For those of you unfamiliar with bit.ly (or other similar’s such as tinyURL, SnipURL etc etc) it lets you shorten web links that you want to share with others.  It has probably achieved a higher popularity in recent weeks due to applications such as Twitter that limit the number of characters you can write (140).  After all when you only have 140 characters you don’t want to waste 80 of them on a web link.

You can view an example of the stats it can provide at my bit.ly profile

Facebook: 68 friends
LinkedIn: 90 conections, 18 groups, 1 recommendation
Flickr: 14 images, 14 views
Twitter: 137 followers, following 130, 226 tweets
Delicious: 26 bookmarks
foursquare: 7 nights out, 8 check-ins
YouTube: 241 channel views

What does that tell me? Not a lot, but it will be interesting to review them in a few months and compare any growth or decline.  Social media is changing so quickly now that the stats could be drastically changed or could even include completely new mediums that haven’t even launched yet.

Interestingly enough the stats really don’t reveal anything interesting about the real benefit of social media, the two-way interaction that it allows you to make.  I may have posted 226 tweets but the what the stats don’t tell me is what these posts led to in terms of conversations and how many of these tweets were in response to my followers tweets.  I’m guessing there is something out there to analyse this so I’m off to find it.

For anyone reading who isn’t aware of what RSS Feeds do there is a handy guide to RSS Feeds on the BBC website but it is basically a program that allows you to store lists of your favourite websites.  It will then let you know when these sites have been updated and lets you read any new articles that have been posted.  It saves you from navigating to each of your favourite websites whenever you want to find new content.  If you’re a regular web traveller then it really is invaluable – I can’t believe I’ve waited so long to try it out.

My current feeds include the two BBC tech bloggers dot.rory and dot.maggie, the Guardian Technology pages, top social media news website Mashable and Charlie Brooker’s Screenburn column in the Guardian.  If you’ve got any suggestions for more feeds I’d like to hear them.

Anyway, we had a few less people than last time – perhaps due to the location? – but I think it was a success none the less.  Below is a copy of the powerpoint presentation we used to stimulate the discussion.

It seemed to have been in the background for a while but I’ve seen it cropping up more and more in recent weeks.  If you use Twitter you may have seen people geo-tagging their tweet so you can see where they were when they are tweeting.  In particular I’ve seen a service called foursquare getting mentioned a lot which is where we start to see possible applications for business.

Foursquare is being described as a location based social network.  You basically ‘check-in’ wherever you go and are rewarded with points for going further and to different places.  But it’s more than this, you can leave further comments too; just been to a new pub you like? Geo-tag it and leave a mini review.  Tag your business and a little about what you can offer.  You can then see how often foursquare users visit your business and reward them for doing so or get them to leave a geo-tag review.  It’s still in the very early stages – think twitter a couple of years ago – but expect more and more ways of using foursquare and in particular geo-tagging in the future.  In the meantime, it’s worth thinking how geo-tagging could be adapted to help your business.

*where I Google my own name and to date have 8 out of the top 10 listings, including the top 6 – yes it is a sad thing to do, I know.

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   “We must sweep clean the entire Government funded industry of business suport…”  There is, I believe, a fantastic support system in place for start-up businesses (in Scotland certainly).  The issue as I see it, is a gap in the system which means businesses who want to take the next step (from £100,000TO to £1,000,000TO)  These are the companies who create the employment and wealth that will help to kick-start the recovery.  Address the system to support these companies and you will start to see results.

2. “The Government must adopt a requirement that a specific percentage of all it’s procurement will be through small and medium businesses”  This is beginning to sound like positive discrimination.  Much better to ensure that the procurement systems are set up to allow SMEs access – simplifying the administration required for applying will ensure SMEs aren’t priced out of supplying the country’s largest customer, the State.

Having said that, I completely agree with his call for 100MB broadband on every doorstep, his encouragement for a greater emphasis on profitable businesses with a social bottom line and his belief that entrepreneurship is not restricted to the few.  It’s perhaps a bit too much generalising with what’s wrong and not enough specific actions to remedy the situation but at least he’s stuck his head above the parapet.

Crowdfunding is not a new concept but one that has flourished under the Internet and in particular, the rise of social media.  It’s basically a way of getting money (funding) from a group of people (crowd).  Recent high profile examples include the recent Obama election campaign.  By harnessing the new powers of the Internet – essentially the ease of taking online payments and the access to millions of people through social networks such as Facebook – Obama’s team managed to secure  nearly a billion dollars via small, online donations.

Another example is the more recent Haiti disaster appeal.  By harnessing the same networks of Facebook and Twitter using a viral message, Red Cross launched a fundraising service allowing you to donate money by text.  Within 48 hours they had raised $8 million.

From global to local, crowdfunding has really come into it’s own since the Internet took over the world.  Watch out for many more examples coming up over the next few months.

The first get-together of the East Lothian Coffee morning took place on Friday morning and seemed to be a great success.  About 48 people turned up which was beyond my expectations but fantastic all the same.  Still waiting to see the survey monkey feedback on the event but the anecdotal response seemed to be excellent.  A lot of complete social media beginners were there which is actually exactly the target market we were aiming for.

Our ongoing challenge will probably be to try and pitch the events at a level that doesn’t go over the heads of the novices while doesn’t bore the experienced.  Hopefully the general networking side of things will help stop the group splitting in two.  The LinkedIn group currently stands at 45 and I know for a fact that some members have joined LinkedIn, the group and even twitter, since the meeting on Friday.

Can’t wait for the next get together already.