that you’ve ever dreamed of. With the idea fresh in your mind you sit down at your keyboard and BANG it out - desperate to hit publish as quickly as you can for fear that someone else will beat you to the PUNCH! Image by pallotron As SMOKE rises from your keyboard you complete your post, quickly add a title to it and proudly hit PUBLISH! Visions of an avalanche of visitors, incoming links and comments swirl before you. But then… Reality hits you like a…

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Noah Kagan's Okdork.com
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Tired of the Cube Life?
Noah Kagan
4 Aug 2008 | 9:53 am
While I was in Argentina I was fortunate enough to reconnect with Cesar Gonzalez who I met briefly at a Twiistup in LA. It’s funny at events how you meet so many people, follow up with a few but you never get to know them or care to. Luckily, I got to get to know Cesar in Argentina and it was an amazing experience. He has been a car salesman, salsa dancer/teacher in Hawaii, CalTech programmer and so much more… more photos of their trek Recently, he has been working on Argentina’s Travel which is ‘the’ guide for anyone visiting Argentina. Anyways, enough flattery.
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Startup Tips: Health Insurance
Noah Kagan
22 Jul 2008 | 9:52 am
This is not a sexy post about marketing or product but something I was hoping to share with anyone starting or looking to start a start-up. We are a small team of 3 working on our new project and my mom kept bugging me to get health insurance for riding my motorcycle. I frankly never thought it was that important but if anything happens it makes sense to have some coverage. link to photo Where do you start to begin or even understand health insurance for a start-up? Good question? I emailed some friends and was recommended a “broker.” I don’t know about you but when I hear…
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Lifehack: Reduce your $290 iPhone Bill
Noah Kagan
10 Jul 2008 | 4:05 pm
Yesterday I got a $290 iphone bill and nearly crapped my pants. I was thinking there has to be a way to cut this cost down. link to photo Solution: I called AT&T and asked to change my plan to one with higher minutes and asked if they could retroactively turn it on for the past month that I went over my minutes. They could. My bill is now $70. Woot! PS. I will be putting up a vote so you guys/girls can choose who should win the free Sumo chair.
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Free Sumo Lounge Chair for You
Noah Kagan
7 Jul 2008 | 11:48 am
One of the coolest benefits about writing this “blog” is that I get free stuff, which means You get free stuff. The guys over at Sumo Lounge said I can give you one of these bad boys: How do you get it? Just say why you want in the comments and one person will get it shipped to their door. Enjoy.
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Breaking: Top Friends! copy may kill Max Levchin
Noah Kagan
2 Jul 2008 | 6:46 pm
Max is probably the business person I respect most in the world. I just saw that a copy of Top Friends was released and in a short amount of time has 600,000 users at 37% daily activity. Screen shot below: Lawrence Lee is the creator vs Slide’s version How do you think Slide feels? Is this aggressive business skills or just crap? Seems like crap to me. Why couldn’t Facebook contacted Slide prior to taking them down and allowing a complete knock-off copy them? I guess this is similar to the Friends-for-Sale vs. Owned! argument as well. Thoughts?

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Publishing 2.0
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How Newsrooms Throw Away Value By Not Linking To Sources On The Web
Scott Karp
7 Aug 2008 | 6:20 pm
A lot of research can go into a piece of reporting, and in print the value of that research can only be passed on through brief quotes or references. But on the web, no longer limited by finite column inches, newsrooms can create huge value for readers by providing links to the source material that journalists have gathered. Want some proof that readers value these links to reference material? Nick Carr has been getting requests for links to all of the interesting source material he used in his Atlantic article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” — enough to prompt him to post…
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Is Linking an Antidote to Plagiarism in Journalism?
Scott Karp
7 Aug 2008 | 2:30 pm
Responding to the investigation of plagiarism on the web by Jody Rosen at Slate, Publish2’s Editorial Director Tammi Marcoullier reflects on her own experience with being plagiarized while blogging for The Washington Post and wonders whether placing more value on link journalism could help with the problem of plagiarism among journalists. Check it out at the Publish2 Blog.
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What The Newspaper Industry Could Learn About Do Or Die Innovation From General Motors
Scott Karp
20 Jul 2008 | 7:40 pm
As newspaper companies lose billions in market capitalization and innovation-minded journalists battle newsroom “curmudgeons” shell-shocked by the rapid pace of change amid increasingly dire economic realities, a lesson in burn-the-rule-book transformation might come from an unexpected source: General Motors. That’s right, the once-dominate car maker, which missed every trend that has lead to Toyota’s dominance, from quality to environmentalism, is betting the farm on a radical approach to a radical new car — and risks going down in flames if it fails. Most media…
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Connecting The Dots Of The Web Revolution
Scott Karp
17 Jun 2008 | 9:52 pm
For several days my brain has been connecting the blogstorm over AP trying to dictate how much of their content can be quoted on the web with the “quote” that Nick Carr lifted from one of my blog posts in his Atlantic article — I finally figured out why. The problem with the AP isn’t really about linking, it’s about quoting. And the problem with quoting is that, now that anyone can publish any thought or idea on the web, and anyone can link to it or reproduce it, the whole notion of quoting and citation has been completely turned on its head. Let me try to…
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Associated Press Hands Local And National News Sites An Opportunity To Get Links And Traffic
Scott Karp
16 Jun 2008 | 8:46 am
The Associated Press is facing a blog firestorm after issuing take down notices to Drudge Retort for linking to and reproducing snippets of AP stories. AP is now attempting to define how their stories can be linked to and excerpted — and the response from the blogosphere appears to be to boycott the AP, i.e. not link at all. This is a huge opportunity for local and national news sites to be the sources that bloggers and social news sites link to instead of the AP. Take the story of flooding in Iowa, for example. The AP is covering this story extensively, as you can see in this Google…

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Marketing Voices
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Social Media Club: What’s it all About Anyway?
Jennifer Jones
11 Aug 2008 | 12:01 am
Everybody’s talking about social media and now there is a club that can tell you all about what it is. Chris Heuer talks to Jennifer Jones about the club he started in Fall 2005 and its growing strong. It is all about social media and its membership is worldwide. Chris talks about how it got started, and what should be most important to marketers today. His new term, “gisting” is great. You’ll have to listen to the podcast to find out what it is all about. Tags: chris heuer, Jennifer Jones, gisting, Marketing Voices, Social Media Club
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Virtual World Success: IMVU: A 3D Social Network
Jennifer Jones
3 Aug 2008 | 3:01 pm
The deep seated need to connect is making headway in the virtual world. IMVU is proof. CEO Cary Rosenzweig talks to Jennifer Jones about how the user-driven IMVU is so successful that it is generating $1 Million a month. More than 1.7 million different items to buy exist in this virtual world and at least 50,000 virtual rooms. What a choice! For the more than 60% of U.S. users and 40% rest-of-world users, IMVU is a joy to behold. Marketers need to learn what it is all about. Tags: Cary Rosenzweig, IMVU, Jennifer Jones, Marketing Voices, social media, virtual worlds
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Forrester’s Jeremiah Owyang: The Best and Worst of Social Marketing
Jennifer Jones
28 Jul 2008 | 12:01 am
Not being social enough is a big problem for corporations trying to use social media. That’s what Jeremiah Owyang and his team at Forrester discovered in a new report. Forrester selected 16 firms across four industries and found only one company worthy of accolades. What makes BMW a social marketing winner? In part, it’s that the automobile manufacturer managed to avoid the most common pitfalls, which is still where most firms fell short. Some examples of those easy-to-make mistakes: creating marketing programs that aren’t self-fueling, that don’t encourage members to…
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FriendFeed: Customizing Content From Your Friends
Jennifer Jones
21 Jul 2008 | 12:34 am
What your friends are sharing is most important to most people and it is also especially relevant for marketers. FriendFeed, a service funded by Benchmark Capital imports feeds from 41 websites, photo sites, music sites and video sites and aggregates them all in one place. It is making things all over the web much more personal. Jennifer Jones spoke with Co-Founder of FriendFeed, Bret Taylor, about his company, his business model and his plans for the future. Tags: FriendFeed, Benchmark Capital, Jennifer Jones, Bret Taylor
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Facebook: Building Successful Social Media Campaigns For Their Site
Jennifer Jones
7 Jul 2008 | 12:01 am
Both Electronic Arts and Microsoft have created social media campaigns for Facebook. Kevin Barenblat, CEO and Co-Founder of Context Optional discusses the creation of these campaigns on Facebook and how companies are making more social media connections through Facebook. Barenblat explains how Microsoft further developed the idea of a poke and geared it to the office. He also delves into how Electronic Arts taught more people about gaming with their gaming application. Tags: context optional, EA, facebook, Jennifer Jones, kevin barenblat, Marketing Voices, Microsoft, social media

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Bokardo
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Passionates
Josh
30 Jul 2008 | 4:31 am
Robert Scoble has a nice piece on “passionates”, people who are early adopters of technology. He says that companies need to focus on passionates in order to drive their business forward, as non-passionates just don’t care enough to share and promote you. He makes a really good point: it’s better to have 100,000 passionate users than 1,000,000 non-passionate users. This allows you to actually sell a product to those 100,000 people and make some profit at the end of the day. If you have a ton of users, most of which aren’t passionate, then you have a much harder…
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Tripit Employee Pretending to be Disgruntled Dopplr User?
Josh
17 Jul 2008 | 8:30 am
In On the Internet, people know if you’re a dog, my friend John Eckman details an interesting situation which underscores the importance of identity and revealing who you are in appropriate places on the Internet. John wrote a great post the other day comparing some newly released features from the travel startup Dopplr with those of another travel startup, Tripit. Both services have become very well known in the last year and are converging in the same space: they’re increasingly becoming competitors in what might be called the social travel space. I actually use both services as…
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Can Interfaces be Evil?
Josh
16 Jul 2008 | 4:37 am
Yesterday I wrote an unthoughtful post about an email I received from Slideshare. I analyzed the email as an interface and ended up calling it evil, pointing out that I wanted to find out more about something but had to commit to the invitation in order to do so. At the time, this frustrated the hell out of me. But it was a dumb post, because I know Jon and Rashmi of Slideshare and I know that they’re definitely not evil. (Of course, I was basically calling them evil in public…for which I apologized in an update to the post) At the same time, on Twitter we were having a discussion…
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Interface Design Principle: Let people learn more
Josh
15 Jul 2008 | 7:15 am
Update #2: Jon from Slideshare responds in the comments with excellent help. And in reflecting on this post…I realized it’s silly to call the design (or Slideshare) evil. This isn’t evil…it’s an interface. Update #1: There is indeed a group on Slideshare called Presentation Design Tennis. So the following email is true… I received an email that was supposedly from Slideshare. I don’t know if it really is from Slideshare, but it feels like a devious email either way. Here is a screenshot: As you can see, there is a single link in the email. It is a…
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North Shore Web Geek Meetup this week, now with talks!
Josh
14 Jul 2008 | 5:13 am
This Thursday we’re holding the next North Shore Web Geeks Meetup, our monthly meeting for web geeks who live up in the Northeastern Mass/Southern New Hampshire area. This month we’re changing to a new format. So far we’ve been completely unformatted…everyone simply showing up and talking for a while. This has worked out well, but it occurred to us that most of us specialize in some topic or another. For example, we have John Eckman who specializes in open source enterprise software, Will Bond who is writing his own PHP frameworks, and Tom Summit who, as a talent…

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chrisbrogan.com
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Dell Launches Digital Nomads
chrisbrogan
13 Aug 2008 | 10:25 am
Mike Gunderoy from Web Worker Daily reports that Dell has launched Digital Nomads, a site for those of us who work out of coffeeshops and airports, who drag their office around with them in a backpack, who work in our spare bedrooms, and at the beach. It’s cool to me for a few reasons. First, it’s being written by swell folks like Lionel Menchaca, Dell’s Chief Blogger, and Dell’s Bruce Eric Anderson, but also John Jantsch and Phil Torrone, so the voices are from people we know, both inside and outside of Dell. Second, it’s content marketing. We, as nomads can go…
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No- I Dont Sleep
chrisbrogan
13 Aug 2008 | 9:53 am
For whatever reason, I get this question all the time: “Do you sleep?” It relates to how much content I put out. I usually don’t feel like I’m any different than folks like Jeremiah, or Jeff Pulver or Robert Scoble, who also post something every day. Heck, lots of people blog all the time. But, to answer your question: no, I don’t sleep. Until I do, and then I fall down asleep like a ton of bricks. Things I’m Working On Project Dogfood for work. I’m loving the project. A one day Boot Camp for Marketing and PR professionals coming up in September (stay…
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My Best Advice About Social Networking
chrisbrogan
13 Aug 2008 | 2:30 am
If one understands the way social networks can deliver value, they have the opportunity to do more for themselves than ever before. What used to be a fairly linear world, one with ladders to climb rank, and lines to wait in for limited resources, are now built of vast and flexible networks, some loose and some rigid. Our social networks, both the old-fashioned type in real life, as well as the new constructs created by social software, give us the ability to do amazing things for ourselves and for others. But it does require some thought and consideration. Here are some ideas for you to use…
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My Best Advice About Personal Branding
chrisbrogan
12 Aug 2008 | 2:30 am
In some ways, personal branding is noise. It’s talking about one’s self instead of talking about something that’s useful to others. But another way you might look at it is that personal branding is leverage: once you know me, you start to build a relationship with me. Once we have a relationship, I can share even more with you. The more we share, the more likely we’ll have other common interests down the road. It’s definitely part of the whole social media story, the rise of “me,” and personal branding. Here are 10 posts about personal branding from…
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My Best Advice About Blogging
chrisbrogan
11 Aug 2008 | 2:30 am
Looking to take your blogging to the next level? I’ve got some advice and thoughts that might help. Over the last little while, I’ve written about blogging from lots of different perspectives. Right now, I think of blogging as one of your best possible tools for lead generation, for developing relationships, and for improving your organic search results. Without delay, here is My Best Advice About Blogging How to Create Business From a Blog If You Intend to Blog Seriously Ten Secrets to Better Blogging A Sample Blogging Workflow Blog Topics for Business-to-Business Customers Basic…

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trendsspotting blog
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TrendsSpotting Handbook Of Online China
Apurba Sen
8 Aug 2008 | 11:19 am
Nin Hao ! In the spirit of drilling down the dynamics of the Internet in China , We have published a data filled , action packed slideshow “Handbook of Online China” on the eve of Beijing Olympics inauguration . The report focus on three key themes - China as an online leader , China Insider - the competitive landscape in Search , IM & Web 2.0 & Business in Online China - that are essentially key indicators of the ongoing development of the dynamic Internet market in China. The report is unique of its kind .Whether you are an online china observer , analyst or investor ,…
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Google Insights for Search: What can be learned from Google’s new trend spotting tool
Taly Weiss
6 Aug 2008 | 7:24 am
Google has just introduced a new search trend spotting tool: Google Insights for Search. Google Insights provides web analytics, advertisers and marketers new means to understand search behavior – now free of charge. Similar to Google Trends, users can insert a search term to see search volume patterns over time, as well as the top related and rising searches. Users will get the ability to compare search volume trends across multiple search terms, categories, geographic regions, or specific time ranges. What can you gain from Google Insights for Search? Offering a smart search analysis, one…
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The DIY trend: The market and the search for “How To”
Taly Weiss
5 Aug 2008 | 6:23 pm
image source: ehow.com Following the DIY market, one can observe that the hobby / self efficiency based trend is still a growing business worldwide (see data on the US DIY market, UK DIY market, Japanese DIY market, French DIY market, Global report) For the last 2-3 years, the online habitat is making its own unique turn with sharing the do-it-yourself experience. Based on a growing demand for DIY knowledge, numerous websites and communities are dedicated to find the solution to million of “do it yourself” requests. Observing the trend, I find the shift moving from home-repair industry…
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Web 2.0 in Brand Study: Obama’s Berlin Speech
Apurba Sen
31 Jul 2008 | 12:55 pm
Senator Barack Obama addressed 200,000 people on Thursday July 24th in Berlin, near the site where the Berlin Wall once stood. This tag cloud shows the top 20 words used in Obama’s speech. The Democratic presidential hopeful’s speech metaphorically used the Berlin Wall, a Cold War icon, to reassure cross-Atlantic alliance. (The word “Berlin” appeared 21 times in his speech, and the word “wall” appeared 16 times.) “The walls between old allies on either side of the Atlantic cannot stand.” Since last January Germany has swiftly developed…
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What makes Cuil to buzz? Case study for launching brands in a highly competitive environment
Taly Weiss
30 Jul 2008 | 11:54 am
What stands behind Cuil buzz? The answer is quite simple - can one ignore such provocative statements? But what makes it so credible? Is it the fact that someone “dares” to challenge Google with no fear? (a great tactic whether you have it or you don’t..) Is it the fact that Cuil involves Googles’ former leading employees who are perceived credible enough to challenge Larry and Sergy. (Can they really?) This or that, fact is so much has already been said, and still we all want to present our own opinion on the matter. Thats the real buzz source. We make it a buzz…

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Scobleizer — Tech geek blogger
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Behind NBC’s Olympics Website
Robert Scoble
12 Aug 2008 | 12:00 pm
Eric Schmidt, one of the developers on NBCOlympics.com, the official Olympics Web site for the USA, just dropped by Fast Company’s offices in New York City for a chat. We used to work together at Microsoft. I turned on my cell phone and videoed Schmidt and we talked about the site and he gave me lots of insights. Yesterday in the afternoon the site was seeing 4,000 new video plays started every second. They are still counting up all the views from yesterday, but it looks like somewhere around seven million unique visitors hit the site yesterday alone. In just a few days they’ve…
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PR-less launch kicks off a stack overflow of praise
Robert Scoble
11 Aug 2008 | 10:42 pm
This is the way I love to learn about a company. No, not from a PR firm. No, not from a CEO (or anyone else from the company) calling me up or writing me email. No, not on some junket. No, not on stage at Techcrunch 50 or Demo or Under the Radar or some other conference. No, not by reading Mashable. No, not on Twitter. Or FriendFeed. Or Facebook. Or MySpace. (I really hate direct messages, by the way). No, not in an advertisement. “OK, Scoble, knock it off, how did you learn about it?” A beta tester (a developer I know and trust) came up to me today and said “this is the…
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Front-row seat to John Edwards sex scandal
Robert Scoble
8 Aug 2008 | 7:46 pm
I had no idea that when former Senator John Edwards invited me to come along on his plane back in December of 2006 that I would have had a front-row seat to a sex scandal. John Edwards today admitted he had an affair with Rielle Hunter back in 2006. I, along with a few other journalists I had a front-row seat and have some of the only photos of Hunter. See, stuff like this always seems to happen to “other people.” People you don’t know. Never have met. Don’t care about. In this case, though, my wife, Maryam, interviewed Elizabeth Edwards. I interviewed John and sat…
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Analytics expert on WorkFast.tv today
Robert Scoble
8 Aug 2008 | 4:09 am
Avinash Kaushik is one of the world’s top authorities on Web Analytics (his new book, Web Analytics: An Hour a Day is already getting critical acclaim and when I first met Avinash he had quite a crowd around him at the eMetrics conference. Now he’s working on Google’s Analytics team and this morning he’ll be on WorkFast.TV at 10 a.m. Pacific Time today. Join us live to watch the show (the recording will be up next Monday if you miss it). After the show we’ll have an interactive “after show party” on my Kyte channel at 10:35 a.m. Join us there if you…
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“The bloodiest, sickest game from EA”
Robert Scoble
8 Aug 2008 | 3:50 am
On Wednesday we hung out at Electronic Arts all day long getting to know the team of Dead Space, a new horror survival shooter-style game that has already won a bunch of awards at industry conferences (it won best new action/adventure game at the recent E3 conference). I recorded a couple of videos with my cell phone, but the really good stuff will come in about two weeks (we’ll be headed out to New York next week to meet with FastCompany team members). Unfortunately getting a cell phone video out of EA was very hard, I hear Qik.com has a new version coming soon that’ll fix the…

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The Social
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Winklevoss twins advance to Olympic finals
Caroline McCarthy
13 Aug 2008 | 6:50 am
There's been another victory on the water for ConnectU founders Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss—even as their court case against Facebook continues to peter out unfavorably. Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss racing in Beijing.(Credit: Row2k.com) The identical twins, representing the United States in the men's pair (M2-) event …
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Facebook: Filter your News Feed even more
Caroline McCarthy
13 Aug 2008 | 4:28 am
You can now filter the items in your Facebook News Feed depending on what you're hoping to check out, thanks to a cool new drop-down menu. Previously, you could sort the list by a few Facebook mainstays: status updates, photo-related updates, and "posted items." The filter additions, originally reported late last night by TechCrunch, …
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ComScore: Social sites are going global
Caroline McCarthy
12 Aug 2008 | 1:34 pm
We sort of knew it already: while Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Hi5, Orkut, and Friendster were all founded in the U.S., social networking is a worldwide phenomenon. New statistics from ComScore show that sites like Facebook are growing rapidly across the globe, even as that growth slows down in their …
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ConnectU-Facebook fight one stroke closer to finish line
Caroline McCarthy
12 Aug 2008 | 11:44 am
As twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss power toward Wednesday's semifinal in the rowing events of the Olympics in Beijing, their longstanding court case against Facebook is winding down. A San Jose, Calif., judge ruled late last week that ConnectU, the start-up that the brothers founded with Harvard classmate Divya …
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Measuring social networks' popularity by region
Caroline McCarthy
12 Aug 2008 | 6:22 am
Performance-monitoring firm Pingdom thinks we should look at social networks differently. The popularity of a social site such as MySpace or Twitter is frequently measured in unique users, page views, or user registrations. But a recent ministudy by Pingdom chose instead to look at how much of a proportional lock …

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NowSourcing
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What is a Plurkshop and Why Should I Care?
Brian Wallace
8 Aug 2008 | 7:41 am
What do you call it when you get 20 Plurkers together on one thread, all discussing the same subject in detail for an hour or so? Why it’s a Plurkshop, of course. The number of Plurkers can vary, I’ve seen Plurkshops that had around 5 people doing most of the talking, and others with 40 or 50 people, all discussing the same subject. Plurkshops can be on any subject, we’ve had discussions on blogs, CSS, marketing, social media, security, second life, and more. To date there have been 13 Plurkshops; the 14th, coming up this Tuesday, August 12, will be discussing the benefits…
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Facebook Addiction: Are You Facebook Official?
n.wunderlin
28 Jul 2008 | 5:27 pm
The following diary is not for any particular day. Its just a summary of how many of my days went during my first year at college. This diary chronicles the addiction I like many of my collegiate brothers and sisters live with everyday, FACEBOOK. Millions of college students live with this addiction day to day, I being one of them. (Image credit: eureekaswindow) 8:00 am I wake up hit snooze on my alarm. 15 minutes later I pull myself out of bed and stumble over to my desk, open my mac book and open safari. Skip the news, go straight to Facebook. Who knows? In the past 6 hours that I was…
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Cure Your Fail Whale Twitter Blues With Identi.ca
maxyRO
7 Jul 2008 | 12:00 pm
If you too got fed up with the whale carrying birds, then you must have turned you attention and free time to another micro-blogging platform. First came Jaiku, then Pownce, after which people started turning to Twitter. When the whale failed ashore, we turned our attention to Plurk. Not a new player has come into the scene by the name of Identi.ca. So after hearing people talking about it, I too decided to create an account just to claim my username. It is named by many “the Twitter killer” and they are right on a certain level. It allows the federated use of the service (laconi.ca), it…
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Turn Up the Beat: 6 Best Social Music Sites
Brian Wallace
3 Jul 2008 | 8:42 am
The Internet is a great medium for a number of different activities. You can get your news, conduct business, or stay in contact with friends and family. Two of the most popular uses in today’s society are music and social networking. There are a number of great websites that perform one or both of these tasks. The following websites are the ones that I believe, offer the most unique features, have the biggest audience, or mix both aspects together most effectively: 5. Mypsace : Myspace is more than just a place to upload photos, blog, or communicate. It has offered many musicians another…
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NowSourcing to Appear on Small Business Trends Radio
Brian Wallace
25 Jun 2008 | 6:37 am
I am making a live appearance on Small Business Radio, the Internet radio broadcasting arm of Small Business Trends (you can follow them on Twitter as well). The conversation will be around the business benefits of using Plurk, which would make for interesting discussion as it is such a fresh and new service. So save the date - Tuesday, July 1st at 1:30pm EST to listen live. You can also get your Plurk questions addressed in advance of the show by leaving a comment on ask the guest.

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FactoryCity
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Bookmarks for July 21 to August 04
Chris Messina
9 Aug 2008 | 11:57 pm
A bi-weekly collection of linky goodness. XCRI: eXchanging Course-Related Information XCRI is a JISC-funded, UK-oriented project to establish a specification to support the eXchange of Course-Related Information. Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ Tags: courseware, specification, open data, education Eco Friend Welcome to EcoFriend.us. We believe there’s a way to both save money and be environmentally friendly at the same time! Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ Tags: environment, shopping View all my bookmarks on Ma.gnolia
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So open it hurts
Chris Messina
30 Jul 2008 | 11:45 pm
Bernice Yeung’s character piece (”So Open it Hurts“) about my relationship with Tara is now available online (feels somewhat awkward using her full name, as she used mine in her post on the story, so I’ll take liberties and presume some familiarity on the part of you, my dear reader). On the one hand, I feel a bit embarrassed and reluctant having had the entrails of our relationship splayed out over 15 digital pages or 13 print pages starting on page 57 of this month’s San Francisco Magazine (which I recommend, given modern reading habits). On the other,…
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Bookmarks for July 07 to July 21
Chris Messina
26 Jul 2008 | 11:57 pm
A bi-weekly collection of linky goodness. ? Découvrons OAuth avec mixin (et django-oauth) » Django, Web Semantique » Journal » Biologeek, l’avis d’un freelance passionné par le web et son évolution. Good write up (in French) of OAuth. Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ Tags: oauth, django mixin authentication — mixin documentation mixin provides a standard authentication based on OAuth. Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ Tags: mixin, documentation, oauth Save the Fail Whales Now The fail whale may be going the way of the Dodo if you don’t…
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The Open Web Foundation
Chris Messina
24 Jul 2008 | 6:38 pm
During this morning’s keynote at OSCON, David Recordon announced the formation of the Open Web Foundation (his slides), an initiative with which I am involved, aimed at becoming something akin to a “Creative Commons for patents”, with the intention of lowering the costs and barriers to the development and adoption of open and free specifications like OpenID and OAuth. As I expected, there’s been some healthy skepticism that usually starts with “Another foundation? Really?” or “Wait, doesn’t [insert other organization name] do this?” And…
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The Community Ampflier
Chris Messina
23 Jul 2008 | 2:52 am
I am honored to be a recipient of this year’s Google O’Reilly Open Source Award for being the “best community amplifier” for my work with the microformats, Spread Firefox and BarCamp communities! (See the original call for nominations). Inexplicably I was absent when they handed out the award, hanging out with folks at a Python/Django/jQuery drinkup down the street, but I’m humbled all the same… especially since I work on a day to day basis with such high caliber and incredible people without whom none of these projects would exist, would not have found…

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Outside the Lines by Dan Farber
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The cloud of unreliability
Dan Farber
11 Aug 2008 | 5:19 pm
It's not clear why anyone should be surprised that Gmail, Amazon.com's cloud services, Salesforce.com, MobileMe, or Netflix have periods of instability or downtime. These services are not promising five-nines of uptime, and they are dependent on complex code and a vast network "tubes," as the beleaguered Sen. Ted Stevens has said, to deliver bits to users. Services such as Twitter have set a new standard for unreliability, making the other cloud-based services look good in comparison despite their outages. The much-ballyhooed cloud from which Web services emanate is inherently unstable and…
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Launchpad Chicken: MobileMe and sync trouble
Dan Farber
11 Aug 2008 | 11:55 am
Guest post: Jean-Louis Gassée looks into Apple's MobileMe launch misfire and whether Apple can run a worldwide wireless data synchronization service for tens of millions of users. The essay was originally posted on Monday Note. Jean-Louis Gassée(Credit: Dan Farber)Simple is hard. Easy is harder. Invisible is hardest. So goes one of the many proverbs of our computer lore. As Apple found out last month with the MobileMe launch misfires, the lofty promise of "Exchange for the rest of us" translated into a user experience that was neither simple nor easyin a highly visible way. Four weeks…
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EIC Squared: Olympics, LinuxWorld, and Google cookies
Dan Farber
8 Aug 2008 | 1:56 pm
On this week's EIC Squared podcast, ZDNet's Larry Dignan and I talk about the big story of this monththe Olympics. Microsoft and NBC are hoping that their servers and software can handle the load as the Silverlight code (Microsoft's competitor to Adobe's Flash) takes its maiden voyage at NBCOlympics.com. In addition, the Department of Homeland Security is advising that people traveling to the Olympics leave their phones, laptops, and other digital equipment at home. "Somebody with a wireless device in China should expect it to be compromised," said Joel Brenner, the U.S. national…
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Up the downturn: How to survive in tough economic times
Dan Farber
5 Aug 2008 | 11:08 am
Guest post: Christopher Lochhead, the former chief marketing officer at Scient and Mercury, offers his advice on how companies can do more than pray for survival in a prolonged economic downturn. It's easy to be great when things are going great. The real test of leadership is who are you when things are tough. Leaders take market share in bad times, and losers lose share, money, and market cap. We seem to be heading into a multi-quarter (or maybe longer) downturn. Planning for a long downturn is the right approach, even if you think this is just a blip. Strategy 1: Don't cut the budget The…
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Personal assistant start-up readies consumer service
Dan Farber
1 Aug 2008 | 9:25 am
Rearden Commerce CEO Patrick GradyIn November 1999, Patrick Grady gathered some friends and advisers to talk about creating an Internet service that would transform the way businesses services are delivered to large corporations. The idea was to build an on-demand Web services platform and a digital personal assistant that takes the hassle out of making travel and dining plans, shipping packages, setting up Web conferences, procuring event tickets and scheduling parking or car services. The metadata-driven technology would take into account user and business preferences and normalize service…

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Somewhat Frank
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Upcoming Web/Tech & Social Media Events
Frank Gruber
12 Aug 2008 | 6:47 pm
It has truly been an action packed 2008 web/tech and social media conference season thus far. I previously listed a number of events but since January a number of new ones have popped up. I wanted to highlight few upcoming events that I will be attending and thought you might want to check out. I will also be speaking at a number of them. The next few months are going to be big travel months for sure. Check out the list of upcoming web/tech, social media and marketing events.Oh and don't forget to bookmark the full web tech social media event calendar page. Intel Developer Forum - San…
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LaunchBoxDigital Demo Day 2008 Preview
Frank Gruber
12 Aug 2008 | 8:03 am
Today I am headed to the first LaunchBoxDigital demo day for the Washington, D.C. based startup incubator program. The program is similar to TechStars which I visited in Boulder, Colorado in March. The following nine portfolio companies received funding as part of the program and will be demoing at the event. This article will offer you a preview. The nine LaunchBoxDigital startups demoing include: BuzzHubb - Founded by Satjot Sawhney and Ashish Kundra, BuzzHubb is a lightweight, mobile-enabled groups product geared towards college student. Similar to the way that Facebook started solely on…
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Video: A Day With The Dash Express GPS
Frank Gruber
11 Aug 2008 | 9:01 am
Do you get lost a lot while driving? If you do you might want to get yourself a GPS navigation system. Dash Navigation, a Sunnyvale, California based startup, which I previously previewed in episode 30 of SOMEWHAT FRANK TV has created an innovative GPS system that connects to the Internet. I recently tested the Dash Express GPS system myself as I spent the day navigating DC with the hot new gadget. Check out the video (below) which is episode 36 of the video podcast SOMEWHAT FRANK TV. If you like what you see you can purchase your own Dash Express GPS. Don't forget to subscribe to the…
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Fight High Gas Prices By Finding Parking Fast
Frank Gruber
8 Aug 2008 | 8:06 am
Filling a vehicle with gas might be the current problem for many, but finding a place to park the car has been an issue for a lot longer. Several companies have fired up to help frustrated drivers park their vehicles. Two previous posts addressed the parking problem with Parkwhiz and Parking Hunter - and I am sure there are a few more similar products. The new kid in the parking reservation camp is BestParking.com, a free online search engine and rate calculator for Manhattan’s 1,030 parking facilities with a free mobile version available. Founded in 2006 by 20-year old college…
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Filtrbox Does Widgets For Olympic Team USA
Frank Gruber
7 Aug 2008 | 8:37 am
With the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympic games ready getting underway you might be looking to stay up to speed with the action. Filtrbox, a Boulder, Colorado based TechStars startup and previous TECH cocktail demoer, is looking to help you keep track of all the USA Teams' news by launching a new widget offering. The widget is not just your normal feed widget as it showcases the power of persistent search and noise control to offer up everything it can find about the USA Olympic team. There is lots of stuff from lots of sources ranging from NBC to bloggers point of view and everything in between.

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Collective Thoughts
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Why Are Alexa Double-Dipping Social Media Penalties?
Andy Beard
8 Aug 2008 | 3:24 pm
Earlier this year Alexa shook things up a little, applying some kind of penalty or reduced modifier to websites with a traditionally higher percentage of Alexa toolbar users than average, predominately technology and webmaster focused sites who found the Alexa data useful, or who actively evangelised Alexa toolbar use as it is often a major factor in gauging traffic for advertising. Some of the 3rd party tools offering Alexa data also provide other useful features, especially for webmasters with toolbars such as Search Status for Firefox. Some level of rebalance was probably fair, to try to…
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Collective Wanderings for August 1st 2008
dave
1 Aug 2008 | 9:46 am
Of all the great news and views from this past week, by far our favorite is the announcement of Brendan Picha (from Squareoak) joining the Collective Thoughts team (welcome aboard Brendan)… Beyond that we have funnies, tri-dimensional conversations and hyper-connectivity to keep the head spinning and the belly aching. Also new this week is Tim’s idea that we each pass along some thoughts for the week… we hope they find you well. Enjoy your weekend!! Brian’s picks I liked this interesting new real time social browsing Still on the fence about the new facebook Top…
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Quality; the ultimate marketing tool
dave
31 Jul 2008 | 4:36 pm
If you’re selling crap, if your website sucks or your customer service is non-existent, then you are likely making your marketing efforts much harder than need be. This is never more true than when talking about social media marketing. If you’d be so kind, allow me to elaborate. Recently the masochists here at Collective Thoughts tasked me with writing the odd tidbit of social goodiness I was certainly bemused at the prospect of doing so. You see, in the end analysis I am a business consultant that almost exclusively moves from the mindset of what is best for the SMB (small to medium…
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Collective Wanderings; Take 3
dave
25 Jul 2008 | 5:25 pm
Our 3rd week of Collective Wanderings draws to a close. This time around, we’ve added a thought to compliment the regular roundup… Enjoy your weekend!! Brian’s picks Essential Skills of a community manager - Chris Brogan Web networking photos come back to bite defendants - Yahoo News If your blog’s ranking is falling, is that really your fault, or Technorati’s? - The Viral Garden Dave’s picks Socialititis strikes social media users - SEO Mentor New communication theory and roles - Brian Solis Twitter is not a micro-blogging tool - Mashable For a web analyst; what…
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Are You Letting Your Employees Out on the Green in Social Media?
Brian Wallace
21 Jul 2008 | 12:25 pm
(Image credit:allspice1) IBM was well known for having golf course privileges for its employees. Quite a perk, right? Well it paid off for IBM, as it kept employees going on talking shop on the golf course. Enter social media. Corporations and draconian IT departments out there often block many or all social media sites from employee consumption. Question is, is this really the right way to approach this? Or rather, should companies embrace their employees natural want for social media. Zappos is one such company that comes to mind for me when thinking about someone doing it right.

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Community Guy - Jake McKee
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iPhone Apps are not dead.
Jake McKee
13 Aug 2008 | 7:02 am
To read TechCrunch and GigaOm, you’d think that the iTunes App Store is crashing and burning. Both articles have used the overwhelming sales numbers as a catalyst for a “too cool for school” rant about how the App Store and iPhone apps in general are destined for failure. Steve Jobs released the numbers for the first 30 days of the App Store: Total Downloads: 60 Million Total Revenues: $30 Million Sales Going To App Developers: $21 Million Sales Going To Top Ten Apps: $9 Million Sales of Sega’s Super Monkey Ball: $3 Million Both Om and Erick have concerns about basically…
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Rapid Fire - Monday, August 11
Jake McKee
11 Aug 2008 | 11:57 pm
souvenirs - a set on Flickr A great gallery proving that you don’t have to spend tons of money to have fantastic impact. Tags: photography, flickr, dailylinks View all my bookmarks on Ma.gnolia
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Job Board Updates: 7 New Candidates & 10 New Job Postings
darlene
11 Aug 2008 | 12:38 pm
Lots of new job openings and job seekers! Community Job Seekers Looking for telecommute or traveling Community Manager position Community Manager seeking Work at Home employment(Huntington Beach, California) Community Manager/ Social Media PR Guru (Boston, MA) Online Community Manager/Executive, 10+ Years Experience (San Francisco, CA) Online Community Manager (San Francisco Bay Area, California) Online News/Content Media Professional (Southeastern US) Social Media Video Producer, Distributor, & Consultant (Boston, MA) To see all candidates:…
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CAB Exchange Event Recap
Jake McKee
11 Aug 2008 | 9:39 am
Shortly before leaving for my wonderful vacation, I headed to San Jose to attend the CAB Exchange. You may recall that I wrote about the CAB (Customer Advisory Board) Exchange event put on by fellow Dallas resident, Bill Lee. The event was a lot of fun and very interesting to me as a community guy. I ran into several people I know who asked “Why are you here? I didn’t expect you to be at this event.” I thought this was an intriguing question, but before I mention why let’s define “Customer Advisory Boards”. One article defines them this way: A CAB is a…
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Will it Blend: Social Technologies
Jake McKee
11 Aug 2008 | 7:32 am
The hits keep right on rolling with the Will it Blend videos. This time Josh Bernoff joins Tom and they have a genius presentation about choosing the right social technology tool(s).

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123 Social Media » Enterprise business social media for entrepreneurs -seo-smo-smm
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Connectory- a Blogger Relations Campaign with Whitepages.com
Barry Hurd
12 Aug 2008 | 3:23 pm
What do blogger relations and Whitepages.com have in common? I am having a hard time drawing good connections and as far as bloggers and directory companies go “I should get it” more than most: I spent roughly eight years of my corporate life at Verizon Information Services / a.k.a. Superpages.com. That probably makes one of the most experienced social media / phone directory professionals online these days. Today’s topic: (From the Whitepages.com Blog) “Last Friday on the heels of a wildly successful Lunch 2.0 the WhitePages PR team entered a new world of…
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Social Media Training - Things you should read today
Barry Hurd
5 Aug 2008 | 10:46 am
One of the greatest tools of social media is group sharing and collaboration. In that venue, you should expand your mind with two articles a day that will grow your social media brain-power. In the case of the following two articles: they will probably make your brain explode. Our first article of choice is from Chris Brogan- 50 Online Applications to Consider. “For those of you who are getting involved in social media a little bit at a time, consider this a list of things you might check out a little bit at a time to see what appeals, what fits into your workflow, and what you can…
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Corporate Social Media Reputation - ePerks or eJerks?
Barry Hurd
3 Aug 2008 | 6:41 pm
So many corporations are jumping into the social media space that a small few are defining exactly what you should (and should not) do. Today we are going to look at ePerks.com, a real estate web site that is a lead generator for real estate agents. Looking at the overall reaction that has occurred over the past few months, this will probably be a case of how social media killed the corporation. From the beginning of June 07, ePerks went into a fairly aggressive campaign of traffic building through various sponsored posts in the blogosphere. To start off this wonderful story, lets take a look…
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Corporate Social Media Reputation - How to be Dugg to Death
Barry Hurd
30 Jul 2008 | 6:41 pm
Corporate social media is a huge buzz phrase. A company’s brand online- through social media reputation and word of mouth marketing is beginning to have more and more weight in today’s marketplace. In the past, the saying used to be that one bad customer could relay the story to ten you never met. In the social media world, one customer can reach thousands they have never met (sometimes millions). Today’s contender for brutality to a companies reputation is “The Worst Company in America Award“, via Digg, Google, and a million online readers. This years contest…
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Corporate Social Media 101 - Intermec Reviewed
Barry Hurd
29 Jul 2008 | 2:12 pm
Monitoring the huge trend in corporate social media, executives around the world are testing new ways of sharing information and trying to discard some old school stumbling blocks. Many corporate decision makers are left looking at advanced spreadsheets and blindly take shot after shot in the dark (hoping they hit the mythical beast “the prospect” in the process.) As our team at 123 is often moving around and speaking to these decision makers, we occasionally like to flex our brains a little and examine a company online. Are they doing it right? Are they doing it wrong? Are they…

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Dan Zarrella
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Why Proverbs and Sayings Go Viral
Dan Zarrella
13 Aug 2008 | 12:10 pm
The Q Document (the source material for the Gospels of Matthew and Luke) is a collection of Jesus’s proverbs. Jesus’s own ministry was comprised of 1 to 3 years of short sayings including proverbs and the occasional long-form sermon. The Book of Proverbs is one of the “Three Poetic Books” of the Old Testament. Ecclesiastes 12:9 and 12:10 say: In addition to being a wise man, the Preacher also taught the people knowledge; and he pondered, searched out and arranged many proverbs. The Preacher sought to find delightful words and to write words of truth correctly. Clearly…
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How and Why Slang Spreads
Dan Zarrella
11 Aug 2008 | 12:09 pm
Slang is not easy to define exactly, but in an article written by David M. Hummon in 1994 for The Journal of Higher Education a workable definition is presented: an oral, highly expressive language not accepted as ‘good, formal usage’. Whereas euphemisms seek to obfuscate and soften unpleasant realities, slang is often used as a shocking way to confront those otherwise taboo topics. Typically slang begins as a sort of encrypted “in speak” for subcultures, the criminal underground is an oft-used example of this. Many drug nicknames are used so that members of the…
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Site Updates and Prizes
Dan Zarrella
7 Aug 2008 | 5:32 am
I made a few changes here, like some of the fonts. I made a portfolio page and I have to add a new navigational menu somewhere, but I’m not sure where. I’m also planning to give away a prize pack to one random subscriber (from the US, for shipping purposes) to my email list on August 22nd. So far the guys over at KickAssEveryDay.com have offered an awesome t-shirt to start off the prizes. I’ll send the winner a copy of Susan Blackmore’s Meme Machine from Amazon. Meme Machine is a seminal book on memetics and a huge influence on me. Update: Geeks.com has added a…
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The ProtoViral Posts, So Far
Dan Zarrella
8 Jul 2008 | 6:49 am
I made some changes to my sidebar and I noticed that I’ve started to build up a decent number of posts on my weird take on history, sociology, psychology, memetics, viral marketing and social media (I like to call it protoviral). So I decided to go ahead and make one big roundup post so that if you missed something you can read it from here, and so that I (and you will too) have a link to send people to help them understand exactly what I’m trying to do with my work. It would be very awesome if you all suggested something I haven’t written about yet (I’m working on a…
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How to Stop the Spread of Rumors
Dan Zarrella
1 Jul 2008 | 11:52 am
If you like this post, follow me on twitter. Barack Obama’s campaign, even from its earliest days, has been the target of a large number of negative rumors, many of them traveling in email chain letters, forwarded from person to person. They recently launched a new microsite called “Fight the Smears” designed to counteract them. The Washington Post published an article about a researcher studying the origins of the email forwards who found that the emails were the result of a totally organic collaborative effort, where most of the participants were unaware of the identities…

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Bazaarblog
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Bazaarvoice Brand Placement in Two YouTube Videos
Sam Decker | Chief Marketing Officer
12 Aug 2008 | 4:12 pm
Coincidentally, on the same day, I found out our brand is featured in two YouTube videos. The first is an interview and acoustic set with the #1 band in Austin, The Band of Heathens. Here the lead singer is wearing our Bazaarvoice “University” t-shirt. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vqhAvirGoI Next, our friend Josh Bernoff (who spoke at our Social Commerce Summit) pokes fun at social technology providers with Blendtec. He does a “Will it Blend?” segment mixing the tchotchkies from several providers, including our flavored toothpicks which we handed out at our BBQ…
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Webinar on Aug. 19: How James Avery Engages Customers Through Stories
Sam Decker | Chief Marketing Officer
11 Aug 2008 | 3:21 pm
James Avery Craftsman, a unique jeweler established more than 50 years ago, creates heirloom jewelry passed down through generations of its clients. James Avery himself doesn’t like to blow his own horn, and the brand reflects that, but they receive thousands of customer letters raving about the special place this jewelry holds in each family. James Avery wanted others to hear these meaningful stories and to share the spirit of the brand without bragging. Their perfect solution was to collect “Real Stories” from their customers online and allow customers to speak for their brand. As a…
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Bazaarvoice Summit Cliffnotes #6: Simon Rodrigue, Senior Manager of eCommerce at Home Depot Canada: Case Study: Home Depot Canada’s Answer Depot
Sam Decker | Chief Marketing Officer
11 Aug 2008 | 4:51 am
This is the sixth in our series of key takeaways from some of the presentations and panel discussions offered at the Social Commerce Summit in May 2008. Simon Rodrigue, then the Senior Manager of eCommerce at Home Depot Canada, shared the successes and strategies surrounding the launch of Answer Depot, powered by Bazaarvoice’s Ask & Answer product. Simon decided to shift HomeDepot.ca’s focus away from products and conversion to building compelling content. Simon’s strategy was to empower his customers, giving them both a reason and the tools to form a community and build an online…
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Come to SXSW Interactive (and vote for our panel now)
Sam Decker | Chief Marketing Officer
8 Aug 2008 | 6:23 pm
Block your calendar. This year’s SXSW is March 13-17 in Austin, and there’s an entire interactive track that will have many panels on social networking and marketing. We’d love it if you let us know that you’re coming and if we get enough people we’ll have a Bazaarvoice party! For now, you have an opportunity to vote for which interactive panels are chosen for the event. True audience empowerment! So let me empower you… I’m on a Panel led by Chris Pacitti, general partner at Austin Ventures. So while you’re voting, if you want our panel to be…
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Helzberg Diamonds’ New Home Page
Brett Hurt | Founder and CEO
4 Aug 2008 | 4:45 pm
Helzberg Diamonds’ new home page is focused almost entirely on user-generated content, both customer Ratings & Reviews and Stories. Bath & Body Works recently launched a similar campaign (not live anymore), which we may be sharing results on later (read these reviews, and you are almost sure to buy a pair). We are very proud to work with both of them - they are very innovative and customer-focused. In the meantime, check out Helzberg’s home page and see if you are drawn in. I think it is much more engaging than the normal “marketing speak”. It tells customers,…

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Rajesh@Blogworks
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Client and Agency Engagement - Today's Paradox
9 Aug 2008 | 9:18 pm
A recent telephone conversation with a friend, a senior communication professional, prompted this post. Do your own experiences as a participant in the communication profession, whether as a veteran or a newcomer, whether an agency or a client validate this paradox? A somewhat controversial one… It is a paradox emerging from today's business reality and the situations it creates, range from hilarious to frustrating - depending on who you are, and where you are at that point. The booming economy, of the last few years and (some claim slowing down now) and the resultant demand for…
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Social Media Obsessions
21 Jul 2008 | 9:42 pm
I haven't written much about social media in the last month, or so, and have chosen instead to silently observe macro trends that interest me. Trends that transcend "Tool of the Day" obsessions with Twitter , Friendfeed or whatever else… Toby and I were speaking day-before and here are my continuing & current obsessions: Impact of social media and blogs on purchase decisions- That there is impact, I don't have any doubt about now. What's been your experience - which categories are you seeing most impacted/ influenced? In fact, Hasan, from IIM - Indore, who has been in touch for the last few…
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PITCHH.COM is now live. Go on, make the right connect.
13 Jul 2008 | 7:42 pm
I have been sharing developments on this project over the last few weeks and we are NOW live, still a beta though. Allow me to present Pitchh.com – why the extra ‘h’? We think it's sexy! We think it gives you an extra H - oops, 'extra EDGE' we mean. :) Pitchh.com, is a business utility that lets Brands and Agencies “Make the Right Connect” globally. Brands can create and invite pitch applications for wider choice of ideas and partners. Agencies across streams of advertising, public relations, marketing, social media and more, can connect directly. We got off to a good start, in…
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Pitchh Update
2 Jul 2008 | 8:16 pm
Pitchh is now a reality - we have a site that works :). It's not public, yet, but in the next couple of days we hope to finish pending changes based on our internal audits and on feedback received from friends that we requested to test the site. In fact, here is the new home page. Tell us what you think of it. So how does Pitchh work? Pitchh is free and quite simple, really: You are a Brand or an Organisation looking for an agency > go to Invite a Pitch > fill in an assignment brief > publish - and you are done. No more reaching out to just a handful of names; no more hunting for specialty…
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Total Gadha
21 Jun 2008 | 8:38 pm
Irreverence is not really an attitude commonly used by educational institutes to position themselves, so this signage caught my attention immediately. For our overseas readers, we are talking about the URL - Total Gadha translated into English means Total Donkey - a fun way, perhaps, for the candidates to describe themselves before they join the institute which prepares them for CAT, GMAT etc. Can't say that I don't like it - thought it was fun. However, one look at the website tells that they haven't really carried the 'irreverence' logic beyond just the name and the mascot graphic as…

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Soshable
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Search for “Cuil” on Cuil… They Can’t Find Their Own Site!
JD Rucker
30 Jul 2008 | 3:11 am
Yes, it has been bad. It is possibly the greatest 1-day reversal of fortunes in the history of the Internet. Monday started off as a monumental day for Cuil with over 7.4 trillion articles and blog posts written about its launch. Before Monday ended, it was reviewed by another 471 billion blogs and given a fail rating by all but 11 or so. If you haven’t heard about it, you didn’t turn on your computer Monday. Sadly, that would make you one of the lucky ones. If you haven’t tried it, it’s worth a shot just so you’ll know that we aren’t just picking…
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Revolt? Day 2, Another Fail Dominates Front Page
JD Rucker
23 Jul 2008 | 12:17 am
One of the first front page stories that stayed at the top of the Propeller “Most Popular Stories” was titled, “Propeller.com new layout Sucks!!!“. If you click on the link to it, you get this: This article has been removed from our system for violating our Terms of Use. Fair enough. It was inflammatory and while it may have been a sounding board for disgruntled users, it did not offer a lot of value to the site. Soon after, an article titled “Propeller. Fail.” was posted and has been the top story on the front page of the site for some time. Not a…
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Testing TweetSnap
JD Rucker
5 Jul 2008 | 10:48 pm
Reviewing (well, testing) Tweetsnap. This seems like a pretty interesting idea for bloggers who are embedded in their twitter but hate messing with the downtime issues. We’ll see how it plays out.
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New Authors Added to Soshable
JD Rucker
27 Jun 2008 | 8:18 pm
It’s been forever since we posted. For that, I am sorry, but I assure you, it was for a good reason. Soshable has picked up corporate sponsorship and will be adding some authors. The usual suspects are still on board, but there will also be an infusion of fresh perspectives added to this blog. Rather than welcome them here, I will let them post directly themselves so as to not “spoil the fun”. With corporate sponsorship comes room for added talent as well. If you have an understanding of social media, social networking, marketing, or anything on the Internet in general,…
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Web 3.0 is (probably) being built as we speak
JD Rucker
27 May 2008 | 7:26 pm
Is consolidation the road to Web 3.0? I’ve mentioned a few times on this blog that I believe the “Web 3.0″ revolution will be ushered in by Social Hybrids. We are starting to see large Web 2.0 companies getting eaten up by the larger Internet powerhouses — AOL/Bebo, eBay/StumbleUpon, Yahoo/del.icio.us, etc — but there hasn’t been a true consolidation of web properties that combines social media with social networking. Are we seeing the Genesis of it now? (more…)

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a thousand cuts
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Social Media Enhances Real World Relationships
Adam Cohen
12 Aug 2008 | 8:32 pm
Call me "Captain Obvious" for this one, but at a recent social media event it became clear to me that all of these social media platforms enhance real world connections. I have made personal and professional connections that are stronger and more valuable to me as a result of interaction with social networks. I will still continue to scrutinize who I connect to on each platform, but some recent examples of this: Last week I set my Facebook status to indicate I'd be in New York City for a couple of days. A few minutes later I received an invite from a couple of old friends I hadn't seen…
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The Brand Factor: Do Established Brands Have It Easier?
Adam Cohen
8 Aug 2008 | 8:35 am
Do big, well-known brands have it easier or harder than start-ups trying to make an impact and leveraging social media? Jeremiah Owyang, the well known social media analyst from Forrester Research, recently wrote a very thoughtful post on the current challenges in social media. I also recently attended Social Media Camp Boston, which had a number of enterpreneurs presenting on tactics they take to leverage social media platforms. This got me thinking - what types of companies lend themselves to social media? I see three major factors that can help to answer…
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Nintendo: Simple = Good
Adam Cohen
4 Aug 2008 | 12:53 pm
This weekend while playing with my oldest son, we saw spotted a note online about connecting our Nintendo Wii with his Ninendo DS for a game he already has. He's really into Pokemon, so I figured I would try to learn about it and see if we could get the connection to work. In less than 5 minutes and a few keystrokes, we had connected the DS, a small, handheld gaming system with Wifi capabilities, to the Wii, and "deposited" all of the creatures he had captured in the handheld game into a "Pokemon Ranch." At the ranch you can interact with the creatures, take pictures of them…
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1 + 1 = 3: Rosetta and Brulant
Adam Cohen
25 Jul 2008 | 11:31 am
How do you build a top digital agency? In July Rosetta announced the acquisition of interactive agency Brulant, where I am a partner in the Consumer Product and Retail practice. The first couple of days since the announcement have been some of the most fun in my career. The two firms build a compelling value proposition when combined, and I've spent a better part of those two days calling clients and friends to talk about it. Acquisitions and mergers have negative connotations to many folks. They can mean personnel conflicts, culture clashes and diluting of the "juice" that makes…
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Choose Wisely: Scrutinizing Your Social Network Connections
Adam Cohen
16 Jul 2008 | 6:30 pm
Last week I conducted an overview of social media for a client. After the meeting, I executed my usual drill: I followed up by taking business cards and checking if all the meeting attendees I hadn't met before were on LinkedIn and Facebook, and sent out a series of thank you notes through those tools and requested connections. In an email response, one of them asked me flat out, "So tell me how you stay in touch with 500+ LinkedIn folks??" That got me thinking about how I leverage these tools personally. Everyone has a different level of scrutiny on who would…

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Tantek's Updates
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An Event Apart San Francisco
Tantek
18 Aug 2008 | 12:00 am
8/18-8/19 An Event Apart San Francisco (u)
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WordCamp
Tantek
16 Aug 2008 | 12:00 am
8/16 WordCamp (u)
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6th blogiversary
Tantek
8 Aug 2008 | 7:23 pm
tags: personal blog anniversary blogiversary The sixth year of blogging felt very different than the fifth. Clearly the in-the-moment interfaces of Twitter, Flickr and Brightkite have become an alternative outlet for the desire to capture life's moments and the frequency of my lengthier, more considered pieces has dropped. In some ways, with these new tools I feel like I'm capturing more, and yet, I can't help the feeling that something has been lost. The bigger, more in depth thoughts keep coming, and I capture and assimilate them into my "blog-this.txt" file which…
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The Start Conference
Tantek
7 Aug 2008 | 12:00 am
8/7 The Start Conference (u)
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Busy, blurring, and behind
Tantek
31 Jul 2008 | 11:59 pm
tags: personal More than a month has passed, with nary enough time to reflect, process, and synthesize all the days' happenings into a sensible narative. Searching just my thoughts and memories rather than my archives, a few things come to mind. BarCampSeattle BarCampSeattle was excellent. The trip involved facing a few personal challenges, which I took as an opportunity to push myself further and lead two sessions on more experimental topics: "Buildering 101" on Saturday where a bunch of us climbed the Fremont Troll, and "How to be a superhero" on Sunday where I led…

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S Studio by Shai Coggins
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What Does Your Blog Say About You?
Shai Coggins
13 Aug 2008 | 6:40 am
When I finally tried the much-talked about Wordle, I decided to give it free-reign when coming up with my “word cloud”. I just typed S Studio’s URL and let it spin its magic. What came out shouldn’t be a surprise to me. After all, those are words that I’ve been using on this blog over the last week or so. Yet, I found it strangely alarming to realise that most of those words don’t really say much about my blog, or myself. Or at least, they’re not saying what I want it to say. And, it freaked me. It made me realise that perhaps, I’m not blogging…
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HATE
Shai Coggins
12 Aug 2008 | 7:00 am
Hate is such a horrid word. It’s the sort of word that I do not like to have in my life on a daily basis In fact, when my 4-year-old decided to use the word a lot - from “I hate brushing my teeth” to “I hate bad people” - I had to tell him that it’s not a good idea to use the word ‘hate’ all the time. And of course, in true pre-schooler fashion, he had to ask: “Why?” I said something about the word hate not doing a good thing in our hearts: “It’s like having black spots in our heart every time we hate something,” I said. Well, that picture…
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52WoC#25: Comments Special
Shai Coggins
11 Aug 2008 | 12:57 am
Time for a new 52WoC! Our previous task needed an unofficial extension due to the site issues and such. Anyway, this week, I thought we’d re-visit the round-robin style of 52WoC again, where Commenter #1 responds to my prompt; and Commenter #2 gets to respond to Commenter #1, then Commenter #3 responds to Commenter #2, etc etc. So, what do we do? 1) Commenter #1 answers my prompt via comments, then asks a question or gives a simple prompt; then 2) Commenter #2 answers Commenter #1’s question or prompt - AND visits Commenter #1’s blog to leave a comment. 3) Commenter #3 will…
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Sunday Sixer: On Stuff That Happens, Olympics 2008, Project Updates & Prizes
Shai Coggins
10 Aug 2008 | 6:53 am
Yes, I’m in a random mood again. So, here are 6 things I wish to share with you this Sunday… 1. Things have been so topsy turvy on my side of the sky lately. Weird events. Illnesses (me & my kids). Site issues. Work stuff. And goodness knows what else. So, I’m really feeling that I’m in dire need of some therapeutic moments. Thank goodness for journal writing. And Plurk. And Twitter. And when possible, art-making. And lately, sewing. I may not get to do much of them all. But, even a little bit helps. 2. Writing of weird events, last Friday night, my family and I…
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The Frustration, The Horror, The Relief… and Everything That Comes After
Shai Coggins
6 Aug 2008 | 7:41 pm
If feelings are like seasons, mine would’ve experienced a full year’s worth in just a matter of days. Including hurricanes, earthquakes and tornadoes. Seriously. Well, you all know that I’m trying to move S Studio to another host. Well, that didn’t work out. I’m soooooo aching to rant about SiteGround right now. But, I won’t get in to that at the moment. All I know is that I’ve paid them money - and I haven’t received a single penny back. But, they were extremely quick to cut my hosting account immediately. Now, I just want to move my other…

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terrainnova.org
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Summer hiatus
Dimitris
8 Aug 2008 | 11:00 am
The next few weeks will mean (even more) sparse updates by me to this blog due to holidays I will be taking in the Greek islands. This happy occurrence (the holidays, not the blogging break) is amplified by the fact that at last the 9-month period of my military service has ended. Can’t complain, it wasn’t that bad and it could have been much worse. Hopefully, by the fall time things will have returned to a more regular routine here. So starting from the first week of August and until the end of the month when I get back the internet remains safe for a bit more. In the meantime…
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Flirting with Filtrbox: a fling?
Dimitris
28 Jul 2008 | 1:00 am
Tom Lindstrom’s comment at my previous post on information overload led me to a relevant post of his which in turn had a comment by Flirtbox’s founder, Ari Newman. Not having heard of Flirtbox at all, I decided to sign up and take it for a spin. Flirtbox resembles what I have suggested our mobiles should do at an earlier post of mine. It is a web service that works as a filter between a section of the social media (in this case, the blogosphere, the twittersphere and the… friendfeedsphere) and you. In particular, you ask it to monitor a number of keywords and it will return…
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What lies past information overload?
Dimitris
25 Jul 2008 | 3:59 am
Yesterday, I commented on this opinion post by Lifehacker’s Gina Trapani. There, she tries to tear apart the myth that we are information overloaded, overmultitasking and under constant distraction that diminishes our productivity and so on. To counter these assessments she quotes three thinkers and their arguments. The last one - and perhaps the most improbable - urged me to put in words what has been in my mind for a long time now. It was Bill Gates. (The second is Clay Shirky - already overquoted in this blog and the first is Anne Zelenka - read Trapani’s post about her views).
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Cheap. Easy. Global. And Individual.
Dimitris
17 Jul 2008 | 9:26 am
Readers of this blog will probably have noticed that Calacanis decided to stop blogging in what, some might say, was a fit of drama. Yes, this is no big news in itself. It did however spur a bit of discussion that blogging may be dead (yes, again) and other nonsense - as if blogging could even start feeling a bit under the weather on a (so-called) A-lister’s whim. As people keep repeating in such cases, the discussion that stems from the original post is by far better than what a single person could hope to achieve. Such an example is this semi-inspirational post by Hugh McLeod (aka…
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Crosspost: OpenCoffee Athens is one year old!
Dimitris
6 Jul 2008 | 5:02 am
The following is a cross-post from OpenCoffee.gr the local startup community blog I occasionally contribute to. Last Tuesday’s event was a very special evening for all of us that are involved in one way or another in the Greek startup and entrepreneurship ’scene’ (for lack of a better word). It marked a whole year of OpenCoffee meetings - a year filled with the enthusiasm, creativity and productivity of the Greek geek crowd. A crowd which by now through these get-togethers should have a clear picture of itself, its variety and its capabilities. The night was also significant…

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Bare Feet Studios
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Planning a Web 2.0 Conference: Step 1
Roxanne Darling
28 Jul 2008 | 1:24 pm
We are the lead organizers for Podcamp Hawaii, coming this fall to Honolulu on October 24 & 25th. I'll be using our company blog to share the behind-the-scenes planning process. Since it is an "unconference" there are several things that we do differently. First off, we are making this happen over a very short time span. Part of this is my insanity to be sure, but in reality the internet facilitates the short time frame quite well. In any case, it adds a sense of focus and urgency, which I generally find helpful in getting things done. Background We actually bought the URL…
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Free Idea: Podcaster-in-Residence Saves Hawaii Tourism?
Roxanne Darling
25 Jul 2008 | 3:45 pm
I have always loved the concept of artist-in-residence or writer-in-residence, like our client Lannan supports. It is an altruistic gesture in most cases, a generous soul or organization that supports a creative person in finding her/his muse, or voice. Alas I am a Capricorn and many roads lead back to business in my mind. I was at a meeting today with Robin Graf, Stacy Keen, and Nancy Daniels at their hotel, The Wyland Waikiki. We were talking about PodCamp Hawaii and we were agreeing how every blogger/podcaster is a "travel blogger" when in Hawaii. This place is like no other in the USA,…
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Friday Buzz Report for Bare Feet Blog 080725
Roxanne Darling
24 Jul 2008 | 10:56 pm
I feel like starting virtually very post here with a mea culpa. I have so many blog ideas but often run out of time. After all, we also produce an almost daily video podcast which takes a couple of hours each, and now I am helping to create the unconference PodCamp Hawaii. Of course I Twitter and FriendFeed too, so this mea culpa is now pau! Follow to the end - as I will bring this back to you. I have some fun news to share and I am practicing talking about us more. I love "pimping out" my friends and clients, but get a frog in my throat when it comes to bragging about our own work. Beach…
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Blogosphere Updates
Roxanne Darling
15 Jul 2008 | 2:58 pm
Jason Calacanis Quit Blogging Altogether The internet is a fascinating place. It so rules the day for a certain subset of humanity, while many more others have yet to really dip their toes in. This week, we are seeing a dramatic shift in how we communicate online, why we communicate, and how we can be both transparent and in control at the same time. Jason is the CEO of Mahalo.com, a human powered search engine. He was the co-founder of Weblogs, Inc. with Brian Alvey, and the GM of Netscape. Weblogs was sold several years ago and was one of the key markers putting "blogging" and "business"…
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Wasting Time or Making Hay on the Internet
Roxanne Darling
8 Jul 2008 | 3:07 pm
I tripped across this report of the top 10 time wasters in the Internet from InternetSafety.com. I'm taking it at face value, (rather then spend time checking out the methodology) because my point relates to the concept not the actual data points themselves. But first, here is the list, no particular order: Social Networking Sites — Recent statistics show that over 170 million people are active users of the two most popular two social networking sites, Facebook.com and MySpace.com. Online Videos — The YouTube phenomenon continues to spill over into the workplace. Well over 100 million…

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Jacob Morgan's Blog on Social Media, Technology, Marketing, and Life
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New Disqus Plugin for Wordpress Causes RSS Feed Error
Jacob Morgan
13 Aug 2008 | 11:36 am
Yesterday I downloaded the new Disqus plugin for wordpress, everything was fine, comments were showing up and I was happy. My blog is syndicated on a few places, alltop.com being one of them. I checked alltop.com to see where my blog was ranking and then realized that it was nowhere to be found. I e-mailed […]
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What are Some of the Top Social Media Blogs Talking About?
Jacob Morgan
13 Aug 2008 | 11:03 am
Yesterday Lee Odden wrote a post on word visualization on search marketing blogs, I decided to do something similar for social media blogs. I decided to look at Chris Brogan’s blog, techcrunch, Jeremiah Owyang’s blog, Read Write Web, and Mashable. Here is what I found Chris Brogan’s Blog Techcrunch Jeremiah Owyang’s Blog Read Write Web Mashable Jacob Morgan’s Blog on Social […]
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Wordpress Password Error? Here is the Solution!
Jacob Morgan
12 Aug 2008 | 6:50 pm
Today I decided to upgrade my wordpress blog to the latest release. I have the automatic upgrade plugin for wordpress so all you really need to do is click update and it should take care of the rest. Simple enough right? I click the plugin and follow all of the steps to upgrade, at the […]
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Learn to Say “We’re Sorry” a Lesson From Google
Jacob Morgan
12 Aug 2008 | 12:40 am
If you are a gmail user you may have noticed the several hours during the day where you were not able to access your gmail account. Turns out there was an error on the Google back end (obviously) but it should all be fixed now. I think it’s important to look at how Google handled […]
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SEO for PR or for Conversions?
Jacob Morgan
11 Aug 2008 | 6:35 pm
SEO can be used for several reasons which largely fall under two umbrella categories, public relations (PR) and conversions. Public relations SEO does not seek to make money, PR SEO has one main goal, rank as high as possible for target keywords. Many of you may be thinking that this inherently will increase conversions, but […]

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The Relationship Economy
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A Lot of Experts But Who Can Really Help?
Jay Deragon
13 Aug 2008 | 2:23 am
As all this “social stuff grows” many businesses, large and small, are plotting strategies and finding resource who can help. Developing to leverage the power of “social technologies” first takes an understanding of the dynamics that make “social” a powerful conversational marketing tool for any business. Finding the appropriate resource can help you and […]
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Competing for Our Conversations?
Jay Deragon
12 Aug 2008 | 4:35 am
We need to forget what we've been using and think "how" to adapt to the convergence of means which enables us to maximize value. We need to ReThink our methods and ReShape the means so we can individually and collectively capture the most value.
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What Advantage Do You Have?
Jay Deragon
12 Aug 2008 | 2:39 am
Factor analysis, also known as environmental scanning, is a method to analyze the environment in which a business operates. Environmental scanning mainly focuses on the macro environment of a business and personal factors. Whereas context analysis considers the entire environment of a business, its internal and external environment. This is an important aspect of a […]
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Are Good Old Boys Losing?
Jay Deragon
11 Aug 2008 | 4:48 am
The recent disclosure of John Edwards affair has dominated the news lately. Originally disclosed by The National Enquirer the story is now being covered by every major news outlet on the planet. The New York Times reported : “It was the encounter that would unceremoniously hoist former Senator John Edwards’s extramarital affair into […]
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Social Media: Hard or Soft Stuff?
Jay Deragon
11 Aug 2008 | 3:05 am
Often we hear business leaders ask about the value gained from all this social stuff. Many look at social web initiatives as marketing tools while others consider it a means of communicating with various stakeholders. The common proclamation from both businesses and individuals is: “Show me the money?” How Does Social Media Produce Economic Results? Social Media […]

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Buzz Networker - Social Networking
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Mitch Joel Takes Over Toronto
Colleen
13 Aug 2008 | 12:44 pm
It’s finally official – Mitch Joel and Twist Image, formerly just of Montreal, are taking over Toronto by storm. The new Twist Image office (affectionately dubbed “TiTO”) was announced on August 8th. Mitch talks a little about the crew heading up TiTO on Six Pixels of Separation: I’m thrilled to say that Leigh Himel is heading up Twist Image in Toronto (aka TITO). The office space is on Front and Spadina, and there’s plenty of room for us to hold some small community and "un"events (so look for those in the coming months). Leigh has a rocking Blog called,…
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Time Warner to Split up AOL
Colleen
13 Aug 2008 | 8:47 am
Time Warner’s been playing with AOL a lot lately. They’ve been buying up social web products like SocialThing!, buy.at, and Bebo, and now according to the Wall Street Journal, they’re looking at splitting off the dial-up access side from the advertising and content side. The only reason I actually knew that AOL was even still around and surviving (I almost typed thriving, but who’s to say it is?) is because a good friend of mine, Carly Milne, writes for their travel channel. WSJ claims that Despite having been in decline for several years, the business is still profitable and…
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The NYT reports, We’re Scared of Google
Colleen
12 Aug 2008 | 9:32 pm
In an article posted on Aug 10, the New York Times asked, essentially, if they should be worried about Google turning into a content provider. They draw comparison to the fact that their own site Knol, ranks it’s Buttermilk Pancake recipe higher than that of the domestic queen, Martha Stewart. (Knol also ranks #4 on Yahoo!) There seemed to be a lot of bluster back and forth from the Times, Jason Calacanis of Mahalo and a co-chief executive officer from Martha Stewart’s OmniMedia. “If in fact a Google property is taking money away from Google’s partners, that is a real problem,” said…
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Timeline of the Interwebs
Colleen
12 Aug 2008 | 9:00 am
Dipity, a site I’d never heard of before Caroline McCarthy (who I thought had given up blogging?) mentioned it on The Social, has created an internet meme timeline. It includes pretty much everything, from RickRolled to the Dancing Baby and more. Pretty damn cool, or as Caroline said, completely awesome. From what I understand, as long as you’re a Dipity member, you can add to the timeline… is there anything you notice that’s missing? Tags: Caroline McCarthy, Dancing Baby, Dipity, Internet Memes, rickrolled, The SocialShare This
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Will it blend?
Colleen
11 Aug 2008 | 2:13 pm
I love Will It Blend. I think it’s one of the most creative viral videos ever. Josh Bernoff recently asked Jeremiah Owyang for some of his random swag from companies for a demonstration. Based on Jeremiah’s comment that he didn’t know his Flip would be turned to dust, I suspect that Josh didn’t mention that he could be using this swag as a demonstration of one of the key points in Groundswell. Do what Josh and Charlene say. Pick a clear objective first not just choosing technologies because they seem cool, otherwise your next social media program is going to end up as social media…

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Ignite Social Media
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And the winner of the free “This is My Profile Face” t-shirt is…
Jim Tobin
12 Aug 2008 | 6:38 am
I know you’ve been waiting breathlessly to find out if you’re the lucky winner of the “This is My Profile Face” t-shirt, we’re giving away. It’s the first of our new, limited edition collection of social media shirts. Congrats, you’ve won! That is, if you’re name is Erica DeWolf. We’ve created an “artist’s rendering” of what Erica will look like wearing her brand new, free, no-pay, t-shirt. (We grabbed her profile image off her blog and then, pow, PhotoShop. I know, you thought it was real… We’re tricky…
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How to Use Social Media Marketing to Promote Yourself as a Brand (part 1)
Jeremy Griffin
11 Aug 2008 | 1:53 pm
Not everyone interested in Social Media Marketing is a big company or start-up business. There are a lot of freelancers, artists, and performers out there who can really get some great benefits from utilizing all that Social Media has to offer when it comes to marketing. You as a Brand - The first step is thinking of yourself as a brand. If you love doing what you do enough to market yourself, you have to treat yourself as your most important client. Despite whether or not you are working for other people, you should always come first. If you can’t help yourself, then how can you help…
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Social Media Marketing Posts that are Igniting–8/8
egroner
8 Aug 2008 | 12:25 pm
Here is some of the best stuff coming out of the social media scene this week. Enjoy!! Working the Crowd Via Twitter Even though this post is from last week, Mike Panetta’s unique story about how he found interesting and relevant people to connect with on Twitter is worth sharing. He concludes that “Working a room is for chumps; thanks to Twitter, I can now work a crowd!” 20 Free eBooks About Social Media I love lists, they are so easy on the eyes. I also love free stuff, (who doesn’t), so this post by Chris Brogan caught my eye. I wouldn’t call many of…
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Brian Ran to Work…
Lisa Braziel
8 Aug 2008 | 6:50 am
This morning Brian made our 9am stand-up meeting with two minutes to spare. As you can see, he was too tired to stand because he had just ran about a mile and a half to get there in time. Breathless, and sweating, he proceeded to explain that he woke up 15 minutes before and realized he didn’t have his car keys. Now that’s dedication :-) Hope you find this as hilarious as we did. Share This
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Announcing the Follow Me Wordpress Plugin - Easy Social Profile Integration
Brian Chappell
7 Aug 2008 | 10:08 am
Ignite Social Media is excited to announce the launch of the Follow Me Wordpress plugin. The Follow Me plugin allows you to easily manage and store your social profiles, right inside the wordpress backend, eliminating the need to continue to manipulate coding inside your theme. There are two different ways to display the plugin currently on your site (we plan to roll out more in coming versions). 1. A button 2. A simple text box We made sure the plugin is cross compatible with older versions of wordpress as well as new versions. It is also Widget friendly so if your theme supports widgets it…

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