This is why we love Creative Commons: when media is licensed for remix, good things happen. Case in point is the Google Android logo which, with a little nudge from Motorola, is seeing a lot of participatory action lately.
Oddly, although Moto is pinning their hopes on Google’s open source cell phone operating system to revive their ailing mobile business, they don’t want you to use any Motorola logos or products in the “droid” remixes. So just keep that in mind if you make your own (you can download the original vector logo from Google) and submit it to the Motodev Facebook page.
We took it upon ourselves to spelunk through the submissions to find the best 10 for you, dear readers. Spot another great one we missed? Add a link in the comments!
Graham Smith took a Facebook road trip for his grad school thesis project, and with help from pal Josh Baron made a 15-minute thought-provoking documentary about going “on a journey to bridge the gap between relationships.”
The pair traveled over 1800 miles in less than a week to literally and physically traverse Graham’s Facebook social graph. They met up with an assortment of present and past friends and acquaintances, some unseen for 15 years, to explore how the social networking medium affects our social interactions.
There was a “strange emotion that developed as we met up with friends we’d made over an entire lifetime, compacted into less than a week.” The video explores some of the awkwardness mixed with re-connection and emotion that characterized the trip. They even delivered what may be the world’s first analog Facebook message.
“Before Facebook they were friends that were starting to fall to acquaintances and acquaintances that were starting to fall to strangers. But when I reconnect with them they start to become a little bit more.
This trip has really led me to see that these people I’ve lost contact with aren’t a series of updates and bits of information on a computer. They’re actually people living their lives.
I recommend anyone take a social network road trip.”
Check out the video below. Have you ever taken, or thought about taking, a social network road trip?
Aside from battling recent DDoS attacks, Twitter has also been hit with a variety of phishing, spam, and malware threats over the past few months. The latest involves something known as a botnet posting obfuscated code as tweets to spread viruses.
At this point, you might be curious what exactly "obfuscated code" and botnets might be. Symantec explained the threat on their blog, and shows what to be on the lookout for via an account that his since been suspended by Twitter:
"Obfuscated Twitter status messages are being used to send out new download links to malware that Symantec calls Downloader.Sninfs …
… Our investigation and analysis of Downloader.Sninfs is ongoing but has so far shown that it reads a specific Twitter.com RSS feed only once. The RSS feed is simply a text file similar to other RSS feeds found on other Internet sites. The RSS text file contains information as to where Downloader.Sninfs can find additional threats to download onto the compromised system. In this way the RSS file acts like a config file for the malware."
Here’s what the account attempting to spread the malicious code looked like:
Essentially, the idea seems to be when a user consumes tweets with the code, it could be used to cause additional harm (by way of downloading new malware unbeknownst to the user) to those that have already been infected with Downloader.Sninfs.
Thus, it would seem that the best way to protect against this is to avoid downloading the malware in the first place by being skeptical of short links with dubious claims and avoiding new Twitter apps that ask for your username and password instead of Twitter OAuth. Symantec also offers removal instructions if you think you’ve been infected.
This afternoon, YouTubetweeted out a link about an 11-year-old reporter interviewing President Obama. Intrigued, I clicked on it and checked out the video (embedded below).
It was as promised: an 11-year-old named Damon Weaver from Canal Point Elementary School in Florida conducting a 10 minute interview with the President about education.
While Weaver handles himself exceptionally well, it's actually part of an intriguing backstory I was unfamiliar with until now.
Apparently, it all started with an interview of Joe Biden during the 2008 Presidential campaign for his school's TV station. Since then, he's interviewed Colin Powell, Oprah, Dwayne Wade (referenced in the interview with Obama), and many other huge stars and influencers. Do a YouTube search for "Damon Weaver" and you'll find some simply amazing stuff.
Now that he's landed the biggest interview them all, expect to be seeing a lot more of this video and other Weaver work making its way around the Web:
If you’re familiar with the trendmeme internet sensation that is LOLcats, you will appreciate the news that I Can Has Cheezburger has spawned a musical.
Two online editors at AOL, Kristyn Pomranz and Katherine Steinberg, coined the idea for “I Can Has Cheezburger: The MusicLOL” and drafted the storyline in about two months.
Out of the essentially plotless narrative of the I Can Has Cheezburger site that houses multiple terabytes worth of funny cat pictures, the pair struck on two essential themes: “The through line is that all cats want cheese, and all LOLruses want buckets.”
And if that isn’t a Tony Award in the making, we don’t know what is. Despite the weighty plotline, Ms. Steinberg assures that the musical is “really full of LOLs.”
Opening tonight at the New York International Fringe Festival, we can only hope attendees walk away uttering the phrase “It was better than Cats!”
However, a new video put together by Erik Qualman takes our obsession with stats to another level. The online marketer and author of the upcoming book Socialnomics has put together a fantastic video comprised of more than 30 different stats about the growth of social media.
While we're familiar with some of the stats (he even cites some of our reports in the video), there were a bunch of new and intriguing ones, including:
1 out of 8 couples married in the U.S. last year met via social media
If you were paid a $1 for every time an article was posted on Wikipedia you would earn $156.23 per hour
25% of search results for the World's Top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content
Qualman's full video is embedded below, and you can read all the stats (and links to their respective sources) on his blog.
It all started so innocently when an aspiring young ground squirrel stepped into the family photo of Melissa Brandts in Alberta, Canada’s Banff National Park, seeking fame and fortune. After showing up on National Geographic’s web site it was picked up by The Interwebs, and the rest, as they say, is internet history.
Squirrels are now bombing everywhere, clogging the tubes and interrupting many a classic moment. There’s even a Twibbon to help you show your support for the venerable portrait-crashing rodent.
We picked ten of our favorites (so far!) to show off, starting with the original Crasher Squirrel whose visage will now live in infamy.
TweetMyGaming launched in June of this year with the goal of finding out what people are saying about games. A project from the folks at gaming social network gamerDNA (be sure to check out our recent feature on the subject), TweetMyGaming taps into the former’s existing database of game titles to aggregate tweets that mention games.
A few recently-added features have turned TweetMyGaming into a sort of Tweetmeme for gaming as well as a zeitgeist of the conversations that are happening around games. We had a chance to chat with CEO Jon Radoff and Community Manager Sam Houston about the new changes.
Real-time Stream of Gaming-related Tweets
For those unfamiliar with TweetMyGaming, the site is essentially a real-time feed of any tweets that mention game titles. To date about 1.6 million tweets have been indexed since the June 1 launch, with each game’s landing page showing how many tweets it’s received and a graph of the relative number of mentions over time.
On the home page, the right sidebar shows the most-tweeted about games in order, with optional filters to set the time interval: 24 hours, 7 days, 30 days or all-time (with “all-time” beginning at the site’s launch in early June). This is a great at-a-glance way to get a sense of what the most talked about titles on Twitter are right now and over recent intervals. You can also see the graphs of mentions over time and an icon that shows which way the game is trending, with a percentage of how much it’s risen or fallen during the chosen time interval.
The central pane is a real-time updating display of gaming-related tweets. An individual game’s landing page displays the same real-time stream just for that game. If you’ve used FriendFeed since its April redesign, this will be very familiar to you.
Tweetmeme for Games
To check out the new Tweetmeme-like Link Aggregator feature, head on over to an individual game page — Diablo III, for example. Because the game’s developer, Blizzard, is having its annual conference next weekend where news is hotly anticipated, we can see the game is trending high right now, up 127% since June.
Now check out the right sidebar under the “Twitter users are linking to” header. This is the set of Diablo III-related links that are being shared, tweeted and retweeted the most on Twitter over the 24h/7d/30d/all-time intervals. CEO Jon Radoff referred to it as a “new way to get at what’s being shared.”
Unlike the more overt and therefore game-able link promotion systems like digg and other social bookmarking tools, this Tweetmeme-like function gets at what is merely passively being talked about and shared. Considering conversation search is one of the holy grails of the real-time data-enabled world, this highly targeted window into game-specific conversations is incredibly powerful stuff.
Game Hashtags Work Like Aliases
Another new feature is the addition of hashtags for each game. So to continue with our earlier example, the hashtag for Diablo III is #diablo3. If you’ve been using tagging systems for a while (old-timers will have the term folksonomy in their lexicons) you’ll know that one of the inherent problems is getting people to use the same tag, or conversely aggregating similar tags that really mean the same thing.
Hashtags on TweetMyGaming work to do the latter. If a game name has several accepted variations (acronyms, short titles, etc.), thanks to hashtags all of them can be grouped properly on the same game page. Users who know the tag(s) can use them to participate in the conversation for that game, but the system is smart enough to pick up the plain text version as well and group them all together. For data nerds, this means better and more accurate statistics and graphs. For everyone else, it just means a more intuitive system of collecting conversations around specific games.
Tweet Right from TweetMyGaming
Another added feature is the ability to send tweets right from the TweetMyGaming site itself once you’ve authorized your account with OAuth. On each game’s page is a “Tweet about this game” button in the right sidebar.
For individual tweets in the real-time timelines, there’s a “reply” button that will allow you to send a tweet back to the original poster, pre-populated with their name and the hashtag for the game they were talking about.
Buy or Rent Games Inline
Last but not least, another added feature is the ability to purchase or rent a game title right from the game’s page itself. You can also click over to the game’s page on gamerDNA to see more information about the game, including cool statistics about who plays it and how much.
Why Twitter?
When asked why they chose Twitter as the centerpiece for a new gaming-related site, Jon replied that Twitter is “fertile ground” for discovering what gamers are talking about. As to why Twitter was chosen as opposed to a site like Facebook that has a larger userbase, the answer is “Twitter is farther along with public and exposed conversations.” And in some sense being “less crowded” works to Twitter’s advantage, because the “signal to noise ratio is different” on Twitter versus Facebook.
Still, especially now that Facebook has expressed a lot more interest in real-time data, gamerDNA expects to explore it and other social services for potential projects. For now, TweetMyGaming is a very interesting new experiment in exposing real-time conversations surrounding a specific topic or interest. And if you’re a gamer, you’re in luck that they’re conversations you just might want to take part in.
Earlier this year, we reported that 63 percent of companies planned to increase their spending on social media in 2009. Thus, it's not too surprising that a recent study from the Association of National Advertisers reveal that 66 percent of marketers have now used social media in some capacity in 2009.
Also not surprising, the top platforms being utilized: Facebook (74%), YouTube (65%), Twitter (63%), LinkedIn (60%). Combined, this usage represents significant growth from 2007, when the same survey indicated that just 20 percent of marketers were using social media.
Although social media marketing is clearly on the rise, it remains a relatively small part of most marketing budgets. ANA reports that the bulk of spending will still go to maintaining a company website, search marketing, and online display ads.
That said, social media (including blogs) remains the quickest growing marketing segment, and as we recently reported, it's expected to grow to a $3.1 billion industry by 2014. In all, it looks like social media marketing still has a healthy amount of growth in front of it.
Vadim Lavrusik is a new media student at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He is @lavrusik on Twitter and blogs at Lavrusik.com.
Though there are countless articles and blog posts sprawled across the web about the dying newspaper industry, this will not be one of them. Some people have even come to the conclusion that journalism itself is dying, yet in reality, journalism is expanding with social media platforms and technology allowing the former audience and sources to become the reporters themselves. Instead of dwelling on the doom and gloom, this post is an attempt at gathering voices in the journalism industry and on the web to give some thought as to what newspapers should be considering in order to survive and evolve with today's technology-driven, short-attention-span world.
Those who think there is one silver bullet to fix the newspaper business are mistaken. Newspapers have almost always had multiple streams of revenue to support themselves and the future will likely not be any different. That doesn't mean, however, that the money-making models newspapers will use on the web will look the same as the ones they have used for print.
Newspapers are struggling financially, but ad revenue is predicted to recover slightly in 2010. The underlying issues are not just business-driven, but include issues of structure, culture and the industrialized foundations of distributing newspapers. This list is not a comprehensive one, but these are some of the things that newspaper leaders should be considering. And though print itself may not survive, the organizations behind them provide value to a democratic society, often covering and providing news that blogs with more limited resources can't always dig up. We welcome comments below with other suggestions of things you think newspaper leaders should try or invest in. Let's have some dialogue about this topic.
1. Putting web first and reporting from multiple platforms
That might seem like a no-brainer, but this fact is a double-edged sword. Newspapers are often still treating their websites as an afterthought because their advertising revenue is largely still coming from print. At the same time, the shift to getting more revenue from websites won't happen until the websites are the first priority.
Jay Rosen, a journalism professor at New York University, said one of the issues is that reporters have been given a job description that revolves around a single platform (i.e. print journalist), when really journalists need to conceive of the editorial act apart from questions of platforms.
Ultimately, the word "print" needs to be removed from the role of print journalists, said Kevin Sablan, leader of the Orange County Register's web task force. Reporters need to focus on primarily gathering information and how to present that information in multiple formats: websites, mobile platforms, social networks and finally print.
The reason? Technology is changing the way people consume news, and though many are still getting their news through traditional print outlets, many others are shifting to get their news through various media, such as television, mobile phones, and the web. Ryan Sholin, director of news innovation at Publish2, a company that specializes in link journalism, said journalists now have to be ready to produce journalism on multiple platforms, whether that is tweeting a headline, uploading a video through their iPhone or something else – journalism comes in all shapes and sizes.
2. Go niche
The mass-broadcasting model just doesn't seem to work as well on the web. More and more, people are finding value in the specific subjects or areas they find most interesting or that impact them directly. The vertical supply chain of newspapers, an industrialized model of a collection of sectioned news stuffed into one paper, is simply becoming less valuable to more people, said Stowe Boyd, managing director of Microsyntax.org, a nonprofit investigating the embedding of structured information in microstreaming applications like Twitter.
"We are seeing more fragmentation and specialization," Boyd said. "How many successful bloggers do you know that write about everything?" Newspapers need to figure out what they do well and report on that, he said, using Politico.com, which focuses on political news, as an example.
Paul Bradshaw, senior lecturer in online journalism at Birmingham City University and a media consultant, also said newspapers need to go more niche and perhaps start publishing less frequently and charging more. He expects newspapers to move into the direction of magazines with higher quality news, while using their websites for high turnover news.
3. Offer unique content in print
Bradshaw's point speaks to the idea that newspapers need to stop treating their websites as a dumping ground for print stories and treat each somewhat independently, carefully selecting the stories better suited for each media.
What this looks like is having the physical newspaper focus on less time-sensitive news and instead more analytical stories, said Mathew Ingram, communities editor of The Globe and Mail. This also means adding context to news that has been posted, shared and retweeted online.
The same concept applies to the web, which Nieman Journalism Lab contributor Gina Chen points out, needs to offer more than just news, but services and resources for readers in that community (see point 11 on the potential revenue from this). This also changes the roles of journalists quite a bit.
4. Journalists as curators and contextualizers
The link economy is very real and the time to invest is now. The brutal reality is that currently newspapers own less than 1 percent of U.S. online audience page views and time spent. Linking to other articles and curating information will not only be helpful to readers but make newpapers more visible on the web.
Sholin from Publish2 said journalists need to curate social media to find out what the news is and verify what is real and what is not from all the information out there, which isn't always reliable. This also means simply sharing what's out there on the web, Sholin said. The NYTimes.com Bits blog does this by incorporating a "What We're Reading" widget that was developed by Publish2. Of course there are plenty of other options available for integrating a similar feature into a website.
The print edition of a newspaper can serve to contextualize the news that has been posted, shared and retweeted online, Sablan said. "It can include a cohesive narrative presentation of the disjointed bits that floated around disparate streams and blogs the day before," he said.
Journalists need to move away from being "processors of information" to contextualizers, Bradshaw said. In the old industrialized model, he explained, journalists simply processed raw material into an article or a broadcast in a market that they also had a monopoly on, but in today's networked model the raw material is available to the former audience, which is taking on the role of the reporter, as are the sources themselves.
5. Real-time reporting integration
Social media is allowing the audience and "the people formerly known as sources" to report themselves. For example, the Fire Department in New York City used a live video stream on their website to broadcast the rescue efforts following the recent Hudson River air collision live from a helicopter, allowing visitors to the site to comment via chat next to the feed. They had more than 300 viewers watching and chatting as the news unfolded and often times those viewers had the news first. They where, after all, the source that a lot of the other media outlets were getting their information from.
"The means of production are available to everyone. The distribution network is available to everyone," Bradshaw said. "Rewriting a press release just doesn't hack it anymore." If sources are able to report news themselves, the bar is raised for news organizations to adopt and integrate real-time reporting on their websites.
Twitter is likely the good target for newspaper websites to focus in on and harness. Breaking news stories are usually huge traffic generators for any site. But now when news breaks it is happening on Twitter, Boyd said. Boyd points out that some TV news organizations have incorporated Twitter into their live shows, and the key will be for newspapers to figure out how to integrate it into their websites and news operations.
Gauging the most effective option is difficult because each has its faults. If a news organization features its Twitter feed on the site, it has the potential of repeating content that is already in a story. Further, if a newspaper site is using an unfiltered hashtag feed then it has the challenge of dealing with spam and poor quality tweets. It seems that currently, Twitter feeds are featured on blogs as a whole, like this one from USA Today, but not on specific news pages or stories.
6. Internal culture: Startup vs. corporate
Many newspapers today are built around a very corporate and bureaucratic structure. There is a reporter and an editor and an editor's editor and the editor of all editors, and well, you get the point. Scott Porad, CTO of Pet Holdings, points out that the problem with corporate environments is that 80 percent of the time is spent planning and only 20 percent is spent doing. While at his startup only 5 percent is spent planning and 95 percent is spent doing. Mark Briggs recently wrote a great post on how one might create a startup culture in the newsroom.
Sholin from Publish2 also thinks newspapers should structure themselves around more of a startup model, rather than current corporate bureaucracies. Sholin compared the newspaper industry to the Titanic, because it is headed straight for an iceberg and can't seem to turn fast enough because of the layers of bureaucracy and the opinions that often halt change. And though completely restructuring a large news organization may not be possible, at least not overnight, creating a startup-like environment that encourages innovation in the newsroom can be.
7. Encourage innovation
Part of having a startup culture includes an environment that encourages innovation, such as Google's "20 percent time" rule that allows engineers to work on side projects they are passionate about, which has resulted in Google products like AdSense, Orkut and more.
Sholin from Publish2 points out that some newspapers are doing this by creating teams that experiment and take risks. The Guardian in the U.K. hosted its second "Hack Day" in July, which brought journalists and developers from the company and from the outside to see what they could create in just 24 hours. The results ranged from the useful to the amusing. If newspapers had started innovating in the early days of the web and experimenting with new tools, then who knows how the industry might have evolved. Maybe a newspaper would have been responsible for recreating the online classifieds system rather than Craigslist.
8. Charging for quotes is not the answer
The Associated Press signed a deal with iCopyright that will help them track and charge for unauthorized use of its content. This hasn't sat well with readers and has been criticized by members of the journalism industry, including the President of Media at Thomson Reuters Chris Ahearn. He wrote a response in which he outlined his support for the so-called “link economy,” which the AP’s deal with iCopyright goes against.
In an interview, Ahearn explained further and said that he believes media is a dialogue and linking and appropriate excerpting is part of that dialogue. Any time someone links, it is a chance to gain another loyal reader, Ahearn said. Also, he said, it adds value to the news story and strengthens the relationship readers have with the publisher.
Bradshaw agreed: "Some magical meta-tagging technology that allows you to charge people for quoting your material is insane."
9. Investing in mobile: E-Readers or smartphones?
Aside from the fact that more people are getting smartphones and using them to stay connected to the news, there is also some potential for money to be made. Apparently, news organizations are catching on, becoming the fastest growing iPhone application category.
And then there is the buzz about Amazon's Kindle being a potential savior for newspapers. Sholin from Publish2 said he thinks both platforms are promising, but thinks it is still too early to tell. However, he said that there are plenty of people willing to pay for the mobile apps and some news organizations are kicking themselves for not thinking of charging to download from the beginning. Another option, he said, is for news organizations to consider pursuing partnerships with carriers that would automatically include the news app on the phones, making it easily accessible. Sholin is also fancied by e-readers like the Kindle and thinks the upcoming Apple tablet could be the "short-term winner."
Ingram from The Globe and Mail said whether it’s on a smart phone or on an e-reader like the Kindle, each technology has the potential of bringing value to newspapers.
Bradshaw said he doesn't believe the Kindle is the right option, referring to it as "a branch to snap on the way to the bottom."
The opinions seem mixed, but because so many people are already using their smartphones for other purposes, pursuing that platform may be the better option.
10. Communicating with readers
It doesn't make sense for readers to not be able to comment on news stories online, but yet many newspapers still either don't have the feature on the site, don't use it, or have various rules to which stories allow comments and which do not. It makes sense that in many cases it is because the comments are vulgar or of low quality, but a clear line and definition of what stories have comments has not yet been drawn.
Stowe Boyd said newspaper websites have a lot of catching up to do in this area. "People have been commenting for a long time online and it is a long time [for newspapers] to have avoided doing that," Boyd said. After all, Boyd said comments do lead to more page views.
It isn't just the comments. A lot of the social media news accounts are used like RSS feeds without any interaction with the audience. But social media can be a great tool for earning trust with your audience. Bradshaw said that individuals, not institutions, most effectively use social media, and so the role of the journalist in distribution becomes more important. He said eventually journalists will be expected to engage readers through comments, blogs, Twitter, etc., or it will be done by dedicated community managers.
"The one thing most likely to make the public value newspapers is newspapers valuing the public," Bradshaw said.
Ingram from The Globe and Mail agreed that in general journalists should be doing more interacting with the public, to build trust. "So that they can help us do our jobs," Ingram said.
11. Building community
Newspaper websites are no longer expected to just provide news, but also to create community. Some newspapers are harnessing social media platforms to achieve this goal. Whether creating a Facebook Fan Page, a LinkedIn group or a Twitter account, newspapers are using social media in an attempt to create a community of readers. Developers like Jeff Reifman, founder of NewsCloud, which creates community-based Facebook applications that aggregate news, are aware of the changing model of the news industry as well and are trying to take advantage. (Disclosure: I helped launch and managed the content for one of NewsCloud's Facebook applications at a previous job).
Reifman's most recent Seattle-based application "The Needle" includes features like a hand-selected Twitter feed of Seattle tweets, a place to post stories that users find interesting and a place to post items users want to share, all aimed at building community among users in Seattle.
"News organizations should stop thinking of themselves as just a news publisher. News sites have to deliver a community town center online," Reifman said. "Creating community, creates a loyal relationship with your readers."
In fact, The Charlotte Observer has launched their own Facebook application called "Zip," though it doesn't include quite as many features as NewsCloud’s usual apps.
12. To pay wall or not to pay wall – that is the question
There isn't a clear-cut answer for whether newspaper websites should charge for online content and if they should, what the best model is. Whether a subscription based model or a pay-per-article model, each has some serious implications. However, some think that there has been enough talking and that newspapers should go ahead and charge for online content. Rupert Murdoch, CEO and founder of News Corp., is planning to start charging readers for online content for all of the company's news websites, starting with The Sunday Times in November.
Chris Ahearn from Thomson Reuters said the better question for newspapers to consider is how to create value for readers and provide services that people are willing to pay for. He said Thomson Reuters focuses on providing services that are valuable to people and the majority of the company's revenue is from subscription-based products.
Bradshaw from Birmingham City University said more adaptable news companies will understand the value is not in news, but information about news, i.e. data. "So the likes of the Guardian's Open Platform, The New York Time's API and Reuters' Open Calais will become broader programs for users rather than destinations for audiences," he said.
Stowe Boyd from Microsyntax.org said newspapers have to figure out what users are willing to pay for and that an overarching model may not work. News sites should offer readers to subscribe or pay for certain areas of interest, like sports, politics, etc. that they value on the site.
Another unexplored area for newspapers is the possibility of generating revenue from social media. Social media has been helping newspapers in various ways, but Sablan from the Orange County Register said he hasn't seen any newspapers using social media for the express purpose of making money directly, but that in the current state of the industry, all possible sources of revenue need to be explored. "It would be great if newspapers could figure out a successful business around social networking," Sablan said.
What does the future hold?
But there is yet one consideration and question that remains:
Will websites replace newspapers? Here’s what the experts think.
"Based on the decades-old myth of the paperless office, I don’t expect printed news to go away within my lifetime." – Kevin Sablan
"I don’t think websites will ever completely replace newspapers. I think there will always be people who want the printed version for a variety of reasons, including convenience, portability, etc." – Mathew Ingram
"No. Newspapers as a platform have several advantages over the web, both technical and cultural, and they are flexible enough to adapt in response. The big difference is they’ll have to adapt economically as well, which is why they’ll suffer more than they did with the advent of radio, TV, etc." – Paul Bradshaw
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JESS3 is a creative interactive agency led by Jesse Thomas. Jesse is as much a entrepreneur as he is an innovator, designer, visionary and eager learner. When it comes to the worlds of branding, data visualization and social media, Jesse is constantly pushing the limits and exploring new frontiers. JESS3 has the pleasure to design innovative solutions, directly or through other agencies, for: Mashable, National Journal, Microsoft, Marriott Intl, Ace Hardware, C-SPAN, AARP, PepsiCo/Tropicana, Dow Jones/The Wall Street Journal, Nestle, Pfizer, Shopzilla, SnagFilms, IndieWire, Advertising.com, National Press Foundation, Webgiftr, Busboys and Poets, New Media Strategies, Ashcroft Group, Heritage Foundation, Blue State Digital, Widmeyer Communications, DBC PR, Adfero and many more. In addition, JESS3 enjoys participating in the industry through partnerships with organizations such as WOMMA, Social Media Club, Barcamp, Facebook Developer Garage, AIGA, and Art Directors Club.
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Vladimir Prelovac is the author of WordPress Development book and popular articles about WordPress SEO, website optimization, customization, security and maintenance. He actively uses WordPress as a base for Internet enterprise strategy for small & mid-sized businesses.
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After the closure announcement – and then sudden re-opening – of short URL service Tr.im, there’s been some uncertainty about the widespread use of short URLs on sites like Twitter. How do you know that the URL company won’t just start redirecting the links to somewhere else? Or what happens if that short URL provider shuts down?
With a vested interest in making sure that people can use short URLs confidently, many of the leading short URL providers have signed up for 301works, an independent URL mapping directory service (you can think of it like archive.org but for URL mapping). The venture will be managed by GNIP, Inc. The announcement reads:
Leading Internet software companies have joined together to launch an independent URL mapping directory service. The new service will allow all participating short URL providers the ability to make their mappings available as regular updates or as a historical archive through the directory. The service is planned to launch in the next few weeks after participating companies individually inform their respective user communities of their planned participation. Once launched the service will be available at 301works.org and will be managed and run by Gnip, Inc. while the participating companies work to identify an appropriate non-profit organization to manage the directory long-term.
It is with these shared goals for improved permanence and transparency that Adjix, awe.sm, betaworks, bit.ly, Cligs, Gnip, URLizer, and urlShort have joined to launch this new organization.
In plain English: the URL shorteners want to establish some sense of permanence to the mappings they provide, making users more confident that their links won’t just break at some point in the future. It’s a good first step towards addressing concerns about the dangers of short URLs.
The notable absentee on that list: Tr.im has yet to sign up.
With his image still tarnished by his involvement in illegal dog fighting (a crime many may never forgive), quarterback Michael Vick is nonetheless attempting to return to the game by signing with the Eagles.
In a tech-savvy move, the Philadelphia Eagles are hosting a live web stream – which started moments ago – to ensure the largest possible audience for the 11am (ET) press conference. Whatever you might think of Vick, you can hop over to the Eagles homepage to see what both he and the Eagles have to say of the move.
Before you ask: yes, you can comment on the live stream thanks to integration with CoverItLive.
Boris Epstein is the CEO and Founder of BINC, a Professional Search Firm that specializes in the Software Marketplace. Boris shares his thoughts about the recruitment industry, job hunting and career advice at AskBinc.com.
Ask anybody why they use Facebook, and most people will respond with reasons like staying in touch with friends, or being able to share pictures. Rarely does one’s professional life ever get mentioned when describing the social network. When it comes to business networking, LinkedIn tends to take all the thunder, and Facebook is generally written off as a place just for fun. Yet, perhaps that’s a mistake.
Facebook, after all, has 250 million active users compared to about 44 million for LinkedIn, and even though the atmosphere is clearly not as focused on business, there are still a ton of opportunities for professional networking that business users would be remiss to pass up. Once you look beyond the obvious social features like sharing pictures and poking friends, there are plenty of ways to tap into the professional community on the world’s largest social network.
In this post we'll talk about how to setup your Facebook for professional use, how to find others to network with, Facebook features that work for professional networking, and ways to maximize the value from those features.
Setting up your Facebook for business networking
If you're like most people, your personal and professional lives have already blended. You share your personal stories and pictures with your work colleagues, you discuss both work and your personal life on your blog and Twitter, and you've probably let go of the notion that professional and personal must be kept completely separate.
But even with that blurring of our work and social lives, most of us still want some separation, and I would recommend actually splitting the two on Facebook. Once split, you can continue to reap the social benefits of Facebook with your friends and family while simultaneously connecting with your professional colleagues.
Here's how to split the two.
– Go to your friends list by clicking on the Friends tab at the top of your Facebook page.
– Click the “Create a New List” button and create one called Professional.
– You can now go through your entire friend list and add all of your professional contacts into this new and separate business list.
– Once you're done, navigate to your profile privacy settings by clicking on the Settings link in the top right corner of your Facebook; then click on privacy; then click on profile.
On the profile privacy settings page you can begin slicing and dicing your Facebook world into personal and professional segments by restricting access to various parts of your profile using your newly created friend list. For example, if you don't want your professional friends to see any of your pictures, click on “edit photo album privacy settings.” In the “who can see this” drop down, click on “customize” and then in the “except these people” field type in your newly formed professional friends list. Now only your personal friends will be able to see your pictures.
Though these settings can get fairly complicated because of their granularity, you can control your entire Facebook experience from this area of the site and decide what parts of your personal life you would like your professional friends to be able to see. Bear in mind that there are no best practices here. Meaning, if you don't want your professional friends to see your wall comments, don't let them. If you don't want your professional friends to see your pictures, don't let them. It's your world and you can set it up exactly how you like.
Using Facebook groups for networking
One way to professionally benefit from Facebook's enormous user base and to grow your professional network is to participate in Facebook Groups. Facebook Groups is a feature that allows Facebook users to connect, discuss and network with each other within the context of a common interest or topic.
Finding groups
There are groups on Facebook representing just about every topic under the sun. To find the right group for your professional aspiration, think of topics that will motivate you, allow you to connect with others of professional interest, and will allow you to gain insight into your industry/skill set – groups around these topics are the ones where you’ll find professionals you can network with.
Now that you have a direction in mind, enter your keyword into the search box on Facebook, and click on the “Groups” filter to the left of the results. You can also filter down the displayed groups by drilling into a number of sub categories, including business (a good bet for many professional groups), common interest, geography, Internet and technology, and organizations.
There are, of course, other ways to find Facebook Groups. Here are a few techniques that should give you plenty of groups to get started with.
– If you have friends whose professional advancements you respect, go to their profile page and click on their info tab. Towards the bottom of the page, you’ll see links to all of the groups to which they belong.
– On the main page of any Facebook Group, there are links to several other similar or related groups.
– Conduct an Internet search for “popular Facebook Groups” coupled with some of the keywords that interest you. You'll often uncover blog posts, articles and people tweeting about a variety of groups, some of which may interest you.
Once you find a group that interests you, it’s a good idea to evaluate whether or not it will be a good fit before joining and pouring too much time into it.
What to look for in a professional group
There are millions of groups on Facebook, so how many should you join and which ones? Joining too many might prove to be unmanageable, so it's a good idea to only join the ones that you can actually see yourself participating in.
Below is a list of the features you'll find in each Facebook Group and what to look for in each to determine whether a group is quality enough to be worth joining.
Recent News – This section contains news from group administrators that is either about the group itself or is about a topic that might interest the group. Is it up to date? Is it useful information or just self-promotion?
Member Listings – Lists all group members including their profile photos, location and link to their profile page. This is an easy access way to send a message to a specific group member OR to request them as a friend. You can also use this tool to evaluate the group before joining. Does the group attract people with similar backgrounds and interests to yours? Can you see yourself giving information to and appreciating information from these other members? Do they seem like people you would value interacting with?
Discussion Board – The group’s discussion board allows members to engage in a discussion about topics listed by other group members. Before joining, use the discussion board to measure group activity and member engagement. Are discussions recent? How many are there? Are they interesting and on-topic? You should contribute to an existing discussion or start your own, once you’ve joined.
Wall Posting – This section is usually for member introductions or job postings. This is a great way to introduce yourself and your interest in this group. How recent are the latest postings? If there is any spam, how quickly is it cleaned up?
Groups also often have photos, videos, links sections, and event listings. You should evaluate these areas for recency and quality of information, as well.
Group participation
Once you’ve joined a group, it’s time to start participating. This is where the real fun begins and the true business value will happen. Below is an example workflow I would recommend following upon joining a group for professional purposes. It's a great way to show your presence in the group and get some professional networking activity under your belt.
Post an introduction on the Group's Wall stating your interest in the group. If you're looking to network, say so. If you're looking for a job, say so. If you can offer advice, say so. The key here is to make this a simple introduction so the group knows who you are – not an advertisement for yourself or services, which may come across as spam.
Add links to interesting events, pieces of news or blog posts. Anybody who reads them will know you posted them, which will add to your professional branding efforts.
Go to the discussion board and comment on a few topics; don't be generic. Find a discussion where you could truly add value and help some fellow members with their questions or contribute to some discussions with your thoughts.
Post a topic for discussion. Ask a question or propose a thought-provoking topic of discussion and share your thoughts — the object is to engage your fellow group members. Check back on this discussion often so you can participate and remain an active part of it.
Add friends. Because Facebook was intended to be an online extension of your offline social graph, it is proper etiquette to know somebody before adding them as a friend. While being in the same group might satisfy that requirement for some people, I think it's a good idea to have some sort of further engagement with a member before requesting them as a friend. Once you’ve engaged someone (such as in a discussion board topic), request them as a friend but include a personal note letting them know you appreciated the interaction. That way, they will have some context for the request and will be more likely to accept. Once you're friends, make sure to add them to your professional friend list so that you are able to maintain that line between social and professional.
Now that you've gone through this workflow for each group you've joined, you can now consider yourself to be an active member. So what’s next? Networking! Come back to each group often to post new links and videos, engage in discussions or start your own. You should also invite other existing contacts to join the group as a way to help spread the word and keep the group active. Also remember to befriend those with whom you've been active and take your professional relationship to the next level.
Once you have the basics down, professional networking on Facebook is very similar to professional networking in real life. The same rules and etiquette apply. As you build your professional network on Facebook you’ll be able to use those contacts for job hunting, business development, and more.
Conclusion
Although Facebook was built as a social network and most people treat it as such – there is a tremendous amount of professional value that can be gained there. Once you're a member of a few groups and have completed the introductory workflow for each one, the professional value of Facebook should be evident and ready to be fully realized. Be creative, have fun, and remember: What you put into things is what you get out of them, so always try to stay active!
If you have any other tips for professional networking on Facebook, please share them in the comments.
Google’s “doodles”, their creative renderings of the Google logo celebrating famous figures and significant events, have the ability to draw worldwide attention to under-appreciated historical figures. Who, for instance, is Hans Christian Ørsted, to whom a brilliantly creative Google logo is dedicated today?
In short, Ørsted was an early discoverer of electromagnetism. According to a very concise account:
Hans Christian Ørsted, one of the leading scientists of the nineteenth century, played a crucial role in understanding electromagnetism. In 1820 he discovered that a compass needle deflects from magnetic north when an electric current is switched on or off in a nearby wire. This showed that electricity and magnetism were related phenomena, a finding that laid the foundation for the theory of electromagnetism and for the research that later created such technologies as radio, television and fiber optics. The unit of magnetic field strength was named the Oersted in his honor.
BONUS: Google Doodle Gallery
For those partial to “Google doodles” (we certainly are), YouTube user Zephopper has put together a compilation video of some of the best from over the years:
Netscape founder Marc Andreessen pioneered the internet browser with Mosaic in the 90s, only to see his innovative Netscape product squashed by Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. Now a prominent investor, Andreessen appears set for a rematch of sorts: he’s backing RockMelt, a new browser that integrates with Facebook Connect.
Few details are available in the NYTimes story published today, except to say that the company was co-founded by Eric Vishria and Tim Howes, both of whom worked with Andreessen at Opsware, the software company he sold to Hewlett Packard for $1.6 billion.
A Facebook Browser?
Most interestingly, the NYT reports that RockMelt is designed to work with Facebook. That idea, a browser based around social networking, has been tried before by the startup Flock, with mixed results:
A privacy policy on the site, which was removed after a reporter made inquiries to Mr. Vishria, indicates the browser is intended to be coupled somehow with Facebook. Mr. Andreessen serves as a director of Facebook.
The policy says that a person could use a Facebook ID to log into RockMelt, suggesting that the browser may be tailored to display Facebook updates and other features as users browse the Web. Another browser, Flock, based on Firefox, already incorporates feeds from social networking sites.
But RockMelt is not currently working with Facebook. "We are not aware of any details about RockMelt and its product," said Brandee Barker, a Facebook spokeswoman.
Nonetheless, this project is likely to attract attention: the pioneer of web browsers taking another shot at the increasingly fragmented space. Additionally, the blog ReadWriteWeb was able to get a screenshot showing that RockMelt will have some kind of Facebook integration (below).
Could a new browser entice you away from Firefox or Chrome? Let us know in the comments.
Yahoo is launching a tool today that tells you what kind of Twitter user you are based on analysis of your Tweets. From “Tweethead” to “Headliner”, Yahoo uses a secret algorithm to come to conclusions about your tweeting behavior.
The site, called Know Your Mojo, is a promotion for the new Yahoo homepage: once you’ve received the result, you also receive ideas for new content to add to your personalized Yahoo homepage. The full result set is below.
What kind of Twitter user are you? Let us know your result in the comments.
Headliner – You're the star of the Twitterverse, have tons of followers, and have retweets the likes of Ashton Kutcher and Perez Hilton
Crowd Pleaser – You use lots of hashtags and are in on all the hot conversations
Cheerleader – Retweeting is how you roll
B.F.F. – Your volume of @replies makes you everybody's best bud
Party Animal – With so many followers, you're the life of the party
Private Eye – Like any good investigator, you're following a boatload of people
Concierge – You live for links and sending people to the best stuff
Word Whiz – You're a natural wordsmith and make the most of your 140 characters
Lone Wolf – You're more of a low-profile type (some might even accuse you of lurking)
Name Dropper – You use lots of @names when you tweet
Matchmaker – You pass along lots of URLs to make sure everyone's connected
Wall Flower – You don't tweet much but you're still in on the party
Novelist – You have a lot to say and tweet with a lot of characters to prove it
Shadow – You follow lots of people like a good shadow would
Scenester – If there's a hashtag conversation happening, you're there
Tweethead – Your high number of retweets shows you like to spread the good stuff
Microsoft, unlike rival Apple, rarely creates drool-worthy products, but we’ve got to admit the Zune HD actually has some sex appeal. Unlike its ugly, “iPod clone” predecessor, the Zune HD’s razor-thin design and beautiful 16:9 OLED display (plus 10 hours of HD video storage and HD video-out) make this a significant jump from the old Zune.
Yesterday Microsoft announced the Zune HD’s launch date (September 15th) and also made it available for pre-order. Prices are $219.99 for the black 16GB version and $289.99 for the "platinum" 32GB edition.
Alas, few had seen the device up-close and hands-on…except for Seattle’s TechFlash, which dropped by the Zune offices in Redmond the afternoon before the announcement and was treated to a hands-on demo from the Zune team’s Brian Seitz. The video (below) shows off features like “pins”, “history” and a “recently added content” section.
Are we gonna buy one then? Heck no, we’re still grasping to our iPhones and saving our “shiny thing allowance” for the upcoming Apple Tablet.
As we mentioned earlier this week, Google is set to launch a new, updated version of its search engine – the update is being called Google Caffeine. These changes to the service’s infrastructure will change the search results on Google in a more noticeable way than the usual incremental changes, so website owners are paying attention.
We wrote of the announcement:
Google has been working on a new project: the next generation of Google Search. This isn't just some minor upgrade, but an entire new infrastructure for the world's largest search engine. In other words: it's a new version of Google.
The project's still under construction, but Google's now confident enough in the new version of its search engine that it has released the development version for public consumption. While you won't see too many differences immediately, let us assure you: it's a completely upgraded Google search. Google specifically states that its goal for the new version of Google Search is to improve its indexing speed, accuracy, size, and comprehensiveness.
So what do website owners need to know? Will you lose rankings, gain them, or will very little change? What’s the thesis behind the update, and what can you do to prepare? WebProNews sat down with Google’s Matt Cutts to answer these questions and more: the video is embedded below.
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Google’s “doodles”, their creative renderings of the Google logo celebrating famous figures and significant events, have the ability to draw worldwide attention to under-appreciated historical figures. Who, for instance, is Hans Christian Ørsted, to whom a brilliantly creative 
Netscape founder Marc Andreessen pioneered the internet browser with Mosaic in the 90s, only to see his innovative Netscape product squashed by Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. Now a prominent investor, Andreessen appears set for a rematch of sorts: he’s backing 
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