Dog Days of August

August is always a bit of a slow month...given that, I've had some time to catch up on the neverending firehose of news, media, content and social media interactions aimed at me. :)

Here are a couple of stories that caught my eye:

Chris Brogan has an interesting post about the tension of real world friendships and "ambient connectivity" in "Is a Social Crash Coming?"

Rohit Bhargava updates his famous 2006 post on social media optimization (SMO) with lessons learned over the past four years: "The 5 NEW Rules Of Social Media Optimization"

AdAge has a very interesting story about how the Steve Slater situation is causing JetBlue problems with their social media and branding efforts, and how they are dealing with it: "How Steve Slater Is Stifling JetBlue's Social-Media Strategy"

The Social Times showcases Pete Warden, the founder of OpenHeatMap. Pretty cool stuff...

Lastly, my agency, Strategic Communications Group, is having a busy summer as we've added two new clients so far: TerraGo Technologies and Whitney, Bradley and Brown.

Some Interesting Links for Today- iPhone, Pre, Twitter...y'know, the usual suspects

A quick roundup of some interesting content:

The Customer Collective- Twitter Hype Punctured By Study; - Tweet All About It

Micro-blogging service Twitter remains the preserve of a few, despite the hype surrounding it, according to research. Just 10% of Twitter users generate more than 90% of the content, a Harvard study of 300,000 users found. Estimates suggest it now has more than 10 million users and is growing faster than any other social network. However, the Harvard team found that more than half of all people using Twitter update their page less than once every 74 days.

A great quote: “This implies that Twitter’s resembles more of a one-way, one-to-many publishing service more than a two-way, peer-to-peer communication network,”

The Social Times- Collecta Launches True Real Time Search Engine

Real time search is becoming all the rage, displacing some of the hype around semantic search and catapulting services like Twitter, FriendFeed and now Facebook into new realms when it comes to accessing its content. Today, search veteran Jerry Campbell is helping to launch Collecta, a service he’s claiming to be a true real time search engine unlike anything the world has seen.

As one of the minds behind the patented process that powered Summize, the Twitter search engine that was acquired by the microblogging platform and is now Twitter search, Campbell has long-standing ideas on how search and discovery should operate on the web. He’s seen the evolution of data-sharing as it pertains to things like news within he financial industry and has learned from organizations’ necessity to reach that “aha” moment as quickly as possible. It’s that “aha” moment Collecta is trying to give you, for any topic, in a very short amount of time.

Instead of focusing on Twitter or FriendFeed, Collecta performs its real time search for the wider web. From Wordpress to Flickr, Collecta searches comments on blog posts, images, and more. When you perform a search, you’ll find your initial results along with a time stamp displaying the time your search was initiated. Watch the page as it adds more results, each of which can be expanded to show the details of your search query.

BTW, the author never included a link to Collecta in the article, which I find odd. Here it is- the site itself is pretty slick: http://www.collecta.com

Ten Hidden iPhone Features from Daniel Ionescu at PC World. Loved his Rhinoceros play.

iPhone Versus Windows Mobile 6.5 Video from PocketNow.com. I've been spending a lot of time and angst researching and thinking about buying a new iPhone 3G S or a Pre or getting a newer version of my current HTC Windows phone. There has been much rending of garments...anyone have a opinion on what's a better purchase?

Here is Gizmodo's review...arrrrggghhhh!!!! What to do?

MySpace Annoucing Open Data Portability?

Hat tip to Nick O'Neill at Social Times for breaking the story, it looks as if MySpace is announcing that they have partnered with Yahoo, Twitter and others to have open portable profiles. TechCruch has more information here and shows a mock up of what it would look like while on Twitter.

This new found openness along with the developing Open Social standard will go a long way to creating a social networking environment that doesn't require me to keep 57 usernames and passwords and create a new friggin profile every time a new app or website pops up.

Content Remains The King

People like relearning old lessons again and again, it seems. The phrase "content is king" has been bandied about for many years now, but some people still get confused when a new medium of communication comes along.

What you say is the most important thing in communications. Exciting and powerful media like social networks only work when the content is exciting and powerful. No one will follow your Twitter posts if you aren't interesting, compelling and engaging. Marc Hausman talks about the "entertaining of PR" and he's right. Public relations professionals will only be successful if they develop and distribute valuable and, yes, entertaining content.

The point of this post is remind anyone thinking about integrating a social media component into their communications strategy that what you say is the critical ingredient to a successful campaign. The fundamentals of good PR remain in place. When building and engaging social networks, it is very important to invest in those relationships by bringing valuable content to the discussion. Merely "being present" is not enough.

Nick O'Neil has a good post about Twitter etiquette which, I think, backs this up. Following people on Twitter just so you can notify them when your press release went out is missing the point. Spending the time to engage with people in an interesting, compelling and entertaining way will grow the credibility you are seeking and will build a valuable communications channel.

Thoughts?

AOL Buys Bebo?

A very interesting development today...AOL has announced that they will be buying Bebo, an online social network with 40 million members, mostly in Europe, according to the Social Times. As Nick points out, there is a bit of a disconnect as AOL is based mostly here in the States. Perhaps AOL is positioning for international expansion, which doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

Hmmm.

I haven't posted in a while. Sorry to all my regular readers...I've been rather busy at work and, of course, following the minute by minute disaster that is the end of Eliot Spitzer's career.

But you can count on me from now on! Posts galore on the continuing mainstreaming of social media and networks, the start of the Nats baseball season, tech marketing in a recession, St. Patrick's Day, the CTIA Wireless show and RSA Security show- all over the next three or four weeks!