"For many companies, the concept of social media is scary; the idea of allowing employees to blog openly about the company—internally and externally—is something to make most companies run—no, sprint—to the hills."

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By Steve Crescenzo
steve@crescenzocomm.com

Five important tips for making Web 2.0 part of your strategy Companies are being told that they better embrace social media, that it’s changing the world, that it’s forever influencing how individuals and organizations communicate … but what the hell is it, exactly?

more...

[online@ragan.com]

Despite the enormous excitment for social media tools among communication and PR professionals, senior management continues to resist the so-called Web 2.0 tools. So does IT apparently. Ragan blogger Toby Ward examines the reasons why...

“Collaborative tools are overloading employees and killing productivity—to the tune of $588 billion a year, according to a January study by Basex, a collaboration technologies consulting firm,” writes Brian Watson of CIO magazine.

Just some of the folks I met with while in San Diego...

...both in SecondLife and real world. The opening cocktail reception for ETech was a dual SecondLife real world event (yes, you can drink in the virtual world).

If anyone is interested in viewing this or other examples of organizations (ISTE, NGA, etc.) in SecondLife, let me know and I'll give you a demo.

What follows is a recording of the press conference from within Second Life.

Overdependence on e-mail for collaboration in the enterprise has led to inbox overload, version control frustrations and a lack of transparency within teams. Fortunately, Web 2.0 applications such as wikis, blogs and social networks as well as technologies such as RSS are addressing many of the shortcomings of e-mail for collaboration, idea sharing, content creation and content distribution.

[Read this Whitepaper]

Check out this video interview with SUN and how they encourage and benefit from employees who blog...

Please be patient while video downloads from my site:
[view video]

Executive Briefings
Published July 2008

Lindsay Edmonds Wickman

Second Life may have started out as a playground for techies, but it has become a well-known virtual world where people play, do business and learn. As a result, more organizations are making the transition to virtual and ultimately finding an engaging, cost-effective training platform.

By Jamie Pietras
Under a social media firestorm, United Airlines is experiencing some not-so-friendly skies

There was a time, not many eons ago, when a group of dissatisfied airline pilots wishing to send their management team a potent, headline-grabbing message, might have rounded up their union colleagues and organized a good old-fashioned strike.

Although the piece below is a bit tongue and cheek… it is a great piece for understanding how Twitter is morphing into a useful [business] tool.

I’d like to see the PR department begin to supplement its staff updates procedure (who’s in and who’s out) via twitter.

By Jane Irene Kelly
Ragan.com

Don’t start using this social media platform without a plan. Here are a few ideas

With the current economy putting the squeeze on marketing budgets, more companies are pondering the merits of social media as a high-impact and cost-effective tool for keeping their current customers engaged and satisfied, while also reeling in new prospects.

By Anthony Balderrama
CareerBuilder.com writer
[online @ http://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/worklife/01/28/cb.facebook.boss.friend/index.html]

Facebook's been around for almost five years -- a lifetime in the Internet world -- and by now it has become a mainstay of workers who want to kill a little (or a lot) of time updating their statuses and playing Scrabble.

Hidden deep beneath the site's fun, technological distractions, some people are actually using the site for its intended purpose: networking (social and professional).

You know, touching base and building relationships with people -- all things that used to be done in person with awkward phone calls and cocktail-party pleasantries.

At workplaces, online networking has become an effective way for co-workers within the same building or on different continents to connect. Bosses and employees are also friending each other, which can make balancing personality and professionalism difficult.

There are obvious drawbacks to letting the boss see too much of your non-work self, but do the positives compensate?

[Continue reading online ]

Ragan.com
By Zak Stambor

A behind-the-scenes look at Southwest Airlines’ social media strategy—and how its six-person team manages the workload

There are over 100,000 C-level executives on Twitter today but it's difficult to know how to find them, which to follow, and where the most important conversations are happening. Not anymore. Now Federated Media, Twitter and Microsoft have created ExecTweets, a real-time tool that helps you to find, follow and engage with the world’s most prolific and successful business executives on Twitter.

ExecTweets cuts through the clutter and provides only the most relevant and insightful business-focused conversations - all curated and aggregated into industry verticals like Healthcare, Retail, Finance and more. You can now easily find the best, most important conversations happening between influencers in your industry. You can also nominate executives to be included in ExecTweets (your boss will be flattered).

Visit ExecTweets