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:

Continue reading »

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

Continue reading »

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.

Continue reading »

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.

[polldaddy poll=3204976]

(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.

Continue reading »

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.

Continue reading »

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.

Continue reading »

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.

Continue reading »