The Social Customer Manifesto

In NYC today and tomorrow for the Social Media and CRM 2.0 certification workshop.  See you there.

Link: Google embeds YouTube videos into Google Earth.

The thought experiment:  The satellite imagery in Google Earth is just data, information, bits.  What if Google recreated Google Earth using the underlying Google Earth engine, but instead of skinning it with satellite imagery, they started it as a blank sphere (tabula rasa) and they let common, everyday folk create what a (building, block, township, county, state, continent) looked like?  And then let folks create their own world by weaving together the terraformed creations?  That would kinda be like SL, wouldn’t it?

image: lat long blog

Keith Hopper: "The more I learn about VRM (Vendor Relationship Management), the more I hear about the importance of benefits for both the buyer and the seller.

The big question that remains then is, how is VRM good for business?
As we consider and construct tools that put the customer in control of
their data, how will existing businesses be convinced this is a good
thing? And what opportunities are in store for new businesses that can
leverage VRM models? In short, how will companies make (more) money in
a VRM world?

Here are some initial thoughts."

  New Uses 
  Originally uploaded by christophercarfi.

Are there ways that existing customers of your product can use it that perhaps they hadn’t thought of?  Think about…

• Using baking soda not only for baking, but also in your fridge.
• Using cotton swabs not just for cosmetic uses, but also to light a hard-to-reach candle
• Using an iPod as a tip calculator when out at a restaurant.

What new ways can your product be used?

I’ve written an article entitled "Social Networking for Business: Measuring the Results" for the October edition of Communication World Bulletin, the monthly publication of the International Association of Business Communicators.

An excerpt:

"The online world is abuzz with talk about social networking. With
companies such as Facebook seemingly constantly in the news, 2007 has
been the year that social networking took its first adolescent steps
beyond being the sole purview of, well, adolescents, and started to
become a tool that is getting noticed in the business world. But with
all the hype out there about online social networking, how can
organizations begin to better understand the tangible business impact
of their forays into this area?"

You can view the whole article here.

"The Department of Technology Services (DTS) has notified us that the Federal Government inadvertently deleted the CA.GOV domain."  Story here.

I hate it when that happens.