My Top Tweets So Far In 2011

Hoping to get back into blogging here again on a regular basis, I spend most of my time writing for Spidvid's blog.

Below are some of my top tweets over the last week that are related to startups, social media, new media, tech, etc. If you don't follow me yet on Twitter, please do now, and say hi.

• Good advice! 11 New Year’s Resolutions to Work Happy in 2011 http://bit.ly/gYgVH2 #dowhatyoulove
• It was all about Apple in 2010! The 50 biggest tech stories of 2010 http://bit.ly/hz8naj
• Just published: My 11 Online Video Predictions For 2011 http://bit.ly/hmKgjh #onlinevideo #videopredictions
• Facebook just raised $500 million and is now valued at $50 billion! http://bit.ly/gh4LCf
• deas matter, great execution of a bad idea = failure http://bit.ly/dWZ8Wn
• Oh no! RSS Is Dying, and You Should Be Very Worried http://bit.ly/eO7vmG #saveRSS
• PUBLIC RELATIONS FOR 2011- SMALL BITES http://bit.ly/dQLIWr #PR #SocialMediaBurnout
• Trust Google? Google was the world’s most dangerous website in 2010 http://bit.ly/g6LQGM
• This is encouraging! Exit activity for VC backed startups in 2010 saw a 25% increase over 2009 http://bit.ly/erFSpz
• How to Pick the Perfect Brand Name http://bit.ly/eEwi2k #howto #branding
• 10 Websites to Watch in 2011 http://on.mash.to/dFsqaf. But where's @Spidvid?
• Goldman Sachs Clients Can Invest In Facebook's IPO -- But You Can't http://read.bi/hHTeh7
• Learn from others! 15 mistakes young entrepreneurs make, but don’t have to http://bit.ly/hoQZgS
• Watching @KevinRose interview @JackDorsey, the creator, co-founder and Chairman of Twitter http://bit.ly/ikmiyj. Loving it guys!
• Just published: Retelling the Story of 2010 in 2:10 http://bit.ly/fmoK2t
• Listening to perhaps the greatest podcast show ever with Seth Godin, Charlene Li, Shelly Palmer and David Weinberger http://bit.ly/fjz3cw
• Startup Fundraising is a Time Sink http://bit.ly/hIC5jU
• Rumor from @KevinRose: iPad 2 is coming soon! http://bit.ly/eM54jD #iwantit
• Watching: This Week in Startups with special guest Gil Elbaz http://bit.ly/hys3EG. Google acquired his company and AdSense was born!

Where Have You Been?

I've been getting that question a lot lately, and my answer usually consists of how I'm working hard on my company's new site Spidvid.

It's not that I don't have the time to write personal blog posts, but rather, I'm having a hard time focusing on writing posts other than on Spidvid's blog. So if you're looking for a blog that I update regularly I encourage you to subscribe to the RSS feed.

So what is Spidvid? Spidvid is a social framework to empower connections between video creators and professionals like writers, actors, directors, and editors. A creator posts a project, attracts members to his or her team, collaboratively produces the video, distributes and promotes the video, and each individual on the team gets credit and compensation according to the video's success.

Each individual on the team gets ownership of the video content, and everyone is rewarded for contributing their talent and expertise.

With the world getting more open and collaborative, myself and others feel that Spidvid is exactly what the video creation industry needs, especially with all the negativity coming from writer and actor strikes in Hollywood.

Hopefully this posts answers the question of what I'm doing, and if you are interested in what Spidvid is all about then I invite you to visit Spidvid and provide your email address to become a member of our private beta.

My 1st Ebook Manifesto

I wrote my first ebook manifesto awhile ago but didn`t want to release it until Spidvid.com was

released. Now that Spidvid is up I have uploaded the PDF to DocStoc and hope that the document

gets viewed, shared, and edited on the PBWorks wiki site.

Spidvid launches and I`m now on vacation for a week, what strange timing but it`s great to get the

site out there to start taking private beta requests, and allow people to get educated and informed

about what I believe will be both an important and disruptive force to traditional video studios.

Be sure to view in full screen unless you have eyes better than a cat`s in the dark.

Hollywood Is Doomed - The Rise of Collaborative Creation Teams -

8 Ways For How To Build Your Social Capital

So what exactly is social capital you may be wondering.

According to Wikipedia, social capital is a social science concept used in business that refers to connections within and between social networks. Simply put I believe it's how well you're connected and how influential you are throughout the social web.

We all want to have more followers and fans online, but how can we attract more attention that gives us more leverage to promote and market our websites, products, services, and perhaps most importantly our personal brand?

Here is a list of 8 ways you can earn more social capital.

1. Offer value - if you have information or intelligence that others would find useful, share it with the world. I have only just recently started to post my research and my discoveries while I'm online, and it's really helped to raise my overall profile as a result.

2. Engage - reach out to like-minded individuals and help them out in some way. Use Twitter Search to join conversations that you want to be part of.

3. Retweet - if someone tweets something you find interesting then don't be afraid to retweet it to your followers. I have done this on many occations and got many new followers using this strategy.

4. Cross promote - on your Twitter page, create a custom background that lists where your other profiles exist. You can view my personal page as an example.

5. Be authentic - you should strive to become a trustworthy person with all the content you create and are part of.

6. Be interesting - if you are reading an informative blog or article, watching a cool video, or playing around with a great website be sure to push that out to your existing followers and new followers you seek to attract. I like to use the service bit.ly to shorten and analyze the click throughs that my links receive.

7. Be human - you got to act like a real human being so don't be afraid to show emotion and your true personality. Act like you would in the "real world", and don't be an annonymous hater or spammer.

8. Look at things from other's perspectives - view your content and accounts from an outsider's point of view. Would you want to follow yourself? If not then you have a problem and likely need to improve things before you can successfully raise your social capital.

What strategies do you use to build your social capital?

Trusting Online Video Statistics

This year finally looks like the year where standards in online video advertising will begin to be put in place. I'm very supportive of this initiative because it makes the buying and selling of ads easier, and essentially validates this early marketplace poised for large growth over the next several years. 

Then I read a blog post which says that online video views may be miscalculated and over inflated. This may not seem like a big deal, but when you think about how the industry is working on building trust with advertisers, then if this group can't trust the analytics tracking views and engagement one might start to wonder how useful standard ad units are for the medium? 

Other interesting speculation is that the TV screen is responsible for 99% of all video views. I believe that this is most certainly coming from TV executives aiming to protect their business models, to further control distribution and advertising, and to deflect the threat that online video poses to its medium going forward. 

It sounds to me that there are lots of companies out there that stand to gain from favorable statistics, and that sooner or later there needs to be third parties which can provide more reliable numbers that everyone in the overall video space can both trust and invest into. 

What do you think about the online video statistics debate?

The Next Bing Wave

I have read many blog posts from across the social web discussing Microsoft's new discovery engine Bing, and Google's Wave service which will be released later this year. The top post I've read regarding both is from Seth Godin which I've posted below, and I've added my take as well. 

Microsoft, home of the Zune, has just announced that they're going to launch Bing, a rebranding and reformatting of their search engine. So far, they've earmarked $100 million just for the marketing.

Bing, of course, stands for But It's Not Google. The problem, as far as I can tell, is that it is trying to be the next Google. And the challenge for Microsoft is that there already is a next Google. It's called Google.

Google is not seen as broken by many people, and a hundred million dollars trying to persuade us that it is, is money poorly spent. In times of change, the rule is this:

Don't try to be the 'next'. Instead, try to be the other, the changer, the new.

If Microsoft adds a few features and they prove popular, how long precisely will it take Google to mirror or even leapfrog those features?

With $100 million, you could build (or even buy) something remarkable. Something that spread online without benefit of a lot of yelling and shouting. Something that changes the game in a fundamental way. The internet works best when you build a network, not when you buy a brand. In fact, I can't think of one successful online brand that was built with cash.

[For an answer to the popular question: "The next Seth Godin" and a few more pithy Q&A, click here]

[For a preview of the real next Google, check out this presentation of Google Wave. As a presentation geek, I need to point out that the intro (the first 2 minutes) is a fantastic example of how someone (you?) can stand up in front of 4,000 people with no slides and make a significant introduction with no hesitation and no apologies.]

My perspective: I think that Microsoft should have kept upgrading their search engine Live.com (rather than just redirect to Bing.com) and then did something more along the lines of what Wolfram|Alpha is about, which is to become an effective knowledge engine. I believe that in time they will realize this too. 

What's your take on the search engine space dominated heavily by Google? Will Microsoft increase their market share in search with Bing? 

Social media marketing opportunities

I had a great thought come to me last week during a fun rollerblade I had along a Lake Ontario trail, here in beautiful Toronto. For some reason I get some of my best ideas while being physically active. 

I have heard the term "social media marketing" (SMM) many times before, but never really fully got the point of it until I realized the potential in responding to Twitter conversations in real time based on very targeted phrase searches. 

I think how most companies use SMM strategies is to pretty much track mentions of their brand and then have individuals jump into those conversations. I consider that to be more on the side of brand management, but I suppose it's part of an overall SMM strategy. 

What I want to deploy is something that engages people in real time according to what they are tweeting about. For example my company's video sharing site could track video creators to see where they want to upload their video content to other than YouTube. Or if they want features that the popular video sites don't currently offer. The next step would be to provide an answer to their problem while tying in the site as a solution. 

Instead of hiring people as employees to do this, I have been debating whether it makes sense to offer a new sort of payment model. Something like 10 cents for each direct engagement made, 5 cents for each "branded" tweet sent out, and maybe 1 or 2 cents for each new follower that is attracted as a result. The real question for me now is, will this provide scalable and tangible value?!

I'm not sure when I will roll out this campaign for my company, but you can be sure that if it successfully works that I will be inspired to develop a simple web service that other businesses can use to improve their current SMM efforts.