After participating in the Emergency Social Data Summit remotely last summer (see my 30 Tweet Gems from Emergency Social Data Summit wrap-up post, I was thrilled to learn the public was invited to attend the National Emergency Management Association (NEMA) Social Media in Emergency Management (SMEM) Camp yesterday in Alexandria, Va. I signed up as soon as I cleared the date. Why? Of all the ways social media can make a positive difference in the lives of ordinary … [Read more...]
Mobile the ‘Missing Link’ in Revolution 2.0 Debate
March 22, 2011 by
"I'll send you the email tomorrow when I have power. We're in a brownout," a volunteer I was coordinating with in Kenya tweeted in a direct message to me using her cell phone. The exchange (for one of my non-profit clients) brought home for me the "missing link" I think many are missing in the debate over social media's role in the uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya. To connect to Revolution 2.0, you don't need a computer. You don't even need electricity. All … [Read more...]
7 Ways to Be a Good Twitter Citizen During a Crisis
March 13, 2011 by
In the wake of Japan's earthquake and tsunami disaster, a handful of pranksters elected to play on fears and launch hoax tweets, fooling thousands if not millions. Satoshi Tajiri, the creator of the Pokemon, become a Trending Topic yesterday on Twitter after Twitter user @xCyrusAndLovato tweeted "The creator of Pokemon died today in the #tsunami, #Japan. RIP: Satoshi Tajiri. #prayforjapan." It turned out to be one of many online rumors, some more harmless than … [Read more...]
Video Clip of the Month: Andy Carvin & News Curation
March 1, 2011 by
My March 2011 video clip of the month is a PBS News Hour interview of Andy Carvin, (@acarvin), National Public Radio's social media guru, on how he used Twitter to curate social media to turn himself into a "real time wire service" for the protests in Egypt and Tunisia. I chose the video because Carvin’s work curating the news provides a hint of what news and information management can look like in an increasingly networked world. From a cubicle in Washington, … [Read more...]
Google Tests Crowdsourcing Search Result Quality
February 19, 2011 by
Did news of J.C. Penney successfully gaming Google to deliver its website No. 1 search results disgust you? How about news of the New York eyewear merchant who used cyberbullying to get top Google rankings and more business? Now you—and the wisdom of the crowd—can take matters into your own hands to stop content farms and websites using shady black-hat search engine optimization (SEO) methods from appearing high in Google search results. Thanks to an … [Read more...]
Egypt and the Rise of the Social Media ‘Swarm’
February 11, 2011 by
Last May I wrote that "we are on the verge of a massive shift in the way we communicate and inspire action." As I watch jubilant Egyptians in the video below celebrating the resignation of their 82-year-old former president, I think I can safely say that paradigm shift has arrived. The leaderless Revolution 2.0 in Egypt, and earlier in Tunisia, illustrate how powerfully social media can be used to galvanize real action in the real world. Social media contributed … [Read more...]
Using Social Media for Emergency Response
February 5, 2011 by
You've got to check out this fascinating video of Craig Fugate, Administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), explaining why his agency plans to engage the public more in disaster response via mobile phones and social media. "A government-centric abroad to solving disaster problems will fail in a catastrophic disaster," he says. "It is a brittle system that does not have the resiliency that we have when we can incorporate the rest of the team: … [Read more...]
HOW TO: Top 10 Social Media Tips for Online Success
February 5, 2011 by
Today’s reality is that your organization needs to be on social media. You can no longer rely on issuing press releases and keeping your website up to date to get your message out. You must proactively lead conversations and participate in stories using Internet- and mobile-based social platforms, such as Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, and YouTube. To successfully start and maintain your social media presence, however, you need to know what works and what doesn’t. … [Read more...]
Video Clip of the Month: Creating a New Narrative
February 1, 2011 by
My February 2011 video clip of the month features the founders of the nonprofit Ushahidi (Swahili for "testimony" or "witness") discussing the revolutionary free and open source software they created for crowdsourcing and democratising information. If you haven't been following Ushahidi and crisis mapping, you've got to check the video out. The Ushahidi story is amazing. Ushahidi collects eyewitness reports sent in by e-mail and SMS/cellphone, allowing "everyone … [Read more...]
5 Reasons Why You Won’t Find Me Posting on Quora
January 25, 2011 by
The last few weeks I've been seeing all these articles about how Quora will be the next Twitter or Facebook and is the biggest blogging innovation in 10 years. Quora is a crowdsourced answer site that is a cross between LinkedIn's Q&A feature, Reddit, Yahoo Answers, and Wikipedia. With everyone so excited about it, I signed up and checked it out. After a week of use, however, I've concluded Quora is a lot of hype. I only see myself monitoring a few … [Read more...]
The Social Media Revolution Nobody Watched
January 14, 2011 by
"Huh?" I thought to myself as a Twitter retweet from @Galrahn flashed across my screen: "I just watched a government fall on Twitter while #CNN interviewed the Jeopardy host about a robot contestant." Then I saw another retweet from @pareen reading: "I am relying on someone live-tweeting al-Jazeera to keep up with Tunisia news. MSNBC reports that Martha Stewart's dog split her lip open." "Wow," I thought, "what is going on?" So I checked the Washington Post's web … [Read more...]
Panhandler’s Viral Hit Is ‘Dragonfly Effect,’ Not a Fluke
January 8, 2011 by
If you think the YouTube-catapulted rise of Ted Williams—the now-famous homeless man with the "golden voice"—is a fluke, you should read The Dragonfly Effect, by author-couple Andy Smith and Jennifer Aaker. The book is a must read for anybody interested in using social media to drive social change. It's full of big strategies, small tips, and real-life success stories proving you don’t need money or power to inspire seismic change in a Web 2.0 world. All you need … [Read more...]
Video Clip of the Month: Anti-Genocide ‘Paparazzi’
January 1, 2011 by
My January 2011 video clip of the month is a MSNBC news report about an unprecedented plan to use crowdsourcing to stop war and war crimes in their bloody tracks. The plan, the brainchild of American actor George Clooney, is using commercial satellite images and the Internet to monitor the border between northern and southern Sudan. Oil-rich South Sudan is set to vote Jan. 9 on a proposal to become independent from North Sudan, a move the former U.S. Director of … [Read more...]
Google Mini Wave Quietly Washes Ashore
December 19, 2010 by
Have you ever received an e-mail with critical information about an event but an unrelated subject line? If you didn't flag it and needed it a few weeks or months later, you could end up wasting quite a bit of time digging for it. Solving this problem by keeping all related conversations in one chronologically organized spot was the genius behind Google Wave, the social networking platform Google launched with much fanfare last year. While many saw its … [Read more...]
Don’t Merge Your Facebook Page & Places Page
December 18, 2010 by
"Don't Merge Your Nonprofit Facebook Page with Places Page," warns the heading of an interesting Dec. 17 guest post on Beth's Blog. The post, by Ivan Boothe, explains if your organization accepts Facebook's invitation to claim your Facebook Places geolocation page, you'll lose your ability to specify a default landing tab on your regular Facebook page. That means all the time and money you put into creating a beautiful custom landing tab will go to waste. Since … [Read more...]
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