In this last part of this series on Social Media Trends, but I’m sure to continue, I’d like to point out some of the cool sites and people I had the pleasure of hearing about in my trip to NYC.
Social Media Research – Ryan Williams (a nice guy, whom I had the chance to speak with for a while on my trip), Tudor Williams of twisurveys.com have done some great research in how companies and those responsible for communication are using social media.
Sites recommended by Ryan and Tudor:
trendpedia.com (searching trends on the web)
forrester.com/groundswell (an traditional book, Groundswell, recommended numerous times to learn more about social media and its effects)
ning.com (set up your own social networking site)
Shel Holtz, ABC, the guru of communication technology was also at the conference. Of course he had a list of cool sites that communicators could be using to help themselves and their company.
SlideShare- the YouTube of PowerPoint presentations. One of those “why didn’t I think of that?” sites.
Stopblocking.org – a blog that talks about a lot of the same ideas I do here and with a theme of work/life balance, corporations trying to block employee access to social media sites. I recently answered a question on LinkedIn that dealt with irrational behavior in corporate world.
Blocking access to the web was my answer and it drew a response from the question’s author, Ori Brafman, co-author of Sway. Seems this type of irrational behavior is evident everywhere in the corporate world where trust of one’s employees is behind the repressive act. It was something I heard about over and over again at the conference, communication leads being blocked from the Web by their IT departments to “increase productivity,” my question is what information outside your company isn’t on the web? Being handcuffed from accessing it isn’t helping anyone. What are your thoughts?
Other sites to check out:
Dopplr- if you travel a lot, this is the site to keep friends and colleaques up-to-date on your travels.
FriendFeed – collects all these social networking profiles into one neat little package.
What sites are you using and what do you find appealing or wrong with them? Let me know.
Until next time, Tim
Related posts:
Hey Tim, great series on the IABC conference/SM trends. I just signed up for Friendfeed after a lot of twitter downtime. Still analyzing but like tools like it that “aggregate” all the other SM tools we’re using. Will keep you posted.
Dora