Social Platforms & Social Media In Business

A recent survey of U.S. journalists by Brodeur reveals that over 75% of reporters turn to blogs for information when doing research for stories and that “blogs are not only having an impact on the speed and availability of news, but also influence the tone and editorial direction of reporting.”

I find this easy to believe! The news content that social media produces is very different that information a reporter would find by doing old school offline research. Blogs as sources are attractive to journalists because:

[Read more →]

I ask you–Is there no end to the social platforms that are floating around? It seems like as soon as I think I’ve got a handle on the major ones, I find out one of my friends is already submerged into another one.

That’s what happened today when I was reading the new posts on David Krug’s Twitter account. I followed a link he shared, and was taken to his Pownce account, which basically does the same thing as Twitter as far as I can tell.

[Read more →]

Have you ever felt overwhelmed by invitations from friends on Facebook asking you to try new apps?

Especially if you’ve got a huge friends list, you might be plagued by that problem, as is my pal Andy Wibbels, who says:

I have over ninety invites from friends to add little widgets and thingies to my profile. I really don’t want to junk it all up. But I have to click each one separately. That sucks.

He’s got a solution though: Facebook should make it so you can batch delete the app invites. I think that’s pretty smart and definitely would be a value adding feature. What do you think–could anyone else use this as a new feature?

Yeah, that’s right–I bet when you signed up for Digg or any of the other social media joints that you just threw together your profile using minimal brainpower (I did too :-))

Well, Brent Csutoras over at Search Engine Land is preaching about how to create a smart social media profle, and he is totally spot on.

Here are some great digger profile tips, comin’ at ya:
[Read more →]

Well, I hate reporting this, seeing as though this is Social Platform Journal and all but the web analytics outfit comScore says that social networks are staring to lose their appeal, particularly MySpace, Bebo, Friendster and even the social network darling Facebook.

From Creative Capitol:

But the pain is not just a MySpace problem. It seems to be an industry-wide issue. The total audience of U.S. social networks seems to be stuck at a low-to-mid-single digit growth rate, while the engagment metrics are falling for just about everyone. Time spent on Bebo.com has been sliced in half over the last four months, while Friendster’s time spent has plummeted nearly 75% in the same time period. Overall, minutes spent per site fell 5% in December 2007 compared to the year-ago period.

[Read more →]

It’s interesting enough to know that when we type updates into Twitter that people all over this world can see what we’re thinking in real time, but you might not have realized that your tweets were also reaching the citizens of the virtual world of Second Life.

New World Notes reports:

created by UK developer Daden Limited, the Twitter Fountain of Second Life takes the public feed from the Web 2.0 site, converting each Tweet into a literal thought balloon that burbles up from a koi pond located on Daden’s SL island. (Visit the Twitter Fountain by clicking the SLURL teleport at this link)

[Read more →]

During my short time of working with Drupal I learned to love and hate it. I’m sure in my limited time of working with Krug, he’d say he just hates it. Thus this site runs on WordPress but I really enjoy it. I run a few of my local client sites on Drupal and there’s never been a single complaint. It has an amazing backend that is really intuitive.

Drupal is a free software package that allows an individual or a community of users to easily publish, manage and organize a wide variety of content on a website. Tens of thousands of people and organizations have used Drupal to power scores of different web sites, including”:
[Read more →]

I bet when you woke up this morning, you thought to yourself, “Today feels like it’ll be a special day in social media history!”

Well, it could be, depending on how many MySpace users Simon Owens has managed spur to action. Today is the day that Owens has declared “International Delete Your MySpace Account Day”.

Owens says of his initiative:

The idea quickly caught fire, being linked to on hundreds of websites spanning from Digg to Fark to MSNBC. Several journalists interviewed me about the day, including live radio and television interviews. I was also interviewed by a journalist at the Washington Post. A Myspace spokeswoman even responded to the event.

Regarding the event, MySpace spokesperson Rebekah Horne, vice president of Fox Interactive Media and MySpace in Australia and New Zealand, had this to say:
[Read more →]

According to TechCrunch:

Mig33 is a downloadable mobile social networking application with a bunch of utilities mixed in. Users can not only do the usual profiles and friending, but also includes VoIP calls, instant messaging, e-mail, text messaging, picture sharing. Long distance calls can be made by using pre-paid Mig33 minutes. They have an affiliate program for selling minutes and have even launched a calling card business in South Africa. Users have been signing on for more than a total of 2 million sessions per day, sending more than 45 million messages each day, and share more than a million pictures a month.

Mig33 has users in 200 countries and has an increasing customer base of 9 million + users.

Hmmm, I did not know that so many people accessed social networks via cell phones, so this is enlightening. I guess it makes sense though–not everyone has an iPhone or a laptop, but most folks have cell phones.

Social platforms are playing a huge role in the political world, both for the voters trying to gather information or express opinions, and also for candidates who wish to get their two cents out to their younger, web savvy constituents.

No longer can anyone use the excuse “I didn’t vote because I didn’t have enough information about the candidates.” The truth is the information we have is bubbling over.

Which candidates are the most tech savvy?

[Read more →]