Blog
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When Business and Charity Align – The Triple Win of Luck of Seven
CC Chapman just pointed out an interesting project/book called On The Luck of Seven. The author is traveling around the world and pre-selling his book for 11.11. CC pointed out that it was a good cause and worthy of support.
When I stopped by the site, I saw something else entirely – an opportunity for SEO – search engine optimization. See, the author is doing something smart – he’s letting donors provide link text and links in exchange for donating.
Those of you in SEO know that quality inbound links cost money –250 or more per link per year. This site is selling good links for $11.11. It’s a steal just on those merits.
On examining the site further, it’s got an estimated PageRank of 5, which is great, and decent numbers with Compete, QuantCast, and Alexa (whose data by itself is suspect, but combined with other metrics gives a relative sense of worth).Now, it’s not just donation – buyers will also get a kid’s book of some kind. I don’t know what it is, but chances are I’ll flip it to a local charity and bingo – my inexpensive inbound link will transform into a charity writeoff, too.
Helping a cause is nice, but helping a cause and helping your business AND getting a small tax break? It’s a triple win.
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A Day to Remember, A Day to Act
A Day to Remember, A Day to Act
Lots of folks today remembering, looking back at September 11, 2001, six years ago. Remembering what was.
Remember also who you were and how much you’ve changed, what powers you have now that were unthinkable back then.
In 2001, there was no podcasting. Blogging was relatively limited.
In 2001, there was no Twitter, and IM presence was silo’ed heavily.
In 2001, there was no Flickr. No YouTube. No Blip.tv. No TubeMogul.
In 2001, there was no Facebook. No MySpace.
The reach, the powers, the abilities you have as a digitally connected human being six years later VASTLY eclipse what you could do in 2001. You have at your fingertips more tools, more methods, more strategies for communicating and sharing with your world than ever before, more ways to tell your story and experience the stories of others.
You have the power to change the world.
Fundamentalism, be it neoconservative ideology, radical Islam, or Jerry Falwell (how’s the temperature down there, buddy?) requires an absence of knowledge. It requires an absence of differing points of view, a willful deprivation of any information that does not conform to a single party line. Now more than ever you have the ability to engage those around you and share your knowledge, share your stories, and in doing so chip away at fundamentalism.
If you lament 9/11 and what has happened since, commit ever more strongly to using the tools of new media to make the world and your community a better place. Only together, through our direct connections to each other and to the world around us, can we defuse the potency of fundamentalism.
How do you get started?
As my good friend Chris Brogan says, “Just press record.”
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Amish ChrisBrogan
It’s green. It’s eco-friendly. It’s web 2.0. Howard Greenstein of the prestigious Social Media Club calls it the Best Web 2.0 Application with a positive valuation of $10.5 million.
It’s… Amish ChrisBrogan!
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D10dd0twofw[/youtube]
Special thanks to Howard Greenstein and Kathryn Jones, as well as Eric Skiff and PodCamp Philly.
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Have You Gone For a Digital Walk in Your Neighborhood?
I recently had the experience of throwing a block party in my neighborhood, and was amazed at the number of neighbors who showed up. It was a great experience, and I attribute a major part of its success to one factor: my wife and I take daily walks through our neighborhood. We don’t necessarily interact with everyone or even a significant minority of people along the route on a regular basis. But our consistent presence helped us achieve a level of recognition in our neighborhood, enough to bring everyone together for a party.
What does this have to do with marketing and new media? If you want to achieve a baseline level of presence and recognition, go for new media walks in the digital neighborhood. Jeff Pulver calls it a social media sunrise. What does that entail?
Make sure you have presence in major social neighborhoods. Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. Obviously, vet the neighborhoods before you move in or you could move into a sleazy place like Quechup.
Maintain the properties you set up. Accept friend invites as appropriate, and leave footprints. Update your status, write a little something here and there on people’s bulletin boards or other presence notifiers.
Check in daily. Again, not a huge commitment, just make sure you’re logging in so that you can stay in touch. If someone posts a question of interest and you have an answer of value, contribute it.
Go to block parties. Conferences and conventions like PodCamp Philly and PodCamp Boston are the equivalent of block parties, when everyone in the neighborhood shows up, except for the crazy disgruntled neighbor who is always out in the yard grumbling at the other neighbors. Some conferences cost money, while others like PodCamps just require you to get to them – the actual event is free.
Throw your own block party. If you live in a neighborhood where there aren’t block parties, or they’re exclusive little ones that not everyone is invited to, throw your own. Amber Rhea is throwing a block party for the sex and erotica community called Sex 2.0, based on the UnConference model. It’s a great idea, and a great way to bring community together.
The most important thing is to go for a walk regularly. Even if you don’t run into a lot of people each day, your consistent presence will help you be recognized and be able to bring together your community.
Where will you go for a walk today?
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The iPod Nano and iPod Touch – 8 Implications for Podcasting and Podsafe Music
The iPod Nano and iPod Touch – Implications for Podcasting and Podsafe Music
A few highlights from Apple’s refresh of the iPod line for podcasters and new media makers.
1. The iPod nano now plays iPod video – 320×240 H.264 video. With this, video iPods are much more affordable and in reach of more of the population. At 149 and199, the nanos are priced well – but 4 GB and 8 GB won’t go too far with lots of video.
Want to be the best video podcaster you can be? Get up to speed on video compression utilities to make your video high quality but small file size – tools like TechSpansion’s iSquint and VisualHub can do serious two pass encoding, making good quality at a small disk price.
2. CoverFlow is enabled on the nano. Again, because the nano line is so popular, it will have greater reach than the high end iPod. If you’re not using your show’s logo as cover art in every episode, you’re going to miss out on an increasingly important branding opportunity.
3. The iPod Touch is an iPhone-sized screen. Again, Coverflow means a huge branding opportunity for your show. The iPod Touch also incorporates the Safari Web Browser, which means that the Podcaster iPhone Kit is now the Podcaster iKit.
4. If you’re a video podcaster, YouTube is a required distribution point if you want maximum exposure. Apple has built YouTube browser functionality into two of its products now, iMovie 8 and now the iPod Touch. For maximum distribution, consider looking into a distributor like TubeMogul.com to hit as many video sites as possible.
5. If you’re a podsafe musician and you don’t have your music in the iTunes Music Store, do so immediately as long as it makes financial sense. The iTunes Music Store wireless edition now allows immediate, impulse purchases from the store, and with the holidays coming up, it’ll be even more important.
6. If you’re a podsafe musician, the iTunes Music Store available wirelessly also means a game change for drop cards. Instead of giving someone a dropcard and hoping they follow up, you can gift a song immediately to them – just with their email address. Instant way to build a mailing list at a relatively low acquisition cost!
7. The Starbucks Now Playing selection in the iTunes Wifi Music Store is interesting in its own right, but I look forward to the packet sniffer and relayer that can mimic a Starbucks, letting independent WiFi access points create a Starbucks-like access point. In turn, this could be used to promote independent artists’ music on a public WiFi point.
8. Search is in style again in iTunes. With a smaller interface than a PC and a smaller keyboard, having your podcast, music, or video easily searchable is going to be a Very Big Deal ™. Make your stuff searchable. Complete your ID3 tags on EVERY episode to reap the maximum benefits. If you work with a vendor that puts your music in the store, make sure they are doing a top shelf job with metadata and ID3 tags.
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A Chat with a Rich Kid
In my work, I get the opportunity to talk to a lot of interesting people, as both part of the Financial Aid Podcast and PodCamp. Last year, while I was doing outreach for the podcast on MySpace, I got a chance to talk to a kid who has had a decidedly different educational experience than most kids in the US. I can’t legally use her name since she’s under the age of majority, but let’s call her Sara for the purposes of discussion.
First, a bit of background. Sara is from one of Massachusetts’ old money families – bluebloods, as the slang goes – and as a result she attends a private school coupled with private tutoring. She’s from a family and background that will never, as far as I know, need the services of the Student Loan Network, unless it’s to offer a multimillion dollar scholarship to the Edvisors Foundation.
Now, most people would probably have a casual chat and be on their way, but I really, really wanted to know one thing: what’s her school system like? What does a child of wealth and privilege experience in school? It turns out to be something very different.
Here’s what she’s been studying as a sophomore in high school:
- Calculus
- Greek
- Latin
- Debate
- Rhetoric
- Classical English literature
- Phyiscs
- Logic
- Geography
This, in short, is a pre-20th century curriculum focused on academic rigor with the intent of giving a child the mental toolkit to be a leader, to have at their fingertips a knowledge of the world and the mind. Most important, she moves at her own (rapid) academic pace because her tutor is integrated with her private school, moving her along academically as quickly as possible to increasingly complex subjects.
What’s more, when I asked her what else she needed to learn, there was one important component that virtually no one is taught in school – as part of her education, she’s expected to be able to network with her peers. If Sam needs something and Jane has it, Sara acts as the intermediary, the power broker, connecting the two. At family parties and gatherings, she’s expected to greet and introduce herself to the guests – and gather information from them for later use.
This blog post is not to express any opinion except to offer a glimpse behind the garden wall. If you have kids, what are they learning?
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Icanhazurpersonaldata – The Q TrustVirus and How Bad a Trust Virus could be
The buzz this weekend was clearly about Q – the first TRUE viral marketing product I’ve seen in new media. It’s viral just like a real virus – it spreads to everyone you’ve come in contact with, and the power of its infection is multiplied by the level of contact you have with others. We’ll probably talk about this at length during this coming week’s best marketing podcast, Marketing Over Coffee.
My first read on Q is this – good. Good that it happened, good that the payload was relatively innocuous (so far), good that it demonstrated a flaw in social networking without obliterating the network in the process. I’d still change your password if you’re a current or former Q user on any email account you’ve used it with.
Just how bad could the Q Trust Virus (trustvirus? is that even a word?) have been? Consider this: how many times have you synced your online web mail’s account information with an address book or other utility? I’d bet dollars to doughnuts that if you’re in the social space, you’ve used a tool like Plaxo or LinkedIn or another sync tool that promises to bring together all your data, and you’ve done so.
I’d bet you dollars to doughnuts right now that in your address book on XYZ service as well as on your personal computer, you not only have friends’ email addresses, but their real names, physical world addresses, phone numbers, birthdays, and more.
Imagine a Q-style TrustVirus (it’s officially a word now) that aggregates all of that, but doesn’t tell you, nor does it mass email all of your friends. Instead, it stores it in one large data warehouse, and cross-references people in your network with the same people in other networks, until it develops a comprehensive profile of an individual based on fragments gathered from that individual’s many friends. CC Chapman may not have my birthdate in his address book, but Chris Brogan might. Steve Garfield may know my cell phone number, and someone might know my work address. Put the sum of my friends’ knowledge about me together, and you’d have enough for a profile of reasonable accuracy.
What to do with such a profile? Well, selling it to an identity theft ring would probably be lucrative and almost impossible to trace. Selling it to marketing data firms, selling it to just about anyone who wants top-notch, qualified personal profiles (three letter government agencies?) would be profitable.
Think about it – not only would a trustvirus gather a lot of information quickly, but it would be highly accurate most of the time, because you’re hijacking trust relationships across networks. Bryan Person trusts me enough to tell me his birthday, and I have no incentive to put inaccurate data in my address book. I trust Anji Bee with my mailing address, and chances are very good she’ll record it accurately. A trustvirus knows this and therefore the data it collects will be highly trustworthy.
What’s the lesson in all this? Think carefully about the information you put online. Think carefully about what you share with whom, even close friends, because they are human and therefore susceptible to trustvirus hijacking. Encourage your friends, if you’re of a sufficiently paranoid mindset, to not record sensitive data that could be used for identity theft (name, SSN, and date of birth is the magic trifecta that unlocks most doors) and be very careful about how you store data about them.
The easiest benchmark of all is to ask yourself this: what don’t you want the world to know about you – and who else knows about it?
Beware the trustvirus.
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Will You Light The Night?
For every light that shines, a shadow falls. – munk
Last year, 19 close friends and colleagues contributed $2,010 towards leukemia and lymphoma research. This year, my wife and I are walking again in the Boston Common to support the Leukemia and Lymphoma Research program. What’s being researched? This caught my eye:
Multiple myeloma is a lethal malignancy for which cure remains elusive. Stem cell transplantation results in improved disease free survival but ultimately fails to prevent recurrence. A promising area of research is the use of cancer vaccines to educate the immune system to target and eliminate tumor cells. Studies demonstrate that the immune system is particularly sensitive to cancer vaccines following stem cell transplantation. We have developed a novel tumor vaccine involving the fusion of potent immune stimulating cells known as dendritic cells (DC) with a patient’s own tumor cells. The vaccine presents a wide array of tumor proteins to the immune system. Laboratory studies have shown that DC/myeloma fusions stimulate lymphocytes to recognize and kill myeloma cells.
A lot of the time, pleas for donations and contributions go the human route – here’s little Johnny who needs to be saved, please open your hearts and wallets. I call Bravo Sierra on that – it’s nice, but this shows you how your money is being used.If you’re not biotech minded, cancer researchers are looking at treating cancer like the flu or any other communicable disease, using the body’s own immune system to fight tumors, rather than just pump someone full of drugs and hope it takes. How cool is that? Going with nature and natural defense mechanisms rather than trying to sidestep them.
Please continue to support innovative research (which will in turn save little Johnny) like this with your generous contribution to Light the Night by clicking here.
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Offline
I’ll be off the grid until 9/4/07. If it’s urgent, call me if you have the number. Play nicely with each other!
