The lat­est from the great mind of Pulitzer Prize-winning car­toon­ist Mike Luck­ovich.

Craig New­mark at Reboot Britain last July (cc photo by JD Lasica)

I’m excited about the boot­camp that I’ll be co-presenting this Wednes­day, June 2. For the first time, Per­sonal Democ­racy Forum will be host­ing a Mobi­lize Your Cause Boot­camp put on by myself and Katrin Ver­clas, founder of Mobi­ile­Ac­tive.

We’ll dive deeply into the strat­egy, tac­tics and tools avail­able to activists, change agents, busi­nesses — any­one who wants to move the nee­dle. We’ll be offer­ing ideas, show­ing case stud­ies and shar­ing resources so that par­tic­i­pants can take home prac­ti­cal tips and field-tested exam­ples of how to take your social or polit­i­cal cause to the next level. The boot­camp will con­sist of five hours of pre­sen­ta­tions and inter­ac­tive discussions.

We also have three mar­velous guest speak­ers who’ll take part in a con­ver­sa­tion with the work­shop atten­dees: Craig New­mark, founder of Craigslist, who knows some­thing about how to cre­ate an engaged com­mu­nity; Nicola Wells, an orga­nizer for the Fair Immi­gra­tion Reform Move­ment, and Rachel LaBruyere, deputy online direc­tor for the Reform Immi­gra­tion FOR Amer­ica campaign.

I’m hav­ing fun find­ing best-of-breed tools, like Google Earth and manyeyes. See the “word cloud visu­al­iza­tion” at the right? I just grabbed the text of the Con­tract From Amer­ica issued by the Tea Party last month and entered it into manyeyes. The Tea Party folks cer­tainly seem keyed in on “gov­ern­ment” and “lib­er­ties,” but I’m not see­ing ref­er­ences to terms like “com­mu­nity” or “prob­lem solv­ing.” It’s one of a wide range of Web 2.0 tools that make it sim­ple to repack­age mes­sages in inter­est­ing new ways. (Go ahead, try one your­self.)

The pro­gram will show you the 12 ele­ments of an effec­tive cam­paign; exam­ples of mobile action for social good; how to build an activist com­mu­nity, and new tech­nolo­gies for mobi­liz­ing your exist­ing and poten­tial supporters.

You can reg­is­ter here.

More details after the jump:

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Social media smarts for busi­ness from JD Lasica on Vimeo.

Mon­i­tor­ing, ana­lyt­ics and more for com­pa­nies of all sizes

“If you’re a brand, you sim­ply can­not afford to sit on the side­lines any longer. This is the real­ity: Peo­ple are going to talk about you regard­less of whether you’re in the room. So you might as well get with the pro­gram, start by lis­ten­ing, and start under­stand­ing what peo­ple are say­ing about you, your indus­try, your prod­ucts and your competitors.”

That spot-on sum­mary in a nut­shell comes cour­tesy of Maria Ogneva, direc­tor of social media for Biz360, the social media mon­i­tor­ing provider acquired by Atten­sity last month.

I’m fans of both Maria — you’re fol­low­ing her at @themaria on Twit­ter, yes? — who’s a stal­wart on the Bay Area tech scene, but also of Biz360, for a sim­ple rea­son: Small and mid-size busi­nesses need an afford­able solu­tion to help them keep abreast of con­ver­sa­tions on the social Web. At last word, Biz360 offers a nice pack­age that begins at $399/month, let­ting you track 10 top­ics by one user.

The ser­vice mon­i­tors every mean­ing­ful nook and cranny “where con­ver­sa­tions are hap­pen­ing,” Maria says. That includes blogs, microblogs like Twit­ter and identi.ca, forums and dis­cus­sion boards, the pub­lic por­tion of Face­book, online news sites, and video and photo sites.

Watch, embed or down­load the video on Vimeo

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Char­lene Li at SxSW in March (photo by Jen Con­salvo)

Char­lene Li’s lat­est is a wor­thy addi­tion to your busi­ness books shelf

The first thing to under­stand about Char­lene Li’s smart new book “Open Lead­er­ship” is that this is not a call to arms for top man­age­ment to deploy a loosey-goosey, feel-good strat­egy of giv­ing up com­plete con­trol of your man­age­ment struc­ture. Nor is it yet another busi­ness book about effec­tive cor­po­rate lead­er­ship techniques.

Instead, Open Lead­er­ship: How Social Tech­nol­ogy Can Trans­form the Way You Lead is about how to rein­vent com­pa­nies (as they must be) for the age of social media. It’s filled with smart, prac­ti­cal strate­gic advice — not only for com­pany CEOs but for mid­dle man­agers, social mar­keters and change-makers at all lev­els of an orga­ni­za­tion — about how to set out a vision, how to over­come inter­nal bar­ri­ers and how to nav­i­gate a brand through these tur­bu­lent waters.

Like “Groundswell” before it, “Open Lead­er­ship” (336 pages) brims with anec­dotes and real-word exam­ples of how com­pa­nies are mak­ing the tran­si­tion to the con­ver­sa­tional era. (The pub­li­ca­tion date is May 24; Char­lene gave me an advance copy of the book at SxSW.)

Char­lene lays out her premise early on: That busi­nesses require its exec­u­tives to adopt an “open lead­er­ship” style of man­age­ment in place of the command-and-control par­a­digm in place at most large com­pa­nies. “Face it — you’re not in con­trol and prob­a­bly never really were,” she writes. “You need to let go of the need to be in con­trol.” As she explains, you aren’t really giv­ing up con­trol — “you are shift­ing it to some­one else that you have con­fi­dence in.”

In other words, open­ness (and let­ting go) is just the first step in Open Lead­er­ship. But it needs to be matched by an equal com­mit­ment to pro­vide a struc­tured, inte­grated frame­work in which an open­ness strat­egy can succeed.

The book begins with the telling exam­ple of United Air­lines’ bone­headed reac­tion to a cus­tomers’ com­plaint about its bag­gage han­dlers dam­ag­ing his gui­tar. (I recently inter­viewed musi­cian Dave Car­roll about it and will post it here soon.) The result­ing neg­a­tive pub­lic­ity spawned by Dave’s United Breaks Gui­tars series on YouTube surely cost the air­line mil­lions and a dam­aged rep­u­ta­tion that has not yet been repaired.

While those of us who run social media agen­cies will no doubt be famil­iar with much of the ter­rain Char­lene cov­ers through­out — Dell’s IdeaS­t­orm, Best Buy, Star­bucks, Com­cast, Motrin Moms — every reader should come away with at least a hand­ful of sto­ries that pro­vide tan­gi­ble evi­dence of the trans­for­ma­tive effects of social media and open lead­er­ship across depart­ments — cus­tomer sup­port, prod­uct devel­op­ment, mar­ket­ing, PR, HR — and across sectors.

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Bypass gate­keep­ers. Hold con­tests. Become a super user.

What does it take to actu­ally be seen in the social media sphere? To raise your pro­file so that you’re seen as a lead­ing voice, a super user? And can that voice be trans­lated into an actual busi­ness, or a great new job? A cou­ple weeks ago I keynoted a con­fer­ence called the PINC­Show, for print design­ers, in San Fran­cisco. It was pro­duced by the Visual Media Alliance (VMA, for­merly known as PINC).The pre­sen­ta­tion offers just a sam­pling of dif­fer­ent voice-building tech­niques along with sto­ries of the peo­ple and orga­ni­za­tions that made them happen.

Got some tech­niques of your own? What’s been suc­cess­ful? What hasn’t? Let us know.

And here are some fol­low up materials:

• HOW TO: Cul­ti­vate Your Brand’s Super Users (Mashable)
• 14 Suc­cess­ful Tech­niques for Build­ing Your Indus­try Voice with Social Media (Post and PDF)
• End of the Resume, Rise of the Super User (14 min­utes Slide­cast presentation)
• 10 Cre­ative Con­tests Pow­ered by Social Media (Mashable)
• 20 Expert Tips on Run­ning a Con­test with Social Media (PDF)
• More Slide­cast presentations

Uproar over pri­vacy revi­sions comes as new plug-ins amount to a game-changer

Like oth­ers among Face­book’s 400 mil­lion mem­bers, I’m awed and daz­zled by the sheer power and grow­ing grandeur of the site. But I’m also per­plexed by the almost cav­a­lier way in which it has approached the topic of pri­vacy, as if pri­vacy were a rem­nant of a bygone era. (Is this partly the byprod­uct of hav­ing a 26-year-old CEO — who grew up in an era where shar­ing trumps pri­vacy — at the helm? I sus­pect so.)

By the way, happy birth­day to Mark Zucker­berg. The Dobbs Ferry, NY, native turned 26 today — says so on his Face­book page.

(We hope you’ll take this poll — it’s the first one we’ve offered here at Socialmedia.biz, using the Poll­Daddy plug-in. The WP-Polls plug-in and Soda­Head Polls plug-in did not work.)

This morn­ing, at the Social Media Break­fast East Bay (I’m the chapter’s co-founder), I said I was cap­ti­vated by the almost Shake­spearean tragedy that seems to be unfold­ing — would Face­book implode from its hubris and utter lack of awareness?

The mam­moth global net­work has been cruis­ing for a bruis­ing with its whole­sale and repeated changes not only to its pri­vacy pol­icy but in the way it has changed its infra­struc­ture to share mem­bers’ infor­ma­tion across the Web. Yes­ter­day I read attacks on Face­book by Jason Cala­ca­nis (cit­ing his ear­lier video warn­ing), Jeff Jarvis (Face­book “should use open-source stan­dards” for iden­tity and pri­vacy) and Robert Scoble (“The com­mon feel­ing [is] that we can’t trust Face­book any­more”). All this on top of last week’s FTC com­plaint against Face­book filed by 15 pri­vacy and con­sumer pro­tec­tion organizations.

Ear­lier today the Wall Street Jour­nal ran the story, Look­ing to Delete Your Face­book Account? You’re Not Alone, and reported, “How do I delete my Face­book account?” was a trend­ing Google search last night.

And now, to join the fray, Moveon.org today launched a peti­tion drive with the title, Did you see what Face­book is try­ing to do?, send­ing that mis­sive (with the chart at top) to its 5 mil­lion mem­bers. Moveon invited its mem­bers to tweet this:

Did you see what Face­book is try­ing to do? Check out this chart — http://bit.ly/9CspPj — #FacebookFail

And a huge num­ber of peo­ple are doing just that.

This wouldn’t be hap­pen­ing (a) if Face­book were not such a pow­er­house, and (b) if they had a greater sense of the public’s appre­hen­sion about how they’re shar­ing its mem­bers’ data. Con­sider Facebook’s stats:

Face­book by the numbers

• On March 13, Face­book over­took Google as the most traf­ficked web­site in the United States.

• Face­book has more than 400 mil­lion mem­bers — big­ger than all but two nations on earth.

• 25 per­cent of all US Inter­net page views are on Facebook.

• 54 per­cent of all US Inter­net users are on Facebook.

• Over 200 mil­lion peo­ple log in every day. The aver­age time spent on the site: 55 minutes.

• Mem­bers upload 10 mil­lion videos and about a bil­lion pho­tos to Face­book every month.

• 50 per­cent of mobile Inter­net traf­fic in the UK is on Facebook.

• More than 20 mil­lion peo­ple join Face­book Pages every day. Those pages have been “fanned” (and now “liked”) 5.3 bil­lion times.

• Peo­ple have pressed the Like but­ton more than 1 bil­lion times in 2 months — and the rate is growing.

• Mem­bers’ aver­age age: 34. The aver­age user has 130 friends. 70 per­cent of Face­book mem­bers are out­side the US.

Aston­ish­ing.

Social plug-ins that are chang­ing the Web

Not every­one is upset by Facebook’s newly aggres­sive approach. Mar­keters, not sur­pris­ingly, are enthralled by the pub­lic release of huge amounts of data — most of which took place a few weeks back when Face­book changed its default set­tings for much of the con­tent on the site.

At a webi­nar last night called “Tap­ping Into the Face­book Gold­mine,” I lis­tened in as a lead­ing social mar­keter waxed ecsta­tic about the “unbe­liev­ably pow­er­ful” of the new phe­nom­e­non of “social proof­ing” ush­ered in by Face­book — the idea that when your friends “like,” or endorse, a per­son, idea, prod­uct or ser­vice, you are sig­nif­i­cantly more likely to inter­nal­ize that belief over a mes­sage that comes from an unknown third party. “This is a marketer’s dream!” he gushed.

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New pro­grams are believed to be a first for health insur­ance industry

As those of us who’ve worked with health care com­pa­nies know, the health care field has been slow to get off the dime and embrace the gamut of changes that social media offers, from inter­ac­tions with cus­tomers to pro­vid­ing a real-time feed­back loop to develop new prod­ucts or ser­vices. But that’s start­ing to change.

Today I had a long con­ver­sa­tion with Jason Yang, brand man­ager in the Cor­po­rate Brand Mar­ket­ing depart­ment of Blue Shield of Cal­i­for­nia, who filled me in on a host of social media ini­tia­tives that the not-for-profit health plan has recently launched, chief among them:

• A cus­tomer rat­ings and reviews pro­gram, launched Jan. 13 (announce­ment here), that enables Blue Shield CA mem­bers to pro­vide feed­back on their Blue Shield health plans. Blue Shield CA is using a plat­form built by Bazaar­voice, an Austin, Texas-based com­pany that helps busi­nesses ana­lyze online cus­tomer con­ver­sa­tions in a style sim­i­lar to Yelp and Ama­zon. It’s believed to be the first health plan in the nation to invite online feed­back from mem­bers to improve the health care experience.

Mem­bers can sim­ply log into their account to rate their Blue Shield health plan and read other mem­bers’ reviews. Mem­bers can rate dif­fer­ent plans using a five-star scale to mea­sure over­all sat­is­fac­tion, cus­tomer ser­vice, value, doc­tor access, pre­scrip­tion drug cov­er­age and whether or not the plan is easy to use and under­stand. Mem­bers can also pro­vide com­ments and advice, though no infor­ma­tion that iden­ti­fies an indi­vid­ual is per­mit­ted, Yang says, and mem­bers aren’t per­mit­ted to rate physi­cians or providers. The pilot has gen­er­ated pos­i­tive feed­back from mem­bers, so Blue Shield CA is expand­ing the pro­gram to all its 3 mil­lion members.

• A ques­tion and answer inter­ac­tive forum, launched April 29 (announce­ment here), that allows mem­bers to ask ques­tions and receive answers from other mem­bers or from par­tic­i­pat­ing physi­cians. Mem­bers can dis­cuss top­ics such as aller­gies, den­tal care, diet/food/nutrition, women’s health, first aid and more. You have to be a mem­ber to post in the Ask & Answer forum, but it’s vis­i­ble to the pub­lic and it’s opti­mized for search engine index­ing, Yang says.

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While suc­cess­ful, casual games are not known for being as social as true ‘social games’

Before there were lucra­tive games on Face­book, casual games have done very well exist­ing on their own sites and on game por­tals. The casual game mar­ket paved the way for the social gam­ing market.

Prob­lem is, beyond a leader board and some chat there’s never been any­thing majorly “social” about casual games. The “social­ness” of casual games was the topic du jour for the panel “Casual Games Go Social” at the Social Gam­ing Sum­mit in San Fran­cisco. Speak­ing on the panel were:

• James Au, Ohai (moderator)
• Den­nis Ryan, Pop­Cap Games
• Mitali Pat­tnaik, Play­first
• Jeff Revoy, Real Net­works
• Richard Fields, Mind­jolt Games

Here are some of the issues came up in the discussion:

• The casual game space has been social for a long time. But the def­i­n­i­tion of social gam­ing has expanded beyond just chat­ting with a player as you’re play­ing a game.

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Is viral the only eco­nom­i­cally fea­si­ble way to dis­trib­ute a social game?

No, answered a panel of four game devel­op­ers and pub­lish­ers at the Social Gam­ing Sum­mit in San Fran­cisco which should have been called the “Face­book” gam­ing sum­mit. Every time some­one men­tioned “social” gam­ing, some­one asked the ques­tion, “Are you being social any­where else?” The answer was always no.

That’s because by using viral hooks, the cost to acquire a player through Face­book is essen­tially cost­less. You can still pay to acquire play­ers through Face­book adver­tis­ing. None of the pan­elists dur­ing the ses­sion “Lessons from Lead­ers — Dis­tri­b­u­tion” admit­ted they did. Although they did say they were will­ing to try as many real­ized that the viral “hon­ey­moon” of col­lect­ing play­ers goes very quickly soon after launch. Once it starts to set­tle down you have to look at other options, like tra­di­tional mar­ket­ing, to gather more players.

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Cen­tral Desk­top at Web 2.0 Expo from JD Lasica on Vimeo.

One of the big tech con­fer­ences of the year, SF-based Web 2.0 Expo, is now in the books. I was able to attend only two of the four days, but here are some takeaways:

I had a chance to check out Cen­tral Desk­top on the tradeshow floor. Above is my 3 1/2 minute inter­view with sales rep Mandy Gon­za­les. Cen­tral Desk­top is an online col­lab­o­ra­tion plat­form that allows you to stream­line your doc­u­ment and project work­flow and col­lab­o­rate with other team members.

Like Google Docs, it’s an entire web-based cloud solu­tion, only more robust. At Web 2.0 Expo they unveiled their Microsoft Office plug-in, which enables real-time co-authoring capa­bil­i­ties. Cen­tral Desk­top works with lots of dif­fer­ent ver­ti­cals, from large com­pa­nies to uni­ver­si­ties and non­prof­its. Their sweet spot seems to be small to medium-size busi­nesses where 50 to 250 users might col­lab­o­rate on a project.

Mandy also pointed out that a lot of con­sul­tants will use Cen­tral Desk­top as an exter­nal por­tal to share doc­u­ments with their clients and to take advan­tage of its trans­par­ent com­mu­ni­ca­tion and project man­age­ment fea­tures. Clients include the Bill and Melinda Gates Foun­da­tion, CBS, Net­flix, Amtrak, Day’s Inn, Har­vard, Stan­ford Uni­ver­sity, the Humane Soci­ety and others.

Watch, embed or down­load the video on Vimeo
Watch or embed the video on YouTube

Other snip­pets from Web 2.0 Expo

• All about .co: Want to get in on the next Inter­net land grab? “The .co era is arriv­ing July 20,” accord­ing to Cre­ate Your Oppor­tu­nity, which is run­ning a $50,000 con­test that ends June 14. I think what this means is that Colom­bia is mak­ing its nation suf­fix avail­able to reg­is­trants — for a price — just as Tonga did with .to, Grenada with .gd and British Indian Ocean Ter­ri­tory with .io. (See the Wikipedia entry.)

If you have a domain name you’d like to pre-register, you can do it right now. But be warned: If any­one else pre-registers the same domain, it goes to a bid­ding war. The fact that you were first doesn’t mat­ter. Which is why I’m not both­er­ing to pre-register socialmedia.co — I won’t pay the tens of thou­sands of dol­lars it will cost to win it.

Will .co cause con­fu­sion to users who asso­ciate .co with “coun­try” — like guardian.co/uk/ — or “Colom­bia” instead of “com­pany”? You bet!

• SEO work­shop: Great work­shop on SEO, espe­cially by Rand Fishkin (CEO and founder, SEO­moz) and Stephan Spencer (Covario). You can see both slide shows on the SEO­moz blog — I may do a sep­a­rate writeup on this if I have time.

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