Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Using Social Media Sites For Self Promotion



The rise of social media sites, such as Facebook and Digg, has presented publishers with an opportunity for self promotion that has never been seen before. Due to the popularity of social media sites, publishers have a huge group of people to promote their sites to. Using social media sites to promote blogs and websites can be accomplished with no money and just a little time.

Using sites like digg.com, reddit.com, or stumbleupon.com to push traffic to a person’s blog or site can cause huge increases of traffic and readership. Simply posting a link to a website or blog post on one of these social news sites will cause a large spike in traffic to the link posted. The key to using social news sites correctly is to post quality content. Quality content will quickly become popular on these social news sites and will push nearly 100 times the amount of traffic to a person’s site than would be pushed by simply adding a random, low quality link.

Social networking sites, such as facebook.com and twitter.com, are another avenue that publishers should take advantage of. By creating a Facebook or Twitter page for their blog or site, publishers can use the social network’s services to update readers about any updates, start discussions, and increase overall reader activity. Using these social networking sites can also help increase traffic, as people often view things that their friends talk about and are members of.

With a little practice, publishers will find the tricks needed to successfully use all social media sites to their advantage. Becoming an active member on any of these sites for a short time will give publishers a feel for the site and a better understanding of what’s needed to successfully use the sites for self promotion.

About the author: James Mowery is a computer geek that writes about technology and related topics. To read more blog posts by him, go to LED TV.

I enjoy thoughts and ideas from innovative web experts. James Mowery is one of them. A technology and social media journalist currently residing in Windsor, VA, James has been awriter for Mashable, CMSWire, and Performancing. I'm fortunate to have him as a guest blogger. If you're interested, please drop me a line, too.

Saturday, September 11, 2010

The Web Is Dead. Long Live the Internet?

Since the time of Alvin Toffler, there have always been futurists who predict the paradigm shifts of technology and society. Recently, Chris Anderson (author of the Long Tail), challenged conventional wisdom of the web, arguing in the Wired article, The Web is Dead. Long Live the Internet, that the web will become obsolete as it is replaced by newer technologies, namely mobiles such as the iPhone App.

1. Web is a shared memory -- We shouldn't see it as a technology, but more of an experience. Arguing for the death of the web is akin to record is dead, long live the cassette. It's rather shortsighted to view one format as the be all of anything. - and I don't think the app is the answer. It's the music that we're after, not the format.

2. Data is the Web - Anderson seems to suggest that the mobile is the is the way to go. Unless phone and internet companies are willing to lower the costs and expand to unlimited bandwidth, most people are still going to have to rely on the web to surf and to download. The web is more than just an "application." It's the circulation system that allows for exchange of information to happen.

3. Ubiquity of the Web Experience - If Anderson is to suggest that the web is dead in the sense that users no longer need to sit at their desks in order to enjoy the web experience, then it's a foregone conclusion. We already are mobile with laptops and similar social devices. Web 3.0 promises to open up for a ubiquitous experience in which the web is that underlying layer of technology that ties physical real world objects together into an 'internet of things'. If anything the web will be more important than ever in this development. Certainly Anderson makes strong points about the new directions that web has taken us; but for us to claim its demise and irrelevance is bit of a stretch!

Monday, September 06, 2010

Introducing Community Informatics

The application of information and communications technology (ICT) to enable and empower community processes, the goal of Community Informatics is to use information communication technologies (ICT) to enable the achievement of community objectives including overcoming “digital divides” both within and between communities. However, community informatics goes beyond discussions of the “Digital Divide” to examine how and under what conditions ICT access can be made usable and useful to the range of excluded populations and communities and particularly to support local economic development, social justice, and political empowerment using the Internet.

Community informatics as a discipline is located within a variety of academic faculties including Information Science, Information Systems, Computer Science, Planning, Development Studies, and Library Science among others and draws on insights on community development from a range of social sciences disciplines. It is a cross- or interdisciplinary approach interested in the utilization of ICTs for different forms of community action, as distinct from pure academic study or research about ICT effect on the elderly, or those living in remote locations in Developed Countries.

At the forefront of this new field of research is Michael Gurstein, Director of the Center for Community Informatics Research, Training and Development in Vancouver, Canada, which works with communities, ICT practitioners, researchers, governments and agencies as a resource for enabling and empowering communities with Information and Communications Technologies. In community informatics, the past decade has also seen conferences in many countries, and there is an emerging literature for theoreticians and practitioners including the on-line Journal of Community Informatics.

What is intriguing is that in a recent ReadWriteWeb article outlining Gurstein's thoughts, community informatics takes a micro-analytical approach in studying how information affects communities. In this instance, it's found that opening up data freely on the web actually had adverse effects. In one informatics study called Bhoomi: ‘E-Governance’, Or, An Anti-Politics Machine Necessary to Globalize Bangalore?, digitization and related digital access to land title records in Bangalore had the direct effect of shifting power and wealth to those with the financial resources and skills to use this information in self-interested ways. This type of study is a counterbalance to what many have proposed for the open data movement. Will opening up information benefit society or just a segment of society of the wealthy? It is these types of questions which will be important for the next version of the web.