In a new report by Gartner Analysts, they’re stating the obvious: social computing/social networking is a force to be reckoned with from a customer relationship management standpoint. Do companies really not know this yet?

Image: Sxc.hu

I do have to rememeber to rein in my skepticism when I read things like the Gartner report and remember that I’m considered one of those early adopter types. I’ve been preaching the need for companies to use social networking for CRM, and brand building for approximately two years now.

The Gartner report predicts that more than 60% of Fortune 1000 companies will have a form of online community that can be used for CRM purposes, but also thinks that more than half of the companies who do will fail to manage them properly which will ultimately backfire on them.

Read any of the particularly good social media blogs out there, and you’ll see what we’ve all been warning companies about this for years and have been trying to help educate them as to the best way to go about this. Every social media strategist or evangelist out there wants companies to be successful using the tools we know and love for all the things we know they can do.

“Social applications offer a great opportunity for CRM practitioners to improve customer experience and influence the customer, particularly in an economic downturn when companies are trying to keep customers and increase wallet share,” said Adam Sarner, research director at Gartner. “Investments should focus primarily on the customer online buying process where it can offer a direct return on investment (ROI) in terms of sales, awareness and customer loyalty.” [source]

I guess it takes an official report to make some of those Fortune 1000 companies stand up and realize what power they have available to them. I just hope they get it right and don’t run headlong, full speed into communities and muck it all up.

Both Forbes and MediaPost’s Online Spin newsletter discussed the idea of a “social nervous system” or the concept of the Hive mind that the new social media world has created, and it really got me thinking. There is a palpable, frenetic energy associated with a lot of the social networking going on. There’s always something happening on one of the networks around the world.

Chess - image: sxc.hu

Think about some of the factors that illustrate that more and more, society is developing into a hive mind. The Mumbai Attacks were twittered, and attacker movements tracked. Despite the police scolding people for revealing their positions, the fact remains, the people were connected in a way never seen before and they were able to assist, coordinate and even direct movement for emergency services.

The Hudson River crash was not only announced on Twitter, the citizen journalists beat out mainstream news by at least an hour, which, in social media time, stretched to several hours. That was also the event that took out the TwitPic servers completely, because one of those citizen journalists put their shots of the downed plane onto the service.

In a social nervous system there will be increasing pressure to be connected 24/7 to the hive mind that is Facebook, Twitter and so on. Those who do not connect, share and collaborate will have a hard time in business and in social life. [source]

I may be repeating myself here, but if the corporate world doesn’t shake off their traditional shackles and start looking in earnest at social media - not just dipping one toe in with a blog rarely updated, a cloaked twitter stream, or a facebook page for the sake of having a facebook page - they run the risk that they’ll be left in the dust, especially in light of the current recession.

The world is moving forward at a startling pace; the hive mind, (which sounds much creepier than it actually is) shares information faster than ever before, and traditional companies and news organizations don’t need to catch up - but they do need to just jump in, with a solid strategy, or find themselves completely out of the loop.

Normally, planning an event can take months, sometimes as many as 12, but the Writer’s Federation and the Shabeen Club have teamed up to create an amazingly fun event in just two weeks.

That meant all of the traditional promotional methods were completely out of the question. So, instead, organizer Lorraine Murphy turned to Twitter to arrange everything. Crime Pays takes place Monday, March 16th at the Vancouver Police Museum.

“We had to do it on twitter because it all literally happened over two weeks, from getting the idea to holding the event.” said Lorraine.  “Papers need more notice than that; we didn’t even get in the event listings at the Straight! So [traditional] press releases were of limited use.”

Lorraine managed to find a free venue, “guys and dolls” to auction off and promoted the event through Twitter and Facebook. In addition, several bloggers have written about the event to assist in promotion, and arranged to have the Executive Director of the Writer’s Federation send the event out to his 2,000 strong newsletter.

Come help the Fed celebrate 32 years of getting away with murder. Whether infiltrating schools, divvying up swag, or distributing subversive publications, the Federation of BC Writers has been operating unchecked in our province for decades.

Do you enjoy the vicarious thrill of rubbing shoulder pads with the Lost Literati of the Wild West, surrounded by instruments of murder and mayhem in the cozy confines of the police museum? Do you have what it takes to make your bones as a Fed member? There’s only one way to find out! Come out to the party and make us an offer we can’t refuse. [source]

When: Monday, March 16th, 6:00pm - 9:00pm
Where: The Vancouver Police Museum, 240 East Cordova Street, Vancouver
Info: Tickets are $20, there will be refreshments, and prizes galore. Register here.

And for a little gratuitous eye candy, here are some of the guys and dolls being auctioned off.

Irwin

Terra aka Zoey Jane

Kris Krug & Raul (aka Hummingbird604)

Caroline

All these fine folk and more are being auctioned off - including a real live fictional character! (How perfect could that be? A date with a fictional character, for a writer?!)

It’s very cool to know that social media made this entire event possible. Without the ability to connect immediately, this never would have come together.

[all images provided by Lorraine Murphy]

This is a first in the social media world of firsts. Yesterday, the Mars Hill Church in Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood not only had the sermon broadcast on large video screens, but the congregation was Tweeting  and broadcasting on iPhones. Not only that, but they were encouraged to do it!

Mars Hill Church

“How does the service impact them, what does worship feel like to them and its a good way for them to kind of tell their friends what church is about without their friends even  coming in the building,” said Kyle Firstenberg, Mars Hill Campus Administrator. [source]

The tweets were popping up on the congregants’ Facebook pages and also on the church’s official Twitter page.

Using the hashtag #MHC, you can search the service, and find out what people are thinking about it, feeling about it or what ideas come up throughout it.

Lichlin Payne is visiting numerous churches throughout the states is enjoying the fact that he can Twitter his experiences with his friends down under. “I remember 10, 15 years ago you couldn’t wear a hat in church, and now you can get out your mobile phones and your iPhones and you can Twitter so these things change and you’ve got to move with the times,” he said.

To me, it seems as though Twitter is becoming more and more mainstream, especially if organizations that are traditionally conservative like churches are not only allowing, but are encouraging their attendees to Twitter. Not only is it helping to spread the word of their organization but also to gain some important feedback for the organizers (be they church leaders or CEOs) as well.

It’s looking like YouTube is about to be made a star. YouTube is this close to signing a contract with the William Morris Agency which would give the company’s clients another screen to be on - the really small screen: made-for-the-Web productions.

Much like the music industry underwent changes to the distribution model when the dust settled and the internet became such a powerful force for music; this deal will underscore the ways the distribution models for television and movies on the internet.

There’s several actors and other celebrities are creating their own content for the internet, avoiding the red tape involved in developing a show for a network. Not only will the distribution change, WM clients will get an ownership stake in the videos they create for YouTube; something that television networks don’t offer.

So far, reps from both sides declined to comment when the New York Times asked to get one for their article. Two people who are close to the deal spoke to Brian Stetler on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the deal, described the arrangement as “YouTube’s most sweeping attempt to date to add professionally produced videos to its Web site”.  [source]

Even better, including celebrity videos on YouTube would solve the niggling problem Google has about how to make some cash from the bazillions of videos they host for free.

By signing a deal with a talent agency, YouTube is shouting pretty loudly that they want to be the next destination for Hollywood content. That concert they sponsored in November, YouTube Live, said exactly the same thing.

I guess we’ll see what happens when the deal’s finally done and the ink on the contract dries.

I spend a lot of time wandering about the interwebs and reading articles that interest me. It makes some sense - as a writer, I’ve got an insatiable curiosity about the world, so when I stumbled across an article titled  "The mother and son torn apart by web ‘cult’ that destroys families: Teenage follower of a controversial internet philosopher tells how he walked out on his family and why he now despises them" I was easily distracted and rather enthralled.

Turns out there’s a guy named Stefan Molyneux, who claims to be an Internet philosopher, who advocates, or perhaps just encourages a practice called "defooing" - the act of "freeing onseself from one’s family of origin". Turns out there are approximately 20 young adults - all above the age of consent - who have "defooed" themselves, leaving their families and simply going out on their own. The only reason this is different than when I moved out of my mom’s house when I was 18 is that I stayed in touch, and these folks are cutting their families off entirely.

The family featured in the story  - the Weeds - are claiming that Molyneaux is a cult leader with "malign influences". Molyneaux says that his site is simple the largest and most popular philosopy site on the internet.

When the Times Online interviewed Ms. Weed’s soon, Tom (who is 18), he said “Love should not be imposed upon a child, like a chore on a ticklist: mow the lawn, wash the dishes, love your parents, I started to examine my relationships with people in my family, and came to understand that they weren’t for me… I didn’t feel like I was listened to by my parents. Whenever I tried to make my preferences felt, they didn’t respond in an interested way.”(that last complaint seems like that of a frustrated teenager, not that of a rational adult to me.)

What I’m trying to determine now is whether or not this phenomenon is any different than any other so called organization. The only main difference that I can see is that Molyneaux is using social networking tools to reach more people (there’s that broader audience again). His Freedomain Radio site primarily uses podcasts as his method of information delivery, and claims 4 million downloads per year.

Do these tools simply make it easier for people to get caught up in what appears to be a random scheme, or are families simply applying some of the new social media tools and opportunities technology affords us to blame people when their children act in a manner they don’t approve of? Is social media just a scape goat?

Tags: cults, family, philosophy, scape goat

Given the fact that I’ve always considered the Air Force and the other military organizations as being pretty conservative, the fact that the Air Force has a well organized policy for social media interaction is totally impressive.

Not only do they have a Twitter account, a YouTube channel and Wigets and Podcasts as well as having Airmen proactively “counter-blog”, which is what they refer to replying to bloggers. They’ve got a complete, strategic flow chart for response, and of course have to be careful about what they reveal online.

I first found this through friends, but David Merman Scott also wrote about it - and had an interview with Capt. David Faggard, Chief of Emerging Technology at the Air Force Public Affairs Agency in the Pentagon.

Capt. Faggard told David that the Airforce has 330,000 communicators, because their goal is to have every airman act as a communicator. Their mission is to use current and developing Web 2.0 applications as a way to actively engage conversations between Airmen and the general public. It’s amazing to me, and to David, considering that so many private companies are so very gun-shy about all this new fangled technology stuff.

I’m thinking that the private companies should take a page from Capt. Faggard’s playbook and engage a little. It’s easy guys, I promise.

Check out David’s interview with Capt. Faggard and check out the blogger chart here. 

There’s a ton of posts out there that talk about how social media will change in the upcoming year, what will happen with our communications and predictions for the year to come and looks-back at the year that was.

Me? Sure, I did the ranty (although, perhaps it was a little too ranty!) post the other day about the things that I hoped would just go away in 2009, and I’ve been looking aroung at the posts that try to predict 2009.

Twitter gained a major following this year and started to go mainstream, big time. Growth is off the hook, (I can’t believe I just wrote that in all seriousness. What the hell does that even *mean* anyways?) and I can only imagine that will continue in 2009.

Newspapers and magazines folded, went entirely online and started to get the whole social media thing just a little more. I think that’s only going to continue in 2009. I will be stunned if by this time next year, more mainstream media has adopted some serious social media interaction and tools. If there’s an industry that seems like it should be picking this kind of interaction with readers up quickly, it’s the mainstream media, however they’re one of the industries that seem the most reluctant.

Companies and Brands are starting to get involved in social media… some of them are going it really well and others are …well, not. Here’s to brands and companies getting it more.

Advertising has taken a huge hit for 2009, and I anticipate that will continue… I think that the people are seriously tired of the spin and marketing messages that come with sales and want to know the honest truth about the product or service they’re looking at.

PR is the same as advertising at this point. It’s changing dramatically and people don’t believe the marketing hype of stories like they used to.

Even the way we communicate is changing.  More and more I find I pull away from email, towards SMS (text) messages and twitter, but even more so, if I need more than 140 or 160 characters, I pick up the phone. It’s faster, easier and accomplishes the same thing in minutes rather than hours. Partly, I think we’re moving away from the technology and going back to our “roots” so to speak, and partly I think people want to do things the most efficient way possible.

What do you think is going to come to the forefront for 2009? Are we going to get more simplified or are we going to move towards more and more social media tools and communications?

The New York Times is beating the bushes to generate more interest in their website, trying to get more eyeballs on the site in order to convince their advertisers that online really is a good thing!

I have to admit, the videos are pretty good. The site calls them “candid conversations with someone’s most interesting conversations about their passions, their lives and NYTimes.com”. They’re unscripted and are, for the most part, just pure fun. You can see them all here.

I think my favourite has to be the Ben Stein one, but that might just be because the dog is adorable.

I’ve been thinking about the whole traditional media/new media thing - everyone trying to figure out will happen to traditional media in the future. I’ve been mulling over thoughts around this for a while now, but haven’t been able to gather all my thoughts into one cohesive post. And then, I came across Chris’s post entitled All Tomorrow’s Armies and realized that Chris managed to coalesce all my thoughts!

Stay with the old at your own risk. All tomorrow’s armies are equipped and ready to embed. We don’t need to gather. We have our own dial tone. We connect and disband the way waves shape the beach. [source]

Now,  although Chris does go on to say that we might also might not be or do all of those things, but I have a very good feeling that this really will be the way of the media world. If traditional media doesn’t get involved in the social media world, they’re going to get left in the dust.

The New York Times has recently realized that the aggregation of and links to things the paper didn’t produce in-house improves the audience experience and they have begun to provide additional information written by bloggers and in some cases, even their direct competitors. [source] While this isn’t anything new for those of us who are used to the social media world, it’s very cool to see the New York Times embracing our world.

Steve Outing from Editor & Publisher has offered newspaper CEOS and journalists some ‘crisis advice’ in his most recent column. Chief among his advice includes hiring a Social Media VP.

Most newspapers have a vice president of circulation in charge of print distribution. Today, you need a “circulation VP” for the Internet. A more appropriate title: vice president for social media.

A key tenet in the digital media world we now live and do business in is: Be everywhere. Any newspaper company that thinks that its Web site or sites (and maybe a few other services like e-mail newsletters, RSS feeds and mobile-phone alerts) is enough is sadly mistaken. [source]

Today’s newspapers and media outlets have got to adapt. They need to get involved with citizen journalists more, get the reporters blogging, start covering hyper-locally,  and be everywhere on line, absolutely everywhere. Check to make sure that your brand/user name isn’t being brandjacked.

In short, get on it, hire your VP of Social Media (I happen to know a few good candidates) and get started before you go extinct.