Social Media Jungle Coverage at CES – Morning Sessions

Jeff Pulver – Image via CrunchBaseI'm having the pleasure of participating in Jeff Pulver&39;s Social Media Jungle at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas today. Below are my notes from the morning sessions; I&39;ll try to blog more with some of the coverage from the afternoon. You can also follow along by monitoring the smjces tag on Twitter. Names below link to their Twitter IDs so you can follow them.

Jeff Pulver Intro
Growing up, he had his real identity – a lonely kid. And then his radio identity, where he engaged in conversations with people all over the world. Now, no one needs licenses to broadcast.

People here are change agents in the world of social media.

Presence is the new trigger for communications platforms. we&39;re always just one click away from calling someone.

March-April-May will take social media jungle on the road to a dozen cities around the US.

Chris Brogan
There was some long metaphor about raising a navy or something. I tried taking notes and lost track when he started mentioning pirates. Yar, social media matey!Brogan by CC Chapmanr

He says PR people got social media faster than others in marketing. Really? Just because social  media&39;s conducive to use for PR, that&39;s not what I&39;ve found. I think both PR firms and ad agencies have been generally slow and misguided, with a few exceptions on both sides. I also think PR firms (ahem, Edelman, ahem) have done the biggest harm to their clients&39; brands by some major misuses of social media. It&39;s much worse to have a PR effort backfire than an ad campaign that underperforms.

The rest of the talk was about empowerment. "Let&39;s stop talking about talking." Ahh, the irony – why was he talking then? Also, he was very dismissive about people who &39;don&39;t get it.&39; He&39;d rather &39;spend his calories&39; on people who do get it.

Jeremiah Owyang, Forrester dude (and the person I first followed on Twitter – though he&39;s on a Twitter hiatus) – he called in via SkypeImage by Laughing Squid via Flickr

The Future of Social Media

Social Technographics: how people behave and interact with technology (complements demographics, psychographics)
– Showed the ladder of participation (Creators, Critics, Collectors, Joiners, Spectators, Inactives) (see all this for yourself with Forrester&39;s online tool)
– US youth much more active as creators, critics, joiners

And now… Jello
– Social media takes different shapes
&0160; – The same content can take the form of blog entries, RSS, Twitter posts, FriendFeed listings, etc

Shish Kabobs
– Content is becoming bite sized, not just steak
– Twitter is the fastest growing social network (Nielsen, Sept 08)

Some analogies he didn&39;t use:

Bacon
– Content&39;s inedible at first, but it gets really tasty once it heats up in its own fat

M&Ms
– It comes in lots of different colors, and even though they all really taste the same, people swear the different colors have unique flavors

Pizza
– Some people like to have it by the slice, but some have it by the pie, and then there&39;s the personal-sized pie that just throws everything off, and don&39;t even get me started on Sicilian.

Robert Scoble
Image via CrunchBase
Initially, lots of stuff on sharing events on Upcoming.org, what FriendFeed&39;s about – basic tech review. It was a good refresher of some other tools like TweetDeck, FriendFeed rooms, etc.

– Not ready to endorse FriendFeed for normal people yet

– Google Reader: he doesn&39;t read his feeds anymore – he reads his friends

– Facebook is getting 450,000 new members a day – it grew by 10 million in 3 weeks.