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Global Neighbourhoods

Following Social Media Wherever It Leads

SM Global Report: Fr. Roderick, The Podcasting PriestOctober 6

A Daily Breakfast of Fun & the Human Condition

         

 

I seem to have a lot in common with Father Roderick, the Dutch podcasting priest. We both have a fascination with technology, yet we both are more interested in how to use technology for story telling than for love of source code and silicon. We also both love to write about our travel experiences and the people we meet and we both find ourselves more than a little concerned with the human condition. Sometimes, we use humor, to lightened our subject matter.

There are two essential differences in us. First, from my perspective, his collar is juxtaposed and my in is not.He's also more prone to wearing black than I am. Second, he is an extremely good podcaster, while I have learned to stick with text. Father Roderick is in my opinion, is among the best there is in mass audience podcasting, and trust me, you need not be Catholic or religious to enjoy his highly entertaining Daily Breakfast shows.

My point of these comparisons is to point out something, that he reveals almost daily. People everywhere are pretty much alike, even if our diverse cultures s

The Power of ReTweetingOctober 4

I talked on Twitter a few times this week about "retweeting," or "RT" for short. It became clear there is some confusion about the practice and I wanted to expand on it.

Retweeting allows the power of the network to take place, in pretty much the same way a blog link can extend the conversation from one blogger to a great many, sometimes at a very rapid rate. If you Tweet something of interest and you have an audience of 10, or 100 or 1000 and no one retweets it, that is far as your message goes. But if you have 10 followers, and one of them has 100 and he or she retweets you, your message reaches that many more people. If of you of this wider ring... and so on.

I retweet usually retweet because someone else said something that I believe some of my followers will find interesting. It usually means I like what was said and want to give credit. It sometimes means that I really disagreed with what was said and am curious to see what others will say. Sometimes--when there's a disaster, a fire, an Earthquake or a Red Sox post season loss, a great many people retweet the information very quickly.

News of a San Francisco earthquake and more recently the China earthquake spread around the world many times before traditional news services picked it up. While sometimes this news contains factual errors, the process seems to filter for truth. In fact, many traditional news organizations now follow Twitter to get early information, often from people who are at

Social Media & the Road to RuinOctober 4

NPR is running a series about the US, called "The Road to Ruin." At any other time in my life, this would be pretty sensationalist for public radio, but it seems to me, to be pretty spot on for the collective feeling of people in the US right now. I spoke at a conference last week, and am pretty much known for being positive in most everything I say, particularly when it comes to social media.

I inserted a slide titled "Social Media and the Recession." I said that there was an elephant in the room, a skinny and ugly elephant and its name was "The Economy," that the people in the room were probably as distracted by economic events as I was and knew they were going home to face words like "cutbacks," and "non-essential." While one person immediately disagreed with me, I saw lots of nodding heads.

These are the most difficult of times. Suddenly and in unison, the American people are in a somber mood. It has nothing to do with terrorism or war. It has to do with loss of jobs and homes and retirement funds. Anyone who has any discretionary funds is not about to spend it on a shiny new car or computer or trip to Vegas or Disneyland.

Our economy has put on the brakes. Spending is stopping. We all know it and we all wonder what it will do to us.

Once the shock has worn out and the reality has worn in, we will start to look at details of what it means to ourselves and our businesses. I am probably among the very few who at this moment is ponderi

SM Global Report: IBM's George FaulknerOctober 3

How SM brings a team of 380,000 closer together

             

                             [IBM's George Faulkner]

In my interview earlier this year with Firestoker's Jevon MacDonald, I speculated there was probably more happening in social media behind the firewall than in front of it. In this talk with IBM's George Faulkner, I would speculate that there is more happening behind IBM's firewall than at any other company.

Faulkner, a 14-year veteran of IBM has played a key role in IBM internal social media, particularly podcasting since 2004, the first the audio social media tool was introduced. He is currently editor in chief of the prolific IBM Media Library, which curates more than seven million employee contributions.

I found the extent of internal social media activity to be far greater than I had expected. This is a company of nearly 400,000 employees residing in over 200 co

Home Sold, Job Found & Goods sold on Twitter. Should eBay & Craig's List Watch Out?September 29

                     

     [ Masiero Family New Home, Berlin NH. Bought through Twitter.]

In the last couple of weeks, I've learned about the first home to be sold on Twitter, a Canadian PR guy who found a job, and new invention to lessen pain in lactating moms. Along with these major items, there's an array, of people search for apartments, brokers getting listing, iPhones and used clothing that have changed hands in the real world through Twitterville encounters.

The house is the biggest deal, and the price also makes it interesting to home buyers and perhaps scary for home owners.

Tom Masiero is co-founder of YoParts.com , an online auto parts club, whose members get discounts on what they buy. He's been living in a rented condo in southern, New Hampshire, paying $1300 a month and figuring it would be some time before he could buy his own home in a place where he'd like to raise a family. Oh yeah, one other key point: He Twi