Samantha Power, in the most recent issue of Time Magazine suggests criticism of web 2.0 trends in “Technologies’ power to narrow our view.” Power highlights the ongoing trend in technology, politics, and social movements:
Much has been made of the convening and mobilizing power of today’s technology. A person inspired by a cause can blog about their outrage and plot a response on Facebook with other similarly animated people. While any single congressional district might not produce a groundswell to demand a halt to global warming or killing in Darfur, a virtual community unmoored from geography can deliver a critical mass.
Power, however, worries:
But while the long tail ensures once obscure documentaries remain available, citizen advocacy may have a short tail, causing the number of viable causes to get winnowed to a handful of megacauses. Burma may achieve the requisite market share, while Burundi fails to penetrate at all.
Non-profit Advocacy and Outreach 2.0:
While I agree with Power’s on-point recognition that this is an issue that needs to be highlighted, addressed head-on, and discussed robustly in society, I fear her analysis may be slightly askew. Certainly an undercurrent of the issue Power discussed is emerging, however I feel Power may miss the larger point. Initially, Power’s analysis forgets the power of the network online. Social movements, non-profits, and advocacy groups are uniquely positioned to take advantage of the community and community aspects of web 2.0, particularly as mobile expands. A nonprofit concerned with Burundi can find other folks interested in similar issues via social media platforms and social networking communities (for instance those interested in human rights in Burma and China, as well as those concerned with genocide and ethnic conflict). Further, a non-profit concerned about Burundi can talk about related issues on their blog, as well as provide context and depth for what may be more shallow coverage in mass media. Video platforms like YouTube, Vimeo, and UStream along with Ovoovoo and Seemic provide the ability to provide dramatic documentation of rights abuses, environmental destruction, and compelling stories of cancer. Video can tell these stories in a way the written word may not. Further, as mobile video expands, the ability to cover issues and international news, including international human rights, ethnic conflict, and genocide, will vastly expand.
A More Viable Criticism of Web 2.0 Communities and Trends:
Non-profits may struggle to find the most strategic platforms to use amongst the thousands of web 2.0 platforms. Understanding how their customers and donors will behave online in three to five years is certainly a difficult calculation. Third, dealing with the struggles of getting outside the echo chamber of the non profit blogosphere in constructive ways and dealing with the information overload in productive ways (aka social networking overstrech may be larger concerns that the ones Power outlines). Fourth, web 2.0 uniquely risks encouraging the younger generation to conflate knowledge of human rights with more robust forms of activism and volunteerism. To me these seem like the more urgent risks and disadvantages of a web 2.0 world for non-profits, social movements, and advocacy groups.
Are the criticisms Powers outlines a real concern? What are the actual disadvantages of a web 2.0 world?
According to the tech savvy folks at CNET, government agencies and political representatives are increasingly leveraging web 2.0 technologies (also know as social media, the Interactive Web, and Live Web) for greater citizen (customer) interaction:
Governments are expected to increasingly use social networking and other Web 2.0 innovations as a means of fostering greater participation and dialogue with their citizens, as well as encouraging more effective intragovernment communication.
“A lot of Web 2.0 applications will allow government to change the nature of what they can do, in terms of interaction, but apart from the technical side of things, there will be a greater focus on improving the business of government,” said Richard Harris, research vice president at analyst firm Gartner.
Branding:
• What is the purpose of your social media strategy? Is it to increase customer support? Branding? Marketing? Product and service innovation?
• How is the blog helping your branding?
• How could the blog better help your branding?
Audience and Customers:
• What content should you be addressing for your audience?
• How can you address your customers needs better with social media?
• How can you better address your audience needs and concerns in your campaign?
• How can you make the experience more participatory and community oriented?
• How can you increase reader engagement?
• How can you better use the collective knowledge of your readers?
Blog Productivity/Getting Things Done:
• Are you creating focus in your posts? Individually and collectively?
• Could you improve your current social media schedule and workflow? How?
Online/Offline Strategy Integration:
• Are your offline and online strategies integrated?
• Could you do a better job of integrating your strategies?
What would you add to this social media audit and assessment for web strategy and branding?
Check out this earlier post for more perspectives on return on investment assessments for web 2.0 and social media.
After completing my undergrad at Middle Tennessee State University in english, I decided to travel northward for some midwestern influenced learn’n in the middle of nowhere Indiana. I recently was contemplating where this near two year section of life moved me personally and professionally, and here’s what I came up with:
• Everything you ever wanted to know about communication you can learn from Malcomb in the Middle, Friends, and The Simpsons.
• Ethos, Logos, and Pathos. And sometimes Mythos.
• So what?
• The power of stories.
• Metaphors will get you everywhere. (see also Metaphors We Live By)
• Muncie, IN is not just a made up town in a lesser known Cohen brothers movie (The Hudsucker Proxy)
What did you learn in college, university, or perhaps graduate school?
If you liked this post and would like to friend me on Stumbleupon or Twitter feel free to do so.
Social Media and Video Conferencing Tools Meet the Environment:
Well, perhaps we don’t have a direct effect. However, we can a) decrease our overall consumption of gas and b) decrease the price we end up spending at the pump by using social media platforms like Tokbox to connect, communicate, and share ideas. Ultimately, this and other video conferencing tools are time savers, because you don’t have to spend time on an airplane or sitting in traffic. The applications send endless….from brownbag lunches to meetings to interviews to conferences. In my book, thats a pretty high return on investment (ROI).
Questions Moving Forward in Video Conferencing:
The question becomes…How smooth is the streaming? And how will they integrate mobile?
The Wiggly Wigglers podcast demonstrates how even remote businesses can leverage social media tools, like podcasts to reach customers and spread the overall message of the organization globally. In fact, its a great case study in the small business use of social media and web 2.0 technologies. [Just grabbing the first 45 seconds or so of this gives you a good idea of how they are leveraging the technology in their marketing efforts]
Phil Wickham has amazing Christian music…and he’s giving away his music for free.
I just think this is pretty cool. Not only is he releasing the music and the live performance for free, he’s inviting his listeners to vote on the tracks he selects (aka crowdsourcing). A great way to embrace faith and his Christian music community.
Please feel free contact me with yourweb 2.0 and social media marketing, as well as your blog consulting and coaching questions. I look forward to helping introduce you to blogging, the wonderful world of social media, and helping you increase your search rank in Google via search engine optimization (SEO).
Advice from family and friends is the No. 1 source consumers turn to when making a variety of decisions — from purchasing consumer electronics to planning a vacation — and advice from an expert rates highest when making medical decisions and purchases based on a product’s environmental impact. Despite the strong evidence that friends, family and experts play a key role in influencing decisions, only 24 percent of communicators report having a word-of-mouth program in place.
In its second year, the Media Myths & Realities survey examines the use of more than 40 media channels, ranging from newspapers to social networking sites. This year’s survey was expanded to include the fast-growing BRIC countries — Brazil, Russia, India and China.
The Annenberg News continues:
With digital media giving rise to increasing media choice, fragmentation and personal empowerment, the term “mass market” is being outmoded. As a result, it is imperative that communicators view their audience as distinct groupings of individuals.”This year’s findings magnify the point of last year’s benchmark survey, which showed that communications professionals need to vigorously reassess their communication priorities to meet consumers’ needs in this multimedia channel world,” said Nicholas Scibetta, Ketchum senior vice president and global director, Global Media Network.
I’m excited. My grandparents have attended Crieve Hall Church of Christ as dedicated members for over twenty five years and have had a relationship with the church since 1964. My grandmother’s preacher Bill Watkins and a pastoral assistant Andrew Leeper are both passionate about the word and are interested in receiving technical knowledge about the so-called “social media space” including blogging and web 2.0 interactivity. I have one other meeting scheduled later this week to help and am looking to widen that number in an effort to help bridge the generational and culture gaps with web technology.
Your Journey and Reflections:
I’m interested to hear your opinion. What do you find to be the biggest challenges of blogging and the social media space? [you don't have to be Andrew Keen or Dooce to know there are struggles] Alternatively, what are your favorite parts or favorite experiences? Or what is your blogging story?
My Crazy Journey through Social Media and Blogging:
Mine seems more like a random series of crazy events…but here goes: Its pretty crazy to think that someone from Asian (and probably Singapore) read my blog after I tracked back to Mitch Joel after he did a conference in Asia and its even crazier to think that someone from South Africa read and commented on my blog. And these are events I know about without the help of google analytics or a geographical map feature (which is soooo the next addition to my blog). I talked in forums to second life pastors in Australia. And I was added to the rotating blogroll at Swerve (the biggest church in the country Lifechurch.Tv). And just this last week I got some link love from Rex and social media guru JD Lasica. For being so young in the blogging part of the space–to me thats pretty cool. Not to mention, I’ve gotten a lot of link love from the Nashville blogging scene in the Music City Bloggers and Volunteer Voters (and all the Nashville readers like Newscoma and Ginger who dredge through my occassionally typo-rich texts) If I failed to mention Travis M, from Maryland who writes for Relevant and Lifted Magazine like it was his job I would be remiss and a host of other folks who read and comment and even lurk. This just scratches the surface. The metaphor of the social web is alive and well. I think one of the projects that epitomizes it is the Twitter Mosaic. The twitter mosaic compiles individual Twitter pictures of people who are following him/her in a mosaic. This month’s Twitter mosaic is of college football.
Nora Barnes and Eric Mattson at U Mass Dartmouth surveyed the 200 largest nonprofits and found that they are adopting social media at a much faster pace than the business world, with 75 percent using some form of social media like blogs, social networking sites, podcasts, wikis or other formats. Makes a lot of sense, given that these tools are mostly free or low-cost, and yet so effective.
Alternatively, organizations that are staying away or silent are having a conversation something like this one way dinner conversation:
It seems to me that churches, particularly with active youth groups and/or members in the 20-40 age range are moving in this direction too. Churches like Lifechurch.TV and Granger Community Church are certainly at the leading edge of alot of this change although others are experimenting a host of other social media configurations including Second Life and JustinTV-esque 24/7 UStreams.
Thoughts? What are the ramifications of this change? How long before it will be 90-95?
A video from Granger Community Church in Indiana about community service:
This is a short 2 minute video thats quickly making its way around the web. It posits the question: what are your three special places in your hometown? Check it out!!!
Really cool project. Very well done. I’m very curious how the project progresses both in terms of video and the actual trip. For academic and political scholars out there–interesting use of rhetoric too–particuarly the rhetoric of social movements. Thoughts? Personally, I’d have to say Cafe Coco, Music Row, and the Bluebird near the top of my list. So where are your favorites?
Check out this link from Nick of Allfacebook. If you want to know about using Facebook for organizing, check out Nicks video here. This event was sponsored by the folks at the New Organizing Insitute.
Two key points arose in relation to cultivating a community on social networking sites like Facebook:
• Using badges for Facebook posted on your main website.
• How do our constituents, users, and connect? (essentially what need do I fulfill their needs and wants with my Facebook group?)
David, who is the author of the Cluetrain Manifesto and more recently Everything is Miscellaneous, chatted it up with me and Johnathon Trenn in the comments at Marketing Conversation. If you don’t know who David Weinberger is check it out here. He is one of the thought leaders who saw the blogging and web 2.0 revolution coming back before 2001. Wow. I’m a bit star struck! Thanks Dave!
If you enjoy the discussion about ongoing revolution in new media and web 2.0, you might check here for my earlier discussion of Dave & Cluetrain related topics in relation to the Vision of StudentsYou Tube video.
Podcamp Boston: 23 Flavors and then Some Unconferences like Podcamp Boston are about conversation, community, collaboration. I just watched a “roundtable” discussion of participants from Podcamp Boston on how to make podcamp better. The discussion included 23+ different perspectives on ways of improving and doing podcamp. Bob Goyetche was great to video the discussion and post it.Chris Brogan was great to cross post it and spread a little community awareness. Watching this video is mandatory watching for anyone who wants to host an excellent unconference be it a Barcamp, Podcamp, or a Whatever camp. Its really a great example of community and conversation in action. Great stuff!
Without further ado, here are the 23+ ideas as I scribed them (sorry if I missed any, it wasn’t intentional) Enjoy!
• Everybody is too nice…where are the hard to ask questions. (***)
• Less repetition between conferences in terms of content. (RSS only needs 1 explanation) (***)
• Reputation centric. Names and brand drives who gets to present or who gets attention.
• What are we doing about the people who are outside the community and don’t know anything about podcasting???
• Disconnect between newbies and folks who already know (its hard to adapt to both or a community disconnect?)
• Newbies might not be able to hear the “answers.” It can be over their heads sometime. (***)
• Give it away. Adopt a newbie model. (***) (A Pay It Forward model, perhaps)
• Spiral of silence. You don’t want to be that guy that says “I don’t understand” (*)
• The unconference has been taken out of podcamp. Its presentations. 3 minutes for questions. (Wisdom of crowds is better)
(***)
• Shouldn’t wait till the end of podcamp to sit in a circle. (***)
• Person whose job is to know everybody. To be a connector.
• Too much new for newbies. Also, some people speaking without expertise.
• We should be about pushing ideas forward. (aka more theory)
• Technical issues. Montetize and promote. Instead: How do I make my content better?
• What do I need vs. community? Can’t make it an individual event.
• Its not Brogan’s job or the unconference director’s job to direct people [like robots].
• Introduce self at first. If you don’t tell them, they may not be inspired to do much.
• Media changes fast. Hard for us & leadership to keep up. We’re creating structure now. Don’t get frustrated by what we’re not doing. TV and radio has the benefit of 50 years. We’re ramping in 2 years. (**)
• Mix of long and short format timeblocks or presentations would be best. (*)
• Facebook party in Israel model. You tag yourself. Ask me button—novice, intermediate, advanced/anme badge! (***)
• Take the chairs out, take the projectors out. Only wi-fi. Facilitators instead of speakers. (***)
• Amorphous schedule and wiki rocks! (**)
• Make your own space.
My Thoughts:
There seemed to be an implicit ethos of Pablo Friere’s rejection of the top-down banking model of education amongst the community. More informality. Less presentation. More conversation. More options:
• Newbie friendly. Open and accepting. Easy for them to plug into folks who can help (ie name badges with descriptors about how an individual can help)
• Less formal presentation. More small discussion and facilitation possibilities. More embrace of unconference ethos and wisdom of crowds.
I imagine organizers of events like Podcamp (insert city name) is not only that the ramp up is 2 years in the non-mainstream media, but the whole movement toward self-organizing is happening now as well. It can be a foreign cultural environment for those who are not natural collaborators.
UPDATE: Brogan has some new commentary from on the future of Podcamps from November 2007 here. Basically, he says that smaller events that are lighter and more targeted to specific niche audiences (ie by industry–education, pr, etc..)
Thanks to Bob, Chris, and all the great folks at Podcamp Boston! Also thanks to Steve Garfield for the photo.
Thoughts? Ideas? Contributions? Anyone know of a link to other suggestions about changing barcamp/podcamp for the better?
(ps. my ***’s were somewhat arbitrary. i thought all the ideas brought something important to the table. some of my asterisks were based on practicality, but i think all the three asterisks deserve serious attention)
YouTube, blogs, and twitter are great way to express yourself to the outside world. We Feel Fine is a new media way to listen to what other folks are feeling in the blogosphere. I get a sense that its designed so that folks can understand that there are humans going through the same things they are. Check it out! It gets 3.9-4.0 of 5.0. The We Feel Fine mission statement says:
The result is a database of several million human feelings, increasing by 15,000 - 20,000 new feelings per day. Using a series of playful interfaces, the feelings can be searched and sorted across a number of demographic slices, offering responses to specific questions like: do Europeans feel sad more often than Americans? Do women feel fat more often than men? Does rainy weather affect how we feel? What are the most representative feelings of female New Yorkers in their 20s? What do people feel right now in Baghdad? What were people feeling on Valentine’s Day? Which are the happiest cities in the world? The saddest? And so on.
The interface to this data is a self-organizing particle system, where each particle represents a single feeling posted by a single individual.
The mashup is where this will get the most traction. What if you could click to “Sphere it????” (My guess is twitter could similarly do a sphere it mashup) In such a world, you could goto related emotional posts on the web for the day? (or at least in a better way than technorati, which seems a bit sterile by comparrison) Perhaps folks that we’re ailing over the loss of a loved one or were grieving the emotional turbulence of a divorce could connect and share. And folks that were going through various emotional traumas could better seek out folks who perhaps could see and even feel the world in the way they did.
In terms of the Weinberger vs. Keen web content debate: I wonder if emotions are really encapsulated in how we frame and filter the information we post on the web. For instance flickr photos, don’t seem to have emotional states or if they do, don’t always capture this emotional context.
Actually there are multiple reasons why Chris is a new media and online community rockstar. (so if he is a rockstar, who would he be? ben folds? prince? james brown sans the legal issues?) This Brogan post is visionary, encouraging, and inspiring:
Here’s 100 Blog/Podcast Topics I Hope YOU Write:
1 How I Use Facebook
2 Ways I Embrace My Audience
3 Should My Town Use Social Media?
4 A Community I Love
5 Technology That Empowers Me
6 How Flickr Did it Right
7 How Best to Comment on a Corporate Blog
8 Ways to Save a Bad Time at a Conference
9 How I Find Blogging Ideas
10 Somebody Has to Say It
11 My Children Will Do it Differently
12 How Schools Could Use Social Media
13 The Best Parts of Marketing
14 Presentation Skills for a New Conversation
15 How I Find Time to Make Media
16 Empower Your Best Customers
17 After the Event- Carrying the Conversation Forward
18 Just Jump Into Podcasting- Heres How
19 My Community and How You Can Engage It
20 Twitter Jaiku Pownce Facebook- And Then What
21 Making a Miniseries
22 If I Were an Advertiser Today
23 My Mother is On Facebook
24 Does a Big Brand Need You
25 Books I Want to Write
Check out Brogan’s original post here for the next 75 inspirational blogging ideas. And I encourage you not just to read, but to blog about one or more of his suggested topics! Enjoy!
Whats your favorite idea? So what are you going to blog about?
Podcamp Nashville was just announced!
What is Podcamp?
When: Saturday, Feb 9, 2008
Where: Edgehill Cafe in Nashville, TN
If its anything like Barcamp Nashville, it should be a blast! Marcus and Dave from My Emma are heading this project (and there was much rejoicing). So if you are interested in podcasting or engaging the podcasting community, you should check it out. Alternatively, if you aren’t around Nashville, you check out more info about the global locations for upcoming podcamps at the Podcamp wiki.
FYI: Big Sight, a sweet blog about young people doing new and creative things in non-profit, new media, and industry, did a write up about Barcamp Nashville. [note: this was written before barcamp on July 23rd] I’m mostly adding it because I thought the concept of Big Sight was very cool and cutting-edge.
Check your fancy new Web 2.0 strategies at the door. Its all bunk and a waste of time! One of the blogs I read a lot is Marketing Conversation. They recently posted a list from Ad Age article entitled “Ditch the Web Content Crazes” The article is fairly provocative and a tad on the hyperbolic side. The following is the top 10 web strategies that Mark Simon thinks Web 2.0 advertisers and marketers should dump:
1) Anything having anything to do with virtual reality.
2) Anything that has to do with the phony recommendation industry.
3) “Smart ads” that aren’t so smart.
4) “Searchless” advertising.
5) Audio-reliant video pre-roll spots.
6) “Human-powered” search engines.
7) Knee-jerk algorithmic media buying.
8 ) Behavioral targeting that goes too far.
9) Twitter and its microblogging ilk.
10) Intrusive mobile marketing.
Thoughts? Agree with all 10? Did he miss one? What would Weinberger say? Has Mark Simon had a little too much of the Andrew Keen kool-aid? Oh, if you’d like to see my response and criticism, I weighed in over at Marketing Conversation on Twitter, Second Life, and Human Search.
