ClappingTree’s Web 2.0

DOES ONE NEED TO DO ANYTHING before attending a conference? Chris Brogan listed 27 Things to Do Before a Conference (thanks, Keven). Here’s a compact rewrite of the tasks in terms of the tools involved (Google, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.):

1. Event schedule :

• Research - Note what you want to see and get a sense of what you might ask and/or decide what the business value of your interaction at the session might be.

2. Google Blogsearch and Technorati :

• Research - Look for event references to the event, company announcements, signs of business opportunity.

3. Google News and Google searches (in addition to 2. above) :

• Research – Look for industry news around the event, to understand what might be impacting the people you’re mingling with.   Read the rest of this entry »

[Reposting because my blog "died" this morning and was "resurrected" this afternoon without the last two posts.]

SOME OF THE KEY BEST PRACTICES as presented in the latest Nielsen Norman Group report, ”Intranet Design Annual 2009: Year’s Ten Best Intranets“, are:

• Company and industry news
• Integrating internal and external information sources
• Editorial control of the intranet homepage
• Keeping the intranet up-to-date
• CEO blogging
• Employee and department weblogs
• Onboarding of new employees
• Consistent navigation
• Multilingual intranets; supporting international employees
• Multimedia and video on intranets
• Data visualization
• Web 2.0 features on intranets
• Community
• Polls
• Collaboration tools and discussion boards
• Internal wikis
• Employee self service
• Search
• Governance
• Development process for intranet redesigns
• Web analytics for intranets
• Staffing of intranet teams; where they report in the organization
• Updating and maintaining standards and guidelines for intranet design
• Intranet branding
• Promoting new intranet features
• Staff directory and employee profile pages
• Corporate calendars
• Personalization
• Customization
• Alerts
• Working with external design agencies
• Intranet budgets and staffing

[Reposting because my blog "died" this morning and was "resurrected" this afternoon without the last two posts.]

FOUND THIS INTERESTING LINK ON a Facebook friend’s profile when I was about to post a birthday greeting to her. I agree with the author, Dan York, who wrote:

The only reason I visit a web site these days is generally if either:

1. The website turns up in a search result.
2. I get notified that there’s something interesting there that I should look at.
3. Random times when for some reason I decide to go there, perhaps remembering a URL for a site I wanted to check out.

 
That’s it. (Note that I do get the content of many websites through the ways I mention below, but I don’t actually go to those websites and see their page.)

As I think about it, my consumption of information online really comes down to five ways:

1. E-mail, although I get too much of it to read it all. [Me: Exactly!]
2. Twitter, where I see links from people or services that I follow. [Me: Now, it's the FriendFeed (or NewsFeed) on Facebook.]
3. RSS feeds where my reader pulls it in and I quickly scan through the posts.
4. Skype persistent group chats where I’m connected to several different groups of people on various topics.
5. Searching for data, typically using Google.

 
The key thing is that, with the exception of search:
All the data comes to me!

“… ALL MEDIA IS SOCIAL AND ALL SOCIAL IS MEDIA,” wrote Edelman Digital director Steve Rubel in his Micro Persuasion blog this month (”All Media is Social, All Social is Media“) and last October (”Ethical Social Media Marketing“).

In the February 2009 post, Rubel commented:

“Yet many, particularly in PR, still treat ordinary citizens, traditional journalism and branded content as distinct islands of media. Going forward, it’s best to see them as a contiguous archipelago.

“Consider that in 2008 some 58 percent of newspapers featured some form of user-generated content on their sites, according to the Bivings Group. This is up from just 24 percent in 2007. The mix includes: user-generated photos (58 percent), homegrown video (18 percent) and articles (15 percent). Meanwhile, the number of newspaper sites that are allowing readers to comment on articles has more than doubled to 75 percent.

“On the other side of the coin, we’ve seen time and again that social networks like Facebook, Friendfeed and Twitter are now essential sources of news and information for millions.”

This brings us to the social media ethics question. In the October 2008 post, Rubel wrote:

“First, all things social are media and all things media are now social – so I am not sure what “social media” is any more.

“More importantly, social media marketing also implies that social networks, blogs and other like channels are advertising venues. They’re not. They’re public spaces just like our great National Parks. We must respect them as such. Otherwise we’re going to pollute the environment and make them less enjoyable for everyone - especially the citizens who thrive there, just like the amazing ecosystem that thrives in places like Yellowstone…

“Social media marketing works best when it’s integrated into the experience and takes a “win-win” approach.”