Made with Monina Velarde's New Year's Resolution Generator. What's yours?
20091231
2009: my year in music
According to Last.fm, these were my favourite albums in 2009:- Jack Johnson – Sleep Through The Static (2008)
- Johnny Cash – Unearthed (2003)
- Elvis Costello – Secret, Profane & Sugarcane (2009)
- Florence + The Machine – Lungs (2009)
- Elvis Costello – The Very Best Of Elvis Costello (2001)
- M83 – Saturdays = Youth (2008)
- Yoav – Charmed & Strange (2008)
- Jeff Buckley – Grace (Legacy Edition) (2004)
- Morrissey – Years of Refusal (2009)
- Conor Oberst – Conor Oberst (2008)
- M. Ward – Hold Time (2009)
- Emmylou Harris – All I Intended To Be (2008)
- Bonnie 'Prince' Billy – Is It the Sea? (2008)
- Bat for Lashes – Two Suns (2009)
- Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu – Gurrumul (2008)
- Regina Spektor – Far (2009)
- Sting – If On A Winter's Night (2009)
- Tinariwen – Imidiwan: Companions (2009)
- David Bowie – ChangesBowie (1990)
- The Doors – The Best of the Doors (1985)
What do you think of my music taste: http://www.last.fm/user/CloWillaerts? How does it compare to yours?
20091230
My year in Facebook, Blogger and Slideshare
There's a (somewhat lame) Facebook app that allows you to make a collage of your Facebook status updates. The result is pictured above. But it made me think about the year so far, and 2009 sure was a wild ride. A short overview:January
- I found out what's it like to be in the middle of a storm, with the faux Annemie Peeters affair with Vincent van Quickenborne twitterscoop.
- Another experiment: crowdsourcing my keynote at ThinkAboutIT.eu event, Standing out in the blogosphere.
- My favourite Facebook status update (although I can't remember what it referred to): is hallucinating with ping-pong balls and a radio.
- People Change was another talk about communities and other "third places". Slide 2 includes a picture of me in a red bikini.
- Big news: Fastest Growing Demographic on Facebook: Women Over 55.
- Brussels Girl Geek Dinner #10 ("the Beauty Edition, sponsored by Nivea) is the first in a series of less technical, more workshop style events.
- My favourite Facebook status update: iz undr yur bed, steelin yur sox
- I sat on Mr T.'s lap, Nancy Reagan style!.
- On 14 March, Eurostar sent a bunch of Paris and Brussels Girl Geeks off to do some girly and geeky shopping in London. Looking back, it was a daring and crazy idea: we were live tweeting and posting flickr pictures while on data roaming. One of the most spectacular BGGD events so far!
- My favourite Facebook status update: is watching Tom De Bruyne's ass on Google Maps streetview. Yes, it's *that* big :-D
- I was totally wowed by the Pepsi Max claw machine the Adnerds showed me. It was a real claw machine - and there's Youtube movie to prove it.
- Start of my "Target Women" project, with a market research about women online, a booklet (Wat doen vrouwen online? / Que font les femmes online?), a blog (www.targetwomen.be) and a roadshow with what we called Office Picnics. Was a lot of fun to do, but also made me officially fat.
- This pretty emo Facebook status update illustrates that besides all that, April was a pretty cruel month: realizes there comes a time in life when you have to let go of all the pointless drama & the people who create it & surround yourself with people who make you laugh so hard that you forget the bad and focus solely on the good. After all, life is too short.
- My geek chart showed I was 42% Twitter, 21% Last.fm and 38% blog. Today I'm 62% Twitter, 26% Last.fm and only 6% blog and 6% Flickr. I'm seeing a similar trend, often also in favour of Facebook, with other social media users.
- Favourite Facebook status update: is made out of ticky-tacky. Gil and I watched a lot of Weeds episodes back then. Also watched as many episodes as humanly possible of Heroes, How I Met Your Mother, Life on Mars, Ashes to Ashes and lately: The Big Bang Theory.
- I bought a windows machine just because it looks gorgeous. I still think it does.
- I donated blood for the first time
- Much to my relief, my (then 12 yr old son) had good grades at school. This made me "happy as a bird with a French fry".
- Favourite Facebook status update: is the Chinese People’s Army Ghostnet 1984-style Covert Botnet From Hell. You've been warned.
- Gil and I spent 4 days at Rock Werchter. The highpoint was without any doubt Grace Jones. Amazing show! She's 61 but still wears that thong with pride.
- Gil and I went for a trip along the West Coast of the US and blogged about it at Geekyusa.wordpress.com. Check out Gil's Flickr set of this trip.
- Big news: Social media overtakes porn as the number 1 activity on the web
- I went back to London on a surprise trip.
- Other events: Pukkelpop (rainy), Klarafestival, and Formula 1 GP Belgium in Francorchamps (forgot to bring sandwiches)
- Favourite Facebook status update: is plotting murder plans against the over zealous neighbourhood rooster. Where's the fire, dude? Why are you crowing at four thirty in the morning? By October or so, the animal was gone, and construction workers started to drill down the building next door to ours.
- Went to Picnic09 conference, a very inspiring edition!
- Brussels Girl Geek Dinner #16 was all about ImkeDielen publishing her first book.
- Telling Facebook status update: has become a sheepwalker. Sorry Seth.
- TV programme Volt had an edition about Twitter with a.o. the number one twitter user in Belgium @Mcewenrobbie, tennis player @Clijsterskim and Milk Inc frontman @Realregi. I explained Twitter as a symptom/example of the realtime web and they recycled that bit in the news in December when Twitter had become word of the year.
- Memorable: BGGD Chocolate Soirée with Cote d'Or
- Favourite Facebook status update: Yes, the golden pigs fly at midnight - but do not listen to them, they speak only lies and treachery!
- My first speaking assignment abroad! Speaking at Personal Democracy Forum, Nov 20-21 in Barcelona about being Naked on the Dance Floor.
- A busy month for Brussels Girl Geek Dinners, but with 2 impressive editions: one on 3D printing, and one on Van Marcke's BigBlue project.
- Favourite Facebook status update: does NOT give way Mr Dirty Van. This is a priority road and I don't like your face.
- Speaking at Social Media Forum (How to make money with social media, blogging at Stichting Marketing Congres and LeWeb09.
- Favourite Facebook status update: Damn you, Charles Lafitte!
Weird Art
The Museum Of Weird Art (Mowa) "is a virtual community of like-minded people who share a passion for art and weird art in particular. As ‘weird’ is somehow a subjective label, it should be interpreted in a very broad sense. We interpret it mainly as a counterbalance for the overload of conventional art that is out there, and hence focus on art that goes beyond the traditional approach.
Over the years we came across countless good artists & artworks. Nevertheless, some of them really stand out, and we want to share these weird works with you in the Mowa gallery.
The Mowa gallery is updated on a constant basis. New additions to the gallery will be announced on the site and via our social media channels Facebook & Twitter."
20091228
The Conversation Prism, embeddable version
The Conversation Prism, made by Brian Solis (@briansolis) and Jesse Thomas (@jess3) is an infograph classic and without any doubt one of the best ways to present the plethora of social media and social network services. One problem: it was impossible to use in a classic powerpoint presentation. Until I came across this embeddable version, which allows you to zoom in on the "leaves".
20091224
Velvet rope social networks
TrendsSpotting's 2010 Social Media Influencers - Trend Predictions in 140 Characters
One of Taly Weiss' social media trend predictions focuses on private social networks, although the word itself implies an impossible contradiction. But as David Armano explains, "Social media begins to look less social .. more "exclusive" - getting value .. while filtering out the clutter”. Once more, the value is in the filter. View more documents from Taly Weiss.
This is related to what Chris Brogan calls velvet rope social networks, "where some kind of gating to keep out the commons will occur." He sees "a thousand specific Twitters popping up for places internally and externally, each using OAuth to validate who we are."
20091219
Flickr Poet
Stories In Flight | FlickrPoet is part of Stories In Flight, an ongoing exploration of storytelling in the age of the Internet. To make it work, copy-paste e.g. song lyrics into the form. For the lazy ones, there's also an automatic version that feeds on haikus published on Twitter: #haiku. The haiku tweets will be displayed in a loop, with regular updates from Twitter when new haiku tweets are available.See also my Twitter Quilt - I love mashups like this!
20091217
One week before Christmas and I haven't got a thing to wear
I'm not exactly known for my sense of style. And for this year's holidays, I literally don't have anything to wear. The kind people of Anne-Sophie Smartshopping had a good look at me and proposed the three combinations above. I get one of them, but which one should I pick? More at BGGD #21 contest: win an Anne-Sophie party dress.
20091216
A Weighty Decision
I'll be honest with you: I stopped doing exercises on the Wii Fit because I felt the "overweight" label hard to swallow. Especially if this also means that your little Mii avatar also gets fat. It reminds me of the talking scale that cartoon cat Garfield used to use. During each of his diets, Garfield would weigh himself, saying something to the scale first. Upon stepping off, the scale would respond by making a snarky remark about his weight, such as "I was made for people and pets, not cargo ships". Can you imagine doing that with the WiFi body scale, with adding more insult to overweight by twittering your weight to 5000+ Twitter followers? Would I be able to swallow the replies I would get, or can we presume that Twitter followers, by nature, would be more kind than Garfield's talking scale?To make things even more complicated, I can't make it to Brussels Girl Geek Dinner #22 tonight and ask the Weight Watchers people myself how to survive the upcoming holiday season without feeling guilty about eating all that food. So here's my question to you: what is your advice? Should I try and find others like me to take on this "Healthy Living/Eating" project together? Do a Weight Watchers course, for example? Or should I go for a life caching version of my project of my own, broadcasting my weight every day to keep the pressure up?
Or both?
20091213
A weekend at the coolest hotel in London, the Hoxton
Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.
Recommended: travel by Eurostar (check out the smile on my face in this Tweetphoto), buy or top up your Oyster card (which is, as Gil just found out, reprogrammable to do anything you'd like it too except get you around in the London Underground), but most of all: stay at the Hoxton Hotel. It's located smack in the middle of a very lively neighbourhood and the lobby is a hipster magnet, but we went for the luxury + technology mix they offer. They had us at "free wifi" but the room itself was gorgeous, with duck down duvets and pillows, a silent mattress, and a great power shower that easily holds two persons scrubbing each others backs. After a full day of shopping and Tate Modern, this room and its little luxuries made me go Soft kitty, warm kitty, little ball of fur, happy kitty,sleepy kitty, purr purr purr in my head. Or maybe it was the Hoxton Love Potion, one of the cocktails they serve at the bar downstairs.
What I learnt at LeWeb09: identity, privacy, visibility, responsibility
Facebook’s Ethan Beard’s topic was interesting enough: how thanks to Facebook Connect (and Twitter) people’s web identity is represented by a series of connections. I’ve been to a number of conferences in 2009 and the big difference with 2008 was: if the speaker didn’t have an active Twitter account, it was very hard to talk about him/her. Twitter’s Ryan Sarver announced a depreciation of basic Auth in June 2010 (“not enough security”) in favour of OAuth. I’m really curious how “Twitter is your online identity” will evolve.
But back to Facebook: Beard’s story was about how in the short future we’ll experience the world around us through the lens of your friends. It’s what Nicolas Negroponte has been saying for years: the web is about people, not technology. And I’m glad the web is no longer about algorithms, code and anonymous users – this allows us to shape it to human needs instead of technical possibilities.
Michael Arrington asked an interesting question during one of the panels he was moderating: LinkedIn, Myspace, Netlog, Yahoo and Ning were all founding members of Google’s OpenSocial but all you hear about these days is Facebook Connect (and by June 2010, I’m guessing OAuth). The “identity by connections” is an interesting thought. Chris Brogan even took it a step further, by talking about Twitter as “the serendipity engine” and its users as “trust agents” (which is also the title of a book I’ve just added to my wishlist).
There is, of course, a big difference between your identity towards the world outside you, and your inner identity. I heard Danah Boyd (@zephoria) say – well I couldn’t help it, since Danah Boyd systematically mistakes any listening ear for a town square – but she explained how you’re not defined by the people who follow you: it’s the people YOU follow that dictate your norms. And since what people are seeing and experiencing is different, the result is often unexpected. Another thing I learnt: Boyd regularly searches e.g. Twitter Search for random words like “the” to see what pop up. She “wants to get to know a world that’s different from her own”. I like the idea: it beats Google’s “I feel lucky” because it allows you to eavesdrop on total strangers in real time. Fascinating.
Her concept of “privacy vs visibility” is also interesting. She talked about three cases of young people who had been documented how they’d been abused, without anyone really taking action. Boyd: “We use privacy to justify why we’re not looking.” Come to think of it: technologies like Google Search and the realtime web make visible what used to be hidden (or, at least: too taboo to talk about it openly): bullying, domestic violence, sexual abuse. Boyd ended with a plea to “think about the power of visibility. Embrace it.”
Which reminds me of Queen Rania. She’s beautiful, elegant and friendly as royal wives are expected to be, but she really impressed me with her professionalism. I’ve never seen anyone so comfortable in front of big crowds and lots of cameras. She delivered a speech in which she tried to “get everybody’s butts out of their computer chairs” to bring change to the real world. She’s probably compared to Princess Diana all the time but this Queen Rania takes it a step further: she uses her own Twitter account to collect ideas and examples of effective online activism. Why Twitter? Because as a royalty, it’s really hard for her to connect with people in real life. But on Twitter, there are no intimidating bodyguards surrounding her and people feel more free to speak their minds. Queen Rania’s call to action was to contact her (through Twitter, of course) to apply to become, during one day, one of the charities or projects that stands in the spotlight at www.join1goal.com .
What I learnt at LeWeb09: social gaming, connecting, passion, communities, and plain hard work
At the LeWeb09 conference, ceo and founder of SocialGamingNetwork Shervin Peshewar predicted successful social gaming companies will go public in 2010. Not sure if he meant Zynga, Playfish, or any others but we’ll see.Director of the Facebook Developer Network Ethan Beard didn’t seem too surprised that social gaming quickly engaged large audiences. According to him, this proves that what consumers really want, is to connect with other users through gaming.
Ning is, of course, not about gaming at all. But Ning’s Cristian Cusser got my attention when he said: “Friending can be a pretty big burden.” I bet he meant how much of a pressure it can be to try and have more Facebook friends and more Twitter followers, since that seemed to be the metrics for “online influence”. This is why, according to Cusser, Ning is not about the amount of connections, but about communicating around a common passion. And if you see and hear Chris Pirillo on stage, you feel that people like him, and the community of tech lovers he leads, are all about just that: being passionate about what you love. Like I mentioned in My 3 LeWeb09 favourites, Chris Pirillo was one of the speakers I was really looking forward to. In spite of his fame, he’s not the kind of person who enjoys being on stage. Maybe it was the room temperature, but he appeared to be very nervous. And he was very, very modest about his role in geek history: “I turned media into mediocrity. I’m just myself.” Which solves like 5 “personal branding” challenges at the same time. He didn’t speak about identity in the digital age, or about social media, but about online communities: “Community isn’t about a company. It’s about a culture that surrounds the products and services this company creates. Community requires tools that can’t be built. There’s one thing that cannot scale, and that’s our spirit. If you believe that a community is a tool, you yourself are a tool.” Replace “community” with “social media” and you’ll immediately see where many companies, in their haste to jump on the social media train, went wrong.
Pirillo’s examples of true human spirit as reflected in internet’s popular culture are icanhascheeseburger .com and thisiswhyyourefat.com: “Community is the antithesis of ego. It exists here in your heart. Twitter of Facebook might not be here any more in a couple of years, but the feeling of belong that defines communities will go on forever. You, wherever you go, are the community.
The example of a brand that has been able to create a community by leveraging social media is of course Zappos. They’re definitely not the cheapest, maybe they’re not the best, but the online Zappos presence and how their CEO (@zappos) Tony Hsieh.
Zappos has become the poster child of customer care as the center piece of a company’s marketing strategy. According to Gary Vaynerchuck, this mindset even has become a customer experience: “Consumers expect a far greater level of customer care. Word of mouth has become so powerful that small time rules will start to apply.” In the end, putting the care back in customer care is one of the most efficient ways to make a difference: “We’re living in the best times ever. The cost of entry is so low that we should all give it a shot.” But what about the economic crisis? Doesn’t that make it far more risky to give up your day job and start a new business on the web? “Don’t give up your day job,” Vaynerchuck replied. “Most people get home at six or seven and have to leave for work at seven or eight in the morning. There’s a lot of time between eight and eight. Instead of watching TV or playing with your wii, get to work.” But even if the cost of entry is low, internet business isn’t any easier than the brick and mortar version. “Internet is a reactionary business. How can you make a three year plan if things change every three weeks? Facebook is only six years old. The fucking thing hasn’t had sex yet and it’s dominating the world.”
What I learnt at LeWeb09: mobile phone billing
American software architect and businessperson Jack Dorsey was introduced as “the inventor of Twitter”. It’s always nice to hear how, like many other great inventions in human history, Twitter was invented almost by accident. But we were all there, of course, to hear what was on @jack’s mind and what he sees as the biggest web opportunities of the coming years. He sees two:
- health care. But he immediately admitted that this industry is currently too much in trouble (in the U.S.) to enable new business.
- mobile phone billing. He demoed the squareup, a small dongle-like physical device that uses an input that virtually every mobile phone has: the audio jack. It didn’t work perfectly, as live demoes never do, and #squareup is still in limited beta because there are still too many challenges: manage fraud, security and risk – all in realtime.
What I learnt at LeWeb09: geolocation, connected objects, and how internet and the real world have started to blend
According to my least favourite LeWeb character Jeff Clavier, one of the really big web trends for the coming years is geolocation. Or as he put it: “Location, location, location.” He’s probably right, but unless I missed something (which I probably did – spending a wild night on the town with the Norwegian delegation takes does that to you) I didn’t learn a lot about this topic. This is a bit of a missed opportunity: I think I’m not the only one who’s been wondering what happened to Dodgeball (location-based social networking, hot in 2007, but labeled “expired” in this month’s WiredUK), FourSquare (“tired”) and what’s so hot about Noticin.gs (“wired” but misspelt in WiredUK). Loic’s Twitter/Wifi Scales (which publishes his weight, 104 kilos by the way, to the web just like Nike Plus helps you publish your running tracks) were not just a running gag, but a fine example of connected objects. But again, I had hoped to see more examples of those and didn’t see any. What happened to Violet, for example – the French company that wanted to take over the world rabbit by rabbit but was rumoured to be in financial trouble earlier this year.
But even if the big stars of geolocation and connected objects weren’t there, Nokia’s head of Ovi MarCom, described 2009 as the year that internet content started to blend in with real world locations. And like Osame Bedier said, mobile is playing a major role in this: “Mobile is bringing the internet to everyday life. The line between online and real life is becoming blurred. “
My LeWeb09: first impressions
I felt a bit stupid back at LeWeb09 for being there as an official blogger but not being able to blog because I had forgotten to pack the power cable for my laptop. Isn’t it annoying how every laptop maker does an effort to design completely different power plugs for every single model? I spent hours looking at other attendees’ laptops to see if anyone had an HP mini too but guess what: 2300 web enthousiasts in one room, and NONE had a laptop like mine. I was lucky I had my Nokia N97 mini with me so I could at least Tweet, update Facebook and check my e-mail.This year’s LeWeb was a very good one if you look at how it’s been organized: the wifi, the food, and even the room temperature were okay. We were totally spoilt in the morning with @jack ‘s demo of square but after that I got bored a bit. There’s a serious downside to having male only speaker panels: they go on and on about how big their * is. And * can stand for anything: user base, funding, amount of apps in the store, or traffic.
On top of this post is a typical panel picture, with from left to right: the Facebook guy, the Ning guy, the LinkedIn guy, the Ustream guy, the SixApart guy, the MySpace guy, and the Twitter guy. Sitting on the right hand side is Techcrunch’s Michael Arrington, who is by the way even scarier when he’s being nice to the speakers and to Loic.
Also very typical is the “Who in this room is using *? Raise your hand.” If your name is not Facebook or Twitter, this is a very risky technique. I saw even Gary Vaynerchuck struggle with it during his "Fireside Chat with Loic Lemeur".
Still, without any doubt, for me this was the best LeWeb so far. I really learnt a lot and many things the speakers said got me thinking over the last few days.
So I’m not going to review every single speaker but focus on a number of web trends, and what I learnt about them at LeWeb09.
20091207
Truth in advertising: Dyson D26 vs my arm
The question I asked myself yesterday in Say hello to my little friend, DC26 aka "the baby Dyson" was: is the official promotion picture for the D26 a Photoshop Disaster, or not?
I decided to re-enact the picture to find out if
- The D26 really is small enough to hold in one hand like this, and
- The D26 really is light enough to hold in one hand like this
20091206
Jonathan Salem Baskin: a heretic at Stichting Marketing Congress
He had been called a heretic by De Standaard, and was expected to bring fireworks to the Stichting Marketing Congres. And I must say author and speaker Jonathan Salem Baskin (@JonSalem) delivered. He didn't use marketingspeak ("If I see another web 2.0 slide I'm gonna throw up") and was not afraid to speak his mind about the reigning advertising popes (on @pietel's hero @bogusky: "I hope I haven't wasted your time. Because that's the business Alex is in.") Baskin clearly hadn't flown all the way from Chicago to Ghent to make friends or to tell the attendees of the Stichting Marketing Congress what they wanted to hear. He was there to challenge them, and get some ideas for the book he's working on in the process.A few quotes to give you an idea:
- Consumers are not in control. They are less trusting, less in control, less loyal than ever. And they just had enough of being insulted by time wasting, mind numbing ads. Keep marketing from ruining the credibility of your brand.
- Brand is not a promise. Promises are never fulfilled. It's about the here and now. Architect 'branding' experiences into real-time experiences. We don't need to get into the head of our consumers, get into their lives.
Charlene Li: Leadership doesn’t happen in a vacuum
I had to get up at 7 on a Saturday morning for this, but it was absolutely worth it: seeing ex Forrester Research executive, book author and influential marketing blogger Charlene Li speak at Stichting Marketing Congres. And she really made my day!
Charlene Li saw 4 goals that define your strategy:
- Always start with Learn and use monitoring tools to do so
- Dialog with your community. It used to be called the Ladder of Participation (inactives, spectators, joiners, collectors, critics, creators) in Forrester's Social Technographics report, but Li now calls it The Engagement Pyramid (watchers, sharers, commenters, producers, curators). Much to Boondoggle's joy, she showed baby-olifant.be as a prime example of how to create a relationship with your audience. For her slide on the Engagement scores of 100 brands (with Starbucks and Dell as examples of high engagement in many channels) she used engagementdb.com.
- Help your members support each other. And Twitter is indeed a great way to provide first line customer support.
- Innovate and encourage ideas from your user base by using crowdsourcing.
- Start small, start now Understand audience “Socialgraphics” Set a clear goal
- Understand the benefits of openness. Fans (e.g. of your Facebook page) have value only if you do something with them.
- Build trust and manage risk. Here Li talked about the Sandbox Covenant, the process by which the open leader defines how big the “sandbox”, and then in concert with employees, customers, and partners, defines the walls of that sandbox clearly. Leadership doesn’t happen in a vacuum – it’s defined by how you will interact and engage with your employees, customers, and partners.
- Plan to fail well: identify the top 5-10 worst case scenarios, encourage risk taking and forgive failures.
Say hello to my little friend, DC26 aka "the baby Dyson"
Some brands have it easy when it comes to listening in on social media. Take Dyson, for example: if you like modern design, you'll like it. If you have a love-hate relationship with vacuuming (think Freddie Mercury in "I want to break free") you'll absolutely agree that Dyson delivers. (Or, if you like cheesy word play: Dysons suck big time).
So when Dyson Belgium offered me to try and use their latest vacuum cleaner, I was all for.
So when Dyson Belgium offered me to try and use their latest vacuum cleaner, I was all for.
The DC26 was developed for the Japanese market, which is why it's so compact - without losing any of its power. Yesterday our Christmas Tree fell over, spilling glitter all over the floor, and it's true: this little Dyson sucks, too. I spent a few minutes watching the glitter whirl in the Dyson's container, but that's because I'm a little weird and easily amused.
What I didn't "buy", however, was the official promotion picture for the D26. Have a look at the picture below: is it a Photoshop Disaster, or not?
Social Media Monitoring tools
I've never met a marketing manager who didn't, at a certain point in time, want a dashboard to see how his/her brands were doing. And since "listen" is the number one step in engaging in social media, a brand vanity search on Google simply isn't enough any more. A short overview:- socialmention* realtime social media search and analysis. Free service that even allows you to create social media alerts ("Like Google Alerts but for social media"). I use it a lot but don't expect it to catch everything. But to find out on which social media sources people talk about your brand, or who the influentials are, socialmention* is a good start.
- Brands In Public: "a collection of interesting, accessible, public-facing dashboards for your favorite brands (...). Each dashboard organizes a hot list of what's being said about the brand around the web, via Twitter and blogs and YouTube and Google Trends and more." Brands in Public is an initiative of Seth Godin's Squidoo and costs $400 a month.
- Salesforce Service Cloud 2 with a.o. Salesforce for Twitter "Monitor tweets and find customers that need help, let customers create cases with tweets, and even share knowledge with the Twitter community." If you already use SalesForce: a great way to put the "care" back into "customer care" by listening in on what your customers say about you on Twitter.
- socialseek by sensidea monitors "press, blogs, tweets, videos, pics, and events on any topic, in your city or anywhere". The app has a pretty a wide reach and allows you to export results and charts.
- attentio helps you to keep track of your brands in social media. Their attentio Brand Dashboard is a listening platform that allows you to identify who's influential in social media. Not a free service, but it allows companies to visualize buzz trends, share of buzz, detect "bursting events", and breakdown by source, topic and country.
- PeopleBrowser: is currently experiencing issues so I'll check back on that one later.
- viralheat: "social media monitoring, analytics, and insights. Now with location filtering." Seven days free trial; plans rangeat $9.99 to $139.98 a month
- Microsoft LookingGlass: currently a proof-of-concept prototype business tool. I heard about it during Social Media Forum. According to this post on the Microsoft Advertising Blog it will enable companies to listen to, participate in, and analyze social media in order to "quickly and efficiently put social media to use as they create advertising".
20091203
My speaker slides for Social Media Forum: how to make money with social media
I'm speaking today at Social Media Forum in Brussels. Follow the #smf tag on Twitter to listen in realtime.
How to make money with social media
View more presentations from bnox.
20091201
Unicef Inspired Gifts: every drop counts
Unicef's Inspired Gifts are real, life-saving and life-changing gifts that
are distributed to children and their communities around the world
throughout the year.When you buy an Inspired Gift for a friend or family member that person will receive an electronic personalized gift card with a photograph or description of the gift/programme that you have purchased.
Your purchase will then, depending on where the need is greatest, be dispatched to any of the 155 countries in which Unicef operates. There's a wide variety of gifts to choose from, including immunization vaccines, therapeutic milk, blankets, family water kits, water pumps, mosquito nets and lots more. So instead of buying your friends and family more perfume, socks and ties, buy a water pump, water purification tablets, or some exercise books and have it delivered to a region in the world where the need is the highest. If there are more products bought then needed in a specific region, the article will be marked as "sold out" on the e-shop. You can choose another article.
Great mix of e-commerce mechanics and charity!
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