Jeremiah's post: Defining Online Community

As I have become more entrenched in social media over the last few months, I have experienced some fairly impressive social networking moments. Most of events have been wide-sweeping with major buzz to boot, others have been...I guess what you would call little online whispers - very little conversations but the content is extremely important to me.

Some of my non-work related social networking highlights include: receiving an endearing "pay it forward" compliment on facebook; being part of Beth Kanter's amazing efforts with the help of Chris Brogan to raise enough money ($10/contributor) within 24 hours to send a Cambodian woman, Leng Sopharath, to college; helping the fight against breast cancer through Frozen Pea Fridays: experiencing bumrushing the charts for Joseph Jaffe's Join The Conversation; having my nieces and nephew choose to friend me on MySpace and Facebook, being interviewed by Kim Dushinski for her soon-to-be released mobile marketing book; and, yet another moment today with Jeremiah.

This morning Jeremiah set out to define "online community" through a posting on his Web Strategy blog, followed up with twitter dialogue and blog conversation. He is asking the community to hone in on its self-defined term until the definiton "online community" melds into that which it is...real-time.

Community sourcing at its finest.

I'm looking forward to this community-made and endorsed "online community" definition to be posted on wikipedia.

Twitter spreads the word on Frozen Pea Fridays

Thank you Chris Brogan!

You introduced me to Connie Reece through a post, saying she's a person to follow on twitter. Through Reece and you, I met Susan Reynolds. And now I follow her day-to-day battle with breast cancer through twitter and her Boobs On Ice.

And frozen PEAs have a whole new meaning for me.

The Frozen PEA Fund site has a wonderful video from Connie explaining why the fund was set up.

More details on getting involved:
See the frozen PEA pool on flickr

Connie's post on The Social Media Consortium's every dot connects blog.

A twitter feed to follow PEAple

And of course, Brogan's post on Susan, finding a cure, and the power of social networking in helping people. 2 PEAS in a pod + 2 tweets equals much more than 4.

PEAS on Earth, social media friends!

Social Media Buzzwords and Twitter WOM

Ah, it's days like today that make me so happy to be part of the everchanging social media landscape.

This morning through Pete Blackshaw's Facebook group, Consumer-Generated Media, Pete directed me to his ClickZ article, "Official 2008 Buzzword Forecast."

Pete is a passionate, enthusiastic speaker; a cutting-edge marketer; and, IMHO a social media guru. He calls it like he sees it (and 9 out of 10 times, he nails the trend at hand) and he is personable, meaning he let's people in - so he's authentic regarding work, play and family.

Yep, and there's no kick back for me on this...I only know Pete through webinars, his blogs, and facebook. I'm touting him only because his blog is relevant to my work and he writes relevant, conversational posts in a way that helps me educate through out my organization without overwhelming.

Anyway, Pete's Buzzword Forecast is a must read and share. He has a pulse on socnet subjects marketers are dealing with, terms we will be using and his defensive brand strategies are spot on.

And another great post of Pete's is his post on Peter Kim's Top 20 Marketing Blogs.

And here's the other 12/11 social media occurrence that I had to write about, Jeremiah Owyang's post on Twitter. Jeremiah's current gig is a Forrester senior analyst and he is best known for his blog, Web Strategist.

In his blog post today, Jeremiah talks about the changes he is experiencing with Twitter. Those that follow me know I'm all about this microblogging utility. Twitter has changed the way I consume media as with many others as well.



Jeremiah tweeted about his post and low and behold, look how many people have commented. Over 200 the last time I checked. It appears his post is so popular his host server is down at this time. Twitter is lagging today as well, maybe it has to do with the Jeremiah buzz as well. WOM is going strong on Twitter today.

On Twitter:
Follow Pete Blackshaw: http://www.twitter.com/pblackshaw
Follow Jeremiah Owyang: http://www.twitter.com/jowyang
Follow me: http://www.twitter.com/zenaweist

Facebook is now living in the reality of our opt-in world

So I'm reading Mark Zuckerberg's Beacon apology on the Facebook blog today and I unconsciously start humming Madonna's Material World. And my inner voice is singing - "We are living in a opt-in world and I am an opt-in girl. You know that we are..." and for those of you that know me - yep, even my inner voice is singing it off tune.

Anyway, I'm surprised that the up-and-coming, over-buzzed, media-darling, "we are grassroots", all about community Social Networking Site (SNS) didn't get from the get that communities live in an opt-in world and we *all* are opt-in girls - well, people. (sigh)

Seriously, how could there not be an uproar over constantly having to opt-out? That's so first days of email campaigns logic - faulty, slimy logic.

I wonder if Facebook did any user acceptance testing with Beacon? Not in the UI but in the actual concept down to opting out with every action. Are they that removed from the conversation pulse that they would need to do testing to know how wrong opt-out is? I'm a little stumped over the rush to market and the lack of common sense.

Lesson here: Don't lose sight of what got you to where you are.

There's good news, Zuckerberg did respond (finally) and admitted Facebook's mistakes over the last several weeks with Beacon. Yep, they changed their tune...Facebook is realizing they to are living in an opt-in world.

Inbox 2.0

I've been mulling over some posts about Inbox 2.0.

Is what Yahoo and Google are delving into really the next evolution in social networking sites? I might be simplifying it but to me, everything I've seen shows me more of a LinkedIn management functionality with all the mail components we are used to seeing but crystalized - kinda like going from standard tube to HDTV.

The Google and Yahoos of the world are creating a way to help us manage our social media tool kits. I don't know that their Inbox 2.0 will meld into trumping social networking sites per se.

I have my social media tools that help me manage and optimmize my relationships, however there's more to SNS. There's the networks, groups, apps (some useful, some fun, some random.) There's the reaching out to friends of friends through various activities on SNS. There's the ah-ha stumbling upon information that you come across while catching up with your friends' lives through their profiles.

With that said, there's the contextual tracking part that gives me the weebie jeebies in a small way. Do I want information gathered on the email context of every message I receive? Do I want advertising shown to me, contact possibilities given to me from the information that comes through my email? If I'm getting my email app and storage for free - well maybe. As long as I can decide the parameters and can opt-in to the behavorial targeting options - well maybe.

I'm looking forward to the mesh up montage that allows me to have my social media tool kit in one place, provides me with the technology to fine tune it and keep the information I want to stay personal - actually personal - not having to opt-out to keep it personal.

Here's a few Inbox 2.0 articles:
Deva from Email Dashboard provides food for email thought
Brian Solis' Inbox 2.0 strategies post
Techcrunch Mike Butcher's Inbox 2.0 post.

Lots of discussion going on. We'll see how it pans out.