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Un'altra Infografica da usare nei propri ppt.

2011-09-07T23:30:00Z

Ed ecco la Brandsphere, un'altra "infografica figa" da infilare nella propria ppt per stupire clienti, parenti, amici e conoscenti.

Al di là della grafica, un paio di concetti interessanti ci sono, specialmente la distinzione, sul fronte dei media, tra:

1. Paid: Digital advertising, banners, adwords, overlays
2. Owned: Created assets, custom content
3. Earned: Brand-related conversations and user-generated content
4: Promoted: in-stream or social paid promotions vehicles (e.g. Twitter’s Promoted products and Facebook’s Sponsored Stories)
5. Shared: Open platforms or communities where customers co-create and collaborate with brands. (e.g. Dell’s IdeaStorm and Starbuck’s MyStarbucksIdea.)

Scherzi a parte, può essere utile ed interessante per pensare ad un percorso di comunicazione integrato a partire dalla "Brand Story".
Secondo me val la pena di rifletterci sopra qualche minuto.

Un po' di approfondimento (e il link per scaricare l'immagine in più alta risoluzione) qui: http://www.briansolis.com/2011/08/new-inforgraphic-the-brandsphere-by-brian-solis-and-jess3/

[Branding & Marketing Blog / Venturini]

Foursquare’s Engineering Lead Takes Your Questions, Courtesy of Reddit

2011-07-14T20:57:42Z

Foursquare‘s Employee Number Three, Head of Server Engineering Harry Heymann, took to Reddit Thursday to answer questions about all things related to Foursquare and coding.

Heymann opened himself up to a barrage of queries from Internet nerds who want details on everything from Foursquare’s homebrewed dev solutions to the worst thing about working at the company.

Here’s the condensed highlights of the thread. You can go to Reddit to quiz Heymann on other topics — say, last fall’s epic bout of downtime and the post-mortem that involved an engineering all-nighter and a statement from MongoDB.

What were some of the major technology decisions you made, both good ones and bad ones, which have had the largest impact on Foursquare’s growth?

Harry Heymann: My four biggest technology decisions:

Scala. Nearly our entire server codebase is written in Scala (if you haven’t heard of it, it’s a programming language that is basically what you would get if Java + ML had a baby). This has worked out super well. It enables us to write concise easy to deal with code that is typechecked at compile time. It’s also been a big help with recruiting.
MongoDB. Nearly all of our backend storage is on MongoDB. This has also worked out pretty well. It’s enabled us to scale up faster/easier than if we had rolled our own solution on top of PostgreSQL (which we were using previously). There have been a few roadbumps along the way, but the team at 10gen has been a big help with thing.
Amazon Web Services. Kind of a no-brainer: It’s the default hosting environment for startups these days. Mostly great. I wish the IO (disk) situation there was better.
Lift. A web framework written in Scala. This one is the trickyest. Lift has a lot of cool features we really love but hasn’t seen super wide adoption and it has some rough edges. Still not certain how this will work out in the long run.

What are the best and worst things about working for Foursquare?

HH: Totally cheesy to say, but the best thing about working at Foursquare is the team. We really do have a great group of folks here that are very good at what they do and are all working incredibly hard to help the company succeed.

The worst thing is that Foursquare has invaded my life 24-7. I never stop thinking about it ever. Not being able to turn that off sucks sometimes. Also the pressure to meet our potential is pretty big. Scary sometimes. Don’t want to screw it up.

What kind of internal tools has Foursquare built?

HH: Jason [Liszka] and Jorge [Ortiz] wrote a nifty query DSL that we open sourced a while back called Rogue.

What is your favorite use of the Foursquare API by a third party developer?

HH: 4squareand4yearsago!

Having been involved since the beginning, do you feel there were any disadvantages to being based outside Silicon Valley?

HH: No, not many disadvantages. We had everything we needed for the early stages of our company in NY. We’ve expanded to San Francisco to increase our capacity to bring on great engineers (of which there are many in the Bay Area), but that was only after we grew to a certain scale.

Is it friendly rivalry between you and Gowalla, or more heated than that? I was just wondering.

HH: I think having them around pushed us to build a much better product much faster. Competition keeps you on your toes.

More About: AMA, developers, engineering, foursquare, reddit, server engineering

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Contingent of Corporate Social Strategists Grows

2011-03-21T01:58:01Z

I just updated the growing list of Corporate Social Strategists, you can take a look at these 280 professionals leading the charge at their corporation.

For a few years now, I’ve been managing the list of Corporate Social Strategists at large corporations (over 1000 employees, and on the buyer side). Part of my passion from being in this role at Hitachi a few years ago, has lead me to conducting in depth research on the future of this role, the Corporate Social Strategist (persona, title, degree, background, challenges, goals, teamcount, budgets). Since then, I’ve been making regular updates on the weekends when I can find time, and wanted to post a few stats:

280 folks have this highly coveted role, and growing. When I first published the list on Jan 7, 2011, there were 161 Corporate Social Strategists. Today on March 20th, the list is now 280 members (growing 73% since Jan), and the submissions continue to come in. I’m not suggesting the roles are being hired between Jan and March, but likely the awareness of the list.
Technology companies lead the pack, at 37% of list. No surprise, but tech companies are the first to adopt new technologies. In fact, by my count, both the hardware and software groups (I had to seperate them out as they are so large) account for 104 of the strategists. This early adopter market has tended to be the first group out of the gate, with many of them being B2B.
Don’t discount regulated industries, which comprises of 20% of the list. A growing 57 members of the list are in the regulated space, which I accounted as: energy, financial, insurance, health and life sciences, and government. One could argue that automotive would fit this bill too, but I didn’t account for that. In fact this role becomes incredibly important for regulated industries who need safe measures in place as they are under immediate scrutiny. In fact, as I argued in my recent post about Social Media Management Systems, regulated industries will need to have a social strategy for compliance reasons.

At Altimeter, we’re proud that Read Write Web’s top editor Marshall Kirkpatrick has identified that three of the top four Twitter accounts followed by these social business buyers are at our firm. Much of my time is spent helping these Corporate Social Strategist to stay out of the “social media helpdesk” and achieve scalable social programs, including getting them ready internally. I’ll be going through a great deal of my research at full day workshop in April at the Kansas IRL conference, hope to see you there.

If you want to keep track of who’s getting hired in this space, see my long term archive of folks “On the Move” in the Social Space, which I’ve been tracking since 2007.

Iran Becomes Next Country For Facebook-Led Revolution

2011-02-14T21:40:20Z

Today’s protests in Iran may have had some amount of organization occur through social media, including a Facebook page called the 25th Bahman.

I qualify the extent to which protest organizers may have used Facebook because Iran blocks access to the social network along with many other types of media, so people in the country have limited ability to get any message from Internet sources.

Now a post on Wired makes it sound like Facebook played a more definitive role in organizing the protests than what an (emigrated) Iranian friend told me this morning regarding censorship in the country; and apparently a significant number of people in Iran have figured out how to circumvent the government’s blockage of the Internet.

The blogger had spoken with someone affiliated with the 25th Bahman page on Facebook, who said:

Within days of the announcement for the solidarity rally, almost 50,000 users came onto the Facebook page and the hits and the views were upwards of 12 million. When we ran the numbers, up to 90 percent of them were coming from Iran.

The rally itself had about 4,000 participants show up at Tehran’s Imam Hossein Square, and the objective of the protest was to show solidarity with Egypt and Tunisia. The organizers of the rally, Mir Hussein Muosavi and Mahdi Karroubi, were denied permits for the event. That’s when organizers formed the page on Facebook to spread the word about the rally and the government’s attempt to censor it.

What do you think about the social network’s continuing use by protest organizers worldwide? And how do you suppose so many Iranians have been able to access Facebook despite the local government’s effort to block the site?

How We Use Social Media During Emergencies [INFOGRAPHIC]

2011-02-12T04:33:48Z

The use of social media during national and international crises, both natural and political, is something that Mashable has followed with great interest over the past few years.

As a culture, we started becoming more aware of the power of social media during times of crisis, like when the Iran election in 2009 caused a furor, both on the ground and on Twitter. More recently, the Internet and social media played an important role in spreading news about the earthquake in Haiti and political revolution in Egypt.

But what about other kinds of natural disasters or crime? Can social media be used to good effect then?

In 2009, two girls trapped in a storm water drain used Facebook to ask for help rather than calling emergency services from their mobile phones. At the time, authorities were concerned about the girls’ seemingly counterintuitive action.

However, according to new research from the American Red Cross, the Congressional Management Foundation and other organizations, social media could stand to play a larger and more formal role in emergency response. In fact, almost half the respondents in a recent survey said they would use social media in the event of a disaster to let relatives and friends know they were safe.

Take a look at the data presented below, courtesy of CreditLoan, and in the comments section, let us know how — or if — you would want to use social media during an emergency.

Click to see large version.

More About: disaster, emergency, emergency response, infographic, social media, trending

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3 Ways to Design Your Own Clothes Online

2011-01-16T15:23:38Z

Dave Sloan is CEO of Treehouse Logic, which offers a hosted design tool solution that enables customer co-creation. You can reach Dave at dave@treehouselogic.com and follow him on Twitter.

Do you have good taste? Feeling inspired? Lots of new fashion startups want to tap into your creativity. These new fashion sites are not your grandfather’s fashion brands. Instead, they invite anyone with design aspirations to co-create their own clothing or outfit.

Here are three ways to get started in fashion design from the comfort of your own computer.

1. Design and Sell Fashion Online

Garmz’s goal is to activate fashion talent. Based on a crowd-sourcing business model, designers upload their best designs and the community votes on favorites. The most popular designs get produced and put up in the Garmz online store. Profits from sales of the designed garment are shared with the designer.

Fabricly has set out to help you, the designer, launch your own clothing line. If you want to design for Fabricly, you simply submit your sketches via e-mail. The Fabricly team evaluates submissions and selects designers it wants to promote. Fabricly takes care of sourcing, production, PR and shares profits with the designer. “In short, Fabricly takes the pain and financial risk out of growing a fashion label.”

Both Garmz and Fabricly are in the business of democratizing the fashion world by giving creative, up-and-coming designers access to the fashion industry. As Garmz and Fabricly attract more designers and publish more unique content, they will grow the community of designers and shoppers. These sites give designers a platform to design, produce and sell their products online.

2. Design and Inspire

Instead of asking designers to sketch out free-form designs, Polyvore provides a web-based scrapbooking tool that accesses a broad library of fashion pieces. “Polyvore is the web’s largest community of tastemakers where people can discover their style and set trends around the world.” Polyvore encourages users to create sets, follow other users and inspire each other with fashion finds. The site also inspires creativity among its members by hosting design contests. These contests are often judged by celebrity icons like Kate Moss.

Fashiolista takes on the difficulty of finding fashion across a crowded Internet, i.e. “the shopping jungle,” by having members find and rate fashion finds. Users install a web browser extension to get started. As they browse through the Internet’s vast selection of garments and accessories, they can hit the “love it!” button from their browser tool bar. Loved items are added to a user’s Fashiolista profile and to the Fashiolista database of browseable items. Users customize their profile and follow fashion-forward members that inspire them, creating a fashion social network.

Google’s Boutiques.com invites members to create and follow online boutiques. Members can love, hate and share individual fashion items. To find items that may interest you, take the trademarked “stylyzer” quiz to be shown personalized recommendations. Like Pandora or Netflix, the algorithm learns more as people interact with the site, constantly improving the quality of recommendations. “Ultimately, Boutiques.com will provide shoppers with a much richer and interactive shopping experience and help drive traffic to retailers’ websites.”

3. Design and Buy

FashionPlaytes is a site where girls are their own fashion designers. Shoppers use a visual product configurator, i.e. “sketchbook,” to make selections including garment type, size, color, trim and accessories. FashionPlaytes offers tween girls an opportunity to design clothing and have it produced to wear at a reasonable price. The design experience is fun and playful, reminiscent of a video game.

Blank-Label is a build-a-shirt site that allows men to design their own dress shirt by selecting a fabric, style, collar and buttons. As users make selections they see a realistic graphical representation of the shirt they are creating. Users can submit their measurements along with their creation and should expect the custom shirt to take a few weeks to be sewn and shipped. “Designed by you. Stitched by us,” is the company’s slogan. Other custom shirt sites include World of Alfa, Shirtsmyway, and Propercloth.

These cool design-it-yourself startups are including you, the creative designer, in the shopping process. Some are marketplaces for up-and-coming designers, some are social fashion sites that encourage creative interaction and sharing, and others simply add visual product design to the online shopping experience. In any case, the Internet is becoming a hotbed of interactive design experiences. Get to it!

More Fashion Resources from Mashable:

- 4 Online Platforms for Personalized Style Advice
- Why the Fashion Industry Is Betting Big on Branded Online Content
- 7 Stellar Examples of Branded Content from the Fashion Industry
- 12 Tech Toys for a Geeked-Out Wedding
- How the Fashion Industry Is Using Digital Tools to Increase ROI

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, vm

Reviews: Google, Internet, iStockphoto

More About: blank label, boutiques.com, clothes, clothing, creativity, design, Fabricly, Fashiolista, fashion, FashionPlaytes, garmz, polyvore, shopping, trending

Una semplificazione del Social Media Monitoring

2011-01-17T13:25:01Z

Monitorare le conversazioni sui Social Media è importante: ascoltare quello che si dice del brand ed essere reattivi alle richieste/dubbi/critiche dei propri pubblici in rete è ormai una priorità riconosciuta. Il problema che si pone oggi non è tanto quello di riconoscere la necessità di ascoltare, e nemmeno quello di sapere in che modo ascoltare: [...]

45 New Social Media Resources You May Have Missed

2011-01-15T17:38:44Z

Wow, what a week. Last weekend the whole team was busy preparing for both the Mashable Awards Gala in Las Vegas and CES 2011 happening just next door. We’ve crowned your favorite picks from the past year and also previewed all the fancy new technology from the CES showroom.

Take a look through our roundup of tools and resources from the past week or so, including the future of the social media strategist, a slew of demos and hands-on gadget reviews and some insights into mobile retail.

Looking for even more social media resources? This guide appears every weekend, and you can check out all the lists-gone-by here any time.

Social Media

HOW TO: Use Advanced Twitter Search To Find a Job [VIDEO]
In this screencast, we’ll show you how the Advanced Twitter Search feature can help you find a job by using hashtags, geolocation and a little ingenuity.
How the NCAA Stays on Top of the Social Media Game [INTERVIEW]
There’s been a lot of discussion of the rules around professional athletes using social media, but what about collegiate athletes? We spoke to the NCAA’s managing director of communications.
Top 6 Private Sale Sites for the Best Travel Deals
Satisfy your need for discount travel with sites like Jetsetter, SniqueAway, Tablet Hotels, TripAlertz, Vacationist and Voyage Privé.
5 Key Tips for a Successful Social Media Content Strategy
These five content strategy techniques will build better relationships and earn your brand better results on the social web.
Mashable Awards Gala Recap & Photos
Congratulations to all the nominees and winners of the Mashable Awards.
4 Online Platforms for Personalized Style Advice
Whether you’re looking for advice from pros, strangers, or your friends, these four digital communities can give you a sounding board.
The 2010 Mashable Awards Winners [INFOGRAPHIC]
Take a look at this year’s Mashable Awards winners as voted for by you, the readers.
Is Twitter a Touchdown for Social Good?
Twitchange, which sells off celebrity Twitter presences for charity, is set to launch a social good campaign championed by NFL star Troy Polamalu.
Social Media and Subpoenas: A Broken System That Puts Journalistic Sources at Risk
Shield laws protect journalists and their sources, but communication via social media can be seized via subpoena, as we’ve seen in the case of WikiLeaks and Twitter. How can this loophole be addressed?
Are We Too Obsessed With Facebook? [INFOGRAPHIC]
Here, in a visual nutshell, are some highlights about Facebook usage, 2010 trends, adoption numbers and a great deal more.
HOW TO: Buy & Sell Music Directly on Facebook
We’ve just found an excellent new way for bands and fans to do exactly that: listen to, market, buy and sell music directly from a musician’s Facebook profile or page.
The Future of the Social Media Strategist
Inspired by Altimeter Group’s report on the “Career Path of the Corporate Social Strategist,” we sparked debate in the Mashable community on the future of this career.
The 5 Biggest Video Game Flops of All Time [COMIC]
These are really bad.
9 Ways to Get More Out of Quora
Businesses and non-profits can glean a wealth of information from Quora. Here are a few ways organizations large and small can tap into this active community.

For more social media news and resources, you can follow Mashable’s social media channel on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook.

Tech & Mobile

HANDS ON: Intel’s Unreal Interactive Graphics Experience at CES [VIDEO]
Intel has a gorgeous installation at its CES booth, and our own Christina Warren is there to guide you through the graphical techno-thrills.
HANDS-ON: Motorola Xoom and Android Honeycomb [VIDEO]
Mashable’s Ben Parr gets his hands on the new Motorola Xoom tablet, the first device with the Android 3.0 “Honeycomb” OS.
Nintendo 3DS: Hands-On and First Impressions [PICS]
We got another chance to play with the 3DS behind closed doors here at CES. This time, we could really explore some of its features, as well as take more pictures of the device.
5 Hip Bluetooth Headsets
We’ve hand-picked five classy Bluetooth headsets that will keep you connected on the go, without attracting unwanted attention from the Style Police.
40+ Things You Need to Watch in 2011
Now that the calendar has flipped to 2011, Mashable’s editors have put together a master list of the sites, apps, companies, and gadgets to watch for this year.
9 Top-Notch iPod Nano Cases
We’ve found some cool cases for the new nano – wrist-based and otherwise – to give you a great selection of coverings to choose from if you’re looking to protect your iPod.
Why the Verizon iPhone Doesn’t Spell Disaster for AT&T
Verizon will debut the iPhone on its network next week. What impact will it have on AT&T, and how will it respond?
DEMO: Motorola Atrix 4G Dual-Core Android Smartphone [VIDEO]
Android phones made a splash at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES), but few generated as many waves as the Motorola ATRIX 4G.
9 Sites To Find Mobile Apps From Mashable & Others
Here’s a list of the different places you can find our iPhone, Android and iPad [iTunes] apps, as well as discover other neat apps for your device.
Why Filesharing Companies Are Starting to Lobby Washington [INTERVIEW]
We interviewed RapidShare spokesman Daniel Raimer about the decision to hire a Washington lobbyist and the company’s ongoing disputes with the movie, music and credit card industries.
How WordPress Themes Actually Work [INFOGRAPHIC]
Ever wondered how WordPress actually works? Take a look at this infographic and find out.
5 Reasons Connected TV Could Flop in 2011
Fear, uncertainty and doubt are all reasons that consumers have been wary about purchasing their first “smart TVs.” Here’s a look at what can be done to overcome the trend.
5 Clever iPhone Accessories That Make Gaming More Fun
Whether you want the feel of a real wheel for driving games, improved grip for fierce fragging action, or fun with some novelty docks, here are five peripherals to enhance your iGaming.
HANDS ON: Dell’s 4G Streak 7 Tablet
In our demo videos, we see the Streak 7 as a great device for connecting to all the other devices and media in your home.
iPhone Faceoff: AT&T vs. Verizon
Spec wise, this phone is virtually identical to its AT&T brother, but the difference in network technologies means that there are a few differences in what the phone can do.
Hands On With Vizio’s Android-Powered Devices [VIDEO]
Vizio is embracing Android in a big way. Last week, the company showed off an Android-based tablet and smartphone, as well as a Google TV-powered HDTV.
Who Owns Your Data?
From searches to tweets to frequent flyer numbers, the trail of data we leave on the web can be long. The tough question is, who owns all of it? And what does this ownership represent?
6 Web Pioneers on What the Internet of the Future Will Look Like
Founders of AOL, MapQuest, Yelp, Drupal, WordPress, and Joomla! respond to the question: “What is the future of the Internet?”
HANDS ON: 10 New Tablets Ready to Challenge the iPad [VIDEOS]
One of the standout trends of CES 2011 was the tablet. No fewer than 80 tablets were on display from manufacturers from across the globe. Check out our videos testing some of the best.
10 iPhone Apps for Music Lovers
Music is an important part of our lives, and these 10 iPhone apps, which have mostly flown under the radar, deserve props for making it easier to enjoy the tunes we love.
Why Google Acquired eBook Technologies
Google has made its first acquisition of 2011 with eBook Technologies, a company that focuses on hardware & software distribution of e-books and e-book readers
Learning Ruby: Expert Advice for Absolute Beginners
We have polled six experts in the Ruby community – developers who have come highly recommended and respected by their peers – for tips, tricks and code snippets that will help get you started.

For more tech news and resources, you can follow Mashable’s tech channel on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook.

Business

Top 9 Job Sites to Bookmark for Your Career Search
Looking for work, or perhaps a career change? Here are nine top job sites – some old stand-bys, and a few fresh options you may not have considered.
Why Mobile Shopping Could Be As Big As Online Shopping
Research from ForeSee Results suggests that mobile shopping is off to a start similar in many ways to online shopping.
5 Creative Facebook Places Marketing Campaigns
These 5 Facebook Places campaigns illustrate how businesses can use the service, from offering simple discounts for checkins to multi-step rewards programs.
Making Data Relevant: The New Metrics for Social Marketing
A structured approach to capturing, measuring, analyzing and refining marketing strategies in near real time is essential to executing a successful social campaign.
How Social Data & Mobile Tech Can Improve the Retail Experience
Online commerce has felt the effects of Web 2.0, but what about the shopping experience in brick-and-mortar stores? Here’s a look at what’s in store in high-tech retail.
HOW TO: Create a World-Class Online Community for Your Business
Check out these nine tips on establishing and maintaining a community where potential customers feel engaged and empowered by your brand.
Should You Name Your Startup After a Meme?
What do you do when you want to build up buzz for your startup without revealing iota of what its purpose is? Call it “Hipster.”
5 New Paradigms for a Socially Engaged Company
Business teams that are engaged at all levels have proven to be more effective. Here’s a look at 5 factors that influence company culture and how to refresh them.
How a Digital Bible Became a Breakout Business
Glo’s interactive digital Bible is not only enhancing an ancient text, but also has the potential to revolutionize educational texts across every topic.

For more business news and resources, you can follow Mashable’s business channel on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook.

Image courtesy of DawgHouse Design Studio

Reviews: Android, Bluetooth, Drupal, Facebook, Google, Internet, Joomla, Mashable, Rapidshare, Twitter, Wikileaks, WordPress, Yelp

More About: business, facebook, Features Week In Review, List, Lists, Mobile 2.0, small business, social media, tech, technology, twitter

New Startup Provides Mobile Users a Live View Inside Local Venues

2011-01-12T04:48:30Z

The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.

Name: What Spot Now

Quick Pitch: With live views, real-time promotions, and social chatter, What Spot Now shows you what’s happening right now at your favorite places.

Genius Idea: Imagine being able to remotely peek inside your favorite coffee house to see if there are open tables or glimpse the interior digs of a nearby bar on your mobile phone. That kind of real-time perspective would likely influence where you end up grabbing a cup of joe or a cocktail.

Such is the logic behind What Spot Now, a new Portland-based startup that is an offshoot of Webby Award-winning software development firm Spotlight Mobile.

What Spot Now makes an iPhone app and mobile website that displays live images — captured by its trademarked “SpotCam” Wi-Fi cameras — inside neighborhood venues. The experience is designed to be a passive way to discover nearby venues and a practical alternative to the location-sharing services offered by Foursquare or Facebook. It too, however, traffics in the deals space with place-based promotions for users to redeem.

Fire up the app or mobile site and you’ll see nearby venues on a map — red pinpoints denote a What Spot Now venue with live images and green pinpoints highlight locations offering short-lived promotions. Touch a pinpoint for a thumbnail live image of each venue, or select a place to get more detailed information on specials and check out a close-up of the interior view.

Should you choose to frequent a local bar with a special, you can use the app to redeem your discount. What Spot Now employs a scratch-off mechanism that will activate a redemption code. Everything is meant to be time sensitive, though, so the code will expire five minutes after you activate it.

Local business owners can sign up with What Spot Now to give mobile users a live, security-camera view of the inside of their venues. Businesses are provided with the custom cameras; the cameras are capable of blurring people in photos and detecting when business is slow (in order to activate promotions). Businesses can also embed widgets on their websites and Facebook Pages that display the same live camera images to their online visitors.

There’s currently no charge for businesses, but that could change once the startup decides on a business model for its service.

“Google Street View changed the way people used the Internet. What Spot Now has the potential to have a similar effect,” explains co-founder Kiyo Kubo.

Kubo believes that the application offers a more important purpose than trite checkin features provided by popular location-based services. This is a “need-to-have” app, he says. In fact, Kubo and his friends used the app on Monday night to locate a bar with ample space to watch the BCS football game.

What Spot Now is a promising startup facing one great challenge: expansion. The small team is using Spotlight Mobile money to fund expansion; it has yet to go after funding from outside investors.

To date, all installations have been manual, another obvious deterrent to growth. It is also localized in the Portland, Oregon area with roughly 15 businesses currently participating and 10 more slated for next week, according to Kubo. Without a strong presence in a major U.S. market, the practical location-based service risks remaining unknown to most mobile users.

And then there’s Google. The search giant is aggressively going after the local business market with its Places offering and may even be working on a store interior view endeavor of its own. Kubo details, however, that What Spot Now has filed a few patents to protect its technology, which may actually make the startup more of an acquisition target.

For now, Portland residents should consider themselves privy to exciting technology that might very well change the way patrons and venues think about the age-old concept of “happy hour.”

Series Supported by Microsoft BizSpark

The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark, a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today.

Reviews: Facebook, Google, Internet, foursquare

More About: portland, spark-of-genius, spotlight mobile, startup, what spot now

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Can Quora Find Answers to Work-Related Questions?

2011-01-10T03:20:40Z

I’ve been looking at Quora for the last month, trying to figure out if it might be valuable for web workers.

What Can You Do On Quora?

In simple terms, you can ask a question on Quora and include some details for your question; comment on a question; answer a question; add a followup question, or flag a question. You can also publish a post to Quora, but for now, let’s just focus on the Q&A portion of the site.

Using Quora can be very confusing at first. Finding a topic, for example, isn’t immediately obvious or intuitive. Your only option seems to be “Add Question” in the field that appears at the top of the page. If you start entering a question, the site begins looking for questions with similar words, presenting them in a drop-down menu.

To find a topic, you need to enter a keyword, rather than a question. This will cause keyword matches to appear in the drop-down menu. You can then select the closest match, without having to click on the “Add Question” button. You can find a person or reference in the same manner.

To “filter” information from Quora, you can follow a topic or question, then receive notifications on your Quora home page about these activities. You can also specify 40 different activities that will trigger emails to you. While the granularity of settings is commendable, it can be intimidating to a new user.

How to Get Your Quora Questions Noticed

I’ve had extremely low response to my questions so far. The most-answered question I’ve posted had to do with relating Twitter to current events; the question was more asking for opinion than factual information.

Here are a few things you can do to improve exposure for your question:

Ask compelling questions where others can showcase their knowledge and experience.
Add topics to your question to tie it in to relevant areas on the site. Once your question has been posted, click the link above it.
Share your question with your network, through the Twitter and Facebook buttons on the right side of your question’s page; via Quora’s inbox to share with someone specific; through your other social networks as updates; and even via email.
Answer other people’s questions thoughtfully to build your reputation and profile on the site.

Over time, it seems like your valuable contributions on Quora will bolster the chances of your own questions being seen and answered.

Will Quora Be Useful for Work?

At the moment, many people are probably participating in Quora because it’s been getting a lot of notice. Until recently, Quora relied on a small group to ask and answer questions. At that stage, there wasn’t as much noise, so it was easier to see new questions. There was probably even a bit of “peer pressure” or reputation-building. But since the new year, all heck has broken loose.

In actual use, getting your answer addressed — and in a quality, thoughtful manner — seems to require:

the “right” people noticing it or being notified of it,
being posted at the “right” time, and
providing the “right” incentive for others with appropriate training or skills to respond quickly and thoughtfully.

Having a strong social network may help expand the reach of your question, but only if your network is paying attention, and all the other variables are in alignment.

In a recent post, Mathew Ingram asked if Quora can survive its growing popularity. Quora has features and algorithms that could help create the environment needed to generate quality responses. It would be a shame if Quora turned out to be based more on popularity than relevance or importance.

Like anything that relies on the serendipity of the right people, the right time, and the right question, Quora may not necessarily be “useful.” Or it may be folly to rely too much on Quora, or such sites as Yahoo Answers, Mahalo Answers, ChaCha, LinkedIn Answers, and Aardvark, for any serious work. I’m skeptical that sites powered by the public can provide fast and reliable information, particularly for work-related needs.

What do you think of Quora? Has it helped you accomplish any actual work?

Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub. req.):

Blogging and Twitter by the Fortune 500: A Longitudinal Study

2011-01-06T08:16:00Z

Here is some new research, The Fortune 500 and Social Media: A Longitudinal Study of Blogging and Twitter Usage by America’s Largest Companies, by Nora Ganim Barnes and Eric Mattson at the Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. I have covered some of their earlier work (see Fortune 500 Blogging Study), This new study builds on their 2008 study and expands to look at the Fortune 500's usage of Twitter.

The main findings indicated that 180 (22%) of the 2009 Fortune 500 have a public-facing corporate blog with a post in the past 12 months. This is up from 81 companies (16%) in 2008. To no surprise IT companies have the most blogs. This includes Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Microsoft, Apple, Oracle and Xerox. The specialty retail industry increased its blogging by from 4 companies on the 2008 list to 7 from the 2009 list. Included are companies such as Home Depot, Best Buy, Toys “R” Us and BJ’s Wholesale. This is perhaps because of the increasing awareness of social media marketing.

The big players seem to like blogs more. The top 100 companies on the list represent 39% of the 108 blogs in the 2009 F500. In 2008, 38% of the total number of blogs came from the top 100. The top 200 companies in 2009 had 58% of the F500 blogs, while the bottom 200 (those listed 301-500) had 29% of the 2009 F500 blogs. They seem to be open to conversations as 90% percent of the Fortune 500 blogs take comments, have RSS feeds and take subscriptions. This is consistent with the 2008 findings.

Of the 108 blogs located, 93 (86%) are linked directly to a corporate Twitter account. This is a three-fold increase from 2008. Twitter usage is now running ahead of blogs as 173 (35%) of the 2009 Fortune 500 has a Twitter account with a post within the past thirty days. Only 4 protected their tweets and these were not included in the total.

The insurance industry has the most Twitter accounts (13) with It and telecom following with 10 each. Like blogs size matters as 47% of the 173 twitter accounts belong to Fortune 500 companies in the top 200 while 35% come from those listed in the bottom 200 (201-500) on the 2009 list.

While there is growth in blogging in the Fortune 500 they are still blogging at a lower rate than the smaller Inc. 500 firms where 45% now have a blog. You can find a complete listing of those with blogs and twitter accounts in the research paper.

So it seems that blogs and Twitter are taking hold. I found it interesting, but not surprising, that Twitter usage is higher. However, if you only tweet and do not blog you are not able to get comprehensive messages out and are generally pointing to the messages of others. Perhaps those Twitter only firms are just interested in getting sound bytes out.

The Darwin Awareness Engine™ provides an easy way to keep track of all these tweets and blog posts. You can set up Darwin Editions™ on your topic of interests, including what the Fortune 500 or the Inc. 500 are saying.

New Year's Resolutions for Small Businesses

2011-01-03T06:01:00Z

Small business owners: if you're going to have a web site, make it an absolutely core component of your business. If you're not willing to do that, drop having a web site altogether. Don't follow the herd out of instinct. ...

44% of Online Sharing Occurs Through Facebook [INFOGRAPHIC]

2010-12-30T06:15:41Z

Sharing widget AddThis, which is installed on more than 7 million domains and reaches more than one billion users per month, released an infographic Wednesday with some interesting statistics about about our sharing habits.

Impressively, 44% of shares occurred through Facebook in 2010, up 33% from last year. That number does not include shares done via Facebook’s “Like” button, which means the actual, universal percentage of shares through Facebook is likely higher. Shares over Gmail increased by 395%, outpacing StumbleUpon, Facebook and Twitter. Shares via MySpace and Friendster dropped 20% and 31% respectively.

What platforms do you use most often to share content online?

Reviews: AddThis, Facebook, Friendster, MySpace, StumbleUpon, Twitter, gmail

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10 Elements for a Successful Landing Page [InfoGraphic]

2010-12-20T03:22:34Z

Great InfoGraphic from the Designers Couch blog which details the anatomy of a perfect landing page. The landing page infographic shows us 10 key items to include in your design as well what colors go well with different sites. The 10 elements they suggest concentrating on are:

Page Headlines and Ad Copy
Clear and Concise Headlines
Impeccable Grammar
Taking Advantage of Trust Indicators
Using a Strong Call to Action
Buttons and Calls to Action Should Stand Out
Go Easy on the Links
Use Relevant Images and Videos
Keep it Above the Fold
Always be Testing

Click image for larger view.

Twitter Places API Gains New Data Partners

2010-12-09T04:51:06Z

Twitter has just expanded and enhanced the location layer of its API.

The changes will make it easier for developers to interface with various datasets and offer better location-based experiences within their apps.

When Twitter Places launched back in June, it was clear that with the right implementations, the implications of a geo-aware Twitter could be vast.

Over the course of the past six months however, the location layer within tweets really hasn’t been used beyond the official apps and a smattering of services. Location-based networks such as Foursquare and Gowalla could associate a check-in tweet with Twitter Places; but for external apps, surfacing this data hasn’t really been possible.

As developer advocate Matt Harris posted to the Twitter API Announcements Google Group, that may soon change.

Twitter now has more extensive information for finding tweets about places using the place operator in the Search API.

Here’s the interesting part: This operator isn’t limited just to the Twitter Places data set. Rather, developers can also call up data sets from a variety of partners, including A&E Television Networks and History, Gowalla, OpenTable, TomTom, Yellow Pages Group (Canada) and Zagat.

This means developers, using the data set alias for any of these providers, can access search information about a specific location.

Where this really has immediate potential is with developers who are already interacting with one of the partner data sets. For instance, if your web app already plugs into OpenTable to offer restaurant information, you can now easily add recent tweets from that location to your app.

Interestingly, two of the biggest data sets, Facebook Places and Foursquare, are not on Twitter’s partner list. Facebook we can understand; Facebook Places is very much a mobile offering at this point in time. Foursquare’s omission is less clear. Foursquare data can still be mapped to Twitter Places when a checkin is tweeted by Foursquare, so we don’t understand the omission of the data set on the other end.

Perhaps the rumored upcoming Foursquare API extension will answer some of these questions.

[via WebProNews]

Reviews: Facebook, Gowalla, Twitter, foursquare

More About: api, geolocation, Geolocation API, gowalla, location, Twitter API, twitter places, zagat

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I AM OFFLINE! On Email Sabbatical from December 9 – January 12

2010-12-09T04:35:38Z

I am offline, taking a deeply needed break while traveling. During the duration of my break, no email will be received by my computer. All email sent to me during this period will be redirected to /dev/null (aka “the trash”). If you send me a message during this period, I will never receive it and never respond to it. If you need to contact me, please send your email after January 12. If it is urgent and you know how to reach my mother, I will be in touch with her every few days. But I am intentionally unreachable during this period. Please respect that a girl needs a break and this is mine.

Credit: Betta Design

Background on Email Sabbaticals…

Years ago, I realized that there was no way to take a vacation and manage the always-on, always-in-contact lifestyle that technology affords. Initially, I thought that it’d be possible to simply ignore email while on vacation and deal with it afterwards but I realized that this was untenable. It takes months to catch up on thousands of emails and I’d come back and immediately burn out again trying to catch up. I’d end up declaring email bankruptcy, thereby failing everyone who contacted me because of my delinquency. I knew that I needed a different strategy.

I decided to start taking email sabbaticals as a systematic and respectful way of publicly communicating my boundaries. Six months before vacation, I let close collaborators and colleagues know that I intend to be wholly offline during a set of collectively known dates. A month before I leave, I write out to everyone that I work with to make sure that we all know what I need to accomplish before I leave and make sure that we have a check list to get it all done. I also publicly blog that I will be departing, letting everyone else know that they should get in touch if they’re going to need something from me. A week before, I message out again warning people. In this way, I systematically make sure that I take care of others’ needs before I depart. Communication is key to an email sabbatical. Disappearing without properly making certain that everyone has what they need is irresponsible and disrespectful.

When I am on vacation, I am confident that I have taken care of my responsibilities before I left. I have contingency plans set up for anything I can predict might happen while I’m away. I make sure that my brother, mother, sysadmin, and housesitters all know how to reach me in case of an emergency. But most importantly, I know that my email spool is not filling up with a big To Do list that will haunt me when I’m gone. Do I miss things while I’m on vacation? Most certainly. Inevitably, I will receive numerous emails from journalists covering year-end stories about teens, people wanting me to review journal articles, students wanting help with their term papers, and perhaps an invitation or two. I do feel guilty not personally responding to these people to say that I’m unavailable but that’s precisely the point. I need to let go in order to truly take a break and refresh. Are there going to be people pissed off at me because I’m on vacation? Sure. But I’m also used to getting pissed off emails everyday from all sorts of people yelling at me for my attempt to explain teen life. Part of me feels a guilty pleasure knowing that I will never see 5 weeks worth of angry emails.

The advantage of an email sabbatical is that I can truly take time and decompress and ease back into everyday life in January without an overwhelming and unmanageable list of To Dos. Personally, I think it’s a whole lot more respectful to preemptively and openly communicate that I need a break than to screw up and declare bankruptcy when everything crumbles. But maybe that’s just me. I’m sure some of you are reading this and thinking that I’m a royal bitch for saying enough. Or think that I’m a privileged brat for being able to carve out time for myself. Personally, I think that we all need to start looking inwards and understanding our limitations and articulating our boundaries. Breaks aren’t a bad thing; they’re a fundamentally important way to refresh. I know that I will be a far better scholar when I return than I am right now because I’m too burnt out to think straight. I need this break. And I bet you do too. And taking a long weekend isn’t the same as taking a serious break. Which is why I’ve been saving all of my vacation days so that I could take a serious pause.

Anyhow, I wish you a happy December. Chag sameach, happy holidays! And please, for your sake and mine, take some time for yourself. {{hug}}

State Department Warns Students Against Discussing WikiLeaks on Facebook, Twitter

2010-12-05T16:04:16Z

A State Department official warned students at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs this week that discussing WikiLeaks on Facebook or Twitter could endanger their employment prospects.

The official, a former student of the school, called the career services office of his alma mater to advise students not to post links to WikiLeaks documents, nor to make comments on social networks such as Twitter and Facebook, as “engaging in these activities would call into question [a student's] ability to deal with confidential information, which is part of most positions with the federal government,” he was quoted as saying in an e-mail sent to students by the career services office on Tuesday.

The warning coincided with WikiLeaks’s release of thousands of secret U.S. embassy cables on Sunday, November 28. The site has since been plagued by multiple DDoS attacks, and termination of service notifications from its DNS provider, EveryDNS.net, its temporary website host, Amazon, and PayPal, which handled many of the donations the organization received.

Student Issandr El Amrani posted a copy of the e-mail on his blog on Thursday, the same day Sen. Joseph Lieberman and other lawmakers proposed legislation that would hold those who publish the names of any U.S. intelligence sources “criminally accountable.” A full copy of the e-mail, which the career services office has since confirmed sending, is pasted below:

From: “Office of Career Services”
Date: November 30, 2010 15:26:53 EST:
Hi students,
We received a call today from a SIPA alumnus who is working at the State Department. He asked us to pass along the following information to anyone who will be applying for jobs in the federal government, since all would require a background investigation and in some instances a security clearance.
The documents released during the past few months through Wikileaks are still considered classified documents. He recommends that you DO NOT post links to these documents nor make comments on social media sites such as Facebook or through Twitter. Engaging in these activities would call into question your ability to deal with confidential information, which is part of most positions with the federal government.
Regards,
 Office of Career Services

According to an e-mail sent by spokesperson Phillip J. Crowley to The Huffington Post, the warning does not, however, represent a formal policy position. “We have instructed State Department employees not to access the WikiLeaks site and download posted documents using an unclassified network since these documents are still classified. We condemn what Mr. Assange is doing, but have given no advice to anyone beyond the State Department to my knowledge,” he wrote.

Employees in the State Department are among the many government workers who were told by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget not to view the leaked documents without the required security clearance on Friday.

Although you may not be going for a job at the State Department any time soon, does the warning nevertheless make you wary of discussing WikiLeaks on public forums such as Facebook and Twitter?

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What's the risk for government agencies of NOT engaging via social media?

2010-12-05T20:51:00Z

If you do not embrace social media soon, the digital divide in your country will be dwarfed by the divide between your country and the rest of the world.
Chris Moore, the CIO of Edmonton Canada, as reported in FutureGov Magazine.

When people ask me to consider the risks of government agencies engaging with audiences via social media, I often respond by asking them if they've considered the risks of not engaging.

This often gets blank looks; many people don't often consider the risks of not doing things, even though it is a normal part of life.

For example, who today doesn't understand the risks of not wearing seat belts? However, only 15 years ago there were plenty of concerns still raised about the risk of wearing them.

Here's a list of some of the risks highlighted by the US anti-seatbelt movement:

Wouldn't you rather be thrown through the windshield of your car to safety than trapped in a rolling vehicle? And after you are thrown through the windshield, how can you jump out of the way of your rolling car if you're all tangled in a seatbelt?
As much as one tenth of one percent of auto accidents involve sudden fire or plunging into water. If everyone in the United States takes part in an annual auto accident, that's 23,000 people who run the risk of being trapped and fatally killed by a seatbelt each year!
Psychiatrists say that exposing young children to practices such as bondage from an early age can cause confusion during puberty.
A section on seatbelts in the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration Web site's FAQ says (when edited for clarity): "Wear ... a seatbelt ... and ... you will ... died."
Even the statistics of the pro-seatbelt Automotive Coalition for Restraint of Freedom proves the case of their opposition. The Coalition says that seatbelts cut the risk of serious or fatal injury by 40% to 55%, but even if this number is believed, it means that seatbelts are potentially deadly in the remaining 60% to 45% of cases!
Seatbelting is related to the hideous ancient Chinese practice of foot binding.

I expect, over time, that many of the risks of using social media will become normalised and accepted or explained away as myths, whereas the risks of not using social media will become more acute.

A good case in point is an article from The Australian published on Thursday 2 December, DFAT the dinosaur needs to find Facebook friends.

Besides the actual article appearing, which could be seen as reducing faith in the capability of DFAT to effectively carry out its duties, the article highlights the level of online activity by foreign services in countries like the US and UK, compared to the level of activity from DFAT.

For example, the article states that:

The [US] State Department operates 230 Facebook accounts, 80 Twitter feeds and 55 YouTube channels and has 40 Flickr sites. And the story of e-diplomacy doesn't end here. Other governments are experimenting with dozens of other innovations and the pace of change is rapid.

Notwithstanding the need to run quite so many accounts, the US State Department is becoming an astute user of social media to reinforce US foreign (and domestic) policy goals. This supports the US government to project its power globally and influence world opinion in its favour.

The expertise the State Department is building puts it far ahead of other nations, although the UK is doing an exemplary job with its diplomatic blog network. For example:

Digital tools would also allow DFAT to play in spaces it is cut off from at present. Take the blogosphere, for example. The US, Britain and Canada have all entered this space. The US maintains nine full-time Arabic-language bloggers, two Farsi bloggers and two Urdu bloggers while the British Foreign Office also has two full-time Farsi bloggers.

So, what is the risk to Australian government of not using social media, or of entering the space late (a position some Departments already face)?

Departments may become less effective at informing or influencing public opinion, locally and abroad. Our governments will be less able to compete diplomatically, both overseas and locally against social media savvy interest groups, corporations or even individuals.

As other nations continue to develop and exercise their public sector social media 'muscles', by institutionally blocking Australian public servants from using social media in their jobs we could be allowing our own government's 'muscles' to become increasingly flabby and weak.

Therefore, if public servants are not able to learn how to effectively communicate via social media now, we will be at an increasing disadvantage as others pull further ahead of us.

This loss of effectiveness could take a very, very long time to redress.

Next time you consider the risks of social media engagement by your department, consider the risks of not engaging for yourself (your career), your department, the government and Australia as a nation.

You might find that the risks of not engaging vastly outweigh the risks of engaging.

eGov AU

Craig Thomler's personal eGovernment thoughts and speculations from an Australian perspective

Google's Orkut Mimicking Foursquare? | The Blog Herald

2010-11-30T20:29:14Z

Apparently in a move to help maintain the sites popularity in the two regions where Google is seen as a major social player, orkut has decided to add a flavor of Foursquare to the service. You might have noticed something new in orkut. ...

Google Places Adds Hotpot, FourSquare Clone

2010-11-17T05:26:07Z

Google Places added a new social element - Hotpot. This FourSquare-like program allows you to make recommendations that then get shared with your friends.

Smartly, Hotpot pushes Places, getting business owners to claim their free listings to help Google build their efforts in the online Yellow Pages space, while using social networking to build reviews for their products.

Click to read the rest of this post...