As a ready-to-buy customer my vertical search on my social network on LinkedIn delivered a qualified target group who could assist me in an important buying decision. But the story doesn’t end there. Following my hospital visit I received several messages through LinkedIn. This is business engagement marketing at work. The likelihood of purchasing services from one of these people whom I had formed a deeper connection with because of my situaton is highly probable. Oh, and something else, I also received an invitation for lunch. Go figure. (Lava Life eat your heart out).

Marketers that dismiss Twitter as chatter do so at their own peril. As a free stream of consumer data that can be mined in real-time there are few resources that are more effective at capturing consumer sentiment and unearthing real-time trends than Twitter. The jury is out whether the newly released sponsored Twitter Ad Model will provide an advertiser gains beyond from just interacting with customers. There are already a lot of third-party analytic tools for companies employing Twitter Marketing. But look what Jet Blue, Dell, Home Depot and others are doing.

During Facebook’s 2010 F8 developer conference last Wednesday in San Francisco, many updates were launched and the big underlying message was that Facebook is on a mission to be the social hub of the web with veins into all the sites and networks we actively use. Facebook calls this the Open Graph.

Innovation continues in the Bay Area as RedBeacon takes local search social with its latest partnerships with FaceBook and Big Tent. You could explain RedBeacon as an advanced next-generation yellow pages but with a social responsibility committed to helping you pick the best business to handle your local service needs at the time, location and price right for you. Aggregating reviews from Google, Yelp and Yahoo is only for starters. Recently RedBeacon rolled out a new application that pings your Facebook friends for their advice and has formed a very interesting partnership with Big Tent where now its possible for “groups” to give the thumbs up or down on your choice of plumber.

Exceeding Twitter user numbers, Google Buzz has become a monster beehive for sharing. This creates a whole new playing field in the ever-growing world of social media. With Google Buzz being just a few weeks old and already so popular, it’s safe to say that this is really only the beginning as new features are already on the horizon to be launched.

Lounging in fluffy slippers while sipping on coffee and perusing the daily headlines I am suddenly interrupted by the Twitterers tweeting. Tweeting used to refer to the sparrows in the backyard signaling another angelic day on the planet. Not anymore. Tweeting has become the real-time activity of an emerging hyper-updating cult driven by a manic desire for connecting. They lust for more Facebook ‘friends’, for more Twitter ‘followers’ and more Linkedin connections and

Is it time to write an Epitaph for Twitter? Obviously the investment community doesn’t think so. They just invested 100 million as they see Twitter as being the next innovation on the Internet. “This investment is happening because it represents a shift” Mr Borthwick, CEO of Betaworks and an investor, stated in the New York Times. He likens the investment strategy similar to those made in Google and Facebook.

We live in an increasingly noisy, over exposed world, drenched in data where information is spread in real-time and our freedom is being compromised. Privacy has become a precious commodity as social structures like Facebook are so pervasive in our lives there appears little hope of a refuge.

Social networking has become the new neighborhood “Cheers” bar and its habit forming, cheap, and delightfully low-cal. It’s not about technology or wanting to be online constantly. It’s about wanting to connect and share.

With 200 million visitors, 850 million photos, 8 million videos, and one fifth of all internet users with a Facebook account, Facebook is changing the future of the internet and how it will be defined.

Can a couple of alpha finance geeks bring the oligarchy giants, like Moody’s and S&P to their knees by replacing the current “gaming” system for credit ratings, with a platform based on open data and user generated content? This may be the solution to one of the world’s largest economic structural issues.

As more TV viewers are waving good bye to their cable companies and turning to the internet for their entertainment, it is not surprising that You Tube is bending over backwards to welcome Hollywood to…

As a real-time messaging service Twitter has become a social network phenomena. A simple message in 140 characters or less sent via Twitter can reach 60,000 people in a matter of seconds. People are sharing their special occasions and their mundane ones, and they are feeling more in touch with others despite long distances. But there is a lot more where this is headed.

Hey, honey those racey photos you just posted on my Facebook wall, well you are in big trouble, Facebook owns them, in “perpentuity”. Now that means “forever”. Too late to reach for the little sock to cover up as their new contract says

 
Social networking tools such as weblogs, wikis, forums and popular networking sites like Facebook, You Tube, Linkedin and Twitter are changing how we relate with each other in our business, personal and community lives. The societal changes that we are going through are profound and should not be ignored or dismissed as being frivilous or [...]

Red alert, full tilt, hyper speed innovation required. “Beam me up Scotty I need a reprieve from the Digital Revolution”. Rapidly the world of communication is changing and its changing our world at a break neck speed. It used to be we would get our news from the daily paper and the evening news on television – not anymore. The computer is so pervasive….

We have come a long way since 1999 when Napster was fined for knowingly encouraging and assisting copyright infringement by allowing internet users to download copyrighted music files. At the time Napster argued they were protected under “fair use” doctrine but this did not fly with the judges who ascertained that peer-to-peer file sharing was [...]

 
 
“The beatings will continue until morale improves”
 
Is your organization run by an autocratic individual impressed with their own genius who adheres to such beliefs that to perform employees need to be directed, controlled, coerced and yes, flogged?  Regardless of the “Company’s Top 100” best managed sign on the office wall its time to take [...]

Rankings in the search marketing game just become a lot easier if you are the ‘local’ or the ‘small’ guy in town. A creation from Praized Media, a Montreal based social media company launched a new platform on July 9, which allows users to rate local businesses and offer comments regarding products and services.

Praized [...]

 
The success of Yelp can be attributed to their against-the-grain philosophy. They did it their way, without following the lead of the popular review sites that came before them. Last March, it had 3.3 million users, according to research firm Comscore, up 87% from a year ago.
 
The New York Times recently ran a piece on [...]

I recently stumbled upon this interesting entry on The ClickZ Network on the socialization of search. Brian Wool of ClickZ shared his interview with Laurence Hopper who founded a new search application for Facebook called Loladex. Here are some excerpts:

Can you provide an overview of your Facebook application?

Loladex helps consumers find local businesses and services [...]

Can the Yellow Pages reasonably deliver customized highly relevant ad content within each niche social network site? That was the question posed by Michael Taylor in the Kelsey Group blog.
He seems confident it will. Since the social networking phenomena began I have been an advocate of the Yellow Pages developing a platform for niche social [...]

Consumers may not always acknowledge how online product reviews of the items they purchase (or do not purchase) on the Web affect their decisions.
But it’s hard to deny the fact that perception plays a big part here, and that reviews do enhance a product’s credibility, no matter if the reviewer is expert or a fellow [...]

The effectiveness of social network advertising was the topic of a recent survey by the Massachusetts-based consumer brand marketing firm, Prospectiv. The results of the Prospective findings revealed consumer opinions on such ads.
Their poll of nearly 800 users of social networking sites such as MySpace, Facebook, Friendster, Hi5 and others reveals that 87% surveyed feel [...]

Multi-media file sharing over the web has just become way simpler. Like a Dummies Guide for Media Sharing, EnjoyMyMedia turns your Windows folders into vehicles for private file-sharing across the Internet. It’s been likened to having your own broadcast media channel.
Many of the existing, similar sites such as SplashCast, Vizrea, Veodia, Bubbleshare, MixerCast, Flektor, Stickam, [...]

Social networking seems to be going mobile, with Facebook, MySpace, and Friendster adding functions or applications that allow users to access their online profiles through your mobile phones.
But, according to a recent posting I came across in Wap Review, it’s been around since the days of the new millennium in a more archaic form, however. [...]

The voice of the consumer will now become all the more vital in web advertising. User-generated content in particular, the growing proliferation of user reviews of businesses on the Web are set to play a more major role for local online advertising, according to the recent Kelsey Report on 2008 forecasts.
Local businesses will begin to [...]

According to a recent survey of more than 2,000 U.S. Internet users conducted by web metrics firm comScore (together with the Kelsey Group), online reviews have a big impact on consumers when it comes to offline spending.
The study, which was carried out last October, examined the impact of online reviews on offline spending at restaurants [...]

“It’s the next generation of the mobile Internet,” says mobile pioneer Nihal Mehta, in a recent article published in the Chicago-based Advertising Age magazine (www.adage.com).
Mehtawho was named an M-Commerce Baron by Newsweek in 2006, and the founder of ipsh!, one of the first full-service mobile marketing agencies is referring to his new local-search/networking service, BuzzD.
BuzzD [...]

Forbes magazine called it the $15 million dollar question: Could top social networking site Facebook actually make money?
Facebook executives have revealed how they hope to answer that question with a new advertising platform that will let marketers track where the 50 million Facebook members go online and what they buy.
The goal? To keep track of [...]

With 55 million active users using Facebook in the last 30 days, (more than the entire paid newspaper circulation in the U.S.), and these users doubling every 6 months, Facebook is a social media phenomena. 50% of its users visit the site daily, and monthly there are over 70 billion page views.
What has driven the [...]