Social Media 3 - Jeff Hester

Posted on March 24, 2011March 26, 2011 by Jeff Hester — Leave a comment

LinkedIn: You Are One in a Hundred Million

Earlier this week, LinkedIn registered their 100 millionth member. They are currently registering a new member at the rate of one per second. While the number still lags behind Facebook, it is a significant milestone and shows strong growth for the professional networking service.

I first heard about the milestone when I received (along with a million others) the following email from Reid Hoffman, co-founder and chairman of LinkedIn:

Dear Jeff,

I want to personally thank you because you were one of LinkedIn’s first million members (member number 548570 in fact!*). In any technology adoption lifecycle, there are the early adopters, those who help lead the way. That was you.

We hit a big milestone at LinkedIn this week when our 100 millionth member joined the site.

When we founded LinkedIn, our vision was to help the world’s professionals be more successful and productive. Today, with your help, LinkedIn is changing the lives of millions of members by helping them connect with others, find jobs, get insights, start a business, and much more.

We are grateful for your support and look forward to helping you accomplish much more in the years to come. I hope that you are having a great year.

Honestly, I have not been a very active LinkedIn user until recently, and I am still learning the ropes. But if you haven’t checked it out, it’s probably time for a fresh look. That’s why I’ve signed up for Neal Schaffer‘s upcoming LinkedIn Workshop on April 19th at SMMOC Labs.

Neal is an recognized LinkedIn expert and author of Understanding, Leveraging and Maximizing LinkedIn. He held a similar workshop back in the fall and got rave reviews. It’s a hands-on workshop — bring your laptop and be prepared to take specific steps that will help you get more value from LinkedIn. Join me there, and feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn.

So What Does 100 Million Members Look Like?

Here is a great infographic that illustrates what 100,000,000 members looks like.

Posted on March 19, 2011 by Jeff Hester — 6 Comments

Why Face to Face Still Matters in Social Media

Last month, I shared how face-to-face meetings still matter. You might assume that the realm of social media — which by it’s very definition encourages online community and relationship building — wouldn’t really gain much through real life interaction. You’d be dead wrong.

Social Media in the Real OC

Here in Orange County we are fortunate to have a thriving social media community, supported by a number of regular, live events. Bryan Elliot’s LinkedOC leverages LinkedIn and holds monthly networking events with great speakers such as Scott Stratton and Seth Godin. These are big events, but you meet a number of interesting people who are building their tribe. LinkedOC lies somewhere between a social media group and an old school networking meeting.

My favorite event remains Bob Watson’s Social Media Masterminds of Orange County — or simply SMMOC. This group meets nearly every week on Saturday mornings from 9-11am in Costa Mesa, and draws a wide range of people with an interest in social media — from consultants to mommy bloggers and real estate professionals to enthusiasts.

SMMOC whiteboard — The whiteboard at SMMOC. Click to enlarge.

The agenda is flexible. There is no projector or monitor, but there is wifi in the room. Attendees are free to use the whiteboard to write down discussion topics or share their Twitter handle. Bob is a terrific facilitator, deftly leading the group through two hours of fantastic interaction and learning. There are just three rules: no self-promotion, no acronyms (at least, not without a definition) and there are no dumb questions.

This group is up on the latest happenings in the social media realm, so whether you’re new to social media or an old pro (what defines someone as an old pro in social media??), you will learn and grow from the discussion. But the real value is in the relationships that are made and bonded through the face-to-face interaction.

A typical SMMOC crowd — SMMOC - Everyone participates

I’ve met and developed connections with a number of local social media mavens, mavericks and masterminds through SMMOC, including Bob (The Man) Watson, Mel Aclaro, Carina Zimmer, Scott Schang, Kirsten Wright, fellow San Clemente local Doug McClure, Matthew Gallizzi, Stacey Harmon, Chris Van Dusen, Eric Stegemann, Michelle Lecours and too many to list here.

There is also a fair amount of crossover between this group and another of my favorite groups, the OC WordPress Meetup. Steve Zehngut and Jeff Turner of Zeek Interactive are sometimes in attendance, as are regulars Loren Nason, Cindy Ronzoni, Ross Teasley and Joan Ganter.

These people have helped me refine how I use social media, encouraged me to improve my blogging and helped me stay on top of the ever-changing social media landscape. My life is richer for the relationships.

Can you develop community and relationships entirely using social media alone? Certainly, but real-world face time strengthens those connections and accelerates the process.

How are face-to-face interactions helping strengthen your social and professional network?

Posted on March 17, 2011March 19, 2011 by Jeff Hester — 2 Comments

Foursquare Check-in Insanity

Foursquare badges — A few of my 39 badges

I’ve been using Foursquare since their iPhone app first came out. The promise of Foursquare has yet to be fulfilled (for me), mainly because the demographic is so specific. You’ve got to have a smart phone (which used to be more of an issue than it is today). You and your friends have to care enough to bother checking in. And it helps to be located nearby. All this conspires to make Foursquare well suited for urban environs like NYC or San Francisco, or tech-saavy events like SXSW. Orange County is still a little too sleepy to realize the full potential of Foursquare.

That may be changing.

The most recent update to Foursquare incorporated a leaderboard. You could always compete on Foursquare with your friends for badges or mayorship of the local Starbucks, but the leaderboard brings a whole new level of competition to the “game” of Foursquare.

I upgraded to the new version as soon as it came out — I’m religious about upgrading. But I didn’t really pay much attention to the new features. The most obvious new feature was the “Specials Nearby” which now shows the number and a list of all specials within a few miles of your current location.

When I checked in, I also noticed it showed my current rank, but I still didn’t pay much attention to that. Then I noticed some unusual check-in behavior. Pete McGowan — one of my friends at PlainJoe Studios — was checking in all over the place. He even checked in from the 15 freeway! Weird, right?

My Foursquare profile on the iPhone — Ranked #7 at the moment

Then I stumbled upon the reason. Clicking on the leaderboard from your profile shows your rank next to all of your Foursquare friends. The gauntlet had been thrown down, and it seemed that — at least for some people — they were determined to sit at the top of that leaderboard.

Foursquare leaderboard — #1 has over 300 check-in points!

My girlfriend will tell you I check in a lot. She marvels at my consistency, but really it’s just a matter of habit now. I figured I’d rank pretty high, which I do, but when you look at my total check-in points, it’s a fraction of those of my friend Pete.

It’s possible that some people are abusing their check-in powers just to game the system. But it’s also clear that Foursquare has taken the game aspect of their popular app to a whole new level.

Are you on Foursquare? You can find or follow me here.

Posted on February 27, 2011February 28, 2011 by Jeff Hester — 4 Comments

What is Memolane?

It’s been said that everything you do or say on the Internet is there for ever. But even with all the various websites and services we use, it’s still not easy to collect all those tweets, posts, photos and other artifacts in a organized way. Flavors.me does a fair job of aggregating this data, and Facebook is doing more and more aggregation. But neither of these attempt to take a historical look back at your activity. This is where Memolane attempts to fill the gap, creating a digital timeline of your contributions.

Currently in beta, Memolane allows users to configure a variety of popular services and then automatically collects them in a timeline. The services supported include Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Last.fm, Picasa, RSS feeds, YouTube, Vimeo, Foursquare and TripIt, with support for additional services promised.

The results are pretty amazing. You can scroll back through time and see where you checked in, what you tweeted, what photos you posted and so on. Across the bottom of the screen is a series of vertical lines that represent a granular view of time that lets you quickly scroll through years of data. Slick!

You have control over whether you share this publicly or not, but I noticed some glitches. For instance, if you have photos marked private on Flickr, they still come over into your Memolane timeline. Depending on your Memonlane settings, they may be visible in your “lane” regardless of your Flickr settings. Not great, but then it’s still in beta.

If you’re interested, you can check out my Memolane here.

UPDATE: Beta Invites

Memolane Community Manager Meghan Krane graciously gave me an invite code to share with you (thanks, Meghan!). If you’d like to try Memolane for yourself, sign-up here using the invite code “hester”.

Posted on February 22, 2011February 22, 2011 by Jeff Hester — 6 Comments

Social Media and Knowledge Management

Social media is often cast as being at odds with enterprise initiatives such as knowledge management. There is a sense that as people embrace and use social media tools like Twitter, Yammer, LinkedIn and Quora, the enterprise loses control over their knowledge. While this is certainly true, it’s also nothing new. There have always been and always will be opportunities and reasons to search the Internet vs searching the Intranet; for participating in an Internet discussion group vs. one in your enterprise community; and for leveraging external wisdom vs. known internal resources.

The subject of this week’s KMers.org tweet chat emphasized this tension: Corporate Social Media vs. Intranets. The implication is that social media and knowledge management are at odds and one is destined to be the solitary victor.

Reality Check.

Social media and knowledge management aren’t at odds at all. In fact, the most successful knowledge management systems embrace social media, but with a business mindset. The smart KM implementations leverage blogs, subscriptions, communities, discussion forums, and member profiles. They tie it together with search in a single working environment. And they look for opportunities to tie in other tools to streamline knowledge sharing — everything from instant messaging (i.e. Sametime) to micro-blogging (i.e. Yammer).

A few of the comments that really stuck out in our discussion today bear this out. We were asked for tips on optimizing the integration between social media applications and intranets. Here are a few notable responses:

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/TKBeard/status/40101729278246912″]

Tammy Bearden hits the nail on the head: it all starts with people.

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/stangarfield/status/40103103382429696″]

I like Stan Garfield’s advice to meet people where they are, which for many is still the email inbox.I’ve found the ability to subscribe and get email notifications to be an invaluable tool for engaging the workforce. I would even say it’s essential, and we’ve found it to be a tremendous attraction at Fluor.

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/BarbaraFillip/status/40102879041687552″]

Barbara Fillip reminds us to take the member eye view. Remove barriers to participation, where possible. Single sign-on is just one example.

Thanks to Stan Garfield, Liz Williams, Tom Menke, Ryan McClead, Sean Brady, Tammy Bearden, Antoon van het Erve, Matthew Loxton, Barbara Fillip, and the other participants who shared their knowledge and insight. You can read the entire tweet chat transcript online, as well as check the schedule of upcoming discussions on KMers.org. We gather via Twitter every Tuesday at noon Eastern time. If you’re a KM professional, you should be a part of the discussion.