Tag Archives: social media highlight

Scribd Your Own Script: Social Publishing Meets Collaboration and More

At DC’s Social Media Club event this past week, I heard many mumors about Scribd, so naturally I checked it out. I have yet begun to explore the site, but already I am impressed. With the self-description of “democratizing publishing” through its document sharing community, it’s hard not to be immediately intrigued.

Launched in March 2007 by founders Trip Adler, Jared Friedman, and Tikhon Bernstam, the platform now has greated that 50 million readers every month, with over 50,000 documents uploaded every day, and is available in 90 different languages. What rock have I been stuck under? I mean, individuals like Obama and groups like the New York Times and the World Economic Forum are on here too! This looks like a great community, that I look forward to interacting with more.

Not only can you

Engage in collaboration,
Expand your social network through your profile, searching for colleagues,
Create and join interest-specific groups,
Upload and/or download documents and files,
Find and discover interesting documents by category, by topic group, by searching, or by browsing the library,
Find interesting documents by category, by topic group, by searching, or by just browsing our library,
Create potential ways to monetize through your documents and hard work

With Scribd having just raised $9 million, along with a new president for social publishing, I look forward to observing and experiencing how Scribd develops in the future. Granted, the term “social publishing” has meant the publication of documents from “many to many” or “one to many” through a variety of social software mixed with web content management in terms of what the technology offers, however, what would “social publishing” through a non-profit/social change lens look like?

Anxious for your thoughts, as with today’s excitement at the We Are One concert on the mall today, my mind is racing with ideas. Cheers!

Liked what you read? Feel free to share with others: and/or connect with me on Twitter – @socialbttrfly.

An Afternoon Conversation Calls Me Back

I’m starting another series. Apparently, I like series. But I think readers do to, because it helps you know what kind of content to predict. Or, so Seth Godin tells us.

Today, I was fortunate enough to connect with one of SocialButterfly’s consistent readers at the Ad Council. I want to thank him through this blog as the conversation inspired me to start this new series: Social Marketing Classic Campaigns.

A month now into my ‘official’ new full-time role at work, I have slightly gotten a bit side-tracked in my enthusiasm for social media, that the true ‘social marketing’ aspect of my blog has been lacking. Thus, to complement the Social Media Highlight series I have, I’m starting this new one.

This afternoon’s conversation reminded me of what I think would be a DREAM job –> having the ability to brand social marketing, to further the field, to expand its practices and applications, to share its tool belt with those across industries and across nations, and to inspire more SocialButterflies…so to speak. =) But this can’t be accomplished alone, and we all play our part.

Thus, stay tuned as every other week I am going to showcase a classic social marketing campaign, and highlight movements in the field. Through this, I hope to elaborate on social marketing’s theory using real-world examples. As, I also realized this afternoon, that I’ve been focusing a lot on the promotional efforts of social marketing, which is a trend of the field and not just myself. Thus, I hope to highlight some really great campaigns.

It might be a small step towards the dream, but small steps can end up coving a large distance! If you have some ideas on some you’d like to see featured, feel free to post a note. Until then, social marketers unite!

Social Media Highlight: Ning is Great, but waiting for Relevance

Next up in the Social Media Highlight Series, where I sign-up for a certain social media site/app/platform, use it for a couple of weeks and offer a reflection on my thoughts and experience, is the social network Ning.

About: Ning was co-founded by Netscape founder Marc Andressen and onetime Goldman Sachs banker Gina Binachini in 2004. It’s software enables anyone to create their own social network based around any idea, topic or mission. There are Ning groups about hobbies, gourmet food, geographic locations, causes and more. Interestingly, 50 Cent has his own Ning with over 100,000 members. Ning was recently estimated to be worth half a billion dollars with 237,000 current networks and growing at 1000 a day!

Use: Ning allows for any user to create his or her own social network. The service is free, and you don’t have to know how to code. Ning is currently all the buzz and is said to have a bright future as more and more capabilities are added onto to service. Currently, Ning can incorporate video, music, discussion forums, google maps, flickr, web badges, and ways to cross promote with Myspace and Facebook.

Demographics: Anyone and Everyone. NING features a diverse group of users that run the gamut in uses and interests. However, according to Quantcast, Ning is especially popular with African-Americans, who make up 75% of Ning’s users. With age, Ning is most popular among users 18-34, followed by users 35-49.

My Rating: 3 out of 5 wings

Rationale:

Good:
- Ning has a lot of potential and is doing a great and innovative service that no one else really provides except for CrowdVine. However, Ning was first, and usually the first gets more brand recognition because it’s well, the first. However, I think CrowdVine has a great promotional strategy of separating it’s call to action for users around groups and events, whereas Ning’s call is primarily more individual based (e.g. “You can create your own network”).
- Also, Ning is nice because you don’t have to be a developer to use it, there’s numerous groups, it is more niche and interest based than say Facebook of MySpace, and it’s growing.
- And, if you purchase your Ning page, you don’t have to display ads and more security features can be added.

Bad:
- Though its big and its growing, I didn’t find much on Ning that I thought was relevant to myself. Thus, for the everyday user, it could be too niche-focused. Perhaps I will become more interested when I attend a conference that has a Ning page. I did find the 29-Day Giving Page on Ning which I enjoy, so its not that bad.
- You have to do some digging once on Ning to find something that grabs you, or, you have to be pointed to use Ning by a certain group.
- And, when you do want to join, you have to go through a lot of steps.
- You can join multiple social networks, but then, that’s can become a lot of managing different profiles and group communities.

Social Marketing and Ning:

Marketing4Change is one step ahead with their Ning, aka their own social networking site, dedicated to social marketing. You can join them here.
There are groups for library 2.0 and numerous groups for those involved in government and health communications.
My own ID is SocialButterfly. I like the idea behind Ning. I’m just waiting for when it becomes uber-relevant for something I need. Like, if we would want to create a “Social Marketing Network” and then get everyone to join, that would be awesome. I even saved the Ning name “Fly 4 Change,” just in case. However, not all of us social marketers are connected online…so, I figured it be me and a few of the trustees that I already stay in touch with through blogging, Twitters, email, facebook, etc.

What do you think? How would you rate Ning?