Now I have always been a firm believer of doing what makes you happy, after all, you only get a few rare opportunities in life to determine what you do for a living. I actually studied architecture in college but as I got through my later years of school I knew that the profession of architecture wasn’t for me. Of course, I did want to design; the goal of every architect is to be able to design. Through my years of school, I had always been designing web sites, as a kind of hobby. It always gave me a great sense of accomplishment to see my design whenever I wanted and from any computer. Since it was something I really enjoyed, I naturally wanted to be a part of the profession after college. It wasn’t something I had planned of course, otherwise I would have chosen it as my major. Yet something about web design and web content made me want to sit in front of a computer all day and since most professional jobs require you to do that, at least I would be happy.

Another thing you should probably know about me is that I have never been the “office type”. The 9-5 world takes some getting used to, and I would rather not adjust to it. Instead I combined all my professional loves into a company, co-owned by one of my classmates. The company is ArchTeque, and we do web design, 3d modeling, digital portfolios, and flash presentations. ArchTeque is our baby, born with zero start-up money and just a couple desktop computers. So how will we compete with these huge web design companies that have been around since the Internet itself? Well, it’s the Internet, and with the Internet comes endless opportunities. The Internet is a great leveler for all companies, but there is just one key issue that will make a new company like this a success. Hard-work! Sure it’s a bit over-stated, but it really is the answer to any business. Well, that and making correct marketing decisions and a little bit of luck can’t hurt. Another quick piece of advice, if you are thinking about starting your own company out of college. Remember that the work will come slowly at first, and don’t get discouraged. It is your drive to succeed that will ultimately lead to success.

So, for two guys with master’s degrees in architecture, looking to start their careers and attack this world head on, ArchTeque is our solution. It may not bring in massive revenue for a while, but with enough grit and determination, we can make in this business. Just a piece of advice for all you recent graduates or soon to be recent graduates, do what makes you happy. Because this is the time in your life when you will have the opportunity to chase a dream. Hopefully you are faster than it!

Thriller in Secondlife (Collection), this is another video from my collection of early videos filmed by residents of secondlife.

Web 2.0 and social software in general, a topic that is being referring to as Social Computing.

If we dare to look beyond this type of computing, as extensions of Web 2.0 and Social Computing, we have the integration of all of our software and IT systems. Microsoft’s Dr. Gary Flake refer said during the launch of Live Labs as the Internet Singularity. Dr. Gary Flake says; “The idea that a deeper and tighter coupling between the online and offline worlds will accelerate science, business, society, and self-actualization.”

Social web sites such as YouTube , Facebook, Flickr and MySpace are examples of the paradigm change that happen suddenly as these new arenas are available to the users of the internet.

Technological Singularity

Dion Hinchcliffe has some interesting ideas around the new era of the internet and how it will evolve. Especially what is interesting is his mentioning of the The Social Graph: Issues and the strategies they propose for 2008. He says in his blog the following; “One of the hottest topics in the online world in the last couple of years has been the growth of social networking services such as Facebook and MySpace, as well as the addition of a social element to existing user experiences. Despite riding several waves of hype, it’s now clear that the social networking space will only get hotter in 2008 according to most watchers. Social software has come fully into its own as of 2008 — for all appearances permanently — and understanding the reasons for this rapid rise as well as figuring out how to leverage it best is the job of everyone who wants to make the most of the Web 2.0 era.

Gaining a deeper insight to the social networking phenomenon, now exhibited by the tens of millions of users employing them globally on a daily basis for both personal and businesses uses, currently means understanding the fundamental unit of the social network, also one of the biggest new buzz phrases of the year: the social graph. Fortunately, that’s simple enough despite the term’s oblique reference to graph theory, which it is heavily based upon.”

Maturity of users on the internet play an important role in development

I agree with Dion in the majority of his standings, as the web is still in the young years for the mass users. The mass users needs changes as the maturity amongst the users develops. Its just like watching a baby begin to explore its environment during the first years of its life. From the baby lying there and only concentrate on its basic needs to become more interested in its surrounding through its crawling on the floor to the stage of walking for itself. The rest of its life it will learn how to communicate and be accepted in the social network of its culture and its sub-cultures. Internet I would say we are at the walking stage, however we are learning how to communicate with each others, which is part of the young humans life, however we need to be sophisticated and understand so many various cultures and their sub-cultures on the internet, which is part of the human teens and rest of life.

Social network analysis (SNA)

The popular business social networking service LinkedIn, uses a social graph model that sorts a member’s social graph into different degrees of separation.

Through the social analytics, such as the Socalistics application in Facebook and the Interactive Friends Graph, though there are also commercial standalone products here for the enterprise and open Web spaces from companies like KnowNow and Bravadosoft. The Interactive Friends Graph is a nice, simple example anyone can try on their own.

Dion uses a basic approximation of the linear usage trends of Service-Oriented Architecture, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, and other organizing principles in software. These various types of software or architectures will maybe merge . But they also reflect that they are aspects of the same conceptual thing. This “same conceptual thing” , something called the Timeless Way of Building Software, can look completely different depending on their focus. Despite they have the same essential, constituent parts. In this future merged software world, people and the relationships between them together with the flow of control will change towards a more democratic model.

Technology and Intelligence

Philip Dorrell wrote in 2006 this; “The concept of the Technological Singularity is that technology is used to create new and more powerful technologies, and this creates a positive feedback cycle. The rate of development constantly accelerates, until, at some point in the future, there is an “explosion”, where all possible new technologies are developed in a fraction of a second by a super-intelligent entity, whose super-intelligence is itself a result of the accelerated development of technology.

Intelligence plays a critical role in this scenario, since human intelligence is one of the main drivers of technological development, and “intelligence technologies” can be expected to play a more significant role in the feedback cycle as time progresses.”

In the same breath of this Phillip Dorell brings in some interesting aspects which is in my area of interest, namely the concept of what intelligence and the meaning behind this. Since intelligence is going to be a main differentiator of applications in the future, we need to understand the meaning of intelligence first of all. Intelligence is purposeful information processing to achieve knowledge of the subject of interest..

So that means the future applications will not only be to create intelligent machines, but to make humans more intelligent, and therefore act as intelligence amplifiers.

Data mining versus today’s data search

Information to knowledge is the key sentence for the future web applications in the next generation internet. Based on the fact that more and more data is available to us, in more and more complex forms, tells us that we need stronger internet infra structure and protocols to deliver the information. Transferring the information into knowledge creates the need for more intelligent applications beyond the web 2.0 arena. Searching and finding information in the google manner is no longer going to be enough for the users. They will need a more sophisticated tool set to empower their intelligence and feel the interaction between internet and other users. There are several tools enabling users to search and create knowledge of the searches already. Especially within pharmacy research and company like Array Biopharma’s use of SciTegic technology which facilitates fielding data mining models with the use of web as SOAP services. In addition software such as Clear Forest trying to make text driven business intelligence a step further by mining unstructured text plus enterprise data to create a competitive advantage.

Internet Protocol Development

The important step will be to build and Secure the Next-Generation IPv6-enabled Internet. Making the new protocols for transfer and communications is a major topic and will need to be addressed in order to enable transfer of larger and more complex data streams of the future.

Summary

So as a conclusion in this short article I would say there are several important quantum leaps that will happen in the next decade or even faster than that.

1. Evolution of a technological singularity of use in application development

2. Data mining versus data search will become central to amplify the human intelligence.

3. Social aspect and applications ability to envision and describe the social dependencies will become more and more important.

4. The internet communication protocols will enable use of more traffic as well as increased complexity of data

5. The users and their need to become more intelligent will be the main driver in the future development beyond web 2.0.

The technological singularity combined with intelligent data mining will create the new era of social networks that will need a more robust and refined way of transferring data across the internet platform. Social networks will enable single users as well as businesses to create analysis and enhance their intelligence about themselves but also about others or their competitors.

Thanks so much to all of you who continue to watch and pass along to others! Please don’t forget to thank Jesse (Vegard39) and Hans (NITRO1250) as they worked equally as hard to bring this video to you all. *If you enjoyed this, please be sure to check out my other video projects, both past and upcoming.* Join former British marine Adam Steele as he demonstrates how to survive in the harsh regions of Second Life! *Disclaimer: Adam does not receive any aid from his camera crew while filming on location. Only in the event of an extreme life or death situation will the production team intervene to give medical attention.*
Video Rating: 4 / 5

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Introducing PeaceFest ‘08

A Ground-breaking Fundraising Effort

On August 15th, 16th, and 17th of this year a benefit event, SL PeaceFest ’08, will be taking place. Our group, Peace Train, is comprised of many dedicated staffers from a number of countries, cultures and walks of life who are striving to make a positive difference for world-wide peace by utilizing the global virtual world platform of Second Life. 

Peace Train members are all active in Second Life as individuals and have been brought together for this worthy cause simply by their own shared desire to create positive change in the real world.   Please see our website:  http://slpeacefest.wordpress.com for current information about PeaceFest ’08, the Peace Train group and Second Life.

What it is:

This 3-day festival of music, art and panel discussions on peace will provide opportunities for attendees in Second Life to donate Linden dollars (in-world currency, then converted to US dollars) that will benefit the following organizations:

Amnesty International
World Conference of Religions for Peace
UNICEF
Kids 4Peace
Uthango Social Investments

All proceeds from the PeaceFest will be given to these groups.  Peace Train is not keeping any of the money raised, and, with support from numerous volunteer organizations, is providing the venues and coordination for the PeaceFest events. 

Goals for PeaceFest 08:

Quite simply, our aim is to create the largest ever fundraising event in the metaverse (virtual world space) and to have those funds generated through contributions from in-world and concurrent real-life activities.  Other goals include:

Bringing together some of the best international minds on peace in the panel discussions;
Showcasing the best in talent that the virtual world (and real life) has to offer;
Creating a unique venue for dialogue on peace-related initiatives;
And, in every way possible, creating a bridge between the virtual world experience and real-world impact (through marketing, fundraising, performances and international connections)

Our panel presenters and discussions are core to the event, along with the art sales, dances, and live music of course.  Here are a few of the presenters / organizations we are lining up:

·        Coalition for Work With Psychotrauma and Peace; Vukovar, Croatia.  Dr. Charles Tauber

·        International Centre for Conflict and Human Rights Analysis; Accra, Ghana.  Samuel Jacobs Abbey

·        Association  UMUSEKE; Kicukiro, Rwanda.  Mariette Utamuvuna

·        Centro de Estudios para la Paz; San Juan, Costa Rica.  Celina Garcia

·        Imaginaction; California, USA.  Hector Aristizabal

·        Uthango Social Investments, Cape Town, South Africa.  Dorette Steenkamp

Presenters will join from their locations via Skype, and their voices will be streamed into Second Life, where images of their works will be displayed, and attendees can ask questions through text chat. 

We will be happy to speak with you about this event and Second Life, and are very interested in promoting the event in the ‘real life’ media.

Please join us as we show the world a global community that strives toward creative excellence, multi-cultural understanding and a peaceful existence for all.  

Peace,

Steve Mahaley, Peace Train Engineer

(919) 451-8320

(aka: Cotton Thorne within Second Life)

acarson1@gmail.com

Bonnie Malone, Peace Train Engineer

(901) 210-7313

(aka: Tonks Akina within Second Life)

bmalone@calvarymemphis.org

So you’ve decidied to get yourself a cool broadband connection and are wondering what fun things you can do with it now that you are about to consign your dusty old dial up connection into the dustbin of history….here are my top ten suggestions which are not in any particular order of merit:

1. Play cool games online against other people in real time on gaming websites. Hey you be warned…apparently you can get addicted to this! Battling it out against other players from across the world in real time will keep you amused for ages.

2. Watch streaming music videos at much better quality and with greater ease than you could before, and while we are on the subject, a great place to watch music videos for free is Yahoo Music at http://uk.launch.yahoo.com You can even create your own video channel based on your favorite bands and singers!

3. Download music and listen to streaming tunes at lightning speed compared to your old diap up tortoise! 4. Watch movie trailers at maximum quality to help you decide which films you would like to see at the cinema or on dvd and which ones you would rather sandpaper your toenails than go see!

5. Watch live webcasts, internet tv and short films online.

6. Listen to a choice of hundreds of streamimg radio stations for free whilst you surf the web.

7. If you are feeling nosey, you can now easily watch thousands of webcams set up around the world, so you can see whats going on in London England or Sydney Australia.

8. Watch the latest, greatest sporting action, sports news and more online at http://www.eurosport.com

9. Become a member of Second Life which is a huge 3d chat network and online game all at the same time. They have over 122,000 members and you can make friends, chat online, build your own 3d dream house on your own virtual land and even start a business such as a virtual nightclub or shop! Second Life even has its own currency which can be converted to and from real money! They say some people spend all day on this site…wow. Why not check it out at http://www.secondlife.com

10. Download software, games and other cool stuff so quickly, you will be wondering how you managed without broadband connection all this time…

There are some terrific podcasts available on the subject of nonprofit organizations. They cover topics including:

* Starting a nonprofit organization

* Fundraising

* Leading and managing

* Using technology effectively

Listening to informative podcasts is a great way to learn.

You can listen to podcasts on your computer or with a portable mp3 player when you are away from your home or office.

I have turned my car into a classroom! Rather than listening to the radio, I listen to podcasts I have downloaded to my mp3 player. There are special accessories that allow you to play your mp3 player through your car radio.

If you have an interest in the nonprofit world, consider listening to the podcasts described below. They are the best I have found. I continue to learn from them and I know you will as well.

501c3Cast for Nonprofits

The 501c3Cast is an independent podcast that is all about helping nonprofit professionals, not-for-profit volunteers, and other “do-gooders” in the philanthropic world.

This podcast is my personal favorite. Listen to it and you will learn a tremendous amount of news and information on a variety of topics pertinent to your role in the nonprofit world.

Go to http://www.501c3cast.com to discover more about 501c3Cast for Nonprofits.

BoardStar: On Being Board

Would you like to learn what makes a nonprofit Board perform at it’s best? BoardStar will provide you a multitude of ideas that can be implemented to strengthen a nonprofit Board.

Go to http://www.smallpackageproductions.com/boardstar to discover more about BoardStar: On Being Board.

NetSquared: Remixing the Web for Social Change

If you want to learn about the very latest use of technology to support your passion to change the world, the NetSquared podcast is your answer. This is a great resource to learn how social networking, social bookmarking and virtual worlds (like SecondLife.com) can benefit your nonprofit organization.

Go to http://netsquared.libsyn.com to discover more about NetSquared: Remixing the Web for Social Change.

BusinessWeek – Top Givers

This BusinessWeek podcast is full of interviews by several people on their Top Givers list. Learn why and how some of the most generous philanthropists give back.

Go to http://www.businessweek.com/mediacenter/podcasts/philanthropy/current.html to discover more about BusinessWeek – Top Givers.

Craigslist Foundation’s Nonprofit Boot Camp

Do you want to know how to start and run a vibrant nonprofit organization? That is exactly the reason the Craigslist Foundation holds their annual Nonprofit Boot Camp. This podcast contains many of the keynote speeches, workshop sessions and interviews and is filled with useful information.

Go to http://www.siconversations.org/series/nonprofitbootcamp.html to discover more about Craigslist Foundation’s Nonprofit Boot Camp.

Tracey Smith from the CBS Early Show explores the “seamier side of SL” SexGen Escorting and Virtual Sex are highlighted in this provocative piece.Be sure to visit Stroker in Second Life or email him at stroker.serpentine@gmail.com
Video Rating: 4 / 5

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Traditionally, men worked on farms or in trades and women raised the family. The industrial revolution introduced the manufacturing sector and established a set workweek. WWII introduced women to the workforce, and the 1970s introduced them to a life outside of the home. The 1980s introduced the two income family, or latchkey family. The 1990s introduced work-at-home, and outsourcing.

The natural evolution has continued introducing passive income in the last five years. Today’s passive income varies from earlier forms. Passive income was first introduced in dot-com revolution. When that crashed, thousands of people tried to use Google as a tool to generate income. They created dozens of schemes that all failed, or if they didn’t fail, collapsed when Google recently closed the accounts of many ‘made for Google’ empires.

In fact, there is even an online game, secondlife.com, that allows users to buy and sell goods, services, and property. In fact, the US government is currently looking into whether they can tax the incomes made from people who buy and sell through this game. This does give investors a unique peak into the minds of the population. People want to own property, even if they can only afford intangible, game based property.

However, there are several passive income venues that did prove to be viable, and realistically build wealth. The most prominent are bullion investing, investing in various media forms, and property investing. Of these, the most successful, and lowest risk, is property.

Britain is currently experiencing an explosion of young investors making a fortune in the buy-to-let market. Despite four interest rate increases in less than one year, and house prices rising about – US a day, many young investors are learning how to build their property portfolios, even without more than a single down payment.

This type of passive income is viable. It is possible to make a living from 4 – 6 properties, if they are located in the right areas. Some investors are very hands on, but using agents can take the stress and confusion out of building a property portfolio.

The concept of passive income confuses many people. Many people start a second business to build a passive income – totally ignoring the term ‘passive.’ A passive income should be a stream of income that requires little work. That is why most revenue venues do not qualify.

Another common mistake is believing that all investments earn a passive income. This neglects the term ‘income.’ An income is a repetitious, steady, income.

Passive income is something that does not require effort on the part of the investor, and it generates a steady stream of revenue, more than a few dollars a month.

A passive income is attractive to the 60hour a week workers in this decade because their most valuable commodity is time. There is nothing in a successful person’s life that is more valuable than time. Passive income is derived from a venue that may require a financial investment, but does not require a time investment.

The internet has offered substantial opportunities for investors. It connects them with tools and agents who can help them earn a passive income.

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MySpace is a great place to make a lot of friends and for people to do something noteworthy. If you are a guy who looks like Brad Pitt or a female that looks like Angelina Jolie this site can be great but what about the millions of people who are less than perfect?

I have spent some time looking for friends to add and all I see are these pictures of great looking people. If you have a deformity I guess you could put up a picture of a nice looking person and others on MySpace will never know. If you are bound to a wheelchair this is not what you have to show the rest of the world.

Have you ever thought about what a color blind or vision impaired person sees when that CAPTCHA pops up? I had to use the windows magnifier to even see the text in the CAPTCHA. At least sites like Google will help users that have problems with this button you can click so the CAPTCHA is told to you via audio.

A business in the US can be shut down for not making their place of business accessible for the handicapped. Does this not apply to US based web sites? What provisions does MySpace make for the handicapped? Do they even give a damn?

We are far from living in a perfect world with only perfect look people. There is tragedys that happen all the time. Birth defects, accidents, shootings, car accidents, when somebody is a victim of one of these very seldom do they walk away unharmed. Millions of people have scars, mutilations and deformities but nowhere on MySpace do we see pictures of people with these.

I gaurantee that if the elephant man wanted to create a profile on MySpace that he would not put his true picture up on his profile. On MySpace the scarred can now communicate with others as the un scarred. How many people on MySpace are showing their true colors in their profile?

Sire like those of MySpace, SecondLife, and Hi5 are great places where people with deformities can see how people will treat them if they did not have these deformities. I am a marketer and when I creat a profile on MySpace it will not be a profile of the bearded lady. I only want to create profiles of good looking people because those profiles get more attention, positive attention.

If a person can not see perfectly then the site MySpace is probably not going to be a site that they want to visit..I know Windows XP and Vista bot have the magnifier to help enlarge things that are too small but still this does not help people who suffer from color blindness like myself.

If MySpace doesn’t make some positive changes in the very near future then MySpace will become OldSpace. The site Friendster only has about 44 million visitors and MySpace will probably end up like this site or even worse. It’s time we speak up and let sites like MySpace know that if they are not equal then they are not wanted.

Kitkat Commercial
Video Rating: 4 / 5

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Experience a real Italian language class from your home. It is not a new e-learn software or a DVD language course, neither an Audio Couse nor a home tuition!

What is it then? Log in Second Life, come to our Italian Campus Classes and enter one of the first experiment of Italian language courses held by Scuola Leonardo. The Italian language lessons will be hosted by the “Second Life Festival” inside the Official Island of Tuscany during the “Festival della Creatività” (Creativity Festival) organized from 25th to 28th October.

This is a testing organised by Sigmasei in collaboration with Scuola Leonardo da Vinci, the leading italian language school in Italy, which counts more than 30 years of experience and is officially authorized by the Italian Ministry of Education. SIGMA SEI S.a.s. is a society specialized in the field of consulting and it has introduced its own project concerning the development of a virtual Italian language learning Campus on Second Life which is addressed to foreign students.

The Scuola Leonardo da Vinci experience and desire of innovation bring to this new test to give everybody the chance to learn Italian directly from your home thanks to innovative platforms like the 3D world of Second Life.

We invite all the interested people to come visit us, to have an Italian language lesson or just a visit of the Tuscany island, where you can see the famous Tower of Pisa, enter the Duomo of Florence, or just have a look at the famous “Scoppio del Carro”. All around, you will find Italian people or teachers available to speak with you.

Are you ready? If you want to partecipate, just log in to Second Life and subscribe to our SL group (called “I love italian language“) and come to one of our language courses starting every day from 12.00 till 13.30.

We are waiting for you!

Info and uptades: http://secondlife.scuolaleonardo.com/en

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You find it anywhere, just go on the internet and try to search for the term – Second Life, and you will find more than 75 million articles written about this topic. Millions of web users visit these pages every day. And best of all is that more than 300 universities and colleges are actively experimenting with accredited courses using “second Life” technology. Linden Lab who operates the Second Life technology, believe only imagination sets limits to what you can do with this technology.

It is not about replicating the classroom in a virtual environment, but to replicate dangerous or not easy accessible areas or environments.

It makes no sense to replicate a classroom with chairs, whiteboards and such things, when you can create an environment where people can jump into a vehicle and perform dangerous tasks or even explore remote dangerous areas without taking any risks at all.

Second Life is not a video game for geeks, but it is a creative technological environment enabling learning and collaboration in a new and more innovative way, and also enable experimenting with new ways of acting in these environments.

BP (British Petroleum) has just recently created an immersive environment for their gas station employees. Trainees can learn in a safe environment at the same time as they have a virtual representation of a gas station with its tanks and pipe systems, just as in a typical BP gas station. This enables BP to train their employees in procedures and see the effect of actions taken in a gas station, by its trainees. All this without endanger their employees or their equipment.

IBM has also found use of this system for their internal between more than 6000 employees around the world and in external communications with partners and clients. They have even made an environment for their retired staff enabling them to keep a dialogue with previous colleagues and exchange experiences.

NASA use this system to prepare for the Mars expedition, a 800 days mission, enabling astronauts to keep in touch with their families and participate at the dinner table and even help their kids with their homework through their avatars.

Joe Miller, the VP of Platform and Technology Development at the Linden Lab says Second Life is a collaborative environment where you really can feel you are physical with other people. You interact through an avatar of your own, with others avatars in a 3D world. You schrink the physical distance almost to zero and it can have dramatic effects in a learning environment.

Pontiac has a second life environment that allows engineers to talk to customers which before was rare to experience for an engineer.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) uses second life to illustrate their hurricane aircraft operation by flying into virtual hurricanes. They have also created a fully immersive experience where the users can learn how tsunamis build up and play its path.

Second Life is driven on a free basis, with user created content all the way. You can visualize products, equipment, physical situations that would be to expensive to build in real life, or to dangerous to have a training situation in real life.

Museums were pioneers using Second Life environments to bring visitors closer to their exhibitions in a more unconventional way. Some have even gone so far that they have created virtual exhibitions were users can create their own exhibition and curate them their self.

http://www.secondlife.com

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Discussions and debates on the viability, necessity, and effectiveness of conversational aka social media marketing continue to roar across the Social Web.

There are three sides to this equation:

- New media pioneers and practitioners who defend and evangelize the art of conversations because they’re investing in people and their feedback and have the experience to showcase value and ROI.

- Social Media marketers who embrace social tools and promote their use in corporate/brand marketing and Public Relations, learning in the process and building relationships along the way. They may or may not be tying these initiatives to business metrics.

- Some experienced business and marketing professionals who view conversations as potential distractions that are immeasurable, expensive, not scalable, and ineffective in purporting corporate messages to their “target audiences.” To them, Conversational Marketing and Social Media are buzz words without substance or statistics to support their reason for being.

As Social Media continues to impact everything from journalism and communications to customer service and the foundation for Website design and network dynamics, it’s also inspiring a new army of purported and legitimate “experts” who are offering assistance to those companies seeking to understand and engage in online conversations.

Social Media Marketing combines, in a perfect world, the most effective attributes of PR, Web Marketing, Customer Service, and a working knowledge and genuine enthusiasm of the social networks and tools to listen to, spark, and engage in relevant discussions – not all but, those with influence. Marketers in the social realm will also embrace social sciences to observe and understand the online cultures and social dynamics where they ultimately wish to participate, while also maintaining a working knowledge of their company’s business model and markets.

Social Media experts must have the ability to determine which networks are relevant to the businesses that they represent, why they need to pay attention, how to listen, and how and when to engage. Most importantly, they must connect participation to brand resonance, customer loyalty and also the ever prominent “bottom line.”

Without a deep understanding of customers, markets, online communities, and the dynamics of their company’s business model, Social Media Marketers will succumb to the brilliance of shiny new social objects and remain hypnotized by their allure and promise – missing the true opportunities of engagement in favor of popular social tools.

Let me tell you where I stand…

Conversational Marketing and Social Media Marketing, to me, aren’t truly rooted in marketing at all, nor should they be. This is about learning from listening first, and engagement afterward.

It’s not a miracle cure for years of one-sided, top-down push marketing.

Assuming that we can change the greater public perception one conversation at a time isn’t realistic and it isn’t scalable in the short term, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t value by investing in the future, now.
If a conversation takes place online and you’re not there to hear or see it, did it actually happen?

Influential conversations are taking place with or without you. If you’re not part of the conversation, then you’re leaving it to others, and possibly competitors, to answer questions and provide information, whether it’s accurate or incorrect.

The ability to listen to public impressions, questions, and discussions that would have otherwise gone unnoticed or unanswered tell us everything. And, the exercise of genuinely engaging and helping forms valuable relationships and inspires brand enthusiasts in the process. These conversations are an opportunity to change perception through dialog, but more importantly, by feeding the information learned in the field back into a company can improve product development, enhance service, and educate executives through real world feedback.

But words aren’t a means to an end. Everything starts with listening and observation and as always, actions speak louder than words.

It’s not the act of conversations that immediately provide value to an organization, it’s the listening, observing and ability to then learn from the inspired engagement.

Are the results of conversations trackable?

Yes.

Is activity measurable?

Yes.

Are relationships scalable and able to demonstrate a return on investment?

That’s the million dollar question.

How do you measure the value of online relationships right now? It can’t simply be tied to sales when referrals, word of mouth, brand awareness, and evangelism are priceless and mostly immeasurable. And, there’s no price too great for paying attention.

I wrote about the concept of Conversational Marketing vs. Market Conversations almost a year ago. I believe it still holds true today… If it’s one thing that we can learn about Social media is that people and the markets they represent have rallied against marketing and slick marketers and have demanded personalization, transparency, and sincerity.

They don’t want to be told what to buy, what to think, or have their views and opinions disregarded simply because they are not classically trained in the art of service, design or marketing.
Brands have become democratized. Audiences have evolved into factions of people linked together by common interests and populate and define communities throughout the static and social web. In some cases, there are thousands of conversations taking place across multiple networks.

Is it possible or even warranted to have a Community Manager track and respond to everything?

No way!

The chances of a company releasing a perfect product and having the public embrace and accurately share its benefits, applications, and value proposition through their peer networks is implausible. It’s called the grapevine and the story will lose precision and factuality in the process of storytelling. And since we live in the real world, not every product or service is perfect, therefore they require listening and discussions to improve them over time.

Perception management is the process of reaching out to these communities and quite honestly, it’s nothing new. The social tools available today only provide an easier solution for listening and reaching people. It’s still designed to create champions and enthusiasts who can help you tell your story within peer networks, accurately and passionately.

Not only can we learn from these real time focus groups, we’re also guided towards the development of more informed and poignant outreach moving forward.

As Sean Maloney of Intel says, “It’s not what you say about you, it’s what they say about you.”

Talk is indeed cheap and a complete waste of time if conversational marketing is used to spin products or services into something they’re not.

However, if your company, and a completely renewed and redesigned infrastructure, is ready to change based on those conversations to improve product/service design and quality, as well as becoming a proactive resource to their communities, then talk begets action, and action is toll for change.

But participation for the sake of participating or engaging in online conversations must be more substantive than hosting one-off conversations in order to truly impact communities and have positive influence on the economics of business.

Richard Binhammer, a primary community leader at Dell, recently commented, “My actions on behalf of Dell are not mere talk and conversation. Everyday we follow up on the online listening and the learnings we get from customers, fixing issues and bringing customers’ perspectives inside Dell — real time, real views and real customer experiences. We believe that is improving our response times, contributing to better products and services and making us a better company, that is directly connecting with customers who care enough about us to talk about us on the web every day.”

As I’ve said before, it’s so much more than the ability to guide companies on how to create fan pages on Facebook, islands on SecondLife, accounts on Twitter, Pownce or (insert microblog of the month here), and profiles on YouTube and Myspace.

Businesses who socialize their marketing because Social Media is the New Black, are in for a rude awakening. Those who realize that conversations are taking place with or without them, invest in the process of listening to reveal public perception and identify the networks where meaningful conversations take place, engage with those seeking a response, and analyze the feedback to improve processes as well as future products, are investing in a brighter, more profitable future.

Insight can not fall upon deaf ears. And, silence is never golden.

It’s the listening, analytics, charting social maps, drafting strategies for meaningful engagement, understanding our relevance in the short and long tail, and the definition of metrics and ROI that count for everything to businesses and respective decision makers these days.

Traffic

Links

Trackbacks

Comments

Threads

Registrations

Referrals

Sales

Loyalty

Functional, real world, and measurable attributes can be tied to any community-focused program today. But, we need to start first start backwards and work our way forward in order to determine and track ROI.

Remember, it’s what you say about you, what they hear, how they share that story, and how you weave that insight into future conversations that underscore meaningful community-driven efforts. And, everything starts with listening and observing in order to maintain relevance to the very communities we wish to reach, learn from, and inspire.

Tamar Weinberg includes my definition in her post, “What Traits Define a Social Media Marketer.” It also includes quotes from Chris Brogan, Valeria Maltoni, Jason Falls, Geoff Livingston, MG Siegler, Allen Stern, Laura Fitton, Darren Rowse, Muhammad Saleem, Chris McGill, Adam Metz, Louis Gray, Jane Quigley, and other incredible voices.

Social and consumer-generated media continues to be all the rage. Look at Time magazine’s 2006 Person of the Year. It’s you. And, me. And, the person in the office next to you.

Look at the interest in social media like word-of-mouth-marketing, blogs, discussion boards, virtual worlds like SecondLife, video sites like YouTube, microblogging like Twitter, and MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn and other social networks. Everybody’s doing it, right?

Look at the mainstream media’s early reporting on blogs – Forbes’ “Attack of the Blogs” (Nov. 14, 2005) and the Wall Street Journal’s piece, “The Blog Mob,” (Dec. 20, 2006). And, look how they are all getting on board with their own blogs like the New York Times, ABC News and local media outlets like my local daily The Toledo (OH) Blade. (Though, BusinessWeek has been around for several years with its Blogspotting blog.) It can be pretty scary in the blogosphere and social media if you’re not already there. Or, even if you are already there.

While there are those who say social media will kill public relations because it gives more voice and power to consumers, that’s not true. Social media opens up more career opportunities for PR pros in online marketing because it’s about relationships. It’s how you work with people to understand their wants and preferences, and then supply them with the proper information and access to achieve your clients’ or your employer’s goals.

Working in social media requires a different mindset than in traditional media relations and other public relations and marketing activities. That is because you are generally dealing with every-day people – not professional reporters who are at work. Think of it like you are communicating with your neighbor.

Though social media requires a different approach, do not fear it: social media is right up our alley. While there are some ground rules already established – like transparency – much of it is still evolving. You’re never too late to join in and be involved.

The main reason for us not to fear social media is because we already practice many of the skills needed for it. By definition, public relations and other communications professionals should know how to deal with and relate to… different parts of society.

We know how to develop trusted relationships with a wide range of media contacts. We know how to work with the various personalities at clients or agencies we deal with every day. We work with company CEOs, VPs and directors of marketing. We work with customers, prospects and vendors in organizing events and gathering information. We develop campaigns designed to communicate effectively with niche markets.

We are jacks-of-all-trades and chameleons who can relate to and work with a variety of personalities and peoples of all walks of life.

So, why should bloggers, discussion board and social network members be any different?

They are not.

Like the other environments we work in, we have to learn the established grounds rules – like being transparent and upfront when contacting bloggers, knowing the background and preferences of our audiences – and adapting. We can do it because we have done it before. It’s like learning a new client’s market, or the demographics of our company’s new product. You just have to get started, and get a feel for the established rules.

Dive right in

But, there’s no way of learning if we don’t do it. So here’s what you can do:

We all don’t have to blog, but we should read and monitor blogs. If you’ve never done it before, take an hour every day or every couple of days and peruse some branding, PR and advertising blogs. Search for and regularly read blogs that are in your clients’ or company’s market.

Search for your clients’ or company’s name in the blogosphere. See what’s being said about them. Use Google’s Blog Search, Technorati, Globe of Blogs, or check out one of the growing number of social media-specific monitoring services like Techrigy or Radian6. Heck, even post a comment if you find a blog post of interest – just make sure you state who you really are – no anonymous comments please. For PR pros, that’s one of the establish ground rules.

Discussion boards and forums are the most under-appreciated communities in social media. Blogs get all the publicity, but you can find many valuable industry discussions and research occurring on boards. There’s practically a discussion board for every industry, topic and geography. Many metro areas have an active blogging and forums community. Some require registration to read the discussion threads, but many do not.

Join Twitter or a similar “microblogging” tool. I have found that Twitter is great for getting feedback from peers and learning about news and posts I might not typically read.

Explore del.icio.us, Digg, StumbleUpon or other social bookmarking tools and see what sites and pages others think are of interest.

Social media is all about interaction – communicating, sharing, rating, connecting. Your employer or clients’ customers are not standing outside your door. But, many – in some industries, most – of them are online talking and sharing information you need to know.

If you as a marketing and public relations professional are not involved in the emerging, evolving and growing communications vehicles for clients or employer, you are doing a disservice to them. And, some other agency or individual may fill the social media need for them. You don’t have to be heavily involved. But, do be aware. And, fear not. Social media is right up your alley. You’re a natural.

Making Money Online: A Beginner’s Guide

Ok, you’ve heard its possible and decided to give it a try; Making money online… Made easy. You hop on the train to catch the jolly ride, thinking it’ll come out as smooth as you’ve been made to believe. You dabble from one site to the other, even threw in a few bucks here and there; just to hasten the “get rich quick” process. You eventually find out you’ve been going in circles and things are not always as easy as proposed in those “guru” adverts you’ve so gullibly followed.

The online money making scheme is a vast empire; one with so much potential. The economic situation worldwide and the ever insatiable want of man have helped trigger the foray of demands for alternative means of livelihood. The Internet, being a mega source of information transfer/exchange, naturally became a major target for information on ideas and solutions. Unfortunately, lots of scammers are also cashing in on the information craze; devouring unsuspecting victims in the process on a daily basis. You start off with the intention of “making money” but end up with “a hole in the pocket” after greedy, hurried, ill-informed attempts.

Now you’re back (maybe wiser), deciding to do a research first before venturing into the terrain (wise move). I’ve got news for you… You’re not alone; we’ve all gone through this at one point or the other during our pursuit of online wealth. You may have heard that making money online is as easy as ABC… Well, I’m sorry to shock you… THERE’S MORE TO IT! The only so called “easy money making” schemes out there could be “Pay per click” or maybe “survey” programs. You’ll find out too soon that even that is not as easy as it seems; after working your fingers to the bones from clicking for peanuts.

Take it or leave it, making money online is just like any other serious daily endeavor in life geared towards success. It involves Dedication, self motivation, self-belief, passion, interest, persistence and lots of patience; if any of these characteristics is missing in your life right now, you might do well to try and improve on it before you step into the online dungeon… If not, you’ll be frustrated out before you could say… “My money”!

Now, having said all these, there are websites you can join and make your own for free that allows you to trade and make money as a starter without financial investment. Good examples would be Weblog sites (blogs) like Blogger or WordPress (to mention a few). With this in place… you have a launch pad to promote your activities online. However, there are some basic requirements needed for this trade:

1.Finding an informative Niche of interest (for you too)
2.Researching on keywords for the niche
3.Creativity, Frequency and conceptual Originality
4.Promoting using multiple channels

In all these, you’ll need to be “web savvy”, which means you need to have some basic ideas of web terminologies like URL, HTML, SEO, BACKLINKS and MONETIZATION… Etc. If you are confused about these terms now, don’t fret, do a search and read up on the terms… I’ll be elaborating on these in subsequent posts.

Some Ways of Making Money Online:
Let’s now delve into some ways of making money online. There are lots of ways of making money online, a few is listed below:

•Taking online surveys: some websites like YouGov pay you for completed surveys
•Pay-Per-Click campaign: Google adwords and Microsoft Adcenter stands out here (not a fan of the auto surf PPC programs though some are pretty lucrative on a long term).
•Affiliate Marketing: Clickbank, Amazon, Adtrader and Ebay come to mind here.
•E-commerce/Reseller Programs: Create, buy, sell or collect resale right from authors of products and services for sale/purchase.
•Online Real Estate: Domain name sales and acquisition
•Social Network Bookmarking
•Online auction Sale
•Message Board Posting: Webmaster-Talk and DigitalPoint pays for posting contents of interest on their message boards.
•Blogging: Blogger, Worpress is free… create a niche site that can generate money using say, AdSense, Bidvertiser or Kontera etc also, you get paid to blog on BlogiTive and PayPerPost
• Photography: IsTockPhoto and Fotolia pays for uploaded original photos of interest.
• Freelance and Virtual Jobs: eLance and oDesk allows members to sign up for advertised outsourced jobs and get paid on completion.
• Games: If you are a “games freak”, you could test your skills online and get paid while winning and collecting points. Try SecondLife or MooLa

Note this: Most successful Internet enterpreneur started off with a free blog. Success is not overnight… It is gradual and involves patience. Don’t give up before your money starts rolling in. Be Smart and creative, People Centric, Focused and Dedicated… Success will surely come.

All in all, three major factors stand out in fueling the engine of online money making…

1. Finding a profitable niche (Think of it as your passion for providing solutions to problems in specific area of interest)
2. Creating a “landing Pad” for your would be customers (website, Weblog/Blog or VideoLog/Vlog will do just right)
3. Generating relevant traffic for conversions. (Where promoting comes to play).

If you are really serious about making good money online, you’ll need to invest a little of your time and resources in pursuit of these factors… They constitute the spring board for online success.

The Need for an e-mail list:
The three factors mentioned above is born out of the eventual overall target of having a LIST. Quality and relevant e-mail list for your chosen niche is very important for online business success. With good quality e-mail list of relevance and quality recommendations from time to time on your part, trust will be established and you’re virtually on your way to success. Ever wondered why most programs request that you enter your e-mail address for “newsletters”, “subscriptions”, “10-day introductory course” etc? LIST GENERATION! This will prove useful when other ideas on money making hits the stands and you have a ready market in your list.

Stay focused.

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The primary goal of any marketing strategy is to increase the company’s public existence so that the company’s business is promoted. Internet marketing is no less but its approach is little different and it target customers across the globe.

Many a times people think that by just buying a domain name and constructing a nice website will drive internet traffic, but that is not true. There are many other factors which are necessary to make yourself prove in this competitive world. Especially now it’s the time of recession and everyone is thinking ten times before purchasing a new product or services, but at this time if we will think that we can hire a low cost SEO company to optimize our website then that will be the silliest mistake which we will do, since internet marketing is the cheapest way of all the other marketing strategies and only by choosing the right internet marketing firm you can increase your website traffic and in turn your business.

In order to successfully market any business or product the marketer should have a firm idea of what they are doing and why they are doing it in order to estimate the response received and make adjustments as necessary. What is the unique product / service they provide which makes them special or what is their main motive behind doing that particular business. So the selection of keywords plays a very crucial role to optimize your website, which can only be done with the help of a good internet marketing company which uses ethical search optimization techniques.

There are several other ways to increase website traffic on your website. Some of them are listed below:

email marketing social networking branding your website WOMM( Word Of Mouth Marketing) SEO PPC Backlinking Newsletters/ ezines Micro blogging Macro blogging User generated content Directory listing Listing in DMOZ

Email marketing:

It can be very effective tool if used properly. An extensive study should be performed before preparing a mailing list, so that only appropriate clients are picked. The email should be personalized so that the receiver should have a nice feeling. The list for which we are targeting email marketing should be prepared in such a way that we are not spammed. Remember having a bad name for once is remembered more than having good name, so we should be very cautious. In brief internet marketing can be proved a very economical way to market any business only when used appropriately.

Social Networking:

The introduction of the Internet, and especially the World Wide Web, has allowed people to meet new friends and acquaintances across the globe. By the advent of Social networking reaching to the masses has become very simple. The social marketing phenomenon has reached more people than any other marketing strategy in an amazing way, just you need to join the social network, put up the start up pages that correspond to the business and don’t forget to include the link of your company’s website. There are many social networking websites like linkedin, facebook, Myspace etc…

Branding of the website:

Your business’s website will be many people’s first impression of your company, products and services. As a result, your site represents a critical component of your branding strategy: It communicates who you are, what you offer and what you promise (your brand) through its content, organization and appearance (the look and feel).

WOMM( Word Of Mouth Marketing):

WOMM’ has got nothing to do with propaganda, advocacy or advertisement. In the marketing world conversation plays an integral part. And these new media sites focus on conversation as their integral part. For better or for worse people talk about products, events etc no one can stop that.

In this day and age, if you don’t have your own website for your business, it’s almost as if you do not exist. Recent studies have found that people are more likely to look up a business online than in the Yellow Pages or other traditional “old-school” ways.

Link building is the process of getting other web sites to place a link to your web site on their own web site.

SEO

Search engine optimization is the process of analyzing a web site and modifying it to enable search engines to read, understand, and index it correctly.

The objective of search engine optimization is to increase web visitor counts by ranking very high in the results of searches using the most appropriate keywords describing the content of your site.

PPC

Pay-per-Click (PPC) Advertising is a feature that is now being offered by the major search engines. Through a competitive bidding process, you can buy a favorable position on the search engine results for specific keyword search phrases that you choose. You pay for results only on a “per click” basis, hence the name Pay per Click Advertising. The twin advantages of PPC advertising are immediate visibility and strategic placement.

Newsletters

Newsletters have massive potential to promote your business, sell your products, inform your potential customers, and retain existing customers. They can increase affiliate sales, market new products, or keep your customers informed of changes.

Newsletter can be an extremely powerful Internet marketing tool. Readers love to get something for nothing, especially information. By reducing the amount of advertising and increasing the amount of genuinely useful and informative newsletter content it is possible to build an email list that will continue to purchase from you for years to come. Newsletter design and newsletter content are equally important, both giving you the opportunity to maximize the effect of your marketing campaigns and subsequently make you more money.

Macro blogging

Macro blogging or Blogging is rapidly becoming a popular way to promote your on-line marketing. Each blog entry you make should include a hyperlink to your business site and should also include tags associated with the blog topic (which can also be connected with your business opportunity).

Every blog post has tags and all of the tags are keywords associated to the topic of your blog and thus your business, so your blog can enhance your search engine ranking. This is free advertising to your website. Every blog is accompanied by feedback and comments (user generated content) about that blog. Either positive or negative comments both are beneficial to you. The more visits to your site, the more you are marketing your business and gaining credibility.

Micro blogging

Micro blogging is an innovative way of blogging, this type refers to short written texts of about 140 words that is published online and viewed by all or to a restricted few. Most uniquely, the brief blogs, in the form of messages, can be imparted even through a number of means such as instant messaging, email, text messaging, MP3 and of course on the web.

In fact, the business world, micro blogging way to best suit the client-based interaction. This can be done in a number of effective and useful ways. For example, with this particular technique, the companies can keep in touch with their clients, informing them with the constant developments. In this way, the companies can also declare discounts and offers to the blog readers across the web. At times, customers may prefer to talk to any particular staff of their choice. Micro blogging makes the job easier to know whether the staff is available online or not get a more honest feedback Besides these, there are many other applications of the very concept of the ultra micro blogging that is already taking the business and social world by storm.

How will writing macro blogs help you improve your business?

When you put your content related to your business opportunity on Twitter and other micro blogging sites like Pownce, Tumblr, and Jaiku, Google’s spiders follow…your pages will get indexed…your websites will rank…and you’ll make more business. 

User generated content (UGC)

It is the content that users (or consumers) write and submit online and can be

Product reviews (e.g. Amazon.com) Service reviews (e.g. Google Local) Seller reviews (e.g. ebay) Blog comments News comments Forum posts or comments Video/Audio and Photo sharing sites (e.g. YouTube and Flickr) Social networking sites comments or posts (e.g. Twitter, SecondLife, Facebook) Wikis Composite review sites (e.g. ConsumerReport.org)

 Why UGCs are important in internet marketing?

          There are several reasons. They are:

Consumers are relying more and more on UGC. Marketers are relying more and more on UGC UGC Influences Offline Commerce Not only positive but Negative Reviews are also actually of interest Negative reviews provide helpful feedback to consumers and R&D Negative Reviews provide authenticity Positive Reviews Outweigh Negatives 

If you sell products and services, and if you have a web site, make sure you allow for reviews. If your products are great to mediocre, you should get far more positive than negative feedback, and a resultant positive impact on sales and revenue.

Therefore, make sure you enable and allow feedback, optimize your review pages, and get traction for them in the search results by supporting brand evangelists, and answering detractor issues promptly and diplomatically.

Affiliates networks

Building your online business with an affiliate network allows you to reach affiliates and customers across the globe. You are able to market your products across the globe. This is very favorable for search engine optimization.

Affiliate network marketing is a combination of network marketing and affiliate marketing. This type of marketing involves selling of products and services to consumers through a wide network of independent distributors.

After you sell the products or services to distributors, they in turn can sell to other marketers. You earn commissions for your sales. Additionally, you also earn for sales through marketers under you to a certain extent. This is affiliate networking and marketing.

Backlinkings

Backlinks are links that are directed towards your website. Also knows as Inbound links The number of backlinks is an indication of the popularity or importance of that website. Backlinks are important for SEO because some search engines, especially Google, will give more credit to websites that have a good number of quality backlinks, and consider those websites more relevant than others in their results pages for a search query

A search engine considers the content of the sites to determine the QUALITY of a link. When inbound links to your site come from other sites, and those sites have content related to your site, these inbound links are considered more relevant to your site. If inbound links are found on sites with unrelated content, they are considered less relevant. The higher the relevance of inbound links, the greater is their quality. Ideally backlinks are web pages with high PageRank, with content like yours and that already link to other web pages.

Reciprocal links: if you enter a link exchange program with the so called bad neighbors and you link to them, this can be disastrous to your SEO efforts.

Paid links:

Paid links certainly have their place. For a lot of sites, this place has proven to be in an SEO campaign. Care should be taken when buying text links for SEO, that the link is a genuinely powerful addition to your marketing campaign without relying on it to improve your search engine ranking. Check page popularity and relevance, link placement, and ensure that the link cost and results offer a good enough ROI to justify the purchase of the link in the first place. Paid links could provide you with good traffic if you find the right ones at the right price.

Directory listing

To enhance the search engine rankings, it is important to list your website in various directories; it also helps your website to come in the top search engine results of all major search engine results like Google, Yahoo and MSN.

The higher the PR of the directory, the more benefit you will get to get your directory listed in that directory. Directories are useful to the user in that if a user wanted to find a site under a particular topic, it would be easy to go to the appropriate category and choose from the selection of links. All links in a web directory are well-categorized and meaningfully sorted out.

Listing in Dmoz (Open Directory Project)

Now owned by Time Warner, the Open Directory Project, is the single most important and powerful of all the directories edited by humans. The results from this high-quality directory are also carried directly by Google (where they are listed in a different order, according to Google Page Rank). There are numerous advantages of submitting your directory to DMOZ, and I can’t think of a single drawback.

It may take many months to secure a listing, and there is no guarantee that your site will be listed at all. Google takes DMOZ listings very seriously, and in fact they even make it known that if you’ve had difficulty getting listed in Google, one of the best ways of remedying that is to get your site listed with the Open Directory Project.

Directory submissions, unlike search engine submissions, are reviewed by human beings and undergo a great deal of scrutiny by the editors reviewing them. It is important that your website is submitted correctly in order to obtain the listings you need.

Listings in DMOZ (Open Directory Project) and the Yahoo! Directory can be very helpful for boosting your site in the search engines. Google, Yahoo and MSN view websites listed in these directories as more important than those which are not.

The future of internet marketing

As more people join up with digital riot, e-commerce continues to grow. Still, one can’t help but acknowledge Internet users are becoming more refined, particularly as a younger generation moves into adulthood.

Specially in this time of recession one cant avoid internet marketing as it’s the cheapest and most effective way of marketing which target people across the globe. The future of internet marketing looks very promising.

Happy internet marketing!!!

Introduction to Second life. Meant as an explanation for people from the business world not as familiar with virtual worlds, or second life. *** this is now historic and doesn’t represent the graphical quality and content of today’s Second Life. Was done in 2006. Much better now!
Video Rating: 3 / 5

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All this cheap chic is creating a wave of consumerism that is based less on passion than experimentation. If individuals are on the fence about that ensemble and its price is right, they’ll buy it, more than willing to abandon it if it doesn’t work. The search for love is being replaced by the search for new.

Welcome to the era of the Trysumer. According to “Trendwatching,”

“Freed from the shackles of convention and scarcity, immune to most advertising, and enjoying full access to information, reviews, and navigation, experienced consumers are trying out new appliances, new services, new flavors, new authors, new destinations, new artists, new relationships, new *anything* with post mass-market gusto.”

This kind of purchasing ushers in a new era of selling. Lifestyle brands are used to high-styled photography as the mainstay of their advertising. But Trysumers are more likely to respond to marketing that lowers the barriers of decision for a quick purchase. Trysumers will respond to retail experiences that allow them to try out products before they actually buy them. Welcome to sampling as a traditional advertising medium.

Retailers can easily take advantage of this trend in-store, but at NYCA, the full-service San Diego-based marketing agency where I am vice president/director of strategic planning, we know there is much a retailer can do with the marketing mix to make sure Trysumers are engaged. Bag Borrow and Steal’s whole business model is based on the bet that consumers will rent designer handbags at a far faster rate than they’ll purchase them. If a customer likes a certain bag, she can purchase it at a “used” price. Sephora opens the cosmetic world for customers to try any product they wish on their own terms before making a purchase. And pop-up retail formats are opening to give fashion brands a sense of showcasing parts of the product line as a way to give consumers a taste of what the flagship stores are actually like.

The online world is proving to be a very efficient way for Trysumers to get their information fixes. You can “try on” new clothing or styles in SecondLife, and even though an avatar is nothing like a real body, the sense of interaction with a brand is tangibly there. The myriad of consumer reviews allow consumers to talk with others just like them to determine whether an experience might be worth the trouble. And inexpensive products and promotional items can be distributed via yes its free.com and other sampling sites. These little bits of brand experience translate to a consumer stopping at the entrance to a store, feeling that this brand is already a part of her life and looking forward to more experiences with it.

“Social Media is a Cocktail Party” say Jim Tobin and Lisa Braziel in their book with the same title. They show us rules of engagement that are successfully used at a cocktail party. So why see it as a chore, it can be as fun as a party!

And there are so many different cocktail parties out there, that do nothing but help you and your business become more popular every minute of the day without you paying for ads or not even throwing your own “welcome customers” party.

Let’s see which Social Media fun venues you can attack: Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, YouTube, Del.icio.us, LinkedIn, Flickr, StumbleUpon, Digg, SecondLife, Reddit, Technorati, Newsvine, just to name the most well known. Do you see the potential here? It’s colossal. It has no ceiling, just like the money you can make as an Internet Marketer.

And you don’t have to be in front of the computer all day to do it. You can do it from anywhere, provided you did not forget your cell phone home! One little text and the entire world is reminded of your existence. Just like that. And it is very important to be on people’s mind every minute of the day. You never know when they just happen to need exactly what you offer, or they meet with a friend who needs what you offer, they’ll be able to help them and you out and feel good about having that piece of information to help a friend in need. Everybody wins! No one feels they were suckered into doing something they never wanted to do in the first place.

Opinion Research Corporation for Cone conducted a study in September of last year and concluded that customers want businesses to actually get involved. Six out of ten Americans who already use social media, interact with businesses on all those social media websites listed above.

You thought Facebook is for youngsters? Think again.  50 million non-college attendees are using Facebook. LinkedIn, the professional social networking website, grew 187% over the past year.  Universal McCann put together a research project that proves that 36% of the online users have a more positive attitude towards the companies that use online social media and have blogs.

These are huge and telling numbers.

Why wouldn’t you want to have a sweet piece of this pie? Make Social Media your cocktail party!

The question has come into everyone’s mind at one point or another.”How do you get rich from the internet?” Luckily for everyone who has ever had that question come to mind there is an answer! There are numerous ways to get rich from the internet, now we will venture through the online category.

Before I get into some nuts and bolts, let me hit you with two different things that are so promising right now, that will help you get rich from the internet.

1. Virtual Reality

This includes virtual worlds like SecondLife and such. Did you know that someone recently sold a huge virtual mansion in this video game?! It made him a lot of real-life money too. He got rich from the internet using a bunch of imaginary computer graphics – and this is legit! You can literally make something for free in these games and then make money off of it.

2. Cell phones

Now, this is huge because there are billions of people on earth and a big chunk of them are using cell phones. All you need to do is to get one slice out of this big trillion dollar pie – and you could be set for life. This is still relatively untapped. People have barely scraped the surface here and yet is another way for sure to get rich from the internet.

Ok, I gave you just a little taste of the open frontier that exists right now as an internet marketer, offering the only possibility for you to get rich from the internet and the keyword her is internet not the word rich. Get rich from the internet is the only place on the planet Earth in the realm of business that allows a person the opportunity to really compete with virtually no money.

And yes this requires real work but you can do it anywhere you can carry your laptop, you do not have to call or even answer emails or build a website or learn any geeky tech stuff but you have to learning something. The next step is to invest in yourself and get the right education which might be the most important decision you make regarding your internet marketing career. Are your surprised that you won’t get rich from the internet in 5 minutes? If that is what you are looking for you are in the wrong place, although it can happen fast.

There are many ways to get rich from the internet like through Ebay, video, social networks like Twitter and Facebook, podcasts, emailing, articles, surveys, press releases and there are even more. Don’t worry you don’t have to learn everything to get rich from the internet, just pick one of the methods above and master it.

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This decade has been one of the most crucial for the technology sector. It was feared that the start of the new millennium would be blighted by computers all over the world blanking out. Reason: computers were programmed to understand the binary database, which meant they would not recognise 2000. But it proved to be much ado about nothing and everything went well when the clock struck midnight on January 1, 2000.

Instead, now we have a thriving billion (Rs 280,000 crore) Indian outsourcing industry, which got a big boost due to the Y2K problem. The industry registered a growth rate of 40-50 per cent in the first half of the decade.

Both Y2K and the global economic slowdown (that started in 2008) highlighted that technology has moved away from the purview of a select team of IT managers to the core of business.

In terms of technology, 2009 has been a crucial period for India, even as we wait for some of the regulatory hurdles to be cleared — such as 3G. It was a year when not only form factors morphed but also boundaries between gadgets blurred. As global warming hit the headlines, IT made its presence felt with Green IT initiatives kicking in. 2009 also saw tech jargon like cloud computing make business sense. Social networking sites impacted consumers and enterprises alike.

2010 will further enhance the usage of some of these technologies many of which will define the next decade. Business Standard talks about five top technology trends.

Wireless technologies: The wait continues
The wait for 3G continues with batted breath into 2010 as well, with the news coming in that the auction process has been delayed by a month. The auction is likely to happen in February. Meanwhile the reserve price for 3G spectrum has been fixed at Rs 3,500 crore, while that for WiMax services at Rs 1,750 crore .

So far, 3G services have already been launched by state-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam (BSNL) and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam (MTNL), although neither has yet developed a major 3G customer base.

The delay has led to a debate within the industry that operators might just want to skip 3G and wait for 4G. Long Term Evolution (LTE) or 4G seems better equipped to quench the bandwidth and user experience thirst of the emerging breed of wireless applications. Along with 3G, WiMAX (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access) also got delayed. Experts hope that 2010 will be the year when these doubts would be laid to rest.

But despite the delay, with 500 million users the mobile subscriber base continues to grow and the telecom sector is briskly marching towards robust growth in 2010. According to a Morgan Stanley report, mobile internet users are set to outnumber those going online via desktop technology in the next five years.

Convergence: All in one
Carrying multiple gadgets for different purposes is so last decade. Today, a mobile phone can do the work of a computer, a computer can double up as a TV and a TV can be used to play out digital content from a gaming console or videos from a digital camera. In short, every gadget is pumped up to do more than what it is supposed to do.

But the biggest change in 2009 was that, in place of separate devices for information processing (computers), communication (telephones) and audio/visual reproduction (cameras, recorders, TVs and radios), we began using handheld devices that combine all of these functions and dwarf the capabilities of computers.

In the coming year get ready to experience smartphones with built-in projectors, cameras of 12 or more megapixel resolution, more storage memory on devices and a battery back-up of over 16 hours. Players that are positioning themselves as suppliers of converged devices include Samsung, Acer, Toshiba and Asus.

Let’s face it — a smartphone can do most of the things you can get from a briefcase full of devices. Convergence will be a consumer reality and thanks to gadget boundaries blurring, 2010 would witness consumers sending emails, uploading photos and videos, and posting status messages anywhere, anytime.

Green IT: Colour for 2010
Green IT, until now preached more than practised, will be a keen area of focus. Springboard Research in a recent survey pointed out that fewer than 10 per cent of enterprises in Asia have formally implemented a Green IT strategy.

However, a majority of enterprises including IT majors — TCS, Infosys, Wipro — have taken steps to implement Green IT at their end. Wipro, for instance, is planning to reduce its carbon footprint from the present 3.96 tonnes per employee to 2.5 tonnes in the next five to seven years. Global firms like IBM, Cisco and HP have already initiated steps to reduce their carbon footprint.

Analysts also say that the initial uptake for Green IT would be from a cost efficiency point. The study’s findings also indicate that the market also needs aggressive education as nearly 15 per cent of respondents claimed that they did not know how or where to begin with regard to Green IT.

Cloud Computing: Finally gets formed
Cloud Computing saw some good on-ground activity from many IT players and hence continued to be a buzz-word during 2009. Recession just gave it the desired push, with cost-saving features as the biggest agenda on CIOs’ lists.

Over the next five years, IDC expects spending on IT cloud services to grow almost threefold, reaching billion by 2012. Spending on cloud computing will accelerate throughout the forecast period, capturing 25 per cent of IT spending growth in 2012.

Some of the concepts of cloud computing that saw momentum in terms of adoption in India were software-as-a-services (SaaS), Platform-as-a-services (PaaS) and infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS).

Adoption among enterprises is still very low. But clearly a few IT services players are pegging this as the best approach to cater to small and medium enterprises (SME). TCS, which announced its foray into the SME segment with ITaaS over a year ago, has close to 60 customers. Bangalore-based Wipro has clearly chosen this route to increase its footprint among SMEs.

Meanwhile there are many IT firms that have started to implement cloud-based infrastructure for their internal requirements. Patni Computer Systems plans to have all its internal IT services hosted on the internet, with many B2C players by June 2010. This in turn will make the company save 30 per cent by way of capital expenditure and 30 per cent on space.

But as Diptarup Chakraborti, principal analyst research at Gartner says, while cloud computing has the potential to change the landscape of IT outsourcing business, there still is a good amount of ambiguity surrounding this concept.

Social networking: Tweet your company status
Blame the recession or the need to cut costs, but Indian companies are latching on to social media to engage with end-users and clients. Social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube are no longer just the purview of GenX. 2009 saw baby steps being taken in the adoption of these sites by companies.

2010 could see the increased use of these sites for branding and marketing. The two joint CEOs of Wipro Technologies, Girish Paranjpe and Suresh Vaswani, are expected to become active on Twitter. S Ramadorai, vice-chairman of TCS, is already on Facebook, and a majority of IT firms including MindTree are on the professional networking site Linkedin.

This despite the fact that, as per a recent Assocham survey, social networking sites cause 12.5 per cent loss of employee productivity in the corporate sector.

Apart from FMCG firms, those that traditionally focused on business-to-business (B2B) tools are also using business-to-consumer (B2C) tools like networking sites to gain attention. An instance is the IT sector. IT companies are not new to the virtual world, having made their presence felt on secondlife.com — a three-dimensional virtual world where registered users socialise and connect with one another. Firms like Infosys, Wipro and others are using these sites for brand promotion and also for marketing and sales.

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Second Life

Entering a virtual world by J B Clare
(Information correct at time of writing)

When I first stumbled across Second Life it was as a result of watching an afternoon chat show on the television.  I was very intrigued by this virtual world where I could leave behind the stresses of my real world life and become someone or something else.  Men can play at being women and vice versa, in fact there’s nothing stopping you from owning your own island and acting like a millionaire.  Be warned though it is a world that you may or may not want to leave………

To start with you need to check out your computers requirements for running the simulation, then visit www.secondlife.com and create your account and then download the free software.   There are several account options, the obvious free account and the premium account.  Premium account holders can own land, while the free account holders are able to explore the world and get used to the various functions.

First of all, decide on your goals, what do you want to achieve from second life?  Are you on there just for fun or do you wish to create scripts, design graphics, sell land, etc.  I would keep in mind a daily, weekly or monthly budget and stick rigidly to that.  You can so easily get carried away.

So, now you are a Second Life Denizen.  Once you’ve created your account, you now need to design your avatar.  Take some time on this, as this is how other SL denizens will see you.  It is a good idea to visit Newbie Island and grab as much free stuff as you can for your inventory.

I should now explain that money in Second Life is in Linden $ or L$ after the creator.  These can be purchased from the web site and also at various places in world.  Depending on your account type you get a certain amount of L$ free each month.

Spend a little time getting used to the in world chat and message system.  Personally I hate the use of bad language on this and other similar simulations but it does happen and I always try and remain clean.  There are many shortened abbreviations to words, two obvious examples are ty (thank you) and omg (oh my god).  Spelling is often thrown out of the window as is capitol letters, etc.

I have had both good and bad times on SL.  One Sunday I ended up chatting to some guy, who constantly went on about needing L0.  I smelt a con going on, so I asked this person to find me an island with no monthly tier fees.  He asked me to add him to my friends list which I duly did and we soon teleported to an island which I liked the look of.  I agreed to pay him L0 with a guarantee that if it did not work out then I would get my money back.  Within fifteen minutes I was booted off the island by the original owner.  I had fortunately both set the island as my home and written down the coordinates on paper just in case.  I chased down the person and he did give my money back.  I reported him for abuse and booted him rapidly off my friend list.  I have also purchased land only to find some unscrupulous person reclaim it and put security on it to prevent me from using it.

As with the real world, there are loop holes in SL that people will always try to exploit.  Just be careful, and always check a persons profile before you do any transactions with them.

When I first started with SL the support system was no use whatsoever.  I have in the past submitted tickets only for them to go answered.   I am hoping this has improved with time.

There are certain problems with this virtual world.  The system can go down for maintenance and can be incredibly slow.  The “lag” is one of the most frustrating issues with SL.  You can be in mid flight one moment, only to find you are in suspended animation, where you cannot do anything at all and you might have to restart the programme.  In an ideal world, one would run simulations of this type on a machine with little or no other applications on except anti virus software.  If you haven’t got a stand alone system, then a good tip is to close all your running apps except your anti virus software.  Also make sure your screen size and graphics card settings are correct.

With a premium account you can purchase and sell land.  The minimum purchase amount is 512 sq meters.  This can hold a set amount of prims (objects or items).  If you want more land then you will end up paying tier fees.  If you are looking to purchase an island then you will need to budget, unless of course you have plenty of money going spare.  One way of owning an island with reduced costs is by forming a group with your friends or like minded people and sharing the tier fees.  You could always rent a portion of the island out to help with paying the tier fees.  It is best to agree on boundaries and set your terms and conditions on the island or land properties tag by right clicking on the land and filling in the relevant details.

There are many security scripts which allow you to determine who enters your land or property.  Also you can find rent box scripts, where you can set your monthly or weekly rent price accordingly.  Just do an in world search for the relevant items you require.

On one experiment I set up a second premium account and once activated added that particular avatar to my original friends list.  I then did a search for land and was lucky enough to find two plots together.  I quickly purchased both of these and then created a group.  This allowed me to join both plots of land together and increase the number of prims I could use on the land.

Be aware if you have a premium account, it can take 30 days to downgrade to a basic account.  This can be a little frustrating depending on your billing date.  Just keep an eye on the downgrade date and make sure your credit card doesn’t get charged for an extra month.

As things do tend to go wrong with SL, if you have a premium account it is often a good idea to have a basic account so you can back up your inventory to it.  You could have 500 items on one visit and the next they may have vanished.  You could also drop your inventory items onto your land as back up.

When or if you purchase property or other items you may have to use a rezzer to resize the items to fit on your land.

Making money on SL.

You can make and lose money on SL.  There are many talented graphic designers and script creators out there already making some cash from their creations.  One way of making some extra L$ is by buying and selling land.  However, don’t expect over night to become a multi millionaire property tycoon.  If you are going to set up a business, start slowly and build up over time.  In fact I’d rather do a real world days work than try and make a living off SL.

If you have any major problems with transactions then be sure to visit your account on the web site and view the transaction history.  You can also access the Second Life web site in world, but this can be slow depending on Internet connection speed.

Second Life can be a rewarding experience.  It is great to be able to connect and chat with people from many different walks of life and from all over the world with similar interests.

There are many different groups on SL, from Music lovers to people into scripting.  They bounce ideas off each other.  There are even dating agencies.  In fact one recent story in the press said the a wife recently found out her husband was having an affair with a women on SL and that he intended to elope with her.

Endless possibilities spring to mind with this simulation.  Imagine a virtual classroom where the student Logon to his/her computer first thing in the morning from the comfort of their own home.  As global warming becomes more and more an important issue, we’ll be able to cut down on our carbon foot prints.

When I first discovered SL, I was excited by the prospect of possibly being able to teach using the simulation.  However, “lag” (Time delay) I ditched this idea.

As with anything the technology improves, processor speeds increase anything could be possible.

The down side to SL, is that it does not run on a machine using Windows Vista as of yet.  However, I am hoping the creators will soon upgrade their software to allow users with this latest version of windows to enjoy SL.

Have fun, and get to know people, keep it clean.  As I have already said, I have had both good and bad times on SL, many of my friends are now on my networks on the various social networking sites like Facebook.

This is an edited verision of the full article which will be available later on my web site

DRAFTFCB is on second life…for real !!! Title: second life Client: DRAFTFCB Airdate: 18/04/07 Agency: Draftfcb/paris Copy: Eric Lavenac Director: Eric Lavenac
Video Rating: 4 / 5

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There are four key areas in which you’re going to notice changes, as described next.Increasing Mobility and Reliance on Mobile Devices.Mobile is the largest and fastest-growing Web 3.0 trend in online marketing!

There are four key areas in which you’re going to notice changes, as described next.

Increasing Mobility and Reliance on Mobile Devices

Mobile is the largest and fastest-growing Web 3.0 trend in online marketing!

BlackBerrys and iPhones are becoming the norm. Text messaging used to be the gold standard. Now, if you don’t have e-mail and Web access, your phone is considered ancient. This trend will affect your personal life as well as your business life.

Resistance to Sharing Information with Everyone

The openness of the Web is causing some major issues with personal security. Identity theft is massively on the rise. In 2008, there were almost ten million victims, a 22% rise from 2007, along with incidences of viruses and spyware. Consumers and businesses are starting to get more skeptical about putting information on the Web as they become more aware of the possible repercussions.

Whatever you put out on the Web can be found, digested, and used by anyone. In fact, there have been recent cases of hackers using the Web to rummage around in your hard drive and even to turn your own monitor against you, remotely activating your webcam and watching what’s going on in your office (without your being the wiser).

In addition to the technical protections people are installing, not to mention the strict rules of online conduct they’re imposing on their workplaces and families, there is a trend of micro community sites and tribes, as Seth Godin calls them in Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us. Facebook will not become a thing of the past, but smaller, more centralized and specialized groups and social sites will become more prevalent. As a marketer, you will need to establish a presence on these sites so that people can get to know, like, and trust you.

A Reduction in the Need to Be “Belly-to-Belly”

There are many reasons people are continuing to flock to the Web for virtual communication instead of jumping on a plane for a face-to-face meeting, with the largest reason being cost. It is very expensive to fly across the country, stay in a hotel, dine out, take taxis, and on top of it all miss both work and, more important, family time. Virtual trade shows are gaining in popularity. SecondLife.com continues to get larger, and services like GoToMeeting and WebEx.com are attracting new customers like crazy. Citrix (which owns GoToMeeting) continues to attract more than 15,000 new users each month. WebEx touts more than 7 million worldwide users leveraging its tool each month.

Once you go virtual, you may never want to fly again, at least for a business meeting. Once you go cam-to-cam, face-to-face will never be the same!

Everything Is Continuing to Go to the Web

Anything and everything continues to go to the Web. Twelve-year-olds are running million-dollar social networks, pizza companies are taking orders through the Web, your family diner accepts reservations on the Net, your grandma is tweeting, your long-lost cousin runs a popular tribe on Second Life, international spies are using it. And the list goes on, and on and on. This trend will not change.

Full Article Resource:  www.tazsol.com/blog/

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