Nashville Technology Council

Nashville Tech Story (1/8/10)

poken |pōkən|
verb [trans.]
to touch two poken devices together, exchange data and make, keep and cultivate human connections.

noun (plural same) trademark
1. any poken product: pokenSPARK ™, pokenPULSE™, pokenHUB™; the poken website: www.poken.com
2. the actual company behind the whole thing. when Poken is written with a capital “P”, we’re talking about Poken S.A., all official and whatnot.

Today, it seems like there are new social media tools coming out by the second. The Poken, “your social media business card,” is making business connections even easier. Much like the iPhone’s Bump Application, you can gather your new friend’s contact information with a simple touch.  This information is then stored on a USB drive, and you can view all of your “social business cards” in one place.

The Poken also records the date and time, which you gathered your contact information.  So, if you know you met someone two weeks ago, and want to check out their LinkedIn profile, you can simply scroll back in time to the date you met them.   Your Poken can store up to fifty contacts before transferring the data onto your computer.

Check out the Poken demonstration video below, and get to poken.

Poken Explained from Poken on Vimeo.

Nashville Tech Story (11/23/09)

[meta]marketer’s Kate O’Neill led the audience through key points to a strategic social media plan last week, as she introduced the group to a number of tools including Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.  As the workshop began, the audience emphasized their need for understanding Social Media as a business promoter, the safety and privacy of these tools, and the proper etiquette for the use of these tools.

Kate began the workshop by emphasizing the importance of adapting to this form of marketing, and embracing these tools as the “new normal.”  An interesting statistic she pointed out is that Facebook is beginning to encroach Google in quantity of web traffic, and very soon might surpass it completely.  Another interesting point, thanks to @Bazaarvoice, is that 64% of consumers connected to brands on social media made their first purchase from that brand due to a digital experience.  This really laid down the ground rules of the importance of getting to know and understand this type of marketing.

Although it is extremely tempting just to dive in and start using these tools, Kate illustrated the importance of creating a strategy for your marketing efforts.  You should ask yourself:
-Who are you trying to reach?
-Who are the audiences you are trying to connect?
-What channel is appropriate to communicate with your audience?  
-What are the key concepts that you want to get across?
-What are the key terms you would use to describe that concept?  
-Who are your content contributors?

After defining your strategy, it is important to participate, but in the proper way.  So, what is the etiquette for Social Media use?  Kate referred to this as, “Think of it like a cocktail party…. light and interesting.”  She also emphasized the importance of not only talking about what you think is interesting, but make sure it will be interesting to your target audience as well.  In addition, she stated that it is essential to think about everything and make sure it is always back on a strategic level.

If you missed Kate’ presentation, and want to find out more, take a look at her slideshow below:

The Nashville Tech Story (10/21/09)

The Pew Internet Foundation released new data today on the generational differences of social media.  “The median age of a Twitter user is 31, which has remained stable over the past year. The median age for MySpace is now 26, down from 27 in May 2008, and the median age for LinkedIn is now 39, down from 40. Facebook, however, is graying a bit: the median age for this social network site is now 33, up from 26 in May 2008.”

Three groups of internet users are mainly responsible for driving the growth of this activity: social network website users, those who connect to the internet via mobile devices, and younger internet users – those under age 44.

Some 19% of internet users now say they use Twitter or another service to share updates about themselves, or to see updates about others. This represents a significant increase over previous surveys in December 2008 and April 2009, when 11% of internet users said they use a status-update service.

In addition, the more devices someone owns, the more likely they are to use Twitter or another service to update their status. Fully 39% of internet users with four or more internet-connected devices (such as a laptop, cell phone, game console, or Kindle) use Twitter, compared to 28% of internet users with three devices, 19% of internet users with two devices, and 10% of internet users with one device.

It will probably become more difficult to track status updating as an independent activity as social network updates feed into Twitter and vice versa. For now, it is clear that a “social segment” of internet users is flocking to both social network sites and status update services. This segment is likely to grow as ever more internet users adopt mobile devices as a primary means of going online.

The Nashville Tech Story (9/14/2009)

With the advancements that are taking place online and the constant growth of social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook, it is becoming more and more difficult to keep personal information secure.  Even if you do not own a Twitter or Facebook account, or if you have never used the Internet, your classified information is still at risk.

Ever wonder how much your sensitive personal information costs?

Symantec is planning to launch an Online Risk Calculator to help users determine how much their online information is worth on the black market.  A risk rating scale is included, which calculates the value based on demographics, online activity, and estimated value of online information.

The program begins by surveying the user about his/her gender, age and online assets and then asks for an estimated value of that information.  It will then question whether security software is used and how cautious you are when you work online.  This program is about gaining awareness to help users stop the loss of data before it takes place.

On the black market today, a criminal could gain access to your sensitive data for as little as $11.  Once the data has been compromised, it can cost large amounts of money and time to not only report the crime, but to fix your credit rating.

Helpful hint:

Use a security program with antivirus, firewall, and intrusion detection/prevention software and make sure to keep your OS and browsers up-to-date.

Want to learn more about Symantec and Data Loss Prevention practices?  Be sure to visit our InfoSec Conference on September 17th to hear Jennifer Ellard, Senior Product Marketing Manager of Symantec’s DLP Division speak.  More information can be found on the conference by clicking here.

The Nashville Tech Story (9/3/2009)

This is just another reason why people, in Nashville, should be flocking to the InfoSec Security conference, on September 17th, at the Nashville Convention Center.  Symantec recently released a news statement issuing a warning about a new malicious software pack that can hack into our VoIP conversations.

The new Trojan horse virus, Trojan.Peskyspy, has mainly targeted to the online VoIP tool, Skype.  Symantec, who will be speaking at our InfoSec conference on Data Loss Prevention, reported that Skype may have been targeted due to its large customer base.

The virus with the ability to travel through Windows APIs, intercepts audio streams and turns them into MP3 files, which is then sent over a remote channel to a remote electronic eavesdropper.  This is one in a list of many attacks hackers have executed on the social media world.

Most recently, Facebook experienced an attack that targeted the contact information of certain users.  If you were one of the many foolish Facebook users that posted your phone number online, your information was made public to all those in your “friends” account.  Currently, the experts at Symantec are not anticipating the malicious code will be used to launch a more significant attack.

Just a couple of helpful hints to avoid being attacked by a virus:

1.  Make sure you have the most up-to-date virus software for your computer.

2.  Don’t open any attachments from email addresses with which you are unfamiliar.

3.  Try to avoid downloading spyware to your computer such as Weatherbug.

To hear from the experts of Symantec, click here for more information on attending our upcoming InfoSec Security conference, on September 17th.

Nashville Tech Story (August 28, 2009)

Is there ever a time when someone can have too much power?   Well the developers at Power.com are working hard to provide a powerful social media tool that allows the user to track all of his/her social media accounts in one place. 

There are other applications out there that are slicker and allow you to track your social media presence, but require the opening of multiple tabs in your browser.  The marketing on this says that it will help consolidate all communications, calendars, and social networks.  It fell short of expectations, but if you are a power user on social networks, you might find some value in logging in once to access all of your sites.  It was a pleasant surprise to find Hi5 included in the social nets as well.

Interested in learning more?  Visit www.power.com

The Nashville Tech Story (8/18/2009)
by Jake Hird, Research Analyst for Econsultancy

The social media statistics I posted a few weeks ago seemed to strike a chord amongst the digital community, especially in highlighting just how big an issue this particular area of online currently is. So I’m happy to say that I’ve trawled around the internet to bring you some more snippets of useful data and awesome figures.

As before, all this information is likely to be out of date in six months or so, but until then, they’re reasonably recent facts and I feel they demonstrate the meteoric rise and importance of this rapidly evolving area of online.

In no particular order:

• Social networks and blogs are the 4th most popular online activities online, including beating personal email. 67% of global users visit member communities and 10% of all time spent on the internet is on social media sites. 
• If Facebook were a country, it would be the fourth most populated place in the world. This means it easily beats the likes of Brazil, Russia and Japan in terms of size.
• 80% of companies use, or are planning to use, LinkedIn as their primary tool to find employees during the course of this year. The site has just celebrated reaching their 45-millionth membership. 
• Around 64% of marketers are using social media for 5 hours or more each week during campaigns, with 39% using it for 10 or more hours per week. 
• It took radio 38 years to reach 50 million listeners. Terrestrial TV took 13 years to reach 50 million users. The internet took four years to reach 50 million people.  In less than nine months, Facebook added 100 million users.  
• Wikipedia currently has more than 13 million articles in more than 260 different languages. The site attracts over 60 million unique users a month and it’s often debated that the information it contains is more reliable than any printed Encyclopedia. 
• The most recent figure of blogs being indexed by Technorati currently stands at 133 million. The same report into the Blogosphere also revealed that on average, 900,000 blog posts are created within a single 24-hour period. 
• It’s been suggested that YouTube is likely to serve over 75 billion video streams to around 375 million unique visitors during this year. 
• The top three people on Twitter (Ashton Kutcher, Ellen DeGeneres and Britney Spears) have more combined followers than the entire population of Austria.
• According to Socialnomics, if you were paid $1 for every time an article was posted on Wikipedia, you would earn $156.23 per hour. 
• The online bookmarking service, Delicious, has more than five million users and over 150 million unique bookmarked URLs.  
• Since April this year, Twitter has been receiving around 20 million unique visitors to the site each month, according to some analytical sources.  
• Formed in 2004, Flickr now hosts more than 3.6 billion user images.  
• Universal McCann reported that 77% of all active internet users regularly read blogs.

Some Nashville related statistics, according to NashMash.com:

• There are currently 19,991 Twitter users in the Nashville area.
• One of the most influential Twitter users in the Nashville area is Dave Delaney of Griffin Technology.
• This month alone, more than 46,000 tweets have been posted on Twitter. 

For more information and other interesting articles revolving around this topic, visit www.econsultancy.com

The Nashville Tech Story (July 10, 2009)

The Nashville Technology Council hosted the first session of our Entrepreneurial Series last night with 98 folks in attendance.  Moderator Bryan Huddleston of Microsoft and panelists Kate O’Neill of [meta] marketer and Bill Seaver of MicroExplosion educated the crowd on how to gain a competitive advantage through social media.  Kate and Bill shared social media success strategies they have used and listed some tools that can assist users along the way to be successful. 

Having many followers is good, but attracting the right followers can create a positive image for your online brand.  Latching onto the most successful social media personalities can be very beneficial to your online growth model.  Nashmash.com helps users identify successful tweeters by listing the top tweeter in your area.

Keeping your message fresh and educational is also a large part of social media success.  With the speed of developments on social media sites, information is quicker to become “old news.”  Tweetdeck is a great tool for refreshing your image and message.  Tweetdeck monitors activity and trends on Facebook and Twitter to keep you up-to-date on new trend developments to help keep your message fresh.  

Another interesting fact is that most businesses have multiple objectives to achieve.  As we all know, too much information can cause “overload” on followers.   A strategy to avoid this problem is to invest in multiple accounts on social media sites and utilize hash tags to eliminate tweets from posters that have little or nothing to do with your message.

If you are interested in helpful reading material, a book mentioned last night called “Ground Swell”  is a great read and specifically covers the POST concept – People / Objectives / Strategy / Technology.

Also, if you would like to track the conversation on Twitterfall from last night, you can do so by clicking here.

“The incredible turnout is testament to what a draw “social media” is as a topic, but it’s a challenge, too: almost everyone in the community knows something about it, but as we saw in audience responses last night, the levels of comfort and familiarity are all over the place. We tried to address the disparity by focusing on strategy and overall best practices rather than getting too caught up in the details of implementation and execution, but the success of the event itself seems to have validated a desire for more detailed presentations on these topics. It will be exciting to see this programming evolve.”  Kate O’Neill, [meta] marketer

“I had a great time at the NTC panel last night. I think the size of the group, the level of attention, and the number of questions they asked just showed the kind of momentum around social media in business today. I hope the people who came were encouraged and empowered through the discussion.”  Bill Seaver, MicroExplosion

The Nashville Tech Story (7/5/2009)

Twitter has become a popular communication tool for nearly all businesses, young professionals, etc.  However, one organization that is overlooked when talking about social networking is the church.  Yes that’s correct, even your pastor is beginning to rely on Twitter.  

One of the first churches to experiment and tweet about a hosted major event on Twitter was Trinity Church in Manhattan on Good Friday this past April.  While it seems like a great marketing tool for the church to get folks interested, there are also a lot of negatives that have to be addressed.  Besides, most that use social media are young people, so what better way to increase your global marketing presence.

As church staff members twittered on the church’s annual Crucifixion event, thousands from around the globe followed the event via smartphones.  Great visibility and marketing for this denomination, right?  Some of the quotes from those tweeting included “Darkness and earthquake,” “Crucify him!”

…so much for that idea.

However, even though Trinity church experienced unexpected feedback on their first run with the social media world, the discussion about further involvement continues.  While Twitter has no bar against crude tweeters, churches and religious leaders all over the world are questioning whether they should incorporate, not only Twitter, but other social media sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn.

Even though Trinity church had a bad experience, they continue to tweet about their Sunday services and their following continues to grow.  However, religious organizations still have some serious questions to answer.  Should there be limited access? Censoring? Is it appropriate for a clergy member to “friend” a minor?

While these questions continue to surround the merger of religion with social media, church goers only need to ask themselves one question.  WWJD – What would Jesus do?

Nashville Technology Council & Digital Nashville present
Social Media 101

From Facebook to Twitter to Yelp and many more, social tools are dominating the way people communicate about all aspects of life, especially brands they like or dislike. In this session, Kate O’Neill covers the philosophy behind social media, why social marketing is taking over as the quickest way to reach an audience, rules for engaging a social audience and the many tools that are available.

Venue: Cumberland University
Labry Hall – Computer Lab 014
Lebanon , TN 37087

7:30 a.m. – 8:00 a.m. – Breakfast & Networking
8:00 a.m. – 9:00 a.m. – Social Media 101

Cost: $25 per person
*cost covers breakfast, refreshments, and the program

Click Here to Register Online

Kate O’Neill has earned a reputation as a passionate advocate for innovative, interactive online experiences in business. Working in online content in Silicon Valley during the 1990s heyday, she introduced the techniques of blogging (before it was called blogging and before there were fantastic tools like Wordpress) to many companies as an employee and later as a consultant. As social networks and social media have sprung up, Kate has been a vocal advocate for their inclusion in savvy business and marketing strategy, as well, both for the SEO boost they often imply and for the way they can strengthen a business’s relationship with its customers and enhance the customer experience.

Kate currently runs [meta]marketer, a web marketing un-agency and freelance consultancy she founded this year. She also maintains four blogs, three Twitter accounts, and dozens of other semi-neglected social media accounts.

Directions:
• Take I-40 East (toward Knoxville) to exit 238 (Lebanon)
• Left at traffic light at top of ramp,
• Travel straight through four traffic lights,
• Left at the next light, Leeville Pike (West) TN Blvd.(East), Ryan’s Steakhouse is on your right.
• Straight at the 4-way stop,
• Right on South Greenwood,
• Left at the 2nd road on left, Martin Ave.
• Park in the parking lot along Martin Ave. Labry Hall is half way up the block adjunct to the gymnasium.