DISQUS

This may be the one opportunity to NOT get caught up in tech marketing jargon. Why not just Government. Did we rename it when we went from the pony express to the modern day postal system? Do the Government's 'customers' really care or are we as an industry just stroking our egos?

Rick Sanchez: "xyz emailed me this on Twitter"

Well said! This is exactly why I think there's a HUGE opportunity for the PR agencies of the world. There are so many reasons why they're suited for this job. Problem is, most don't get it and still treat it like traditional media relations--most are trained to immediately take a defensive posture, trying to control stories & take away transparency. We should NOT expect brands to give up complete control but the opportunity is THERE for some REAL conversations. Can PR agencies evolve?

Hey Ray -- Michael from KickApps here. The idea behind our layout is that they're entirely customizable to fit your needs. Think of it as a canvas with some basic structure to it. All it takes is HTML, CSS and/or JavaScript. Just design, not even development. - Michael

Clever. More interesting than the images and the background, etc., is: "I average about 8-10 outbound ‘tweets’ a day, and your brand would be represented in each."

Does that mean that the brand is represented in the content of the tweet or by association?

If most people use Twitter via SMS, Twhirl, IM (BRING IT BACK!!!) isn't that where the value is? What's the line there for Ian?

Is there more value in the conversation itself vs a person's profile page?

From an corporate or serious/professional web publisher's point of view, Ning and Friend Connect both suffer the same shortcoming, ownership of the relationship with the audience. If you're a professional web publisher, core to your business are 3 things: your brand, content and relationships with your audience. As a bolt on, neither Ning or Friend Connect (or Data Availability or Facebook Connect for that matter) give you that ownership. Marc's right, the power in Friend Connect is as a gateway to a large, aggregated audience. Under the right circumstances it is a great tool for driving pageviews and engagement on your website. A terrific value add. What you can only get from owning the data is the deep insight that fuels programming, marketing and targeted advertising.

Hey Kristin! Check out the widget on lower right www.guinnessworldrecords.com! UGC for record holders and record attempts. Powered by KickApps of course ;-). Give it shot...you never know.

Keeping people on your site is one benefit, the other is leveraging YouTube as a distribution and syndication channel to drive traffic back to your site. This is great stuff for publishers.

What's cool here is the relationship between a mega-community (MySpace) and a niche-community (VIBE Verses). Beyond all the talk about OpenSocial, etc., there are real business relationships to be had between content/programming (VIBE) and audience aggregators (MySpace). The intermingling has begun...

As far as it being a one off, there is a real opportunity for VIBE in that they have an amazingly engaged community of over 60,000 members. Check out some of their profiles, comments, voting, etc. Contests drive brand engagement and give people a reason to interact with the brand and leads to other parts of (in this case) the magazine.

Aside from the advertising and sponsorship revenue, the opportunity also exists offline (live events like the one with Wyclef), a big part of the business model for publishers like VIBE (they throw several hundred events a year).

Word?

Michael
KickApps