In today's era of social media advancements, it's tough to imagine a book about social technologies having much shelf life. With Groundswell, it's a different story. Authors Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff went way beyond my expectations, taking an in-depth look beyond current technologies into the fundamental transformation that is taking place in how we all communicate and build relationships. 

Relationship building versus tools is still a key difference that I feel a lot of folks diving into social media still have trouble wrapping their heads around. It's easy to assume a presence on Facebook or YouTube is an immediate solution to fulfilling your "social media strategy" when in fact the decision to use these or whichever tools should be one of the last decisions made prior to implementing a social media plan.

Li and Bernoff start off by defining the "groundswell" as: A social trend in which people use technologies to get the things they need from each other, rather than from traditional institutions like corporations. 

By nature, humans like to share. Furthermore, we trust our friends and each other more than anything else. In order to properly market and connect with others, companies need to realize that becoming embedded in this communication process is what's driving action.

Obviously the manner in which we share content and ideas online with one another has changed drastically in recent years. In Chapter 3 of their book, Li and Bernoff provide an excellent general breakdown on the types of groundswell activities U.S. consumers are participating in, ranging from watching online videos (29%) to running a blog (11%) to using Twitter (5%) {note: the online survey of 10,000 U.S. adults was conducted in Q2 2007, so you can imagine how those numbers have shifted in the past year}.

The same chapter identifies Forrester's Social Technographics tool as a quick (and free!) way to assess an audience you may be looking to target. More importantly, the Social Technographics ladder breaks down groundswell participants based on whether they are creators, critics, collectors, joiners, spectators or inactives and provides an essential framework for thinking about your own target audience and how a particular online strategy may resonate with their level of online participation. 

Audience identification obviously remains an essential first step in ensuring you're talking with people who care and people who are willing to naturally help you achieve your marketing or community building goals.

Next: Groundswell Learnings Part 2 - Defining your objectives and strategy, choosing technologies and the "Groundswell Blend."

-Scott

I like the Squidoo lens option for organizing and publishing information on a micro subject. My own Hula Hoop and Hoop Dance Videos lens made LOTD some time back. Aaah, this Squidoo genius appears to run in the family. ;-)

Link Web site articles or blog entries to the most popular sites: Twitter, Digg, StumbleUpon and FriendFeed.

Use sites like del.i.cio.us to find like-minded people in the community who would be interested in your business. You can use tags, or bookmarks, to search other people’s content, and share your bookmarks with others in the community.

Create profiles in sites like Digg and StumbleUpon to create buzz for your Web site or blog so like-minded people in the community can find you through link sharing and link tagging.

Create links to the sites above in your toolbar for easy reference and submission.

Tag your Web pages with icons for bookmarks, so others can talk about and recommend your site.

News originated as word of mouth.  Then evolved into a central source such as a town crier.  Then to a distribution method via paper, to radio which allowed even easier distribution and less barrier to entry (not having to know how to read).  TV merged radio's low barrier to entry with newspapers embedded pictures to bring you sound with moving pictures.  The internet has allowed us to "get back to basics" by absorbing our news again by word of mouth.  News headlines are streamed via individuals on their Twitter feed.  I found out about Isaac Hayes and Bernie Mac's death as well as the recent LA earthquake via Twitter.  If those "headlines" interest me, I can dig deeper via a trustworthy news source.  But the first touch came from a peer.

Sharing personal information and gossip is also an old pastime.  Before the written word, we began with oral peer to peer sharing but only with those in our immediate proximity.  The postal service allowed us to more frequently keep up with those we cared about over long distances to be brought even further with the telephone.  Now a site like Facebook allows me to broadcast my life to those interested into small chunks that over time paint a broader picture of what is happening in my life.

The ways we go about our ingrained human goals evolve and change, but we're still trying to accomplish the same goals we always have.  If you're trying to create something, don't attempt a new idea, try building on an existing one.

Here is part of the email I sent the list

One of the problems I've seen with 2.0 is the library runs out and gets a blog or facebook page or whatever and declares themselves 2.0. They don't consider who they are trying to reach, what they are trying to accomplish, how they will accomplish it or measure success. We need to take the same approach to 2.0 that we've taken to library services for years. Not every tool will work for every library and community. Some libraries have wildly successful film programs or extensive tools for small businesses, but not every library does. We look at what our community needs and what works best for them. The same approach should be taken with your web tools.

My answer is yes.  I think there are many aspects of Library 2.0 (and web 2.0) that are providing better service to our patrons.  Right now I'm using a blog to create a new Readers Advisory service for our patrons.  Learning 2.0 & Learning 2.1 teach our staff about technology and terms our patrons are using that they might now have known about before.

I can go on and on with examples and arguments, but what I really want to know is What do you think?  Do you have some great examples of Library 2.0 or Web 2.0 is helping (or not helping)?  Is the objection to 2.0 that we're placing a value judgment on it that we don't apply to traditional services ( and by that I mean when we order the latest romance or horror novel)? Are we doing a disservice to our patrons by having a blog?  Are gaming events a waste of our valuable time?  What should we be doing with our time?

In Social Poster you have to sumit your posts url, title, some texts, tags and then select your desired social bookmarks from left side and then press submit. That's it. After that, you will get like one Submit to Social Websites just add this text in below to your site. On that page user can get the scope to bookmark your posts. For extra you can see the posts Page Rank, Alexa ranks too.

Question: What Is Kwippy? How It's Work?

Answer:

Kwippy is a micro-blogging platforms for everyone and clone of twitter.com. You can signup for an free account (now on beta) and also you can enabled your Gtalk, Yahoo IM. Send your messages through IM and automatically your msg. will be posted at your own account. You can follow to others, comments to others, share your tweaks at kwippy.com

Question: How To Add 150+ Social Links On A Website or Blogsite?

Answer: If you would like you can free signup at proflactic.com and which is generating 150+ social bookmarks and social networks, covering video sharing websites and photo sharing networks and so on. You can get a list all of your networks from profilactic.com.

After signing up, you have to submit all of your social links and they will generate codes for your site. You can customize the codes or attach extra css effects. See below the same codes.

[sourcecode="javascript"]

[/sourcecode]

Jeg har selv været medlem af eLearning Guild siden starten og deltaget i 3 konferencer i USA samt et utal af webkonferencer.

Du skulle unde dig selv og din virksomhed at deltage i den næste konference:

Devlearn (Learning in a Wb 2.0) i San José, Californien fra 11-14. november 2008. Èn af hovedtalerne er manden bag web 2.0 termen Tim O'Reilly.

Gratis medlemsskab:
Adgang til handouts fra tidligere konferencer, eLearning Insider (ugebrev), eLearning Solution Magazine (artikler der udkommer ca. 40 gange om året), rapporter, hvor du selv har bidraget gennem spørgeskemaer.

Medlemsskaber til 0$/år, 99$/år, 695$/år og 1.695$/år

Læs mere her: Membership Benefits Summary - jeg har det dyreste Premium medlemsskab, som gør alt 'gratis' inklusive deltagelse i konference i USA hvert år.

Bliv gratis medlem til en begyndelse! Det vil styrke din professionalisme!

F.eks. er nedenstående rapport tilgængelig selv med et gratis medlemskab!

July 17, 2008 - The eLearning Guild announced today the publication of a new Guild Research 360° Report on Mobile Learning. This is the largest, vendor-neutral report on M-Learning ever conducted and contains critical insights into benchmarks, trends, benefits, ROI, and best practices in using Mobile Learning. Download and read this report today!

ACCESS: As a Guild Member, Member Plus, or Premium Member, you can download a complete copy of the report (pdf) as part of your paid membership. To download your copy now from the Research Library, click HERE.

RESEARCH WEBINAR: Attend a one hour Webinar Thursday, July 31st at 8:30 AM Pacific Time, in which Steve Wexler, David Metcalf and David Rogers will discuss key findings from this important report. This webinar is free with registration.

Really. Am I supposed to be impressed? Am I supposed to be just fascinated that an ad that is "magically" targeted to me just happened to land in front of me? Am I supposed to be so dull of mind not to think anything except, "Wow. These are just the products for a 44 year-old female. Welch's fruit snacks. Definitely! When I was 43, I wasn't so sure about the Welch's fruit snacks, but now that I'm 44 -- and female, mind you -- I'm really giving them some thought."

Well, I don't know about all you other 44 year-old females, but I was more curious about Facebook's campaign to offer advertising that's tying in with their users' profile info. Personally, I'm all for it: targeted advertising, that is. I just found this particular ad so, um, less-than-brilliant.

Gosh. Maybe I'm just in a bad mood. Maybe being 44 is wearing on me. Maybe some Welch's fruit snacks are just what I need. Thanks, Facebook. Thanks, Smart Advertiser. You've really helped me navigate the difficult waters of Life.

Tracey, co-founder of the Low Carbon Community Network in the UK, is one of the organizers of 2gether08, which is going on right now, including a streaming video feed and an event-centered social networking installation. Tracey's questions are basic to the need for sharing knowledge and experience among the countless communities of all sizes that are facing the harsh realities of unaffordable transportation and uncertain climate futures. We know that change is coming, but we don't know in exactly what form.

We know that all of us, down to the household level, need to reduce our carbon footprints and learn to live more sustainably, but we don't know what the impacts will be on each of our locations as global warming intensifies. Just look at the flooding in the American Midwest and the fires in California. Then think about how you'd prepare for such events if you lived in the affected regions.

This is where more grassroots communication and mutual education is essential. Pamphlets and Web pages from FEMA are fine, but they are general and don't benefit from the experiences of citizens on the ground who must deal directly with impending disasters.

England has suffered major flooding and unprecedented heat waves over the past two years. Many of its small towns are taking climate change seriously, and many highly motivated local activists are attending 2gether08, building and strengthening the social networks that will help them all provide smarter leadership for their local communities.

One big idea now emerging at 2gether08 is using online networking, and public service media, to help communities reduce their carbon footprints.

Groups in towns and villages are already starting to share experience nationally and internationally about local projects to tackle the challenge of peak oil and climate change, through the Low Carbon Communities Network and Transition Towns Network.

However as Tracey Todhunter, co-founder of LCCN, explains in this interview, they need technical help on how to raise awareness and communicate better online, by using social media and attracting the interest of public service publishers like Channel 4.

Tracey plans to gather a team on the first day of 2gether08 to add more tools to their current set of blogs, wikis and other communication methods, and develop their networking skills. They’ll work to a brief developed by Tracey and others in the network - and on the second day present back a working demonstration.

Although the main focus of the project is climate change, the tools and networking processes could be applied anywhere that communities seek to collaborate on projects for social benefit.

That’s why Tracey hopes Channel 4 might be interested in sharing ideas on how to do this effectively. In a series of interviews on 2gether08.com, Channel 4 executives have explained how they are moving beyond public service broadcasting to develop a range of interactive tools and programmes with partners.

The tools developed by Tracey and the team at 2gether08 will be used to build a network that will meet face-to-face at a conference in October. This will bring together the Low Carbon Community Network and the Transition Towns Network.

Twitter, at least for now, is my A#1 favorite social tool. Love it, love it, love it.

Question: How Twitter Bot Works?

Answer: Taggy casted a posts about it. "How Twitter Bot Interact With You". Thanks to Taggy.

[content missing in first past, sorry for the inconvenicen]

Question: Can I Get High Quality RSS Feed Icon?

Answer:

Sure you can. Checkout and get free download the rss feed icon for your sites.

This got me thinking about game theory, the psychology aspect of what is mainly an economic theory focuses on social situations, which i feel is a more accurate description of what game theory is about. Although game theory is relevant to games such as poker, most research in game theory focuses on how groups of people interact. I have also started to hear about game theory in John Seddon's book about Systems Thinking in the public sector...

The rise of social tools to foster mass collaboration has really taken me by surprise and i am now following like many others into a new era of communications and social interaction.

A colleague has expressed their concern over the real face to face interaction which gives you some real contact. However with the GPS capabilities and the link with social networking, it will only offer me more opportunities for face to face contact but with people who are friends of friends or who are recommended by friends as people with similar interests.

This on a sunday has made my mind boggle and i can only contemplate how the next few years will look in terms of the web considering facebook was only developed in 2005! Look how that has impacted our lives, whether we use it or not, it seems to play a major factor in how people information.

My hope is that we all continue to focus on the social and community benefits, which after all is driving these social tools and continuing the revolution of how groups and communities come together.

Everyone needs to realise that the technology can only play a part (the platform) and it is all of us who continue to make this stuff work, function and tick. That is the beauty of how things have changed in web2.0.

On a seperate and more personal note, we have finally finished the engine for the van and we are ready to start it up tomorrow (providing there is petrol in the local petrol stations)....

Anyway this signals a turning point in what feels like 4 years of hell really, but we are so close now to getting him on the road. Just the brakes to do after this...

Also i forgot to add a photo of the scarecrow we made over in the allotment. Not sure what the boys have called him but this is Ewan with our scarecrow.

She is trying to start up a group in Flickr that is focused on "ABC."  I think she wants to start a photo journal and eventually publish it. She wants my help to drive traffic to the site and build participation. That's about all I know. I will be able to fill in blanks later after our conversation. Hope this helps. I appreciate any insight you can provide regarding the inner workings of flickr.

Here's my response to him. First, I'm not an expert on this subject. Second, this is a long post. Ready? OK, so I'm fudging a bit on my answers, but I'm close enough to get some key points across. See, Flickr, is a classic social media site. It includes --

• user profiles for people who post pictures or comments,
• commenting capabilities,
• tagging of content,
• "friend" features and
• group functions.

And it takes work to make it work. In other words, just like any other social media site, it requires purpose, vision, nurturing of relationships, admin, moderation and ongoing and ongoing attention. That said, it can be a wonderful tool to use for accomplishing multiple goals for an individual, business, group or "cause."

Just some of the things to think about before starting a Flickr group (and this is from my own limited experience with it) --

• There's the thinking and decisions about tagging photos and creating, if desired, unique tags.
• There's figuring out admin functions.
• There are group rules and Terms of Service to consider.
• There's moderation of content, and perhaps comments, tagging accuracy and photo titling.
• There's inviting in and nurturing relationships of members.
• There's spam.

And perhaps the biggest of all, there's inertia. Having a purpose, value and mission behind something doesn't seem to be enough to get the ball moving anymore. At least not through my eyes. So getting a community of people to participate in a Flickr group -- by joining, commenting on photos, adding their own photos, et cetera -- can be a challenge.

Probably the easiest route to a robust Flickr group is to have any existing group that has personal and meaningful relationships and then to layer in Flickr as an additional means of connection and expression inside the group. But that's just a guess.

I actually do have two good friends (Strobist and Ozoni11), both local, who have extremely successful Flickr groups. They both happen to be world-class photographers, so they created a social network inside of a tool (Flickr) where their community members already play.

I have another good friend (Mary Kate Murray, of Oakland Mills), also local, who uses Flickr to support the many cool community activities she does. She actively layers Flickr in along with Socializr, Facebook, blog comments, Twitter and other online media. So Flickr is one component of her tool kit for creating and strengthening community. She *works* it. Each picture gets a comment, and on occasion, a hyper-link.

Your client wants you to help drive traffic to her Flickr group, and I'm certain you can do that. What does she want to happen when people get to her Flickr pictures?

• Comment?
• Join her group?
• Upload photos?
• Repurpose and share them elsewhere? (Creative Commons License needs to be set accordingly)
• Brand herself?
• Sell photos?
• Have people link to another site?

In recommending Flickr as a tool for a client, I think it would be helpful to know how comfortable your client is with Web 2.0 technologies and culture. Sometimes seemingly simple stuff can be a huge hurdle to the uninitiated.

• Is she comfortable uploading files and using light HTML?
• Does she understand Web 2.0 and the concept of tagging?
• Has she created an online profile before?

Social media is not a build-it-and-they-will-come world anymore. Your clients idea sounds relatively sound on the surface. As you know, there's lots involved in making a site successful once people arrive at it. And much of that success has to do with how the site was set up and what you want people to do when they finally do arrive at it. In social media, it also includes a fair amount of admin and content management and the no-two-ways-about-it time-consuming task of creating, developing and nurturing relationships.

Probably the best thing for you, right now, is to

• Create a Flickr account yourself and join at least one group.
• Post and tag some photos.
• Comment on some photos and explore how commenting is used inside of groups.
• Create a small group.
• And play around.

That's my two yuan on a Friday afternoon.

Oh, I can hear them now.

Blasphemer.

Heathen.

Stone her.

Hang her.

How dare she ....!

Well, it's true. I blog for me. I blog because it helps me think. It helps me store information. It helps me figure out what's important and what's not, to me and just me. It helps me put my current thinking around content, categorize and tag it and put it in a place where I can most easily find the info: in my own blog.

And, because I learn from others and am interested in knowledge that moves from person-to-person, I put this information in a public blog, visible to anyone with an internet connection.

So, had you asked me -- say six months ago -- what the purpose of my blog is? I'd have said some high-falutin (and totally appropriate) answer about content, community, conversation and such. Ask me today? I'd say it's for my own benefit. And blessings to all who benefit from it -- and contribute to it -- as well.