social media – Page 7

The Social Gnome’s Hoard

Welcome to the Social Gnome’s Hoard, a collection of this week’s most interesting finds from the Social Gnome’s internet travels.

Week of May 7, 2012:

If you’re not already aware, there are two excellent tools for sharing great content: Curate.us and Repost.us. Curate.us allows you to clip an article or webpage and share the image in a blog, email, etc. (like what you see to the right here.) Repost.us allows you to embed an entire article, like you would a video, into an email or blog. These are fantastic tools, especially if you know a bit about HTML. Another special thanks to Jay Baer for using this tool in his daily One Social Thing emails newsletter, which is how I found out about these tools.

crowdfunding-nets-millions-for-game-developers1 — Image credit: Entrepreneur.com

An interesting article from Entrepreneur.com’s blog talking about the use of crowd funding to finance video games. Those seeking hundreds of thousands of dollars in backing are finding that they’re getting well into the millions in some cases. The article warns that this should still be considered the exception, rather than the rule. I’m interested in seeing how well these games do financially once they actually hit the market and they’ve promised copies to all the backers – the very ones who would have been their market in the first place. Will solely realizing the game be enough, or will the meager profits steer creators away from promising free merchandise for backing?

Chicago start-up Belly — Photo credit: TechCrunch.com

TechCrunch featured an article spotlighting recent investment into Chicago startup Belly, who is trying reinvent the customer loyalty aspect of social business “through gamification, digital check-ins and a <sic> iPad setup for businesses.” It sounds like it would at least get rid of those pesky customer loyalty keychain cards everyone hates. Although, “scanning” or “swiping your Belly” just doesn’t have a great ring to it. It sounds kinda weird, actually. Nonetheless, this is a start up to keep an eye on.

I have a guest post on The Social Penguin Blog this week discussing 4 Important Aspects of Handling Online Reviews. If you have customers that review you online, this is something you really need to take a look at.

If you haven’t read my previous post this week on Google Currents vs. Flipboard, check it out. I’ve made myself a Producer on Google Currents as well. You can go here (https://www.google.com/producer/editions/CAow7ZynAQ/robzie_social) to subscribe via Currents if you have the app. I do recommend downloading and using it if you read articles and publications on your mobile device (iOS or Android). It’s pretty slick. Also…I need to get to 200 subscribers so that I can actually be found via search. When you first submit your content, people can only subscribe with the link provided. Help mmeeeeeeeee. 😀

Oatmeal State of the Web — Credit: TheOatmeal.com

And finally, I leave you with a laugh. As usual, The Oatmeal gets it right, and makes it hilarious, with their State of the Web, Spring 2012. This captures some of the highlights of what we’ve seen in recent internet and social media news. Things such as Facebook’s purchase of Instagram, a jab at Google+, and constant gamification.

If we haven’t already, let’s connect on Facebook and LinkedIn. I’m always looking to grow my network. If anything, I share interesting and funny things.

So there you are. Another weeks’ worth of noteworthy, interesting or just funny content to keep you in the know.

Now go get your social on!

Found Tweet Friday

Found Tweet Friday!

May 4th 2012 (Happy Star Wars Day! May the 4th be with you!)

Welcome to the Redlight District of Twitter

I spend a good part of my day using Twitter to find potential customers for my clients. I use the Twitter search function and locate people talking about relevant things that could translate to needs my clients’ products or services could fulfill. During this digging through the nonsense, the marketing messages, the slang and abbreviated hashtags, I find some pretty ridiculous tweets. Many that make my jaw drop. It never ceases to amaze me how many people forget that their tweets are completely public while they treat their Twitter conversations as if they were private. Some of those are simply too offensive or gross (not to mention misogynistic and lewd) for me to bother posting, but below are a collection of this week’s gems that I just had to share. My occasional commentary will be the parenthetical portions. Enjoy!

****Warning: Some content may be inappropriate for young or easily offended readers****

Found tweets:

-Boy your lips taste like the night of champion ! (Judging how champions celebrate their big nights, I don’t know that this is a compliment…)
– Why was the frog sitting at the bustop…? Because his car got TOAD! *slaps knee* (But I grew up being told that Frog and Toad are Friends)
– Funny, because avocados are fruit, which means they’re more like ovaries than anything else. (So what does that make guacamole?)
– The 5 second rule : ( food hits the floor) Germs: Get it! Get it! Hurry! King Germ: No no no relax. We gotta wait 5 seconds, it’s the rule (And all this time, I thought it was just a human rule. Turns out, the germs actually follow it too, huh?)
– Yayy I was drawing blood today & I got it (Best bet is that she was talking about Draw Something. Oh how the internet has changed our lingo)
– Fun fact: the average human body contains enough bones to make up an entire human skeleton. (Wow. Had I but known! This would have been great knowledge to know in school. Thanks for nothing internet!)

There you are folks! I will try to keep this going on a weekly basis. Obviously, some weeks will be less interesting than others, but I hope you enjoy it. Also, if you ever see any great ones worth pointing out, send them to me at robzaleski1@gmail.com

Now go get your social on!

The Social Gnome’s Hoard

Welcome to the Social Gnome’s Hoard, a collection of this week’s most interesting finds from the Social Gnome’s internet travels.

Week of April 23, 2012:

I was presented a very interesting article by @captain_jake on whether Facebook (and subsequent other social networks) are making us lonely. Although the article brought up many interesting points, there were still questions about its generalizations.Then a full fledged rebuttal article came out, also make interesting points. A good read on both accounts to get you thinking about what all this “social” is doing to our real relationships. If you have time for a great video, Sherry Turkle gave a TED talk about the same topic, Connected, but alone? “The illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship. ” Wow.

What would you think of the possibility to get some Ivy League education without ever leaving your home or studying for the SATs? Well, The Faculty Project will allow you to do just that. This article from a couple months ago tells how professors from prestigious universities will be able to upload lecture notes, which will be downloadable free of charge to anyone with an internet connection. The internet. Providing quality information. Who knew?

For a good laugh, here is a list of The 21 Worst Things In the World, courtesy of Buzzfeed. I can’t help but agree with some of them, especially the demon spawn of Satan that is #14. Why? Why does something like that exist? In our homes?

Wildcat! Wildcat! is an up and coming band that a friend of mine, @rudyc, turned me on to. They currently have two songs up on Soundcloud. I really look forward to hearing more from them. If they can get an album together this year, they certainly have the type of sound that is doing well right now with bands like Foster the People and The Naked and Famous. They also have a great video on YouTube for Mr. Quiche. Just weird enough.

Klout announced that it will be starting something called Brand Squads, which will recognize top influencers for brands, rather than just industries and topics. Many people immediately dismissed it, asking whether brands should even care. I know Klout score doesn’t amount to a whole lot to many people, but I like this idea of focusing on the influencers. This has the potential to really recognize brand advocacy, and although Klout score doesn’t mean much in the marketing metrics world, this could be huge for companies really trying to drive a force of support for their brand. As of now, only Red Bull is doing this (I’m not exactly their target market, so I think I’ll hang around, leaning up against the wall until something more relevant comes my way.) This has potential to get people excited about Klout. It also has the potential to completely flop if Klout doesn’t get more brands moving wit this initiative.

And finally, I have a blog post up on Starr Hall’s website (she is a columnist for Entrepreneur.com, national speaker on social media, author and restaurant owner. In other words, she’s amazing.) I talk about a feature on LinkedIn called Projects. I don’t see many people using it, but it is a fantastic way to create connections with other LinkedIn users while showing off things you’ve worked on.

So there you are. Another weeks’ worth of noteworthy, interesting or just funny content to keep you in the know.

Now go get your social on!

The Social Gnome’s Hoard

Welcome to the Social Gnome’s Hoard, a collection of this week’s most interesting finds from the Social Gnome’s internet travels.

Week of April 16, 2012:

—The genius behind Likeable, Dave Kerpen, offers up a video of the Top 11 Professionals to follow on Twitter. You may be surprised at who’s on the list. via Mashable (video)

—Since I wrote a review of the mobile app Path a couple of weeks ago, I’m really interested in the amount of buzz that it’s getting now that Facebook paid $1 billion for Instagram. There are many back and forth points being made on if Path has enough interest and user base to be the next big buyout. Here are a couple interesting articles on Path’s current situation. Via Social Times and GigaOm

—If you haven’t taken 11 minutes out of your day and watched Caine’s Arcade, do it. Now. You don’t have to thank me, but you will probably want to, because you’ll feel all warm and fuzzy inside. I’m not gonna lie. I kinda teared up. I had to hold it together since I was at work…

—Pressure is mounting in opposition to CISPA (Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act). The Electronic Frontier Foundation posted a collection of tweets with the hashtags #CISPA and #CongressTMI. Some are serious, some are hilarious.

—We all know that link building is important to SEO, but some links can actually do HARM to your site’s rankings. Seomoz provides some great insight, as usual.

—A friend, Jake, showed me this little gem. Sure you’ve got Facebook friends, but what about Enemies? EnemyGraph is a Facebook app that allows you to basically do the opposite of friending people, and connect with those who share your hatred. Strange, but you know you’re intrigued.

—How about an iPhone app that can ‘sense’ when you’ve hit full sleep mode, and makes sounds to influence your dreaming patterns? Yes, between this and holographic Tupac, we have in fact achieved the future everyone thought was only science fiction. The Social Penguin Blog explores the app developed by Professor Richard Wiseman.

—For one of the funniest and greatest guerrilla marketing stunts you’ve ever seen, watch this video. Thanks to Chris Brogan for sharing this via Google+.

—Finally, Facebook is apparently competing with the potential reanimation of MySpace by offering a “listen button” on musician pages. It is interesting that they use whatever music playing app you already have set up with Facebook. Good tie-in for app creators. I wonder if podcasters will start hosting their podcasts on Facebook as well? Techcrunch provides the article.

So there you are! Some good reading material for today. See what’s in store next week in the Hoard from the Social Gnome’s internet travels.

Now go get your social on!

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