DISQUS

I personally don't think it is all that effective. I don't think Babbo's take on it is quite accurate, specifically referring to Apple:

"Microsoft is the company that wants to explain everything in a commercial. Apple, Google and other forward thinking tech companies choose to instead appeal to curiosity–that’s why Apple’s commercials are so effective."

I think that the iPhone ads actually do "explain the benefits" of the product. The application ads show the iPhone in use and how specific applications are able to make your life easier. In fact, pretty much all of the iPhone ads are centered around the concept of what it is, how it works, and why you should want one.

There is a very big difference between "explaining everything" and being clear and effective. For the average person Google=search and search alone. I think that a commercial that showed Chrome being used and then gave the URL for a specific landing page to download would be a lot more effective.

Kevin Bondelli's last blog post..links for 2009-05-08

I think that the administration isn't necessarily going to do it on their own, but we may be able to apply pressure on them to start moving in that direction. It isn't going to be easy, but if we are committed to it we can make it happen.

I have been calling it User-Generated Government. I decided to write a post on it after reading this.

http://www.kevinbondelli.com/2008/11/12/user-ge...

You've got a ton of great tips here Mike. A lot of people don't mention including a retweet ask in their tweets. Asking makes all the difference.

It surprised me that when they rolled out the commenting feature they did not include the ability to comment on your main news feed.

I think there are a couple reasons why the commenting hasn't taken off yet:

1)Like you said, it is restricted to individual mini-feeds that most people aren't looking at. It also may seem a little creepy to be commenting on someone's mini-feed, it has a stalker-like feel to it. It would help big-time if the integrated it into newsfeed.

2)It is hard to have a conversation with it because as far as I know there is no way to tell if someone else has commented on the item you commented on without going back and checking.

3)This is where spelling out comment might help. A lot of people I know had no idea that this function existed. They will probably realize it now though.

I think that Facebook would need to make it a news feed feature and dramatically alter the way news feed works in order to get a Friendfeed-like functionality. Until then, I don't think it will really take off.

"Even though it helps, it doesn’t really matter if your technology is the most efficient. What matters more is that your technology has a community backing it."

I think this is the key here. I have two groups of people that I communicate with online and engage in the discovery phase with: tech people and young political activists. For the tech people Friendfeed is great for discovery and communication, but only a handful of the political group use it. For them, Facebook becomes the discovery tool through wall posts, shared links, and posted items.

The Scour toolbar doesn't appear to be compatible with Firefox 3 yet.

A lot of great stuff here Chris. I think the points about commenting on 5 blogs a day and having an editorial calendar are especially useful.

I think that the group message restriction has been very relevant to people that do political organizing on Facebook. Coming from the background of online organizing for youth political groups, there are groups that have more than 1,000 members (especially national orgs) that will benefit from the increase.

Since Facebook groups are opt-in and very easy to leave, I don't really see there being too much of a problem with potential spam. If people begin to get unwanted messages from a group they have joined they will leave. The limit, however, prevents people that have opted-in to receiving communications from an organization from getting messages, which definitely decreases the efficacy of the Facebook group for organizing. A group with 999 people was more valuable in reality than one with 1,000 or more.

It's good to see that the number has been increased and more organizations will be able to take advantage of all the value of a Facebook group.

I spent about 30 minutes with Powerset last night and was not all that impressed. It seems to me to just be a fancy way to search Wikipedia and not much else.

Kevin Bondelli's last blog post..Crystal Strait Pledges for Barack Obama

This takes the cake: @Rumford un-followed me :-( for not "adding value" ... wow, Twitter is hard.

Twitter is hard?!?! I just HAVE to hire this girl. She is a social media philosopher. Just look at this nugget: "I am thinking that Twitter is like RSS for Life." Brilliant.

The funny thing is that she is going to get a ton of followers that just want to see the stupid things she says.

Some of my other favorites:

I have 69 Followers *giggles*

does anyone still use mybloglog?

Maybe I should have just bought a Twitter account on eBay. Like joining a Fraternity in college? Just buy friends?

I've been wanting to take a look at Joost to write about it. Good thing they are starting to open up the invitation process more.

kbondelli(at)gmail(dot)com

I support Statsaholic and urge Amazon/Alexa to drop their ridiculous lawsuit.

Great idea for a post.

1) The Farther Reaches of Human Nature - A.H. Maslow

2) Thinking Strategically: The Competitive Edge in Business, Politics, and Everyday Life by Avinash K. Dixit and Barry J. Nalebuff

3) Co-Opetition : A Revolution Mindset That Combines Competition and Cooperation : The Game Theory Strategy That's Changing the Game of Business by Adam M. Brandenburger and Barry J. Nalebuff

I would most like to attend Robbie Cohen (Videomment) 'How to reach new audiences through video.' Working for the Arizona Democratic Party in developing their internet strategy, I often look to the business internet marketing world to get ideas to apply to political advertising on the internet. We have been eager to use video to reach different audiences and Robbie Cohen definitely could help with ideas for this. Unfortunately, most people in the political realm do not understand the importance of internet marketing knowledge in developing their political marketing plans, and therefore never send their internet communications people to these conferences.

I agree with you on this one. Allowing users to use tools from other services on the Myspace network is likely to keep them happy and prevent another social networking site from gaining ground on MySpace by being more open. If I were in charge of MySpace I would want to see what services my users were integrating into their profiles to see where we could improve our features and make them a better alternative. By blocking other services it is basically admitting that the built-in features are inferior and can not compete with other services.