Enjoyable, thought provoking keynote from Gary Vaynerchuk.
While it runs at over an hour most of it is Q & A with the audience.
Worth watching:

Enjoyable, thought provoking keynote from Gary Vaynerchuk.
While it runs at over an hour most of it is Q & A with the audience.
Worth watching:
The Irish Social Media Awards are being held in June in Dublin and nominations opened today.
As with other years nominations are 100% free.
This year’s categories are:
Facebook categories:
Facebook Page for a Business (Non Campaign)
Facebook Page for a Non-Profit/Organisation
Facebook Page for a Business (owner managed)
Integrated Facebook Campaign: Page, App, Ads
Twitter categories
Best Business Twitter account – marketing, sales
Best Business Twitter account – support, CRM
Best Business Twitter Campaign
Mobile categories
Best Mobile App (Marketing)
Best Mobile App (Events)
Best Mobile Campaign Using Social Media
SME Categories
Best Use of Social Media by an SME (new)
Best Blog of an SME
Other Categories
Best Experimental Format (Vine, Instagram, Snapchat)
Best Social Media Only Campaign (not linked to any other media)
Most Innovative Use of Social Media
Best Use of Social Media by State Body
Customer Care using Social Media (Integrated)
Best Video/Video Campaign (non broadcast)
Best Online PR Campaign
Best Use of Social Media for a Sponsorship Campaign
Social Media Effectiveness – conversions, metrics etc
Best Integrated Social Media Campaign
Full details on the event site.
Gary Vaynerchuk posted this deck yesterday.
It’s well worth reviewing and sharing, as it highlights one of the worst things that people and businesses do on Twitter:
I’ve seen a LOT of businesses abusing Twitter this way. Sure, if someone pays you or your business a compliment you might want to share it. But if the bulk of your tweets and retweets are just this kind of junk then it’s really quite pathetic
Social media networks want more users. Of course if you’re trying to grow your social network then it makes sense that you use your users’ existing connections .. So a lot of social networks tap into the data available via Twitter, Facebook and other services.
Of course by doing this they can upset each other .. end result you see social networks blocking access to each other. Sometimes it’s pretty petty, but it’s still fascinating to watch.
The guys over at Hootsuite used a Game of Thrones style analogy to visually represent what’s been going on:
Pinterest has made changes to their systems in the last couple of months that make it easier for brands and businesses to use the social network.
But what’s actually going on?
This graphic from Curalate gives some interesting insights:
Do you use Pinterest? Why? Do you like it? Hate it? Let us know in the comments!
A lot of the companies flogging social media services to businesses probably shouldn’t be in the business at all.
A lot of the “advice” they’re giving companies is terrible and yet they charge their clients “top dollar” for it.
(Not all of the companies operating in the space are “evil”, but a lot are)
The Onion’s recent video in the style of “Ted Talks” is brilliant and worth watching if you have any doubts about social media gurus:
CoTweet Standard, which is used by a lot of companies to manage Twitter for teams, is being withdrawn on February 15th
From then on CoTweet will only be offered as a paid service under a new name “SocialEngage”
There aren’t much details about SocialEngage on the CoTweet / Exact Target site unfortunately, nor is there any information on pricing. It looks like they’re adding support for tracking Facebook, but without knowing pricing etc., it’s really hard to see if this is going to end up costing companies a lot more than they’ll gain or not.
Their Enterprise product “Cotweet Enterprise” may have been very powerful, but it also came at a very high price.
So are there any viable alternatives?
Gowalla is to be shutdown.
After being acquired by Facebook the “also ran” to FourSquare will be shutting down early in 2012, according to Techcrunch.
So while Facebook may have acquired the skills and experience of the FourSquare team, they’re not taking over all the data.
So will Facebook use some of the technology to improve their own location based services? You’d have to assume that was the plan..
Guess we’ll find out ..
Guinness Ireland’s Twitter account is a bit odd.
They want to restrict their followers to people over the age of 18!
Of course I’m not “following” their account, but I can still see all their content!
And here’s the screenshot to prove it:
I think the word I’m looking for is “fail”
They’ve posted a “clarification” of what they’re “trying” to do:
You won’t be blocked as such.You’ll be removed from our followers & you’ll need to verify age before u can follow us again
Seemingly this is similar to the laughable “age restrictions” that alcohol companies put on their websites.
It’s kind of sad really that they’d even try to do this on a social media network. So you can add alcohol companies to the list of those that simply don’t “get” the web..
Angry Birds is one of those games that is all too easy to dismiss, but it’s also incredibly easy to get addicted.
Just ask anyone who made the mistake of installing it on their mobile device!
But how would it play out if you brought it into the real world?
German mobile company T-Mobile did just that as part of an advertising campaign: