Archive for category internet

What is Social Discovery?

Posted by Paul Holmes in business, internet, social media on February 18, 2010

What the heck is Social Discovery? I’ve seen the term thrown around here and there, but only in passing.

After a chance meeting with Dan Martell on a rainy afternoon in Las Vegas on January 17th, the light bulb suddenly appeared!

I am convinced “Social Discovery” will become an integrated component for every serious marketing department in the world within the next year.

The term itself is nearly self-explanatory:

“Social”, as in “Social Media” (yes, “Social” is the new “it” adverb).
“Discovery”, as in “discovering” where people are, and how they are using social media.

As Dan explains it, every business has a client list – and these days, that means a list of e-mail addresses. As companies roll out their social media campaigns, the most important people they need to connect with are their clients who are using social media.

Dan is very active with a social discovery startup called Flowtown.

You probably haven’t heard of Flowtown, and Dan explains that this is on purpose. They don’t want to garner too much attention while they refine their product. But you will start hearing a hell of a lot more about this company very, very soon.

What Flowtown offers is a complete, automated social discovery product, launched in late October.

Their target market includes small businesses, and has a very low starting price point. They even have a “free demo” version available online right now.

I’m excited about the whole concept of “social discovery.”

Dan and I chatted at length about the possibilities in this sector. Could software make appropriate connections automatically? Can it find new, valuable connections automatically, and keep them tuned into your companies channels (in a useful, non-annoying way)?

Could software check to see which platforms people actually use, and what their interests are there. Perhaps somebody uses Facebook for finding love on lonely Friday nights, and might feel awkward if you suddenly ask them to fan your Facebook business page. Perhaps somebody uses Twitter, but strictly for the purpose of stalking celebrities.

At this point Dan started telling me fascinating things about “Social Lead Scoring” and metrics, and my head was spinning.

Dan lives in San Fransisco now, but he cut his teeth in Canada. In Moncton he started, and later sold, a successful development firm that boasts a pretty impressive list of clients.

I was impressed with Dan Martell, and enjoyed our lunch together. He is very professional, confident, and successful, yet modest, inquisitive and personable. While I was walking with him at the Affiliate Summit conference in Las Vegas at least a half dozen people came up just to say “hello”. While such attention comes to those who are successful, it also confirmed my previous hunch – that he’s a pretty swell guy.

dan martell, flowtown, social discovery, social media

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Is Google Buzz the Twitter Killer?

Posted by Paul Holmes in blogging, business, internet, social media on February 16, 2010

Will Buzz Kill Twitter?

Some have compared it to FriendFeed, some have called it Google’s answer to Facebook, and some are just annoyed and can’t wait to turn it off (in GMail, you can scroll to the bottom and click on “turn off buzz”, by the way).

Others have predicted Google Buzz will annihilate Twitter! They make a compelling argument.

It’s a sophisticated broadcast notification system, much like Twitter.
It’s public.
You can send images (and you don’t need third party applications like TwitPic).
You can automatically feed Buzz from other services (Blog RSS Feeds, YouTube, Twitter, Flickr, Digg, etc.).
Your Google profile is now your Google Buzz profile, and has much more information than a Twitter profile (yet, uglier).

It’s overwhelming like FriendFeed, but this is offset in part by neatly integrating right into GMail (which is certainly the most open tab on my browser). This means you can have a peak, or you can completely ignore it – but it will always be at your fingertips, beckoning you…

And does anyone have any doubt that “Buzz” will very soon be searchable (and from Google, no less)?

Will Buzz kill Twitter? Maybe. Maybe not.

What do you think?

buzz, digg, facebook, flickr, friendfeed, google, rss, twitter, youtube

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Dammit LinkedIn, I’m a college dropout!

Posted by Paul Holmes in business, humour, internet, personal, social media on November 20, 2009

My LinkedIn profile is 85% complete. It has been since I first signed up, and probably will be in 5 years. Why? Because I have not included my education. Here’s my recent correspondence with LinkedIn:

I do not wish to include education in my profile. I am a self-employed college dropout, and it is not relevant.

Yet LinkedIn does not allow an option for “include none”, and insists my profile remains only 85% complete. I find this really annoying, and would appreciate the option to include no education component in my profile.

Is my life incomplete according to LinkedIn because I have been largely educated within the University of Life?

Here is the response:

Dear Paul,

Thank you for contacting LinkedIn Customer Support.

And I want to apologize for any inconvenience this has caused you.

Unfortunately, this option cannot be changed at this time, I will sent your information to our research and development team for future consideration.

[...]

We appreciate your commitment to making LinkedIn a stronger community!

It was mostly written in a late night moment of jest, but I do wonder how many others fall into a category like mine. Is Bill Gates on LinkedIn? OK, Bill Gates has been a bit more successful than me, but he’s had a few years headstart.

For those who don’t know me terribly well and aren’t already bored by this post, I’ll fill in some of the mundane details of my life.

As a teenager, I was very interested in computers, and would often stay up very late working on them. I wasn’t interested in games, but communications. One of the first things I did with my new 80286 computer and 1200 baud modem was open my own bulletin board system (BBS), which allowed people to dial my computer up from their computer, using the phone line, and post messages, download files (ironically, usually games), chat (when I was around), and send private messages.

Before the Internet came into popular use, my BBS was a node of FidoNet, a global network that operated across phone lines around the world (my address was 1:340/36).

I also found high school exceptionally boring, so much so that I barely graduated. They’d always enroll me in special classes for smart kids (or smart asses, in my case), but I’m fairly certain I never once applied myself. I had a C- in English 12, due primarily to the fact that classes began at 7:45am, so I missed about a third of them.

After high school I took an operations job with a medical software company and worked my way up the ladder there. I quit after a few years to take Political Science and History in college (I even took an English placement test, which ironically allowed me to skip the first English composition class, despite almost failing English 12). I went for one semester, but was given an opportunity to go back to my previous employer. The offer was for far more than what I might have earned with a PoliSci degree, so I dropped college and went back to work.

In 2000, I made a strategic exit from that company to start my own web company, and have been doing that ever since.

Let me be clear: I am not anti-education. Far from it, I am an enthusiastic supporter! I am often invited as a guest speaker for business students, and often work with people in my community to support the local University. I have a tonne of respect for anybody with an MBA, a Masters Degree, or a Doctorate – they clearly have a hell of a lot more patience than me!

So when people ask about my alma mater, life experience is my response.

BBS, Bill Gates, College Dropout, Education, FidoNet, History, linkedin, Political Science

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Happy 5th Birthday Firefox!

Posted by Paul Holmes in events, internet, social media on November 11, 2009

The Mozilla Firefox browser is 5 years old! Now that Internet Explorer isn’t nearly as awful as it once was, and Google Chrome has started to raise some eyebrows, we often forget the effect Firefox had on the world.

They made a cool site, and a cool video.

And, of course, they published it on Twitter and Facebook.

Admittedly, I use Chrome most often these days. But Firefox is still an amazing product, and perhaps one of the best examples in the world of how a great open source community can contribute to a better world – literally.

chrome, facebook, firefox, google, twitter, youtube

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Share on Tumblr

Posted by Paul Holmes in blogging, internet on August 22, 2009

I’ve been playing with Tumblr for awhile. It’s really cool, and the interface is amazingly simple, but I could never quite figure out exactly what to do with it.

Then I went to WordCamp in Surrey and listend to Lorraine Murphy from Raincoaster, and she described it as a “terrible blogging tool”, but a “great scrap-booking tool.”

The lightbulb went on!

I was using DiggBar a fair amount for this, but “scrap-booking” is not really the point, and because of the “social” aspects of Digg, you have verify your humanity every time, which slows the process down considerably. Then, going back and finding your Digg later isn’t rocket since, but it’s not dead simple either. This is not an anti-Digg post (they did send me a free t-shirt, after all), but I would say that Digg is best used for it’s intended purpose (same goes for StumbleUpon and Delicious).

Retrieving links from Tumblr is 100% idiot-proof, since it’s a public blog – no logging in, no messing around. Since it’s “blog-style”, you just need to remember the date you added it, or search for it.

I installed the “Share on Tumblr” bookmarklet (not button, widget or plugin), and already find myself “scrap-booking” all sorts of stuff.

I’m off to the races!

When you login at Tumblr and create your first Tumblog, go to the Account menu (top right) and select “Goodies”. Click on and drag the “Share on Tumblr” button to your bookmark bar (yes, it even works in Chrome).

After that, you’ll be tumbling like a mad tumblr!

blogging, digg, scrap-booking, tumblr, wordcamp

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Guest Blogging 101

Posted by Paul Holmes in blogging, internet on August 20, 2009

I was recently invited to submit to another blog, to blog on the topic of blogging. This practice has been around for ages, and is generally referred to as Guest Blogging.

I wrote a short article about Feedburner.

Guest blogging is a very interesting concept. On one hand, bloggers are limited by the amount of time they have, so writing content for another blog (that adds value to that other blog) might seem counter-intuitive.

If you blog for fun (and not to try to make millions of dollars), as I mostly do here, this isn’t that big a deal.

There are a couple of benefits to guest-blogging which may not be immediately obvious:

By posting a well-written blog entry, you enhance your reputation as an “expert” or at least a “reliable source”. Certainly you were reliable or expert enough to be trusted by the person who you guest-blogged for.
When that blog content links back to your website, it’s of far greater value from a Search Engine Optimization perspective than yet another link from within your own website. Google, and other search engines, don’t just count the links coming into your site, they look at where they come from, and they look at the context (i.e. which keywords are linked). If you are linked from a highly reputable source, it will enhance your reputation within Google’s Almighty Algorithm™.

There is an excellent Guest Blogger group on LinkedIn to meet with others interested in guest blogging, and to otherwise discuss the concept.

Needless to say, my little experiment isn’t earth-shattering, but it certainly was a great deal of fun.

feedburner, guest blogging, linkedin, reputation, seo

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