I always am a little amused when people express shock that relationships can be built and can thrive completely online. After all, I have been meeting people I previously knew only online as far back as 1996 — long before Match.com or any of these other social sites sprung up explicitly to bring people together and keep them in touch. Of course, once tI got to New York City to take part in Blogger Social ‘08, I was quick to discover that, as is usually the case, I didn’t know half as much as I thought I did.

Because I’d done it before, when CK and Drew conceived and pitched the idea of Blogger Social, I was on familiar ground. Stand toe-to-toe with people I chat with all the time? Sure. It’s the only natural next thing to do.

I didn’t expect it would draw in people all the way from Australia and Belgium.

I also didn’t expect the event to be put together so well that what was presumably so familiar would be so new and rich to me.

When we read what people write — on blogs, in newspaper editorials, etc., it’s easy to take for granted our knowledge of that person and the concept of a shared experience. The truth is, though, that it is an interaction that often takes place only in our own minds, and as wonderful as the Internet is and is becoming at bringing people together from vast distances, nothing compares to meeting face to face.

And an open bar.

Here’s the point. The heart of social interaction is participation, and the root of participation is will. It doesn’t have to be more complicated than that, and I hope that, if you hesitate in joining the conversation, you find it in yourself to overcome any fear you may have.

The world is, as CK said, getting smaller, and at long last we are starting to act like it.

All I can tell you is this: If you’ve read these articles on MPDailyFix or on various blogs and you’ve enjoyed them but haven’t joined the conversation, you’re not only missing out on a great opportunity to meet and know wonderful people, but you’re depriving them of the chance to meet and be enriched by you, too.

You never know what may come of it.  We’d love to talk to you.

Photo credit of Luc Debaisieux and Arun Rajagopal to CK.

It may not ever compete on volume, but will surely compete on quality, revenue and recruiting social media talent.

Current.tv is like Project Greenlight, it encourages video submissions that the community votes on. In fact the community can “greenlight” projects as part of the voting mechanism. And because current.tv is actually a TV channel, it has an avenue to broadcast the best and the brightest. Oh and guess what — people get paid.
What current.tv has done is probably the model that every channel, that creates original content could benefit from, in addition to it’s normal development process. I can’t imagine a more cost effective sandbox for television content. I wouldn’t be surprised if the concept of a broadcast TV pilot just moves to a social video platform. IMHO this would have been a much better model for Fox Atomic
Current.tv is not a free for all, and it provides guidelines around what it’s looking for from the community. It asks for short stories called “pods,” mobile video, viewer created ads, and promo spots.
As I’ve said before, the content will follow the money, but how about the talent will follow the opportunity? Sure some folks will manage to make a career out of YouTube, with its massive audience, but with 65,000 videos uploaded a day, how do you rise above the noise? If you are creating something artistic, thoughtful, thought provoking, where is the outlet for that? Maybe not YouTube?
Current.tv seems to be more of a patron of the arts, a steward if you like, sure they get great content for their TV channel, but they are also encouraging story telling.

Tip of the Hat: Myphonerocks.com
BTW Joseph Jaffe has an interesting conversation going on here at MarketingProfs as well as on JaffeJuice called Why YouTube Imitators will fail. My response is, YouTube imitators will fail as long as the continue to “imitate” and not innovate. YouTube has pioneered a model of social media that no one has figured out how to capitalize on, not even YouTube.
Technorati tags: currrent.tv social media YouTube

Back then, I remember my excitement when more than a couple new Web sites launched. Ahhh, back in the day….
But with all the talk of Web 2.0 and “user generated content,” one of the more remarkable aspects of the Web that continues to inspire me is the need for people to “share” with each other. Early Web browsers all offered the ability to bookmark, and they still do. But a new wave of tools are emerging that enable and encourage sharing everything from photos to music to the most essential and simpleist thing of all, a link.
Share a link. The very essence of the Web. Who needs Google’s algorithm when there are almost 100 social bookmarking services that will help me find all the cool sites I’ll ever need based on what other people like and think I might like, etc.?
You could have seen it coming. Amazon’s recommendation engine was an early example (“if you like this then you might also like this…), and Alexa has their “people who visited this site also visited…” feature. But these tools are math driven, not people driven. They fail in funny ways. Amazon thinks I should want a pair of Crocs just because I bought the movie Chocolat. I have no idea why.
So today’s version of the recommendation engine is the user himself. Using free tools like digg, del.icio.us, shout, furl and spurl, people from kids to grandma share lists of great sites with hundreds of thousands of other people.
And the engines aren’t blind. They want in on it as well. Googlebase and MyYahoo are two obvious examples.
Sadly, the link spammers also want in. How long before that cool site recommendation comes from a brand manager? It’s already happening.
What’s the take-away for Web marketers?
Social bookmarking and tagging are part of the power to the people movement that the Web makes possible. You have the opportunity to identify and interact with key influencers in more places and in more ways than ever. The techniques you use to interact properly in the social sharing environments will vary, but the time spent will be well worth it.
Eric Ward
http://www.ericward.com