Hitler Finds out that United Breaks Guitars

Found this video and couldn’t help but think about our United Airlines breaking guitars conversation. It seems United will never hear the end of it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEqvCktdSBM

Social Media Analysis (SMA) services

Here are two sites that discuss the impact of Social Media Analysis and the advantages for businesses.  Can you charge people for analyzing their presence?  Apparently so!!!!

http://www.insurancenetworking.com/blogs/insurance_technology_social_networking_social_media-23708-1.html

http://www.information-management.com/newsletters/fraud_security_social_network_analysis-10016665-1.html?ET=informationmgmt:e1242:2148188a:&st=email

The Sancttitty of Marriage #myministerwouldsmackme

Without revealing my actual opinion of the issue,  IF, again: IF, we WERE to amend the constitution to “defend marriage” I think there are some emerging threats that we should address.

Consider the recent groom who chose to couple (what color is it i’m supposed to use for puns Tim?) his eternal vows to God and man with a mobile Facebook status update and Twitter announcement. (View and recoil/chuckle HERE)  Probably an  attempt to compete with the JK Wedding Dance (as parodied on The Office). Interesting, eh? I never thought I would ever hear “let no man put asunder” and “Facebook status” in the same sentence. Of course I never thought I would learn verb conjugations for a word previously only heard on Bambi (speaking of controversial issues! I swear this isn’t a political post despite this reference to that infuriating piece of propoganda)! It is indeed a brave new world…

Ok, so I don’t really find the status update thing to be entirely offensive, I can’t imagine doing it personally but I can at least appreciate the absurdity. In fact! Maybe that’s what he was really doing! Like an animal rights activist (stupid bambi) smearing themselves in blood, FB Groom intentionally put the influence of technology on our cultural traditions on display as a means of social commentary!

More broadly though, does anyone else find the ever-shrinking realm of what should remain “sacred” to be a bit sad? I don’t know maybe I’m cynical or old fashioned or sad cause “hott friday movie night with my dog!” has never gotten me a you-tube video. After all, we’re just talking about new tools to make communication easier. But still! Am I (ok, not “ME” but somone) going to be going through a scrapbook with grandchildren one day and have to say something like, “I remember the first time i told your grandmother that I loved her. See? Here’s another the email I printed out.”

It seems like more than just the method/vehicle of communication that’s changing. Our grandmother’s fine china is now a Styrofoam plate (not me Staci! i only use organic fair trade paper plates), the crafted mahogany table is now a chipboard from China,  bowling leagues and are now Farmville neighbors, and the To Kill A Mockingbird leather bound first edition is now a .pdf or Kindle: cheaper, more convenient, and easier… How far are we willing to let our communications and relationships move with that tide?

Ok, Andy Griffith is back from commercials so I’ll end there.

Twitter in the Playboy Mansion

Ok, so one of my guilty pleasures is watching Girls Next Door…Hopefully no reflection on my character…

I was watching last week and saw an effective use of fundraising via Twitter. Hef’s girls opened a lemonade stand to raise money for AIDS and advertised it on their Twitter accounts. I don’t remember the exact numbers, but they received a significant portion of their donations through Twitter. Many others coming to the lemonade stand came after hearing about it through Twitter. I must say before this class I really did not like or understand Twitter, but if used correctly, it can add significant value to a company or cause – even in the Playboy Mansion.

A cool ttip to brightten your day

Having taken note of your astonished faces and gazes of amazement and adoration as  Team COM unveiled our groundbreaking Twittergator: trademark pending for Twitter+Aggregator (sneak peak: the logo is the litter twitter bird being eaten by an alligator) we’ve decided to be good community members  and show you how you can get one too! (Please note how we are selflessly giving up (some of) its allure for your benefit, like Copperfield giving you cliff-notes to a disappearing Golden Gate Bridge.) (Revisit that magical experience by visiting OUR SITE: TeamCom doing its ning.)

Ok, ok, ok, so it’s basically just a widget and the following link will take you to the site that let’s your personalize the color, layout, content choices, display options, etc and then produces the HTML code for you to copy/paste (wish I had known that before I spent all that money outsourcing labor to write it myself). Think warm thoughts of Team COM and click HERE.

1. Enter in your basic information (There’s a helpful link right at the top for “advanced queries“  for how to format your search terms so your Twittergator (trademark pending) spitts out the right information for you when you implement it.

2. Make it pritty with the “preference, appearance, dimensions” options.

3. Make sure to do the “TEST SETTINGS” first so you can see how it’s going to look/act, and re-test every time you change something cause it doesn’t always work like you think it will.

4. “Grab the Code” and copy it.

5. In your blog (oh please! Don’tt ttell me you’re not blogging yett) add a simple Text-Box to your layout and then pastte it in there just like you pasting a typical message you would display (Like: “Wow! TeamCOM is hott!”) and then when you save it the magical HTML fairies fly in and turn letters into pictures and when you view your blog:

KAZZAM! (or whatever it is that Copperfield says) You’ve got yourself a Twittergator!

#NEATT!

(sorry if that was overly simplistic, and hope it helps!)

IBM Rational & Social Media

Stephanie Trunzo and Sera Lewis of IBM spoke with us recently about social media and IBM Rational.  IBM Rational software provides a software development platform that improves the speed, quality, and predictability of software projects. 

• Sera Lewis is an NCSU alumnus, with more than 15 years at IBM, currently managing the Rational Web marketing and developerWorks Rational teams.
• Stephanie Trunzo is entering her 10th year at IBM, currently as the Executive Dashboard manager and MCIF information architect at IBM.  Stephanie has an MA from Carnegie Mellon University, and in May 2010 will finish her MBA at NCSU’s Jenkins School of Business. She also teaches distance education courses on professional writing and digital media for NCSU and Chatham University. (Stephanie’s excellent presentation on teaching with social media will be covered in a future post on social media pedagogy.)
• Sera and Stephanie met on Twitter.  In fact, their first face-to-face meeting was in our class for the presentation!
• Stephanie and Sera gave an excellent presentation that was packed full of interesting, topical and valuable information. Here is an overview:

IBM’s Social Media Marketing Challenge is to balance listening to, learning from, and responding to customers. Everyone in the corporation is enabled to speak via social media and this is both a gift and a responsibility.  

(All images from Stephanie and Sera’s presentation)

Social Computing Guidelines at IBM

As previously discussed in this blog, establishing a social media policy is a critical step for any organization and the BEST guidelines are “by the people and for the people” of the organization.  IBM social computing guidelines are used as a model for many other organizations, and call for IBMers to be open, responsible, and honest and to be themselves. The guidelines evolved in one of IBM’s jams. (Since 2001, IBM has used jams to involve its more than 300,000 employees around the world in far-reaching exploration and problem-solving.)

• The IBM social computing guidelines

Social Media Used for IBM Rational

IBM has a huge breadth of social media in practice including:

Social Listening

There is a great deal that can organizations can gain by doing a better job of LISTENING, and IBM makes this a focus of social media activity. 

• Listening:
  •  IBMers work to listen first … to understand what is going on in the industry, with customers and other employees.  
• Reacting:
  • Once listening efforts are well place, members of the IBM Rational team react indirectly with statements such as “we’ve been hearing a lot about…”
• Responding: 
  • Team members will then respond specifically to direct comments about the product. 
• Engaging and Nurturing:
  • Focus on keeping the process going.

How?

• The process starts with team members listening for 70+ keywords that are important for the IBM Rational brand across social networking sites. Each team member takes 2 – 3 words – which makes this a manageable monitoring activity. Tweetdeck is a primary tool, as it is simple to create columns that filter for keywords. Other tools, such as Technorati, are also used.
• Let customers know that you are listening and focus on what is learned to improve relationships
• Show customers that you are interested in improving their experiences with your products by responding quickly with suggestions and/or fixes.
• Be sure there is a primary person who owns a particular topic so that too many people don’t respond to same customer
• Engage and nurture  through customer ratings and reviews – a low-touch consumer feedback mechanism in an “open” environment
  • Drive public dialogue around product experiences
  • Don’t filter out bad reviews – you want to follow up on negative reviews
  •  80% of IBM Rational reviews are positive  - nothing beats first hand feedback / word of mouth

IBM Rational Social Media Event Example

The recent Rational Software Conference, a huge event, showed how social media is becoming pervasive:

• Conference was advertised across social media sites like Twitter and Facebook, as well as in traditional and Web media
• Customers could ask questions and get information in whichever channel worked for them
• Remote and live attendees could interact with speakers via live displays of tweets

A good idea for a conference using social media is to define hashtags (hashtags are ways to unite Tweets around particular topics) ahead of time and get these out to participants before the event.  This is a great way to keep people involved in the conference even if they aren’t there live.

Global Social Media at IBM Rational

IBM teams from around the world are adopting social media designs from the U.S. and other countries and localizing. In 2010, the IBM Rational team will offer “Social Media in a Box” kits. This helps create design continuity across countries and makes the process much easier to implement at the local level. 

In China, a virtual event had:

• Video with over 2 million plays on video sites (Youku, Tudou, Ku6, Google video)
• Online banners generated 21 million impressions
• Live broadcast increased availability to larger audience via 7 IT media sites

A big Thank-you & Resources

With its social media guidelines, social listening and “social media in a box,” IBM and specifically IBM Rational shows that it understands to potential of social media.  Thanks to Stephanie Trunzo for making this presentation possible and to both Stephanie and Sera Lewis for sharing their valuable insights with us.

Resources:

•http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2008/04/04/the-variance-of-corporate-social-media-policies/

•http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_22/b4086056643442.htm

•http://erikkaiser.com/wp/2009/06/the-experiment-ibm-social-media-jams/

http://www.chrisbrogan.com/five-tools-i-use-for-listening/

IBM Rational software

Foursquare may bounce social media into money-making mode — chicagotribune.com

This seems to be the latest big thing. I’ve seen some of our local social media friends playing this. What do you think about it?

Foursquare may bounce social media into money-making mode — chicagotribune.com

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Woman loses benefits based on Facebook photos

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/AheadoftheCurve/woman-loses-insurance-benefits-facebook-pics/story?id=9154741

 

Perhaps this goes towards reputation management…or the general creepiness of large corporations/governments + Web2.0 Interesting nonetheless.

Pharma reacts to Social Media frontiers

Another industry questions the usage of social media.

http://www.lifescienceleader.com/index.php?option=com_jambozine&layout=article&view=page&aid=3922

It looks like an opportunity to me, especially when momnitoring adverse events (sometimes referred to incorrectly as “side effects”)  in patients using the meds.  Even bad news might still be OK.  Adverse events are usually bad news for drug companies.  But if those are reported in real time in controlled environments such as private tweets, the company has a chance to react.  Historically, pharma companies are too big to turn on a dime.  They don’t stop Phase III trials unless there’s a tremendous reason to do so.  Response times to these events MUST decrease in the 21st century. Profitability depends on it.  Accountability depends on it.  The public will not accept pharma companies who fail to respond promptly to what amounts to ignoring adverse events.

But HIPAA has yet to surface on the subject…

-Tim Tucker

If Courtney Love can be held liable…

In keeping with my tradition of posting professionally useless, but hopefully personally entertaining information, I just happened to see this on the front page of CNN.  It opens with Courtney Love being sued for libel as a result of something she posted to Twitter and expands to similar stories about non-famous people.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/11/17/law.technology/index.html

In light of our discussion with guest speakers Stephanie and Sera today, it’s a good example of something you posted to a social media site having a much bigger impact than you may have expected.