In an article by in the Social by Caroline McCarthy,

"On April 17, the day of the show--when CEO Evan Williams appeared on-air and Winfrey herself began Twittering--a whopping 37 percent of visits to the Twitter.com homepage were new visitors. That's a high number even for the fast-growing Twitter."

The PR guru has done it again. Whatever she promotes makes it big. Talk about pitching stories just send it to Oprah and she will get it out there. I swear she could support genocide (of course she wouldn't) and still have millions of eager followers. This kinda scares me because her endorsement of Obama seemed to be quite the political stunt, and her not willing to interview Sarah Palin added to that controversy.

Besides the point here she is again promoting another product, a product that seems to promote itself quite well. I mean if you can draw that many visitors, than you deserve a position, forget if she is "social media savvy", she is socially savvy.

This sort of "hit phenomenon" generally happens when something is pitched to a popular blogger or a service intrigues that blogger. The next day or even that day you see the "hits" out-of-the-park.

What do you think about this? I mean one has to wonder how many different things are being tossed at Oprah everyday.

i just wanted to add one thing. When spell check corrects a word like Oprah, you have got to be an influencer, I mean with Sarah Palin it tried to correct it to Sarah Plain.

Social Media Power

Deltina Hay gave a presentation the other day and she had some insightful information to share. First she recommended the essentials,

"RSS feed or blog
Social networking and micro-blogging
Social Bookmarking and Crowd-Sourcing
Media Communities"

She emphasized that these are key practices you should adhere to getting your name, product, or service out .
"Blogs are not just political rants," Hay said. "These are the essentials." Building social media newsrooms. Widgets and gadgets. Tags are essential and having your tags correlate well is good, its how you keep yourself relevant. Tag images and a social portal is the desired approach for someone who cannot manage 2-3 blogs a week (e.g. me, most all AARP members). You need to engage with others and integrate your tools. One image upload to Flikr and your image can be everywhere else you have a presence.

I personally think these are all great ideas. It is important not only to get your service out there, but to make sure your message is the same across all these mediums

For a musician on facebook, "make a profile to link your facebook page" Keep things manageable!!

This is helpful because maybe now they cant steal your content if you make your page and say you are a business.

Squidoo- a squidoo lens can bookmark your favorite subject. It can be used for personal use or your business

This is just one of the many sites I would really like to learn how to use. Not to say that I don't already have a thousand sign in names and passwords that differ. What made the presentation interesting were her personal accounts and experiences. I completely understand the fact that these old business people do not know how to use the Internet, let alone how to use social media sites. If I showed this to some of my parents friends they would just laugh because they do not understand the significance of the Internet and emerging social media.

For all my Bloggers! (Facebook gets credit for yet another miracle)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7983725.stm

The above link is an article in the BBC news about a boy who was trying to commit suicide. The boy apparently was over-dosing and at the last minute decided to get help. He sent a private message to a girl in Maryland saying something along the lines of harming himself. The girl told her mom, who according to the article,
"who called local police. The police called a "special agent" at the White House, the British Embassy in Washington and finally the police control room in Abingdon."
"Staff narrowed down his location to eight possible addresses, and officers found the teenager at the fourth house they tried. He had taken an overdose, but was still conscious."
NOW this is PR!!! Facebook has dozens of stories like this where in one way or another their networking site saved a life or dozens of lives. Their PR is perpetual and seems to be both constant and self-creating

Facebook is HUGE

If you haven't heard yet facebook has doubled its size in 8 months from 100 million to 200 million. It is clearly one of the most powerful social networking sites and is constantly evolving and updating itself to keep up with Twitter.

"Facebook has also become a vehicle for broad-based activism — like the people who organized on the site last year and mobilized 12 million people to march in protests around the globe against practices of the FARC rebels in Colombia."

This is just one example of its multiple purposes. A recent conern for people my age 18-25 is that their parents are starting to use Facebook. This is a problem for many users who joined the network when it was just for college students. Now it is an international goliath.
My question is where is the virus that will take it all down?? It is becoming an important target as bussinesses and personal info is flooded through the gates of Facebook.

Podcast

Click picture to hear podcast!

Wow!! you really don't know what a podcast is until you actually make one yourself. Without the free help of Audacity, we would all be lost. The most difficult aspect of the podcast was recording an interview. We chose to interview through Skype, and there was no program that allowed us to record our Skype conversation, and because of that we hit a brick wall. We tried a couple different ideas and then we ultimately decided to have the person we were interviewing download Audacity.

This turned out to be perfect, after we straightened a few kinks we were able to have him send us his recording. What made this work was a synchronized recording (on both ends), that made the questions and answers fall under the same time space. Then, Audacity overlapped the two audio clips perfectly and thereafter we were able to edit particular sound bytes.

Our podcast is interesting in that the person we interviewed was one of the first persons to post a picture (any material) of the AA plane that landed in the Hudson river. He used the social network Twitter to send his breaking news. He was later contacted by major media networks and his story was disseminated on television and not just the Internet.

Show Notes:

00:10 Ben (I) introduce the show, speakers, and special guest, Janis Krums

01:58 Ginny interviews Janis about his experience after posting the famous Twit Pic

5:28 Reanne and Janis discuss social media and citizen journalism

09:15 Austin presents concluding thoughts, outro, and thanks to Janis

Social Networking can be harmful to your health

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7898510.stm

Above is a link to this article on online networking and health issues.

"Dr Aric Sigman says websites such as Facebook set out to enrich social lives, but end up keeping people apart".
"He also says that evidence suggests that a lack of face-to-face networking could alter the way genes work, upset immune responses, hormone levels, the function of arteries, and influence mental performance". The implications of these alterations can have a serious impact on your health. Dr. Aric goes on to say that it displaces people and isolates them physically meaning people will lack skills to read body language impeading our social skills.
My question to you all is... Do you find this imformation factual?? It was a peer reviewed and published journal by the institute of biology.

Cluetrain

The Cluetrain Manifesto highlights some interesting topics concerning new markets and social medias.
1. Markets are conversations.

This idea alone is very interesting because this seems to be one of the first documented account of how important a conversation can be on the internet.

2.Markets consist of human beings, not demographic sectors.

This idea is backed by the influence of blogging and its increasing democratized power.

53. There are two conversations going on. One inside the company. One with the market.
This illusrates the importance of the blogosphere. The most important ideas outlined in the "manifesto" are ideas which emphasize the relevance of social media and web 2.0.
This is what web 2.0 allows us to do, this interaction should keep a company alive, if it participates. The manifesto has a good focus on companies being too distant with their markets and not directly communicating with them, which is what social medias allow.
My question to my peers.... Do you really think all companies will die if they don't take part in the interaction?? And aren't there companies that really don't matter directly to their consumers?