Social what?

I wrote this post on 4 February 2010. And it was never posted.

It's funny to see how things have changed in 23 months.

I don't listen to as much of what Chris Brogan or Mitch Joel are saying - mainly as my interest in social media waned a little. Not in the potential of the tools, but perhaps in the incessant need for money to be made. Or people talking about how to make money.

Anyway, I thought I'd post it anyway and see if anyone else found it funny to see how the world has moved on:

Social what?

Some slides explaining what Social Media might be about (first half is good): http://www.slideshare.net/mikefruchter/social-media-1010705

How to get started in Social media: http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/seo-blog/index.php/how-to-get-started-in-social-media/

Some fascinating stats about Social Media: http://brianwlink.wordpress.com/2008/12/17/fascinating-facts-in-social-media/

Top Social Media sites: http://www.prelovac.com/vladimir/top-list-of-social-media-sites

Content:

Food for thought - be a leader by sharing your views, not just name-dropping!: http://www.mpdailyfix.com/2009/03/social_media_a_readers_manifes.html/

RSS:

What is RSS: http://www.commoncraft.com/rss_plain_english

You can get a free RSS reader from Google here: Google Reader. The key here is to keep on top of what you follow... I can have anything from 100 to 1000 unread dependant on how much I have been keeping up with reading. Why? Well, there are so many people making noise, it can be good to listen to a few voices more regularly.

Some feeds to add to your reader for Social Media goodness:

Seth Godin: (a fine example of insight, regular posts and some good ideas!) http://www.sethgodin.com

Mitch Joel: (Canadian, Marketing, Loads of insight on Social Media, Journalism & Publishing): http://www.twistimage.com/blog

Chris Brogan: (Brogan is one of the genuine Social Media consultants, you can see one of his presentations/webinars here: http://www.hubspot.com/smboss/) His blog: http://www.chrisbrogan.com

Jeremiah Owyang: (Social media strategy & an employee of Forrester Research (not his company blog tho!): http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/

track Standard Life on twitter: http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=standard+life. you get some nonsense, but some gems: http://twitter.com/wilsonreid/statuses/1628382025,http://twitter.com/Returnedmail/statuses/1597816502

Twitter:

What is twitter: http://www.commoncraft.com/twitter

(I'd recommend most of the content that Commoncraft put out as it's pretty simple to follow and gives great insight too!)

A CEO who uses twitter: http://www.forbes.com/2009/04/22/twitter-ceo-networking-leadership-managing-social.html

This is what can happen if you are active on twitter: http://sesquipedalis.blogspot.com/2009/02/finally-use-for-twitter.html

The search function on twitter is quite something. You can basically search any keywords and see what people are saying. Then add that feed to your RSS reader and get a realtime update as it develops. People use the hashtag principle to categorise content. swineflu is one of the most popular at the moment.

Okay, so it's all within the fishbowl of the userbase, but as the numbers (and demographics) show, this is not a static community. When Oprah got involved the move to mainstream gathered significant momentum.

Alerts:

You can also set up Google Alerts to send you email digests of any mentions of pretty much any keywords. Check here for more: http://www.google.com/alerts