The findingDulcinea Blog

All I Need to Know I Learned from Social Media Boot Camp

For a long time I resisted buying into the whole social media hype. Facebook? Why would anyone want to see who my friends are? Twitter. Please. I really don’t care about the Pop-Tart® you ate for breakfast.

Eventually I learned that social media is more than posting photos of your weekend or sharing the contents of your meals. It has a future and if you want your career to have a future, you can either hop on the truck or watch it bounce by with all those (gasp!) happy, chatty strangers.

So I gave in. I opened a Facebook account, then a StumbleUpon account, then Twitter, Digg, Delicious, Reddit. And last Thursday, wonder of wonders, I participated in a thing called Social Media Boot Camp, a generous project designed by Chris Heuer and Howard Greenstein, founders of Social Media Club, who normally charge much more for the advice they give.

As a social media pioneer, I’m not claiming guru status. I’d like to pass on what I learned at the camp from its founders and other savvy advisors:

1. Whether you’re looking to market a Web site, a product or another service, Chris Heuer advised audiences to identify their best customers. “What characteristics define them? Find those characteristics and try to recreate them.”

2. Howard Greenstein, also a founder of SMC and a columnist for Inc., advised the audience to realize we’re working in a “gift economy.” If you learn something valuable or discover a new tool, share it with others. And for journalists and other bloggers, he added, “Find and write great articles that help people.”

3. Dan Zarrella researched the nature of Twitter and explained “How to Get ReTweets.” A tweet is a message you send on Twitter, a retweet is a message that someone else sends and you share with your friends politely, marking the tweet with a "RT" to note it wasn’t your own thought. The most common word seen in retweets is “please,” as in “please retweet.” According to Zarrella, if you want people to share an article you’ve written or discovered, all you have to do is ask.

4. In another discussion group, Larry Aronson and E.B. Moss asked participants, “What can you do to humanize your company?”

They cited the example of charity: water. When Scott Harrison turned 31, he asked all of his friends skip buying presents and donate $31 to help build wells in Africa. As a thank you, he sent them photos of villagers staring at fresh wells with amazed faces. The next year, others took up his cause asking their friends to do the same thing.

5. And lastly, Chris Heuer reminded, “Serve your market.” While it may seem obvious, a lot of people get caught up in meeting their own needs and forget to listen to their customers. “Help people, save time, make money, get more done, be happy, find meaning, connect with others and find greater satisfaction.”

Thanks for reading and good luck putting these suggestions into practice.

Shannon Firth
Senior Writer and former technophobe

Live Blogging Beyond Facebook: How Will Today's Students Use the Web of Tomorrow? | Internet Week NY 2009

Students are at the forefront of a rapidly changing Internet, which is posing significant questions for how universities, Web businesses and employers will adjust. To explore this further, findingDulcinea is hosting and moderating a panel of leading student-focused startups who will discuss how students will find the best information online, how they're tailoring the Web in unique ways to fit their varied interests, how new Web sites will fulfill students’ needs, and ways in which businesses can better serve the 16-22 age group. We’ll also ask for audience participation as we share goals and forecasts for the Internet of the next five years. Our panelists are:

• Ariel Aberg-Riger, Creative Development & Marketing Manager, Fourth Story Media
• Jordan Goldman, Founder and CEO, Unigo
• Kate Hillis, Co-Founder & Partner, NextNext Entertainment, Chat the Planet and Qwidget
• Mark Moran, Founder & CEO, findingDulcinea and SweetSearch, Moderator
• James Rohrbach, Founder & CEO, GulliverGo
• Michael Staton, Founder & CEO, Inigral

Follow the event here, or on our Twitter account. Follow the discussion using the Twitter hashtag #gmfb.

Social Bookmarking at its Most Fun

The second generation of social bookmarking sites is attempting to take the concept of grabbing a link and turning it into something visually appealing, addictive and all-encompassing. While many people swear by the comparatively old-school Delicious and Digg, there is room in these people’s lives—and yours—for other sites.

Current is technically a user-powered cable television station founded by Al Gore, but it also happens to be a social bookmarking Web site and hub for the station where you can watch video, read news items and comment and vote articles up or down, as well as submit your own. The focus, generally speaking, is on issues of public interest and issues that will pique your interest.

We Heart It calls itself a “visual bookmark for everyone.” Users have an eye for elegant imagery on the Web, whether it’s a photograph in a field, the interior of a house, a cute animal or a piece of clothing. Submissions are presented as squares and users can “heart” the selections they fancy and “explore more” to see similar items. (Warning: some items may be considered unsafe for work).

BuzzFeed is a time-bending portal to amusing, gross, and strange (did I say amusing?) items discovered on the Web. BuzzFeed has a staff of curators, but also invites user submissions. Each item comes with a photo or video, a link, user responses and other links on that topic. But you’ll likely never leave the site, so it doesn’t really matter.

Twine claims that it “Understands Your Interests,” and this is certainly an inviting proposition. Test it out by joining communities within the site, such as “Financial and Economic Global Crisis” or “Politics,” browsing the links others have posted and posting your own. You can bookmark items, share them and comment on them, and Twine will recommend items it thinks you’ll like.

Liz Colville
Senior Writer
Audience Development

Gay Rights in the Mainstream Media, Gay Rights in the Twitter Stream

Rep. Beth Bye of Connecticut holds her marriage license, the first issued to a gay couple in the state, on March 6, 2009. (Photo: George Ruhe/AP)

When Proposition 8 appeared on the California ballot in November 2008, gay rights were not yet a mainstream topic. Ironically, when Prop 8 passed, support for gay marriage started to mount. Whereas once homophobia was considered “the last accepted prejudice,” people came out in large numbers to protest the ban, and the media covered it. More states started to push harder for marriage laws. Recently, Iowa and Vermont passed laws in favor of gay marriage, and the District of Columbia council voted to recognize marriage in other states.

Now, the media watch on gay marriage is so tuned in that The New York Times City Room blog published a piece yesterday about N.Y. Gov. David Paterson’s anticipated but unconfirmed plans to introduce a gay marriage bill. Ten years ago, homosexuality was still a taboo topic, but in the past year, most media outlets, and many Americans, take the importance of gay rights as a given.

But perhaps the best example of all was the fast spread of news about the so-called #amazonfail on Twitter. A handful of gay authors found that their books had been reclassified as “adult” on Amazon and therefore could not be found on search. A decade ago, I genuinely believe that those few authors would have been the only ones to know or care about that situation. But this weekend, #amazonfail became the most popular search topic on Twitter.

Amazon decided it was such an emergency that employees were called in on Easter Sunday to fix the problem. The fact that the mistake is being called a PR disaster tells me that somewhere along the way, this country’s attitude toward homosexuality has shifted. No longer is homophobia “the last accepted prejudice.”

Rachel Balik
Senior Writer

Qwidget: A Better Way to Comment

The comment section on most Web sites is an area of controlled, and sometimes uncontrolled, chaos. The great thing about the Qwidget, the comment widget that we use on all our news articles, is that it's all about conversation, not just commentary. The Qwidget is a project of the company Chat the Planet, which is responsible for critically acclaimed 2007 documentary "Hometown Baghdad."

The Qwidget asks you a question about an aspect of a story or blog post you've just read, as posed by the publisher of the article. You respond "yes," "no," or "maybe," and are then prompted with "Why?" You can then respond at greater length on the issue. As Phil Glockner of Scribkin puts it, “Think of it as a easy yes/no poll box that’s been pumped full of social media goodness.” After you input your response, you can look at everyone else's comments and respond privately to the people whose answers you're intrigued by. This is a great way to get to know your fellow users, as well as take part in an organized debate online.

The Qwidget calls itself "the conversation starter." Indeed, the Qwidget is worthy of a better description than "comment thread." Threads are easy to lose. But the conversations that happen with the Qwidget aren't. What I like most about it is that it encourages me to read thoroughly. It's not easy to answer a question about an issue like Mexican drug trafficking without having read an article attentively. Learn more about the Qwidget mission here.

Soon we're going to be rolling out the Qwidget in some of our features articles, where we often talk about timely matters that affect you, like the recession. We want to hear more of your opinions and hope to include them in some "people's choice" editions of popular feature articles like "5 Things Worth Spending Money On During the Recession."

Head to any of our news stories to see what Qwidget is like. After you answer your first question, you can create an account in a couple of easy steps!

Liz Colville
Senior Writer
Audience Development