Group Collaborations Made Easy with Micromobs

In short, Micromobs is like Twitter or Yammer for family, friends and classmates. The service lets you create groups, which can be public or private. Each mob is set up like a mini microblogging service with status updates, replies, search, etc. If you’re looking for a simple collaboration tool for school, groups of friends or a way to keep in touch with family then this tool is perfect. It only takes a few minutes to set up your mob, and you can login via Facebook or Twitter.

Create A Mob

You’ll need a name for your mob. The name you choose will also be attached to your custom domain, so make sure it’s not too long. You’ll have the option to invite friends via email or by sharing a short URL (supplied by the site). You can also share your mob on Facebook and/or Twitter with the click of a button. It’s also a good idea to go into the settings and add a description and image to your mob. Here you can also set your mob as public or private. If your mob is private, no one will be able to see anything going on in the mob unless they are a member.

Participate In Your Mob

Being active in your mob is easy. Like Twitter, there is a status update box; you can attach an image to your post and even share it on Facebook. What’s nice about Micrombos is that there is no character counter and no limitations to worry about. Like Facebook if you add a link, a description (and sometimes a thumbnail) will be attached to your post (see below).

There is no way to edit your posts, but you can delete them. Others can reply to you in Twitter-like fashion using the “@” symbol. When you click on “reply” below a post, the @username is automatically entered into the text box. You and others can also share posts on Twitter with the click of a tiny icon. All of these options appear only when you scroll your mouse over a specific post.

If you are on the page when a new reply or post is made, a notification will appear at the top of the timeline letting you know. Once you refresh the page you’ll be able to see it.

Popular Topics

As your mob gets more popular and more people are participating, you’ll start to see the popular topics displayed in the right sidebar. This is pretty much like trending topics for Twitter, except they are only applicable to your single mob.

Popular Users

You can also see who the three most active members of the mob. The most active/top user will have the title “chief” displayed next to them.

Quick Reply Methods

Micromobs also has a mobile version, which is great for keeping up with your mob on the go. Alternately, you can also reply by email. You can choose to receive an email whenever someone mentions you or responds to a post you’ve made or commented on. It’s a good idea to enable this because you can just reply to the email notice in order to reply back.

You’ll also get weekly digests sent to your email so that you can keep up with what’s going on with your mobs. You can, of course, choose which mobs to receive email digests for (if any at all).

I have been using Micromobs for a few months now and I have four mobs that I’ve created myself. I’m very happy with the service and how easy it is to use. Even if you have family members who are not very computer literate, they should have no issues with Micromobs as it’s very easy to catch on to. Micromobs has made it fun and easy for me to keep in touch with classmates as well as online friends.

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Study Says Social Media Users Follow Only 5 Brands

More than ever, social media users are including brands in their list of friends and follows but according to the 2010 Cone Consumer New Media Study, five is the magic cutoff number.

How do you become part of the small, inner circle? You already know the answer to that. 77% of users said they followed a brand for free products or discounts. No surprise there. But getting the engagement and keeping it, are two different things.

Says Cone‘s director of new media, Mike Hollywood:

“Attracting new media followers is like starting a fire – coupons are your gasoline, and engaging content are the logs that keep the fire burning. Consumers’ affinity can only tolerate five brands, so companies need to think beyond the coupon or clever widget to figure out how to develop long-term relationships with real staying power. The best new media strategies are those that balance relevant content with timely promotions and ongoing company-consumer dialogue.”

According to the survey, 58% of users will stop following a company if it acts irresponsibly toward its consumers, over-communicates with them (58%) or provides irrelevant content (53%). Under-communicating (36%) or censoring user-generated content (28%) are the lesser reasons why people disconnect.

Personally, I disconnect from brands mostly because the deal I signed up for is over. For example, I’m currently following Lowe’s thanks to their crazy Black Friday promotion but once it’s over, I’ll likely “unlike” them. Facebook has made that easier than ever by including the option on the drop-down linked to each post. Since they added that ability, I’ve disconnected from several brands I was following in order to get a deal or coupon. Why bother disconnecting at all? It does tie back to that magic number five. I simply can’t tolerate more than five commercial messages popping up in my social media stream on Facebook. On Twitter, where things blend in and become invisible very quickly, my tolerance for following brands is much higher.

The takeaway here is that coupons and deals will bring them in but you have to up your game if you intend to keep the audience you developed. You have to deliver content that is useable or fun and you have to engage the community. If a person is a participant and not just a watcher, they’re more likely to stick around, share information and buy what you’re selling. And isn’t that the ultimate goal?

You can download the full presentation for free from Cone. Just click here.

Graphic by Cone

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Facebook’s Data Tactics: Disrupting or Disturbing?

Many people like to talk about the disruption that Facebook is creating in the business landscape. Most prominent of those is Mark Zuckerberg himself.

Funny thing is that when he talks about the new world order that is being brought about by Facebook (and I suppose there are others but that’s not his job to say anyone is as smart as he is now, is it?), he usually leaves out the dark spots.

One of those has been revealed by Google as the search giant is pulling Facebook’s ability to import contact data from Google properties (Gmail) for the simple reason that Facebook doesn’t offer reciprocity on the deal like most other sites.

Jason Kincaid of TechCrunch reports on Google’s reasoning for why they are pulling the plug on Facebook with this response from Google themselves

Google is committed to making it easy for users to get their data into and out of Google products. That is why we have a data liberation engineering team dedicated to building import and export tools for users. We are not alone. Many other sites allow users to import and export their information, including contacts, quickly and easily. But sites that do not, such as Facebook, leave users in a data dead end.

So we have decided to change our approach slightly to reflect the fact that users often aren’t aware that once they have imported their contacts into sites like Facebook they are effectively trapped. Google users will still be free to export their contacts from our products to their computers in an open, machine-readable format–and once they have done that they can then import those contacts into any service they choose. However, we will no longer allow websites to automate the import of users’ Google Contacts (via our API) unless they allow similar export to other sites.

It’s important that when we automate the transfer of contacts to another service, users have some certainty that the new service meets a baseline standard of data portability. We hope that reciprocity will be an important step towards creating a world of true data liberation–and that this move will encourage other websites to allow users to automate the export of their contacts as well.

Of course, the goal of this action and the statement that follows it is to paint Google as riding on the white horse of openness while Facebook rides the black horse of closed, unsharing and uncooperative data monger. They actually pull it off in this case.

Kincaid continues

Facebook has claimed in the past that there are sensitive issues around exporting contact information. But that hasn’t stopped it from pulling in whatever data it can. And it has also forged deals with both Hotmail and Yahoo that will let those services access its contact data. Google didn’t do a partnership with Facebook, so it doesn’t get the goods.

In other words, the battle lines are being drawn and there is enough of a window for a company like Google to paint Zuckerberg and Facebook into the corner of their disruptive business being more of a disturbing business. A business where openness is a political front facing ideal that doesn’t quite depict the behind the scenes reality of “If you don’t play with us we won’t recognize you”.

It looks like this gamesmanship is all part of the growing process of the future of the Internet as we know it. Google is now the granddaddy of the space while Facebook is the young whipper snapper coming up with little respect for anyone and doing what it deems necessary to succeed (Which is make as much money as possible not change the world like a sweaty Zuckerberg proclaims. Mark and your minions, please stop thinking that the rest of us are morons like your college ‘friends’).

This won’t necessarily impact the actual users of these services (other than those who are silly enough to just import everything from one place to another without thinking about whether all of those folks even belong there). What it will impact is just how much of the social graph Facebook will have ultimately.

You see, despite their aggressive tactics they are working hard to piss off a rather larger part of the online world by treating Google as the enemy and not a ‘frienemy’. If Google decides to take their ball and go home that will sting even the mighty Facebook and it could disrupt the disruptor even more.

Your thoughts?

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Leave Your Social Footprints All Over the Web with Marginize

I have been using the Marginize browser plugin for a couple weeks now on both Firefox and Google Chrome. It’s a non-obtrusive tool that I really enjoy using because it makes browsing the Web more fun and social. Marginize is a great way to see what others are saying (on Twitter, Facebook and Google Buzz) about a specific web page. As you’re surfing the Web, you can also share your own thoughts and opinions about any web page. Not only that but you can check-in to any web page and possibly become the “curator”. Being the curator means that you are the most active person on that site (for the moment).

Like many sites now, Marginize allows you to sign in with your existing Twitter, Facebook or Google Buzz account; no need for creating a new account. One you install the browser plugin (or add the bookmarklet to your bookmarks bar) you will see a tab displayed on the right side of your browser. There will also be a button at the top of your toolbar that allows you to show/hide the tab. The tab will also have a number displayed on it, which represents the number of people who have commented on that page via the plugin.

Clicking on the tab will open up a sidebar-like window (on top of the current web page). This is where you interact on Marginize. You can check-in to the current web page with the click of a button. When you check in, you’ll have the option to share your check-in on Twitter, Facebook or Google Buzz (depending on which network is selected when you click check-in). By the way, you’ll be able to see all of your check-ins and comments on your profile page.

You can only check in to a specific web page once every 4 hours. You will not be allowed to check in until time is up. Until then, a timer will show on the button letting you know how many hours, minutes and seconds you have left until you can check in again.

You can see who (from the Marginize community) has recently been to that page. You can view the “community” for that site, which will show all of the people who have been to that page and how many times. Users will be ranked by number of visits to the page and you’ll be able to see the current curator.

Then there is a box that lets you say something about the website, and you can choose which social network to share your comment on. If others have reacted/commented, you will be able to see those below the box. If not, you’ll be invited to be the first one to react. If there are reactions/comments already there you can like, RT and comment on them. You can also click on the user’s name or avatar to view their Marginize profile.

I like that with Marginize, you can take Twitter, Facebook and Google Buzz to every web page that you visit. Surprisingly, the tab never seems to get in the way and it doesn’t slow down any web pages either. In my opinion, Marginize is a definite win for those who want to be more social and love sharing what they’re doing all around the Web.

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Lowe’s, Best Buy Start Black Friday Early

It’s 8:47 pm PST, nearly midnight on the east coast and 2,000 people have just left a comment on a Lowe’s Facebook post that went up five minutes ago. Why? Because in just a few minutes, Lowe’s is going to launch their Black Friday Sneak Peek Party where they say they’ll be giving out coupon codes for up to 90% off items at Lowes.com.

The deals will be off specific items and limited in quantity which means bargain hunters have to virtually stand in line and fight the crowd if they want to get one. A coupon handed out at 1 am will probably sell out within the hour, which of course, is meant to entice people to stay on all day and night. In between giveaways, Lowe’s is going to announce the Black Friday sale items that will be available on the real BF – the day after Thanksgiving. Talk about creating a buzz!

Though it’s likely no one will be trampled in the Facebook melee, (more than 90,000 people signed up for the event), there’s bound to be some hitches and some hard feelings as the day goes on. One can only hope that Lowe’s has a properly prepared staff of social media managers, customer service reps and website troubleshooters on hand to deal with the load.

For those that like a more visceral experience, Best Buy is having their own pre-Black Friday sale this Friday and Saturday. It may be wishful thinking on their part, but the ad talks about lines forming two hours before store opening, tickets as place holders and limited quantities.

All this without the sinking sensation of having eaten too much turkey? How’s a person supposed to cope with that?

For months, experts have been saying that the deals will happen early and often this holiday season, with some retailers, like Newegg.com, going for a Black November concept in order to maximize sales.

Update – two minutes after the hour and Facebook fans are already complaining that Lowes.com is down. It’s going to be a long night.

Are you ready for Black Friday?

ETA: Lowe’s 5,000 90% off coupon Black Friday Facebook Party just ended a half hour in with only 100 coupons given out on a mixer. Servers are dead. Party’s over and the mocking has begun. A lesson to be learned here for sure.

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5 Reasons to Attending Blogging (and Other) Conferences

It’s a known fact that conferences can be expensive. Not only do you have the cost of registration and travel, but also the expense of time away from your work, family and social life at home.

If you are traveling to another city for a major multi-day conference you can easily expect to spend several thousand dollars in travel costs and miss at least a week of your normal life. As great of a time as it might be, it can be hard to justify the expense when you consider an actual vacation can cost less and be far more relaxing.

Because of this, many bloggers choose to stick to their online socialization. However, as great as email, IM, comments and other forms of communication are, they are no substitute for meeting someone face-to-face

So if you tend to pass on conferences because they are too expensive (in one regard or another) or simply not valuable enough, here’s five reasons you may wish to reconsider that and maybe give going to one a (second) try.

1. Networking

Though you can do some great networking online, it can’t compete what you can do face-to-face. The ability to look someone in the eye, shake hands, have a natural conversation without the barriers of technology and enjoy a meal together are just some of the things you can’t do on the Web.

Physical networking is more “real” and memorable than virtual networking and the people you meet face-to-face are much more likely to remember you than those you’ve exchanged a few emails with. There are people I’ve met once at a conference I’ll never forget but people I talk to semi-regularly online I can barely recall.

In short, physical interaction just brings you closer to other people and lets you build stronger connections that you can take into the virtual world.

If you need any tips on how to network better at a conference, take a look at Ben Spark’s excellent post filled with such tips.

2. Information and Education

Conferences are not just about meeting new people and heavy drinking. Contrary to popular belief, conferences have sessions where people teach things they know and give others the chance to ask questions.

Attending sessions at relevant conferences is a great chance to expand your knowledge into new areas or simply get a brush up on what you should already know. It’s also a great chance to get a grasp on a new technology or idea that you haven’t had the chance to try out yet and get yourself on the cutting edge of your field.

3. Ending Isolation

Blogging, by in large, is a very solitary activity, usually done by one person alone in their home or office blogging on subjects they feel passionate about. Conference are a chance to break that isolation, see that there are other people out there who do they same thing you do, put faces to names and make human connections.

More than just networking, conferences are a reminder that you aren’t isolated that the Web is “real” and that the things we do online do have an impact in the physical world and that you are part of a community, whether you realize it or not.

Basically, if you’re experiencing a case of blogger blues, a conference may be just what you need.

4. Get New Ideas

If you feel like you’re running low on ideas for your site, a conference may be just the thing that you need. Talking with other people, getting new perspectives and seeing what outsiders have to say about your niche can give you a lot of great things to talk to on your site and may even enable you to choose topics that let you reach out to new audiences.

A conference can lead you to new paths to follow and that can make blogging exciting again, both for you and your readers.

5. They Don’t Have to Be Expensive

As true as it is that many of the bigger blog conferences can be very costly, in every sense of the word, there are many, smaller ones that probably won’t be. If you seek out smaller events closer to home, you’ll save on travel, time away and, in most cases, registration.

By staying more local, you can not only cut the cost of the event, but also meet people in your area that you may be able to form a local network with and see on a regular basis. This can help turn blogging friendships into new real-life friendships that can help you in an infinite number of ways down the road.

Bottom Line

To be clear, conferences aren’t a magic place and I don’t think bloggers should spend more time mingling and networking than they do producing good content. But that doesn’t change the fact that going to conferences regularly is not just a great chance to have some fun, but will also help make you a better blogger and help you keep your enthusiasm about your site alive.

In the end, if you’ve been shying away from conferences, it might be time to give them a shot and, if you’ve been before and didn’t enjoy it, it’s likely time to try another event.

There are just too many ways conferences can help you be a better blogger to ignore them outright and you owe it to yourself, and your readers, to see if you can take advantage of what they have to offer.

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News Corp to MySpace: Shape Up or Ship Out

“We’ve been clear that MySpace is a problem.”

“The current losses are not acceptable or sustainable.”

They must show improvement in “in quarters, not in years.”

News Corp. president Chase Carey spoke to investors earlier this week and everyone is talking about it. He made it clear that the 70 million drop in ad and search revenue wasn’t going to be tolerated and that without a major improvement MySpace’s days were numbered.

It’s interesting timing. Not two weeks ago, MySpace announced a major overhaul that included a redesign and a focus on entertainment and a younger demographic. The website’s one saving grace over the years has been its popularity with musicians. Back in 2005, shortly after the NewsCorp buyout, MySpace launched its own record label.

“We have marketing power reach at our fingertips,” MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe said Thursday. He said the relationship with News Corp. could get bands it signs into movies developed by 20th Century Fox and on television shows on the Fox network.”

Their first band was called Hollywood Undead. Maybe that should have been a sign.

So here we are in 2010 and here’s Carey tapping his foot as he waits impatiently for the hordes to return to the once beautiful and powerful Oz. Will it happen? I think it could. But first MySpace has to stop trying to be Facebook. They can’t compete, but they can come back with an entirely different product that gets people excited about social media again.

If MySpace can build an interactive playground focusing on trends in movies, music and TV, they could have something. Facebook doesn’t cut it in this area and neither does iTunes’ new Ping network. Give me a spot that makes it easy to send my friends my favorite clip from a TV show and download the song that played over it and I’d come back to MySpace.

The question is, will they be able to build something new before the NewsCorp clock runs out.

What do you think? Does MySpace have a chance of regaining an audience or will it be on the auction block within a year?

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Digital Primetime Arrives Just in Time to Crush the Net

The following is also my column in next week's Advertising Age.

Digital Primetime Arrives Just in Time to Crush the Net

All of the social media hype has, to some degree, diverted attention from the bigger storyline to emerge over the last few years - the meteoric rise of long-form, streaming video viewing.

Unlike Twitter and YouTube, which propelled ordinary geeks and moms to cult-like status, the Hollywood content community here has been the runaway winner. There's more demand than ever for professionally created and curated content.

However, a new dynamic is emerging that could completely upend the economics - that is if it doesn't break the Internet first.

First, a look at the trend lines.

For years streaming video was a two-foot viewing experience that took place largely at desks via PCs. While YouTube's user-generated and viral clips dominate short fare, long-form streaming video is coming into its own and on different platforms.

The entertainment community - with the help of partners and in a race against piracy - has been aggressive in making their content available as on-demand streams rather than solely as downloads. This means that studio content is now far more widely available than ever before - and it's "couch friendly" too. Online video has become a seamless archipelago that spans a one-foot experience on smartphones and tablets to a ten-foot experience on set-top-enabled TVs.

Consider Netflix, for example. The company's on-demand video rental service is available on dozens of connected devices. This includes everything from the Roku set-top box to the iPhone and iPad. By one measure, Americans are eating it up.

Sandvine reported last week that Netflix alone represents a staggering 20 percent of all downstream US Internet traffic during what's normally primetime (between eight and 10 p.m.) This is remarkable given that the overwhelming majority of Netflix subscribers - 98% according to Sandvine - are not streaming content yet.

XBox Live, which carries Netflix and other content, is seeing a similar pattern. Larry Hryb (aka Major Nelson), Xbox Live's Director of Programming, blogged last week that 42 percent of XBox Live's more active 25 million US users are streaming an average of an hour of television and movies per day. (Disclosure: Edelman, my employer, handles Xbox's PR needs.)

Digital primetime is here. Madison Avenue should be giddy with excitement. Hulu served nearly 800,000 ads in July, comScore reports. What's more, the proliferation of interruptions are not stopping Hulu users from watching an average of 2.6 hours of video per month.

But there are potential challenges ahead as Xbox, Netlfix and Hulu supplant the TV nets as the new kings of primetime.

For starters, as more Americans become "cord cutters" we may opt for ad-free on-demand rentals or all-you-can eat subscriptions. The appeal is interruption-free viewing. Some 13% of Americans intend to cut the cord in the next 12 months, according to Strategy Analytics - a market research firm.

However, the more scary scenario is that all of this video consumption and cord cutting could push the Internet to a breaking point.

Nielsen reports that 64 million people watched at least part of the World Cup online. That's a drop in the bucket by what we'll see in 2014 when Brazil hosts the event. The Internet may not be ready for it.

Akamai President David Kenny says that in five years the average user will consume two hours a day of HD video. To accommodate this insatiable demand, the Internet will need to increase capacity 548 times from where it is today. Factor in net neutrality debates, cable companies squaring off with TV networks and it's easy to be pessimistic that there's enough "shovel-ready" broadband projects underway to pave the way.

Advertisers, not just the content community and distributors, have a significant stake in the future of Internet video. However, the debates around net neutrality and capacity aren't front page concerns for most us. They need to be.

The danger is that the ad community will be left out of the debate. Even worse it may not have a voice in creating viable ad-supported ways for the providers to invest in infrastructure, just as millions of cord cutters flee cable TV for ad-free content and push the Net to the limit.

Photo credit: jeffgunn

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Going Places?

We have been speculating exactly what Facebook was up to since the launch of its location based offering Places back in September. Yesterday our favorite social network made the mobile check-in application available to major merchants and thousands of small and midsize businesses with the announcement of Facebook Deals – news made public in a hyped Silicon Valley press event not dissimilar to those hosted by Apple.

So what is the Deal behind Facebook’s latest move?

Deals is designed to connect users of Facebook Places to special offers from brands, with 24 Hour Fitness, Gap and Palms Casino Resort among the first to sign up (Gap has already been dipping its toe in the water of location-based deals, with successful promotions recently running for customers checking into a store on Foursquare. Next week the store-with-the-logo-everyone-has-been-talking-about will give away 10,000 pairs of jeans via Deals.)

So how will it work? On tapping the check in button, users see a list of nearby Places. These will now show yellow coupon icon if they are running a Deal. Users can tap through to the Places page where they can see details about how to claim the Deal, for instance by checking in, or checking in and tagging three friends. Once a user completes the Deal’s instructions, they’ll be shown a confirmation screen which includes the reward, an expiration date, and how many people have also claimed the Deal. This can be shown to an employee of the Place to redeem the reward.

So far so good. Makes sense to combine the holy grail of mobile marketing, the coupon, with the growing popularity of the location based check in. And to the naked eye, Places has seemed redundant until now; with many Facebook users not using the functionality regularly to broadcast their location to an often fairly wide group of contacts accumulated on a page. Add a deal into the mix and that is one heck of a stimulus. And for businesses, the ability to tap into the Facebook ecosystem with location based deals is truly the holy grail of focused marketing.

One point to consider is privacy settings on the application. Surely Facebook will update with some “Groups”-like settings that allow Deals check-ins to be seen only by certain people. There are just some deals that users do not want to broadcast to their entire Facebook friend list, a list that that usually includes work, family and friends for most.

Generally, though, it is likely most people will respond positively to the service. And it could well signify the end of game-based check in services such as Foursquare, SCVNGR and Gowalla – with each only possessing a tiny slice of the audiences Facebook boasts, it is highly likely they will be consumed in some way by Facebook. And the smart coupon providers – Groupon and the simple yet effective Voucher Cloud in the UK for example – will work out a way to integrate to Deals rather than try and fight it. Just before Facebook’s announcement, Groupon introduced a new mobile redemption-tracking app to streamline and improve the merchant experience by allowing merchants to scan and verify Groupons using the built-in camera on their mobile device. (Clearly had a premonition of some sort?)

So what do you think? Has Facebook placed a nail in the coffin of location based marketing, set to spark widespread concerns re privacy; or is this yet another move of genius to make Facebook truly the indispensable marketing platform for brands big and small?

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E-mail v. Social Media: Utility v. Futility?

The debate rages on as to just how important social media is to the fabric of our changing lives v. just how much of a time suck activity devoid of value it is. People take a stand at either extreme and at all stops in between. Where do I stand? Depends on the time of day and about 1,000 other variables.

eMarketer presents a study done by TNS which looks at the amount of time spent doing a certain activity as well as the percentage of people who do the activity itself. The study shows that a larger percentage of people use e-mail on a weekly basis but people who are social media centric spend slightly more time with SM than with e-mail.

What isn’t studied is the productivity of these two equal uses of large blocks of time. My informal take is that the e-mail crowd is about work and business. It’s mostly about getting things done which is more measurable. While there is an element of that in social media exchanges it is probably safe to say that more time in the social media space means more time building virtual farms and posting career ending thoughts and pictures than being ‘productive’.

Rather than prattle on about this I would love to hear from you about what your take is on the difference between your e-mail time and your social media time. Is one more work focused while the other is about anything but work? Are you able to get as much work done in the social realm as you can through e-mail? What kind of work gets done in the social sphere?

Let us know because we all want to know. That is unless we are looking for a lost cow or something else important like that.

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Amazon Hooks Up with Facebook For Gift Card Giving

Just in time for the holidays! The ability to spend even more time on Facebook! Amazon would like you to know that you can now send Amazon gift cards directly to your Facebook friends instead of having to use that pesky old email. Neat, huh?

To make sure everyone gets the picture, they’re even running a special Give 5, Get 5 promotion. Give five $1 mp3 gift certificates to five Facebook friends and the first 100,000 users will get a $5 Amazon gift certificate in return.

It’s a pretty smart way to get the masses to do your marketing for you. Five dollars is an amount most people won’t think twice about throwing away and since you’re required to send it to five people (you can’t send $5 to one person), Amazon has assured themselves a wide reach.

The downside here is that the buyer has to pay out the $5 even if their pals don’t use the GC. I have no idea if Amazon is likely to reach its 100,000 limit before the offer ends on November 30, so maybe there’s no risk of being out of pocket.

On the receiver’s end, in order to buy an Amazon mp3, you have to download their player which may be more than a lot of folks are willing to do for one free song.

The full gift card program allows you to purchase a card up to $5,000 (oh for a friend who loves me that much) which you can schedule to send up to a year in advance (really?) The notification of the gift then appears on your friend’s wall, though I believe you can make it private so only the two of you see it. By why wouldn’t you want the world to see your generous gift?

All of this is a huge step toward what’s being called “Social Shopping,” a concept that leaves me bewildered. How is sending a GC via Facebook any better than sending it via email. I suppose it’s a way around sending gifts to people whom you don’t know well enough to have their email address.

Come to think of it, I know several celebrities on Facebook who could well benefit from a program like this. Hey, Mike “The Situation,” sorry about you getting bumped off Dancing with the Stars, here’s an Amazon gift certificate so you can buy more tight shirts.

What do you think? Will Facebook connect up Amazon’s gift certificate sales? Or is “social shopping” a trend that will come and go?

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Facebook Reveals Deals for iPhone Users

Today Facebook has accelerated its mobile efforts by introducing its Places offering to Android users (but I can’t find the updated app in the market despite claims from Facebook in their press event to the contrary) and it is rolling out a Deals offering to iPhone users of the Places feature.

Both of these moves firmly places (pun intended) Facebook in the lead pack for mobile applications. They have around 200 million mobile users as it is so there is probably not a more ready or more willing harvest that is ripe for the picking.

From the Facebook blog on Deals for the iPhone:

Using Places on the iPhone already lets you share where you are and find nearby friends. Now with the iPhone 3.3 application, you can also find nearby deals from your favorite businesses–from restaurants down the block to major retailers. Deals are only available from Places in the U.S, for now, and we’ll be expanding them to more merchants over time. Learn more here about the initial offers from businesses using Facebook Deals.

In addition, Places has been updated to include a starred friends list, making it even faster and easier to tag friends with whom you frequently check-in–no more searching and scrolling.

Single Sign and Groups for Android users are also being rolled out for the mobile space as well. I suspect there will be plenty of analysis and explanation of all these new things over the days to come so we’ll keep leave the “How To’s” to others.

One thing of note from this press conference. I am not sure if Mark Zucerberg is just a “sweater” or if he sweats when something is up but he had that shiny look today again which makes him look suspicious. He then gave the line of the press conference when asked by about the iPad app and when it might happen. His response?

The iPad is not mobile.

Nice! I bet Steve Jobs jumped out of his black turtleneck on that one. Zuckerberg later took the mike back and tried to backpedal on his comment but it is just another example of why Mark Zuckerberg is probably better left in the backyard playing with the engineers while the cool kids sell the lemonade out in front of the house.

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Redefining Friends vs Followers

If you search the word “friend” in Google images, you’ll get lots of cute cartoons hugging each other but you also get Facebook logos. Facebook has become so synonymous with the word friend that Webster may have to change the definition in the dictionary.

Think about it. How many people on your Facebook are actually your friends? Friends in the offline sense of the word? Probably not that many. In my case, I’ve had human-to-human contact with less than half the people on my list. Another quarter are people I know virtually well and the others are folks who have popped on for a variety of odd reasons. I don’t think I’m typical. I think the typical user has an even lower human contact ratio because Facebook has become a competition. He who dies with the most friends wins.

I started thinking about all of this after reading Augie Ray’s blog post, “Facebook is For Real Friends.” Here’s the line that hooked me:

“There’s an alarming and irritating trend on Twitter as of late. Some people are sending automatic Direct Messages to every new follower asking them to connect on Facebook. First of all, auto DMs are annoying (and I almost always unfollow a person for sending one).  Second, I just followed you on Twitter—why is this not sufficient?”

On a personal level, I’ve stopped following several people because I was getting duplicates of everything through Twitter and Facebook. But then you have to look at the business end. If you read this blog regularly, you probably use social media sites for marketing or branding. In that case, it makes sense to make contact with the largest pool of people possible, right?

Ray’s point is that Facebook shouldn’t be about networking. It should be a communication tool for people you really care about, “real” friends and family. Twitter, on the other hand, is about followers – followers aren’t friends and that’s okay.

Think about a popular actress who has lots of fans following her on Twitter, but keeps her Facebook locked down to only people she actually knows. That way, when she shares photos from that wild party, they won’t end up on TMZ. (Maybe.)

You don’t have to be a celeb to get in trouble mixing business with pleasure, and isn’t that what we’re all doing with social media? Twitter’s a little easier because you can have an account dedicated to your work persona and your leisure persona, but Facebook frowns on multiple accounts and the mechanism makes it much harder to pull off.

All of this becomes even more of a question now that Facebook has launched Friendship Pages, which is an archive of the communication between any two friends. The hitch? Any third friend who has access to both parties can see the Friendship Page.

To try this out, go to the profile of one of your friends and click on the “You and (name)” link under the photo. If you have a third friend in common, on the right sidebar you’ll see the option to look at the Friendship Page common to the two of them. I have my brother and his wife in common so I can see a page that lists photos they’re both in, events they went to and communication between them. Very voyeuristic.

The point of all this is to make you think about how you present yourself on Facebook and Twitter. Between the growing privacy issues and the personal nature of Facebook, you might want to think about keeping your “friends” and your “followers” in two separate social media pockets.

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LinkedIn Introduces New Company Pages

Before I get into this post about the latest LinkedIn update I want to make it perfectly clear that I do not use LinkedIn to its utmost. Of the three ‘majors’ (Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn) the social networking choice of professionals finishes a distant third in order of importance to me personally. I am not saying that this is the way to go I am just telling you this is how I approach things.

That said, the announcement of LinkedIn’s new Company Pages (which replaces the Company Profiles of the past) has me a little confused. Here is what LinkedIn has to say about this in a press release entitled “LinkedIn Launches Powerful New Tool to Help Businesses Drive Growth Using Professional Recommendations”

LinkedIn, the world’s largest professional network with more than 80 million members worldwide, today announced the launch of Company Pages to help businesses of all sizes attract new customers using trusted, professional product and service recommendations.

Company Pages help bring a brand to life by showcasing standout products and services on LinkedIn, an environment where millions of professionals turn to their networks for help making critical business decisions every day. By making it easy for customers and employees to become brand ambassadors, Company Pages help grow a company’s business virally through word-of-mouth, the most trusted form of advertising. At the same time, business professionals can write and share such endorsements to build out their personal brands, highlight their expertise in a given field and provide additional value to their connections.

Here’s a look at part of a new Company Page from Samsung

OK, that sounds nice. I have looked through this new offering and honestly I am a little underwhelmed. Maybe I don’t see the application because I am not a LinkedIn power user (or whatever you might call a LinkedIn fanatic). Essentially, there is a chance to follow a company (very Twitteresque) then you can recommend the company and its products to your network (very Facebookesque). What is missing is the ability to air a grievance about a company.

Recently, LinkedIn purchased ChoiceVendor which was really a talent acquisition. ChoiceVendor is a business review service and the idea of being able to review a business in LinkedIn was quite interesting to me because that seemed to a step at painting a real picture of businesses and professionals. Of course, it will also be a place that will be abused and gamed to death so you have to proceed with caution.

This new offer really is just a way to gather up numbers of recommenders which turns into a quantity play since all you can do is recommend something. This is another area to be gamed as well but what isn’t online?

Some big companies have been rolled out with this free service being available to all businesses over the next week or so. Interestingly enough this Place Page of sorts uses the Google map service to give a map of the location but does not connect to the Google Place Page for obvious reasons.

I have to admit that this battle for the ideal Place Page is interesting but how much room is there for several players? Will there be enough differentiation to make one offering better than the others? Of course, LinkedIn’s information is for LinkedIn users and not the general searching public at large (unless these results start showing up in SERP’s).

I don’t know what else to say. Instead I would like to get your opinion. have I missed something here? What do you think about the myriad services that are trying to give business information to anyone and everyone? Will there be an ultimate winner of one dominant service or will each have its place? Is there real value in providing only the chance to push a positive result across your network or will it ring hollow?

Your thoughts?

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Fanning the Social Media Flame for Viral Exposure

Are you a content marketer? If so, you have a choice to make.

You can sit around and wait for your content to go viral.

You can hope you’ll get sudden bursts of traffic, hope your readers will spread the word, hope your content will catch fire.

Or you can bring your own matches and lighter fluid to set the dang thing aflame yourself.

As bloggers and content marketers, which will you choose?

Sure, sometimes the passion you have for a subject will be enough to ignite a spark and compel your audience to share your content with their network. Being able to unleash something with such conviction and power that it combusts on its own is great.

Over at my SEO consulting firm Outspoken Media, we’ve been able to do it several times.

Sometimes we post something like The Power of the Unexpected, something that goes hot without us lifting a finger. As content writers, we live for these moments.

However, they almost never happen.

What is more common is that marketers need to fan their content to help it ignite and go viral. And sometimes that means stepping in when an accidental hit shows signs of life. How do you recognize those signs to take advantage? Here are some methods we use at Outspoken Media.

Identifying the spark

You know what’s normal for your community. You know how many comments an average post gets, how many tweets, how many shares, etc.

When you start to see activity that is double/triple what you’re used to seeing, act.

For example, early on we published a post called It’s Not The Recession, You Just Suck. Almost immediately after hitting the publish button I noticed the post being retweeted and passed through social media at a velocity that dwarfed anything we had seen prior.

Once we noticed we had a spark, we jumped in to add fuel and fan it.

Adding fuel to the fire

As soon as you notice a post showing signs of life, it’s up to you to keep the momentum going.

On the social Web, that means keeping the conversation alive. Find people who are talking about your post and encourage them. Respond to comments, engage, fan the debate, and keep the conversation on a healthy note.

When we called out Robert Scoble last year for spreading misinformation, he was the first person to come and engage on our post, and he did so negatively and aggressively.

The tone he set could have killed the conversation right there and caused people to be fearful of jumping in. But we weren’t going to let that happen. Instead, we went in there to engage Robert and show the community this was just the beginning of the conversation that would ultimately take place. We made it obvious that we were still in the post listening, and that everyone who commented would be heard and responded to.

No one wants to hang out at a party that’s dead or on its way out. Its important people see you’re still there.

Another way to add fuel is to allow readers to subscribe to comments so that they’re alerted each time a new voice enters the fray. This will keep them in conversation mode. It’s good for debate, but it’s also good in terms of SEO. The more page views the post receives, the more time people spend reading comments, the more it’s going to give off positive toolbar data to the search engines and help the post appear on an Alexa hotlist.

Fanning a positive flame

So, let me fill you in on something you already know — it’s really hard to have an intelligent conversation on the Internet.

Things always start out okay. Someone chimes in to offer an intelligent opinion and then, almost before your eyes, it devolves into threats, accusations and commentary about who still lives with their mother.

While it’s 100 percent entertaining to watch people have emotional breakdowns in public, conversations that get too far off track hurt your chances of going viral.

As the owner of that community, you’re responsible for fanning the flame in the right direction. When you see personal attacks being made, it’s up to you to steer the conversation back. If you think people are going too far, moderate.

Be careful, though. Viral conversations are typically rooted in debate. So you don’t want to discourage or squash it, but do keep things productive. You need to be the adult in the room, regardless of how good it feels to throw things.

Hitting the social streets

Once you’ve helped fan the flame, hit the streets!

Make sure your piece has been properly submitted to all the right social media sites, that it’s been Stumbled, that it’s on Reddit, that niche social sites are aware of it, and that it’s hit all of the communities and blogs you know are friendly to you.

Once you complete that, look outside your bubble to find other networks that may find your content interesting. What you’re trying to do here is pull people in from other networks so they’ll go out and talk about it with their community, one that doesn’t currently follow you.

It’s great that your own readers are passionate and involved in the conversation, but you want to use the natural sparks to pick up on other readers to help grow your blog and authority.

Tipping off mainstream media

You’ve covered your bases on the social networks, now look toward news sites and blog aggregators that may be interested in the conversation happening around your post.

If you’re part of the marketing community, you want to watch aggregators like TechMeme and TweetMeme. If you have a hot social media story, you want to tip off someone at Mashable. If it’s Google or heavily tech-related, tip off TechCrunch. If it’s a broader tech story, tip off more mainstream outlets, as well.

For example, our post about what we perceived to be brandjacking by Seth Godin received coverage from Business Week. My partner Rae Hoffman’s post on Google’s Real Time Spam Problem was noted in USA Today. And my other partner Rhea Drysdale is often featured on CNN.

These don’t happen by accident. They were opportunities created by tipping off the right people at the right time. This is where having a linkerati list comes into play. It helps you know who to contact for what type of story.

Making sure the post is optimized for SEO

The final thing you want to do is properly SEO your post to capitalize on search.

Going back to our Robert Scoble example, when we saw that taking off, we went back and edited the title tag to include Robert Scoble’s name. It was a small tweak that allowed us to take advantage of Google’s freshness factor and appear in his News results.

It’s a temporary rank, but it made sure that anyone who searched for Robert Scoble that day found our post. Sometimes that’s all you’re looking to do, to help keep the momentum going and get eyes to the page. You have to build awareness.

Content marketers don’t have the luxury of sitting back and hoping something goes hot. It’s up to you to help things take on a life of their own, whether it was planned from the start or you picked up on early signs of success.

Savvy content marketers always have the matches and lighter fluid ready for when a spark presents itself.

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Awesome WordPress Plugins to Empower Your Visitors

This guest post is by Jeff Starr, co-author of the book Digging into WordPress.

Helping your visitors get the most out of your site benefits everyone. Visitors get more relevant and useful content, and you enjoy better statistics and more exposure. Unfortunately the game is set up to keep people away from your site. Think about it:

• Search engines are used to find your content
• Feed readers are used to read your content
• Social media is used to share, tag, and organize your content

These are major obstacles, certainly, but they don’t have to work against you. People use search engines, feed readers, and social media because they provide functionality missing from most websites. By integrating some of that same functionality into your site, you empower your visitors to maximize its usefulness. This may sound like a tall order, but if you’re using WordPress, improving your site couldn’t be easier. Let’s look at some awesome WordPress plugins to make it happen.

Google-power your search results

People will always use external search engines like Google to find content on your site. That’s a good thing, but you also want to empower your users with the best possible search results. WordPress’ default search is limited in several ways:

• does not do “exact-match” searching
• only searches posts and post titles
• only searches your current WordPress installation
• can be painfully slow, gobbles resources

Fortunately, we can harness the power of Google and empower your users with the most accurate, comprehensive, and speedy search possible. Integrating Google Search into your site provides the following benefits:

• exact-match searching (i.e., using quotes to match specific phrases)
• searches your entire site plus any other desired sites or directories
• usually works pretty quickly – much faster than WordPress default search
• optional additional revenue through Google’s AdSense program

Sound good? Here are some of the best plugins to make it happen:

Google Search for WordPress

This beautiful plugin works silently behind the scenes to replace WordPress’ search results with Google’s search results. You simply install the plugin and enter your Google API Key in the Google Search Settings. If you don’t have an API Key, it’s free and easy to get one. The only other requirement is to include “Powered by Google” next to your search form and on the search-results page. Once it’s installed, all search results will be replaced by those from Google. No code-wrangling required.

More information and downloads are available at the WordPress Plugin Directory.

Google Custom Search Plugin

The Google Custom Search Plugin is another excellent way to integrate Google Search into your WordPress blog. Instead of signing up for an API Key, visit Google Search and create your own custom search engine by walking through the steps. After setting up your own form, grab the generated code and paste it into the plugin’s Settings page.

More information and downloads are available at the WordPress Plugin Directory.

More from Google

The More from Google plugin works a little differently by adding to your default search results instead of completely replacing them. After installing and configuring the plugin, your search results will include matches from both WordPress and Google. If Google has yet to index your entire site, this may be the perfect way to ensure that visitors are getting the best search results.

More information and downloads are available at the WordPress Plugin Directory.

Other Ways to Improve WordPress Default Search

If Google Search isn’t for you, don’t fret. Here are two additional plugins that will vastly improve WordPress’ default search:

• Search Everything – literally searches everything in your database, based on your preferences
• Better Search – highly customizable solution for improving WordPress’ default search

Regardless of how you do it, improving your site’s default search functionality is a great way to help your visitors use your site and find the content they crave.

Socialize and communitize your WordPress site

Bring the excitement of social-media to your WordPress-powered site! There are so many reasons to empower your readers to favorite, share, and rate your content directly on your website, and just as many awesome plugins to make it super-easy to do. Here are some of the best plugins for making your site fun, social, and more interactive.

WP Favorite Posts

WP Favorite Posts is a popular, five-star plugin that enables your visitors to add favorite posts to their own list of favorites. Installation is easy, and the plugin is straightforward and easy to modify and customize to fit any design. I use the plugin on my Angry-Birds fan site. You can see the “Add to Favorites” link in the upper-right corner of any post. There is also a link to “View Favorites”, where each user can view (and delete) their favorite links. And even cooler than all that, you can display a list of everyone’s most-popular favorites, very similar to how Delicious works.

More information and downloads are available at the WordPress Plugin Directory.

Star ratings and reviews

Post ratings are a fun and informative way to engage visitors and promote content. And there are many post-rating plugins to choose from.

In terms of functionality and customization, the GD Star Rating plugin can do just about anything, but the endless configuration options may be overkill. On the other end of the spectrum, you’ve got the elegant simplicity of the Vote-the-Post plugin, which is lightweight, flexible, and easy to customize code-side for tight design integration. I use this plugin to enable voting at Angry-Birds.net (see any post for example).

These plugins also enable you to display lists of top-rated posts anywhere on your site, so you can uninstall that most-popular-post plugin you no longer need.

Chat forum

Chat forums aren’t for every site, but when done right they’re great ways to build community and facilitate conversation. As with post-ratings, there are many chat plugins available in the Directory, but there are two that stand above the rest:

• WordSpew
• Pierre’s Wordspew

Both of these plugins are popular, highly rated plugins that provide flexible, customizable chat functionality. WordSpew is great because it uses Ajax to refresh everything automatically, keeping the chat window flowing in real time. Pierre’s Wordspew works without AJax, but it also uses a Flash .flv file that prevents it from working on devices like the iPad and iPhone. You can see a highly customized example of the WordSpew plugin at Dead Letter Art.

Show online users

Just like showing off counts for feed subscribers, Twitter followers, and Facebook fans, you can also show off the number of users currently online. An excellent plugin for this is WP-UserOnline, which provides several templates for easy configuration of how and where the user-online count is displayed. You can also set up a “Who’s online?” page that shows detailed statistics of where your visitors are on the site, who they are, and where they came from. This awesome plugin takes only minutes to implement using template tags and/or widgets.

Social media

Even after socializing your site, you want to make sure that visitors can easily share and bookmark your content on their favorite social-media sites. I tell you the truth, there are a gazillion plugins and widgets for adding every social-media site under the sun, but you really only need one plugin to do the job. Just install and configure WP Socializer and done. Any combination of social-media buttons, icons, links displayed virtually anywhere on your site. Tons of options yes, but they are all well-organized and easy to configure from the comfort of your WordPress Admin.

Wrapping up

No matter how awesome your website, there’s always room for improvement. With the techniques and tools described in this article, empowering your visitors to get the most from your WordPress site is as easy as installing and configuring a few choice plugins. As you go, keep an eye on site performance. Loading up with too many plugins can burden your server and slow things down for visitors. All the functionality in the world means nothing on a slow-loading website. A good strategy is to cherry-pick a few choice plugins and watch the results. Remember the goal is to help visitors get into your site and really use it for all it’s worth.

Jeff Starr is a web developer, graphic designer and content producer with over 10 years of experience and a passion for quality and detail. Jeff is co-author of the book Digging into WordPress and strives to help people be the best they can be on the Web. Read more from Jeff at Perishable Press or hire him at Monzilla Media.

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