Social Media Week started in New York City back in 2009 and since then the startup community has exploded. To promote the booming eco-system of innovation, New York Tech Meetup in conjunction with Nasdaq has produced the following promo to encourage entrepreneurs to bring their startups to the city.
New York
NGOs, Causes and the Original Interest Graphs – Takeaways from a Social Media Week NYC Panel
I like a panel with structure. John Gordon, Fenton’s SVP of Digital, did a great job of laying out the themes at the beginning of the panel NGOs, Causes, and the Original Interest Graphs on Tuesday morning.
Here are the four themes with examples of how they could play out.
Utility – Using this blog post as an example – I’m covering the takeaways and themes from a Social Media Week panel. My aim is for it to be useful to you, and I got it to you as fast as I could. If you find it useful or interesting, I hope you will take action by commenting and sharing with friends. Through this blog, I am subtly promoting my organization’s services and expertise.
Authenticity/Transparency – I work at the Ad Council, a nonprofit. I’ve worked with Fenton in the past. I may mention one of our sponsors in this blog. If I had a self-effacing joke to say right now, I would add it to show my humanness. This can make me more likeable.
Storytelling – Panelist Amanda Michel, Editor at the Guardian, told the story of Joe Trippi cherishing attacks on Howard Dean when running his presidential campaign. “Cha-ching” he would say as he sent out the email blast reminding constituents of the attack which then motivated them to give. Polarizing issues and backlash are not always bad.
Data – If several people comment on this blog to tell me that I got some facts wrong. I should respond to the comments and consider revising the facts.
There were many more takeaways from this panel, but one I would like to talk about in detail. James Windon, Vice President of Causes.com, talked about the shared value between a NGO and corporation in a social good partnership. Sometimes a NGO’s concern is a disillusioned consumer who sees a corporate brand slapped on their favorite cause. However, Causes.com data purports that consumers are more likely to engage with and share a corporate sponsored cause initiative than others.
At a time when corporations are realizing more and more how effective these partnerships can be, it’s encouraging to hear the sentiment has shifted on the consumer side. Whether the increased engagement happens simply because the corporate funds facilitate more impressions is something to think about. Either way, this is good news from Causes.com as they ramp up (with big support from Facebook) to take the once popular Causes FB application into a site format. For NGOs, Causes.com is one to watch.
On The Move- Nokia and SMW12
We’ve been hinting at it and now it’s time to reveal. Global Headline Sponsors Nokia have been quite busy preparing some amazing activities for SMW12. Our heads are awhirl with everything going on! From Singapore to London to New York, see Nokia in action
New York
Swing by the Global Society Hub at Big Fuel to see Agora, Nokia’s social visualizer. With 6 screens aggregating data as it comes out, displaying the latest videos, photos, and texts, it’s truly a sight to see. And it’s right next to the Global Nokia Stage, hosting our daily Guardian interviews with select keynotes.
Then, catch the Nokia Cab! Need a lift around town? You’ll want to follow #NokiaConnects to hear where the Nokia Cab will be stationed.
Finally, Nokia was behind SMWNYC’s opening party, with some fun surprises in store for those in attendance. Checking in on Foursquare released a special task in order to gain access to a magical performance.
Hong Kong
Photo fan? Like a good scavenger hunt? Then, check out Hong Kong Fashion Geek Photo Hunt, powered by Nokia.
Then, since it’s Valentine’s Day, you knew it was coming. Dating + Twitter = DWITTER. On this night reserved for romance, we’ll be pairing up attendees. Bring your smartphones!
Wind down your week with a little trivia fun! Fashion Brands vs Fashion Bloggers Quiz Night Mixer will pit Hong Kong’s most hip fashion bloggers with the most tech-savvy brands in a quiz night to find out who knows more about the Hong Kong fashion scene. The night has some amazing surprises in store for the winning team and participating audience members. Don’t be shy!
Finally, cap off SMWHK with the SMWHK12 Wrap Party, Powered by Nokia! This closing party will feature the first SMWHK12 Awards. SMWHK and Nokia will award the most active communicators from the city, looking for the Best Photo, Best Video, and Most Active Sharer. Get tweeting!
Singapore
Singapore and Nokia are bringing the activity online and want you to participate in some rather unique ways!
Start off by telling us what makes your day amazing. Amazing Everyday Singapore, powered by Nokia, is an online collection of the amazing things happening everyday in Singapore. Post your favorite images to Facebook or tweet us with a caption and the hashtags #amazingeveryday #smwsg. Each day, pictures will be collated, printed and added to the Nokia Amazing Everyday Singapore photo wall.
Then, help discover if Man Can Live On Social Media Alone Experiment. In conjunction with Social Media Week, Can Man Live on Social Media Alone? powered by Nokia, is a daring cross-city social experiment to evaluate whether one intrepid traveller can depend on nothing but the goodwill of locals and the power of social media to survive in a foreign city for one week. From 9 – 15 February, Daphne (#CanManSG) and Martin (#CanManLondon) will trade cities, power up their social media channels and prepare for the best (or worst). They’ll need your help, so don’t be afraid to get involved!
London
Nokia Lumia House Open Weeklong / Hosting Social Surgery Sessions is providing drop-in surgeries for businesses with social media questions. This one-on-one time with experts on various aspects of social media – from managing Facebook pages through to analytics, social media policy, using Twitter effectively and all stops in between- will run Mon 13th – Weds 15th Feb 2012 (9am – 5pm) at Nokia Lumia House in Central Soho.
Nokia also was behind the SMW London Opening Party at SNR Denton.
A very social company, indeed. Want more? See Nokia at these events around the globe, and keep up with the conversation by using #SMW12 and #NokiaConnects.
Monday, February 13
- 1-3pm in London: Bridging the Social Media Skills Gap at Design Council
- 1-3pm in New York: Keynote: Valerie Buckingham on This is Your Brand on Ziplines: Authenticity through Social Media followed by Beyond Borders: Impact of Social Media in a Global Economy (Livestream)
- 6:30-8:30pm in New York: SMW Global Opening VIP Reception. Making it magical and amazing, Nokia has some surprises in store for these attendees.
- 6-9pm in San Francisco: SMW San Francisco VIP Kickoff Party, Powered by Nokia at Project One
Wednesday, February 15
- 9:30-11:30am in Hong Kong: Social Commerce for Brands & SME’s
- 4:30-6:30pm in Hong Kong: How to Create a Successful Media Competition
- 11-1pm in London: Social Media: Teenage of the Species at Design Council
- 9-12pm in New York: Social Business by Design
- 2:30-4pm in London: The Nokia Social Innovation Lab at Design Council
- 4-5pm in New York: The Future of Sharing: An Analysis and Prediction of Online Sharing Trends
- 7-9pm in New York: COMMON Pitch Event, sponsored by Nokia
Thursday, February 16
- 11-2pm in Singapore: Can Man Live On Social Media Alone? (panel wrap) at Rajah & Tann
- 4:15-5pm in Singapore: Afternoon Speakeasy: How Nokia Got Social at Rajah & Tann
- 9-11am in London: The Future of Sharing: An Analysis and Prediction of Online Sharing Trends at Design Council
- 11-1pm in London: Inside the Firewall: The Social Business Revolution at Design Council
- 8pm in Singapore: #TweetJams- Sixx and Syndicate present Singapore’s first crowdsourced gig
- 9-11am in New York: Brands as Publishers: Writing and Publishing Content at Scale at JWT
- 6-10pm in London: SMW London Closing Party at The Penthouse
- 1-2pm in San Francisco: The Future of Sharing: An Analysis and Prediction of Online Sharing Trends at San Francisco State University
- 4-5pm in San Francisco: VC/Startup Office Hours at San Francisco State University. Take a chance and give your best elevator pitch to founders and VCs from around Silicon Valley.
What The Social World Has to Say About Our Hosts: New York
Hello again! Sheldon from Sysomos back with one final look at what the social world is saying about our host cities before Social Media Week officially starts tomorrow. I’ve been using Sysomos’ industry leading social media monitoring and analytics software, MAP and Heartbeat, to find out what kind of talk goes on in social media about our host cities. Today I’ll be looking at the last city in the series, and also the original home of Social Media Week, New York, New York.
Doing a search for people mentioning New York or the much used NY in social mendia yielded a lot of results. In the past six months I was able to find 6.2 million blog posts, 6.7 million online news articles, 3.8 million forum postings and 14.7 million tweets talking about New York.
I then trended those mentions over time to get the popularity graph below. New York is one of the most known cities throughout the world and it shows by looking at just how much people are talking about it. Twitter, as usual, seems to be the channel creating the most talk about it. Something interesting in this graph is noticing just how much New York also gets mentioned in the news. This is likely because New York is home to a lot of activity including tourist destinations, big name sports teams, large media outlets and the New York Stock Exchange.
Next, I looked at where all the talk of New York was coming from. Naturally, the majority of mentions were coming from right within the United States (60.7%). In most cities we’ve looked in this series we have seen the US, UK and Canada as top country sources, but here I found that Indonesia mentions New York (5.9%) more than the UK (4.1%) and Canada (3.9%).
When I pulled up a buzzgraph to get an idea of what all the conversation was about I found it hard to pinpoint any real substance. As I said above, New York is home to a flurry of activity, and this is represented in the buzzgraph. In it we can see all kinds of random words that have no real connection to one another. People are talking so much about New York in different ways that it’s hard to find a single theme in all that conversation.
I then wanted to look a bit deeper in to the people that were doing all of the talking about New York. I found that when it comes to bloggers talking about New York, women actually mention it the most at 53% and men at 47%. I also found that bloggers between the ages of 21-35 make up over of half all the mentions of New York in blogs (57.1%).
On Twitter, the gender split of people mentioning New York was very similar to blogs, but opposite. Using technology exclusive to Sysomos, I was able to determine that 52% of the Twitter mentions of New York came from males and the other 48% from females. I also looked at the top Twitter sources that were talking about New York. Here I found that the majority of these top sources were news accounts like @TweetNewsss and @NYLiveNews. An interesting one in this list was @DatingMobi, which is some sort of mobile dating site. I also found @NYGiantsNation in this list, which is fitting, as the team just won the Super Bowl a week ago.
Lastly, I looked a bit deeper into some of the larger activity spikes we saw in the popularity graph. I started with the largest spike in the graph which occurred between August 26-29. Looking at the buzzgraph for this time period I found that the talk was centered around “Hurricane” “Irene.” This was a huge storm that made its way up the eastern “seaboard” of the United States in August hitting cities like “Carolina.” The storm was supposed to reach a peak when it hit New York and there was even talk about having “Manhattan” “evacuated.” Luckily, by the time the storm hit New York it was nothing more than a little storm.
The second spike I looked into happened on September 11 and 12. Here we see that there was a large rise in talk about New York on Twitter, blogs and then news. A quick look at the buzzgraph for this time period showed that the spike was because of the 10th anniversary of 9/11. While the talk mostly mentioned New York as that is where the twin towers full of people came down, we can also see that tribute was paid not just to New York, but also to “Shanksville,” “Pennsylvania,” and “Washington.”
Well, that concludes my lead up series to Social Media Week. We’ve some interesting things about what the world has to say about each of our Social Media Week cities. But this isn’t the last you’ll hear from me. All during Social Media Week I’ll be using Sysomos to monitor what is going on around the world and I’ll be providing daily updates right here on the blog. So be sure to keep checking back to keep up on everything that’s going on for Social Media Week.
Around SMW12 World With Buddy Media
The social enterprise software of choice for eight of the world’s top ten global advertisers, Buddy Media is truly a leader in their field. While their main office is in New York City, they’re spread out to Asia, London, and San Francisco as well. With this global presence, we’re excited to have Buddy Media bring this to SMW12. Going beyond helping sponsor Social Media Week New York, Buddy Media is hosting events in London and Tokyo as well. See what they have going on:
Tuesday, February 14 at the Hospital Club in London, Optimising Your Global Social Media Strategy for 2012 brings together Matt Owen of Econsultancy, Luca Benini at Buddy Media, Richard Dance at Blue Hive, Kathleen Ryan of Dove, and Jane Maybury from Edelman Digital to explore how true global strategies can be established and maintained. And the night will be capped off with a drinks reception!
Tuesday, February 14 at Hearst Magazines in New York, Social Syndication in 2012: Experiences First, Networks Second helps refocus on the “what” of social media. Featuring Sam Champion of Good Morning America, Kelly Balz of Avon, Michael Svatek from Bazaarvoice, Kristine Welker of Hearst Digital, and Jeff Ragovin at Buddy Media, this team will explore strategies for creating and distributing real-time social content and how social syndication powers monetization.
Wednesday, February 15 in Tokyo at 電通ホール, Your Social Media Strategy for 2012 (2012のソーシャル戦略) features Eddie Cliff of Buddy Media sharing social media success for brands, with 2011 Facebook & Twitter global trends and statistics, 2012 projections on social media usage, social marketing software scalability, and case studies.
Thursday, February 16 at JWT in New York, Michael Lazerow, CEO of Buddy Media, Inc. will give a keynote sharing his expertise and experience.
Thursday, February 16 at Ogilvy in New York, Social Commerce Is Here, Is Your Brand Ready? takes on e-commerce. As 90% of all purchases are subject to social influence, Myles Kleeger of Buddy Media, Jonny Cottone from Busted Tees, and Kelly Solomon at L’Oreal share the importance of implementing programs that turn social connections into revenue and conversions.
Proving their not a company that’s not all work and no play, they’re also hosting three cocktail mixers in Singapore, New York and San Francisco Thursday night to close out their participation with SMW12. Let us know which events you’ll be seeing Buddy Media!
RunKeeper Global Meetup Run
This is a guest post from Jake Cacciapaglia of RunKeeper
When RunKeeper launched 3 years ago, it was just an iPhone app and an online fitness community. We’ve come a long way–in addition to the iPhone, the RunKeeper mobile app is now available for Android and Windows Phone 7. Most recently we introduced the Health Graph and over time we’ve built up a community of more than 6 million fitness enthusiasts that continues to grow at an accelerating pace.
The social side of fitness has always been at the core of the RunKeeper experience, and the RunKeeper community has been asking us for months to help host RunKeeper group runs in their hometowns. We knew RunKeeper Meetups would be a great way for the community to come together, get the word out, and provide users with ownership of the group runs in their own communities.
On July 9th, the first ever RunKeeper Global Meetup Run will take place; the initial response has been truly mind-blowing. In just two weeks, over 2,700 runners have signed up in over 950 cities around the world. Things have really been heating up between cities!
We know there are some competitive users out there in the community, so we’re adding a twist to the event–we’ll feature the largest RunKeeper Meetup group on the RunKeeper blog, including team photos and their tips for how to make a RunKeeper Meetup a success.* The New York group is currently in the lead, but the whole RunKeeper team’s in Boston, so you better believe we’re stepping up to the challenge. Bring it on!
Here’s how the Social Media Week community can get involved:
- Visit meetup.com/runkeeper.
- You’ll see RunKeeper Meetups near your location.
- Click on your city name, then click ‘Count me in’ to join the group.
And most importantly…spread the word and run with friends!
Tie your running shoes, and we’ll see you on July 9th!
*To be eligible to win, groups should submit a team photo to meetup@runkeeper.com
Jake Cacciapaglia joined the RunKeeper team in May 2010, where he spends his days making sure users are happy and leading community development initiatives. When he’s not hanging out with the RunKeeper community, he himself is an avid runner and enjoys cycling, skiing, tennis and a long list of other outdoor activities. You can get in touch with him on twitter @JakeCacci or @RunKeeper.
Interested in joining the Social Media Week Global Editorial Team? Apply here!
Video Highlights from Borderless Brands Launch Event at JWT June 1
We shared with you earlier today our recap of last week’s Borderless Brands launch event at JWT.
The event served to both introduce the Borderless Brands iniative as well as feature a conversation talking through the concept of what it means to be a Borderless Brand and what challenges those brands face in innovating for the future.
For those of you who missed the event, included below now are a number of highlight videos from the event.
SMW Borderless Brands: Toby Daniels Gives an Overview of Borderless Brands Initiative
SMW Borderless Brands: Toby Daniels Discusses Ways To Get Involved With Borderless Brands
Borderless Brands: Social Space Exploration recap
Carolyn Everson of Facebook Discusses Importance of Global Conversations
Bonin Bough & Freddie Laker Discuss Shaping Global Organizations
Freddie Laker Discusses Importance of Brand Passion Points
Carolyn Everson on How Facebook Innovates
How Brands Handle Language Differences Across Borders
About Social Media Week’s Borderless Brands Program
As part of Social Media Week this September 19-23, the Borderless Brands program will take 10-15 participating brands on a unique tour of three international cities over five days to meet and engage with some of the world’s top emerging media and technology influencers, representing an incredible opportunity for brand marketers to close the gap between where society and organizations are in their understanding and adoption of social media tools and technologies.
If you are interested in learning more contact Toby Daniels to discuss ways that you can get involved.
RECAP: Borderless Brands Initiative Launch Event at JWT, June 1
“Are we prepared to adapt?”
This was a question posed by Bonin Bough, global director of digital for PepsiCo last week at JWT during the Social Media Week launch event for Borderless Brands, a new program that aims to provide marketers with unique perspectives into how social media is impacting global brand communications.
This Darwin-esque interrogative set the stage for an evening designed to showcase the underlying principles of Social Media Week’s new Borderless Brands platform, through a panel discussion featuring marketing and branding leads from Facebook, GE, PepsiCo, AOL, JWT and SapientNitro, starting with Bough’s preamble, “Achieving Digital Fitness in a Borderless World”.
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| Borderless Brands panelists (l-r): Bonin Bough, Peter Nicholson, Taylor Gray, Linda Boff, Freddie Laker, Carolyn Everson and moderator Todd Wasserman |
Bough’s question of “Are we prepared to adapt?” was highly germane to the evening and was asked repeatedly during the hour and a half of conversation.
Social and technological innovations and an ability to connect with and get feedback from the consumer are driving these adaptions, said Taylor Gray, VP of Marketing & Social Media Strategy, AOL Huffington Post Media Group: “Companies and brands have an incredible opportunity between the technology and the platform to give a much broader experience of their brand and their company to consumers.”
Organizations big and small around the globe have begun to understand that the age of Borderless Brands demands similar ideas about the need for change and adaption, as well as in listening to the consumer. On how her company GE has been able to grow and evolve in the 21st century, Linda Boff, Global Director of Marketing, said that she realized that “We’ve got to get out of the business of just talking and start listening and engage one-on-one.”
“Social is a great listening mechanism and an incredible way to transform your business. We think the most interesting businesses are saying, ‘How do we redesign our business?’” said Carolyn Everson, Vice President, Global Marketing Solutions, Facebook. Everson stated that “two and a half million businesses have given up on their own website and have put their presence on Facebook pages: ‘We’re going to go where the people are and be part of the social network.’”
But right now, not everyone has figured this out yet, according to Peter Nicholson, Chief Creative Officer of JWT, but in order to survive, they must, he said. “A lot of brands are afraid to take risks. They are precious about their messages and what to put out… but at some point you have to throw uncertainty out the window.”
At Facebook, it’s written on the wall that “It’s OK to break things,” said Everson, but it’s hard for many brand marketers to have the courage–and internal backing–to take such risks.
“We need to exercise those muscles so we feel comfortable with them and we will see more risk taking as a result,” said Bough, whose company PepsiCo was referenced repeatedly as a chief innovator and a brand unafraid of learning new ways to engage and adapt. According to Bough, “Those organizations who have figured out how to deliver strong, global passionate campaigns around the world have been able to change their business.”
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| Bonin Bough, Global Director of Digital, PepsiCo |
Throughout the evening, the speakers were lively and engaged as the conversation ranged throughout to answer the six questions listed above defining Borderless Brands. At the end of the day, while many brands are daunted about the potential adaptions and evolutions required of them to grow in today’s borderless age, but for those that do, the possibilities are endless. “If you can use [data compiled from Facebook and others] in an amazing way, you will be able to communicate with consumers in a way that has never been possible before this time. The relevancy that you can deliver through this insight is mind-boggling,” said Freddie Laker, Vice President of Digital Strategy for Global Brands, SapientNitro.
It was a fascinating evening, and the first of many conversations to take place over the next few months on the topic of Borderless Brands. See more photos from the event at the SMW Flickr page here.
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| Toby Daniels, Founder and Executive Director, Social Media Week” |
About Borderless Brands As part of Social Media Week this September 19-23, the Borderless Brands program will take 10-15 participating brands on a unique tour of three international cities over five days to meet and engage with some of the world’s top emerging media and technology influencers, representing an incredible opportunity for brand marketers to close the gap between where society and organizations are in their understanding and adoption of social media tools and technologies. If you are interested in learning more about the Borderless Brands initiative and would like to find out if you and your company are qualified to participate, contact Toby Daniels for a meeting and consultation.
The Internet is His Religion
His relationship with the internet began as a young boy who spent his free time in chatrooms swapping ideas with strangers. Years later as a young man, he would find himself sitting in a hospital room on the verge of receiving a lung transplant made possible by the very same internet. This is the story of Jim Gilliam, a speaker who addressed hundreds Tuesday at Personal Democracy Forum’s annual conference. During his remarks, Jim spoke of his struggles with cancer and religion and how he determined that in the face of such adversity, God could be found in the connections between people. In his words, the internet was his religion.
The previous day, one of the speakers referenced Malcom Gladwell’s now infamous dismissal of the internet and social media chastising the controversial article as Gladwell’s “tripping point”. His article doubting social media’s ability to facilitate strong ties was the butt of several jokes throughout the conference in large part because so many conference speakers and attendees had been privy to situations that emphasized how misinformed his claims were. The inclination to dismiss the power of social media specifically as it relates to the ability to organize is still a part of the dialog around the impact of technology in politics. Yet that dialog is removed from the realities of people like Alaa abd el Fattah, Omoyele Sowore, Dr. Rasha Abdulla, Andy Carvin, and several other speakers who had not only witnessed the power of social media to facilitate the creation of strong ties but who saw the ramifications of those ties play out on a global scale.
Listening to to Jim’s remarks, I couldn’t help but marvel at the strength of the tie between an organ donor and the recipient of his/her donation. It was Jim’s friends and even strangers on the internet who fought to get him on the list that resulted in his lung transplant. There’s nothing weak about that. There was nothing weak about the other stories told at PDF that showcased how social media is being leveraged as a tool to to not only organize but revolutionize how we interact with each other.
Watch live streaming video from pdf2011 at livestream.com
Watch Jim’s inspiring remarks above or here and click here for additional footage of speeches at PDF.
I wouldn’t be surprised if you joined me in feeling like you’d possibly just witnessed what should very well be Malcolm Gladwell’s come to Jesus moment.
Sara Haile-Mariam is a Digital Strategist based in New York City and the Editor of the Social Media Week blog. Follow her on twitter @sarahailmariam
Interested in joining the Social Media Week Global Editorial Team? Apply here!
NY Techies: charity: water is Hiring!
charity: water is a quickly expanding international non-profit that brings clean and safe drinking water to people in developing nations.
To meet the needs of their growing organization, charity: water is seeking to immediately hire a Director of Technology, Senior Software Developer and a Software Developer. They’re looking for technologists with passion, experience, and talent to deliver practical solutions that further their mission and meet their goal of bringing clean water to 100 million people in the next 10 years!
For more information or to apply click here.
As a digital startup, 70% of their funding comes from online grassroots support and every single cent of public donations funds water projects. charity: water is the first charity to reach 1 million twitter followers and their staff of 23 plans to continue to leverage online tools to drive millions of dollars towards water projects.
They’re looking for 3 amazing developers to join their small, passionate team in New York City.
In their words, “We can’t offer you a big buy-out or stock options…. But we can offer you the chance to change the world and see directly how your work can save thousands of lives around the globe.”
To learn more about their positions or to apply visit: http://www.charitywater.org/
To learn more about how water changes everything, watch the video below:
