http://www.thevirtualhandshake.com/blog Blogs, social network sites, social software---and how to use all of these tools to become dramatically more successful Wed, 30 Apr 2008 15:13:29 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en I'll be visiting the San Francisco Bay Area May 5-8, and hope that you can attend some of my investor seminars to the Wharton and Columbia Business School Alumni Clubs: Topic: "Squeezing Blood from a Stone: The Professional Investor's Guide to Eliciting Information" Host: Wharton Club of Northern California Learn how professional investors ... http://www.thevirtualhandshake.com/blog/2008/04/30/visit-to-sf-bay-area-may-5-8-wharton-columbia-business-school-alumni-clubs Authentic social media engagement has the power to transform brands that have a declining reputation for customer service. Microsoft, led by Robert Scoble and the Channel 9 team, reversed their image as a company out of touch with its developers. Dell, spurred on by the public complaints of A-list bloggers ... http://www.thevirtualhandshake.com/blog/2008/04/29/can-comcast-scale-social-media-customer-engagement LinkedIn launched their blog in April 2007. One year later, how are they doing regarding community evangelism and social media participation? I’ve set up a simple survey which I hope you'll take a minute to fill out. For additional background if you're interested, see my post at Linked Intelligence. http://www.thevirtualhandshake.com/blog/2008/04/23/survey-linkedin-community-evangelism-one-year-later I've long been fascinated by the economic approach to human behavior, as described in books like David Friedman's Hidden Order: The Economics of Everyday Life, the popular Freakonomics and the collective work of Nobel prize-winning economist Gary S. Becker. Prompted by a conversation on MyLinkedInPowerForum about the relative value ... http://www.thevirtualhandshake.com/blog/2008/04/13/my-new-favorite-blog I could go into a long explanation about legal liability, etc., but Jeremiah Owyang said it perfectly on Twitter today: Many bloggers I know prefer a blogging policy at work, as it helps to distinguish where the guardrails are. http://www.thevirtualhandshake.com/blog/2008/04/04/why-your-company-needs-a-blogging-policy Yet another great video from Lee LeFever explaining a Web 2.0 phenomenon: Ready to try it? Join Twitter (if you're not already on it) and follow me! More great Web 2.0 videos from Lee: Social Networking in Plain English Blogs ... http://www.thevirtualhandshake.com/blog/2008/04/03/twitter-in-plain-english Unbelievable news out of LinkedIn tonight: 4/2/2008: Yes, this was supposed to be completely unbelievable - it was an April Fool's joke. LinkedIn to End Free Service 4/2/2008: No, they're not really. I knew this day was coming. 4/2/2008: Every April Fool's Day has a day after,  when we all clean up the mess we ... http://www.thevirtualhandshake.com/blog/2008/04/01/the-end-of-free-at-linkedin From Jim Turner on Twitter: Is it just my imagination or does Twitter sometimes 'eat' your tweets? Must [have] a 'tweet tooth' or something. http://www.thevirtualhandshake.com/blog/2008/03/16/twitters-little-secret Anil Dash of Six Apart, the makers of Movable Type blogging software, has an interesting commentary today on the state of data portability. In summary, he says that despite our many technological advances, the fundamental ability to embed dynamic content -- particularly text-based content -- from one site into another ... http://www.thevirtualhandshake.com/blog/2008/03/14/anil-dash-on-embedded-journalism I have two new social media addictions thanks to SXSW. The first is Twitter (more on that in another post, but in the meantime, you can follow me); the second is Bitstrips. Simply put, Bitstrips is a Web 2.0 application for creating comic strips. It enables people like me who have ... http://www.thevirtualhandshake.com/blog/2008/03/13/social-comics-a-review-of-bitstrips-in-pictures