Interesting article on New York Times on how new jobs (in US) are created by startups, rather than big corporations.
“So any serious discussion of job creation, it seems, should look at the business tactics and policy steps that are most likely to nurture more of these promising corporate upstarts.”
The latest inspiring talk by Chris Andersen explains how web video is fueling the new learning revolution
Few months ago HP annouced it would create his Customer Support Community, a way to use Social Media to reduce support costs.
I’ve found myself this last month in the situation where my HP laptop needed assistance; i turned to the support forums (thanks to google) and got my swolution right away, both from HP users and HP staff.
As Charlene Li stated in “the groundswell” this use of social media might save a lot of money and time, reducing the load of traditional customer services.
According to the press release these are the functionalities of the support community launched by HP:
Here’s a quick post to inspire some toughts of our media landscape.
According to wikipedia the seven mass media in order of their introduction are:
1 - Print (books, pamphlets, newspapers, magazines, etc) from the late 1400s
2 - Recordings (records, tapes, cassettes, cartridges, CDs, DVDs) from the late 1800s
3 - Cinema from about 1900
4 - Radio from about 1910
5 - Television from about 1950
6 - Internet from about 1990
7 - Mobile phones from about 2000
Mobile offers seven benefits that cannot be replicated by the six legacy mass media:
1 Mobile is the first personal mass media (each person has one)
2 Mobile is permanently carried (it’s the first device we turn on, and last to turn off)
3 Mobile is always-on (some even sleep with cell phone on)
4 Mobile has a built-in payment mechanism (and a built-in identification number)
5 Mobile is available at the point of creative inspiration
6 Mobile has the most accurate audience measurement (if you have a blackberry, you are a high spender)
7 Mobile captures the social context of media consumption
No wonder there a lot of buzz around mobile, mobile industry, mobile standards and mobile social networks….
One last figure… the number of mobile phones overtakes the number of internet connections by a factor of three.
“A recently released UN study indicates that in 2008 mobile phone use worldwide will reach 50% of the earth’s population“
Event the web can seem small compared to mobile…
I was reading again some chapters of the popular “Groundswell” by Forrester Research this morning.
I’ve found really useful the Social Technographics Tool (chapter 3), explained in this slideshare presentation by Forrester.
For those not familiar with this profiling tool, Forrester groups users into:
This conceptual framework can help understaing and profiling users, in order to treat different users in different ways. Here’s a brief explanation.
If you are dealing with Social Media and Social Computing I strongly suggest to read the Groundswell book
Men are competitive by nature. Peraphs we have been genetically programmed to compete over scarce resources, and this is why we enjoy so much challenging and competing with others.
Most of the online games are about quizzes and competitions. Magazine publish rankings of any kind: bestselling books, richest people, wealthiest companies, powerful brands. We even have a “book of records”.
Online Social Networks allow us to compete and measure competition even more. This competitive inner force is a big driver in social interaction and social networks growth.
Here’s a simple example of what people are capable to, when they are challenged.
Orkut is a social networking service (now owned by google) started in 2004. At the beginning of 2005 on the website appeared a leaderboard showing how many members each county had in orkut (US, Turkey, Brazil…). Brazil at the time was a minority. The fact of showing a public ranking of users engaged brazialian in a race to become the biggest nation on the website. By word of mouth brazilians started registering to orkut and, by july 2005, 73% of Okrut’s members where brazilian. Today Orkut is mainly a brazilian website after what has been called “the brazilian invasion”.
This simple story demonstrates the power that competition has in online networks, it is a driver that engages people and, sometimes, makes the fortunes of some websites
Twitter is booming, stats say it clear. The growth in the last 12 months is indeed remarkable.
This made me think about the main differences between Twitter and Facebook.
Recents changes in the Facebook user interface suggest that their trying to get closer to Twitter, feeding live streams and allowing for more interaction (or conversation) with brands and celebrities, expanding the Facebook Pages section.
One main difference remains: asymmetric VS symmetric relationships.
On facebook in order to “keep in touch” with someone in need to have a two-way relationship called “friend request”. After all Facebook mission is to map our social graph and connect with friends and acquitances.
Things are different on Twitter. I can follow Steve Jobs, without having Steve Jobs following me. This simple difference (asymmetric relationships) can help understand the core differences of the two webistes.
Facebook is a social utility to map our personal relationships
Twitter is mapping our “attention”, allowing us to give attention and receive attention from other nodes of the network, whether these are friends or companies.
Twitter, in my opinion, is capturing the real essence of the attention economy, allowing us to connect (and disconnect, without feeling embarassed, like we would on facebook) to those entities that matters the most to us.
Facebook is obviously doing the same with their “fan system” on Facebook Pages, but the scale at which Twitter implemented it is much bigger and meaningful.
An inspiring video on the crisis, not just the financial crisis…
“Barry Schwartz makes a passionate call for “practical wisdom” as an antidote to a society gone mad with bureaucracy. He argues powerfully that rules often fail us, incentives often backfire, and practical, everyday wisdom will help rebuild our world.”
The following post by Jeremiah is a must-read for everyone in the social media business.
It’s part of a Forrester report, but this abstract is already a good starting point.
I’ve found it useful to understand how and when different technologies (like OpenSocial, Facebook Connect) will come together and offer a new technological paradigm.
http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2009/04/27/future-of-the-social-web/
