WebConnoisseur

Read this piece on Valleywag today about the New York Times hiring their first-ever Social Media Editor.

Here’s the NYT description of their social media editor:

One of the bracing things about this topsy-turvy media landscape is that you can wake up one morning and find yourself actually doing something you never thought you’d even think about. Take Jennifer Preston. In 25 years in the news biz, she’s been plenty of things: Reporter (cop shop, City Hall, Albany, etc.), editor (political editor, section editor, administrative editor, etc.) and even circulation marketing manager (at New York Newsday). But still, did she ever think she’d wake up one morning as “social media editor”?

No, she didn’t but yes, she did. That morning was this one.

Jennifer is our first social media editor. What’s that? It’s someone who concentrates full-time on expanding the use of social media networks and publishing platforms to improve New York Times journalism and deliver it to readers.

…She will help us get comfortable with the techniques, share best practices and guide us on how to more effectively engage a larger share of the audience on sites like Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Flickr, Digg, and beyond.

Knowing the NYT has the 2nd most popular Twitter following and a great number of journalists with accounts on Twitter, I thought it would be interesting to check out who Jennifer Preston is and if I knew her from past social media events I have attended.

Turns out her Twitter account was locked, according to Valleywag. Looks like she opened it up to the public in response to the article, but she had yet to post her first tweet. I looked around for a non-NYT account for her, but didn’t find any. One place I looked was Linked in. I was shocked to see she only had 13 connections (especially for someone who works for a large publisher).

I tweeted my findings, which may have spurred her to post her first tweets (she now has 3). From my perspective, she’s got less experience with twitter, digg, youtube, blogging, etc. than any college intern I’ve ever worked with.

Either the New York Times is trying this as an experiment, or they have effectively set a very low bar for what is considered a social media expert.

Can’t believe how many people scratch their heads trying to figure out how to make money using twitter when the formula is so incredibly simple. If you fall into this camp, let me share a little secret with you…

How to Make $$$ Using Twitter:

Follow these simple steps.

1. Open up your twitter account
2. Click on the dialog box to create a post.
3. Hold down your shift button on your keyboard.
4. While holding the shift button, carefully click on the 4 button exactly three times.

Congrats! You’ve successfully made $$$ on Twitter. Now go tell your friends that @webconnoisseur showed you how to make money using this easy tweet this link.

Sometimes when I use Twitter, I feel like I’m Mel Gibson in the movie What Women Want. Sounds random, but stay with me here…

In What Women Want, Mel Gibson’s character can hear the thoughts of all the women around him. Sometimes the chatter is information overload and it drives Mel crazy, other times he can harness the information he’s gained and put it to good use.

Twitter is much like the voices in Mel’s head in the movie, only the voices come from other Twitter users who are predominantly online marketers, consultants, and pr professionals. If you follow too many people, you will go insane. If you follow or surround yourself with the right people, you will gain valuable insights.

It’s important to know what your goals are with Twitter. Is it tapping into the minds of fellow marketers? Or maybe a particular segment? Are you looking to join a certain conversation? Whatever your goal is, make sure the majority of the people you follow match that goal.

If you’d like to add one more voice in your head, follow me @webconnoisseur.

If you are on Facebook and haven’t had the pleasure of reading a 25 Random Things About Me note about one of your friends yet, you are missing out. Normally not a fan of chain letters or tagging memes, I will admit the 25 Things activity on Facebook is fascinating.

History of Facebook 25 Things Notes
Facebook notes were launched on August 22, 2006, but didn’t receive heavy usage until 2009 thanks to a new viral phenomenon that started off as “25 Random Things About Me.” Memes using notes on Facebook are nothing new, entire websites have been put together to catalog and inspire various memes-most as lame as the emails that have been going around for over a decade.

The Velocity of 25 Things
The earliest entries I can find via various search tools for 25 Things is mid-January. I really saw it taking off in my personal network starting in February. Using Google trends, I compared 25 Things searches to searches for an older site people might be familiar with: 43 Things.

As you can tell from the chart, 25 things searches increased rapidly, easily overshadowing 43 Things despite the fact that users won’t find Facebook notes entries doing this search, nor will they find definitive information about the origins of it.

How to Find 25 Things Notes
If you do want to find all your friends 25 things postings, I suggest you follow these steps:

1. Login to Facebook and make sure you are on the main page (click Home if you are not sure).
2. Click the drop down arrow for more feeds (blue arrow next to live feed button)
3. Choose notes.
4. Scroll down and you will likely see activity around 25 Things postings.
5. Click show more posts at the very bottom if you want to look for more postings.

Facebook 25 Things Learnings
There are things we can all learn from Facebook’s 25 Things success:

• Patience is important in business. Facebook could have easily scrapped notes long ago due to low activity.
• Never underestimate user-generated content.
• Viral successes are often luck
• Providing a platform where UGC viral successes can happen is important

I noticed a lot of people commenting on how Facebook didn’t make sense to them until they started reading other people’s 25 Things posts - this simple meme has created an amazing amount of value for Facebook and their traffic reflects it:

I’ve had the pleasure of judging the Webby Awards, the Web 2.0 awards, an international pageant, and now the Mashable Open Awards.

Like many awards, there is the judges choice and the people’s choice (both an honor to win for any website). Below is the form you can use to submit your choice (cast your vote before midnight Sunday, November 30th):

Just received an email from LinkedIn announcing LinkedIn Apps. Here’s a quick look at the apps they’ve launched with and my thoughts on how they might help you with your career reputation management.

“Today we’re announcing many more ways to interact with your network on LinkedIn. Whether it’s a new way to create projects and collaborate, share information, customize your profile, or gain key insights, the new LinkedIn Applications deliver.”

LinkedIn Applications available at launch (in decreasing order of first-glance importance) with my quick thoughts:

• Company Buzz by LinkedIn - Very handy way for non-twitter savvy users to gauge what people are saying about their company.
• WordPress on LinkedIn - Another way to promote your blog to your connections or future connections.
• Google Presentation on LinkedIn - A way to share some of your work in a public way (only presentations right now, but wouldn’t be surprised to see other Google Docs added soon). Great way to promote your presentations.
• Bloglink on LinkedIn - A handy way to keep up with your business network’s latest blog posts.
• TripIt on LinkedIn - Keep tabs on where your network is traveling. May help you better connect with your network in person.
• SlideShare on LinkedIn - Share, view and comment on presentations from your network. Use in a promotional way, or use it for pre or post live presentation feedback.
• Amazon on LinkedIn - Insight into what your network is reading.
• Box on LinkedIn - Share files on your profile and/or collaborate with your network.
• Huddle on LinkedIn - Helpful private project management collaboration abilities.

Obviously many of these applications are available on other sites or in other ways, but having them associated with your LinkedIn business network may bring about some interesting opportunities. It will be interested to see how popular these become and what other applications are added.

So far, I’ve installed Blog link (so far first person in my web savvy ~400 person network), Wordpress (more control and better profile display than blog link), TripIt (two connections on it thus far), and company buzz (didn’t add to my profile, however). Of the three, I noticed blog link may suffer from speed issues (plus I removed it from my profile as I didn’t like the way it displayed) and company buzz doesn’t work very well compared to other twitter search tools.

Love to hear your experiences and thoughts about LinkedIn Apps.

Thought this was pretty funny when accepting a LinkedIn request from a new co-worker named Jack (look at the action buttons):

Apparently I either accept the invite, or admit I don’t know anything.

This well-done video featuring the likes of Jennifer Aniston, Halle Berry, Courteney Cox, Ellen DeGeneres, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jamie Foxx, Jonah Hill, Dustin Hoffman, Ashton Kutcher, Eva Longoria, Tobey Maguire, Demi Moore, Natalie Portman, Forest Whitaker and other celebs, is sure to be one of the most rapidly deployed viral videos. The non-partison video is aimed at getting more people to vote using the invite 5 friends meme strategy.

At the time of this posting, the video has less than 100k views. I expect it will surge to a million views in short time.

I’m registered to vote, so I’ll pass this along to 5 more who run websites or blogs in the search community:

• Todd Mintz
• Rand Fishkin
• Greg Boser
• Neil Patel
• Jessica Bowman

For those planning on attending the Marketing Profs Digital Marketing Mixer in Arizona, but haven’t registered yet, here’s a Discount Code you can use to save $200 (or $350 if you register today): ESPKA08

It appears that Digg is finally closer to being purchased. The leading candidates are Google and Microsoft. While the final owner won’t be known for probably another month, the future of Digg is known:

If Google buys Digg, it will become Gigg.

Rather than trusting pesky humans to digg news stories, Google will implement an algorithm developed by a team of PhDs based on previous digg analytics data. The new algorithm will look something like this:

if (headline ((pro-Microsoft, -50, anti-Microsoft, +50) (“Apple”, +100) (any game title, +35)) + if (content contains (Scantily clad women, +85, -25) (“Hack”, +35, -5) (displays ads, -20)…

If Microsoft buys Digg, it will quickly become Dugg.

Dugg will be the result of the dust that quickly develops on Digg as it suddenly becomes uncool. To make matters worse, Microsoft will implement content restrictions like no Microsoft bashing, no discussions of Apple or Google, and all gaming diggs must be Microsoft-created games only. Within weeks, Dugg will be the wayback machine of the social news site once known as Digg.

Ask will build a competing product to Microsoft Dugg called “Doug” to add a human element to the archive, but you will have to search news stories with questions like, “What male celebrity is a little bitch?”