What for a year ago started with This Week In Startups, a live podcast by Jason Calacanis to embrace entrepreneurship and help out startups, has now turned into a web television network ThisWeekIn, covering a wide range of topics from tech to entertainment. Together with co-founders Kevin Pollak and Mark Jeffrey, Jason is now airing 12 weekly shows from their Santa Monica studio. Whether you want to catch up with funny YouTube moments, Twitter trends, coolest Android and iPad apps, or get the latest Internet industry deals and juicy insights, there’s a show for that.

The latest edition to the schedule is This Week In Social Media with the highs and lows of the social web, hosted by Alana Joy and Sean Percival. The very first guest on the show was none other than Brian Solis himself, who got to give his view on the all time trending topic Internet privacy, as to reflect on the impact social media and social networking have on our very own behaviour.

Catch up with the entire interview and social media blunders of the week.

Broadcasting 2.0 – turn your audience into fans and co-producers

The statistics on the two-screen experience keep showing an increasing trend, at the same time more devices are being connected to the Internet. As Justin Kan of Justin.tv already pointed out at the LeWeb conference last year, two-screen experience also counts for 15% of the revenues of the traditional TV.

So, now that services like Justin.tv, Ustream, Bambuser, Qik and soon YouTube (?) are democratizing live broadcasting, and together with social networks making it possible for almost anyone to reach an audience, what is it that makes ones audience to turn into fans?

Include and Engage. I talk based on my own experience: This Week In Startups has managed to keep me engaged since the very first episode, because it stays relevant to its audience by refusing to become an echo chamber and a megaphone for marketing messages. It’s a show built together with its audience using all the interactive tools and possibilities of social media, both before, during, and after a show. The audience becomes the co-producer in choosing guests, topics and participating in the show in a sincere way.

I think Scooter Braun, manager of Justin Bieber, summarized it well in his advice regarding Justin’s engagement with his fans across social media:

“The moment you think you’re too big for your fans, they’re gonna abandon you”.

Which leaves us with one thing that’s certain: The future of broadcast media is social. #EngageOrDie

Paula is online strategist and startup evangelist. She blogs at paulamarttila.com and here at Bub.blicio.us.
Follow her on Twitter: @paulamarttila
Drop her email at paula.marttila[at]gmail[dot]com

It’s striking how fast one has come to experience search, distribution and measurability of ones content across different social platforms as a commodity, no matter how great or disruptive the service itself might be. Since all objects are social, we also have a need to share and know what’s going on with our content to better interact around it.

Good example of a great and disruptive service is Prezi, an online visualization and storytelling tool that aims to change the way people present information and tell their stories. To me Prezi was love at first beta invite, resulting it to become one of the very few software products that I’m actually, and happily, paying for. And I’m not the only one who’s been dazzled by how it inspires and challenges, both its user and audience, at the same time. In just within a year Prezi has become the darling of the innovative minds in tech, design and educational institutions. It’s often seen on stage in places like Davos, TED conferences, who also has invested in Prezi, and LeWeb. Robert Scoble is in love with it, and it’s certainly not every day Umair Haque describes a product as “total awesomeness”.

Thus, it’s no surprise that education, social media and technology are the most common words used in the public prezis.

The Hungarian startup with its Swedish CEO Peter Arvai and Jack Dorsey, Co-founder of Twitter and CEO of Square, on the advisory board, seems to have chosen the right path by being obsessive about the product development to create great user experience and an awesome product. As Jason Calacanis keeps reminding the startups on TWiST: “Create great user experience and an awesome product, and the business will follow.” Having both dedicated fans and paying customers with a great product is a good space for Prezi to be in, but to stay competitive I think it’s important they gear up its social sharing and discovery of content a notch.

Prezi was early to embrace social media by including basic social sharing options, as well as using blogging, Twitter and Facebook for customer feedback and service.

If that’s not enough for being social as a service, what am I still missing?

User profile and improved search: To be able to share and socialize around content it needs to be found. There’s no public user profile page, and since the search function only includes the titles of the content, it’s nearly impossible to search and find single users. (I’ve tested to add my name in the description field without any luck). For example: A search for Sean Percival results to a copy of his presentation saved by someone else only because his name is found in the title. On the positive note, Prezi has become more search engine optimized after changing its URL structure to more readable ones.

Tags and categories: Adding possibility to tag and categorize content will also facilitate and improve the search and user experience.

Statistics: A standard and important feature in so many levels, both to the user and the service itself. Prezi does have a page for popular prezis, which I believe would better serve its purpose if including metrics about number of viewings and sharings.

Notifications: Since it’s possible to “pad”, i.e. like, a presentation, as well as to comment on it, it’s necessary to receive a notification of some sort to be able to act upon it. This would also help to increase the conversation and engagement level of the Prezi community.

Slideshare: All the functionality mentioned is found on the largest document sharing service Slideshare, yet a closed door for prezis. As Slideshare doesn’t support Prezi’s file format and Prezi doesn’t offer any conversion functionality, this has become a slight inconvenience to, and a request from, its users, who now have to use manual workarounds.

Copyright: Gregg from GriDD

Whereas Prezi’s claimed to be the Powerpoint killer, it’s actually pretty funny to find over 200 Powerpoint or Keynote presentations on Slideshare about Prezi, or actual prezis converted to ones. Think if they were all prezis.

Prezi recently released an improved editor, to my liking, and is now also offering reuse of all the public prezis. There’s a free public license option so you can easily let yourself get inspired by the works of both Joi Ito, CEO of Creative Commons, and Sean Percival of MySpace, to get started with your own storytelling.

To quote Joi Ito: “All of our talks are inspired by others and using and reusing material should significantly improve the quality of all of our talk.”

Paula is online strategist and startup evangelist. She blogs at paulamarttila.com and here at Bub.blicio.us.
Follow her on Twitter: @paulamarttila
Drop her email at paula.marttila[at]gmail[dot]com

Originally published at PR 2.0

Disclosure, I’m an adviser to PeopleBrowsr…

In early December, we released a public alpha of PeopleBrowsr, an attention-centered dashboard for managing your online relationships, brand management, and communication in Twitter and across multiple social networks – all from one place.

The public alpha is running incredibly well and thanks to everyone who contributed feedback, ideas, and recommendations, the public beta will be even more incredible.

If you’re a brand manager, communications or customer service professional, community manager, or on the product support or development team, PeopleBrowsr may very well be the most comprehensive, real time monitoring and engagement solution available today. My good friend Sukhjit, created a phenomenal video demonstrating how she tracked conversations, images, and videos related to the inauguration of President Obama on Twitter and across the Social Web – as it happened.

Hopefully this helps you…

Connect with me on:
Twitter, FriendFeed, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Pownce, Plaxo, Plurk, Identi.ca, BackType, Jaiku or Facebook

words and pictures by Brian Solis

I attended the Facebook f8 developer conference yesterday in San Francisco and I’m still recovering from the overwhelming experience.

Thousands of developers flocked to the San Francisco Design Center to see their Social Sherpa in person and calibrate with his vision for the next year of propagating the social graph. It’s indeed a movement and his influence can not be underestimated. Comparisons to Steve Jobs were broadcast as freely as the ideas that were exchanged in almost every conversation.

I was lucky enough to get a front row view for Zuckerberg’s state of the social network and his plans for making Facebook more pervasive in the socialization of online content.

Facebook is aiming to become our dashboard for relationships and everything we do online, creating a cohesive and simplified connection between us to change and improve how we communicate.

Their mission is no small task, “Give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected.”

One of the many announcements that was made at the company’s second annual developer conference was Facebook Connect, and it just may well be the epicenter of our social activity.

With just a bit of code, Facebook Connect enables seamless integration between Web sites, pages, communities, and networks and the Facebook identity system. For example, if you’re commenting on a blog hosted on the Moveable Type platform, you can now login with your Facebook details and not only will your comment and link to your Facebook profile appear on the blog, the activity of commenting is also linked back into your activity feed for your friends and colleagues to see. Digg, another example that was shared on stage, also supports FB Connect, making it possible for Diggers to log on using their centralized Facebook ID and for each story they digg, the activity is documented back on their profile.

Not only is it an aggregated system for personal identity across social networks, it is also laying the foundation for Beacon 2.0, which will more accurately assess who you are and what you like. As Om Malik points out at GigaOM, “Each service adds a few more data points about you inside the Facebook brain, which is quite aware of your activities inside the Facebook ecosystem. The brain can then crunch all that information and build a fairly accurate image of who you are, what you like and what might interest you. With all that information at its disposal, Facebook can build a fairly large cash register.”

Moveable Type

DIGG

Facebook Connect partners include Amiando, CBS.com, CitySearch, CNET, CollegeHumor, Disney-ABC, Evite, Flock, Hulu, Kongregate, Loopt, Plaxo, Radar, Red Bull, Seesmic, Socialthing!, StumbleUpon, The Insider, Twitter, Uber, Vimeo and Xobni.

Yes, it’s practically a direct competitor to the important OpenID system that has invested over the years in the education and development of unifying the social web and personal identities – with one login. FB Connect however, assumes that you want a profile in its proprietary social network, which may or may not be a bad thing. It’s ambitious to say the least. And, unlike OpenID, Facebook is not only the keeper of your online identity, but as I’ve written about for two years, it is also the hub for your online brand. If Facebook is listening, I’m not alone in suggesting that the company should also integrate OpenID. It would be the right, and most promising, thing to do.

FB Connect transforms the social network into a portable profile that travels with you across the Web, placing you and your brand at the center of the experience.

This announcement is significant in my opinion, not just for the opportunity it represents today, but for the implementations and opportunities next month, next quarter, next year, and beyond.

The ongoing integration of support for social services in the Facebook NewsFeed is aggregating and expediting personal lifestreams and quickly becoming representative of our true online activity, painting a vivid picture of who we are and what we represent online and in the real world. With FB Connect the previously isolated silo distributes your identity and creates a direct link back to your profile, which ultimately, is a bright, powerful, and distributed beacon for your personal brand.

Facebook Connect also further socializes and unites the Web.

Now, for example, static Websites can socialize, creating a dynamic link between content and people. Businesses and communities can now directly connect corporate brands with personal brands, and more notable, the people behind them. Social networks can build and leverage expertise and reputation and carry thought leadership, preferences, causes, and relationships from community to community. Facebook Connect is a powerful catalyst for investing in and increasing Social Capital.

Remember, Facebook “public” profiles are indexed in online search engines and can be among the top results when your name is searched.

In the real world, your online reputation proceeds you.

More pictures from f8:

Mark Zuckberg Press Conference

Michael Arrington of TechCrunch

Nik Cubrilovic of TechCrunchIT

Justin Smith of InsideFacebook

Robert Scoble

Kristen Nicole of Mashable and Dave Morin of Facebook

Rafe Needleman

Randi Zuckberg

Eddie Codel

Sarah Lacy

iLike founders

Brian Solis

For more pictures from Facebook, please visit the following albums on flickr:

Mark Zuckerberg Keynote

f8

Mark Zuckerberg Press Conference

Connect with me on Twitter, Jaiku, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Pownce, Plaxo, FriendFeed, or Facebook