Social Media resources – week 18

In my readings I’ve collected some resources about “Social Media” and I want to share them with you. I hope they can inspire or be helpful!

Begginer’s Guide to Launching a Successful Blog
http://www.1stwebdesigner.com/design/launching-successful-blog-beginners-guide/

“Here is why did Facebook bought Instagram prsm.tc/ktFwCZ via @prismatic”

Who Will Survive The Social Media Bubble?
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/who_will_survive_the_social_media_bubble.php

9 Things You Must Know Before Your First Facebook Ad
http://socialmediatoday.com/node/501021&utm_source=feedburner_twitter&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=autotweets

PierG

How to write a successful blog

This week end I’ve re-read an old (2006 ) post by Guy Kawasaki about called The 120 Day Wonder: How to Evangelize a Blog. I’ve encountered it again reading the Occam’s Razor blog by Avinash Kaushik.

In the post (that I suggest to fully read), Guy writes down a list of 10 items he thought were meaningful to write a successful blog. It was 2006 and he was not much in the blogging arena but here is what he thought, being a great innovator and communicator:

1. Think “book” not “diary”: from day one think about spreading the word
2. Answer the little man: is your blog a good product?
3. Collect email addresses
4. Collect links for blog rolling: to link with interesting blogs on the same topics
5. Scoop stuff: eat like a bird, poop like an elephant
6. Supplement other bloggers with a follow up entries: help others to spread the word
7. Acknowledge and respond to comments: you do care
8. Ask for help: if you give value, ask your readers if you need
9. Be bold: speak your mind
10. Make it easy to jump in!!

I think most of these ideas are still of great help: what’s your experience? As a reader or as a blogger what would you change 5 years after? How can this be applied to internal communication in corporations?

PierG

Why your IT department sucks

Courtes of racatumba - Some Rights Reserved

When people talk about their IT departments, they always talk about the things they’re not allowed to do, the applications they can’t run, and the long time it takes to get anything done.

Here is the beginning of an intriguing post called:  The end of the IT department – (37signals).

Let me state immediately that  I consider it oversimplistic and a  just sales pitch (guess what’s the proposed alternative to the status quo?) but … there is A LOT OF TRUTH in the post! And we, the evil IT departments, should always keep in mind these things I’ll quote from The end of the IT department – (37signals): the list of why your It department  sucks

1. When people talk about their IT departments, they always talk about the things they’re not allowed to do, the applications they can’t run, and the long time it takes to get anything done
2. If businesses had as many gripes with an external vendor, that vendor would’ve been dropped long ago.
3. There’s no feedback loop for improvement.
4. IT job security is often dependent on making things hard, slow, and complex.
5. It’s the same forces and mechanics that slowly turned unions from a force of progress (proper working conditions for all!) to a force of stagnation

I agree on all these diseases and I seriously doubt the solution is the new silver bullet: “today you can get just about all the services that previously required local expertise from a web site somewhere“.

Is  this “you can find everything from a web site somewhere“ changing  a lot the way we  do IT? Yes … and it’s not the silver bullet as it was not the  outsourcing or SOA or … It’s a tremendous arrrow, among other arrows.

The step ahead in IT departments will not be done thanks to a ‘technology’: as I use to say “if you think technology can solve all of your problems you don’t know technology or you don’t know your problems“.

But I’m more interested in learning from you: why does your IT department suck precisely?

PierG

RSS is Quiet and Fast and Professional

I totally agree with Seth, I DO love RSS even if I’m a huge Twitter fan, for example.

RSS is quiet and fast and professional and largely hype-free. Perhaps that’s why it’s not the flavor of the day

via Seth’s Blog: In defense of RSS.

PierG

Social networking come fenomeno business dell’anno – Mauro Lupi’s blog

“this new phenomenon is enabling business leaders to regain the trust and credibility they have lost over the last 10 years”

via Social networking come fenomeno business dell’anno – Mauro Lupi’s blog.

Lettura interessante!

PierG

The Piergiorgio Grossi Daily

Kudos to the paper.li guys: their system grab 24 hours of tweets of the people I follow, producing a kind of newspaper called the Piergiorgio Grossi Daily.

They group similar tweets based on content, tags, media type and similar stuff and produce a great product: I’m seriously thinking of stopping reading rss feeds and just read the newspaper as most of the blog that I follow have also a Twitter account.

And if you want, you can receive daily an alert when the Piergiorgio Grossi Daily is out just clicking in the Alert me button in the newspaper:

PierG

Will I leave Google Reader?

Few days ago I’ve found how to generate Automatic Newspaper from Twitter using a system called paper.li.

Then I created my own newspaper based just on the people I follow:

Then I started reading it. What happened was that I was reading more this kind of newspaper and using more and more the ‘mark as reader’ feature of Google Reader where I read blogs.

Now the question are: does this means that paper.li will kill my Google Reader? Will I leave Google Reader and standard blog reading? Is this happening to you too?

More to come …

PierG

Automatic Newspapers from Twitter

Here is a great idea called paper.li I’ve found thanks to people I follow on Twitter.

paper.li organizes links shared on Twitter into an easy to read newspaper-style format. Newspapers can be created for any Twitter user, list or #tag.

A great way to stay on top of all that is shared by the people you follow – even if you are not connected 24/7 !

Here is what I’ve generated based on the people I follow:

Try it and give me your feedback.

PierG

Slides from BetterSoftware2010

Here are the first slides available from BetterSoftware2010 #bsw2010 (some are in italian). It seems everyone has read slide:ology and Presentation Zen :

Francesco Cirillo – Dinamiche di team di sviluppo

Alberto Falossi – Crowdfunding (Prezi!!!!)

Luca Mascaro – UX design agile

Maurizio Delmonte – Come avviene Plone

Elvira Berlingieri – I nuovi modelli di business developer centered: un`analisi giuridica.

Giuliano Prati – Enterprise microblog per il Project Management

Omar Cafini – Sviluppare e vendere applicazioni per iPhone

Fabio Franzini – Sviluppare applicazioni mobile native in html e java script

Stefano Sanna – Application Store: opportunita’ e trappole

Luca Mearelli – WorseSoftware

Antonio Volpon – Recruitment2.0

(updated) Giordano Scalzo – Better Software Developers

(updated) Giovanni Intini – Agile tricks

(updated) Giacomo ‘Peldi’ Guilizzoni – Alcune lezioni che ho imparato negli ultimi due anni

(updated) Daniele Montagni, Davide Cerbo, Stefano Linguerri – Playing between the clouds

(update) Fabio Castronuovo – Management Agile e Improvvisazione Jazz

(update) Pietro Polsinelli – Una Homepage memorabile

(update) Roberto Cobianchi – Il project management degli avatar

(update) Leandro Agrò – Una storia di SW dai protocolli alla startup

(update) Salvatore Laisa – Augmented Reality e il web

A lot of good stuff!!!

If you know where to find other presentations from BetterSoftware2010, please let me know.

PierG

Sviluppare applicazioni mobile native in html e java script

Crowdfounding or not Crowdfounding, this is the question

Courtesy of byrne7214, Some Rights Reserved

I’ve been working with Pisa University for years now: Prof.Davini and Prof.Cisternino are always a good source of inspiration and a good resource when things are getting interesting. I’ve just discovered that in the group of these good guys there is also Alberto Falossi. Alberto is together a geek and an economist, and expert of Social Media and a teacher (you can follow him on Twitter or Friendfeed too).
Alberto is going to present, at BetterSoftware 2010 (#bsw2010 on Twitter), Crowdfunding – Financing an idea with the Web:

PierG: Alberto, can you explain to all of us what crowdfunding is?  

Alberto: Crowdfunding means raising money online through donations or shares. It’s something that has always been around – online and offline. In the past it was mainly used for charity or for political campaigns, now is out there available for anyone thanks to the web and to social networks. You can use crowdfunding to fund activities like publishing a book or recording a CD but you can use it also for personal stuff like a special birthday, a trip or a wedding.

PierG: So is crowdfunding a real alternative? and what’s the rationale bewtween choosing crowdfunding or a more conventional sourcing strategy?

Alberto: Crowdfunding works when involved people share the same goal and trust who’s collecting money. So a good communication strategy is needed and a wise use of social media is a key factor: there are people who have many and many contacts in Twitter and that can collect thousands of dollars in few hours. Recently I’ve collected in the Kapipalist Manifesto (http://www.kapipal.com/manifesto) the basic principles of crowdfunding.

PierG: And now my last question, very appropriate due to the topic of your talk: in your opinion why is it so difficult in Italy to start your own product company?

Alberto: On top of the old and well known shortage of financial support (seed and venture capital), in Italy we have a cultural barrier due to a poor risk attitude …. and this has a negative impact on the overall system.

PierG