Social Honeycomb

Jeff Pulver is a Dance Machine

I had the pleasure of attending the Boston TweetUp last night in the North End at Limoncello and then later the VON party at the Roxy. Let me just tell you- my new friends ROCK.

Joe Cascio organized a wonderful dinner for a great group of social media peeps, including Jim Long, known on Twitter as newmediajim. Great food, great conversation, great photos… I’m so glad I was able to join in.

After dinner, most of us headed over to the Roxy for the VON party, where I think I danced more in one night than I ever have in my whole life. That Jeff Pulver. Man can he bust a move. Laura Fitton, Julia Roy, Jesse Chenard, Amanda Mooney were also cuttin’ a rug on the dance floor. We had a ton of fun and I’m looking forward to future events with my awesome social media friends.

Podcamp Boston 2 = Gathering of Rock Stars

To everyone who had the pleasure of being a part of Podcamp Boston 2, you know how much fun it was. To those of you who couldn’t make it, please do live vicariously through the many posts, casts and photos that have been popping up around the Web. Podcamp, for me, really was a gathering of social media rock stars. (See Eric Skiff for any and all Podcamp-related rock songs and/or jingles.) Podcamp was brimming with people I look up to, people who inspire me, people who shake things up… Just stellar human beings.

One thing I really enjoy about social media events here in Boston is the feeling that no one is a stranger. I’m young and I’m pretty new to this game, but I always feel completely welcomed by the many people I meet. The atmosphere at Podcamp was electric.

I took away a lot of interesting bulbs of knowledge:

• Twitter is more addictive than crack cocaine.
• Hugs are free and wonderful.
• Listening is one of the most important things we can do as PR people. Whether it’s a podcast, a blog or a face-to-face conversation, listening is one of the keys to kingdom
• There are little things we can do to be more productive, happy and healthy. Since Saturday I’ve been making an effort to drink more water and breathe like a yogi. (Ask Brogan to demonstrate the chest-string-pull if you too would like to enjoy the benefits of better breathing.)
• I guess I really do look like my profile pictures, because people recognized me.
• There’s no time or reason to be afraid of putting yourself out there.
• “With advertising you buy your way in; with PR you beg your way in; with new media you publish your way in” -David Meerman Scott.
• Sometimes you should dance anywhere you want.
• Chris Brogan makes ridiculous faces in photos.
• Podcasting is a really involved process. I greatly respect the people who take the time to plan, produce and edit their content to share with the world. Echoing my third point, I have a lot of listening to catch up on.
• LOLsaurs are pretty sweet.
• Chris Penn has the funniest business cards. Nobody picked one up without smiling.
• You don’t say no to a Pulver Party.
• There is someone in the world who hasn’t heard of Google according to Mitch Joel and CC Chapman.
• Jeff Glasson knows how to make people feel special.
• Facebook is getting so huge that it completely defies logic. It’s like trying to visualize the galaxy. Your brain pretty much can’t handle it.
• Podsafe music is pretty awesome.
• RSS (specifically Google Reader) is uh-may-zing.
• It’s important for us to spend time “finding, following, joining and creating” conversations online. Bryan Person and Doug Haslam gave an interesting presentation/led an interesting discussion about this engagement process.
• Being a student about to graduate at this particular time in history is ridiculously exciting.
• There are some really savvy, talented young PR pros out there who are helping to shape what social media becomes in the future.
• Steve Garfield has one of the friendliest smiles I’ve ever seen.
• Even bars like Tequila Rain can be geeky.
• Scott Monty laughs at pretty much everything I do and/or say.
• My New Media for Public Relations class rocks. You should follow @MaThurrell @danilady and @KeraC.
• I’m lucky to be a Boston girl.
• I’m a big fan of where my life is going.

Like I said before, Podcamp was electric. It was a weekend of connections, hugs, laughter, ideas, conversations, and lightbulb moments. Thank you to Chris Brogan, Chris Penn and all the organizers and volunteers who made Podcamp Boston 2 possible for all of us.

More link love to come. And photos of my Twitter costume. Yes.

Dwight Schrute is on Second Life

The Office LOVES social media.  Dwight is on Second Life right now flying around in virtual Dunder Mifflin.

Can you even stand it?

Facebook Ads Love You and Your Interests

From a user’s perspective, I don’t like it. From a developer’s perspective, this is smart. Facebook has never been one to let someone else blaze a trail…

Facebook users, what do you think?

clipped from mashable.com Facebook Flyers 2.0: The Promise and Pitfalls of Social Networking Ads Facebook has made some big changes to their “Flyers” advertising format that turns it into a much more advanced advertising system. Advertisers can now target users based on specific data from their profiles, such as interests, age, education, and relationship status. Much like AdWords, the advertiser sets a maximum price per click and a daily budget. Previously, Flyer ads were limited to specific universities or networks, and were charged on a CPM (cost per thousand impressions) basis. Whereas Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft use algorithms to match ads to content, Facebook has the ability to do exact matching on ads to keywords a user has entered in their profile. Things like targetting ads to single males, age 18-30, that play golf, in the Washington DC area, are now possible.

Thank You

Compliments are funny. Over the past couple weeks, I’ve gotten some really good ones.  Like the kind that make you sit back and make an unusual face at your computer screen or your cell phone.

As a student, it’s really special and unbelievably appreciated to have positive feedback from professionals you admire. I’m not going to get all mushy or build myself up, but to everyone who has had kind, encouraging, inspiring words to say in the past few weeks, thank you.

I know a lot of really amazing people.

Boston Blogger Dinner, 10/18/07

Hi, amazing.

I had such a wonderful time meeting and talking to everyone at the Boston Blogger Dinner tonight at Rattlesnake here in Boston. It felt so great to be in a room filled with passionate, smart people who actually get me and laugh at my weird jokes. Plus, free drinks are always a good deal.

Thank you to EMC, Jeremiah, Chris, Sarah, Laura, Scott, Alison, PhillyMac, Jeff, Dan, John, Nate, Christine, Julia, Yianni, Amanda, and everyone else for showing me a great time and letting me talk your ear off. I truly had a phenomenal time. Podcamp, anyone?

For more of my excellent photos from this event, check out my Social Media Adventures Flickr set, and please link me to yours, too. :)

Where Do You Draw the Line?

In my classes lately, we’ve been discussing the issue of privacy and how careful you need to be when considering your online presence. We’ve been talking about how potential employers are using Facebook and other common college social sites to get the inside scoop on what their interviewees are really like, and how dangerous this can be for students living in a world where pretty much everything you do is captured on a digital camera.

We worry and fret about what about us will be a deal-breaker in a hiring situation. Should we untag every photo of ourselves, or just the really bad ones from our 21st birthday party? Should we list only our career-oriented interests, or can we feel free to say that we enjoy things like shopping, partying and naps? Should we turn our Facebook account into a pseudo-resume, or can we use our profiles to interact with our friends online in relaxed, even silly ways?

I guess I’m somewhere in the middle. I don’t want to completely compromise my online personality out of fear that someone won’t hire me because I’m not always wearing a blazer and I happen to enjoy taking silly pictures. But at the same time, I can’t deny the real risks attached to revealing too much of one’s personal pasttimes online. (Just for the record, I think I live a fairly tame life compared to most of my peers, so maybe I’m not the best person to use as a gauge.) I go out of my way to warn my (non-savvy) peers that you know, maybe you SHOULDN’T post that picture of you puking in some bushes and maybe you SHOULDN’T say that your interests are simply “sex and food.”

The hardest part is that there are no real rules about this stuff.

What I find difficult is this: I truly don’t believe that the post-Facebook hiring managers out there never had a night (only one?) of partying with their friends in college. I also don’t believe that these hiring managers have never spent time with their friends in situations that were, let’s say, less than professional. The issue here is that students like me, who have grown up in a digital world where photos, video and sharing are commonplace, are being personally judged by people who were never in our shoes. It used to be that the interview and the resume were the deciding factors–now employers are digging for content outside of what we have chosen for you to see. I, myself am not ashamed of my Facebook profile; I just think that students and employers alike need to look at this judgment issue with a more critical eye.

Yes, we college kids capture and post footage that no one really needs to see, but maybe all the seasoned pros out there would have done the same if they had had the same technology and values driving their own college experience. It’s a different world for sure.

The point of this post is not to say that college kids should be off the hook when it comes to the content they post online, but I really think we all need to develop some guidelines for ourselves when it comes to the intersection of college, career, leisure time and social presence.

Just be glad you aren’t Stacy Hedger, OK? No matter how many drunk, sloppy photos of you there are on Facebook, it could never be as bad as this. For me, this would be a deal-breaker. If you were (or are) interviewing college kids, what would be a deal-breaker for you?

Computers > Peace and Happiness

Well, of course. You can’t blog and share photos on a “peace and happiness.” Mom and Dad, if you’re reading, a shiny new MacBook wouldn’t be a bad gift…

In all seriousness, I’m looking forward to a post-holiday roundup to see how this all pans out. In the meantime, what are you asking for?

clipped from www.msnbc.msn.com “The fact that they want computers over clothing and peace and happiness is amazing,” said Shawn DuBravac, the CEA’s economist. “It’s a testament to what the tech industry has done to empower the consumer.” People are doing more with their computers, such as posting videos or writing blogs, Bates said. The demand for laptops is particularly strong, “and you can buy a more powerful one and at a lower price than what you paid for four years ago,” he said.

MySpace: A Place to Learn New Languages

My brother has a hobby of teaching himself to speak different languages. When we lived at home, if he was bored, he would go buy a book about speaking Polish or Chinese or German… Now that he’s a student at an Ivy League university, he’s taking time each semester to take classes on a new language. This semester he’s learning Portuguese. If he wanted to, I think my brother could have more MySpace friends than Tila Tequila.

I have a question, though. Does friendship mean the same thing in every language and culture represented in the MySpace community? If not, is MySpace really just a collection of smaller social, more culture-specific networks, or can we truly continue look at it as the social behemoth it seems to be? I’ll ask my brother- in English…

clipped from mashable.com MySpace Speaking Portuguese, Russian, Polish and More October 14, 2007 — 06:06 PM PDT — by Kristen Nicole — Share This MySpace is expanding its global reach by launching localized language-specific versions in Brazil, India, Poland and Russia. These are scheduled to be rolled out over the next four months. With 24 versions in 20 countries already, MySpace is the leader of the pack when it comes to localized versions of its social network. Its largest global presence can be seen in the UK an Germany, after its domination in the US, of course.

I Wish I Could Join iFoods.tv

I order most of my meals, but if I could cook like the people on iFoods.tv, I would dine in every day. Niche social networks aren’t always exclusive just to their members– I would never post a video of myself on iFoods.tv but I plan on revisiting the site for food inspiration in the future. From brownies to pizza to these crab cakes, I promise your mouth will water.

clipped from ifoods.tv