Social Networking Wars
Sometimes I feel a bit like the guy in this video. If you haven’t seen it yet, I hope you enjoy some giggles.
If it were you, what social networks would be chasing after you?
A Tiny Taste of PodCamp NYC 2.0, Amandalana Style
I met Alana Taylor, of Twitter song fame, on Saturday at PodCamp NYC 2.0. She whipped out her Flip and we made a moment. Check it out:
If You Can Make It There… PodCamp NYC 2.0
Sup friends? I’ll be at PodCamp NYC 2.0 on Saturday at Polytechnic University in Brooklyn. I will probably want to capture you in some way. No, not in a trap, silly! But I’m gonna get you in a photo, video or Utter while we’re having fun at camp. Deal?
I’m looking forward to seeing a bunch of good friends and to turning some pre-lationships into REALationships this weekend. If you see me around, please say hello. See you there!
Happiness
Everyone has bad days. Days when you question yourself and you feel like you just suck at life. I know I’ve been spending a lot of time blogging about communities on Twitter lately, but I have another example of this network coming together with kind words. I recently had an unhappy day and reached out to my community on Twitter, asking for inspiration and ideas about how to “happify” myself.
Susan Reynolds saw my happiness thread a couple weeks ago and requested that I write a post about the suggestions people had for me on how to feel happier each day. Here are my favorite responses:
@shonnoll says exercise
@thattalldude says listen to happy music
@mindchaotica and @linkedmn say to remember that things could always be worse
@cambeck says to become Joseph Jaffe
@iAlbert says to take a walk and be around nature
@geoffliving says happiness is an inside, spiritual job that external things can’t determine
@vanhoosear says learn to accept and let go
@podcastmama says to be kind to yourself, allow yourself to change your mind and get enough rest
@Paisano says to help people every day, engage in random acts of kindness and take naps
@jackvinson says to make a gratitude list
Building relationships and cultivating communities is central to our jobs as PR professionals and social media evangelists, and sometimes we get to see the strength of these social groups in ways that truly show how meaningful this stuff can be. Being a real person is SO important on the social Web. Asking, helping, advising, suggesting, being there for others. For me, I’m finding that being real and being happy go hand in hand.
If you have any suggestions of how to be happier, please post them in the comments section. Maybe we’ll all find some new ways to feel happier day-to-day.
Haagen-Dazs Helps the Honey Bees
Social Honeycomb cares about honey. Honey comes from bees. And apparently, the bees need our help.
I recently came across a campaign by Haagen Dazs called Help the Honey Bees. This didn’t sound like your typical awareness campaign so I poked around the site a little. Apparently there are a lot of forces working against honey bees, and this in turn affects many of the foods we eat, including, of course, my guilty pleasure of choice–ice cream.
A few interesting facts from the Help the Honey Bees press kit:
- Honey bees are responsible for the pollination of more than 100 crops, including fruits, vegetables, nuts, and seeds, providing 80 percent of the country’s pollination services
- Honey bee pollination directly results in about $15 billion worth of fruits, vegetables, nuts, and agricultural seeds annually in the U.S. That does not include the role that honey bee pollination plays in providing the seeds that are planted for forage (alfalfa and clover, etc.) that are eaten by our livestock and end up on our plates as meat, or as dairy products
I never knew honey bees were so important! This Haagen Dazs micro-site represents an interesting cause marketing/PR campaign for an issue most people probably never think about. You can easily learn about the bee crisis, see what’s being done, find out how you can help and play around with some fun bee-themed features at the same time. This awareness-raising campaign seems genuine, and positions Haagen Dazs as environmentally-minded and responsible beyond the brand just wanting to sell more tubs of ice cream. …Mmm, ice cream…
Even if you hate ice cream and don’t care if the foods you enjoy are ruined by the plight affecting honey bees, you may enjoy the whimsical “Make a Bee” section of the site. It’s reminiscent of the Become an M&M campaign, where you can customize a honey bee and send it through “bee-mail” to a friend.
I think this is an interesting cause-related PR campaign. So get out there, buy some ice cream and save some honey bees. …Mmm, honey…
Facebook Chat is Here, Ridiculous
Facebook’s chat feature launched today. In my opinion, we all have PLENTY of chat and conversation options separate from Facebook and this new feature is just redundant. I already have AIM/iChat, GChat/GTalk, ooVoo, Skype, Twitter and SMS that enable me to have real-time conversations with my friends. Facebook was never about that for me. It’s a place to store and share information–including the contact information I choose to display for the conversation-enablers mentioned above. I won’t say that I’ll never use this new Facebook chat feature, but I maintain that it’s ridiculous and unnecessary.
Below is my reaction. What’s yours?
Twitter, What Are You Doing?
Twitter has been a brat for the past couple days. I’m only getting a couple people’s updates, and I know I’m not the only one having problems. I feel so abandoned.
Boo, Twitter. You suck this weekend.
Today’s Honey: April 20, 2008
I came across this video on Yianni Garcia’s blog and thought it was absolutely fantastic. Alana Taylor is definitely a rockstar in my book.
Lyrics:
When I wake up in the morning,
The first thing I see,
Is an e-mail in my Gmail,
Sayin’ you’re followin’ me.
And next thing you know,
I’m followin’ you,
Not everybody does it,
But me and Scoble do.
Chorus:
Cuz Twitter beats Facebook any day,
140 characters is all you need to say.
Cool thing ’bout Twitter is you meet new people,
You even get to stalk the famous ones too,
We’ve got Veronica Belmont from Mahalo Daily,
Barack Obama and Hugh MacLeod, too.
Chorus
Twitter’s like a family,
As long as you’re not spamming me,
We keep in touch, we share too much,
And @garyvee meets up for lunch.
Chorus
But be careful with your iPhone…
Don’t DM the whole worldddddd!
Chorus
Because There Aren’t Enough Ways to Stalk What People Are Saying on Twitter…
There are about 47.3 billion Twitter apps to break down what people are saying, who they’re saying it to, where they’re saying it and how popular they are for saying what they say. But there’s always room for more, right?
I’ve seen some of my Twitter friends like Geoff Livingston, Greg Verdino and Matt Dickman talking about Tweet Clouds recently, so I checked the site out. It’s a cool way to visualize your most tweeted words.
What I find interesting as a PR person is that you can see the terms arguably most important to people as well as who they’re talking to most often. This gives us insight into who our influencers are and what things and people are central to their conversations. Tweet Clouds could end up being a visually interesting and useful way to get a better snapshot of who people are on Twitter.
Try this out. In the meantime, here’s my Tweet Cloud:
I Hulu, Do You?
I don’t know what my problem is. I got my Hulu beta invite back in December, and I never really used my account until recently. I don’t know why I waited around neglecting my access, but I’m glad I finally got on board. Oh, and don’t worry–if you never got an invite, it’s all good. Hulu came out of private beta on March 12, 2008 so now you can (and should) sign yo’self on up.
For those of you who aren’t already using Hulu, it’s a place to watch TV and movie content online. Why do I like it? You can create a “queue” of videos which acts sort of like a DVR function, so you can have your content ready and waiting for you when you want it. The video quality is great on my MacBook Pro, and Hulu makes it easy to watch your content in different ways. You can watch shows and movies directly in the Hulu tab of your browser or you can pop the content out into its own window. This is good if you want to resize the video box or minimize other distractions, with the additional option of muting and dimming the light on the rest of your browser. There’s even an embed feature so you can share your online videos–in their entirety or as a selected clip. It’s all very simple, with a pretty UI to boot. I must admit, I’m a fan.
Hulu’s gotten all sorts of press over the past year, in everything from Fortune and BusinessWeek to Wired and PC World. And of course, the blogosphere has buzzed about the service as well. Hulu’s got the sticky and the buzz part down. I read this morning that Hulu may be jumping from my laptop to my mobile phone in the near future. As someone who gets antsy if she hasn’t touched her phone in the past 30 seconds, I’m interested to see where this goes and how it looks once it’s implemented. When and if Hulu is available on my iPhone, you may see me on the bus or the train in Boston, giggling at Michael Scott or gasping at Jack Bauer.
Now I know not everyone likes Hulu, and some prefer other online video sites like Joost and Fancast. If you want to watch TV shows or movies online, where do you go? What do you think of Hulu now, and what value might the service bring to your mobile content consumption? Online video, nom nom nom.
