Friday, September 26, 2008

Are Yahoo Groups So Expired?

Two years ago at a biotechnology conference, a PR Newswire employee brusquely explained that doing Yahoo Group just wasn't the thing to do anymore. He didn't school me on what I ought to do. Luckily, I was blogging and learning about Meet Up. Much later, I got turned onto MyRagan.com. This past winter, I was clued into Ning which allows anyone to start her personal social media.

Where communication is key, any avenue that connects you with people, ideas and opportunities is worthy. Yahoo Groups may be accessed via email or online. There's a moderator that may choose to read every submission before putting it out for every member of the group or every submission goes straight to the group.

While different forms of social media emerge--Dodgeball, Twitter, Ning, MeetUp, radioblogs, teleconferences--Yahoo groups remain viable. I read one from Phenomenal Woman-Northeast and was amazed by the mix of personal rant, political opinion, resource exchange and event notices. It was the end of September and my calendar was checkered through November.

The same thing occurs if you get involved with Meet Up, Twitter, teleconferences, dodgeball, ad infinitum. If people believe they're being heard or they're connecting to others, then it's gold.

I also think writing letters is cool.

Saturday, September 20, 2008

Web 2.0 NY at Javits Center



The exhibitors at technology expos are as fascinating as the seminars running on the other floor. Thursday, I was turned away from a room because I had an 'Expo Only' tag around my neck. How was I to know? The huge directory read 'Web 2.0 New York' and the room was as big as an exhibit hall.

Once on the Expo Hall floor proper, it was amazing to find the "in the clouds"products that programmers have strung together to make the online experience as face-to-face as electronics, glass and cable can assume. Twing.com is a search engine for online communities. Clickability provides On Demand web content management. Samsung and Nokia displayed an array of unlocked mobile devices. Ebay touted its partnerships and acquisitions to ensure Ebay is THE online auction and store experience. Some enterprises were beyond conception. Take Brickfish. This is not an interactive ad agency; it's not a search engine marketing agency. It's a social media marketing platform that utilizes viral marketing campaigns to move your 'brand.'

Two non tech things uncovered were the origin of the term 'On Demand' and America's regional variations. Pay-per-view is pretty obvious but 'On Demand' threw me. Clickability's Molly Dolan explained that 'On Demand' was a marketing phrase Microsoft Corp. coined eight years ago to mean movies you request from a cable company rather than saved on your hard drive, placed on a CD, on a video cartridge or DVD. The point being it's the cable subscriber pulling the strings; i.e, On Demand; and not the cable company; i.e., pay-per-view.

Many exhibitors came from the west coast. Take Brickfish's Ashley Futak. When her colleague asked about the origin of her name, Ashley explained it came from one East European nation. I remarked, "How interesting!" Ashley said, "Yes, it's random." So "random" substitutes for "interesting" and "unusual?" How San Diego of her to hip me to the vernacular.

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Thursday, September 4, 2008

Web 2.0 NY MEET UP

People think up web applications for fun and for profit. Sometimes the creations conceived from the spirit of fun are more impressive than those driven by the profit margin. Joseph Campbell's "Follow your bliss" directive is all the difference.

At the August 2008 Web 2.0 NY Meet Up, six apps were presented by PR-smart techies. They didn't let no access to the Internet stop their show. Sailthru.com and GetConnect.com were products for email marketing. Online email services like MSN, Hotmail, and Gmail have very vigilant spam filters. Marketers using e-newsletters or just websites requiring registration authentication get caught in the filters. Imagine someone wants to join an online community or registers for a web conference but a Marine of a spam filter grabs the email. Sailthru handles that. GetConnect facilitates migrating email address books from one database to another; however, it doesn't handle address books stored on hard drives.

Drop.io is a site that keeps things private. It's classified as social media but it does away with registration and many other identifiers to allow people to have a space in the clouds to share photos, audio, video and text in private. That way the day you decide to send photos of your freaky Roman toga party won't become public information. Drop.io may be more of a pandora's box than a blessing when predators use it to trap prey.

Pop17.com is a sophomoric vlog about pop culture. Following MyRagan, RocketBoom, and DSSimon, the young woman presenter does shorts on what she sees as "the most hip now." She just needs to work on her stage presence. She often looked at her teleprompter rather than into the camera or the person beside her. Julia Allison , featured in Wired mag's August 2008 issue, could teach her a thing. Her presentation was bad and that's why she was last at bat.

Dailymugshots.com is a site to post daily pictures of yourself, baby, pet, plant--whatever. The key is uploading a photo daily. How many are so consistent? You look at other people's galleries and link to them. They're thinking of making coffee mugs and calendars emblazoned with the images. For now, they offer pocket size albums of your 365 head shots. This site was just whimsy of two friends; then again most of the displayed product are creations of two people, just kickin' it.

Edopter.com is all about being an influencer of fashion, entertainment, thought--you name it. Register, set up a profile and then, say what you believe is hot. You can invite others to yay or nay your observations. The point is tracking how many people will join your trend and where are they located. Does anyone on the bandwagon make a modification to your trend or submit a new 'cool' thing? This app was probably conceived with the marketing and advertising worlds in mind.

The Meet Up crowd was young, though there were old heads hanging tough. Primarily vanilla ice cream, sprinkles of caramel, chocolate and banana slices made this dessert bowl interesting. There was a Rastaman wearing a knit tam sidled up to a Russian lass. As the roving African Web Queen I long to see the day when I encounter a tech event where there are black presenters standing before an ethnically diverse crowd. So far, Small Biz Technology editor Ramon Ray is the one making waves on and offline.

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