Posts from — February 2008
Facebook engages conversations
Businesses are getting in on the social networking sites, because they know that’s where a substantial audience is. Then they’re finding that they need to actually engage with their customers:
Ernst & Young were among the first companies to set up a recruiting page on Facebook, aimed at recruiting the thousands of entry-level graduates throughout the world it needs each year.
Young said some businesses felt uncomfortable about their lack of control over what was posted on social media sites.
But he said opening a business to scrutiny was what made social media advertising work.
“It’s conversational rather than just a one-way broadcast,” says Young.
Lee agreed businesses using social media should be prepared for a two-way conversation.
“A one-way push of information doesn’t work any more. You want people to engage.”
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February 23, 2008 No Comments
New communicators transform our relationships
Our relationships are no longer the same, thanks to modern communications:
Beam me up, Scotty — before he could utter those immortal words, Captain James T Kirk first had to pull a small device called a ‘communicator’ from his pocket. He’d flip it open, it would chirrup, and communication was established.
In the 1960’s when the Star Trek TV show was created, such a device was the stuff of wildest dreams. Now, in 2008, we wonder why the only thing the ‘communicator’ could do was make what amounted to phonecalls.
Almost everyone now carries a ‘communicator’: a tiny cellphone and/or a tiny MP3 music player. Their capabilities are amazing: phones take photos and MP3 players play videos; keep address books and calendars on both, or either. …
Where you can connect to a wireless network you can use an iPod touch to check email and RSS feeds, browse web pages, Twitter, Facebook and pretty much anything else on the Internet, along with accessing YouTube and the iTunes Store with all its podcasts. Oh, and don’t forget Google Maps that can not only show you where a location is and how it looks, but also give you turn by turn driving directions.
Read more about how we’re caught up in a web of ongoing communications at: iPod touch and iPhone transform our relationships.
February 19, 2008 No Comments
National Library Flickr photos
The National Library has a good collection of photos on Flickr. The image at left is a screenshot from their Edmund Hillary collection.
Flickr automatically provides RSS feeds too, so it’s easy to subscribe to the National Library’s photo feed and keep up with what’s being added. Below is a screenshot from my feedreader, NetNewsWire, showing one image, along with its description. Following photos in a newsreader like this, is very similar to reading email.
They have almost 400 photos online at the moment, and seem to be adding more regularly.
Flickr offers so much more than just displaying photos. Users can add comments and notes, tag photos, click through to other photos added on the same date, see events placed on a map, add favourites and so on.
They even provide a graph showing how many visitors they’ve had. Good job, National Library!
The Library say:
The purpose of the National Library is to enrich the cultural and economic life of New Zealand and its interchange with other nations.
We are posting a small selection of our collection images onto Flickr as a pilot. We hope to see that this helps people discover new material.
Has your community organisation experimented with Flickr yet? It offers many possibilities for increasing interaction with your members and the general public. How about giving it a try. We’d love to see your feedback here.
February 19, 2008 2 Comments
Old Friends, Bebo and MySpace are a hit in NZ
Apparently Kiwis are big users of social networking sites such as MySpace, Bebo and Facebook:
Australians and New Zealanders have jumped on the global social networking bandwagon with more than 60 per cent of online Kiwis using the sites followed by 55 per cent of web users across the Tasman.
The numbers come from a social networking report released [13 February 2008] by Nielsen Online, which shows that 62 per cent, or 1.3 million adult Kiwis, and 55 per cent of Aussies have browsed other people’s online social networking profiles in the last 12 months, while 49 per cent and 44 per cent respectively had updated their own online profile.
…In New Zealand, the Trade Me affiliated site, Old Friends, remains the country’s most visited social network site, followed by Bebo and MySpace.
… In New Zealand, social networking has largely been driven by a desire to reconnect with people, with 42 per cent of those surveyed saying they wanted to reconnect with former colleagues and old school friends.
[Via : 1.3 million Kiwis use social network sites - m-net - ICT business news and information.]
If that’s where the people are, your community organisation definitely needs to at least know about it, do some exploring, figure out how it fits with your work.
February 17, 2008 No Comments
Blogs, wikis? Learn to use new internet-based tools
Register now for the Engage Your Community conference.
Engage Your Community: using blogs, YouTube, and other cool tools to achieve your group’s goals aims to help tangata whenua, community and voluntary organisations.
Experts and community group leaders who are currently using new internet-based tools will lead a series of practical workshops.
Sample topics:
- Set up a project website in 10 minutes flat
- Use the internet to cut costs and raise funds
- Use blogs to develop an online support community for clients
- Use Moodle as a virtual office
Venue and date
- Tuesday 22 April, 2008.
- Start at 8.30am; close at 5pm.
- Waikato Management School of the University of Waikato, Hamilton.
Register now
Register at: engageyourcommunity.eventbrite.com.
The registration fee includes admission to all workshops, morning tea, lunch, afternoon tea, and a conference bag.
Register before 15 March 2008 for $75; after that it’s $100. Bring another person from your organisation for $50 per person.
5 free registration scholarships
5 free registrations are available to groups who:
- agree to participate in a follow-up case study
- and / or have a low budget.
Apply before 1 March directly to Prof Ted Zorn.
Contact information
Contact: Prof Ted Zorn, Waikato Management School, chair of Waikato 2020 Communications Trust.
Office: 07 838-4776
E-mail: tzorn@mngt.waikato.ac.nz.
The conference is organised by Waikato 2020 Communications Trust.
February 5, 2008 1 Comment
