It’s Summer, 2010! PW2 Web Blog
Integrating Media, Marketing, and Technology.
Regular features include S’M (Social Media) Tuesday, Thriv’Able Thursday, and S’Monday (Social Media) Tips.
S’M Tuesday (I): Twiget for Opera
Contributed by Rick DeVan on September 7, 2010 at 7:00 am ET
Resource: Stay on top of Twitter with Twiget
Twitter addicts rejoice! The Twitter Opera widget gives you an easy way to tweet and check your twitter feed without opening a browser.
If you are reading this from the U.S. you may have no idea that a browser named “Opera” exists. It does and although it represents only about 1% of Web browser usage worldwide, that is more than 12,000,000 users. Miniscule compared to IE’s almost 1 billion users, but bigger is not always better. You could ask Howard Hughes about this concept if he was not a dead recluse.
Opera is my browser of choice.
Twiget is very easy and it sits comfortably right on your desktop. My only issue with it so far is that I would like be able to re-size the display window.
Filed under Media, Social Media
Tags used: Opera, Twiget, Twitter —
Comments and discussion are welcome on the PW2 Web Facebook Page up to four weeks after publication date.
S’Monday Tips #9: The First Rule of Information Overload
Contributed by Rick DeVan on September 6, 2010 at 7:00 am ET
One of the problems with Information Overload is all the people blogging about Information Overload.
Don’t listen to them. More on that in the next tip.
Remember the famous line from “Fight Club”?
The first rule of Information Overload is that you do not talk about Information Overload.
At least not much.
Here’s something I did recently.
I had a job outdoors on a recent evening starting at 7:00 p.m. True to my nature, I checked weather.com. The forecast called for isolated thunderstorms.
I checked the local radar. All clear at 16:36.
Conclusion: It may or may not thunderstorm. Take a raincoat.
All well and good if I would have stopped there.
But, no… I zoomed out the radar map and found a line of thunderstorms near Lansing, Michigan, moving in my direction.
I checked the other weather maps. Severe thunderstorm watches and warnings associated with this line of storms.
I loaded up Google Earth.
I calculated the great circle distance between Lansing and my work location (170.84 miles).
At 50 mph the storms would arrive in 3.417 hours, or just after 20:00 local time, right in the middle of my job.
However, the storms could break up or they could intensify over the lake. If they slowed down to 35 mph I would make it, but if they went up to 60 mph… and if rotation developed… and if… is my friend Joe in Ann Arbor safe?… should I call and warn him?…
Oh, for goodness sakes! This is what they pay Jim Cantore to do, not me. OK, they don’t pay Jim to call your out-of-state friends, but the rest is fairly accurate.
Conclusion: It may or may not thunderstorm. Take a raincoat.
The solution is simple. Maybe too simple for our complicated times.
Ask yourself: Do I really need this information?
I’ll llet you take it from there.
P.S. You owe me $50.00 ’cause I just saved you $30,000 in therapist bills.
That’s it for the tips for today.
Comments and your own tips are welcome on the PW2 Web Facebook Page.
Filed under Media, Social Media, Tips
Tags used: Tips —
Comments and discussion are welcome on the PW2 Web Facebook Page up to four weeks after publication date.
S’M Special: Social Media in the Workplace
Contributed by Rick DeVan on September 3, 2010 at 7:00 am ET
Resource: How to Handle an Employee’s Controversial Online Comment
The beloved Quentin Crisp once said:
The formula for achieving a successful relationship is simple: you should treat all disasters as if they were trivialities but never treat a triviality as if it were a disaster.
I may not go quite as far Quentin Crisp — it is not a good idea for rescue crews to be sipping umbrella drinks while the overturned tanker out on the highway leaks ammonium chloride, but you get the picture.
Not every negative comment posted about you or your company or posted by an employee is a disaster. Some are. Some aren’t. There will be both. You will need to deal with both, or not deal with both, as the case may be.
Ask any politician.
Deal with the situation… and remember every situation is different.
Just like real life.
Filed under Observations, Social Media
Tags used: Social Media —
Comments and discussion are welcome on the PW2 Web Facebook Page up to four weeks after publication date.
S’M Tuesday (II): Older Adults and Social Media
Contributed by Rick DeVan on August 31, 2010 at 7:00 am ET
Resource: Older Adults and Social Media
Social networking use among internet users ages 50 and older has nearly doubled — from 22% to 42% over the past year.
Half (47%) of internet users ages 50-64 and one-in-four (26%) users ages 65 and older now use social networking sites.
Is there still such a thing as a generation gap or have the Baby Boomers been filling it in over the past 30-40 years?
Filed under Social Media, Statistics
Tags used: Social Media —
Comments and discussion are welcome on the PW2 Web Facebook Page up to four weeks after publication date.
S’M Tuesday (I): Social, Mobile, and Human Nature
Contributed by Rick DeVan on at 7:00 am ET
Resource: The Intersection Between Mobile and Social Just Became Much Blurrier
With 500 million subscribers (and reports that 150 million of these are mobile), sheer size makes Facebook the clear favourite. In my opinion, Foursquare, Gowalla, My Town, etc. are officially the underdogs (if they weren’t before). Naturally, Facebook is faced with the issue of privacy, and provided they allow users to self-provision and dictate terms, then chances of success are high.
As Facebook continues its dominance it is important to remember that size ain’t everything. There is and always will be an “underdog” market.
It’s human nature.
Just ask Steve Jobs.
Filed under Business and Commerce, Marketing, Social Media
Tags used: Facebook —
Comments and discussion are welcome on the PW2 Web Facebook Page up to four weeks after publication date.