Since we’re about to jump into 2010 (that’s “twenty ten,” everyone), I wanted to ring in the new year with something that will hopefully kick start your collaborative efforts. This is a guest post from Shevonne Polastre, who wrote this article on behalf of TopHost.Gr, a Greek web host that offers shared hosting.

Crowdsourcing has become more and more popular with private companies, non-profit organizations, and even government agencies. It’s a model that is based on many people contributing to an idea, product, or service that would have usually been done by one person. Crowdsourcing has become increasingly more widely used because it helps cultivate creativity and innovation. There are three main reasons why this model works:

1. Crowdsourcing builds competition – In an environment where one person is the one having the power to build something, mediocrity is usually the final result. When you have a group of people submitting their work, there is an awareness that it isn’t just one idea that will work, so the result is a higher quality of work. As they saying goes, competition breeds excellence.
2. It becomes a collective effort – Crowdsourcing also makes people feel like this is a team effort that not just one person is the most important piece to the puzzle. This model allows people to feel comfortable enough to reach out to others and work together for the final work.
3. Learning is key – By having many minds contribute to the final goal, people can learn from one another on other ways to do the same type of work. This is great because it helps everyone be the teacher and the student, so there is an increase sense of education that is a plus for everyone involved.

Crowdsourcing is an useful model because it can be used by any group for any reason. Organizations have used it for developing programs, marketing efforts, research, and education. Earlier this month, we saw DARPA release ten balloons and ask people to pinpoint their locations. The results were outstanding and proved that a collective group can solve time-sensitive and critical situations. There have also been doctors that have used social networking tools, like Twitter, during surgery. This is a great use because it allows doctors collaborate together and share their expertise, which can ultimately save a patient’s life and/or help find cures in the future. Another use has been to aid others in fulfilling dreams. Kiva is an organization who allows anyone to contribute money to aid an entrepreneur in a developing country be successful in a business he/she is trying to begin or further develop. Additionally, crowdsourcing has even help bring awareness to charity causes and collecting money for them. One great example this year has been Blame Drew’s Cancer. After finding out he had cancer, Drew Olanoff used this knowledge to do something wonderful about it. He used Twitter to raise money for charity if people tweeted and blamed his cancer.

Here are ten social media tools that can aid you with crowdsourcing:

Twitter

It is already being used for many crowdsourcing efforts. The best way to use it is create a hashtag, explain what you are trying to accomplish, and have your followers tweet away. One of the ways that Twitter has been used (other than listed above) has been by conferences like South by Southwest (SXSW) and Gnomedex. They used Twitter, so that attendees could tweet and discuss the events with their followers.

Facebook

Create a Facebook Page and tell everyone about it. You can use the many applications that Facebook offers, so that others can answer questions on a survey, have discussions on the forums, and/or have notes to bring awareness to a topic. Facebook Page is a great way to use it for building brands, calling people to action, and/or build ideas.

Evernote

Create an area for your team can collaborate on notes, ideas, and information. Evernote allows you to clip anything (e.g. web sites, images, videos, etc.) that you find useful and share it with others.

Google Docs

If you want to share and collaborate in the creation of documents, spreadsheets, and presentations, then Google Docs is the best way to go. You can even chat with your fellow collaborators and see one another’s modifications without having to be in the same room.

GetSatisfaction

The best way to offer your clients the best customer service is by also allowing them the ability to resolve the issues themselves and share their questions and answers with anyone, even if that person is not a client. GetSatisfaction provides a way for companies to do that. JS-Kit Echo uses GetSatisfaction for their customer support. When I was having some issues adding the commenting system to my web site, I was able to quickly get a response from the JS-Kit team and their users. It was great to also be able to share my experience with my Twitter followers and Facebook friends.

Delicious

Social bookmarking is a great way to share interesting links that could aid in the development of an idea, education, and/or marketing efforts. Delicious is my favorite one to use for this. You can have a create a network or a group bookmarking account so that anyone can add new bookmarks, tags to existing, and add comments. It also allows you to share your bookmarks on other social networking sites.

Dropbox

Have a way for your team to upload and share different files with one another. This is great for sharing code, developing a web site, or for storing research findings. Dropbox offers a virtual hard drive that you can drag and drop directly from your computer. It even provides an audit trail, so that you can know what was uploaded, when, and by whom.

Scribd

If there are written works, such as documents, eBooks, and use cases, that you want available to your team or customers, Scribd is the way to go. Scribd allows people to read a piece of writing, share it with others, and provide comments on it. It’s a great way to get the ideas, suggestions, and questions from many people and make a better product.

Ustream and YouTube

Video blogging is becoming increasingly popular, especially now that smartphones have better video cameras, and there are apps to upload them to video services, such as Ustream and YouTube. Ustream gives you a way to host a live show and have your Twitter followers chat with you while you are on the show. Additionally, these can also be tweeted, so that their own followers can also contribute. You can also upload to YouTube, which is great because then you can also receive video responses.

Google Wave still has a few defects, but it can be a strong collaboration tool if Google resolves them. I am currently part of an Augmented Reality (AR) wave where they are trying to find a way to use Google Wave for AR. It is great seeing these innovate minds find creative ways to building augment reality into Google Wave, sharing code, images, and documents. Google Wave can also be used for customer service, web site/blog creation, an idea repository, etc.

What are some methods and tools that you have seen various organizations use for crowdsourcing? What do you think will be seen in 2010?

[ 10 Social Media Tools To Help With Your Crowdsourcing Efforts is a post written by Tamar Weinberg. ]

Read more about The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web, a primer to social media marketing. Or you can subscribe to the Techipedia RSS feed.

With many individuals finding great success with social media (and as an aside, a basic understanding of search engine optimization), they immediately consider themselves social media marketers and consultants (as well as seasoned SEOs) and offer to sell their promotional services. What skills, though, do successful social media marketers have that put these individuals above the average (or addicted) social media user, and better yet, above the traditional marketer? I asked several social media consultants, bloggers, marketers, search engine optimizers, and social media addicts about what they considered to be essential skills and characteristics of the most efficient and results-driven social media consultants. In the many paragraphs that follow, learn from many of the experts and hear what they consider success when using social media to engage with consumers about products and services.

Maki, Internet Marketing and Social Media Blogger: The main characteristic [social media marketers] need to have is a genuine curiosity/interest in social media, particularly on how it influences human relationships and business practices. This is not just standard required job skills but rather a deep interest that pervades one’s day to day life. One needs to constantly be informed of the latest technologies while striving always to learn and improve one’s knowledge levels. In order to do well when marketing, one should have tactical knowledge and ideally, first-hand experience of the specific social media platform. This will help a great deal in planning and managing successful marketing campaigns.

Reem Abeidoh, Social Media Strategist: A social media marketer provides strategic online recommendations based on the client’s business goals and intensive research. A marketer also reaches out to the target audience through various methods of social networking, and constantly monitors the buzz surrounding the client’s products and services. They should be passionate, strategic, creative, personable, intelligent, aggressive, diligent, determined, adaptable, motivated and have a sense of humor. To succeed, they need to do the following well:

• Data analysis
• Provides holistic strategies to clients
• Training, presenting, and research
• Relationship-building and networking
• Outreach to online users and bloggers

A social media marketer’s job never ends. They usually work 70 hour weeks and need to be extremely flexible. There are days when marketers may have to serve as internal evangelist by introducing key stakeholders to social media. There are other times when marketers may have to launch a multi-platform outreach campaign. It just depends on the needs of the client.

Additionally, a social media marketer needs to be a contributor and participant online to better understand the space and provide solid recommendations to their clients.

Valeria Maltoni, Online Marketer: Although social media as a set of tools has radically transformed marketing, I do not think it appropriate to use the term “social media marketer.” People do not want to hear from companies as represented by marketers, they want to hear from other people.

The scope of marketing needs to be broadened in view of the new dynamics that have employees, customers and prospects engaged in conversations – horizontally, peer to peer, in some cases even in co-opetition situations.

These scenarios come to fruition in spontaneous communities, on social networks, and other self-service tools – all thanks to the availability of low cost technology and access to the world wide web.

To participate in the conversation, marketers will need to be able to have and provide greater access to decision makers – speed of response is crucial. Other important skills will be the ability to hold or facilitate a conversation where listening and learning take the majority of the attention.

We are now right were we should be, attracting customers, building relationships and trust as we help them connect with each other.

Rebecca Kelley, Search Marketing and Social Media Consultant: A social media marketer needs to be an active participant in the social media sphere. Because social media is so interactive, it can constantly shift and change; therefore, a savvy marketer needs to be extremely familiar with the community and know how each social media website audience is different from the next. Also, one story on the Digg home page does not an expert make. A knowledgeable social media marketer has experienced repeated success on various social media websites and knows what sort of content succeeds and fails, and effective ways to write, submit, and promote various pieces.

Jason Falls, Director of Social Media: A social media marketer is simply someone who uses social media tools to connect products or services with customers or audiences. There’s no real reason to define it any more than the simple semantics of it all. That said, such a broad determination means you can be a social media marketer and not know it. You can also not use the tools correctly or not behave appropriately within communities around the tools and market poorly.

So, in order to be a good social media marketer, in my opinion, you should understand the tools you’re using and the communities to which you are marketing, be they ones that surround the tool itself (Twitter users) or subject matters within a certain tool (FriendFeed room about, say, cell phones.). Some communities are very open to marketers being there and contributing to the conversation. Others aren’t. As long as you earn your keep, contribute meaningfully to the community and gain the level of trust they need to allow you to seed your own messages or pitch your own products or services, and you don’t violate their trust, you’re marketing via social media successfully.

No, it’s still not a clear picture. People are different, communities are different and marketers/brands are different. As a result, the acceptance or success of a social media marketer will vary in different communities, using different tools and for different brands. But those basic rules will apply everywhere social media and marketing collide.

Geoff Livingston, author of Now is Gone and CEO of a Media Relations Firm: I think social media marketing really requires networking skills first, because you are building relationships, not overtly promoting. It’s a unique blend of networking skills (relationships). traditional PR skills (building goodwill), marketing skills (giving customers what they want), and customer service (delivering resolutions to issues). So ultimately, the best social media marketers understand all of these disciplines. It requires a convergence, making the jack of all trades suddenly and incredibly valuable.

MG Siegler, Technology and Digital Writer: I think a person who is a social media marketer is someone who is an expert at all of the various way of getting data on the various social sites out there. By that I mean not only the social voting sites like Digg, Reddit, etc, but also on the social networks (Facebook, MySpace, etc), social communication tools (Twitter, Pownce, Seesmic, etc..), social conversation tools (FriendFeed, and maybe you could even lump in Disqus and the like with it).

That person would ideally knows all the ins and outs of these systems and their various differences. For example, what plays well on Digg versus what plays well on Propeller.

A lot is made about being able to “game” these systems, but more I think a social media marketer should just know how to work with what is in front of them. Knowing the right people to send something to on StumbleUpon or keeping a conversation going on FriendFeed for example. Other example may be creating a fan page on Facebook or creating a company account on Twitter that tracks instances of the company name via a service like Summize.

I also think it’s extremely important for such a person to stay up to date on the most current trends within the social sphere. Things evolve so rapidly and sometimes new opportunities open up quickly that can be utilized.

Allen Stern, Founder of a Blog on Social Media: A social media marketer is someone who possesses first marketing education and/or experience. Second, a social media marketer is someone who markets products and/or services through the usage of social media tools.

Daniel Scocco, Blogger: In my opinion a social media marketer is someone that leverages social media to promote a website, product or company.

As for the characteristics that they need to possess, I think that the most important one is to be a social media user in the first place, and to like the concept.

Social media can be seen as a tool for a marketer, but not a static one like an advertisement. The term itself describes something that is made out of people, so the marketer needs to understand the dynamics behind it.

Michael Gray, Internet Marketer: Being a good social media marketer requires a combination of a few different skills. The first is understanding what are the things that appeal to a certain community. Stories that do well on Digg or Reddit, may not do as well on Kirtsy or Boudica, because the members of each community have different likes, dislikes and interests. A marketer has have an understanding of the community and help craft campaigns, articles, stories, videos and or pictures that appeal to each community.

Another skill is understanding what makes a story viral, or what are the qualities that make it sticky or interesting. Many companies just see this as a new avenue to push existing traditional marketing messages, and this is why they almost always fail. For example an article with “10 Reasons You Should Buy Travel Insurance” is almost never going to go viral, it’s not surprising, shocking, interesting or in any way sticky. But something like “10 People Who Wished They Bought Travel Insurance” showing pictures of prop planes that collided on the runway, or a video of someones suitcase dumping out and the contents strewn down the highway, has a much better chance.

Lastly is understanding that you have to be a member of the community first. if you see the community as a virtual ATM where you can come and get links without ever contributing, eventually your account will run dry. if the only stories you ever submit or vote on are for clients or friends, you are not going to do as well over the long term. The people who do well are the one who contribute lots of good stories that the community values, with a sprinkling in of other stories.

Laura Fitton, Presentations Consultant and @pistachio: A social media marketer is someone who is fundamentally oriented towards LISTENING first, and only then offering contributions that move the conversation forward. The result of their work is that it helps the business grow by genuinely and authentically helping customers. It’s not about any of the tools.

Advertising and marketing currently emphasize selling and helping others sell. That’s shifting to a future where profit comes from helping people buy.

Social media marketers have to listen and respond genuinely, most of all. Characteristics: unselfish, interested in people, open-minded, un-controlling and creative.

Chris Brogan, Social Media Strategist and Blogger: I think the term “social media marketer” might just be a temporary thing, because it’s like saying “email marketer.” I believe the people who use social media tools as a part of their marketing strategy should understand the following:

• relationships over shotguns. — marketing in online communities is a slower, more matching-based approach, where you think hard about whether the person you’re connecting with is the idea recipient of the information you have to share. It takes more time, but sticks much better.
• party hats not bullhorns. – social software and the communities it empowers are for contributing, not pushing. Share something at the party; don’t just barge in to give your messages.
• it’s not always about you. – sometimes, other people’s products are better. In this world we’re developing, we say that outright. We don’t obfuscate or dance around. We just say it when we think someone’s done it better.

People using these tools have to “be human” well, and by that, I mean realizing that all life isn’t based on marketing directives. Instead, it’s about contributing, bringing something to the picnic, and doing what Radian6 Marcel LeBrun calls “listening at the point of need.” That means, knowing when to promote your idea, product, or service.

Darren Rowse, VP of Blogger Training and Co-Author of Problogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income: What makes a person an effective social media marketer? Here’s a few quick thoughts:

1. Playfulness – there are so many tools out there that it can be overwhelming. An ability to be able to ‘play’ with them and work out how they are best used is important. Also not taking yourself too seriously is important.
2. Focus – social media is full of all kinds of wonderful distractions. Knowing what you want to achieve and being focussed enough to stay on that path is important.
3. Curiosity – most social media marketers that I know are constantly asking ‘what if….’ type questions. Curious people are driven to push into new group and solve problems in new ways.
4. Perseverance – building a social media presence doesn’t happen over night. It takes regular participation over a sustained period to build a network.
5. People Persons – being genuinely interested in people, what they think, how you can help them, what makes them tick…. all of this helps you become more effective in your communication and networking

Chris Garrett, Blogger, Internet Marketer, and Co-Author of Problogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income: I think there are three types of social media users: marketers, browsers and active users. Browsers obviously mostly lurk. The difference between the other two is agenda. A marketer has a goal, even if it is just self promotion, while the rest are just taking part out of social or entertainment reasons.

A good social media marketer has to be able to write, particularly headlines and descriptions, and will have a better chance of success if they are a student of psychology. The best like people, are fascinated by them, and enjoy socializing. You also have to be able to take knocks on the chin as social media can provide harsh criticism.

It’s a lot like SEO, people focus on algorithms, tricks and tactics but it is really all about people.

Matt McGee, Small Business Expert and Internet Marketer: I think great social media marketers come in all shapes and sizes, but if there’s one trait that seems to show up in spades in the people I know, it’s that they’re engaged with the world and the people around them. They love communicating and reaching out to others. They love ideas and news. They love sharing ideas and news. They have an interest in other people, whether they’re close friends or not. They have an interest in the world around them, and being active in it. Social media success is about being engaged.

Steve Spalding, Blogger and Entrepreneur: Like any traditional marketing field, Social Media marketing is almost exclusively about understanding the “territory.” You don’t hire a marketer because you think they have some magical ability to make bad products good. You hire a marketer because they understand the people, products and culture surrounding the industry you are trying to enter.

Good Social Media marketers are heavy users of Social Media. They love (or at least respect) the idea that many kinds of content can be distributed most effectively over the Internet, and because they use the platforms so heavily themselves they have the networks and the knowledge that allow them to make those distributions easier.

Almost as important, effective Social Media marketers also act as product designers. They’ve seen hundreds of applications and have used a large fraction of them. More importantly, they know which applications have been successful and have a general intuition as to which design elements sink and which swim in an environment inundated by noise.

To paint my answer in broader strokes, Social Media marketers “get” the web. We understand that the Internet is just like any other country, city, town or industry that has ever existed and that in order to market a product successfully on it you have to understand, respect and know how the deal with the people in it.

Brian Clark, Blogger, Editor, and Entrepreneur: A social media marketer is one who understands how social media works, takes the time to observe what people say and do within the context of social media, and then markets accordingly.

Todd Mintz, Director of Internet Marketing (and @toddmintz): Social media marketing (as I define it) is the process of delivering a marketing message via the most appropriate social communication channels to a targeted audience. A top-level social media marketer needs to possess the following capabilities:

1. Being able to look at the client situation and perceive the appropriate steps that need to be taken in order to have a successful engagement.
2. Identify who the target audience should be for the message (Note that I’m deliberately starting with the conclusion and working backwards).
3. Decide which social networks / influential persons are the most appropriate conduits for relaying the message to the end users.
4. Creating or overseeing the creation of a marketing message that will not only resonate with the targeted audience in a way advantageous to the client but also resonates with the members of the social networks & key influencers so they will act in such a way that the message gets passed via their collective sphere of influence to the masses.
5. Launching the message out to the networks & people that will spread the word (schmoozing as necessary).
6. Supervising the whole process and when the inevitable hiccups happen, knowing what to do to get everything back on track.

People who can do all this well are Social Media Marketing Rockstars!

Muhammad Saleem, Social Media Maven: A good social media marketer isn’t really a ‘marketer’. He/She is a connector (and is good at social networking), a maven (and is a thought leader and ‘information specialist’ or information resource), and a salesperson that can persuade an eskimo to buy ice. He has to not only be an information resource but be an active participant in the various social web communities that he claims proficiency in.

A good social media marketer is one who can start a conversation that people want to participate in.

Brian Solis, Principal of a New Media Agency and Blogger: Social Media Marketing combines 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 conversations. In an ideal world, Social Media Marketers will also embrace social sciences to observe and understand the online cultures and social dynamics where they ultimately wish to participate.

Many purport to be social media experts these days, yet most of us are truly students. We overlook some of the most rudimentary elements that define and inspire the socialization of content, especially the social sciences involved with observing the culture, behavior, and conversations within online societies.

We’re excited, and maybe even obsessed, with the tools. We frantically rush from service to service in an exhausting attempt to keep up with our peers, fearing that we may one day relinquish our position as a leading authority on the subject of all things social. We are edglings, and the membership dues are paid in the form of time, attention, vision, and translation as we bring shiny new objects from the edge to the center.

But, are we losing sight of the guiding principles and teachings that foster meaningful and rewarding relationships simply because we’re practically held captive by a never-ending cycle of new and popular social tools? Our thinning attention may be clouding our ability to see the bigger picture.

Suddenly everyone is a social media consultant, yet very few of us are true online sociologists, observers, or genuine conversationalists. The firsthand research and lessons learned in the field are invaluable and definitely tier the experience and expertise of those selling their services. But, just because we’re on Twitter and Seesmic, blogging, or uploading Flip videos to YouTube doesn’t qualify us social media experts.

It’s so much more than the ability to guide companies on how to create fan pages on Facebook, islands on SecondLife, accounts on Pownce or Plurk, and profiles on Bebo or Myspace. Social Media experts must have the ability to determine which networks are relevant to the businesses that they represent, why, and how and when to engage. Most importantly, they must connect participation to brand resonance, customer loyalty and also the ever prominent “bottom line.”

It’s the listening, 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.

Without a working knowledge 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.

Jonathan Hochman, Internet Marketer and Wikipedia Administrator: I classify social media marketers by their level of involvement:

1. Listening — Being aware of social media, monitoring your brand, and using that information to make business decisions.
2. Responding — Participating in discussions about your brand on the web in an effort to improve your reputation and increase visibility.
3. Inviting — Building social media applications, such as blogs, wikis, bookmarks, to interact with your audience.

Li Evans, Director of Internet Marketing: A social media marketer understands that utilizing social media is about building relationships through communication and sharing. In order to build relationships with customers, or potential customers for their clients, the social media marketer realizes that those relationships have to be built on trust. By starting out with a solid foundation in social media, marketers realize they can do exciting things with these customers — the potential can really be limitless. With social media, the marketer realizes that the experience of the interaction and engagement with the customers is the ending results — anything else is a by-product.

Debra Mastaler, Link Builder and Search Marketer: What makes a person a social media marketer? The desire to be heard.
What characteristics do they have to possess? The good ones have to be brave, smart and fair to a fault.
What do they have to do well? Good social media marketers need to communicate well, understand not all goals are profit oriented and have the ability to turn casual participants into a legion of loyal followers.

Jonathan Fields, Entrepreneur and Blogger: What makes a social media marketer?

Reality is, everyone who engages in social media on a regular basis is a social media marketer, it’s just a matter of what we’re marketing. Some people are looking to change the world, others to change what people buy and still others just want to make friends. But, in the end, all of us in social media are looking to effect some outcome.

The folks who get “labeled” social media marketers, though, are the ones who tap social media to push a more commercial end-result. So to me, it’s more about the intention behind the action.

Are you choosing your hubs and posts based on a concerted effort to build authority, brand or sell a specific product or service? Are you crafting the language of every sentence toward that same end? That’s commercial social media marketing.

So, while a lot of the actions of a commercial social media marketer and someone pushing friendship or conversation around non-commercial topics may look outwardly similar, it’s the intention and level of focused, deliberate effort that makes the difference.

Wiep Knol, Link Builder and Internet Marketer: In my opinion, the difference between a social media marketer and a “regular” marketer is their point of view. A regular marketer is usually product minded and aims products (or content, or whatever) at target groups, while a social media marketer is consumer minded and matches groups of people with products. Another difference (and characteristic) is that a social media marketer is far closer to the end user. By following, participating, discussing and listening very carefully, a social media marketer is able to adjust both his or her product AND his or her selling technique to the customer.

A social media marketer is like opt-in, where most regular marketers are like opt-out.

I came across a great example earlier today; the form at http://www.conversationmarketing.com/2008/07/how_not_to_design_a_signup_for.htm
was probably designed by a regular marketer.

David Chen, Blogger: A social media marketer thoroughly understands the systems that people use to connect to each other, and knows how to leverage those systems to spread positive messages about a brand.

Michael Dorausch, Chiropractor and Social Media Addict: I’ve been a webmaster for more than 10 years but I wouldn’t consider myself a social media marketer. From the people I’ve met and interacted with, I’ve come to the conclusion that it takes a specific focus if they are to perform well. The best social media marketers that I’ve met have had these traits in common: they network well off-line and online, they offer assistance first and ask for help later, they get great results (for themselves and or their clients). Being able to work well with others, not being pushy, selecting quality content and/or clients to promote, and seeking ways to help others, are all things I’ve seen top social media marketers do well. They are active on nearly all the usual suspects popular social media sites, and they typically bring a lot of value to the community. That’s the one thing I believe separates them from novices and newcomers to social media marketing. It’s like going to an open bar event, the newcomer will ask people to buy them drinks. The advanced marketer will make sure the bartender is tipped well and we’ll see all their friends don’t go thirsty. Doesn’t cost them much to assist others, and they reap many return benefits.

Chris McGill, Founder of Social News Site Mixx.com: To me there are mostly social media enthusiasts: we call them “media hubs.” These are people who are enthusiastic about information and what is going on right now is part of the fabric of their being. They represent somewhere around 15% of the population and they simply have a passion for info and sharing info on the topics and subjects they find interesting/ are passionate. The vast majority of people fall into the “reader” category in that they consume (and vote) on the content that is being put forward by the media hubs. Again, I think being a media hub is just a part of a person’s being.

Adam Metz, Social Media Strategist: [Social media marketing is] a few things:

1. Experience working with diverse groups of brands, generally (business-to-business, business-to-consumer)
2. Experience executing in at least 10 tools (podcast, video, wiki, blog, social network, etc.)
3. Total authenticity with the client, to the point of being willing to terminate an engagement when it’s clear that the client is not ready for social media counsel.
4. A win-win-win attitude (for the client, the social media consultant, and the users of the social web at large)

Kim Krause Berg, Blogger and Usability Consultant: A social media marketer is an outgoing personality who intuitively understands the medium and its potential to network and communicate ideas, as well as persuade value proposition to readers. Link drops in social media sites are not social media marketing. Creating sites on Facebook and MySpace are not either. There has to be a REASON to go there and retain interest.

Basics and theory aside, I find the social media marketers I respond to the most are impeccably polite polite, friendly, care about the people they network with and are responsive in positive ways. They know their audience and stay in touch. I can sense a “user” type and that turns me away.

Shana Albert, Web Designer and Social Media Addict: What is a Social Media Marketer? They are active honest members of Online Communities where they can naturally get the word out about a product or service… causing their message to become viral throughout online communities and bring in viewers/customers/clients to a Website.
Characteristics they must possess: outgoing, extrovert, motivated/motivator, social, easily multi-task, organized, influencer, persistent, creative, friendly
What do thy have to do well? conversation, multi-task, participate, influence, unselfish member of community, creative web content

Jason Kaneshiro, Blogger and Web Developer: A Good Social Media Marketer:

• Should be comfortable and eager to use new technology.
• Should be able to quickly assess a new social website – how it works, how it would be useful, and the characteristics of the community that fits within.
• Should be sensitive to the mores of the community within a social site – what would be considered spamming or rude behavior.
• Should do their best to become part of that social site’s community.
• Should also be comfortable and productive using “old” technology (Email, IM, desktop applications).
• Should be aware of the tools the target audience is communicating with, and able to craft the message to the appropriate medium.
• Should be able to work anywhere, and from any computer, or even just a cellphone.
• Should know how to make their data portable so they aren’t tied to one service for their online identity, and manage that data so it can be retained.

Generally, different social sites foster different communities, where different messages are appropriate or celebrated while others are considered “spam” – and what’s “spam” on one site may not be on another.

Also interesting is the “digital nomad” trend – increasingly mobile computing, from laptops to cell phones and beyond. I would say it’s a must for social media marketers to have all their data and tools online so they can be productive from any computer in any location. Then consider how one could be productive with just a cell phone, and it may even be a worthwhile exercise to write a blog post using pencil and paper.

The last point is a reminder to be aware of data portability – if not the principle of the thing, it’s good to know how to get all our online data “out of the cloud” and backed up. A user of new technology should use it to the fullest, but also consider that a lot of technologies fail and it’s never good to become “locked in” to one company’s products.

Louis Gray, Blogger: A successful social media marketer would be somebody who grasps where his/her audience is and knows where conversations will take place online. They would typically leverage social networking sites and news aggregators, and engaging in such a way that their message or product is communicated.

They would need to display an understanding of how different social media communities interact, and what how each one offers a unique experience, which could be folded into more traditional approaches to public relations, demand generation advertising and brand awareness.

An ideal background for somebody here would include:

• Traditional marketing or public relations experience
• Tie-ins with increasing pipeline and revenue
• Their own active blog with strong writing skills
• The ability to communicate as a public speaker and use PowerPoint-type apps
• Awareness and engagement of leading social communities

Jane Quigley, VP of Social Media and Emerging Technologies: There are a number of different skillsets needed as a social media marketer. Of course, like any job, there are different levels of experience, but I have a pretty set list of criteria that remains constant.

One — Participant
This is the easy one. Where, how, how much (although that’s subjective — people get busy) and how smart they are about it. That’s to say — are they smart about what’s posted on the Facebook profile? Can they identify trends? Are they obsessive about it, or does Social Media seem fun and easy? What blogs are they reading — and what posts have been memorable? Do they go to BarCamps, PodCamps, etc?

I want to see the basics — Facebook, LinkedIn, Digg, StumbleUpon, Flickr, YouTube, a Blog, Twitter (Basic)

Two — Big Picture
How does social media work with other current strategic tactics (SEO, Branding, Advertising). Where does it fit within the entire campaign and especially how does it support the brand?

Three — Relationship Master
Building a client relationship is key — not only in communicating trust and results — but long-term client welfare.

Four — Analyst
Knowing how to analyze a campaign for results. How to set benchmarks, test campaigns, look at trends, analyze results.

Five — Curiosity
Did not kill the cat — it makes each candidate stronger — no matter where you are in a career. Be curious about everything online and offline. Real life has a way of influencing online behavior.

Six — Sharing is Caring
I want to know what excites someone — what people bookmark, what FB apps they like, what videos/pictures they tag. You can tell a lot about a person from what and how they share.

Brent Csutoras, Social Media Consultant: Defining a social media marketer is difficult based on the true definition being the use of social media for a marketing purpose. With “social media” being a vague term that indicates any feature or function that allows other people to participate with any given site, almost everyone is technically engaged in social media and people that use it at even a basic level for some conversion or gain, often refer to themselves as social media marketers.

However, if you were to sell your own car, it does not make you a car salesman. So just because someone happens to use or participate in social media marketing does not make them a social media marketer.

I think being a social media marketer is defined when you are paid, in some fashion, to take an active interest in the way social communities work and start to participate within them strategically. When I was young someone once told me “If you do it for fun, it is a hobby. If you get paid for it, it’s your profession.”

Conclusion

I purposely asked a variety of users of social media, from the media relations and marketing spectrum to the social media enthusiast and blogger spectrum, for this answer. Many agreed that social media is about community-building, passion, and enthusiasm. Creativity, a multi-tasking mindset, and the ability to think outside the box were also heavily agreed upon. Most importantly, those who find the most success in the social media marketing realm are those who are heavily networked and ensure that maintaining ongoing relationships is part of their everyday routine.

Social media marketing encompasses a variety of elements and is synonymous with community (particularly those communities that belong to the new media sphere) sprinkled with other traditional marketing elements, such as dedication, perseverance, and fervor. Successful social media marketers are thought leaders. They must be kept abreast of the latest technologies in addition to buzz surrounding the products and services that they are responsible to market. Above all, though, social media marketers’ contributions to the community should be selfless and should be thought to benefit those who engage within the community.

What is your definition of a successful social media consultant?

(All photos created by Will Lion as discovered by Paul Stamatiou)

[ What Traits Define a Social Media Marketer? is a post written by Tamar Weinberg. ]

Read more about The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web, a primer to social media marketing. Or you can subscribe to the Techipedia RSS feed.

Greetings all from SXSW! It’s been an incredibly busy and physically taxing few days (with little hotel internet and no real opportunities to sit down and edit posts), so you’re seeing yesterday’s keynote today (and numerous other posts to be put on this blog in the upcoming days). Here we go with the highly-talked-about keynote presentation at South by Southwest…

Just like an Apple keynote, they tried to build up some serious momentum for this event. In fact, before Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook came out into the open, they dimmed the lights, pumped up the volume, and introduced Mark with some catchy Daft Punk tunes.

This keynote has been heavily discussed, mostly criticizing BusinessWeek editor and interviewer Sarah Lacy’s approach toward the interview. Personally, having sat next to Daniel Terdiman of CNet, I heard (and understand) both perspectives after having liveblogged the entire event. Particularly, for me, Mark Zuckerberg’s responses were lacking of any substance and felt too “corporate.”? Brian Solis has written a very good piece on Sarah after spending hours speaking with her about the backlash.

(Photo credit: Brian Solis)

Here’s the edited version of the interview from a neutral perspective.

Sarah Lacy: Facebook is playing a strong role throughout the world. Tell us about how it has evolved.
Mark Zuckerberg: It’s a great first place to start. A lot of the focus as of late is how we as a company has grown. Facebook helps people connect and communicate more efficiently. For individuals, Facebook helps to build more trusting and empathetic relationships and builds upon their lives. One example of this is that we just launched internationally: Facebook was always available for people to use but only in English. On February 11, we launched in Spanish. (Sarah Lacy interjects: Let’s hear it for Spain!) One of the countries that has benefited from this is Colombia. When we launched in February 11th, a lot of people signed up to use it to revolt against the guerrilla army in Colombia.

Lacy: Let’s talk about that: the original vision and original mission of the site. Did you ever expect them to revolt against the government of Colombia?
Zuckerberg: Well…no. If we can help people communicate efficiently, that will have profound effects. That’s a really important thing as the world becomes an increasingly complex place. As you add all those connections, you can make a profound impact on the world.

Lacy: What is it about Facebook though? The Internet as a whole enables communication, so why Facebook?
Zuckerberg: The internet is a great platform for overall communication, but there need to be specific tools. We’re not the only ones [enabling such communication] but a lot of people are using our tools, especially in places like Colombia. We’re not trying to build new communities; we’re allowing people to communicate with people they already know.

Lacy: You were telling me a story about Facebook and terrorism. Can you talk about how efficient the platform is for this? It’s surreal to think about these stories.
Zuckerberg: A few months ago, I heard this story that’s unbelievable. Facebook has a large population in Lebanon. At this point, people who have studied terrorism enough know it’s not out of a deep hatred of anyone; it comes from a lack of connectedness, a lack of communication, a lack of empathy, and a lack of understanding. There were youths in Lebanon who have spent a lot of time with their local religious leaders because their leaders educate them and provide the youths with free services such as food and shelter. They are also like regular youths: they do things on Friday night like we do in the western world, such as going out for food and meeting girls. Because of Facebook, these people were able to maintain connections with their friends who have gone to Europe and other places, which enabled them to broaden their horizons and increase the options [and choices] that they had. It gave them a broader perspective of what is happening in the world. These people are currently at a crossroads in their lives and are deciding what they want to do with themselves, and Facebook is helping them choose. We’re not the only ones who do this but we’re definitely helping them communicate.

Lacy: Beyond just enabling it, are there things you are doing to proactively do things in the world? As a company?
Zuckerberg: As a mission, it is a very important thing for us: to help people communicate efficiently.

Sarah tells the story about how Mark Zuckerberg was on 60 minutes and how Mark hasn’t been giving great answers. Eventually, she asked, “tell us in two words what you feel about this interview.” Zuckerberg answered, “that’s really hard.” And the response? “Okay, three words.”

Zuckerberg: So what was the question again?
Lacy repeats her question and Mark continues: There are a lot of really big issues in the world that need to be solved. We’re trying to build an infrastructure to solve these problems.

He talks of a group on Facebook that has a goal to build an organization that has enough political clout to achieve ends to end poverty. He heard a story where there was a bill that was being voted on. There were people protesting everywhere. Within a week, the senator behind the bill realized that he got it wrong. With all the protests, the senator realized that the people behind the different organizational efforts really were against the bill. The thing that was most striking to Mark about this is that he realized that Facebook can help out. He asks, “why does there need to be a big organization that channels people’s voices? We’re at a day and age where people should be able to communicate without millions of dollars. The world is increasingly complex. There are a ton of issues out there and the US is not necessarily in the same position it was before where they can tell other people what they should be doing, so there needs to be a solid base for people to communicate. We need to have a base that works from bottom up” with people who build applications. I think that’s a really important trend in the world. We’re not running around with a ton of money but we’re trying to build the infrastructure where people can communicate and do these things.

Lacy: When you compare Web 1.0 and Web 2.0, I think that fewer companies are as successful in the Web 2.0 world, but those who are have a tremendous impact. I think that’s why people are addicted to the site.

Lacy: Well, you’ve touched on international — I heard you were launching France tonight –
Mark: Yeah! Way to get that news before me! [Audience reaction: mixed reviews]
Yes, we’re launching in French tonight. [And now everyone cheers]

Lacy: A lot of web companies have a hard time scaling internationally. You guys seem to have navigated it better than others. Why do you think that is?
Zuckerberg: We’re tapping into a universal need. Even from the beginning when I launched Facebook in Harvard, a lot of people thought it was a college thing, but we’re always helping people connect. I think that this or something like it — perhaps Facebook, perhaps not — will connect every single person in this way.

Lacy: You’ve created a great innovation. What about the ad deal you currently have with Microsoft? Google and Microsoft are going after social networks and some people feel aren’t monetizable. Do they feel they’re getting their money’s worth (especially because sites like Digg and MySpace may not be)?
Zuckerberg: Let’s talk about what we do at the company. Our mission is connecting people. In terms of the Microsoft relationship, we want the way people make money to be in line with the way people use the site. People always list their favorite music, favorite movies, and things they’re into, and a lot of that is very commercial. That’s fine; people are expressing their identities. If we give people enough information, that’s a significant overlap with the way we think we’re going to make money on the site.

Someone from the audience yells out “Beacon sucks.” (“We’ll get to that,” Sarah says.)
Lacy: There’s a sense that you have this immediate revenue from Microsoft but people think that’s not sustainable and it’s not profitable.
Zuckerberg: I’m sure Microsoft is pretty happy with it. We’re a private company so we’re not sharing but it’s going well for both of us.
Lacy: The world of advertising is changing.
Zuckerberg: It’s part of a larger trend. It’s basically people endorsing things.

Lacy: Have you figured out how this endorsing thing works?
Zuckerberg: We probably got a little ahead of ourselves and thought we understood more about it than we actually did, but I think in general, the theme holds. We think that the way that people share things is the way we want to build upon.

Lacy: You view this as a social graph and you see this as a multi-decade process.
Zuckerberg: Correct. We see this as a long term process. A lot of people are playing an instrumental role here and it takes time.

Lacy: Let’s talk about Beacon. WTF?
Zuckerberg: …
Lacy: Tell us about it. Let’s all have an open mind and listen.
Zuckerberg: In our company, Beacon isn’t part of the ad team. It’s part of our platform team. There’s a trend that these social networks or social services have moved from monolithic sites to a collection of social services. Some are ones we’ve developed, such as the News Feed, Profiles and Inbox, but a lot of services are things that we’re not developing. We know our DNA isn’t set to develop everything and a lot of people out there are more talented. An increasing number of social sites like Facebook are building platforms that allow other people to build services upon them. Similarly, a lot of people are building things outside Facebook.com. We can push information to our friends and that’s an increasing part of the ecosystem. Beacon is the first step in letting people take action in other parts of the web and sharing them back with their friends on Facebook. Our ad system was intended to fit very organically with things on the site. It’s trusted and you care about it because your friends are endorsing it. If your friends communicate it, you trust it. The first iteration of Beacon was intended to do that outside Facebook. We made a lot of mistakes when we did that and we’re trying to fix that. We’re learning as a company.

Lacy: It’s interesting that you compare the News Feed and Beacon. At the time, the News Feed situation threatened the company more than Beacon. There was a lot more uproar over the news feed from more users than there was with Beacon and it was primarily a concern about privacy. Is there something about a bigger vision of where things are going that addresses this concern of privacy?
Zuckerberg: We need to give people complete control over the information that they have. That enables more sharing. Twenty to twenty five percent of people have their cell phone number shared on Facebook at this time. The reason why they do that is because they have opted to share this only with their friends. Granular control over their information allows for this connection to take place. The more control users have, the more information people will prefer to share and the more we’ll be able to achieve our goals. All the times we’ve made mistakes, we haven’t given them control (“or you haven’t communicated it” — Sarah).

Lacy: When you opened the Facebook developer platform, you grew in membership but a lot of people considered all these apps frivolous. What do you think about this? Are we going to see real substance?
Mark: There are pretty big changes underway. We believe that people are fundamentally good and aren’t trying to game the system inherently. The applications you get are inherent of the product system we’ve set up. You can add the box to the profile and choose to distribute it, etc. You as a user have up until a point to utilize this without being spammy. These systems are all about trust. We have made the system work in such a way that when you send requests, the more your friends accept particular requests, the more requests you’re able to send. If people like your feed items, your feed items will appear more frequently on other people’s feeds. Those feed items people like get pushed to other users. It’s a trust based system.

Lacy:Is that a fine line in keeping the system very open?
Zuckerberg: In one way, it means less rules from us directly. The community can determine if something is being too aggressive.

Lacy: Talk about the rumors that you’re launching an iTunes with record labels. What’s going on?
Mark: I don’t know. We talked to a lot of companies all the time. Right now, there are music applications on Facebook, and music has been a vertical that we haven’t gone after at all. Facebook internally has developed photo applications and video applications, but not music applications. Once we opened the developer platform, there were music applications that filled that void, like iLike. At this point, I don’t think we have anything to talk about.

Lacy: Is that something appealing to you though?
Zuckerberg: We’re first and foremost trying to build this base. We want to enable communication so that we can build applications ourselves and then we build a developer platform that enables our users to build other applications for that goal.

At this point, Sarah thought there was time running out (but there really is 30 minutes left)…

Zuckerberg: You mean you’re out of questions?
Lacy: I was at a Hackathon at Facebook and the place was disgusting. There were Wii bongos all over the place and it was like a tornado had come through. Mark was half asleep and I kept him out for 6 hours.
(In other words, she has plenty of questions.)

Lacy: Respond to this: you’re the youngest billionaire according to Forbes.
Zuckerberg: We’re not really thinking about that. We’re not focused on financial information. Internally, the company is all about the themes about communication, our developer platform, and how we can best map out friends. We just want to go and build a business. That lets us attract the people that enables us to reach our goals.

Lacy: Does having a valuation like that bring forth a negative? More people want to work at Facebook and you have to live up to a high bar?
Zuckerberg: It’s tough, but it adds a lot of positive things. The recruiting is important to us though, as we consider people who are aligned with our core mission. Having such a focus on money in the business has been tough because it has self-selected people who care too much about that. We’re not planning on going public anytime soon because we don’t want people to want to make money very quickly. I think we want to do well and build a good business. We value that we are worth to be aligned with the value we provide to our users.

Lacy: That’s what we talked about in the beginning. The core of it is community building and without that, nothing wouldn’t be happening.
Zuckerberg: Right.

Lacy: For such a long time until the Microsoft deal, IPO was a topic of conversation. Maybe you want a valuation because it kind of closes the door on that speculation. Is that a side benefit?
Zuckerberg: We’re not making a lot of decisions based on [financial decisions].
Lacy: But it throws it down the gauntlet.
Zuckerberg: It’s really not about the value. It’s not that we don’t want to do IPO; we’re just not focused on it. Some companies have that as a goal, but for us, that’s not what we’re trying to go for. There was a similar thing in 2006 when Yahoo was going to buy the company. They were offering $1 billion, which is a lot. We were thinking that perhaps the company can grow to be worth more than that. We used that opportunity to really give people the opportunity to connect. How many times do people have the chance to do that? Zero or one. That’s how we’re thinking about it.

Lacy: Jim Breyer, who is on the Facebook board of directors, realized you were an entrepreneur who ran your business with your gut feeling, your heart, and with sheer analytical thinking, and when you weighed on the IPO from both perspectives, you said it was a bad deal.
Zuckerberg: Okay.
Lacy: Well what do you think about that statement?
Zuckerberg: A lot of people didn’t want to [go ahead with IPO].
Lacy: Really?
Zuckerberg: Yeah.
Lacy: That’s not he word on the street.
Zuckerberg: Yeah, we made some management changes. [The audience murmurs at this response.]
Lacy: You know what you’re good. If you don’t like people, they don’t stick around.
Zuckerberg: We really rely on the people on our team. There are expectations from us and from our staff in terms of what people want to get out of it. With the Yahoo thing, there were a lot of people who joined who wanted to have the company bought for $1 billion, because they would have made a lot of money right then and there. There were others who didn’t care for that.
Lacy: I think it’s good that you remove people who don’t see in line with your vision.

Lacy: Let’s talk about Sheryl Sandberg, the person that you just hired from Google. What do you think about bringing a grown up into the mix?
Zuckerberg: It was a group decision, really. We were looking for someone to scale our operations, as we now have over 500 employees. The company is growing really quickly. It’s incredibly important for us.

Lacy: What do you think about having a woman in this environment? After all, this is a male dominated field.
Zuckerberg: I think she has a good track record. I don’t think that will be an issue.

Lacy: You also recently put Matt Cohler in charge of Product Development. Can you elaborate?
Zuckerberg: He’s been here for nearly 4 years and he’s been in charge of a lot of operations in the company, including sales. This is a big step for us. We want to scale the company in an effective way. We have over 200,000 developers, so this step was necessary.
Lacy: It gives you more time to be CEO.
Zuckerberg: Cohler is going to bring more scale and organization to the business. It’s an interesting time for us.

Lacy: What about you staying CEO? Why do you want to be CEO? A lot of founders don’t want to be CEOs. Kevin Rose, for example, is not CEO of Digg. Do you feel that you want that level of control over what you build or is [being a CEO] something that you love?
Zuckerberg: I think the CEO sets the goal of the organization. For me, being in that role is a good way for me to make sure that the organization focuses on these goals in its product development, its communication and narrative, its privacy policies, its development platform, the advertiser system, and the operations — and that’s a really important thing. As the organization grows, we need people to keep their eyes on what’s important and that’s what I do.

Lacy: Everyone wants to write about Web 2.0 and they all use Facebook as an example. I think you’re distinct from the rest of the web 2.0 world. One way this is is that you consider yourself a tech company, not a media company, and you don’t leverage yourself as using one community.
Zuckerberg: Being a technology company is important for the culture of the company. We try to hire a leadership team that is largely technical. Our marketing director has a tech background. Our CFO has a technical background. It lets us be pervasive in our culture. We really believe that to reach our goals, we need to let other people build companies that can help them communicate. In terms of community, we think about it as a personal thing. The site is really serving as a utility to maintain relationships.

Lacy: Can I tell the people about the books?
Zuckerberg: Go for it.
Lacy: One thing a lot of people don’t know about Mark is that he has a lot of bound books that he uses to painstakingly write out his ideas for the site. You can actually see everything in these books about how the website is played out. [To Mark:] I find that fascinating that you’re a computer guy and you write this on paper and you’ve been working on this vision in this way all along. Right?
Zuckerberg: Sure.
Lacy: Well?
Zuckerberg: You have to ask questions.
Everyone starts applauding at this! (Here’s where it gets interesting.)
Lacy: Just to warn you, when I interviewed Michael Arrington once, I spilled a cup of cold water on him. At this, Zuckerberg takes away her cup of water and moves it to his side of the table.
Lacy: How much of that has been your original vision that you’ve seen in your books and how much has changed?
Zuckerberg: A lot of what I’ve written in those books have been broad ideas. The News Feed is a pretty good idea in theory, but for a lot of stuff that gets built, there are a lot of details. People look at the News Feed and think that it may have been good or bad. The same goes for the platform development. People chock most of it up to the original idea but the vast majority of what is currently on the site didn’t come from me writing in a book. It came from the team at Facebook who has been working for weeks and months. My job is to communicate and help people focus but I don’t want to downplay the fact that other people are doing all this work.
Lacy: You didn’t mention that you destroy the books.
Zuckerberg: Yes, I didn’t.
Lacy: He burns the books.
Zuckerberg: No I don’t! You made that up.
[An audience member shouts: Talk about something interesting!]
Lacy: You have to realize that my job is a lot harder than you think!

Then the audience shouts “Q&A” and Sarah gives into mob rule and lets them ask questions.

Question: There’s a fundamental problem with the site right now. You have the information, but you can’t hold onto it.
Zuckerberg: We are aiming to give more people control. If we don’t succeed at control, it’s going to be an issue for us.

Question: You can’t even search within your messages and you can’t hold onto a post and tag it.
Zuckerberg: We’re working on these things, and they’re clearly very important to us. Facebook is relatively constrained as a company. Things take time for development. We’re working on it. We need to get there, so thank you for bringing it up.

Question: Do you think there are too many applications right now, like MySpace, and that you’ll have to block them?
Zuckerberg: I think the ideal format is one that lets people use the applications that they want to and not use the ones they don’t want.

Question: Other than really rough interviews, what do you think is the single biggest obstacle that Facebook faces?
Lacy: Has this been a really rough interview?
Questioner: I’m not asking you. I’m asking Mark!
Lacy: Someone send me a message about why it is that I suck so badly.
Zuckerberg: I think a lot of it is around building these systems and giving people control while also building an easy product that honors users’ privacy. We want the framework that enables people to share the info that they want. That’s a huge thing for us within the next year.
Follow-up question: Is this a concern related to security or reputation?
Zuckerberg: It’s really about privacy and trust. The most important thing is to give people control and build a framework for application sharing. If we can extend that to the application platform, it can be a really valuable thing.

Question: Is Google pissed that you are trapping so much information within Facebook?
ZuckerbergL I’m not trapping information. [pause] No, those guys are nice. In general, search is an important thing if you want to make information available to the whole world. With Facebook, your information is not completely private and it’s not completely public. You can give information to your friends or not. We think that it’s a different realm. Search and sharing semi-private information is a big trend and will play a big part in the next few years, but [us sharing information with search engines] is really not us.

Question: One of my frustrations with MySpace is that they like shoving TV shows and ads in front of me. You’ve talked a lot of about efficiency, but I can’t sort messages or save them. I can only keep them or delete them. In reality, email is a better option. When do you plan to fix this and why hasn’t it been prioritized?
Zuckerberg: We didn’t plan on being an email competitor. Messaging was initially set up to be a simple thing but people started using it more often than we expected and for other things. We didn’t focus on it because messaging was set up for that purpose initially. It’s something we want to fix in the future.

Lacy: Anything else you wanted to add?
Zuckerberg: I didn’t think [that the interview] was that painful. I think these are interesting trends to watch, and I’m glad that we got to talk about this stuff. We often find ourselves talking about this corporate stuff and the valuation of Facebook as a company and not stuff we care about. But we should understand the trends in the world and this is a conference to do that at because the attendees are engineers, artists, designers, and developers.

So, what are your thoughts?

[ SXSW: Mark Zuckerberg Keynote (the edited liveblogged version) is a post written by Tamar Weinberg. ]

Read more about The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web, a primer to social media marketing. Or you can subscribe to the Techipedia RSS feed.

Last year, I ended 2006 with a great (and still pertinent) list of blog posts and articles that I felt were really the best in their class in the area of Internet Marketing. This year, I present you my favorite timeless posts of 2007, complete with descriptions about each blog post (which more than quadrupled the workload for me this time around, especially because I tripled the amount of links, but I had fun!) (Disclaimer: I’m certain that even with this list in excess of 250 links, I forgot a bunch of posts, so if you have any additional recommendations, please feel free to comment and I’ll add them!)

By the way, I still haven’t fully embraced video yet, so this will only include written articles. Maybe next year, folks!

Social Media Sites: General

• The Big Boys of Social Bookmarking: The Top 20 Sites (10e20): Chris Winfield ranks the top 20 social bookmarking sites by their Alexa rankings and gives a short description of what each does — in case you haven’t ventured beyond Digg.
• 24 Do-Follow Social Bookmarking Sites that Actually Work (Caroline Middlebrook): Get some powerful links on some of these lesser-known social sites.
• Social Networking: Ages 20-60 and Up (Muhammad Saleem): Did you know that the older folk also embrace social networking? What are the most popular sites in these age groups?
• Online Networkng and the Professions that Use It (Muhammad Saleem): There are a lot of niche social sites around, but did you know what they are?
• Top 29 Niche Social Media Sites (That Actually Send Traffic): Andy Hagans consistently updates this list with some great resources that aren’t necessarily being tapped into by many folks, but maybe it’s time for things to change.
• 83 Social News Sites – Categorized by Niche (Square Oak): Brendan Picha lists another handful of social media sites in case you’ve lost your taste for the mainstream sites.

Facebook

• The Facebook Marketing Bible: 24 Ways to Market Your Brand, Company, Product, or Service Inside Facebook (Inside Facebook): Justin Smith shows how Facebook includes a variety of channels that spread the word in a very in-depth blog post.
• 9 Reasons You Should be Using and Watching Facebook (Sugarrae): There’s a lot of marketing potential in Facebook, and Rae shows you why.
• 12 Ways to Use Facebook Professionally (Web Worker Daily): Networking on Facebook is precisely what you make of it. If you have the mindset to make Facebook a professional tool, you certainly can turn it into one.
• The Updated Unofficial Smartass Facebook Guide (Sugarrae): People still don’t know how to use Facebook. Rae explains all.
• 10 Ways to Use Facebook to Promote Your Business for Free (After the Launch): How do you promote your business on Facebook? Easy.
• Facebook Ads: Will They Work for You? (SEO Space): Jody Nimetz highlights the pros of opting for Facebook ads.
• Facebook Flyers Pro Taking Off (Optimize and Prophesize): Jonathan Mendez illustrates the ease of targeted Facebook ads.

Digg

• How to Become a Digg Top User Without Doing Anything Shady (10e20): If you still want to hit the Digg’s top users, Chris explains what’s involved in the time investment on Digg.
• It’s the (Other) Algorithm, Stupid: Understanding DiggRank (Search Engine Land): Muhammad Saleem examines what is known about the Digg algorithm and dispels common myths.
• To Shout or Not to Shout: The Digg Dilemma (Brent Csutoras): Brent asked many top Digg users what their thoughts were on using Digg’s new shout feature.

Reddit

• Reddit: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About It (10e20): Guest writer Maki talks about how to submit links to Reddit, to hit the front page, and to become a power user.
• 6 Things that Work Right Now on Reddit (10e20): We saw the introduction to Reddit, but what else can we learn? Well, 13-year-old Reddit genius Adam Fuhrer provides his thoughts. (This kid is awesome.)
• Reddit Tips from the Top Dog on Reddit (Social News Watch): How do you become a top user on Reddit? It’s not much different than other social networks, and a top user will talk you through some lessons he’s learned while he climbed the Reddit ladder.
• Five Ways to Leverage Traffic from Reddit (Single Grain): Sujan Patel explains that you can build you Reddit profile with some simple steps.

StumbleUpon

• How to Become a Top StumbleUpon User (or Why You Shouldn’t Really Bother) (Dosh Dosh): Maki gives a straight honest assessment of the social bookmarking site. It’s not only about the algorithm but on understanding how SU can be used for content discovery and sharing.
• How to Use StumbleUpon for Your Business: The Definitive Guide (10e20): I walked through some of the basics of StumbleUpon, and this guide still definitely points you in the right direction, but don’t be surprised if you see an updated guide posted sometime in the near future!
• Internet Marketer’s Guide to StumbleUpon (ViperChill): A beginner’s guide into using StumbleUpon for your marketing efforts.
• StumbleUpon – A Blogger’s Best Friend (Newest on the Net): A beginner article from Fred Peters about how to use StumbleUpon to gain traffic to your sites.
• For Photographers: How to Optimize StumbleUpon for Photo-Blogging Traffic (Muhammad Saleem): It’s all about the StumbleUpon PhotoBlog it! menu item.
• StumbleUpon Mathematics for Stumblers (The Venture Skills Blog): Tim Nash tries to explain the StumbleUpon algorithm.
• 7 Ways to Use StumbleUpon as a Discovery Tool (Dipping into the Blogpond): One of the most important elements of StumbleUpon discovery is one that nobody talks about (and one I intended to write about awhile ago). Here’s a starter guide on using Stumble discovery to get some great ideas.
• StumbleUpon Networking: How to Easily Share Content and Build Relationships (Dosh Dosh): The concept of sharing on StumbleUpon is obvious and it’s built-in for a reason. However, there’s a lot more to Stumbling when you share. There’s an aspect of relationship-building.
• StumbleUpon Phenomenon: An In-Depth Look at a Social Networking Giant (Search Engine Journal): Sujan Patel writes a short but sweet post (though not as “in-depth” as I expected) on StumbleUpon and some tools you can use to improve the user experience.
• Writing for StumbleUpon: High Impact Content “Above the Scroll” in Four Easy Steps (Copyblogger): Or in our terms, it’s “above the fold.” And that’s really what’s important. Muhammad Saleem explains how titles, visual cues, a strong opening, and substance helps boost your visits through StumbleUpon.
• Run a StumbleUpon Advertising Campaign for Your Blog (Problogger): I’m noticing that a lot more people are running advertising campaigns for their blogs since this article came out. Perhaps Darren’s advice resonated with his readers?
• 65 Must Read StumbleUpon Articles (Newest on the Net): At first, I didn’t intend to link to link posts in my yearly recap, but if you really wanted more information on SU, Fred has accumulated some 65 posts on StumbeUpon and linked it to his blog. I can tell you that finding these articles isn’t easy!

LinkedIn

• Effective Marketing on LinkedIn: Helen talks about how to build your network and make your brand successful on LinkedIn.
• 8 Things You Can Do to Get Work Through LinkedIn (Freelance Switch): Collis Ta’eed talks about how recommendations and networking will get you more clients. (Plug: They also recently came out with an awesome eBook on how to become a rockstar freelancer – aff)

Twitter

• Newbies Guide to Twitter (Chris Brogan): Haven’t used Twitter yet? Maybe you should get started, but if you’re inundated with all the hype about Twitter, sit down, relax, and read this beginner’s guide.
• The Big Juicy Twitter Guide (Caroline Middlebrook): Want more Twitter goodness? Caroline has a 7-part series on how Twitter has worked as a successful networking and productivity tool.

Mixx

• Top 10 Blog Posts about Mixx in 2007 (Bill Hartzer): Bill talks about the best posts that highlight the up-and-coming social news network, Mixx.
• What a Mixx Up: Interview with Mixx Founder Chris McGill (Collective Thoughts): Brian Wallace interviews Chris McGill to learn about the goals of the promising social news network.
• How Mixx Changed My Perception of Social Media (The Trukstop): Greg Davies discusses why Mixx is a better social site than any others he’s used — and he provides compelling reasons to try Mixx.

del.icio.us

• Become a del.icio.us Power User (Web Worker Daily): Not many people talk about using del.icio.us for its social media potential, but it’s a good tool for social bookmarking and should be utilized.

Sphinn

• Top 10 Blog Posts about Sphinn in 2007 (Bill Hartzer): Like with Mixx, Bill takes the best articles about Sphinn and shares them with his readers.
• Sphinn: In Depth Traffic Analysis and Advice (Blogging Fingers): Matt Jones takes a look at Sphinn in its early beta stages and gives a lot of interesting feedback.
• Introducing the Sphinn Effect (Small Busines SEM): Matt is in love with Sphinn, and he explains why.
• Sphinn: The Social News Site Every Search Marketer Should Be Using (SEOmoz): Rand lists 10 compelling reasons to join Sphinn.

Social Media and Social Media Marketing

• Social Media Marketing in a Nutshell (Dosh Dosh): Maki introduces SMM and explains why it’s important.
• The Social Networking Guide for Newbies (Fast Company): Social networking is much like networking in the real world. The difference is that it’s virtual.
• 27 Website Promotion Sources that Have Nothing to do With Google or SEO (eMoms at Home): In other words, Wendy Piersall explains that your online marketing strategy is all about internet marketing and a whole lot of social media.
• How to Influence Powerful Social Media Users for Traffic and Attention (Dosh Dosh): How do you influence the influencers? Mainly, through networking.
• A Visual Tour Through the Basics of Social Media Marketing (SEOmoz): Still not involved much in SMM? Rand Fishkin uses pretty pictures to explain the importance of social media marketing and how you can apply it to get better traffic, more conversions, brand awareness, and more.
• 8 Simple Rules for Social Media Marketing in Business to Business Markets (Stuntdubl): Todd talks about how you can make social media marketing work well in the B2B world, but you can certainly extend his post to just about any sort of SMM.
• 11 Guidelines to Social Media Success (Search Engine Watch): Eric Enge presents his 11 takeaways from SMX Social Media.
• Why Social Media Belongs in Your Internet Marketing Campaign (Bruce Clay): The Lisa goes through three successful examples of good social media applications and illustrates why they grabbed her attention. By the way, if you want your attention to be grabbed every time, make sure you read The Lisa’s Friday Recap posts.
• The Social Media Manual (Search Engine Land): Guest writer Muhammad Saleem teaches his social media know-how and provides lessons from mistakes in the social media world.
• 7 Benefits to Engaging in Social Media Marketing (Search Engine People): Jeff Quipp explains why an SMM strategy is important for any business.
• Are You a Social Media Idiot? (Bruce Clay): Lisa says that it’s all about building brand equity, so participation (and Twitter spam) is key.
• Ignore the Social Media Scoreboard (Instigator Blog): Ben Yoskovitz says that you need to leverage friendships to build brand, reputation, trust, and to discover new opportunities.
• A Comprehensive Guide to Going Viral on Digg (Part 1) and A Comprehensive Guide to Going Viral on Digg (Part 2) (SEOmoz): Daniel Tynski’s guest posts on SEOmoz are must-reads if you’re considering some sort of viral marketing campaign, even if it doesn’t include Digg.
• The Importance of Social Media Marketing: Why You Should Learn and Master It (Dosh Dosh): Maki details why social media marketing is an important strategy and explains how it can be used.
• What Urban Legends Can Teach Us About Social Media Marketing (Dan Zarrella): Dan talks about the application of urban legends and how it is useful to incorporate these thoughts into a social media strategy.
• Marketing is Not Social Media/Social Media is Not Marketing (Chris Brogan): Chris Brogan makes a clear statement when he says that marketing is a discipline and social media are tools.
• Stop Steampunk SEO, Start Being Friendly to Your Peers (Collective Thoughts): The future is here and it’s social, Tad Chef explains.
• The Sexy Girls of Tech and Politics: The Unbeatable Trio (NxE): Find what the community likes and pander to them for the best kind of traffic exposure on social sites.
• What are Social Media Marketing and Social Media Optimization? (ViperChill): Eighteen-year-old Glen Alsopp, who just scored an incredible gig as a director of social media at a firm in South Africa, talks about the rules for on-site and off-site optimization in your social media efforts.
• 7 Ways to Own Social Media Before it Owns You (Collective Thoughts): Brian Wallace offers tips on avoiding social media overload.
• 10 Commandments of Social Media Marketing (Site Visibility): Kelvin Newman makes social media rules relate to olden times — literally. For example, Rule #1 is “Thou Shalt Be Honest.”
• A Beginner’s Guide to Social News Websites (Dosh Dosh): Maki presents an actionable post about how to interact with and choose social news websites.
• The Secret to Social Media Success (Chris Garrett): According to Chris, it’s a popularity contest, so make those friends and network above all else.
• The 10-Minute Daily Guide to Building Your Social Media Profile (Instigator Blog): With so many social networks out there, how do you pay attention to all of them? Ben lays it out in a guide that should only take 10 minutes a day.
• Social Search and Why We Should Care (10e20): I think that Chris Sherman is a genius. In this webcast that I transcribed, Chris talks about the evolution of social search and its challenges.
• Social Media Marketing Tactics (SEOmoz): Jane Copand, the Web 2.0 guru, shows how to leverage Web 2.0 sites to market your brand and control your message.
• Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship (Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication): This is a scholarly article into social networking in case you wanted a firmer grasp about how it’s being studied in the academic sphere.
• How to Encourage Clients to Engage in Social Media (Bruce Clay): The reason why many people aren’t engaged in social media is because they have fears and reservations. Lisa attempts to quell those concerns.
• Viral Marketing is NOT the Same as Word of Mouth (Search Engine Guide): Jennifer Laycock differentiates between WOMM and Viral Marketing.
• Why Networking Socially Beats Social Networking Every Time (Social Media Explorer): Jason Falls explains that it’s not just about social networking; instead, networking with the influencers makes all the difference.
• Social Media: Under the Microscope (SiteLogic): Matt Bailey compares the traffic spikes to conversions.
• The Future of Communications: A Manifesto for Integrating Social Media into Marketing (PR 2.0): Brian Solis makes a pretty compelling argument about how we’re engaged in a dialog and how social media has brought new influencers to town.
• The Value of Social Media Traffic (Frontpage Bids): Once you get that social media traffic, how do you take advantage of it?

General Internet Marketing

• What Internet Marketers Can Learn from a Teenage Boy Asking a Girl to Prom (Shoemoney): Guest blogger Brennan Hayde equates that prom date struggle to your internet marketing strategy.
• 10 Secrets of Successful Online Community (Influential Marketing): Point #2 on Rohit Bharghava’s list is a theme that is pervasive on this blog: “listen to your users.”
• Ten Web Strategy Blog Posts I Wish You’d Read (Web Strategist): Jeremiah Owyang links to his frequently-discussed blog posts on marketing and web strategy, especially as it relates to corporations.
• Internet Marketing Mindmap (SEOBook): Launched in September, this mindmap covers what Aaron calls “Internet Marketing Made Easy.”
• All I Really Need to Know About (Search) Marketing I Learned in Kindergarten (Search Engine Land): We learn about the basics of marketing from an early age, but how exactly are they applied to (search) marketing? Jon Miller tells you.
• 17 Guerrilla Marketing Ideas for Your Website (DailyBits): What’s your marketing strategy? If there are any freebies involved, don’t forget me.
• (Your Stories Never Go Popular Because) Your Personal Marketing Plan Sucks (Wolf Howl): Michael Gray explains the elements that define a personal marketing plan problem and how to resolve them.
• Measuring Search Success 2007 (10e20): Another excellent webcast with Chris Sherman of Third Door Media: it’s all about conversions, baby.
• The Many Forms of Web Marketing for the (2007) Search Strategist (Web Strategist): Jeremiah alludes to many tools and tactics for corporate web strategy.
• 23 Surefire Small-Business Marketing Tips for 2008 (PlanetC1.com): Michael Dorausch talks about internal and external marketing efforts that you should apply next year.
• 10 New Years Resolutions for an Internet Marketer (Search Commander): Scott Hendison is already preparing for 2008 with some resolutions that will hopefully make marketers more productive in the upcoming year.

Viral Strategies

• The Link Baiting Playbook: Hooks Revisited (Stuntdubl): Todd looks at the variety of link baiting hooks (news, controversy, attacks, resources, humor, ego, and incentive) and explains their pros and cons.
• Andy Hagans’ Ultimate Guide to Link Baiting and Social Media Marketing (Tropical SEO): Andy lays it all out here. Make sure your article has the right hook, has a kick-ass headline, is presented properly for a social media crowd, and ensure that you target the right people to give your story a push.
• The Golden Rules of Linkbaiting (Smashing Magazine): The wonderful guys at Smashing Magazine take quotes from a variety of link baiting articles and make a compelling argument as to why link baiting works.
• Under the Microscope: Six Strategies for Building Viral Content (Skelliewag): Skellie talks about what makes viral articles alluring.
• 12 Examples of Viral Content and What We Can Learn from Them (Skelliewag): Skellie goes further to examine some successful linkbait pieces and why they were indeed notewrothy.
• 10 Brilliant Examples of LinkBait (WebGeek): Scott Allen shows how tools are great linkbait.
• Brainstorming Linkbait: A Four-Step Approach (SEOmoz): Want to create a linkbait piece? Scott Willoughby says that you can be successful if you brainstorm every idea. Don’t be afraid to write anything and everything down. Seriously.
• Linkbait Articles (Cornwall SEO): Lyndon takes his favorite linkbait articles and puts them in a single post for our reading pleasure.
• How to Make Viral Linkbaits Work: Four Characteristics for Success (Dosh Dosh): What makes viral linkbait? Maki takes us through four elements and then goes through a case study.
• The 7 Secrets of Viral Content (Daily Blog Tips): So, you have a great viral idea. Now what? Here’s how you should present it.
• Anatomy of a Viral Sensation (Pronet Advertising): This post by David Chen explores how content can be a viral success.
• Calling it Linkbait Doesn’t Make You Less of a Jerk (Bruce Clay): If you’re aiming to profit off of tragedy or unfortunate situations, it’s really bad for your reputation, says my BFF Lisa Barone. Don’t capitalize on someone else’s suffering.
• SES Interviews: Matt Inman on Linkbaiting (Search Marketing Standard): Joe Whyte interviews Matt Inman on his amazing linkbait strategies. Did I ever mention that I heart Matt?

Link Resources

• Ultimate Guide to Building the Perfect Link (Small Business SEM): Matt McGee talks about who you should look for links from and why.
• Perspectives on Buying Links (Stuntdubl): Todd explains that you should justify the purchase of your links from an SEO, engineer, or visitor standpoint.
• Internal Link Architecture Made Easy (SEOBook): Aaron provides tips on how you can optimize your internal link structure.
• How do You Measure a Link? (SEOmoz): Rand talks about the elements that determine a link’s value.
• Link Value Factors (Wiep.net): Wiep Knol asked a bunch of experts in the Internet Marketing sphere what they thought were the most important elements of links. This is one of the best articles of the year.
• Five Link Development Experts: A Group Interview (Sugarrae): Rae interviews Rand Fishkin, Todd Malicoat, Roger Montti, Eric Ward, (and herself), and provides a really cool interview about link development.
• Michael Gray Interview: Advanced Link Strategies (Link Juicy): Michael talks about more advanced link building (and baiting) tactics.
• Hansel and Gretel Link Building (Skelliewag): Skellie applies the old children’s tale to link building. Clever!
• Link Buying Guide: Directories, Ads, and Reviews (Search Engine Journal): Need to buy links? Loren Baker vouches for directories and brokerage services to get the job done.
• Linking Gotchas Even the Pros Make (Andy Beard): Andy debunks a ton of articles and explains his reasoning. Pretty daring and altogether a wonderful read.
• 11 Guidelines for Getting Authoritative Links (Search Engine Watch): Eric Enge explains that it takes time and patience to get what you’re looking for.
• Links Links Links (Top Rank Blog): They aren’t as conventional, but Lee Odden explains that some of the most traditional ways to build links still work.
• How to Achieve Higher Rankings and Stay out of Google Hell via Optimized Internal Linking (Jim Boykin): Jim explains that by optimizing your internal linking strategy, you can avoid the supplemental index.
• Factors of a Quality Web Directory (Shimon Sandler): What makes the right web directory? Check the factors that need to be considered.
• The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Link Builders (Search Engine Land): If you plan on doing link building yourself, you need to possess these seven traits, says Debra Mastaler
• Interview of Debra Mastaler, the Link Guru (SEOBook): Apparently, Deb is so busy building links that it was nearly impossible for her to answer this interview questionnaire, but she finally pulled through!
• 17 Creative Link Building Ideas (Search Engine Journal): If you felt that you were still running dry with all the posts I’ve linked here, here are 17 more ideas that can get you some more links.
• Link Building as Relationship Building – A Great Example (Search Engine Guide): Jennifer explains that building relationships resonate well when building links and how communication is important.
• Creating Authority and Link Development (Martinibuster): Roger Montti says that differentiating your site is the key to creating authority and building links.
• Online Publicity and Link Building in 2007 (10e20): This is a webcast I transcribed earlier this year that featured esteemed link builder Eric Ward.
• What Exactly Qualifies as a Quality Link? (Jennifer Slegg): Start asking yourself these questions and mark off which ones apply to the links you’re seeking.

Blogging: General

• Blog Setup: 40 Practical Tips (Daily Blog Tips): Starting a blog? This article covers five blogging topics: WordPress setup, design, validation, plugins, and analytics.
• How to Choose the Right Blog Niche: A Simple Three-Step Method (Dosh Dosh): The brilliant Maki helps you get started in blogging if you haven’t started yet. It’s not too late!
• 5 Items Your Blog Sidebar Must Have (Blogging Tips): Chris Garrett explains that you need to add prominent features to your blog’s sidebar to visibility.
• How to Improve Blogs in 4 Easy Steps (Social Media Explorer): Jason Falls talks about how content is king, and taken with other advice on this page, he’s certainly right.
• Beginner’s Guide to Setting Up a First Blog Site (Lonely Marketer): Patrick Schaber provides an informative basic list for beginners who are about to embark on the blogging journey.
• Wait! Write Before You Launch (Blogging Experiment): It’s unwise to launch your blog with only a few posts. Build content first and then start marketing your blog.
• To Niche or Not to Niche: Top Bloggers Tell All (Jonathan Fields): Jonathan asked several bloggers, myself included, if it’s a better idea to focus your blog on one topic area or to be a little more general. What do you think is the answer to this question?
• The Definitive Guide to Blogging – 1st Edition (Sponsored Reviews): Jarrod Hunt lists over 130 resources for building, monetizing, and customizing your blog.
• 101 Tips I Learned from Blogging (Etienne Teo): Blogging is rewarding and a learning experience for all. Etienne shares her 101 lessons with her readers.
• Top 10 Tips for New Bloggers from Original Blogger Jorn Barger (Wired): The guy who coined the term “weblog” dispenses blog advice for newbies in this Wired article.
• Answer My 30 Questions and Then I’ll Take You Seriously (Alister Cameron): Alister Cameron provides questionnaire that lets you audit your blog and see if you’re really in need of consulting services.
• Blog Metrics: Six Recommendations for Measuring Your Success (Occam’s Razor): Web analytics wizard Avinash Kaushik shares ways to see how you’re successful in your blogging efforts. This prompted Joost de Valk to write an awesome WordPress Blog Metrics plugin.
• 10 Articles All Bloggers Should Read (At Least Once) (Performancing): Just in case the list on this blog doesn’t suffice, here are 10 more blogging articles. You can also subscribe to the hundreds of blogs about blogging too (or you can come back here in 2008).
• Blog for an Audience… Even if You Have None (Blog Herald): One of my favorite bloggers, Jason aka Webomatica, talks about how you should perceive your blog as having a huge audience — even if you don’t — so that every action matters.
• 10 More Blogging Tips from a Novice Blogger (Occam’s Razor): I don’t consider Avinash Kaushik a novice blogger, and you don’t have to follow these rules to a tee, but it is solid advice.
• Your Fellow Blogger is Not a Competitor (Dosh Dosh): You’re not competing against any bloggers. If anything, you can use the information that blogger teaches you and absorb more information to better your skillset. In the end, however, your fellow blogger is a person you can network with.
• Tips for Using Images in Blogs (Blogoscoped): Images are eye candy, but use them well and you will reap the benefits.
• I Live in the Blogosphere (SEO 2.0): Mark Dykeman’s guest post makes a bold statement: “The blogosphere is my communication medium and my blogs are transmitters.”
• WordPress Desktop Blogging: 5 Tools Reviewed (CenterNetworks): So, after reading all these articles, you’re going to use WordPress? Good choice. Now check out the options you have for desktop publishing on WordPress, or do what I do and just stick to the web interface.

Blogging: Inspiration

• 66 Successful Bloggers and What They Can Teach You (TheBizOfKnowledge): Bill Belew links to 66 different blogs and explains that each blogger brings a unique voice to the table.
• Your Secret Blogging Weapon is You (Cornwall SEO): Everyone can start a blog, but which blogs are the more outstanding of the bunch? The ones where your personality shines.
• Discover Hundreds of Post Ideas for Your Blog with Mind Mapping (Problogger): If you’ve stumbled on writer’s block, take out a pen and paper and start mind mapping – that is, get a theme and start building up other related ideas by association.
• The 5 Immutable Laws of Persuasive Blogging (Copyblogger): Brian Clark is my favorite copywriter and proves it by listing 5 laws of persuasive blogging. What elements make blogs successful?
• 4 Reasons to Write on the Weekend and 4 Posts to Do it With (Muhammad Saleem): Don’t call it writer’s block now.
• 101 Great Posting Ideas that Will Make Your Blog Sizzle (I Help You Blog): Philip Liu put a ton of effort into this post and then he disappeared from the blogosphere. I miss you, man!
• 101 Blog Posting Ideas (SEO 2.0): Just in case Philip’s ist wasn’t enough, Tad has another 101 ideas.
• 23 Great Ideas for Blog Posts (Pat B. Doyle): In case the previous 202 ideas weren’t enough, Pat gives you another 23.
• 37 Viral Post Ideas You Can Use Today (Skelliewag): Out of ideas? Here are some viral blog posts to start writing right now.
• 100 Blog Topics I Hope YOU Write (Chris Brogan): This post should keep you devoid of writer’s block until at least 2009…
• 101 Essential Blogging Skills (Skelliewag): You need not possess all 101, but they certainly help.
• Top 20 Tips for Beginner Bloggers (How to Build a Website): Not everyone follows all these tips, so you can get a lot of inspiration from these.

Blogging: Promotion

• Hare Krishnas Reveal the Secret to Massive Link Love and Mega Sales (Jonathan Fields): Give and you shall receive. Jon makes a brilliant analogy to how when Hare Krishnas give you a flower, they subconsciously are programming your mind to give them a donation. Likewise, in blogging, give something before requesting anything. The more you give, the more rewards you reap.
• How I Increased My Traffic by 11259.7% in 3 Months in 10 Easy Steps (SEO 2.0): You want traffic? You have to work for it. Fortunately, Tad lays out the guidelines that he followed to give his site more visibility, so all you need to do is implement the strategies.
• Do You Have a Blog Commenting Strategy? (Caroline Middlebrook): Commenting on blogs has helped Caroline grab others’ attention.
• The Power of Search: Driving Traffic to Your Blog (Vanessa Fox): Vanessa spoke at BlogHer this past year (I’m so jealous) and applies three concepts (relevance, discoverability, and crawlability, for a total of four posts!) to making blogs more heavily trafficked in the search engines. Maybe next year, I’ll steal her presentation…
• Strike Up a Conversation Today for a Relationship Tomorrow (Blogging Experiment): Ben Cook talks about the steps he’s taken to score some pretty awesome guest blogging stints.
• How to Get Darren Rowse to Read Your Blog (Cornwall SEO): Want to get someone’s attention? Write about them. (Hint: I have an alert for both “techipedia” and for “Tamar Weinberg”. I notice that Robert Scoble adds me to his link blog when I write about him too. Hi Robert!)
• Pattern Your Audience: How Editorial Calendars Increase Your Readership (Dosh Dosh): Make your readers expect to hear from you, so set up an editorial calendar to know when to visit your site next.
• Five Ways to Attract More Comments (Blogging Experiment): Need more comments on your blog? Ben shows five ways to compel more people to participate.
• How to ACTUALLY Get Blog Comments (Snowboardjohn): John talks about advanced concepts that will not just cause people to comment — they will provoke them to comment.
• Create 50000 Links in 11 Weeks (Blogstorm): Patrick Altoft talks about his blog marketing strategy and how it worked for him.
• Blogging is About Writing (Problogger): Guest writer Lorelle VanFossen lists ways to get your blog noticed: writing matters.
• 99 Ways to Promote Your Blog for Free (Vandelay Design): If you think you’ve run out of ideas to promote your blog, you’re probably wrong.
• 19 Strategies to Help Turn New Visitors into Loyal Readers (Skelliewag): How do you maintain a new reader? There are at least 19 ways!
• 20 Essential Blog Directories to Submit Your Blog To (Search Engine Journal): As Loren once said, BLOG = Better Listings on Google. That said, submit your blog to many directories to get maximum visibility.
• 15 Ways to Become an Influential Blogger (NxE): If you are aiming to become a blogging celebrity, take heed to these 15 tips and apply them to your blogging right away.
• 35 Guaranteed Ways to Increase Your RSS Subscribers (Newest on the Net): Newcomer Fred Peters talks about how he increases his RSS subscriber count. Many of these tips should be implemented into any blogging strategy!

Content Generation

• 11 Unique Content Sources in Saturated Markets (SEOBook): What do you do if you’re in a competitive area and want to write something original? Aaron Wall answers the question.
• 10 Helpful Hints for Creating Strong Web Site Content (10e20): Jake over at 10e20 talks about how you can pump out some great articles if you research, hire experts, do competitive research, and focus on alternate languages, among other excellent tips.
• The 4 Essential Elements of an About Me Page (Quick Sprout): Neil explains that it’s important for your about page to have an image, a statement about yourself, an expressed willingness to help others, and contact information.
• How to Use the Simple Power of Contrast to Become More Persuasive (Copyblogger): Using analogies, Brian Clark examines “contrast” and explains how you can change perceptions to get people to proceed with a purchase.
• Using Google to Target Bloggers & the Mainstream Media with Search Queries (SEOBook): Aaron Wall presents some excellent content-generation ideas.
• How to Avoid Fool’s Gold and Create Value-Packed Content (Skelliewag): Brilliant writer Skellie talks about how you can make every piece of content more valuable.
• 25 Headline Formulas that Have Plagued and Blessed Web 2.0 (Skelliewag): Still need a good headline? Here are some creative angles you can take.
• Are You Using the Right Content Development Strategy for Your Website? (Dosh Dosh): How do you intend to deliver high-impact that will build up readership quickly? Read Maki’s guide.

Reputation Management

• Reputation Management Emancipation Proclamation: 10 Ways to “Own” Yourself Online (Stuntdubl): How do you build your personal brand? Todd details 10 great tips, including registering your name on every social network, getting interviews, and speaking at industry events.
• Buzz Monitoring: 26 Free Tools You Must Have (Marketing Pilgrim): Andy Beal talks about the 26 tools that help you monitor your reputation online. He’s also coming out with a book in February entitled Radically Transparent: Monitoring and Managing Reputations Online which will give away all his trade secrets.
• Reputation Management You May Be Missing (Vanessa Fox): Using an obscure search engine gave Vanessa incentive to write a post about how utilizing any profiles (even less-trafficked ones) can till help manage your reputation online.
• Full Blown Reputation Management Campaign (Shimon Sandler): Need to bury bad press? Shimon outlines what your campaign should offer should you offer reputation management services.
• Five Ways Negative Reviews Help Your Online Reputation (Andy Beal): A positive reputation comes from embracing negative reviews.
• The Definitive Guide to Online Reputation Management (Scoreboard Media): Brian Provost gives strategies for owning the first page of the search results.
• 31 Places to Monitor Your Reputation Online (Search Marketing Gurus): Explore every nook and cranny to get the most out of your reputation management campaign.
• 10 Ways to Fix a Google Reputation Management Nightmare (Marketing Pilgrim): What’s the best content to fill up page 1 of the search results? Ask Andy Beal, or just read this post.
• Beware: Your Digital Footprint is Your Resume (Search Engine People): Jeff Quipp talks about how everything you do can be traced back to you.
• PR Disasters Lurk in Web 2.0 Chicanery (RogerD’s Notebook): If you’re going to go into reputation management, you better understand the Internet. Bad reputation management is noticeable.
• Using Social Media to Help Manage Online Reputation (SearchRank): David Wallace illustrates how reputation management works and explains how engagement in social media can help change perceptions.
• DIY Reputation Management (CNet): Stephan Spencer talks about how to do reputation management right in a short easy-to-read list.
• Reputation Management and Search: Avoiding Chunnel Vision (RB Digital Rodeo): Sure, reputation management is a good step in the right direction, but the reality is that your search engine rankings are usually not where the problem lies.

Video Articles

• How to be a Star in a YouTube World (Wall Street Journal): A news article from the Wall Street Journal about how consistency, finding the right niche, early adoption, networking, and professionalism will make you a popular YouTube star.
• The Secret Strategies Behind Many “Viral” Videos (TechCrunch): This controversial but brilliant article provides many insights into how some marketing firms make their videos really stand out above the rest.
• Definitive List of Video Aggregator Sites (SEO Space): There are a lot of video sites beyond YouTube. Jody Nimetz lists them out for you.
• Ultimate Video Optimization Resources (Web Analytics World): Manoj Jasra provides a list of more articles that will help you in your video optimization efforts.
• Why Online Video is Good for Your Corporate Executives and How to Deploy (Web Strategist): Jeremiah Owyang explains how videos are time efficient, allows executives to talk directly to people, and work well in a corporate strategy. What comes to mind: David Neeleman’s JetBlue apology.

Business

• 5 Ways an SEO a Consultant Can Make More Money (that have nothing to do with Google) (Tropical SEO): I’m starting to see the value of this!
• 8 Simple Steps to Build Traffic for Your Internet Startup (Scoreboard Media): Brian Provost explains how you can create an audience for your product and gain the necessary exposure for fame.
• Breaking Up with Bad Clients: It’s Not You, It’s … Me (Stuntdubl): If your clients aren’t profitable and raise your stress levels, perhaps it’s time to cease the relationship. But how do you do that?
• 16 Tips to Successful Business on the Web (Stuntdubl): Todd Malicoat talks about how he’s successful at his business. Some tips: never be afraid to say no, work with successful people, execute, and overdeliver.
• Your Personal Viral Marketing Plan (Eradicate Perplexity): What are the pros and cons of working for yourself? Scott Orth outlines the positives and negatives of both approaches.
• 20 Work-Life Balance Tips for the Overworked Entrepreneur (Entrepreneur): If you didn’t let Scott Orth’s cons bug you and decided to take the freelancing route, how do you make time for yourself? (Answer: You certainly wouldn’t be writing a blog post about the Internet Marketing Best Posts of 2007 for 10 hours straight on a holiday weekend!)
• Online Marketing 10 Tips (DaveN): Dan Horton shares his thoughts on how to build a firm and reputable marketing strategy.
• How a Small Winery Found Internet Fame (CNN Money): Two words: blogger outreach.
• 9 Random Tips on Becoming a Successful Online Marketer (Shoemoney): Jeremy writes what’s been on his mind.
• What Separates Search Marketing Novices from Experts (SEOmoz): What are the mistakes that differentiates the newbies from experts in the search marketing field?
• 13 Ways to Promote Your Local Business for Free (Wolf-Howl): This doesn’t quite fit under the “Business” category that I was thinking of, but Michael’s post is surely a gem!
• What My Preschooler Can Teach You About Online Success (Social Desire): In a very clever comparison, Shana Albert equates lessons from preschool to business.
• Working on the Periphery: How to Make Any Website You’ll Ever Create a Success (Dosh Dosh): Maki emphasizes the importance of relationships to contribute to the growth of your website or business.
• How to Find the Right Search Marketing Partner (10e20): Chris Sherman speaks at a Search Marketing Now webcast about the factors to consider when choosing a search marketing partner.

Search Engine Optimization

• Why the SEO Folks are Mad at You, Jason (Search Engine Land): Danny defends SEO — again.
• Search Ranking Factors v2 (SEOmoz): Rand Fishkin asked a bunch of experts about what determines search rankings and published the new findings in April.
• The Bloggers Guide to SEO (SEOBook): Aaron and Giovanna have created a great in-depth guide on how bloggers can ensure that their posts are ranked well within the search engine results. Unlike their eBook (aff) which is worth every penny, the guide is free.
• How to SEO Your Site in Less than 60 Minutes (Small Business SEM): Matt McGee acknowledges that you need to take more than 60 minutes to SEO your site effectively, but if you were really in such a time crunch, you might as well use his guide as a starting point.
• Example of SEO Strategy Document (Shimon Sandler): What should you present your clients when you’re offering services in SEO? Shimon literally gave away his trade secret with this one.
• The SEO Playbook (Stuntdubl): Todd calls this “the advanced beginner’s guide” and goes through the techniques that get you top rankings. He also includes a whole lot of additional links for reference which makes this blog post extremely comprehensive.
• Search Engine Optimization Warfare (Stuntdubl): Todd calls this post “the competitive webmaster’s guide to understanding the dynamics of top rankings.” I’ll leave you to read the rest.
• Top SEO Tips (SEO Refugee Forums): GaryTheScubaGuy lists his 12 most important SEO factors.
• What Makes SEO and SEM So Damn Hard (SEOmoz): Marketers face a lot of obstacles in the SEO and SEM sphere and it’s a difficult task. What are the challenges? Rand explains all.
• The Lowdown on Press Release Optimization (Top Rank Blog): Lee Odden knows a lot more about press releases than I do, and he talks about what you can to do optimize those PRs.
• Ultimate Local Search Optimization Resources (Web Analytics World): Manoj Jasra aggregates a bunch of websites and provides resources which should help anyone in the area of local optimization.
• But is it Spam? (SEOBook): Aaron shows through examples that we should come up with the correct search marketing strategy.
• WordPress SEO Masterclass for Competitive Niches (Andy Beard): Is your blog niche competitive enough that you feel that you can’t rank for these terms? Take apart your WordPress theme and make it search-friendly. Awesome.
• A Complete Glossary of Essential SEO Jargon (SEOmoz): For newcomers in the SEO sphere, there are a ton of acronyms and terms that you should get acquainted with.
• 21 Essential SEO Tips & Techniques (Search Engine Land): Matt McGee explains that these are the things you should do whether you’re hiring an SEO firm or doing SEO yourself.
• Keyword Inspiration: Aaron Wall Shares His Secrets (WordTracker Blog): Where does Aaron Wall get his ideas for the ideal keywords? Now you know!
• SEO Expert Quiz (SEOmoz): Are you an SEO expert? Launched earlier this year, the SEOmoz quiz will let you know how literate you are in the world of SEO.
• Why the PageRank Toolbar is Killing the SEO Industry (Search Engine Roundtable): Barry Schwartz argues that if PageRank were removed, then the whole landscape of SEO would change.
• 7 Steps to Get Your New Site Indexed in 24 Hours (Solo SEO): From my experience, it was all about WordPress, but Michael Jensen gives more realistic steps in the absence of the blogging platform.
• 55 SEO Interview Questions (All Things SEM): Marios Alexandrou has been interviewing for quite some time. What questions does he ask during the interview process and what should you also ask?

Search Engine Stuff

• Google 2.0: Google Universal Search (Search Engine Land): Danny Sullivan explains the ramifications of the universal search and what it means for you.
• The Illustrated Guide to Duplicate Content on Search Engines (SEOmoz): In this article about duplicate content and many others, you’ll quickly learn that Rand Fishkin is an artist.
• What is Google PageRank? A Guide for Searchers and Webmasters (Search Engine Land): Danny talks about the green bar and explains the various applications for SEOs and searchers. This in-depth article is the best I’ve seen on PageRank.
• How to Handle a Google Penalty (SEOmoz): Rand talks to Matt Cutts about a penalty on a real estate website and then illustrates his findings in a flowchart.
• The Ultimate Guide to Advanced Searching within Google, Yahoo, and MSN (HybridSEM): This is the search operators cheat sheet that you’ve been waiting for.
• Restricting the (Google) Search Space (Blogoscoped): Philipp explains that you can get desired results simply by performing certain queries with specific operators.
• Five Things You Didn’t Know About Google’s Search (Matt Cutts): Matt gives away secrets in this blog post… okay, maybe not, but it’s an interesting read nevertheless.

Web Development

• Efficient Web Design & Development: Hacks to Save Time and Money (SEOBook): Need a new website on the cheap? Aaron walks through the steps you should take, from domain purchase to design to content.
• 50 Common Web Design Mistakes (Design Refugee): Before your site goes live, make sure you check every item off of this checklist and address these concerns.
• Thirty Free Image Resources on the Web (About): Wendy Boswell, searcher extraordinare, shares her top 30 sites for finding free images for your blog and other websites.
• 100 (Legal) Sources for Free Stock Images (Virtual Hosting): In case 30 wasn’t enough, here are others that are driven by the community, allow new users, and are small but still very useful.
• Difference Between a Website and a Blog (Social Desire): What differentiates websites and blogs? Look at Shana’s chart.
• 8 Web Design Tactics to Help You When You’re Stuck (SEOmoz): My favorite West Coast guy is a brilliant designer (I’ll save the gushing for later) but writes an amazing post on how to get out of designer’s block.
• 404 Funnies: Making “Not Found” Work for You (CNet): Stephan Spencer says that creative 404 pages show a sense of humor. For more 404 pages, check out the Smashing Magazine collections.

Search Marketing Tools

• Analytics on the Cheap: Six Free Stats Packages for the Startup or Small Business Owner (10e20): Can’t afford an expensive analytics package? There are plenty that are free, and here are six that I personally reviewed.
• A Beginner’s SEO Toolbox (Small Business SEM): Matt McGee shares his favorite plugins and tools for doing SEO.
• 10 Ways to Become a More Efficient Webmaster (Lee Dodd): Lee Dodd outlines 10 tools and explains how they help at improving your webmastering skills.
• Five Free “Advanced” Web Analytics Examples (Occam’s Razor): Avinash shows how you can get some great statistics about your website by using tools that are totally free.
• Bookmarklets for the Web 2.0 Jedi Master (MicroPersuasion): Steve Rubel knows his bookmarklets.
• 6 Web Tools that You Can’t Live Without (Square Oak): Brendan talks about some lesser known tools that are quite helpful for search research and for getting things done.

Paid Search

• Re-Upping Your Google AdWords Certification (Stuntdubl): Getting certified? Again? Don’t review the entire course guides once more. Just check Todd’s notes.
• 31 Killer Writing AdWords Ads Tips (GoogleLady): The best-written ads can give you higher CTR and thus conversions. What’s stopping you from trying these?
• Using Paid Search? Here’s How to Maximize the Impact of Your Ads (10e20): Chris Sherman speaks about the importance of paid search in yet another webcast that I transcribed.
• Example of a PPC Strategy Document (Shimon Sandler): If you’re offering PPC services to a client, here’s a strategy document template to use.
• PPC Success in Five Steps (ISEdb): It’s all in your keywords, ads, landing pages, organization, and analysis, but there’s more to the article than what I just wrote!
• How to Turn Around an Unprofitable PPC Campaign (SiteProNews): Kalena Jordan highlights mistakes people make in their PPC campaigns and how to remedy them.
• Five Common Paid Search Mistakes that Can Sink Your Campaign (Search Engine Guide): Jennifer Laycock describes the five most common pitfalls and how to solve them.
• Starting From Scratch: A Paid Search Primer (RKG): If it’s your first time in paid search, this is a good guide to get started.
• Optimizing the Mix of Paid and Organic Listings (10e20): Is it good enough to simply be ranked #1 in the organic listings? No, complementing that with paid listings can boost your brand, according to Chris Sherman.
• How to Lower Your AdWords Minimum Bid (eWhisper): Brad Geddes gives you a strategy you’re hopefully taking advantage of if you’re using paid search.
• Website Conversation Rate 101 (Invesp Blog): To increase your conversion rate, you need to invest time and energy. Khalid presents an 8-step tutorial.

Recommended Books

• 5 Books All Search Marketers Should Read (SEOmoz): Except John Battelle’s book, I don’t own the listed books.
• 5 More Books Search Marketers Should Read (SEOmoz): Here are 5 more books to keep your marketing learn on.
• Books that have Changed My Business (Shoemoney): Jeremy is an audiobook type, but now I have to obtain the audiobooks since I have no time to read with all this writing I’m doing. Summary of this section: I need to get reading (or listening) right away!

Affiliate Sites: My disclaimer here is that I’m not at all too familiar with this area, but I think these articles will certainly get me started when I make the time!

• How to Build an Affiliate Site You Can Sell for $1M (Tropical SEO): Andy Hagans talks about how time, effort, and a defensible website can give you a good push.
• How to Survive the Affiliate Revolution (Sugarrae): Rae explains that you need to find the right domains that have the right keywords and that unique content really does sell. Engaging the community and building a well-designed website are also important elements.

Domaining: Another disclaimer – I’m also not really involved in the domainer’s sphere yet, but these are really good reads.

• Master of My Domaining: 10 Things I’ve Learned About Domaining Since I’ve Jumped in the Pool (Scoreboard Media): Once Brian Provost took domaining seriously, he had lessons to share for those of us who haven’t. I’ll keep these in mind.
• Interview of Frank Schilling, the World Famous Domain Investor (SEOBook): Aaron interviews a guy even I’ve heard of.
• Diary of a Domain Virgin (SEMpdx): Todd Mintz talks about how he got started in domaining, but acknowledges that the results may not be visible for quite some time. (Tip: It’s all about patience!)
• The Domaining Revolution (Search Engine Guide): Todd talks about the recent Domain Roundtable conference with a beginner’s post on domaining.
• Why Warren Buffet Recommends You Invest in Domain Names (Tropical SEO): Andy draws very interesting parallels between stock investments and domain investments. The idea is that investing now is valuable in the long run.
• How to Get Started as a Domainer (Aviva Directory): So, have the articles convinced you to jump on the domainer’s bandwagon? Here’s how you can get started.
• Top 4 Lies Domainers Tell Themselves (Tropical SEO): Andy Hagans lies to himself, but at least he admits that he has a problem.

Miscellaneous

• 50 Perfect Gifts for Webophiles, Bloggers, and Internet Marketers: Rand lists some awesome gifts, and now I want them all!

And finally, Techipedia’s Best Posts for 2007 (that aren’t rants)

• Top 6 Idea for Incredible Viral Content
• A Review of Social News Site Mixx
• 11 Tips to Enhance Your Digg User Experience
• How I Network on Friendster, Facebook, LinkedIn, and MySpace
• Reputation Management with Marketing Gone Bad
• 29 Super Awesome Tools Built on the Digg API
• 13 Reasons Why I Am an Obsessive Compulsive Facebook User

Lastly, one real final milestone for me: my first mention in Forbes!

This reading should set you back 12 months… until 2009. But don’t only read these articles, because you’ll still need to catch up on the latest and greatest in Internet Marketing developments over the course of ’08 — unless you just want to come here next December.

This post has been brought to you by SMS Gateway software.

[ Best Internet Marketing Blog Posts of 2007 is a post written by Tamar Weinberg. ]

Read more about The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web, a primer to social media marketing. Or you can subscribe to the Techipedia RSS feed.

Before we get back to the daily grind, I owe thanks to a few more people than those I mentioned yesterday.

First, I got this awesome package in the mail courtesy of the Ask.com team today.

I love it! Thanks so much, Erik, Patrick, Gary, and Jennifer!

Second, I wanted to thank the guys who helped me score some schwag at SES San Jose. I only featured people in my last post, but look what was inside my suitcase once I got home! Can you believe I managed this? I really don’t.

The individual photos have a lot of Flickr notes on them in case you were wondering who was giving out what.

In other news, I’m fortunate to have joined the Gawker team writing for probably one of my favorite blogs of all time, Lifehacker. It’s an incredible privilege to be part of such a wonderful team. Thanks for taking me on board!

And finally, as you may know, three of my pals started a tech-oriented podcast and I’ve been a guest on two of the shows. If you are interested in tech and social media news, check out The Drill Down. You’ll find me in episodes 3 and 6, but the others are pretty good too.

[ Hot off the Press: SES Schwag, Lifehacker, and The Drill Down is a post written by Tamar Weinberg. ]

Read more about The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web, a primer to social media marketing. Or you can subscribe to the Techipedia RSS feed.

Ever since Digg opened its API, talented programmers have built a ton of tools that utilize Digg. Some of these tools monitor upcoming and popular stories. Others tell you about your account statistics and your circle of friends. Yet others allow users to browse stories, videos, and pictures in very unique and flashy ways. Here are twenty-nine tools, with some being lesser known than others, but all of them having some pretty significant purpose in the life of a Digger.

1. diggwatcher is a simple application built in Flash that runs in the background and monitors a single Digg story of your choosing. You can receive sound alerts when you get new Diggs, comments, and when your story becomes popular. The script refreshes every 60 seconds.

2. The Digg Noise Filter is a tool that will let you watch upcoming stories before they become popular… that’s if you don’t want to use the regular Digg upcoming tool. (Developed by Russ Jones)

3. Digg Entourage was also developed by Russ Jones and shows you who is in your Digg social circle by avatar and also in table format (number of stories Dugg, percentage of stories Dugg, and whether they’re your friend or fan):

4. Digg comment viewer lets you see your recent Digg comments, their rankings, and you can easily navigate to your friends’ comments. You can also have it auto-update every 60 seconds.

5. Digg CommentSpy is based on a similar concept and lets you see the most recent live comments on Digg. (Developed by Alex Bosworth)

6. TINC – or Who’s Digging You? is another Alex Bosworth Digg application that lets you see who is digging your stories.

7. Digg Charts shows the most popular stories in a table format, followed by a pie graph format and a graph that shows the progression of story popularity over time.

8. Digg Alerter is a great tool for Windows users that sits in the system tray and informs you about your most recent Digg submissions (or those of another user). You can see if your submission was popular or if it’s still “upcoming.”

First, you can choose your desired username:

Then, you can see (and hear) the tool in action when there’s activity on your recent submissions:

9. Digg Wordweb allows users to visualize the most popular keywords in a Digg submission and related stories.

10. Digg Expose displays thumbnails of all recently Dugg stories:

11. DiggCity allows you to view the most recently popular 10 stories in a city format. Each stick figure represents a Digg user and the buildings grow as more people Digg the stories and run into the buildings. If you keep this running for awhile, you’ll have very tall buildings.

12. Smart Digg Button is an excellent Firefox extension that adds a “Digg This” button to the bottom of your browser when the story has not been submitted. If the story has been submitted, you will see how many Diggs it has. This is a great and handy tool for those of us who submit a story only to find out that it’s already been submitted. For those of us looking for high quality stories to submit, this button is a huge timesaver and I wish I picked it up earlier.

This is what it looks like when you still have yet to submit the site to Digg:

And this is what happens once you do:

13. Digg Pics addresses the problem that Digg has as it is still lacking a picture section. Cadu de Castro Alves created this to let you filter through promoted or upcoming stories that include (and are labeled with) pictures.

14. Diggtris is a Tetris game based on recently dugg stories. It’s actually quite fun and addictive, though what’s up with those crazy shapes?!

15. Duggback is a tool that allows you to view cached copies of pages of Digg stories that may have been taken down due to the Digg effect.

16. What about widgets? Diggest allows you to integrate Digg into your own blog or website by taking videos off of Digg and putting them into a continuous channel.

17. Similarly, the same author has built the Digg widget that shows the recent popular stories in a widget that you can put on your site.

18. Which Stories are Popular on Digg? shows which domains are most popular on Digg. While it could be more useful if it listed the domains in order of popularity, nonetheless, it’s a pretty cool list.

MANY OF my favorite Digg tools were built by Brian Shaler. I happen to know that he still has more Digg applications up his sleeve, but here are his Digg applications as of late:

19. Wheel of Upcoming is Brian’s Digg API contest entry. It allows you to visualize the upcoming stories in a particular topic and you can then spin the wheel to see each story’s details.

First, select a topic:

Then, spin the wheel and mouse over the story:

20. Digg Heat Map allows you to visualize the Digg community as a universe with the most popular Digg members appearing to be bright stars in the sky and the newest members to be in the center of the universe. You can choose a username and then see how many friends and fans the user has.

21. Digg Friends Venn Diagram allows you to see who has befriended a particular user of your choosing, who the user has befriended, and mutual friends in a Venn diagram display:

22. Digg Radar is yet another supercool Brian Shaler creation that allows you to envision the Digg community like a universe, with the newest members at the corners of the galaxy and the oldest members in the center of the galaxy. As thumbs-ups appear, you can mouse over them to see which users have been most recently active on Digg and who have Dugg a story.

23. The Map of Digg Friendship was the original concept that turned into Digg Radar. It allows you to see the number of friends and fans that you have and where you are located on the Digg map, with the oldest members being placed in the center of the galaxy.

24. Digg Status allows you to view different statistics for a particular Digg user. I chose one of the oldest Digg users for sake of illustration. Statistics include age of account, total stories Dugg, average number of stories Dugg per month, total stories commented on (as well as a monthly average), total stories submitted (and monthly average), stories promoted to the front page, number of profile views, number of friends, and number of fans.

Some Digg tools require Apollo from Adobe. Unfortunately, most (if not all) of these applications do not run under the newest version of Apollo (air_b1_win_061107.exe), so you can try downloading AIR Alpha instead. These applications are:

25. DiggGraphr Desktop: A desktop installation that will show you Digg stories in treemap format. Each section is color-coded and you can drill down and see stories that would interest you the most (e.g. Tech News, Gadgets, etc.) There happens to be a live DiggGraphr too. (Developed by Arpit Mathur)

26. D’Lite is a “miniature” version of Digg, where you can view recent popular Diggs, its description, the submitter, the number of comments, and the number of Diggs, among other very cool information.

27. Digg Watch is also a mini Digg, allowing you to view recently popular stories and see when the story was submitted/promoted and the number of Diggs/comments it has.

28. Mini Digg is a pretty cool application that shows both Digg newly popular stories, which you can filter by section, and a tracker for particular users to see their activity in Diggs and comments.

This is what the reader looks like:

This is what the tracker looks like:

(As you can tell, I Digg a lot of stories, and I comment a little bit too.)

29. Digg Top is another Adobe AIR application (though it works with the beta version of AIR, not the alpha version as linked earlier in this article). It allows you to see newly popular stories in a variety of formats. One of the better features is the ability to load pics.

You can select the representation of the Digg sections you would like to view:

All News is displayed below. My screenshot includes me performing a mouseover so that it shows the full length of the headline for another story.

If you want to see the image within the application, just click “Load Image” and here you go:

And you can also watch videos in the built-in player:

That’s all. Twenty-nine Digg API applications… for now. I’m sure I’ll have more to report on later. If you know of any others, please add them to the comments!

[ 29 Super Awesome Tools Built on the Digg API is a post written by Tamar Weinberg. ]

Read more about The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web, a primer to social media marketing. Or you can subscribe to the Techipedia RSS feed.

I’m still posting lightly for the next week, but I had some time to Stumble a bit, and here’s what I’ve found.

• Winston’s Lego Computer: This guy built a computer out of Legos. Pretty cool stuff.
• The Meaning of Colors: Interesting page that explains the symbolism behind colors. Did you know that people are more productive in blue rooms?
• Fonts 500: I love fonts. Here are some freeware ones that you can download for designs and documents.
• Weird Facts: Interested in useless trivia? Here’s one for you: Every year about 98% of atoms in your body are replaced.
• Homemade Obstacle Course: Wow, I thought this stuff was only fictional like in Back to the Future. This video shows some pretty impressive tricks.
• The Most Amazing Images from StumbleUpon: StumbleUpon lets you see some pretty impressive images. This guy took the best of 20 or so and put them all in one page for you to enjoy without sorting through hundreds of pages to find the best.

[ Stumbles for the Week of April 8, 2007 is a post written by Tamar Weinberg. ]

Read more about The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web, a primer to social media marketing. Or you can subscribe to the Techipedia RSS feed.

I just saw interesting report via MicroPersuasion. A recent study showed that Web 2.0 has a very great reach within large companies. A study done by Clearswift did a survey with 827 individuals in large companies (1,000 employees and up) and found the following:

• 43% of office workers access social media sites from their work computers several times a day
• 51% spend an hour or more a week on the sites; 13% spend five hours or more
• 46% have discussed work-related issues on social media sites
• 46% regularly access Wikipedia during work hours
• 50% believe they have a right to use work computers for personal internet access

What do you think of these findings? Do they come as a surprise to you? Are they representative of your surfing behavior?

[ Is Your Site Web 2.0? If Not, Perhaps it Should Be. is a post written by Tamar Weinberg. ]

Read more about The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web, a primer to social media marketing. Or you can subscribe to the Techipedia RSS feed.

Another week, another bunch of stumbles:

• Google Image Ripper: Nice little site that bypasses the Google Images interface and takes you directly to the large-sized images.
• Instant Eyedropper: I was looking for a plugin on Twitter which could provide me with the hex code of any color on a web page. I’m still looking for the specific plugin that would do exactly this, but shortly after I asked, I stumbled upon this application which does the same thing — just not in plugin format.
• Body-Mass Index, Waist to Height Ratio, and More: I found this calculator helpful and timely, especially since I just wrote about my fatblogging experience.
• Before and After Magazine: How to Design Cool Stuff: A simple yet elegant website with some amazingly useful tutorials on design.
• Top 12 Weird Japanese Inventions: I’ve seen some of this before, but it’s still just silly.
• Fractal Gallery: Wow, this gallery features some beautiful and colorful art.
• PhobiaGuide.com: Did you know that Gamophobia is the fear of marriage? Well, today I found that out. I celebrated my 2nd wedding anniversary on Tuesday, so I don’t think I’m afraid of such a commitment. In any event, here’s a dictionary of all fears.

[ Stumbles for the Week of March 25, 2007 is a post written by Tamar Weinberg. ]

Read more about The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web, a primer to social media marketing. Or you can subscribe to the Techipedia RSS feed.

As always, another great week of stumbles. Here are some of the precious gems that caught my eye this week.

• Interactive Photo Mosaic: I’ve always had a soft spot for the creativity of photo mosaics. This one is brilliant. It kept me busy and engaged for a pretty long time.
• Photoshop Tutorial: Web 2.0 Buttons: Just about everything Web 2.0 can be done by yourself. Here’s how you can create “Web 2.0 style” buttons using Photoshop CS2.
• Mac Products Buying Guide: I’m not a Mac user in the slightest (I sold my iBook awhile ago on eBay), but for whatever reason, StumbleUpon serves me a ridiculous amount of Mac pages, probably because I am always thumbsupping the Mac sites. This one happens to be rather cool. It tells you how long Apple typically goes before releasing a brand new product “update,” advising buyers to either wait until a new release is about to come out or to buy now since the product has just been updated. For example, for the iPod Shuffle, which has just been updated (2nd generation), it says “Buy now, product just updated,” but for the full-sized iPod, it says “Buy it only if you need it – approaching the end of a cycle.”
• The Adaption to my Generation: I’m sure many social Creative Commons photographers have heard of “Project 365″ where photographers take a photo a day of anything. This is a bit like that, only with mugshots of a guy known as JK taken over an 8 year span. Pretty neat idea. Personally, I prefer his short-haired and clean-shaven look. What do you think?
• Dark Project Studios Wallpapers: Some amazing artwork is featured here. Unfortunately, I don’t think there are large-sized wallpapers available for download here.
• Long Bets [On the Record: Predictions]: Interesting site where people voice predictions for the future. Example: “By 2060 the total population of humans on earth will be less than it is today.”
• Default Router Passwords: Lost the password to your router? Check this site — it contains a database of the most commonly used default passwords for hundreds of different router makes and versions.
• Life before the computer: I’m betting that I had seen this in the 90s when I read the content from a bunch of joke sites, but nevertheless, it’s so true. “An application was for employment /A program was a TV show /A cursor used profanity / A keyboard was a piano!”
• WebSketch: Bringing MS Paint to your web browser, with playback of the work you’ve done.

[ Stumbles for the Week of March 18, 2007 is a post written by Tamar Weinberg. ]

Read more about The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web, a primer to social media marketing. Or you can subscribe to the Techipedia RSS feed.