Open The Dialogue

At last night’s Feast on Good Event, hosted at the very cool MEET at the Apartment, I had the opportunity to listen to a collection of great speakers address the concept of innovative social change through the lens of digital.

During the beautiful presentation by Nathan, of Crush + Lovely, he challenged the audience to imagine an internet that was personalized just for you.   Does it look similar to the one now? What would you change?  He challenged us to move away from the standard cheers of big, fast and open and think about an internet that is instead small, slow and closed.  Small  in a way that is highly personal, slow as in thoughtful and meaningful, and closed in a way that enables more value-driven interactions that challenge the traditional social graph.

Fitting nicely within this concept, although maybe a bit differently than he originally intended, is one of the platforms presented during these talks:

Catchafire, is an organization that is working to enhance (and save) the volunteer experience by helping non-profits scope much-needed work and access skilled volunteers.  By charging non-profits a small fee to participate, Catchafire slows down the process and helps these groups think about what will truly be valuable.  Rachael, the founder of Catchafire, spent her talk discussing the hidden dangers of “free” for non-profits.  Free stuff, free bodies, free services – these things often have unintended costs (staff time for management, organization, maintenance of Free) and can distract non-profits from their primary goals and needs.   Using a process that is a bit more tailored, a bit more methodical, Catchafire is able to help non-profits connect with a tailored group of volunteers who can serve specific purposes.

In a similar vein, by using LinkedIn profiles, the organization easily identifies volunteers’ skill sets and offers up personally tailored opportunities.  This makes the volunteer experience more meaningful, as volunteers are doing projects that they find interesting and that fit their skills.  This thoughtful approach ensures a more positive volunteer experience – hopefully encouraging more participation in the future.

The platform interrupts typical behavior (both on the volunteer and non-profit side), provides personalized content, and fosters off-line connection.  I know that I, for one, am looking forward to volunteering through them.

As rumored, Steve Jobs unveiled the newest generation of the iPhone during his keynote at Apple’s Worldwide Developer’s Conference today. The new phone, which has dropped “phone” from its name and is now referred to as iOS 4, will be available for pre-order on 6/21 and in stores on 6/24.

The controversial Gizmodo leak in April got it right in terms of its design. The iOS 4 will include glass on the front and back for a more scratch (and fingerprint) resistant surface and stainless steel around the newly squared sides. Apple’s new phone is thinner than its predecessors, features two camera lenses and an LED flash, as well as 326 pixels per inch and a 3 axis gyroscope to help with tracking on its GPS sensor. The new phone will have HD video recording capabilities (720p quality) and users will be able to edit video on the phone.

What does this all mean?

Apple is hoping that it means they have changed the playing field again. And I, an Apple-obsessed user, agree that it will change the way we communicate forever because it will up the ante on our expectations of what we think our phones should be capable of. Soon we won’t be calling them “smartphones,” they’ll all be just phones as consumer expectations continue to dictate the course of technology.

All of these specs (available in their entirety here) and highly technological language shake out to a much better battery life (think: 7 hours of talk time, 6 hours of 3G web browsing and 10 hours of WiFi browsing, as well as 10 hours of video, 40 hours of music, and 300 hours of standby); video chatting; multitasking and folder organized applications; better telephone connection; faster internet; insanely clear and crisp images, and better GPS. Oh, and voice control. And photo and video geotagging.

Come June 24th, we’ll be able to geotag our pictures (can we say Foursquare integration in the near future?) on Twitter and our videos on Facebook. We’ll be able to video chat with our friends in Ohio for some quality face time and then show the same friends what we’re seeing around us – while still chatting. The new phone will undoubtedly give rise to a new generation of social networking platforms as well as push our stand-by favorites (Twitter and Facebook, we heart you) to come up with new functions to integrate with the ever changing mobile technology landscape.

Endgadget has a great slideshow of Steve Jobs’ keynote with pictures of the iOS 4’s new features (of which there are 1,500 in total), as well as clips from the promotional videos.

Zuckerberg’s “Nixon Moment”

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg sat down with All Thing’s Digital’s Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher to discuss the buzz surrounding the recent Facebook privacy settings changes. This site includes the video where Zuckerberg appears to be under immense pressure and it’s showing with his demeanor.

B2B is the Newest Frontier for Social Media

While many B2B companies have been a bit slow to the social media game, they’re starting to pick up on the discipline and the industry is now expected to explode with new B2B opportunities by 2014.

Lego Is Clicking Together Well With Social Media

Lego gambled on digital and social media in 2009 and the result was viral. Lego successfully leveraged their brand to garner nearly 2 million views of their film “Click.”

Questions Every Social Media Firm Needs to Know

This comprehensive list of social media questions covers everything from monitoring practices to reputation management and questions on values. This list is a must-read for any brand looking to hire someone for social media.

Since most of the world’s Facebook users have decided to stay with the service, it’s only fair that we take the spotlight off the privacy tools for a second. Instead I suggest we dive into a few ways that Facebook let’s you take control of your Fan pages or whatever you prefer to call them now.

1. Promote Your Status- Want to promote your most recent brand page and want to do it quickly?  I’ve noticed that each update now has the option to “promote”. Clicking on it brings up a ready made ad featuring your page name, profile picture and most recent status update.  Edits can be made to targeting, price and duration, but the interesting part in this ad tool has to be simplicity.  Now you can find a much larger audience for your fan page and your content with a click of a button.
2. Edit Your Links- It’s easy to add a link to your status update with the link tool, but did you know that you can edit it as well?  A link brings in the header and first chunk of content on the page as well as the pictures.  It’s easy to scroll through the pictures, but if you double click on the header or content that FB has pulled in, you can edit that as well.  This can be especially important if the link isn’t being explained well or is bringing in jibberish.  With this quick edit, you can make sure all of your links look great!

Well there’s two quick tips to start your shortened week off right.  Now if you have decided to trust Facebook for a little while longer, at least you can promote and edit your fan page accordingly.

What are you doing to tweak your fan pages?  More importantly, what are you calling your fan pages after the switch to likes?