The irony of this post is,  I was on the Mashable site following some others that had followed me on the Mashable Social Network when I noticed that Mashable itself was advertising for Mashable readers to “Join the conversation by adding Mashable’s Pete Cashmore to your Circles on Google+ .”  The upper portion of the site has a drop down bar telling you to add Mr. Cashmore (see image below).

Google Plus is the new darling of social networks and it is the latest in shiny things that we social media people love to jump in and declare ourselves as early adopters.  We get to try it out and pick it apart piece by piece and provide feedback and add our 2 cents.  I’m somewhat behind that game as this is my first post about the new network.  I must admit that I have been on Google Plus now since I could get an invite when it first launched and tweeting every article I can pass along that I have read on the subject.

Getting back to the issue at hand, Google Plus originally opened up the invitations to its “field test” of their network to the user that had an invite.  This made the invites like the gold standard for a while and everyone in social media was calling all their friends to get in on the gold rush of invites.  Most of my colleagues were in and salivating on the new toy, and I heard tell of brands that were also jumping in and being a part of the fun, the point there is to be an early adopter and get a jump on the competition as we are all seeing how the past rolled out with Twitter and Facebook.  This ended for businesses however as Google pulled the plug on the ability for businesses or brands to sign up on Google Plus. Google went as far as to  suspend those brands they could hunt down and find on the network.

Now enter the folks at Mashable.  The thrive on the metric of eyeballs.  They are a media property that tries to gain as many eyeballs as possible for the businesses that pay them for distribution of their posts.  They are known for reaching millions of readers and have mastered every trick in the book for having those million readers share and re-distribute their content.  Enter the next distribution system in Google Plus and its already exponentially  more than 10 million users and you have yet more metrics and eyeballs to add to your existing pitch of being the most read media property in the world of social.  Last time I checked, Mashable was a business and therefore according to Google, unable to have a presence on its new network.

There are always those that are jail breaking iPhones and those that are gaming the system to get more followers and every other loophole that can be found to get the upper hand.  This apparently is not much different with Mashable and their having a presence on Google Plus.  The route they took?  We will take our leader, Pete Cashmore, and his Google account and use it as a distribution channel.  He is a person and not a business and therefore his account can be used for us here at Mashable.  Is this a gaming of the system?  Are other businesses and brands using their “ambassadors” (Thanks Chris Heuer for that Tweet) to get a jump on the competition and getting an early look as a business on the network?

I have an admission myself, I have not used my Google account for much other than Google Buzz or Wave or whatever else I have needed to use the account for and I suppose my company is getting a leg up on other companies that don’t yet have a Google Plus account, but I am actually at the helm of my account.  I am not sure Pete is the one that is sharing each of the Mashable…err Cashmore shared posts on Google Plus.  It did strike me as funny that they would use advertising space to increase the eyeballs of the Pete Cashmore account.  Are they gaming the system?  Probably.  Do I blame them?  Not really, but I do blame Google for not having a plan on how to better handle this and how they might unfold Google Plus for Business.

UPDATE:  Upon further view it appears that Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land already discussed this in his post and updates.  It appears that Mashable is now just blatantly advertising the fact to get more followers on the account for Pete Cashmore.

There are many social sharing sites and if you wanted to count them it may take you all day to finally include each site in your count. Some of them are well known like Facebook, Twitter, Digg, StumbleUpon, and of course the latest darling of the dance is Google Plus. Social sharing has been evolving as a way to increase page views and cast a wider net to see if you couldn’t create a larger community and get more readers. We use social sharing at Bloggers For Hire as a way to create this very thing. Social sharing has become big business for many and a way to create some dividends in traffic and numbers. The question I have for you is whether your social sharing is properly branded? Let me explain to you, first what I mean about branding, and then I will give you an example.

Branding to me is making sure that at every turn, your community is reminded of your existence, be it your name, a logo, or something that can identify you as the expert in your field, the product that all must have, or a service people should love. We all know when I say Nike, Pepsi, Ford, that all of these bring an image to mind or a thought or something that stirs our brains to think of the company. That is branding. In the sense of the online world, we must always look for ways to have that in place, be it a link, a banner ad, a mention, or in the case of this post, a social share. Making sure your social sharing is also branded where possible is one more way to make sure you are always putting your brand out front.

The example I have seen and been privy to over the last couple of days has been sharing on Twitter. I read a large number of posts daily. I am constantly consuming information and then sharing that information with my community. It helps the person that has produced the content for me to share and it also informs my clients and others with whom I provide the links. It is a win-win for everyone. I also note that when I share information, via the in post applications people use, they have not branded their default settings.

One such instance this morning was sharing a news item from Media Buyer Planner. No I am not picking on them but it was what spurred this post. The have the sharing buttons as everyone on their news item that can be shared via various networks. I hit the Twitter share button and up popped the Twitter window for me to share with my followers, and I saw the title of the post, and the link and then i saw “via @AddThis”. This is the name of the application and not the name of the Twitter handle of the company where I found the article. They have missed an opportunity to brand @MediaBuyer. Many companies don;t put anything in the spot they can for branding. Make sure you are taking every opportunity to brand your company.

As I sat and watched Mike Arrington of TechCrunch interview Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, I heard them discuss the future of privacy.  It seems that Zuckerberg is evangelizing the death of the doctrine of privacy.  With Facebook being the largest social network out there, that is a pretty scary notion given the fact that we all are signing up and turning our social life over to the Internet.  I wonder what privacy will look like in the next few years?  In fact it seems to be changing at a rapid pace and evolving with every new application.

I recently helped present a series at my son’s school on “Cyber Safety”.  In addition, local law enforcement also presented on the dangers of the world of social networks and what our children are doing online and the predators that are out there and their methods.  It was very sobering to figure that there are that many people out there trying to harm our kids via the Internet and social networks.  An yet, we are all flocking to these networks as our new playgrounds and the place to be and all from the safety, or so it may seem, of our own homes.

I am particularly interested in geo-location or geo-tracking applications that are becoming more and more popular.  Twitter themselves have opened up location based Tweets so that people can determine your whereabouts as you click away at 140 characters.  These software applications are so new that they have yet to become mainstream uses for evil but it can only be a matter of time until we begin to hear of predators using them and suddenly you will hear of their evil deeds on the prime time news.

Is privacy going away?  Is our notion that we are protected by privacy laws and common sense enough?  Have you read the terms of service of each and every software application that you are using today?  Perhaps you have agreed to give up your rights to a private life by participating in that latest cool place to hang out on the Internet?  In 2009 I deemed it “The Year of Listening” as that was the new marketing mantra.  If that were the case, we should probably listen to what I am now calling “The Year of Privacy.”  It could turn out that our privacy will then turn into the “Year of Living Dangerously.”

photo via Alan Cleaver_2000

I have been writing this post in my head for a while after I was catching up on the drama that unfolded with Jason Calacanis and the people at Comscore.  If you have no idea what I might be talking about, you can read all about that flap on Jason’s Posterous blog, and certainly the echochamber that ensued following as compiled by Techmeme and listed out by Jason.

In the tech world online and in social media circles we have been trained that we can do a whole lot of things for very little, and in most cases, everything we want to do has a “Free” application associated with it.  Things like YouTube, Blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, and a plethora of other things we “sell” to clients and companies that come in our toolkit we obtained for free or for very little investment.  Our investment at this point has been the time it takes to understand and implement the use of such tools.  This has been a very lucrative part of being a social media consultant and I suppose why you cannot swing a dead cat in a room and not hit one or two of the “experts” in our business.  Free is always easy to sell.

I have talked before about “The Problems of Free“, and I also talked about how companies are using free as a business model. I want to turn back to the discussion or debate related to Comscore.  We have begun to expect companies to provide services online for free or for very little cost, and as I see it that proposes a problem somewhere in the chain.  Comscore cannot compete with Free.  Someone has to pay for free.

If you are providing a service online, or if you have the latest cool application and you offer it to your users for free, how do you make money?  I often ask many of the startups that come to me what their revenue model is and how they plan to make money.  This is usually followed of course with “How are you going to pay me?”  I am not yet providing “Free” for my own services.  Many companies have long drawn out plans with “ad revenue”, affiliate marketing”, or worse yet I get a blank stare of “we have not yet come to that part of the business plan.”

In the end, you have to pay for the service you provide, be it your time, servers, salaries, and long lunches at In-N-Out.  Comscore is having the problem explaining that they have to pay their bills.  We have to give our stockholders a piece of the pie and we have to pay our salaries and everything associated with the costs of giving you what you want.  They are not able to barter it all and they certainly cannot ask their employees to do it out of the goodness of their hearts, so they have to charge.  I am not sure whether Jason or anyone else has really come up with an alternative to charging for Comscore’s services, other than perhaps the aforementioned ad revenue or the like.  Someone has to pay for the free in the chain of the exchange.  The problem that I see is that Comscore is asking the customer to pay when others are offering it for “free”, but even in that instance, someone is paying for the free.

Photo via Photos8.com

I have been thinking about the previous year and the things that I did and accomplished and the clients I worked for and the partners I collaborated with in business.  Overall, it was an exciting year for me and a year that so some growth and a year for learning.  I had the opportunity to make many new friends and some of those friends came from Hawaii.  I spent a wonderful week in May and June in Hawaii on the So Much More Hawaii Tour, and then organized a conference called the Social Media Business Summit in conjunction with Blog World & New Media Expo where I spent most of the year as their Social Media Director and Conference Director.  One By One Media was a title sponsor of the Social Media Business Summit in Hawaii and we enjoyed the time there.  I am wanting to go back now, not working, and not blogging or being a part of something work related besides enjoying the beach, the beautiful blue water and the waves crashing on the sand.

I was great meeting new friends while in Hawaii, like, Chris, Christine, Bruce Fisher and his wife, Neenz and Noe and Melanie, Marijane, Mark, and Aric, and Leah and Sheila and well you get the idea, it was a year of gaining friends and experiencing life.  Most of all it was becoming a part of a new community.

jim turner on ‘[re]think:hawaii’ from aric s. queen on Vimeo.

I will be recapping much of 2009 and some of what we accomplished as a company and will cover some of the initiatives for clients and how we grew in the world of social media consulting and social media management.

We will be soon relaunching Social Mediasphere Radio, with some new friends, which will also be a part of SMTV.  We are also going to have a new site here soon and we will refocus our efforts to be a trailblazer in the world of social media.  I have some events I will be speaking at soon and I will do a list of those so we may perhaps be able to meet and I will get a chance to make friends in another community.

I just came from a meeting where I was subject to a few “WOW” moments.  There are a few times in my business where I get to see some cool technologies that revolutionize the way we communicate, or listen, or perhaps the way we drink our coffee.  All of it is related to entrepreneurs that are taking their ideas and making them work.

The same should be for businesses that are already established.  We have been told the quote “innovate or die.”  We heard it as recent as the opening keynote at CES.  That is a mantra that all businesses should be paying attention to in the future.  Innovation is key to keeping your product or service fresh.  People will want to continue to buy if it changes and is better or changes their lives for the better.  I think Ford is doing that with its own innovations in vehicles.

I hope that in the coming weeks, we will be creating some “wow” moments for our clients and business partners.  We can use the “Wow” we are seeing as innovations and implement them into our daily routines to help clients and others change and make their own “wow” or awesome sauce or whatever buzz phrase you choose.

Stay tuned for some magical moments here at One By One Media, as we start on a mission of creating “Wow” and innovating our services.  I challenge all of you to have your own mission of creating “Wow!!”

photo via puliarf

I woke up Thursday morning and had Haiti on my mind.  As I fed the kids their breakfast and started getting ready for my day, I saw on the news picture of children suffering in the damage of the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake.  My heart shattered and I wanted to do something.  I felt helpless watching as families were destroyed, mothers and fathers were dead and children and others had no homes, no food and no water.  I had to do something.  I couldn’t stand by and watch more of the devastation without a way I felt I could lend a hand.

I had no way to provide monetary support.  I am not Bill Gates and my meager bank account was not enough.  I needed a better way to help.  What did I have that would be valuable enough to help those victims I was seeing?  I could think of only one thing, the help of many.  I know social media is powerful and I have seen how it works with other causes.  Not to discount the other causes and their value, but this is going to be seen as the single most devastating tragedy of our time.  I need to make it count and I needed to do it soon.

I reached out to a few friends I knew would help me and people I knew could.  I talked first to Chris Noble of Cause Media Group and his latest project at WhatGives.com.  After I gave him my 3 minute pitch, he said, “I’m in Jim.”  I know I can count on him to give his all and it was no surprise at his reaction but nonetheless appreciated.

I next reached my new friend Chris Murch of WS Radio. I met Chris at BlogWorld & New media Expo and we launched Blog World Expo Radio in Vegas at that event.   I was not sure whether Chris would be comfortable with my idea, but he quickly laid that issue to rest when he said “We can make that happen.”

The result? Haitian Assistance Relief Telethon

I wanted to make an impact that meant more than my $5 donation or even a $500 amount.  I wanted to go big and prove what I already know, you get a community together behind something and good will come of it.

You can watch along with Ustream as well as listening to it live.  We are using the hashtag of #HART in all of our Tweets and you can follow along there as well.

I would love to ask you for your support as we try to make an impact of the lives of those suffering in Haiti. If I can only help one child it will be enough, but showing a impoverished nation of children that we care about their pain and hurt and we want to comfort them might make a difference.

I was going through my feeds last night and funneling all of my reads as I tend to do in the evenings and sharing some of what I found to be interesting to my community through Twitter.  This is becoming more and more of a habit with me as I tend to pour through a lot of data.  What I think might be of interest to my followers I share.  I am generous that way.  Actually it is part of my overall plan to let the blogosphere and other platforms know that I exist—I network therefore I am.  I see a t-shirt in the makings here.

As I approached the 11:00 pm hour I noticed that my Tweetdeck was acting up.  I am the type that wants everything just to work.  I don’t care about the Internet service and other stuff I want it to work when I hit the power button.  The same thing goes for Twitter.  When I hit send and let everyone what is happening, I want it to work.  When it doesn’t I just chalk it up to another fail whale.  That is until today when I found out that Twitter was hacked.  Not  hacked by a 13 year old kid in his parents basement but by the “Iranian Cyber Army”.  Excuse me?  I was just watching a Leo Laporte show about Cyber Warefare and making fun of it actually on Twitter, but now I read that headline on TechCrunch.  You can see the rest of the coverage on Techmeme.

Twitter is starting to lose my trust.  Is this what we are going to expect out of Twitter’s future?  There has been numerous Phishing problems with Twitter and there are many other incidents just this year of them getting hacked and Google documents being obtained.  I am losing trust for Twitter quickly.  I hope they will learn from the recent attack and work on making adjustments.  Do you trust Twitter?  I’m not sure I would give them my user and password for…. Ooops!  [Runs to change password again]  I am clearly not trusting the Twitter world at present.

I think I have seen it all or in this case heard it all and then they come out with a Twitter song! This is awesome!

I am behind the times on this one but I wanted to get it on my site to refer to it later.  This is a great video and worth the watch.

Some of the information in this video is already obsolete.  Social Media is moving at a rate that none of us can keep up with, and I for one sometimes must take a step back to look at the big picture to keep up with the rate of growth.

I am trying to wrap my had around the idea that Google may possibly be the next owner of our beloved golden child in the world of social media, Twitter.  Are we ready yet to turn the keys to the Twitter kingdom over to the folks at Google?  I have been a serious watchdog lately it seems talking about Twitter ethics and the gaming of Twitter and the eroding of all things pure about the application.

How about if we turn it over to Google and make it a part of that empire?  I know Techcrunch talked about it in terms of Twitter search and that it is becoming the real time search engine.  It makes sense actually and since they turned down the money offered by Facebook due to valuation issues and Facebook’s stock, I think it could be said Google has the bank account for it.  Google and the leadership at Twitter have had dealings in the past with Blogger so in fact there may already be that relationship.  We will see how this unfolds.  I am hoping to get some further analysis from some of the people in our industry to help me grasp the idea but for now I will just try to fathom a life of Twoogle.

Update:  You can read more about it at Techrunch and the rest of the folks on Techememe.

I have recently launched Social Mediasphere TV and added it to my list of blogs including this one and including Bloggers For Hire in the long list of blogs I contribute to and provide.  Social Mediasphere TV is an extension of the radio I was doing on Blog Talk Radio.  You can still go over and take a look at my archives at that location and I may still continue my on location live radio using that service as it seems to be a very simple solution to the technical issues related to live radio.

I will be doing my show continuing here forward on Tuesdays at 5:00 p.m. PST and 8:00 p.m. EST.  We will be discussing all things Social Media and as always we will have special guests, commentary and even you as listener can call in and ask questions make your own comments or just be a guest yourself.  I am still working through all of the issues with using the applications of the trade, but I have been given some good advice and help from many friends that are cheering me on to make this new project a success.  See you all on Tuesdays!

For some time since the iPhone first made it’s appearance, I have been thinking about how I can keep up with the Jones’ and get into the smart phone arena. Those who also know me are the first to tell you I am not the guy that should be preaching the idea of technology or gadgets. I am the one that only uses the tool, not knowing how, why, or the what of the details. The phone rings I answer it, the email comes I type out a response. I don’t know, or for that matter don’t really care, about memory, megapixels or what flux capaciter comes with the “back end of the unit”. I have been in the market for a new desktop recently as well as a mobile phone and they sometimes offer too much information on what comes with the computer. I can get easily overwhelmed. I don’t think that in this instance I am too different than most of the real life users out there and that is why I looked to them for help.

I first started my initial testing of the waters by asking my real life friends how they came about purchasing their phone. Many of them had the same response. “I was given the phone by my employer”, or “I walked into the store and that one looked cool”, to the ever popular, “Scoble told me to buy this one.” Strangely enough that latter response was actually more of the popular one. I am of course picking on Robert, but this latter one is where I also paid a little more attention. The experts out there are the ones that are going to be using the best of the best. I turned my research to that area. I read blogs of the experts.

I read Engadget, Gizmodo, MobileCrunch and every other gadget blog available that had information about smart phones. I searched out their reviews and other information they had on the models available. There is a plethora of blogs you can read with information on everything and anything mobile. These are people not associated with the company or product and they truly give an independent review in my mind. Some are more specific product leaning, but for the most part they have some unbiased opinion.

I have to vent my frustration a little here because of the lack of choice we are offered as consumers based on our current service provider and the phones that are available to each service provider. I have been with Verizon since before they were Verizon and they were Airtouch Cellular and before that USWest Cellular. You might say we have established a relationship. My choices were very limited in the smart phone area so I went with a few choices, and it came down to only two that were available in my world, The Blackberry Storm and the Samsung Omnia. Yeah, I know overwhelmed with info about the phone and underwhelmed by my choices. Here endeth the frustration rant.

I then turned to another form of social media for my research. I asked my friends. Not those that I go to church with, or have dinner with, but the ones online. I reached out to my Twitter followers. When I asked more than 5000 people what they thought, I was given plenty of opinions. I loved it. Some had no opinion but a friend of a friend had good experience with this phone or that phone, or they had a bad experience but fixed it with this or that carrier. This was great “man on the street” information. I was well armed to make a decision at this point. The problem, as always, I was afraid to make a purchase of this magnitude. I couldn’t pull the trigger. I was afraid I would spend too much money and then later be angry for making the wrong choice. In spite of being completely advised, I still needed a shove. The shove came at an opportune time.

I was reading through my RSS feeds that I had subscribed to as a result of my research and found that one of the blogs had a breaking story. Verizon was offering the Blackberry Storm at a very good savings, and sure enough a check of there site showed not only a savings on that phone but on my other choice the Samsung Omnia. This was great news to me. I was armed with the information I need to make an informed decision, had seen real life experiences, saw unbiased reviews, and knew as much about the phone as anyone. I headed to the Verizon store.

A few more follow up questions later, having actually informed the sales person of some of the information I learned, and questions specific to the usage and data charges etc., and I decided on my choice of phones. I went with the Blackberry Storm. i went with the Storm because of the fact that Blackberry is well respected in the mobile community and Samsung is still lacking somewhat in my opinion. Samsung was a little too hooked into Microsoft’s software for my taste and that was another deciding factor.

I had reached out to my community to help me make a purchase. I spoke to the people I knew that had the phones. I researched blogs and the things l that the experts were touting, and I saw what my peers were also recommending. I then reached out to my community and asked for help which was more than ample to help me make a choice. Then as luck would have it because I had signed up and subscribed to some feeds I was tipped off to a sale that benefitted me in my purchase. I had used the tools available to help me. I hope that if you are reading this and you are a company you can take a look at how people are using the social media tools available to them to make informed decisions about your products and services. By looking at how I use the Internet to go from point A to point B you too might know how to get your information to the people that are searching for your products.

My next postings will be on the after purchase and use. How did the information I gathered help? How am I using social media to help me use my phone? Yes, I am now becoming addicted to my Crackberry and I can’t wait to help the next person with their decision to purchase a phone. I have become a social media evangelist of the company and they had to do nothing other than get into the social media world. Now about that choice of desktop. Is it going to be the iMac or the HP model. All these decisions are going to be helped by my use of the social media world.

UPDATE 2/10/09: Apparently, I am a real early adopter for the Storm deal that is all over the internet. Should I be worried now about what is in store for the Storm? Is another Blackerry Storm brewing?

I was sitting and watching the festivities today as President Barack Obama, our 44th President is sworn into office, and couldn’t help but notice that they were discussing the fact that the White House website was changed over to the new administration at 12:03 p.m. EST. They indicated that the menu for the luncheon was the number 1 visited page on the site, then I noticed that TechCrunch reported on the website and discussed the White House blog. We have made it to the White House!

As I prepare to head off to Chicago on Thursday to attend another event for Blog World Expo, I wonder about the changes (the key word that got him elected) that will take place and how social media will begin to seep into the mainstream more and more as our new President implements more in the digital world. I for one am looking forward to it. i will be talking about the new changes and the new President Obama on my radio show tonight so come and join me at 5:00 PST and 8:00 EST.

[Photo via TechCrunch]

Marketing has taken a new look as we enter the digital age. Companies are now looking for a new way to reach customers. They are reaching them in different ways because their customers are finding them in different ways. With everyone, even my 84 year old grandmother, searching the global market through Google, and getting recommendations from every friend in Facebook, Myspace, YouTube and in circles like Twitter with their options to buy or find services and products, businesses are clamoring for the attention of people. The new look and feel of marketing is participation, or what I have been calling participatory marketing.

Social media is really nothing more that participation in a social structure using different tools. All of the vehicles I mention above are merely a community of people. Like a block party where everyone gathers. An online neighborhood. They talk about their lives, they talk about their kids, they stand around the water cooler now known as their computer screen. They talk about you, your business, your product and your service.

Companies are trying to work their way into these communities now and they want to be the most noticed person at the party. The problem is that many of them are doing it wrong. They participate in the community but don’t provide anything of value. I’m not talking about walking into the party and handing out coupons for $5 off your $100 ice cream scoop. That is the way most are doing it. I’m talking about actually participating. Getting into a community of us Daddies and talking about how your 6 month old kept you all up all night is the conversation starter and ice breaker that works to get an in, but again companies open with that and then turn around and say, “Now download my sidebar widget thingy.” Again, what does that have to do with a sleepless night unless my 6 month old is put to sleep by your product? It takes a while for you to be in the group before I want to be approached for life changing conversations, like here let me help you buy a new home. Perhaps I should be calling this Kumbaya Marketing.

It takes a while for you to be in my group long enough to give me marital advice or if you want me to buy your stuff. Some of the companies have already been in my group a while. Some of the big brands and major companies are a part of our everyday lives and they can leverage that into instant credibility. If you come to my community for instance and say hey look at this cool Mac Book Pro, chances are we will all look and perhaps buy. If you want me to send you $100 to have me try your latest blue pill that will change my life, I will probably have to get to know you first.

[photo via mikebaird]*

*Not really relevant to participatory marketing but that is the point. Be relevant. That is one cute critter though. Since we are talking about Otters, check out Otter Box. See what I mean? No they are not a client, but they are a cool company that is using social media. They have been in my community a little. Now if I could get them to send me a new Blackberry case with the actual Blackberry in it.