Thoughts from Around the Web

Human Companies, Blog Responses: Todd Defren over at PR Squared posted a thoughtful piece this week about the approach companies take to address negative posts on the web and whether corporate community relations pros should remain unflappable or show their humanity, making them (us)– and our brands – that much stronger? 

I responded with a fairly lengthy comment.  It could have been a blog post here, so I am linking to it.

A Tribute to Randy Pausch:  If you have not seen this video in the last lecture series, check it out. One of the segments in the lecture (and related to the item above) was his comment that when you screw up and no one tells you, thats when you are in BIG trouble.  In August 2006, Pausch was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.  He died this week.  Thank you for this wonderful lecture. 

Digital Age Literacy in The New York Times:  Interesting article about how we read on the web; is it better than being in front of a television or is it destroying traditional ways of reading, like reading a book.  Great quote:

Young people “aren’t as troubled as some of us older folks are by reading that doesn’t go in a line,” said Rand J. Spiro, a professor of educational psychology at Michigan State University who is studying reading practices on the Internet. “That’s a good thing because the world doesn’t go in a line, and the world isn’t organized into separate compartments or chapters.”

Interesting Graphic too from The Times

 

The New Media Divas from Blogher talk Twitter: Blog World Expo on Blog Talk Radio talks to the New Media Divas who offer insight and perspective, especially related to Twitter.  Great to listen to these pros together. The New Media Divas include: Erin Kotecki Vest, Lucretia Pruitt and Laura Fitton.

Twebinar 2 a Blast, Sign Up for Twebinar 3: Crosstech Media and Radian6, put together a wild, fun and experiential social media learning program with their Twebinars. Hosted by Chris Brogan, the second twebinar had a new more interactive format and seemed to be a hit with the large crowd.  It resulted in more than 1100 tweets in a two hour time frame --I know it kept LionelatDell and me busy and made for some fast-paced discussion on the impact social media is having on brand ownership.

Why Your Company Should Consider the Blog Council: The Blog Council has a blog here: http://blogcouncil.org/.  Glad to see JohnatDELL headlining the video about why companies might want to consider this organization.  Keep an eye on the Blog Council Site tomorrow, Monday, July 28th for some news, I think.

Social Media Club Appoints Interim Board and Focuses on Deliverables: While I was away the Social Media Club announced a new interim Board to chart the organization's strategic direction related to development of membership, acceleration of local chapter development, increase adoption of industry standards and implementation of a new legal structure for the organization.  If you have thoughts or views, I'd love to hear them as one of the interim Board Members.

Social Media Camp here in Austin:  Related news, from the Social Media Club, lets get social, have some fun and get more people involved.  Here is the link for the July 30th event: http://barcamp.pbwiki.com/SocialMediaCampAustin

New Tools: Lately I have been preoccupied trying to figure out how to make us of and apply some of the many new tools available to bloggers and people like me trying to find their way around the web, without getting lost along the way.  While I am still working with some of these tools/applications, and it took a bit of work to get there, here are some I am trying out to see if they make life on the web a little more productive and fruitful.

1. Friendfeed:  With special thanks to Louis Gray and Scribin I have a "customized" friendfeed that works for me and am finding pretty darn good so far.   The key add-ins for me are the scripts available in Firefox that add tabs and allow you to filter services.  Let me know if you want additional details to shorten your learning curve.  PS: Im not leaving twitter for friendfeed.  I use them differently :-)
2. Feedly: If you are interested in "user interfaces" and making the web more friendly for getting through feeds and finding information, versus the "raw data" sort of approach, check out this magazine style reader that integrates with information from others to give you recommendations.  Its pretty cool.
3. AideRSS: Thanks to Jason Fallis for this lead.  Very impressive for sure.  Its an interesting way to take a look at material in your google reader and see what is bubbling to the top with others.
4. RSSmeme: Is another interesting approach to see what is moving and being shared around the web.  I think both it and AideRSS have tremendous implications for business wanting to be involved with communities and determining whether their contributions online are in fact becoming part of the community. Can you say new metrics perhaps? 

Any other good finds? Other thoughts? Looking forward to hearing from you