Social Web News & Articles

This week we discussed letting go of the baggage when moving from social media to social business, social web strategy and keeping up with the external enterprise. 

For many marketers, cross-channel marketing on the social web has been a dizzying, ad hoc and all-too-often unmeasured experiment. What many don’t understand is that the social web offers the greatest marketing opportunities we have ever seen, so it’s time to get serious.

Years ago, when I first started working with customers on the concept of Intranets and corporate portals, people looked to the World Wide Web for a definition of what they wanted. In a discovery session with a client, one of the VPs said, “You know that new thing out there….the one where you can move your stuff around…you know, MyYahoo? That’s what we want.”

While social media as we know has been around for a number of years, it’s only been a few since companies considered it part of its communications and marketing strategy, and even fewer since many actually started integrating social media and tracking its impact on engagement. Yet, it’s never too late to learn from our mistakes.

Jive (news, site) has launched a new connector allowing Jive Engage-powered platforms to access and thrive on the busy Facebook communities, and maximise advantage of the messages.

We preach about the importance of planning in almost every article concerning preparation for the future of the collaborative enterprise, but this week we're considering just the opposite: not having an in-depth strategy is a strategy in and of itself. 

When it was first announced that Hotmail would offer Facebook chat access from within the inbox, it was only available to six different regions.This week the Hotmail team has expanded the feature to reach customers worldwide.

If you're wondering what it'll take to make it in 2011's Social Web circle, turn to Klout. The online influence measuring company is one of the first to be funded this year by the Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers sFund ("social" + "fund"), a US$ 250 million dollar social Web initiative backed by KPCB and other bigwigs such as Facebook, Zynga and Amazon. 

Try as it might, Google hasn't seen much success in the social realm: Wave totally bit it, Buzz has had lukewarm reception, and we're still not sure whether or not the Internet giant's rumored social network will amount to anything more than a pipe dream. While most hopefuls are campaigning for a massive turnaround in 2011, Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster says Google is on the verge of giving up.

There's no denying that the social Web is changing the world. Every arena from business to casual communication is being intimately rearranged by collaborative technology. Subsequently, it is more important now that ever before to consider how we can successfully guide our lives into an age of total information awareness and connectivity. 

Alterian (news, site) officially launches its new customer engagement management framework Alchemy today. CMSWire had the opportunity to peek inside the new framework. Here`s a look at what we found.

Not satisfied with dominating social networks, Facebook (news, site) is now going after the major email services.

Social media moves so fast, it's hard to keep up. Here are the week's top stories in scan-friendly format:

• Twitter Activity Said To Predict Stock Market
• Privacy Watch: Facebook Apps Leak Data
• Klout Adds Facebook To Influence Metrics
• LinkedIn Enriches Profiles with Skills, Publications and More

The overwhelming popularity of social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare have overshadowed user-rated news aggregators and social bookmarking sites liked Reddit and Digg. As a result it has forced them back to the drawing board in an effort to revitalize and inspire users.

One of the biggest buzz words floating around organizations today is Social CRM. You don't have to look very hard to find an article that discusses what it is and how it differs from traditional CRM. But once you know what it is, what exactly can you do with it?