I've finally managed to finished a book I've been spending the last few months reading called "Blogging Heroes" which was authored by Michael A. Banks. The book contains interviews with (at the time of writing) 30 of the world's top bloggers. People such as Joel Comm, Gina Trapani, Frank Warren, Peter Rojas, Robert Scoble, etc. offer their stories on how they have become successful through blogging. This post is the first in a two part series which will highlight 30 things I have learned by reading this book. Dave Taylor 1. Write only when your inspired and write more...
Shared by Mike Fruchter "The FriendFeed social network is a powerful resource. With it you can connect to some brilliant people and learn new things as they learn them. Converse with interesting people around the world around similar interests. Stream together separate news sources into a single place and then kick off some great discussions about them. Read on for fifteen ways that other users are making FriendFeed a more valuable tool for all of us." By Daniel J. Pritchett of SharingAtWork.com (FriendFeed/Twitter)The FriendFeed social network is a powerful resource. With it you can connect to some brilliant people and...
Andrew Warner is an Internet entrepreneur and the founder of Mixergy.com. Tim Ferriss’ relationships with bloggers helped him reach the New York Times bestseller list with his book, The Four Hour Work Week. I recently called Tim to ask him how to market to bloggers. Here’s what he taught me: Start before you need something “I reached out to certain bloggers as far as a year in advance of the book being published,” Tim told me. By building his connections ahead of time, he never had to start a relationship with a blogger by asking for a favor. Meet bloggers...
Beyond being an online media cultist, I’m also a devout TV geek. So therefore I’m of course obsessed with Dexter, Showtime’s wonderful, whimsical, and occasionally haunting tale of a “good serial killer.” Every episode has a theme, and this week the Butterfly Effect was thrown around, which is described as “the idea that a butterfly’s wings might create tiny changes in the atmosphere that may ultimately alter the path of a tornado or delay.” While that’s a little dramatic, it led me to think about cause-and-effect with relation to social media. I’ve been thinking about and writing to an extent...
[Gary Bolles (r) with my other former partner Robert Scoble. Photo by Shel] Chris Hoet has posted some spot on observations on conferences over at his blog, Cross The Breeze . His sharp and specific comments bring back to Conferenza Premium Reports, which I co-founded with Gary Bolles in 2001. It has since evolved into the Conferenza Blog, where some of the pioneers and leaders of social media post about events they attend. During my three-year Conferenza tenure, our product was a subscription-based e-newsletter. Some of the current Conferenza bloggers, like Doc Searls and David Weinberger,...
[Honor Guard at Forbidden City more for tourism than intimidation. Photo by Shel] I read about half of Paul Theroux’s 1988 China travel book, Riding the Iron Rooster through China on my way over. It would prove to be a mistake. First, he and I tend to have different attitudes, I see light. Second, the China of 20 years ago is dramatically different from today as perhaps the China of 50 or 100 years ago. This is a country that is evolving rapidly, dramatically, at a pace and with numbers that takes a Westerner's breath away. Robert Scoble had...
I just saw this exchange from Robert Scoble and Rick Sanchez, so my previous analogy wasn’t so far off the mark. @PRsarahevans any PR person on Twitter is one of the good ones. @Bluraven USA media only shows small part of China (and world). 03:28 PM November 12, 2008 from web in reply to PRsarahevans @Scobleizer ur right, trying to get us all to think beyond the norm. twitter can lead the way. aint going to change overnight though. 03:34 PM November 12, 2008 from web in reply to Scobleizer @ricksanchezcnn just Twittered me. Now THAT freaks me out! It’s...
In 1952 Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn published their seminal work “Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions”. They provided a systematic overview of 164 definitions of this anthropological key concept. I did not find as much definitions of social media and furthermore the differences between definitions social media are far smaller than the differences between different concepts of culture. This is a quick overview of the first 14 definitions of social media by the following people: Ben Parr Anthony Mayfield Robert Scoble Brian Solis Stowe Boyd Chris Heuer Joseph Thornley David Meerman Scott Ike Pigott Deirdre Breakenridge (PR...
Facebook’s ties to Microsoft go back to 2006 when they first signed an advertising deal. A year later they took a $240 million investment, and the advertising relationship was extended this year. Those ties explain why Facebook was willing to ignore it’s own privacy policy in March 2008 and give Microsoft access to Facebook user emails. Despite shutting down Plaxo and Google products that tried to access Facebook users over privacy concerns, they were ok with sending and displaying emails to Microsoft to let users invite Facebook friends to Windows Live Messenger. Facebook’s privacy policy says “We do not provide...
It's more than a rumor: The great Silicon Valley gossip-rag experiment has come to a humbling conclusion. Two-and-a-half years after launching Valleywag, blog magnate Nick Denton has decided to fold it into Gawker, which covers the media business. For the past month, Denton has been saying to everyone who will listen that online advertising is undergoing a sharp slowdown as the economy continues to tank, and Web publishers are going to get nailed. After recently paring the Valleywag staff down to two, Denton is now keeping only one -- Editor Owen Thomas, who will write as many as a...
A concept in video advertising has been bubbling up amongst the professionals I’ve been listening to over the last six months, one that makes a lot of sense and is already in use by several successful podcasters, but one that is rarely described explicitly and definitely lacks a cute buzzword-y name, at least as far as I’ve seen. Most advertising in video and audio media is treated separately from any other content, text or otherwise. Most blogs and news organizations that regularly (or irregularly) produce and feature video and audio content don’t monetize it at all. Those that do monetize...
Last night, BoomTown was at the Horn Group offices in San Francisco, to appear on a panel called “Is Social Media Killing PR?” Focused on the “future of the media ecosystem,” it was moderated by Media Survey’s Sam Whitmore. Besides me, the other panelists were the Horn Group’s Susan Etlinger and Jeremiah Oywang, a Web strategist with Forrester Research. The panel topic was inspired by recent blog rants by Jason Calacanis, Robert Scoble and Michael Arrington, all of whom have taken potshots at the PR industry as unnecessary or broken in the new social media order. Of course, as...
If Bambuser's mobile live broadcasting app sounds familiar, it's because it's trying to unseat Qik. As one of the companies presenting at Wednesday's Under the Radar conference in Mountain View, CA, Bambuser is trying to convince investors and future partners to propel their business forward. Like Qik, Bambuser broadcasts the contents of your view finder from your mobile phone, which viewers can watch live online. Also like Qik, Bambuser viewers can chat with the filmmaker when the video is live. However, Bambuser throws in recording and geotagging from the Webcam in addition to the phone. As an extra touch,...
The liquored-up consensus at San Francisco watering hole Joey & Eddie's last night: Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk is actually kind of hot. Musk, who drove up in one of his electric car startup's Roadsters to speak to me yesterday, is divorcing sci-fi novelist wife Justine and has taken up with a British actress, Talulah Riley, whom he squired to a party earlier this year at Tesla's Silicon Valley showroom. Riley told the Daily Mail that she "fell in love with Elon because of our mutual love of physics." Perhaps it was "physiques." Those British accents are tricky. Justine Musk's...
This will be hilarious: Self-obsessed videoblogger Robert Scoble, managing director of FastCompany.tv, has a new boss — who's the same as my old one. Noah Robischon is leaving his job as managing editor of Valleywag's publisher, Gawker Media, to run Fast Company's websites, which include Scoble's personal blog, Scobleizer.com. Everyone assumes Gawker Media publisher Nick Denton personally pulls the puppet strings at Valleywag, but since I was hired last year, I've reported to Robischon, a friend I've known since we were both at Time. Damn: This means Denton actually is personally pulling the puppet strings now, doesn't it? I'm in...
Image by thinkjose via FlickrThis evening whilst online frequenting my usual sites I was alerted to a video reaction by Gary Vaynerchuk to comments that Howard Stern had made. The tweet from Robert Scoble was hard not to be intrigued by as when I noticed his enthusiasm on Twitter I couldn't help but feel the need to watch the whole reaction.Howard Stern was asked which was more popular - social networking sites or pornography - clearly social networking is the Internets darling at the moment and Howard acknowledged that but also poked fun at it as more of a joke....
