Posts Tagged ‘Web 2.0 Expo’

What’s Mine is Yours and His, Hers, Theirs…

Monday, April 26th, 2010

Last week, I was blown away by the announcements from F8. The Open Graph and the new technologies that support it are incredible, and you can already see signs of Facebook integration on many popular websites.

While the fact that Facebook has over 450 million users seems like enough to prove its worth to brands, this new expansion is another sign of the social phenomenon’s impressive reach to consumers.

I think this is just the beginning of a whole new level of social interaction. Instant connections to sites like Yelp and Pandora are sure to lend a new element to the emerging share culture. All of this is very cool and exciting. And yet…

"I'm sorry. I can't let you "Like" that, Dave."

Isn’t it a little scary? I mean, you don’t even have to be logged in for CNN.com to know which of your Facebook friends have “liked” the article you’re reading. It just knows. Like some all-knowing HAL 9000 character.

Facebook’s privacy policy and use of its user information has been the topic of serious debate and criticism lately, and I think that this new development will add heat to the fire. Do people really want that information out there? Does the idea of the opt-in still exist?

The next few weeks will grant us a much better view of how these new changes will affect businesses and their online presence, and I’m looking forward to having a front row seat. Also, next week our own Richard Ha will be updating from the Web 2.0 Conference in San Francisco, and I am sure he will have more insight to share.

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Posted in New Media, Social Media, Technology | 4 Comments »

Who Said “There’s No FUN in FUNction”?

Wednesday, December 9th, 2009

With over a gazillion* new mobile applications and interactive websites cropping up each day, keeping track of the useful ones can become quite the task. As a dabbler in all things social, I will try anything that seems interesting, fun and functional at least once.

GetGlueOne of the newer sites that I’ve been checking out is Glue. It encourages you to “like” or “dislike” things based on category, add comments or reviews of said things and accumulate badges for participation – that last bit they seemed to have taken from Foursquare.

The site is fun enough, and you see other users’ results in real time, which is neat. However, I’m not finding any practical purpose of using it. Do I really gain something from clicking “I like this” 20 times day? Also, the range of topics is so wide that you can rate a concept like “Racism,” and in the next moment rate and review the classic film Jaws. To me, the disparity of topics combined with senseless clicking frenzies just seems…directionless.

I think it’s fantastic that creative minds are hard at work coming up with imaginative new tools every day – I’m certainly not trying to discourage that by any means. I suppose my request is that functionality and practicality be key factors in the development process.

I’m still keeping an open mind with Glue – maybe a devotee out there can lend me some perspective on its practical benefits…

* Okay, that might be a slight exaggeration, but Scott Porad of Pet Holdings, Inc – the company behind I Can Has Cheezburger? – said at the Web 2.0 Expo in NYC that they can create a fully integrated UGC (user-generated content) network site in about one working day. Now multiply that by the number of innovative, tech-savvy minds…

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Posted in New Media, Social Media | No Comments »

Social Media and the Anti-Social Future…

Tuesday, December 1st, 2009

I can’t help but notice and I’m sure you have too, that more people prefer to write an email rather than pick up the phone these days. You’ve also probably noticed that social networks and communications sites have inundated the web in a big way. How big? Social Media has overtaken email as the most popular activity on the internet (over 17% of all web usage)!

That’s exciting – all these new discoveries and fun tools at our disposal, and even more on the way. But what does it mean for our in-person interactions?

This is so perfect!

This is so perfect!

When I was at the Web 2.0 Expo, I wasn’t surprised to see many heads down during the various seminars. Everyone was sending out tweets at a furious pace, blogging their findings and opinions, updating their statuses to reflect their exact position – it was all very cool. However, when it came to face-to-face interaction I only met two or three people that were open to chatting for a few minutes. Now, something doesn’t seem right about that. (No, I didn’t smell and my hair looked fine, so it wasn’t me…at least I don’t think.)

Folks would rather sit next to each other and text than turn their heads a degree to say hello. It’s weird and it’s kind of scary. Parties have become tweetups, client meetings have been digitized and personal relationships are made official, become complicated or end with the click of a button.

If this is the situation now, then what can we expect one, five or ten years from now? I miss the days when you could sit a table in a coffee shop and have conversations with the people around you. Now when I do that I’m just the crazy lady who talks to herself – I have to pretend like I was just answering a phone call. So tragic.

Can Social Media and our social lives find a peace between them? Can they be used for the greater good? Or are we doomed to live in a future world of tweet talk and Facebook face time?

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Posted in General Blogginess, Social Media | No Comments »

Web 2.0 Expo NYC: Day 4 – The Insanity

Tuesday, November 24th, 2009

The final day at the Web 2.0 Expo seemed close to what a zombie convention might be like – people shuffling around looking tired and drained, but motivated by some unknown force to consume the nutrients from the brains of the speakers…

Okay, maybe that is a little extreme, but still everyone looked truly exhausted. The final day of the event was a good one, and what I took away was that while the term “social media” may evolve into various other terms, the concept itself is not just a trend. And here’s why: the kids are the ones in control and the kids are going to continue to develop new and more advanced interactive communities/technologies.

There has been a major culture shift. Today, people want to connect with real people. They want transparency. A great example of how this is already making an impact is Beth Noveck’s (Executive Office of the President/OSTP) work toward putting open government into play. This includes sharing government data with the people for full transparency. (She also had a great comment about the importance of “Do-Tanks” versus “Think-Tanks” that I just loved!)

So this is it, the end of my week of social media madness. The event overall was really great and I am so happy that I had the opportunity to go. I’ve never felt more excited about the future, and if you have any doubts just remember this:

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Posted in New Media, Social Media | 2 Comments »

Web 2.0 Expo NYC: Day 3 – The Exhaustion

Wednesday, November 18th, 2009

Oy! Just got back to the New Yorker Hotel after another long day of idea building and concept crunching and boy are my brains tired – seriously. Speaking of the New Yorker though, they are a perfect example of how to use Twitter to resolve customer concerns. When I arrived I sent out a tweet that read:

“Made it to the New Yorker Hotel in Midtown Manhattan. It’s a nice enough place, but the room is tiny – I’m sleeping in the bath pretty much…”

And they replied:

“re: small room. Our apologies, Katie. We don’t have as much land space as you guys in Cali :) ”

How awesome is that? A business that listens to its customers and responds in a timely manner? Yes please!

Anyway, the speaker of the day goes to Clara Shih who gave a terrific talk about how Facebook is changing business – and everything else. Explaining that the last decade was spent observing the World Wide Web, Shih says this new era is all about focusing on the Social Web. Shih is a wonderful public speaker – eloquent, poised and very charismatic. However, the highlight for me was winning a copy of her popular book, The Facebook Era.

At the beginning of her talk she encouraged the audience to participate via Twitter and announced that the person with the seventh tweet would win a copy of the book. At the end she revealed the winner – and it was me! WOOHOO! I was pretty happy.

Second place speaker goes to Mike Lewis, whose talk about ROI and Social Media was unfortunately hijacked by the audience. Instead of him being able to give a great presentation (and it was great at the beginning), it turned into a Q&A that would not end. People were so rude and disrespectful of his time and I was unbelievably irritated. Sigh. Mike was great though and has a lot of really fantastic things to say.

Tomorrow is the final day of the expo and I am happy to say that I have already learned a lot and met some great people. It’s going to be hard to say goodbye, but I miss my bed and my pup – oh and the Gunn/Jerkens office ;) .

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Posted in New Media, Social Media | 1 Comment »

Web 2.0 Expo NYC: Day 2 – The Hugeness

Tuesday, November 17th, 2009

It would be an understatement to describe the Javits Center as humongous. The glass beast that stands on the shore of the bay seems to be an endless labyrinth of booths and rooms and signs – it’s just massive.

Once I finally figured out where I was though, I made my way to this morning’s first talk, which covered Web Search and the progression from static to social to real time results. Hosted by Eric Schonfield, Akhil Wable, Tobias Peggs, Vik Singh and Gerry Campbell, it was more of a discussion about the idea of realtime search and what it should be. The big idea that struck me was the concept of “freshness over timeliness.” This speaks to indexing content based on what is the most fresh and useful versus what is the most recent. I think we are going to be hearing a lot more about this within the next few months.

After a brief lunch I was able to sit in the fourth row for the Keynote presentations – wow. What an experience. It started off with Tim O’Reilly and his War for the Web analysis. He said some really great stuff about how companies need to focus on development for the greater good versus creating new technologies that lead to a monopolized system. From there, we enjoyed an interview with the CEO and Founder of Digg.com, two super young-looking gents with so many ideas – it was a tough act to follow. And yet…

Chris Brogan is a guy who never really charmed me. I heard all of these wonderful things about him, but it just never really clicked with me I guess. Until today. When Brogan took the stage he commanded the audience’s attention. His ideas were simple (worry about listening more than you worry about what to say), his delivery eloquent (“The difference between an audience and a community is which way you turn the chairs.”), and the response was noticeable (an applause that was more than animated). I have been converted. Mr. Brogan, you do know what’s up.

Caterina Fake, the genius gal behind Flickr also spoke quite a bit about start up companies, her new project Hunch.com (so very cool!) and “the power of less,” a running theme of this year’s expo.

Now I’m off to another seminar, so I bid you farewell!

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Posted in New Media, Social Media | No Comments »

Web 2.0 Expo NYC: Day 1 – The Arrival

Monday, November 16th, 2009

Ah yes, there’s nothing like arriving in New York City after a delayed flight and near-death cab ride. You just cant beat it. The city lights are shining bright, the streets are singing a siren song of car horns and, so far, the people have been as cold as the crisp November air.

That said, I’m extremely excited for tomorrow morning. The Web 2.0 Expo signs are all over the place and the folks on the sidewalks have a certain “I’m a tech nerd!” look about them that is just so charming.

Tomorrow’s schedule is pretty full. I’ve got “The Future of Web Search: From Static to Social to Realtime” in the morning, followed by five other seminars that cover online engagement, ad strategies in Social Media, user-generated content and more.

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Posted in Social Media | No Comments »