social media — GigaOM

social media

You may love social media, but even the biggest fans of the social web will find some sources of frustration. What is your social media pain point? I thought I’d explore some of the main ones I’ve identified and offer up some potential solutions. Read More »

Facebook has quietly announced to application developers that third-party apps will be able to access the addresses and mobile phone numbers of Facebook users. The easiest way to avoid making postal addresses and mobile phone numbers available is to not include them in your Facebook profile. Read More »

 
 

As the social media industry matures and best practices continue to refine, I’m struck by how too many people tend to get caught up in the numbers — or at least the wrong numbers — and let those numbers dictate how and when they use social … Read More »

Flavors.me and About.me are both platforms for creating “personal splash pages.” I decided to compare the two services, in order to see how splash pages can be used as online business cards, and whether they might be useful for web workers. Read More »

I enjoy looking at previous “predictions” and see what actually happened. Here’s what I predicted in my 2010 post on trends in social media and the outcome as of the end of the year. I’m also providing additional thoughts on trends to watch in 2011. Read More »

I’ve had the chance to speak with a number of online innovators. Every day, step by step, these people have proceeded into the unknown. The web has possibilities for innovation that takes us from the warm shallows into the uncharted depths beyond what we know now. … Read More »

Have you been feeling like a Grinch about social media? It’s everywhere, shining its “happy, cheery” hype wherever you look; I know it’s taken over my life more than it probably should. Here are some simple tips for dealing with social media in the coming year: Read More »

Just the other day, someone told me that they are afraid of social media; they have no Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn account. I’ve compiled this list of eight reasons why you shouldn’t fear social media for anyone who is still apprehensive about using these tools. Read More »

When I noticed that bit.ly had a Pro version that enables custom short domains and that it was free, I just had to try it out. You have to submit your email address to be “considered” for the beta; I just received my access information. Read More »

Facebook has released a new Facebook Profile. As usual, the changes seem pretty arbitrary, but Facebook appears to have moved in the direction of a profile that blends your professional life and your personal life, and I feel strongly that this is a mistake. Read More »

In 2008, Beth Kanter blogged about how much time it should take to implement social media. She created a diagram to illustrate the main social media activities and the hours per week it takes to implement them. I’ve created my own up-to-date version of the figure. Read More »

Social Media Nomenclature, Then and Now

I’ve been thinking about what this year has meant for social media marketing and how things have changed. I came across one of my posts from 2008 where I tried to find category names for social media tools; it’s interesting to see how they have evolved. Read More »

More Must Reads

Facebook Messages isn’t about replacing email. What the social network is really trying to establish with its recently unveiled unified communications hub is presence management, and this new "modern messaging system" is more concerned with intimacy and immediacy, as opposed to formality, flexibility and history. Read More »

When people mention social media and TV, often the reaction is that viewers don’t want constant status updates and tweets creating a visual mess on their screens. But yesterday at NewTeeVee Live, Robin Sloan from Twitter talked about how Twitter is changing the TV viewing experience. Read More »

The EU is currently proposing laws that would require web site and service owners to delete individuals’ personal information from their records. The new laws aim to uphold a person’s “right to be forgotten.” How do you feel about your right to be forgotten? Read More »

Launched at the weekend, new “social browser” RockMelt promises to make it easy to share and keep up with your friends. It caused quite a lot of discussion after Om wrote about it. I’ve had a chance to take it for a quick test drive. Read More »

When it comes to consumer technologies, how big is big enough? When do they really start to gain momentum, and what happens when they do? These are questions of critical mass — the tipping point when user adoption starts producing the hockey-stick growth that fosters sustainable … Read More »

I’m probably more comfortable sharing my work with other people; I also tend to share information about other parts of my life online. Occasionally, I like to step back and think about how much is too much when it comes to sharing details about my life. Read More »

I recently received an email advertising a webinar from HubSpot, an inbound marketing company. The subject line was provocative enough to get me to open it, and it got me thinking about all the hype we’ve seen over social media. Where is this thing going? Read More »

In the realm of might-have-beens, Myspace shows more promise than Friendster. But unlike some former web leaders, it’s still salvageable. Myspace shouldn’t try to challenge Facebook for social network leadership, but it can remain a valuable consumer media business, if not a technology driver. Here’s how. Read More »

The recent appearance of the Firesheep plugin for Firefox has raised concerns over the lack of security for browsing sessions that are conducted at public hotspots, so the release of Fireshepherd to stop digital eavesdropper is welcome news. Hotspot sessions are more vulnerable than many realize. Read More »

Privacy isn’t just Facebook’s problem. The whole consumer Internet and media industry had better devise a plan for facing the privacy issues fast, or get ready to face serious consumer backlash and, perhaps worse, government regulation. Here are a few steps social media companies can take. Read More »

Are you looking to convince a colleague or a client of the value of LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter? Here’s a list of some basic ways you can use LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter for specific business activities. No bells, no whistles, just business. Read More »

Last week, I posted some tips for automating boring everyday tasks. However, I feel I should point out that automation’s like a nice wine: you can have too much of a good thing. Here’s a look at some of the things that I don’t automate. Read More »

For third-quarter social media and real-time technologies, most of the action was in consumer services, and much of it — from social gaming to location-based services and advertising dollars — was influenced by Facebook. Here is a brief look back at the NewNet action highlights from … Read More »

Even if you don’t believe real-time feeds will become the dominant content consumption paradigm, they’re clearly a growing force. Consumer-paid access to real-time feeds is largely for paid mobile apps, and advertising is the immediate payoff. So here’s how social media companies can best cash in. Read More »

Looking for an interesting new event to attend? Having trouble finding events, other than the ones you and your immediate friends or colleagues already know about? Going the “old-fashioned” route of finding new events through Google searches? If so, you may benefit from social event discovery. Read More »

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg this week called the newly introduced Groups feature a “fundamental building block of the social web.” If adopted widely by users, Groups could have a significant impact on communications and identity management — both inside and outside of the social network. Read More »

Google headlines this week beg the question: Would Facebook ever pursue a three-screen strategy by offering up its own TV platform to users? The answer could be yes, as the TV screen seems too big a honeypot to ignore for a company that lives on advertising dollars. Read More »

The posts on an organization’s social media accounts reflect on it in a very public way. People’s impressions of the company can be positive or negative depending on whether the people posting to those accounts represent the company in a professional and consistent manner. Read More »

Bringing a stagnant social media channel back from the dead requires more than just posting to it again and hoping your connections didn’t notice your absence. Each channel will require different resuscitation techniques. Here are some steps to take to breathe some life back into them. Read More »

Analytics service Trendrr today launched a new version of its social-media dashboard that incorporates location along with the usual Twitter tracking. The service pulls in data from Foursquare and Gowalla, as well as aggregating “like” activity via Facebook’s open-graph protocol and reputation scores via Klout. Read More »

Marketers have been lured by how easy it is to set up Facebook pages and Twitter accounts for their brands, but according to a new report, their content often doesn’t get through, because Generation Y users are overwhelmed with Facebook friends and Twitter messages already. Read More »

Just about every company online should add some social spice to its site. In the case of Yahoo, where turmoil is reaching crisis proportions, an aggressive dose of social networking elements could help the former Internet giant maintain its huge audience and leadership position in advertising. Read More »

We’ve all been there before: One of the social networks we use regularly suddenly changes its features, and we’re left scrambling to figure out the impact of those changes. Remember when Facebook narrowed the custom tabs within Pages, requiring major overhauls? Read More »

The Nielsen Company is working to extend its ratings measurements to online campaigns, giving advertisers the ability to understand how well their cross platform efforts are faring. Nielsen Online Campaign Ratings will provide Nielsen’s first look at online ratings similar to the way it’s tracked TV … Read More »

LinkedIn has agreed to acquire ChoiceVendor, a startup that allows companies to rate and review business-to-business service providers. The acquisition appears to be designed to improve LinkedIn’s ability to offer recommendations and other social features to its members and the companies that use the social network. Read More »

After denying rumors of a deal, blogging platform Six Apart and advertising network VideoEgg have confirmed they are merging to create a new social-media company called SAY Media. It’s the end of one of the early pioneers of the blogging world as a standalone entity. Read More »

Where once Yammer could be described as Twitter for the enterprise, now it will be Facebook for the enterprise. I was interested to learn whether Yammer is returning the favor and innovating and contributing technology and features that might have value for other social networks. Read More »

No single strategy guarantees social media success. Twitter’s recent relaunch mirrors some of Digg’s tactics, but social services from Google and Apple take entirely different approaches. In other words, with multiple strategies available, there’s more than one way to win the social network game. Read More »

This week is Social Media Week, which is a great opportunity to put the emphasis on the “social” aspect of social media and boost your productivity at the same time. Isn’t social media inherently unproductive, though? After all, studies suggest that it wastes money. Read More »

Don’t trust anyone who says they’ll reveal the “secrets of social media.” There are no secrets of social media. As someone who has seen the bubble of the early web and new media business burst, I’m feeling a sense of deja vu. Read More »

Even those of us who use Facebook for business are hard-pressed to keep up. In the last few weeks, I’ve learned more about Facebook through trial and error (and my Twitterstream) than I ever have from Facebook’s communications. Here are a few things I’ve learned: Read More »

For those of us who use Twitter tags purely for adding a layer of sarcastic commentary to our tweets, the idea of using tags properly — to categorize tweets and make them easier for others to find — may seem a little humdrum. Read More »

Because social media cannot be “controlled,” the thought of putting marketing messages out into the social web strikes fear in the hearts of many. Without control, how do you avert or manage a crisis that bubbles over and could explode on Twitter, Facebook and the like? Read More »

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