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Dennis McDonald

1 week ago

in Authority Is A Highly Charged Particle on /Message
Interesting. This reminds me of the old arguments in academic circles about the meaning/importance/significance of journal citations. Lots and lots of discussion about whether or not a simple rule like "more are better" has real significance. At least in that sphere of activity the size of the community makes a difference, given that different academic and research specialties have varying sizes, which impacts the generation and cultivation of journal article citations. So it is with number of Twitter followers, with different "communities" having different sizes. As with academic specialties, in Twitter there are many "small ponds" and fewer "big fish." I fear, though, that attempting to ascribe too much meaning and significance to these numbers will create a byzantine structure of statistics and gaming opportunities that will ultimately detract from Twitter's value. Perhaps before that happens, though, Twitter will have gone the way of Technorati and the Dodo.

1 month ago

in SEO is Dead on Learn To Duck
I'm not sure I agree with the statement "Twitter, Facebook, even the biggest social network, MySpace, which was built as a place to market to young people, has been destroyed by the attempts to commandeer them by marketers." I know plenty of people who still use these tools all the time for communicating with friends and colleagues.

Maybe what you should have written instead was something like "Twitter, Facebook, even the biggest social network, MySpace, which was built as a place to market to young people, has been destroyed as a marketing vehicle by the attempts to commandeer them by marketers. Friends and colleagues, though, still get plenty of use out of them for genuine communication."

3 months ago

in Seinfeld and Bill Gates Microsoft Ad, WTF?! Part Deux on Jacob Morgan on Social Media, Technology, Marketing, and Life
This really made me feel uncomfortable, like the treatment of old people in the original Seinfeld comedy series. I know this is supposed to be viewed as funny, wry, quirky commentary on "common people" but count me out. But then, I already use a Microsoft operating system so maybe I'm not the target audience?
1 reply
jacobmorgan's picture
jacobmorgan hey dennis, i heard that from a few people actually. im not really sure who the target audience is actually :) now im just wondering what the upcoming ads are going to have, bill gates breakdancing perhaps?

thanks for reading and commenting!

4 months ago

in What do Retailers Know About Social Media? on Jacob Morgan on Social Media, Technology, Marketing, and Life
Jacob, thanks for the post. My first question is, what about the little guys? Do you have to be a big retailer to use these tools? What if you are a single-store-owner in a place like Old Town Alexandria Virginia? Would it make sense for a local retailer to use such tools on his or her own? Or would it be necessary to bring in a PR or marketing firm to help? Seems to me that the division of labor you see at a large retailer would be just as much of a challenge for a small retailer.
1 reply
jacobmorgan's picture
jacobmorgan hi dennis,

depends on what the goals are. i actually think the smaller business at better off with social media then the big guys. if i had a small town somewhere the first thing i would do is make sure that i could sell online. there are all sorts of things you can do if you are a small retailer, after all, in the online world it doesn't matter how big your actual store is. online, your store is as big as you want it to be.

a small online retailer can create a fashion blog, a flickr account with locals wearing the store clothes, can write guest posts on other fashion blogs, etc. there is a lot of potential for any company anywhere to get involved in social media. mashable, one of the largest social networking blogs, was started in a small town in scotland!

there isn't as much labor involved as one might think

4 months ago

in “Secret session” reflections on Principled Innovation Blog
So some feathers were ruffled. You guys (and gals) should be congratulated for trying something different.

5 months ago

in Are Web 2.0 startups wasting their time with Web 2.0 early adopters? on Futuristic Play by @Andrew_Chen

I wouldn't recommend ignoring the a-listers just yet. True, a lot of their dealings are with fellow "echo chamber" tech-savvy folks, but a lot of the followers of a-listers are people wanting to learn about technology. Many folks seek out "who are the best people to follow in order to learn about technology" and that's one of the main reasons that Scoble et al gain audience share. Of course you need to focus efforts at reaching non-tech-savvy folks as well but a-listers are just part of the mix.

6 months ago

in louisgray.com: The Importance Of Blog Linking Seems to Be Declining on louisgray.com
Excellent commentary. I've sort of felt this analysis myself, even though my own blog is much more obscure.

But aside from traffic, linking, sources being social sites, or whatever, what I'm beginning to suspect is that interest groups -- some people call them "communities" -- have absolute sizes and intensity levels that drive their interaction frequency, and this interaction can occur through an increasing variety of means, not just via linking, phone calls, IMs, tweets, or whatever.

I'm sure network analysts have a more technical term for this phenomenon, which is that, for any given type of social event, the participants will choose a method of interaction that is available, easy to use, and appropriate to the participants and rge occasion. Linking is a behavior that takes effort. Why engage in it when you can just jump into FriendFeed or Twitter and connect?

One thing to watch out for, though, is to assume geeks and non-geeks behave similarly. Another issue is that, by focusing too much on interacting with like-minded groups, our ideas and thoughts won't "leak out" to others who might also be interested in benefiting.

6 months ago

in Stupid simple marketing tip: hijack RSS scrapers on Christopher S. Penn's Awaken Your Superhero
Excellent post. Very practical ideas. Ultimately I'd like to get some of the dollars these scrapers make off selling ads linked to my stuff but I know how likely that is to happen. (I wrote about this topic as well in http://www.ddmcd.com/different.html.)

8 months ago

in Is "Social Enterprise Software" An Oxymoron? on A VC
The term "social" by itself is a problem since it implies external and non-work types of relationships, even though many "social" applications are primarily professional- or task-oriented in ways that are very supportive of enterprise interests. For a list of "social" applications that are relevant to large organizations, see this page on my blog, which is based on a presentation I give to large consulting organizations and government agencies:

http://www.ddmcd.com/reading-list/

Dennis D. McDonald
Alexandria, Virginia
http://www.ddmcd.com

11 months ago

in Is it really about the conversation? on WinExtra Comments
If I understand you correctly, one of the things you are saying is that if you use someone's "official" list of tags for tagging your content, and you depend on a retrieval infrastructure built around that list for accessing objects tagged using that list, then you run the risk of having your retrieved set filtered through the content tagging decisions made by those controlling the tag set. End result: echo chamber.

Wasn't free form tagging (e.g., "folksonomy") supposed to have prevented this isolation from occurring?
1 reply
StevenHodson's picture
StevenHodson Where did I say anything about an official list of tags. If anything Technorati is dependent upon the person writing the post to supply the tags for the post. Without those tags and the ability to search something like Technorati using them then Technorati become just another search engine in an already overcrowded field.

1 year ago

in Study: Music downloads don’t affect sales on Mathew's comments
Studies like this are meaningless. Even if they are recealing the truth (which I believe they are) the music distribution corporations will still spread FUD about downloading because they want to have legislatively legalized control over the distribution channels.

1 year ago

in Wild thoughts about the Google Social Net on Paul Jacobson
Sounds like a lot of opportunities to sell advertising. Not sure I like that.

1 year ago

in Jay’s lessons on news “crowdsourcing” on Mathew's comments
This is really interesting and seems to point out that such efforts need to be managed. Is anyone surprised at that? It also reminds me of what happens whenever a volunteer effort among geographically distributed individuals needs to be coordinated. Usually a small core of individuals emerges who take it upon themselves to shoulder the burden of leadership and coordination. With today's systems, though, the numbers of people and decisions can be increased by orders of magntude, and this increases the likleihood of people veering off in the wrong direction; this in turn increases the need for oversight and management.

1 year ago

in The Techmeme pile-on — good or bad? on Mathew's comments
I've noticed that the "dogpile" effect is more prevalent in blog communities where authors tend to refer to each other by their first names under the assumption that all readers -- even those of us "on the edges" -- will know who they are.

1 year ago

in Some great advice from the Doctor on Mathew's comments
Matthew-
Thanks for pointing this terrific article out. I'm sending it to friends in the newspaper business. I also think it is interesting how much of what Doc says here is relevant to any public facing organization, not just newspapers.
-Dennis

1 year ago

in How much do we trust Google with our private information? on Paul Jacobson
It's not just what they do with it it's how long they keep it. See this post of mine from 2005 when I was considering gmail: http://www.ddmcd.com/managing-technology/google.... I wonder if Google retention policies (which I assumed then were perpetual) have changed since then?

1 year ago

in Do blog comments still matter? on Mathew's comments
I agree with the comment that the folks who say "comments are dead" and turn theirs off usually are folks with large names or audiences already. When I hit one of their blogs and can't leave a comment my reactions are (a) they don't really care about my comments because I don't already know them and (b) they are like an old fashioned static web site that is set to "broadcast only."

1 year ago

in One social network to rule them all? on Mathew's comments
Matthew - By coincidence I had a similar thought when I started to think about the deal Elsevier and Google Scholar are doing; the Elsevier data could provide a powerful networking infrastructure given the importance of citation behavior in scholarly publishing.
- Dennis
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