DISQUS

Hi Dave! Thanks for sharing the app with your readers. Hope you enjoy it!

Chris

I love teaching the little guys how to use social media and prosumer technology to take on the mainstream media. I love seeing the faces of senior execs at big corporations when they start to understand the idea of conversing and collaborating with your consumers instead of shouting at them.

I would love to meet with all the people in the world who have stories to tell in the face of supreme opposition and teach them how to get the word out, like http://www.aliveinbaghdad.org/ or a blogger in China or Africa....

Hi Aaron:

I think this is a good primer. It's definitely important to listen and engage. There are a couple key steps missing, however.

1) You have to set goals before you can determine your strategy. Are you trying to increase awareness about your company or product? Trying to decrease calls to your customer service team? Trying to raise the positive sentiment around your brand? These are all different goals that require different strategies.

2) Define who you want to target. Is it moms? Maybe you want to reach male teen gamers? In the listening phase, find out where they hang out and what tools they use to communicate. Since both of these target audiences use social media differently, you'll be able to better choose what tools to use when developing your strategy.

3) Don't just choose to do video or a blog because you feel like everyone else has one. Choose the tools that best align with your goals and the technologies your target audience use.

4) Since you have goals, you'll be able to measure how well you met thos egoals. How many calls to customer service were deferred? Are people talking about your brand in a more positive light? If you have clearly defined goals, the ROI will be a lot easier to see.

Whoo whooo!

Adam, very thoughtful response. Wondering if CNET was just upset bc they couldn't have a rocking party! \m/

To me, quarterlife was never a web series. It was actually a TV series broken down and repurposed for the web. When approaching web series creation, writers and content creators have to look at the medium of online film as a platform that incorporates all of the social media tools. Unlike their passive TV watching counterparts, audiences on the web are interactive and want to be immersed in the show. Don't feed us content, engage us.

I think it's a very interesting idea, but I don't buy it.

I will agree that the gestures of those around us supplement a viewing experience, but they are not the entertainment. I love people-watching, at a mall or plaza, but in a theater, content is king.

Almost like an enhancing drug, real laughter and real expressions of pleasure make the joy that we feel at a comedy show feel even more real. Dr. Cialdini in his book "Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion" calls this social proof; when we feel like others approve or disapprove, we are influenced to comply. TV studios discovered this years ago and added the laugh track to their shows. That may be somewhat ok for comedy, but what about news?

The gesture model may be a time-saver, but leaves people open to be influenced by shrewd marketers and politicians. If everyone is tuning in to the same show, who is discovering content? What is influencing them? Marketing? Advertising?

What about publishers that don't have the means to market or advertise? Who finds them? How do they get their voice to be heard?

New Valleywag post:

"Scoble Enters Rehab"

"Podtech's Robert Scoble is in London allegedly for a conference, but sources close to the former MSFT employee say he has entered rehab for an apparent social media overdose..."

First off, it was good that Zuckerberg finally posted.

I agree: I don't think FB members will Opt-Out of Beacon because most of them don't understand how it works. For Opt-Out to work, FB has to inform the community of what that actually means and how member data is being used. Until then, Facebook hasn't really listened, they are still pulling a fast one on their members.

I think the difference between Beacon and Google Adsense is that Google doesn't have access to all of the data. I might be wrong, but I think Adsense tracks with cookies and keywords; that's a lot different than sending data from one site to another.

Scoble also makes an outstanding point: Facebook has not responded, apologized or explained themselves, which seems to tell the userbase that FB just doesn't care what they think.

Ok, so that ad does piss me off. Ever since I "upgraded" to leopard, my MacBook starts up slower, the fan is in use all the time, things are crashing, and applications run really slowly. WTF?!