Adobe Photoshop Express is now live. The free photo editor has a robust Flash based interface. I was expecting something more in line with Photoshop but this is a photo editing tool with some social sharing features - which is the opposite of Flickr; being a photo sharing site with some photo editing features. I don’t see any reason for Flickr fans to jump ship but its a great tool for managing your images online. Here are some screen shots.
When we think of ‘crowdsourcing’ some of us think of leveraging crowds to do work like oDesk or Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, sites that help you outsource jobs globally. Another way crowds are leveraged is to allow companies create massive focus groups, garner fresh ideas, and even predict the future. Major brands such as Dell, Eli Lilly, Proctor & Gamble, Google, and Best Buy leverage collective insights to shape business strategies.
There are sites that provide this kind of functionality such The Industry Standard. a predictive marketplace (like the Hollywood Stock Exchange) where members track startups and technologies and place bets on which will succeed. Continue reading »
I just found an easy way to invite all of my LinkedIn contacts to my Ning community. Ning is a leading white label social networking platform which means you can brand it so to your members it looks like your very own online community. I’m using it now for the Massachusetts Innovation and Technology Exchange (MITX), a community called MITX Exchange. I’m sure it works in a similar way for other community platforms.
Since the popularity of Twitter microblogging sites have been taking off. New sites like Pownce and Tumblr have added functionality so that users can post not only about what they are doing right now but also post video, audio, events and other more structured content. So why are these sites so becoming so popular even addictive for some of us?
One reason is that they help us experience more relevant content on the web. The major aggregators of content typically have so much content that its difficult to effectively identify what content you want to see. The recent comScore study suggests “heavy clickers” distort reality of display advertising. In the same way it distorts what is presented as “most popular” on sites like YouTube. The ”heavy clickers” most likely aren’t people that are ‘like’ you.
If you are promoting a blog or website you can make use of the various social bookmarking sites. After all the word ‘social’ tends to make you think of anythi
ng other than online business issues, as it doesn’t really give a fair representation of what these sites actually do.
But if you are not taking advantage of them you are missing a valuable – and free – trick that you can put to good use as a marketing tool.
Sites such as Stumble Upon, Digg and del.icio.us make it easy to share the latest advances and additions to your website with the world at large, and they can provide a good stream of traffic once you know how to use them properly.
Veronica Belmont has created a killer summary of the Steve Jobs keynote at Macworld.
Dan Ackerman Greenberg, a student at Stanford, has a consulting group and describes it as viral marketing hired guns. They have a methodology to ensure their clients videos achieve over 100,000 views on YouTube or they don’t charge. In this guest blog post on Techcrunch Dan outlines the strategy.
Link to The Secret Strategies Behind Many “Viral” Videos
What do you think, should marketers employs these kinds of strategies to boost viral impact of content?
Web 2.0 and social media are transforming businesses across every industry in how they communicate and interact with people. This impacts the entire HR 
lifecycle. The interactive industry is experiencing a major hiring crunch.
Just as consumers are less influenced by marketing, prospective candidates are also seeking opportunities through social networks. If you want to learn what a company is really like you can learn a great deal from sites like LinkedIn, Jobster and Zoom Info. You can connect with insiders on Facebook and Twitter.
You can even target advertising on social networks like this Facebook ad targeting to Boston area marketing professionals. More importantly companies establish their voice via how they participate and contribute to social content. The idea of transparency has become a key strategy for companies not only in how they engage consumers but how they communicate. What is your company doing to engage talent?
An early pioneer in interactive media, Dean Whitney is a Web 2.0 and Social media technology evangelist. Start-up veteran, President of Garfield Group Interactive a Boston-based digital agency.
