Overheard in the tech blogosphere » social media

Overheard: Monetizing Tweets

Margaret Rouse — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 12:09:47 +0000

The Silicon Alley Insider blog reported that Summize was acquired for an estimated $15 million in cash and Twitter stock. Are Twitter search ads next?

Mark Walsh, Twitter Buys Search Engine Summize

Overheard: The best way to make $$ from social media is to run a conference on it

Margaret Rouse — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 15:54:06 +0000

I hate to say it, but the best (and likely only) way to get ROI in Social Media is to run Social Media conferences.

Steve Baldwin, commenting on David Berkowitz’s article Ten Questions Not To Ask A Social Media Panel

David’s satirical blog post about “what not to ask a social media panel” got a lot of virtual heads nodding.

Overheard: NFO is the new SEO? A tale of accidental optimization

Margaret Rouse — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 17:06:25 +0000

“The next generation of optimization is taking shape. First it was search engine optimization SEO, next came social media optimization (SMO), and now we’ve got news feed optimization (NFO).”

Chris Schultz, Jason Calacanis Crushes My Facebook News Feed

Chris Schultz’s blog post about Jason Calacanis’ using Facebook to brand his “human-powered search engine” by optimizing his newsfeed on Facebook hit home the idea that when it comes to optimization, we’re still living in the wild, wild west. Chris writes:

I’ve got 99 friends on Facebook but I hear from Jason Calacanis more than anyone. He has turned Facebook into a marketing platform for his human-powered search engine, Mahalo. And he doesn’t pay Facebook a dime for this primo branding opportunity.

The very best part of this post? The comment he got back from Jason.

The reason this all happened was because I was using our Mahalo Share tool (google it) and it puts my delicious bookmarks on Facebook. I didn’t think it would put so many of my bookmarks on other people’s pages. So, I’m going to limit it to my best 2-3 bookmarks a day.

Overheard: Social media and the enterprise? Not yet

Margaret Rouse — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 15:20:43 +0000

The IT guy is someone my heart goes out to, because he’s got an extremely difficult job. People who he reports to see him as a cog in progress and a drain of money; the people he’s supposed to serve see him as a bottleneck.

Shel Israel, as quoted in Naked IT: Shel Israel on social media and IT (includes podcast)

Michael Krigsman writes: The Global Neighborhood interviews [sponsored by SAP] point toward the future, to a time when the enterprise embraces social media as a mechanism to enhance communications. However, that time has not yet arrived, and for the moment, social media remains an interesting curiosity for most large enterprises. On the other hand, forward-thinking organizations are studying how to integrate social media, minimizing disruption wherever possible, to gain its benefits.

I agree with Michael. Until social media translates directly into dollars, we’ll be stuck with the status quo. The legacy systems already in place are just to big, complicated and expensive to mess with — and the IT guy would be the last person on the planet to ask for more on his plate.

BTW, I love the tag line for Michael’s blog IT Project Failures. “Rearranging the deck chairs.”