Image via CrunchBase

Every month in 2011 we’ve been sharing social media news highlights. This month: Cincinnati named Most Social city by Mashable, Google Plus, Google rebranding Blogger and Picasa, and a Twitter job hustle.

Cincinnati Named Most Social City by Mashable

Last Thursday, June 30, The Pub at Rookwood Mews was packed for Social Media Day!  We’ll have more to say about that in a separate post.

Special thanks to Blair Ward for creating a video that put Cincinnati at the top of the list for Mashable’s Most Social City title.  And thanks also to NMC Steering Committee member Anne Castleberry for helping organize Social Media Day Cincinnati!

Google Plus in Limited Field Trial

Google + is Google’s latest attempt to make sharing on the web more like sharing in real life. Group contacts into Circles (Friends, Family, Acquaintances, and more), create Hangouts, etc.  It’s in limited field trial right now, with full public launch expected by the end of the month (7/31).

Chances are you may have received an invitation already. Check it out and let us know what you think! Is this more than just another social networking platform? What are some ways that marketers can use this?

Google Rebranding Blogger and Picasa

Mashable reports that the Blogger and Picasa names are going bye-bye, as Google re-brands the products as Google Blogs and Google Photos, respectively, as part of its larger effort to unify its brand under Google +.

As someone who first started blogging on the Blogger platform, it’s a bittersweet moment.

Twitter Job Hustle

If you’re not following Tim Siedell on Twitter @badbanana, you’re definitely missing out on some humor. Tim’s blog recently featured a video about how two creatives used Twitter to land a prized agency job for the summer. Check it out: Twitter Job Hustle

Related articles

• Blogger and Picassa to Be Retired by Google (accesscomptech.wordpress.com)
• Google Takes Another Crack At Social Media (cincinnatisearchengineoptimization.com)
• Cincy named top social media-savvy city (news.cincinnati.com)

Image by archer10 (Dennis) via Flickr

This month we’ve got LinkedIn going public, Facebook changing privacy settings (again), and Google honoring guitar great Les Paul.

LinkedIn Goes Public

Big news last month as LinkedIn launched on the NYSE (LINKD), the biggest internet IPO since Google’s in 2004.  The Wall Street Journal reports:

Shares opened May 19th at $83, up 84% from its initial public offering price of $45. By the market’s 4 p.m. close, the stock had soared 109% to $94.25.

Could this set the stage for other internet companies like Facebook, Zynga, and Groupon?

Facebook’s Facial Recognition App Controversy

Facebook again has stirred up controversy with its new Facial Recognition application. We talked about this a bit back in January.  You can tag groups of photos in an album, and Facebook uses its facial recognition technology to suggest the friend you should tag with. This means that a Facebook friend could potentially tag you in any photo they’ve uploaded, whether you want it or not by default.

There are three ways you can manage this, should you be concerned. In a recommended order of importance:

1. Don’t put yourself in compromising situations where a Facebook friend could snap an upload a picture of you to Facebook.
2. Manage your Facebook friends so that you’re only connected to those you trust.
3. Update your Facebook privacy settings.

To disable this feature in Facebook:

1. Log into Facebook, click the Account drop down and select Privacy Settings.
2. Click Customize settings.
3. Scroll down to the Things others share section.
4. Next to the Suggest photos of me to friends option, click Edit Settings and change the setting from Enabled to Disabled.
5. Click Okay.

Google Honors Les Paul with Playable and Recordable Google Doodle

Google is known for commemorating special days and anniversaries by changing the logo on its homepage. Earlier this week, they put up a special Google doodle to honor Les Paul, shaped like an electric guitar. Mousing over the strings played notes, and you could also record and share your recording with others.

Playable Les Paul Google Doodle

What is it about games that bring so much engagement from those of us who play them?  Just yesterday I learned that there’s a version of Angry Birds now on the Chrome platform. (Thanks, Chris!)

Wouldn’t it be great to know how we can introduce a gaming dimension to the products and services we offer to get more engagement from those who use them?

Today at the May 2011 New Media Cincinnati Second Saturday event (you’re coming, right?), we’ll be watching a video from Seth Priebatsch, the Founder of SCVNGR. SCVNGR makes a mobile game with real-world challenges.  And guess what? They have a playdeck that lists nearly 50 different game mechanics that can be mixed and matched to create the foundation for different types of games.

Interested in injecting a game dimension to your products, services, or business/life in general?  Most of us are.  Then this SCVNGR Game Dynamics Playdeck comes as quite a welcome resource.  Read more from the TechCrunch article:

SCVNGR’s Secret Game Mechanics Playdeck

And if you want to print your own version of SCVNGR’s Game Mechanics Flash Cards, go for it!

Print Your Own Version of SCVNGR’s Game Mechanics Flash Cards

Power Tip for Social Media Tragedies Discussion by Michelle Beckham-Corbin.

As more businesses and individuals begin to carve a presence for themselves online, the question about reputation management arises. “How do we manage our brand online?  How do we control what people are saying about us, especially if it is negative?”

So how do we, as caretakers of the Brand (company, products, services, personal brand, etc.), manage this?  There are many tools you can use to help manage your Brand.  Today’s Power Tip focuses on using the service About.Me.

About.Me is a great place to build some positive SEO for your Brand.  It is a custom profile and personal analytics dashboard that can be created for an individual profile or for a company.  This puts the power to convey your Brand in the manner that you want it shared with the world.  The site gives you the ability to:

• Create a slick bio with images
• Tell the World what you want them to know about you
• Add in your social links (Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, YouTube, Reddit, etc.)
• Add an Email link

Now people can find all of your online real-estate in one place and your image presented in  the way that you would like it to be shared. The built-in analytics capability allows you to see who is looking at your site and how they are interacting with it.

Here’s a view of NMC March Speaker Daniel Lally’s profile:

Dan Lally's About.Me Profile

And another example from About.me co-founder Tony Conrad:

Tony Conrad's About.Me Profile

Other sites to use are Google Profiles and Flavors.Me

What are you waiting for? Get started creating the best version of your online Brand now!

Daniel Lewis

From Daniel Johnson, Jr.: As you know, this month at New Media Cincinnati, we’re talking about building community. In coming up with a power tip you can use in building community, I reached out to Daniel Lewis, asking him to share how he’s used Twitter Search to help him in his own community-building efforts.  What follows is his guest post.

I leveraged the power of Twitter searches to help promote my podcast about how to podcast and Audacity (free audio-editing software), The Audacity to Podcast, which contributed to its being featured in the front page of the iTunes podcast directory. Read on to discover how you can do the same to enhance your brand or drive traffic to your website.

Twitter clients

There are many choices for a how you can access Twitter—called a Twitter client. In order to track your topics and improve your brand or promote your content, it’s possible to use the vanilla Twitter.com, but I highly recommend switching to a more powerful client, such as TweetDeck, HootSuite, or Seesmic. Each of these have desktop, mobile, and browser-based editions. TweetDeck Desktop is my choice and what I will use as example, but the same principles apply to these and many other Twitter clients.

The basics of searching Twitter

A couple years ago (or millennia, in Twitter years), Twitter bought a little company called Summize and used their technology to power the new Twitter Search, which yields real-time search results. To avoid confusion over quotation marks and search terms, I will show search terms in fixed-width (Courier-type) font, like this: audacity.

Twitter search uses the same simple and advanced methods as Google and other search engines and is case-insensitive:

• Type words to find tweets that contain those words in any order.
  Example: audacity podcast returns “How do I use Audacity to podcast?” and “I’m trying to podcast with Audacity,” but not “How do I start a podcast?”
• Enclose words in quotation marks to find tweets that contain that exact phrase.
  Example: “podcast with Audacity” returns “I’m trying to podcast with Audacity,” but not “How do I use Audacity to podcast” or “How do I start a podcast?”

Because I want my podcast about Audacity and how to podcast to be heard by people who are podcasting as well as people who may be using Audacity for other purposes, I simply search for Audacity. Although I don’t recommend it, if you search Twitter for that word, you’ll find the following:

• Racial slurs
• Obscene profanities
• Quotations from famous people
• Book titles
• Tweets about the Audacity software

The first five of those are either offensive to me or totally irrelevant to what I offer. Your own search term may also reveal unwanted patterns. So we need to refine the search.

Refining your search with boolean operators

Don’t let a technical phrase scare you away! We’ll use the simplest and easy-to-understand boolean operators, OR and NOT or -. These must be typed in all-caps. By default, Twitter is like Google in that it assumes AND whenever you type more than one word. Thus, it will find things that only contain all of those words. I think that’s logical.

• Use OR to run a single search that could contain two different results.
  Example: Audacity OR podcasting returns any tweets with either the word “Audacity” or the word “podcasting,” or even both words together! Do you see why it’s called OR?
• Use NOT or the hyphen - to find tweets that do not contain words or phrases.
  Example: Audacity NOT hope or Audacity -hope will not show me any tweets that contain the word “hope,” such as ”The Audacity of Hope” or “I hope Audacity can do the trick.” I use this to avoid tweets with certain obscenities or slurs that usually wouldn’t have anything to do with the Audacity software, anyway.

Combing techniques for true power

All of the above methods can be combined for even greater results. Here are some examples:

• Audacity -”audacity of hope” -dewey returns tweets that don’t mention President Obama’s book title or John Dewey (he said, “Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination”).
• Audacity OR “how to podcast” -”the audacity” returns tweets either about Audacity or how to podcast. Telling it -”the audacity” avoids a lot of the hateful comments (“She has the audacity to say that?”), but also means “The Audacity to Podcast” won’t show up. Oh well.

I still get a lot of irrelevant tweets, but this simple formula helps me more easily find exactly what I want. For example, I’ll often see people tweet, “I can’t figure out how to use Audacity,” to which I will reply with help and eventually direct them back to my site where they can subscribe to my podcast or find more answers.

This isn’t the end of how you can search Twitter! There are still ways to search by location, time, links, and more. Additionally, you can attach advanced Google Analytics codes in order to track how effective your Twitter search-and-respond campaign is, but there isn’t the time to explain that.

If you enjoyed or benefited from this article, please follow me, Daniel J. Lewis, at all of the following:

• @theRamenNoodle
• The Audacity to Podcast—podcasting and how to use Audacity
• Are You Just Watching?—Christian movie reviews with critical thinking
• the Ramen Noodle—clean-comedy podcast
• ONCE – Once Upon a Time podcast

via Christiaan Todd Photography

A huge part of the strength of the community we’ve developed over the past three years through the Second Saturday events comes from individual participation. As each person shares about the community online and in-person, the wider the reach the community has. We have this blurb that people get to read when they register that says:

Unless otherwise specified, New Media Cincinnati events and content therein are licensed under Creative Commons to promote the sharing and distribution of new media content.

In other words, please

• take pictures and add them to the Flickr group and elsewhere,
• record audio and video,
• blog,
• tweet,
• record audio and video,
• live-stream, and
• otherwise create and share content to document and promote this event on the internet

And that’s what happens. We update Twitter and Facebook statuses and check into Foursquare during the events. We take pictures and post them to Facebook. Some of us write blog posts. Here are some pictures that Vickie Sceifers and Christiaan Todd have published from last week’s Second Saturday event: Naked On The Web! How’s YOUR Privacy?

• VSPNetwork.tv – New Media Cincinnati – Privacy Panel
• Christiaan Todd Photography – #newmediacincy

Related articles

• What we have in common (danieljohnsonjr.com)

The Steering Committee has been discussing possible questions around privacy, the web, and social networking tools in preparation for tomorrow’s Second Saturday event.

Some background posts and resources that have prompted our discussion:

• Facebook Brings Facial Recognition to Photo Tagging
• Facebook Users Upload Record-Breaking 750M Photos Over New Year’s Weekend
• Help! My Boss Wants To Be My Friend On Facebook!
• Facebook’s Privacy Guide
• Foursquare Responds To Please Rob Me: Please Shut Up
• On foursquare, location, & privacy…

Twenty Questions About Online Nakedness And Privacy

The order below is in no particular importance, but useful for reference in the comments:

1. What are some must-haves for your privacy on a Facebook Business page? What are your must-haves for privacy on Facebook?
2. How private is too private? If you keep yourself totally locked down, then doesn’t that defeat the purpose of being social on social networks?
3. Does your IT department block social networking sites at your work? What is their rationale, and how does this hinder your ability to use social networking sites on your job?
4. From a legal standpoint, what can I do to protect what my employees are saying online, either as explicit representatives of my company/brand, or as themselves but otherwise associated with my company/brand?
5. What is your personal strategy for using Facebook? Do you use it to connect with family and old friends, or do you use it for business? Is there a way to keep them separate?
6. What steps have you taken on social networking sites to keep your profile private?
7. Were pictures of you among the 750M uploaded to Facebook on New Year’s Weekend?
8. What do you do when you realize you’ve been tagged in a photo? What if a questionable photo was live on your page for a week, and you happened to be offline but your boss and colleagues were not?
9. Should you or have you connected with your boss on Facebook?
10. What is going on with Facebook’s Instant Personalization? What are its benefits to me, and what can I do if I don’t want it enabled?
11. Should you really be concerned about posting where you are on sites like Foursquare and Gowalla or Facebook Places? Should you be concerned about the premise of PleaseRobMe.com?
12. Should you “geotag” your tweets (updates from Twitter)?
13. How can I manage what I say on Twitter best protect my privacy?
14. Describe some potential situations in real life in which you think it would not be best to connect online.
15. How do you tactfully decline a connection request (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Foursquare, Google Buzz, etc.)?
16. How do you remove a connection/friend on these social networking sites? Do they get notified when I do this?
17. How does posting content online affect your career? We want our businesses to be high profile, but what about the behavior of our employees when that content is less than attractive?
18. Is there a benefit to having lists or groups of people on Facebook? Is there a way to control what people in these lists see? (Limited profile settings, perhaps?)
19. Should I accept a Friend request from a profile that is a business (i.e., not a human at a business)? Facebook friend vs Facebook page, etc., on Foursquare, too.
20. What benefit, if any, is there to being connecting with a venue on Foursquare?

Related articles

• Report: Facebook and Twitter Most Unsafe Social Networking Sites in 2010 (socialtimes.com)
• Ways to Protect Your Privacy on Social Networking Websites Like Facebook (computersight.com)
• Social Networking Etiquette (thinkup.waldenu.edu)
• How to Control Your Privacy With Foursquare and Other Geolocation Services (socialmediatoday.com)
• 4 Quick and Easy Ways to Protect Your Online Self in 2011 (socialtimes.com)
• What Your Business Needs to Know About Social Graphs (socialmediaexaminer.com)
• Year in Ideas: Social networking and the end of privacy (nationalpost.com)

When we met earlier this month, one of the things we talked about was Google Buzz.

Here’s a nice matrix that Jeremiah Owyang compiled to compare Google Buzz, Facebook, MySpace and Twitter:

Web Strategy Matrix: Google Buzz vs Facebook vs MySpace vs Twitter (Feb 2010)