Looking for some fresh marketing feeds? Then check out Marketing on Alltop, from Guy Kawasaki's Nononina.
Other great (but not as good looking) marketing blog collections are the [now defunct] M20, Mack Collier's Top 25, and the Ad Age Power 150.
Coincidentally, my better known colleagues Jeremiah Owyang, Charlene Li, and Josh Bernoff are also on Alltop - in the "Egos" section...!
On Thursday May 22nd I'll be participating in a webcast with Blake Cahill from Visible Technologies and Marty Collins from Microsoft. We'll be talking about "Unlocking Social Media’s ROI through Engagement & Participation." Registration is free and we'll begin at 10 am Pacific/1 pm Eastern.
If you are on the fence about brand monitoring or just want to learn more about how it's being put to good use, this is your chance to ask questions.
There's finally an alternative to Nielsen's Blogpulse. Not that there's anything wrong with Blogpulse - it's a handy, free tool for searching trends in the blogosphere. And there have always been other ways to get at the information (without paying for it) - Google blog search or Technorati in particular. But Blogpulse delivers a simple results graphic with rudimentary tools for controlling date range and drilling down into results.
Now from Belgian brand monitoring firm Attentio comes Trendpedia - a tool to search blog trends with a bit of zeitgeist thrown in as well. (Now available out of beta.)
I ran a quick search on the first topic that came to mind after a long three-day weekend (it was Patriots Day, for those of you not in MA, ME, or WI - commemorating the ride of Paul Revere in 1775). The topic just happened to be the drama around the New York Yankees young pitching staff.
The results from Blogpulse vs. Trendpedia:
(I admit that the first search I ran was for Joba, "Ian Hughes," and "Phil Kennedy." Oops.)
From what I can tell, it looks like Blogpulse is on autopilot - a "2005 year in review" feature lives on, the copyright at bottom is 2006, and latest news is from April 2007. Maybe a tell-tale sign of the revenue generation potential from a free blog trend search engine...?
I just had another piece of Forrester research publish - this one on brand monitoring. Lest you think I went on a Kerouac-ian benzedrine + caffeine writing tear...I didn't (but what's the frequency, Kenneth?).
As you may know, I've been following the brand monitoring market for a couple of years and since publishing the Q3 2006 Forrester Wave on the space, it's clear that the market has shifted. That's why I plan on updating the Wave in Q3 2008.
In the meantime - it's clear that not all brand monitoring firms are created equally or should be used for the same purposes. But marketers who don't work to understand the differences before sending out an RFP or running a pilot are in essence using Plinko as their selection process.
I believe that three primary applications of brand monitoring have started to surface, based on buyer goals, vendor capabilities and intent, and business needs. Clients can read the full research, "New Uses For Brand Monitoring," which explains how and why the three applications matter. The summary:
J.D. Power and Associates acquired brand monitoring firm Umbria, combining industry-focused consumer satisfaction and rankings with consumer-generated media (CGM) insights. The deal highlights the use of brand monitoring as a key input to formulating marketing, brand, and product strategy. Interactive marketers and social media strategists interested in using brand monitoring must choose a tool based on business objectives, recognizing that the market now addresses three distinct applications: 1) mining customer insight to formulate strategy; 2) quantifying social media to compare with other metrics; and 3) identifying influencers in order to participate in online conversations.
Much deeper analysis forthcoming later this year. In the meantime, Forrester clients - feel free to set up an inquiry via your account manager to learn more.
P.S. I think our Forrester Marketing Blog Feedback Survey is still open...
Congratulations in order this morning to Janet, Howard, and the rest of the team at Umbria. The brand monitoring firm was acquired today by J.D. Power & Associates, the customer satisfaction research company.
The significance of this acquisition lies in the acquirer - McGraw-Hill/JDPower is different type of company than Nielsen and TNS - and will use brand monitoring differently. One thing in common - another brand monitoring brand name disappears. Umbria will be folded into their new parent company, while Buzzmetrics/Intelliseek have disappeared into Nielsen Online and Cymfony now operates as part of TNS media.
I have a short research piece publishing soon for Forrester clients.
Robert Scoble posted recently that he's discovered the secret to Twitter, which is "how many people are you listening to, not how many people are listening to you." To quote Scoble,
Why? You just have to read a post from an hour earlier where Scoble tells a great story about microblogging and starting a great impromptu party at a California vineyard. What made that situation work? People were following his messages, not the other way around. In fact, the more followers one has, the more difficult it becomes to filter signal vs. noise.
(I meant to say "the more one follows" there, but the same applies, as people typically reciprocate followers.)
What's wrong with considering Twitter as semi-synchronous conversation? It's not more complicated than people talking, others listening. Businesses need to have objectives when using social media; people do too. Your objectives may change over time and they may have varying weights - but everyone has a reason and different people use Twitter differently.
But I'm not going to say that the answer here is something along the lines of "it depends." (Being an analyst forces the fence-sitting out of you.) Social media doesn't work well with a uni-directional approach. That's the domain of traditional advertising. The secret to Twitter and every other social computing application lies within the conversation and relationships - which requires not only listening, but also speaking, energizing, supporting, and embracing.
Personally, the way I use Twitter has changed - I only have time to jump on once or twice a day usually during the commute, so @ and direct messages have increased value. But if you follow me, I'll follow you back (unless you're a porn star or sales pitch - which are showing up more often) and look forward to the conversation. As tired, played out, and 1.0 as the term may be.
I've seen a lot of brand monitoring solutions that claim to do a lot of things. Many vendors say they can predict future events based on chatter levels. Most often, the backup happens in hindsight, which you and I both know is 20/20.
But this brand monitoring vendor Collective Intellect is doing something different - they are publicly releasing projections of US Presidential primary outcomes, based on analysis using their technology. Why does this matter? Because the outcome is publicly available so you'll know whether they were right or wrong.
So how did they do on Super Tuesday?
Democrats:
Republicans:
Overall, the predictions went 5/10 (results based on CNN projections). Could have been better, but marketer decisions typically aren't as black & white as this and more directional. Credit for putting your neck out there, Collective Intellect.
Contrast this with brand monitoring predictions around the Super Bowl. All hindsight. Will anyone else prove their system publicly? Next American Idol winner? New hit TV shows? The next President? Or does this show that these systems aren't ready for prime time?
Despite the record prices for Super Bowl XLII spots, I just haven't been able to get into the hype. Why? Because I care more about the Patriots finishing 19-0. And if you recall what happened with last year's ads, I'm telling you that not much is going to change.
If you want to start drafting your post-game wrap up, use this cheat sheet. Fox has already won. The Pats are 13.5 point favorites. We'll see which advertisers come out winners as well.
UPDATE: If you're looking for this year's Super Bowl commercials, they should all be available on MySpace shortly.
As I've spent more time on Twitter, the way I use the site/service has changed. A part of that is becoming familiar with features and functionality, as well as assimilating changes as they occur, e.g. tracking. But by far the biggest factor that has changed the way I think about Twitter involves the number of people I'm following. Moving from a handful of following/followers to over 400 has shifted the way I use Twitter - primarily how I use different platforms. I think this is an experience that others have experienced as well.
Jeremiah took a poll recently that showed most people using web, many people using a client app, and some using mobile. I think if tracked, platform usage correlates with account tenure. Most newbies start out on the web. If they stick with it and discover enough engaging conversation, people get "serious" a.k.a. "addicted" and install an app like Twitterific or Snitter.
But once the novelty wears off - the brightness and shininess, if you will - what then?
The answer's simple - find *real* value in the service or go dark. Here's how I see some ways that individuals appear to be finding value (not mutually exclusive):
As more people get on Twitter, the ecosystem evolves and matures, while the "rules" bend and get broken. The bad news for marketers is a lesson straight from Second Life - just having an account isn't enough; success requires engagement. Will the next lesson for Twitter itself be from Facebook - if and when the day to monetize arrives?
[BTW I'm tweeting here.]
Edelman has just published a white paper titled "Distributed influence: quantifying the impact of social media." An important subject. I participated in the original discussion last September and Jonny Bentwood has done a super job with turning our ramblings into something tangible.
Well done!
Back around Thanksgiving, Doug Haslam tweeted about working on Prospero podcasts. I sent him some recurring questions that I've been hearing about virtual private communities - you know, like Communispace, Passenger, Prospero, MarketTools.
If the topic interests you, it's probably a good idea to check out the podcast directly. I'll paraphrase the Q&A here:
Q: Why should I do a paid virtual community? Why not just do it for free using existing tools and tap into the discussion that’s already out there on other communities and existing blogs?
A: Participate in both, i.e. integration. Use the private community for focused discussion and insight, can seed out to external places.
Q: Should a community be customers or non-customers?
A: Depends on company goals; the more specialized the topic, the more closed customer communities make sense.
Q: Is there bias inherent in a brand-sponsored community?
A: Analogy to paid search - acknowledge that brands are there, but as long as you don't meddle too much, it's not a problem.
Q: How much time does managing a community require?
A: No easy answer; will fit into marketing strategy and touch on many areas, impacting engagement.
Q: Do you need to change your marketing process and organizational structure to make this work?
A: Probably not just for communities but definitely for social media in general.
I've done some research into Del Monte's use of a VPC (subscription required); Emily Steel wrote a WSJ article about the same effort; and Communispace won a Groundswell award for their work with Charles Schwab.
My colleague Charlene Li will be on 60 Minutes discussing Facebook tomorrow (Sunday) night, Jan. 13th at 7 pm ET/PT. She's blogged about the experience of being interviewed for the segment and CBS has previewed it as well.
I'll be watching with curiosity - Facebook has been one of the top, if not THE top social computing story in 2007. The recent Beacon stumble reminds me of working at Razorfish in 2000 when 60 Minutes did a piece spotlighting founders Jeff Dachis and Craig Kanarick. A lot of people pointed to that piece as a watershed as the company (and market) crashed.
I wonder if this piece will be similar in nature and a quote like this may foreshadow how true this piece was before its time: "I actually think [our ads] make it less commercial." An ad is an ad.
Ironically, if you read the recap of the 2000 Razorfish piece, these guys are describing Web 2.0 - problem was, it hadn't yet been invented.
(BTW I'm on Facebook here.)
Travel happens. Dopplr is open to the public and I activated an account today. What's Dopplr? A social travel site that allows you to share information about being on the road with others in your network.
I set up entries for 2007 as well as trips I've scheduled through July 2008. In retrospect, I hadn't realized that I'd traveled so much this year: over 40 different cities, but only three I'd never visited (Barcelona, Cleveland, Rio de Janeiro). 7 different countries, 2 new (Brasil, Spain). New York was the most frequent with 11 trips. No never-visited cities planned yet for 2008, but looking forward to some I haven't seen in a long time, like Helsinki and Los Angeles, maybe Istanbul too.
Here's my listing on Dopplr; we can share trips, if you're so inclined.
Your Twitter account has metrics. You knew that. The number of followers that a person has can be used as a measure of influence. On the other hand, that metric could be gamed by followlove, i.e. I follow you, you follow me and vice versa.
So here's another approach from Tweeterboard (thanks @jowyang for the heads up): a reputation score based on "conversations" you have with others. So now it appears that the community has found attention and influence metrics for Twitter...now all we need is one for authority.
It's the combination of all three factors that make an influencer influential (earlier thoughts on this).
A couple of months ago, I published a report called Microblogging For Marketers. I recently spoke with Jennifer Jones at Marketing Voices/PodTech about the research and our conversation is now available as a podcast. Moreover, we've made the research available for free to non-Forrester clients (registration required).
In addition to Jennifer, there are other very smart people working at PodTech. One that comes to mind is actually a former employee, Jeremiah Owyang, who is now a Forrester analyst. Another is uber-blogger Robert Scoble, who took issue with some of the data in my research. Let's recap:
To reiterate - IMO the number isn't critical to the report's premise. As you'll hear in the podcast, rather than dismiss this technology based on small adoption alone, brands learn about how microblogging works and determine whether/how this technology or its broader application fits into marketing strategy.
If you're not a Forrester client and would like to read the research, register and read it here. If you follow me on Twitter, I'll follow you back. You can also find @forrester there, along with analysts like @jowyang, @charleneli, and @jbernoff. (and if you don't know what the @username means...read the report!)
New father, book writer and excellent marketing blogger Rohit Bhargava has opened the doors to the Ultimate Marketing Bookstore.
He's compiled a list of books recommended by marketing thinkers, including Ann Handley (Marketing Profs), Jeremiah Owyang (Forrester), Henry Copeland (BlogAds), Dave Balter (BzzAgent), and Mack Collier (The Viral Garden), as well as his own and some from me.
Best of all - 100% of affiliate proceeds go to DonorsChoose.org, a not-for-profit education organization.
For more information, see Rohit's announcement, Mack's description, and the Facebook group.
Andy Sernovitz has launched the Blog Council - an organization for "large corporations" that "have significant blogs." If you fit the description, you should check it out. Charter member brands include:
Some pretty good company, if you ask me.
I had "dinner" at Can Paixano last night - talk about being social!
During the day, there was a lot of talk about social computing initiatives and we tweeted quite a bit of it. As I hear about different brands, industries, and technologies, some questions keep coming to mind:
There are probably more questions; these are the highest-level ones that keep coming to mind when I hear people speaking about what they're doing or recommending to clients.
Good case study examples should answer all of those questions - we're past social computing 101. Brands still need 101-type information and there's still a lot of learning left out there. What it means is that people who are put on stage these days as experts should be delivering the goods, better.
Pete Blackshaw gave an energetic overview on Nielsen Online's viewpoint of the state of CGM. Pete has also traded in his CMO title for the more verbose "EVP Nielsen Online Strategic Services."
Here are the key trends he's seeing:
Nielsen launched a global study on advertising trust. Most trusted channels? Recommendations from consumers (78%), Newspapers (63%), Consumer opinions posted online (61%), brand websites (60%), television (56%). While the options look a lot like the work I've done at Forrester, I've seen different results (because I've worked with an offline and North American sample) - recommendations still finish #1, but mainstream media don't rank nearly as high and in-store ads are trusted as well.
Pete showed a CGM Opportunity Spectrum, outlining how marketers can get involved. From low to high participation: unaided issue or theme specific content; product/brand experience & feedback; consumer fortified media/echo effect; outright solicited (cocreation); CGM as page view creator for more ads.
I'm at the Nielsen Online CGM Summit 2007. Jonathan Carson and Manish Bhatia kicked off the day talking about the past and present of their businesses with a peek at the future. 10 days ago Nielsen announced the launch of Nielsen Online, combining Buzzmetrics and NetRatings.
No mention of new products and in the near term the focus will be on international expansion, i.e. 15 countries. However, it's clear to me that, while online is justifiably capturing everyone's attention today, the opportunity integration with offline. Manish mentioned two key foci for the business: cross-media behavior and ROI of online-offline behavior. Credit for taking a consumer-centric approach here.
When you think about the family tree of related measurement: TV ratings, ACNielsen, Claritas, Monitor-Plus, Telephia (mobile), homescan - there's huge potential. Like a measurement death star. But making it work hinges not only Nielsen's own product development, but process overhaul for the entire advertising industry.
Mark started his presentation with a great quote regarding Thomas Jefferson. Appropriate for social computing, as TJ focused on the power of the individual. Yahoo! builds consumer strategy around four pillars:
Play this model against different sites: Wikipedia. Amazon. Ebay. Online debates on Yahoo! News. Bud.tv.
Targeting in the Yahoo! model works along audience pyramid:
Seems to me that the "four pillars" model works. Thoughts?
EMC hosted about 100 bloggers last night at the Rattlesnake in Back Bay (Boston).
It was great to meet people from the community in person, like Constantine von Hoffman, John Eckman, Scott Monty, Steve Garfield, Doc Searls, Dan Schawbel, Julia Roy, Chris Brogan, Amanda Mooney, and Ann Handley.
Jeremiah has pics.
Looking forward to seeing you at PodCamp Boston next week!
When I talk about Twitter to corporate audiences, a very common reaction is "I just don't get it." Hence, the post title.
If you want to learn more about microblogging check out this report (client access only).
Our data shows that 6% of US online adults use Twitter regularly.
If you want to reach an affluent, well educated, and early adopter audience, there might not be a better communication channel out there.
BTW each line in this message is < 140 characters.
@forrester is on Twitter, as are many individual analysts like @peterkim, @jowyang, @charleneli, @birdahonk, @sureshvittal, @carriejohnson, @SFOSkyGod, and @jbernoff.
UPDATE: Many people - namely Robert Scoble - believe that 6% is way too high. Here's related information from Cynthia. For those interested in the methodology, you can read more about it here. The specific question that survey respondents saw: "There are also more general activities you can do on the Internet. How frequently do you do each of the following activities? (Select one for each row)" and "Use Twitter" was one of 11 options, with the frequency choices of "at least daily," "weekly," "monthly," "less than monthly," and "never."
A researcher on my team tells me the number is corroborated from data from another survey as well. It isn't drawn from Nielsen//NetRatings, which has its own methodology. While researching, I did d biz and email pownce, but neither responded.
It's fun to talk about whether 6% is BS or not, just like it's fun to watch traffic spike when one gets Scobelized. To move that part of the discussion forward, I'd like to hear from people who have facts and data to refute the figure, not just feelings. [But I do care about your feelings - deeply. :) ]
IMO the number isn't critical to the report's premise; more importantly, I explain why brands should pay attention to a small percent of online activity and how microblogging fits into social computing strategy.
Jeremiah posts a great round up of Day 1 of Forrester's 2007 Consumer forum.
I've been busy - but haven't been posting here... Had a lot of fun tweeting from our Consumer Forum today; follow along at http://twitter.com/forrester. Most interesting to me = conversation "with others."
Jeremiah posted photos from today. Thanks to Critical Mass and VML for hosting receptions this evening.
Look for more activity on the blog starting tomorrow at http://blogs.forrester.com/marketing.
Now you can add Twitter to your suite of free brand monitoring tools. Tonight, Twitter announced that you can track keywords using the "track" command.
Here are 23 other things you should be monitoring:
1 - 10 from Cameron Olthuis
11 - 17 from Jeremiah Owyang
18 - 23 from Joseph Jaffe
Richard Edelman will be speaking about "Corporate Image In The Age Of Social Technologies" at Forrester's Consumer Forum.
I'm introducing him and moderating Q&A afterwards.
What questions do you want me to ask? For anything asked, you'll most likely get a response via blog or twitter.
Keep in mind that I only have a couple of questions and then we'll open it up to the audience to respond to the speech - but I'll do my best to ask anything that comes in here and is relevant!
This was a good week to meet people and get exposed to new ideas.
At a client engagement, I met Steve Zades who helps people figure out the future. He's founding partner of The Odyssey Network.
At Edelman, I was part of a group brought together by Jonny Bentwood, creator of the Social Media Index. Max Kalehoff has written a post/column titled "What Is Influence?" that captures part of the discussion. Henry Copeland pointed out a dissonance in blog advertising and a point about HoJo Brooklyn. Jeff Jarvis was on a Mac and soon to be interviewing Michael Dell. Steve Rubel was bullish on search, was twittering the least, and caught a lot of grief for using a Mariah Carey example. Rick Murray was in from Chicago and did a great job of bringing the ideas together. I also stepped out for a while to discuss Richard Edelman's speech at Forrester's Consumer Forum where I'll be introducing him and moderating Q&A. Looking forward to Jonny's next steps here!
Back in Boston, Compete and Yahoo hosted tastybytes at the Boston Harbor Hotel. Kathleen Gilroy and Otter Group are doing some interesting things with their podcasting platform. I almost worked for Zefer back in 2000 and asked Tony Tjan about the most interesting sites on his mind these days - Knovel and Incenticlick. I had an enlightening conversation with Katie Paine about brand monitoring and she told me about the upcoming IPR Summit on Measurement.
I also got some great information from companies using Twitter for an upcoming research piece and interviews with Y&R and Critical Mass for a Q4 piece on the "agency of the future."
My JetBlue flights between Boston and JFK were both early. My Chipotle burritos were huge. I caught a show. I'd call it a good week to be Peter Kim.
We are officially one month away from Forrester's Consumer Forum - it's going to be held in Chicago from October 10 - 12. Here are some of the things that I'm involved with during the event and others that I'm looking forward to.
- Using Twitter, Facebook, and Forrester's Marketing Blog to communicate around the event.
- Facilitating the "Tools For Tomorrow's CMO" workshop with Lisa Bradner the day before the forum.
- Forrester keynotes from Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff. They have finished the first draft of Groundswell and have great content to share. I am currently tied (with Cliff Condon) for the highest rated Forrester keynote this year - I hope to lose that title because one or both of these speeches are so good.
- Facilitating Q&A for Richard Edelman after his speech titled "Corporate Image In The Age Of Social Technologies." Any burning questions on your mind?
- Moderating a panel discussion on brand monitoring, Thu Oct 11 at 4 pm. This is going to be a good one with only client-side marketers on the panel. I'm really looking forward to the discussion with David Churbuck from Lenovo, Suzanne Fanning of Fiskars, and Karl Long of Nokia.
- Moderating another panel on using WOM for market research, Fri Oct 12 at 1:45 pm. Another good one with Dave Balter from BzzAgent and client Steve Scebelo, SVP Marketing at TV Guide. The value of this discussion is getting past the played out story of "BzzAgent: good or evil?" and getting to a less obvious but highly valuable aspect of using an agent network: market research.
And finally, we're working on a meet up for Thursday night...can't post details yet but it involves Andy Sernovitz, David Armano, and Jeremiah Owyang among others. I'm pretty sure it'll be worth attending.
Robert Bruner of Darden shared some words of wisdom from Warren Buffett recently in a message to Darden alumni and on his blog:
"We can afford to lose money. We can afford to lose a lot of money. But we cannot afford to lose one shred of our reputation. Make sure everything you do can be reported on the front page of your local newspaper written by an unfriendly, but intelligent reporter."
These words of wisdom should be applied in toto as advice on how to succeed in social media.
There aren't any links that I could find from delta.com, but today Delta launched an official company blog.
The old delta.com/change site was set up to discuss rebranding; an old message on the site had this to say for itself:
"Very soon, though, it will evolve into something truly collaborative—truly revolutionary. We envision a forum for open, honest dialogue between airline and air traveler. A place where your ideas may very well influence how we operate in the future. And a stockpile of user-generated tips that will make travel more enjoyable and sane for us all."
Looks like a blog is the aforementioned next step. Good stuff. (Let's hope it has more staying power than Delta's twitter account that has gone silent...)
Facebook's momentum can be described as any sort of a number of analogies involving velocity. I've been meaning to write a post but with so much great insight popping up, I'll leave it to aggregation and attribution.
Strategy:
Tactics:
And with all good things comes spam. The malicious-minded can create fake profiles to mine profile data.
"There will be time / to prepare a face to meet the faces you meet." - T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, 1917.
"New technologies are enabling a more subtle shift that marketers have yet to recognize and adapt to. 'Dissociative identity marketing' would refer to the relationship a brand establishes with the various personas of a consumer, from the blogging persona, to the social network persona or the gaming persona." - Eric Kintz, The Marketing Excellence blog, September 2006.
"Within a decade or so, most of the devices we carry will be location-aware. Any number of location-based services will be in widespread use. And our friends, family and colleagues will increasingly know where we are -- and perhaps expect to know it." - Jason Fry, The Wall Street Journal, August 2007.
The 3 P's of personal social publishing:
It's going to take a while for robust identity management tools to develop. I'd expect to see one from Yahoo!, Google, or Microsoft.
To make things more difficult, additional platforms will emerge that lend themselves to unique experiences: mobile, vehicle telematics, in-store kiosks. In the meantime, technology continues to shift culture and society right before our eyes, e.g. privacy fears over E911 tracking for some people are turning into ways to answer "What are you doing?"
This story is just beginning...blogs are about as "dead" as TV advertising - which means not at all, just evolving, morphing, and adapting.
Toby Bloomberg has posted the story of how I started blogging over at Blogger Stories. If you've ever bothered clicking on the "about" links here, you'll understand why I'd title mine "Dr. Strangeblog or: How I learned to stop worrying and love the blog."
While on the subject of personal stuff, C.B. Whittemore tagged me weeks ago regarding 8 random things about me. I'll put a spin on it and tell you the most non sequitur things I've been asked/told:
With that, I'll tag three people - with a non-random tie back to me:
I've been thinking about the roles of different social media tools. Everyone has. Steve Rubel and Jeremiah Owyang in particular. You still get a few LinkedIn requests every week, but now you're also getting a few Facebook notifications and enough people are microblogging for you to at least bother with setting up a Twitter account.
So how does it all come together? How should it all come together? It's not like social media has created more hours in the day, so people are engaged for reasons that encompass multiple personal personas. Here's a model of how I see my own participation, related to content in particular:
Overall, I believe that an individual's predisposition governs participation. Like risk tolerance or the ability to eat spicy food. There's a mode to which you default, but may prefer more/less beta or more/less wasabi in any given situation.
I think the frequency of social media channels lend themselves naturally to certain types of content. Moreover, while persistence may be forever (i.e. archived), attention is fleeting. Upon self-reflection, this is how I see my use of social media:
The lines aren't solid, but they are relatively firm. I know don't think too deeply about the model (actually not much at all); I just do it. So why does it matter? Understanding the nuances of platforms may open opportunites you might not have considered - e.g. maybe microblogging isn't a total waste of time after all.
Thoughts?
I meant to say something about this before, but there's still time as this deal hasn't been "officially" announced and now the deal is official. That fact also makes it one of the worst kept secrets of 2007 - the beans are spilt and the cat's out.
Google is supposedly buying Feedburner for $100 million. I think Feedburner's great and have been using both their free and paid services (yes, I'm paying for them, I don't get much for free around here).
If you are a blogger or other self-publisher, you'd be wise to set up a Feedburner account NOW a.k.a. "burn a feed" before the deal closes. Why? Because from what I see, when Google buys a company, it typically gets closed off from the public and months or years pass before it's openly available again. And this one is too valuable of a tool for you to miss out on for the rest of 2007.
UPDATE: The deal is now closed and Feedburner will remain up and running during integration. Hooray! (Hope this isn't the proverbial "open heart surgery while running a marathon" for you all...)
