Rochelle Grayson

Over the past week, I’ve noticed some great new ways people are using twitter and twemes. Building on my earlier post about flash online communities, people are now organizing groups, not just for quick events, but for causes and things they firmly believe in. One that caught my eye yesterday was #freetibet. This is a great example of people determined and passionate about a cause using the power of twitter and twemes to get their message out.

This week, I also received an email from Mike Sansone highlighting the tweme #quotable. Here’s what Mike said in his email:

Have a favorite quote? Use the tag #quotable and share it. Or place the quotable widget on your site.

What a great way to inspire others and recognize those nuggets of wisdom or moments of genius! On those days when things just don’t seem to be going well, it’s a nice to review the tweme and pick out some inspiring quotes!

And, finally, we are only one week away from Mother’s Day! I received another email from Anne Gentle, who is launching the tweme #mom to recognize the funny and precious tales of mothers. Here’s her description;

A mom friend and I are starting a tweme called “I’m the Mom Who” or “I’m the Mom Whose” which we’ll shorten to #mom – to tell funny tales of parenting in time for Mother’s Day. While there may be a few guilty confessions in there, the goal is to gather funny sayings from your kids throughout the day, or recount funny scenarios, not to pour your guts out or tattle on anyone (including yourself!) in 140 characters or less. Here is an example:

I’m the #mom who has the 4-year-old son who wants to buy his preschool teacher a gift certificate “For Zales, for diamonds!”, for the holidays.

I’m thrilled by all of these new uses and encourage you to think about ways you can organize, recognize and inspire others! Social media tools are quite powerful and small ideas can blaze through the networks and have incredible impact! Try it on for size; the results may really surprise you!

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For most of us in social media, the challenges of an attention economy are well understood; we often hear “attention” is our currency and in very short supply. Trying to capture attention, promote viral conversations, engage an audience and ultimately, increase our networks and awareness are difficult goals to achieve. Many of us have heard that people in the online world suffer from “Attention Deficit Disorder” (ADD), which results in people skimming web pages, snacking on information, only reading bullets, etc.

Given this trend, micro-communications seem like a great answer to this ever-shrinking attention economy. Things like Twitter, Facebook status updates, and micro-blogs like Tumblr should really help us to address this issue. (In fact, I’ve even heard rumblings that “Blogs” are dead, but that discussion is for another post .) While micro-communications are a great way to perhaps grab people’s attention, there still may be something missing.

This was highlighted for me as I was reading “twitpitches” on Friday. A twitpitch summarizes your elevator pitch into 140 characters, usually a link is also included, and you post it to Twitter and tag it with “#twitpitch”. (Naturally, I followed the stream of twitpitches on Twemes .) I must admit that while I liked the concept of twitpitches, there was still something missing. Maybe it’s just that many people have not taken the time to communicate the essence of their pitch, or that 140 characters is too short. But, I definitely felt like I needed to hear more.

Then it hit me, most of the posts were missing the “Art of Storytelling“. In social media, we are constantly saying that to get the most out of these tools, you must participate! This idea is very much along the same lines; you need to participate because you need to create that never-ending story – the story of your life, the story of your thoughts, the story of your moments of genius, etc. – Your Story, however you define it! And, that cannot be summarized into 140 characters such that most people find it compelling and engaging. If you are lucky and/or very skilled, some might, but most of the time, we need to read and hear more.

So, what does this all mean? Yes, we live in an attention-starved economy, and micro-communications are great in capturing attention, as well as allowing us to dole out our stories in snack-sized pieces. However, do not forget that the most engaging and influential personalities are the ones who can build compelling stories (in many cases, bit-by-bit) and those who can take readers/users/listeners on an interesting journey!

Don’t just give me a short description, give me something that intrigues me, piques my interest! I don’t have a lot of time or attention; so, do make it worth my while!

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I just returned home from a brilliant week at the Banff New Media Institute, where I met 20 of the top Canadian women in media. I was asked to be a “peer advisor” for the Canadian Women in Communication/Corus Digital Media Career Accelerator Program. All I can say is “Wow“! This past week has been truly invigorating and enlightening!

My role was to offer insights (aka presentations) on common social media tools, business models (yeah, right ), and the nature of instant feedback! What was really interesting was how intimidated many of these senior women, primarily from the broadcasting world, were about these new “digital” options and distribution channels. However, after a week of learning, there were many great take-aways that highlighted the incredible success and need for such programs. A few of the key take-aways included:

• developing a real appreciation for social media tools and the value they can bring to a company or brand
• realizing that the digital world is very similar to the real world (and the traditional media world), with differences occurring primarily in what we “called” things, i.e. jargon and acronyms.
  (At the end of the week, we had a huge whiteboard covered with glossary terms and important websites and applications!)
• understanding that it’s all about the audience; the platform or medium is merely a conduit to conversing with them
• recognizing that games are often about the relationships created within them
• learning about the “attention economy”, the “device revolution”, and what “locative media” is
• reviewing some amazing case studies, such as ZeD TV, Regenesis, Fallen, CurrenTV, and many more
• recognizing the tremendous work associated with creating a successful blog and blog presence
• evaluating the pros and cons of HD programming and production
• realizing that storytelling needs to be taken to a new level
• establishing our own personal brands, even within large organizations
• appreciating that we all face similar challenges!

I’m sure there are many I’ve missed and over the next couple of days, I will sift through my notes and perhaps write other posts. However, I did want to sincerely thank the Banff New Media Institute (BNMI) (the organizer), CWC & Corus (the sponsors), and the phenomenal participants and my co-peer advisors for a spectacular week of dialog, conversations, insight and laughter! It was magnificent to expand my social network and to have connected with so many accomplished and inspiring women!

One cool take-away for me was the fact that I can now officially call myself an “Artist”… at least that’s what it says on my Banff Centre ID card ! The Banff Centre and this program definitely inspired creativity in me this week!

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It’s been great seeing the evolution of twemes.com! Over the past several weeks, we’ve had many people (and groups) pound on it and give us some great feedback. Thanks for all the feature suggestions and tweaks…keep them coming!

What has truly intrigued me, however, is how people are creating adhoc and instant communities. The most obvious example is at conferences, where audience members can twitter about panelists, have sidebar conversations, and generally just connect with the other people present. But, we’re also starting to see “Flash Communities” emerge around quite short or fleeting events of interest, e.g. the Oscars tonight. Currently, there is a long list of twitterers getting ready to twitter the red carpet and tweet their comments using the #aa08 tag. I’m sure many in this group may not follow each other’s tweets post-Oscar, but it’s cool to see how twemes.com is enabling twitterers to quickly pick a tag and create an “Online Flash Mob” around an event of interest, only to disburse and move on to the next event of interest.

Have you participated in a “Online Flash Mob”? What did you think of it? Did you make some interesting new friends? Do tell!

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I’ve fallen of the blogging wagon and realized that it’s been almost a month since my last post! I hope to be better going forward (no promises), but ensuring that I run a lean, mean money-making machine can be quite challenging…I guess I should post about those challenges . In any case, I did have some thoughts today and wanted to throw them out to see what others think…

Recently, there has been lots of talk about microblogging (Twitter), and microformats. In a Mashable post yesterday about Twemes (yeah, we got the “Mashable Bump” care of David Gratton – thanks, David!!), Kristen Nicole mentioned “configuring your mini-network”. This got me thinking about the mini- and micro-social networks we create daily and quickly. I’m currently following Socon08 on Twemes (unfortunately, I couldn’t make it to GA) and am pleased to see how people are creating new micro-networks after following a stream of microblogs about common or shared interests/views at a specific event. Very cool!

I’m heading to SXSW in a month and am really looking forward to meeting a slew of new people and creating some instantaneous mini- and micro-networks. If you’re gonna be there, let me know and let’s connect IRL!

I’m curious, what social networking tools do you use to dynamically create and build your mini- and micro social networks?

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What is a social network? I often hear answers like, “it’s like Facebook or MySpace”. Sometime’s the response is “Second Life”. What I’ve been noticing however, is that over the past year (due to the successes of several online communities), social networks are morphing. Increasingly, they are no longer simply – Friends, Chat, Direct Messaging, Blogs, etc. Many companies are now creating what I will call “Hybrid” Social Networks.

What are these “hybrid” social networks? Generally, they include many of the functions in Facebook or MySpace, but are also tied to or integrated with Virtual Worlds, MMOGs, Television Programs, and even that “old media”, Books . At Donat Group, we have several projects that are doing just that…just check out MTV’s Virtual Lower East Side project. But that’s just the technology side of things…what about the business drivers?

Today’s Furrier.org post – Finding the Next Google nicely summarizes one of the key business drivers behind these “hybrid” network activities. Microcontent will be a viable business model. Knowing this, many large media companies are already creating the necessary online communities/networks to monetize a variety of microcontent. These projects are not merely initiatives to merge (or play with) social technologies, they are new ways to expand and connect with an audience, and hence, more advertising opportunities. However, one major challenge for these media empires will be ensuring that the advertising is appropriate for the community. A very fine line, indeed! All of this makes for some interesting times ahead!

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So, I started my Twitterati experiment a few days ago and realized quite quickly that I am having a hard time keeping up with tweets and all the respective responses. And, I’m only following 72 people! I don’t know how those of you following thousands do it!

Instead of giving up, I decided to create a solution. Something that would allow me to organize the fire hose of tweets and responses. This morning, I launched Twemes.com (with the technical assistance of my husband, Geoff ). Using “#” I can tag and begin a tweet conversation (or meme) and follow the responses on the Twemes.com website.

For example, given that there are so many posts about CES currently, wouldn’t it be nice to aggregate some of these tweets and see what the Twitterati all have to say in one place! I’ve started an initial CES tweme using #CES. Include this in your tweets and your thoughts/responses will be added to the list. I also started another tweme called #best-of-ces. I know this is coming…why not capture people’s suggestions while it’s still fresh?! So, using Twemes.com, I say, “Let the conference season begin!”

I’ll be playing around with twemes over the next couple of days. So, if you see some odd tweets from me, feel free to either respond and try out the system or simply ignore . If you are also playing around with Twemes.com, let me know what you think!

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Just checking out Mixx Maker, which is a Facebook application that lets you make ‘Mixxs’ (digital mixtapes) with your Facebook friends using any combination of songs from your and their music libraries.

Here’s how it works… you create a Mixx by setting a theme, like ‘Music that reminds me of high school’. Once you’ve set your theme, invite your friends to upload songs and discuss the Mixx. And voila, you have a tailor-made online digital Mixx made by you and your friends.

So, now I need to come up with some ‘witty’ theme(s)…any thoughts? Let me know!

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I just returned from my 4-year old nephew’s birthday party…exhausted! It was a great party and I made quite a few new friends with the 3-5 year old crowd (don’t know what that says about me !

In any case, on the way home, I started to wonder what his Social Graph might look like based on his party playmates . What would a Social Network Analysis look like for a 4-year old? Who were the influencers, mavens, trendsetters, cool hunters, etc.? Which application would be most important to his network – the Train, Car or Balloon App? Perhaps, the Dora App (that one seemed to appeal to both boys and girls). Is 4 too young to think about such things? The simple answer is yes! I’ve clearly been focusing on Social Media too much lately!

I sincerely hope that I am not the only one with such outrageous thoughts! If you’ve had similar experiences, I’d love to hear them!

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Yesterday, I decided to give Twitter another try. I tried several months ago and never got into it, but I have “heard” that the conversations (aka “tweets”) are no longer just about “What are you doing?”, but have evolved for some Twitterati to conversations more about “What are you thinking?” or “What do you finding interesting?”. In fact, I think Hugh MacLeod’s tweet (aka gapingvoid) yesterday captured it best :

Just told a friend: “Don’t phone me, e-mail me or IM me. Just Twitter me. It’s the only media that I respond to now.”

As a result, I’ve decided to go back and see what nuggets of wisdom I can both share and glean from the Twitterati’s tweets. I’ll blog my thoughts periodically; but if you want to follow me on Twitter (it probably won’t be that interesting ), my ID is RochelleGrayson.

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