What does social media make-up look like?

I just stumbled across this very cool social media process chart from Damien Basile via Steffen Konrath (@stkonrath).

It definitely sums up a lot of my social media make-up although there are a couple of things I don’t use that I’ll endeavour to try out.

For example, to my shame, I am yet to get to grips with FriendFeed, Pixelpipe or Spotify (which come to think about it isn’t on this chart).

So thanks to Damien for giving me the push to investigate some new social networks and apps. I hope he does another in a years time – I’m sure the social media landscape will have turned around another 360 degrees by then!

There’s life Jim, but not as we know it…

Having moved back to the UK from Mexico, my wife and I decided to move to Cheltenham instead of return to live and work in London.

Although massive fans of the big city we’d pretty much had enough of hectic, polluted megapolises after living in Mexico City (population c. 25 million) for four years.

So here we are. Having moved back in June we have finally readjusted (although not to the cold) and are now looking at our future here.

Having worked in media, both on and offline, I am looking to move into the digital world in the South West, but have always wondered:

Is there (digital) life outside the M25?

Many would have it that there isn’t. When I informed friends who work in the industry (and are based in London) that, shock horror, I was considering moving here, they were almost aghast.

What? Online? In the south west?

This was said time and time again, so much so that I really began to believe that I couldn’t possibly entertain the notion of a decent career outside the capital.

After really very little effort or research I could see straight away that this was very short-sighted.

According to The Top 100 South West Creative Companies 2009, the top ten digital agencies had a combined annual turnover of £32,361,714. The number one dagency, Sift, netted just over £7 million.

Of these 10, eight are based in Bristol, suggesting that my quest for work may be focussed there, but the fact that there are ten in my view is very healthy.

In terms of media owners the obvious company to mention is Future, based in Bath, and publisher of titles such as totalfilm.com and metalhammer.co.uk. With presence in both the UK and globally, Future is increasing it’s digital arm every year and tops the South West’s top publishing company list.

Finally, there seem to be healthy communities of people here (admit it, we’re geeks) who want to explore the possibilities of digital and social media in the South West. In Bristol, Brrism (Bristol Social Media) holds monthly meet up’s to talk shop, whilst I shall be heading off to Chelteham’s DigiTalks tonight (I’ll post to give my feedback).  What with various tweeps looking at starting up a Cheltenham-based Social Media Cafe, things look pretty healthy here.

I’m confident that digital life does not end at the M25, but would love to hear from you if you are a social media consultant, if you have your own digital agency or are pushing the boundaries in digital publishing. I’d love to promote you (and then maybe one of you can give me a job ).

Alternatively if you run or attend a social media community in the South West (or anywhere outside London really) it would be great to promote you too. It’s a regional love-in!

Possibly the biggest understatement of the century?

I was just checking out this post on the birth of Twitter. It’s a tad geektastic, but interesting all the same – amazing what can come out of an afternoon’s brainstorming session.

Oh this is going to be addictive – @Dom

According to @dom this was the 38th ever message (written by him) on twitter. Talk about an understatement.

@jack – twitter founder and chairman Jack Dorsey – was just as prescient:

One could change the world with 140 characters

With Twitter’s proliferation both in terms of users, tweets and presence in the global conscience, these guys have been proved right time and time again.

Check out @dom’s website for his book  140 Characters: a style guide for the short form. I’m yet to read the book but it looks fascinating and should be well worth a read for anyone who gets confused about their tweeple and their twitpics.

Will this be the new language form of the future? Could you write Shakespeare in 140 characters? I’m not so sure, but people are always willing to give it a go. If you’re one of them you should enter @timescheltenham’s competition to write a story in 135 characters.

If you liked this post don’t forget to retweet it. I’ve even shortened the URL for you http://wp.me/pn1Fq-2a

And here’s my take on thinking in 140 characters or less.

Update:

I just stumbled upon this explanation of 140 Characters by @dom himself on Mont C. M. Metger’s blog. Thanks for sharing Monty!

Michael Jackson tribute tour cancelled…

I just read in quick succession the news that the Michael Jackson tribute tour has been cancelled and that Stephen Fry’s twitter influence is having a dramatic effect on the publishing world, I thought I’d post a video that combines the two in a rather marvellous way.

Could Amir Khan threaten freedom of speech on Facebook?

So, should we all be watching what we write in our blogs, on facebook, twitter and the many thousands of outlets available online?

It would seem so.

The Guardan reported yesterday that Amir Khan, the WBA light welterweight champion and Frank Warren are threatening legal action on Facebook for a failure to remove defamatory

The pair have engaged lawyers to threaten the US internet company with action over the use of images and names alongside material they consider to be defamatory and racist. Stephen Taylor Heath, head of sports and media at Lupton Fawcett, said that a cursory search of Facebook quickly led to “bogus” pages that used the images and names of the pair to link to material that would be “highly defamatory” if published in a newspaper or magazine.

Obviously, racism is a BAD THING and should be thwarted at all turns, and as a British Asian, Khan has a right to try and stop people being racist against him. This is without doubt.

But (and you knew there was gonna be a but) Khan is also a brand. He is not just a sports person but has been created, by Warren, as a marketable commodity. His threat to sue Facebook for not removing such bogus pages surely will have huge implications to the internet if he wins.

How far could this be taken? Consumers are forever writing derogatory remarks about products (or brands) that they don’t like, don’t agree with, have had bad experiences with. That’s why so many of us research online before any purchase, however large or small. Will this lead to companies suing individual users for regular bad reviews?

What with Google being forced to reveal the identity of the “Skanks in NYC” blogger and The Times’ failure to protect the police blogger Night Jack from the courts, this certainly feels like freedom of speech online can no longer be taken for granted.

Your business card is cr@p!!!

I just stumbled across this video on the www.digitalks.com website (more about them in another post) and I love it. This guy gives even the late, great Billy Mays a run for his money…

To be fair the guy has a point. So many people, myself included, have incredibly boring, formulaic business cards that you’d forget in an instant.

In fact some of the most memorable and commented upon business cards I’ve seen are my wife’s – business cards with a selection of her photos on the back from Moo. She’s a freelance writer and photographer (check out her work here – I’ll be in her good books for ages!) and the photographs not only immediately showcase what she’s all about but actually initiate a conversation. She gives her new contact a choice of their favourite photo and it goes on from there.

So for anyone, in any business, at a time when making yourself stand out from the crowd is more important than ever, a great business card is a valuable investment. Now if only I could work out how to get my business cards to talk…

Oh and if you want to check out exactly why Billy Mays was known as the greatest pitchman in the business, check this out:

After insidemex.com, it’s back to planet blog…

Finally after two months of working solidly getting www.insidmex.com it has finally gone live and I can actually write some posts!!

In case you don’t know, we’ve been working for the last year and we think we’ve created a great site.

We’re adding more and more content all the time from Mexican real estate articles to travel in Mexico, expats living in Mexico to some great multimedia. On top of that, and the most interesting of all for this writer, is the social network that we’re developing for expats living in and around Mexico. I think it’s going to be big…there isn’t anyone else out there doing it at the level we are.

So go on, if you’re thinking of visiting Mexico,  looking at buying some real estate or maybe moving here with a job there’s bound to be somthing of interest there for you.

Anyway, enough self promoting, but seriously, check out www.insidemex.com and let us know what you think.

Mobile gets social media on the move

Everyone is doing it. Apart from me.

Everyday I log into Facebook from my “mobile” desk of a Dell Inspiron, it seems I see another five of my friends have added one of the 461 facebook applications for iphone.

Even the most technophobe of mates, as soon as he or she gets an iphone, is adding the handy little app that lets them update their facebook statuses or check their messages whilst on the move.

Indeed the stats speak for themselves: mobile social media usage shot up last year by 152%, with the UK having the largest penetration in the market with 9%.

And it would seem that it is the popularity of the iPhone 3G (every man and his dog seemed to have bought one for Christmas), as well as the blackberry and Nokia N series phones that has really spurred the growth in mobile social media usage.

Or has it?

Could it be that the public’s obsession with social networking and micro-blogging sites like Twitter has fuelled the sale of mobiles (cel phones to our American cousins) with advanced internet access?

It will be interesting to see if the now established recession puts a dent in both sales of 3g mobiles and the latest form of mobile communication.

Now I just have to work out how I’m going to afford an iPhone…

Image of the Day 28/1/09

I'm big and yellow and floating in a dockyard. What am I?

Image from www.woostercollective.com

President 2.Obama

We all knew that this administration was going to be technologically more advanced than previous terms when Barrack Obama won the 2008 election to become the 44th President of the United States of America.

Not only did the Democrats stunningly over achieve with online donations, enabling them to out spend the Republicans out of the water, we also got the first presidential candidate to embrace social media.

His campaign team used @BarrackObama, as well as facebook, youtube and myspace to reach an audience of potential voters and doners that traditionally could have been ignored by past campaigns. Obama has also become the first President to use email and amazingly kept his blackberry, although will be restricted in its use to a small group of select Whitehouse staffers.

By using social media, email marketing and clever media buys Obama was able to enthuse and mobilize the youth vote that proved incredibly important on November 5th.

Finally it seems, we have a web 2.0 international leader: President 2.Obama.

President Obama and his team will be using technology in an unprecedented way to reach out to the nation and beyond.

As Kevin Merrit, CEO of Blist shows in this excellent Washington Post/Tech Crunch post, the presidency has listed communication, transparency and participation as being their watchwords for their first term and as such are utilizing every channel possible to get their messages accross to the people.

So from his first Weekly Address as President on Youtube (see above), to the setting up of recovery.gov, and the first ever Presidential blog on whitehouse.gov, the US presidency has fully embraced the idea that you can no longer rely on tv and radio to reach your voters. They realise the importance of transparency in an age where anyone can look at public records, google a politicians past claims and promises or just vent on what they hate about a government with the click of a mouse.

So, if you’re not already why not join President Obama’s other 144,000 twitter followers, or the 4,422,962 registered supporters on Facebook.

Can Obama revolutionise the Whitehouse as we know it? Yes he can! (Sorry, couldn’t help it…)

UPDATE: If you want to read a great post on how exactly Obama should be using Twitter, check out Mashable for some great analysis and an extensive list of politicians who use Twitter and how they use it. I would definitely agree that whilst it’s great that Obama is on Twitter and that the Whitehouse uses it, just twittering about policy announcements is not going to get them far. They need to start turning the personal on before they turn the followers off. Remember we are a fickle bunch!!

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RT @siburgess79 President 2.Obama  http://ad.vu/m9pz