Updated: Facebook group for caregivers

This appeared in our discussion forum this weekend.

Hi everyone,
I started a facebook group so that other people can share caregiving tips.
It can be found here
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=17125346543

Lincoln N.
http://connectingcaregivers.com/blog/

Kristi asks, "Is there a way to get an AHA link or something here?"

I replied, "My initial reaction is that we couldn’t if they haven’t already. I would assume that a group of caregivers would be familiar with our offering. If it is valuable to them we will have an honored position in their group, if not, we won’t."

I also wonder how we would approach them on this. Maybe if we link to this from our Facebook group there will be some exchange there. Thoughts?

Update: Click link below...

Anu suggests:

I would create a widget on the Caregivers AHA site that promotes Community and link to this page on Facebook. It becomes another option instead of message boards. You can add the disclaimer too.
Great test.

I would contact the owner of the group and let them know how much we appreciate it, and tell them what we’ve done, and ask how we can help them be successful.

Great Idea! Let me know if you have any other ideas...

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Weekend Blog Roundup

State of the Twitter, June 2008
Saturday, June 28, 2008 by Dave Winer.
Did Twitter die Saturday? Dave Winer explores in his blog.

It’s About Conversation, Not Marketing
Saturday, June 28, 2008 by Chris Heuer
"Let’s be clear, the real problem with conversational marketing (other than the God awful term itself) is the ‘marketing’, not the conversation."

Where is the sweet spot between network and community?
Friday June 27, 2008 by Beth Kanter
"netmunity?" "Or perhaps a sociesphere?" More terrible mashups of previously respectable words?

Welcome to Creative Capitalism: A Conversation
By Michael Kinsley and Conor Clarke
Creative Capitalism: A Conversation is a web experiment designed to produce a book.

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Making the case for Science 2.0

I am building a case for using social media and benefiting our cause by embracing Science 2.0 (Health 2.0?.) For anyone who has never heard of this, you should google either term and read everything. There's an especially good article in Scientific American from April.

Dr. Francis Collins (Geneticist who lead the Human Genome Project)speaking on NPR this morning said that the work and discoveries made over the last fifteen years were all about team work. "There are still a few projects that can be done by the lonely investigator toiling away at the lab bench, but not many," he said. He added, "Most of the big problems, exciting problems…require teams." He also acknowledged that most of the work is benefitting from multiple disciplines. "The disciplinary boundaries are getting blurry...If you want to have the big wins, you need to work with teams, instead of toiling away at the lab," said Dr. Collins.

I was thrilled to hear him say this. THIS is the root of the cultural revolution brewing in the scientific community, spurned on (faciliated?) by the notion of Health2.0 (open health, science2.0, research2.0 call it what you will.) It is the same as open source software in the engineering community in the early 90s. This was a major disruptor that led to the discovery of great talent, ideas and innovations that would not have otherwise been identified (at least in such a compressed amount of time) through the traditional means. Many in the science and health care communities believe it is time for such a disruption of the dominant paradigm today. Open your research notebooks to wider communities, find and organize peers and colleagues from other disciplines to build quick teams. There are myriad examples of this going on today to great profit. I am keeping this in mind when we meet with OSO regarding improving My.AmericanHeart.org, member benefits, Mission:Lifeline, the Professional Education Center, Research Application and Awards tool and Member Get a Member.

With these tools we can not only provide the benefit of online applications and services, but we can begin to facilitate real innovation among our professional constituencies.

I'll keep adding links to this post as it is begging for reference, so help me. If you run across any articles, blogs or people working for Open Health and Science 2.0, send em in.

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Mircrosoft Cause Campaign Online

[blog title is link] i’m is an initiative from Microsoft. Every time you use Windows Live™ Messenger or Windows Live Hotmail®, our free webmail service, Microsoft shares a portion of the program's advertising revenue with an organization of your choice from a selection of some of the world’s most effective organizations dedicated to social causes.

Update: PMA is going to approach MicroSoft (existing HW team relationship) about AHA being one of the nonprofit organizations listed. Will keep you posted.

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Keeping the Doors Open

When I read this article I immediately thought of the policy I learned of last week in Dallas at our social media workshop--that absolutely no photographs are allowed at Scientific Sessions due to embargoes. Hearing about a security guard physically taking someone's camera from their hands made me cringe.



This is the exact behavior we need to avoid in a new media world. There's nothing people dislike more than having a door closed in their faces (or a camera taken away), and there's no better way to get some bad PR for yourself than to do just this.



Just read this article on Forbes--it sounds alarming like something that could easily happen to us if we don't change our policies and do what seems so scary--release a little control.

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Blog issues are International

Thought I would share an interesting Business Week article on how global companies are dealing with the nature of blogs In China.

Click here to read.

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AHA Tech Blog

Check it out. Michael and TCS are blogging now!

http://aha-technology.blogspot.com/

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Interesting Site: BlogCatalog

Blogs tagged with Heart Disease
on the site BlogCatalog. It claims to be the largest catalog of blogs. Interesting?

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Founders has a blog

The Founders affiliate has a page on Daily Strength where a stroke survivor blogs.

Check it out.

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Jill Bolte Taylor: My stroke of insight

Brain researcher Jill Bolte Taylor studied her own stroke as it happened -- and has become a powerful voice for brain recovery. See her video from the TED conference here.

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Barack Obama - Social Media AND Fundraisting done perfectly

Not sure how many folks have been to the Barack Obama site. Regardless of your political affiliation, you have to admit that they have done a brilliant job at harnessing the power of individuals for getting the message out there and for fundraising. Their site was created by one of Facebook’s original founders, who knew how to nurture and foster communities.

I love the way that they have multiple calls for action and still manage to not muddle it up or confuse visitors. They’ve streamlined it, made it efficient and easy for folks to do what they want – create their own blog on the site, set goals for their fundraising, post events, track events, create profiles, and talk to each other.

While AHA is not a political organization, I see many similarities in what we are trying to deal with - leveraging the single consumer to donate, and to connect. How the Obama campaign has done this to harness the passion that people have for his campaign seems non-replicable, but I believe that AHA has the same types of people as passionate about living healthy, and being advocates for the brand.

I was sent an article recently by Jenna at LiveWorld on the Obama site with the great information that goes into much more depth. You have to register but it's free. Get it here.

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Panel Discussion: Putting the Tools to Use

Erin Edgerton (CDC)
Elisa Camahort Page (Blogher)
Jenna Woodul (LiveWorld)

Jerry is facilitating discussions about how their orgs are working with social media.

Erin talking about how they interviewed stakeholders internally. Focus on Who is your Audience, what do they want. There was a big gap between what the stakeholders thought and what was true (big surprise.)

Interviews and usability studies led them to start producing content for people trying to manage their health. What they did was put up a Podcast. Aimed for a solid B with a plan to get to A+ as they learned more.

Build v. Buy discussion. Alliances and Partnerships to leverage interest and resources. Social media activities developed based upon goals.

Focus on opportunities per channel to understand what would work best for achieving the goal.

Started a DailyStrength Group page to activate small groups.

The podcasts were launched in 2006 from repurposed audio/video files. Now all units may produce them anytime.

Mobile is the next big thing for the CDC. (could they be any less conservative than us? so much outreach. they require discussion/commenter moderation. should find out how they require it)

Elisa and the story of Blog her
Elisa met some friends three years ago around the meme "where are the women..." ...on the pundit circuit, ...blogging, ...on capitol hill, ...in the political space.

This started them talking about it and they decided to start something. It generated a positive, passionate response. "Three chicks with credit cards" no big deal. Very collaborative, community driven group. When they turned it into a company they wanted to know how to keep the same spirit. Structurally they are different, but they maintain the same spirit by using social media. Creating a community is an active persuit, not just bi-directional, but a ciclical call and response interaction with "no" placed as important as how "yes" is placed. "The conference that community built"

What works?
Twitter really works. People are talking non stop about Blogher on Twitter. Finding the tools that are "hot" with people and getting to where the people are, following the threads and participate (be present.)

Added features to let members blog. The only way they count is by providing tools that "empower" the users.

After effects of Blogher?
People don't ask "Where the women at" anymore. It has become very difficult for conference organizers to say "we don't if there is a woman with expertise in x"

Jenna's turn
What is your brand, what do you think of your brand, what do people say about your brand (YES!)

Jenna says this conversation should be appropriate to the culture. How does it integrate with what you have going now in your organization. 2) how and where does it exist on the web. The cultural part you have to set up is that. Model the way people come together around your brand. (do we need to hire ethnographers and anthropologists or MarCom people?)(Ray?)

Ebay set up a group called voices. That is their core community. They test changes and plans against the values expressed there. This could be a good idea for GRFW and maybe even PTES.

[Transgendered Squirrel Jerry? Either you don't know much about AHA or you've spent too much time in Second Life.]

When putting the tools to use, the panel recommends getting over fear of failure and risk. Measure security risks with risk to your relevance in the market, or reach to the audience.

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Gaming for Health

Here's a link to the "serious gaming" rss.

http://seriousgames.tumblr.com/post/38078101/fourth-annual-games-for-health-conference-joins-health

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Interview: Gaming and Health with Ian Bogost

We as experts are supposed to oversimplify things. Sound bytes, inches on Newspaper, two minute YouTube video, the bulleted blog post, and the 160 character txt msg. Counter to this is the video game. Full immersion into a very complex world.

Animal Crossing, Nintendo game for 3+ Start with nothing, navigate the world get a job, get a mortgage, real time clock. Ian and his 5 yr old played a lot over a year. His son came to him at one point totally stressed about how much stuff his character had accumulated and how he was stretched on his credit.

Persuasive Games:
Work through Modeling, role play, a medium, and examples

Procedural Rhetoric: The art of using processes persuasively

Process the logic by which things operate in the world

Rhetoric: making claims

Make and experience claims about how things are made. Leads to role play, the act of simulating an experience, constrained by rules. The power being the way to generate empathy, living in someone else s shoes as well as complete immersion allowed by the genre. Finally Expertise being achievable.

Examples of use of games outside of typical stuff: Corporate training, exercise, relaxation, health, politics, pornography, religious discipline...

Places you might take games...
Fatworld: PBS produced game to bring about health thinking. Birth through death. Goals can change "I want to see how fast I can die from what I eat" "I want to see how long I can live"

They did a game based upon Kennedy immigration plan. As they were reading about the topic the decided a game would be useful. They included scenarios from the legislation itself and modeled how it would work (obviously thinking it through further than the legislators)

Connecting social media to video games:
Facebook has a platform on which third parties can build applications. Some people are making games to fit there and use the social data to alter the game. Parking Wars. Earn money by parking your car on other people's streets. If you park illegally, you can be ticketed and the person who owns the street gets your money. It is interesting from the perspective of simulating something from the world. Playing with your friends, you learn how they live their lives, what their values are, by the way they play. "I know bob is working on deadline, therefore he's not paying attention, so I'll game him"

Hope labs made a game about having cancer for children to help them prepare what they will undergo when the take on a disease. They have shown improved self efficacy and improved health outcomes via improved compliance rates. Inputs: confidence of the child to face it and compliance with the therapy.

Nancy asks about whether you could teach CPR with a video game. Since much of the exercise is tactile, perhaps that would be complicated, but if you could teach emergency response. Somebody fell down and isn't breathing, react now!

Through role playing, you can get people to think through things...

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Panel Discussion: Mobile Health

Richard Adler(IFTF) and Eric Holmen(from SmartReply) discuss Mobile Health

Mobile Phones are universal. Mobile phone saturation 100% in the next decade? Worldwide penetration over 3 billion! What are the opportunities? What are the interventions?

Richard is describing how powerful his iPhone is, however decrying the weakness of the 2G network. Looking forward to 4G which will be pervasive broadband networking.

How the phone is a health tool.
Richard: There are services where you can text the name of the product and you will get back more info than the label contains. i.e. fishphone: Which fish to order, you will get info on sustainability, mercury content, endangered? etc.

You can find Heidi the Nutritionist on signs in front of foods in the Grocery. Text her to help make a decision about which product is healthier. She is like a wellness concierge.

Geolocate: there is an awareness of where you are when you have your phone. You could have tips sent to you even away from stores, i.e. farmers markets, Napa wine festivals. You could be in a virtual walking group; with a pedometer attached to your phone, you have distance and position.

Brightkite: tells you who is nearby, what they are doing. Like twitter with a position or location

Twitter Smoking Cessation: can help you fight the triggers that make you want to smoke. It can also trigger communication with a friend or counselor to intervene in a bad situation. This doubled the quit rate over traditional methods (citation?)

To participate: text SMOKE to 54989

There is also a walking tool for tracking how much you've walked.
to participate: text LINDORA to 47201

CDC working on a Bluetooth Glucometer. Someone taking their blood sugar reading would send it in to a website along with notes. A counsellor would evaluate notes and patterns and make suggestions. The idea being, "Can you use technology to self manage health."

Considering the kinds of telemetry being developed along with technologies like bluetooth and broadband and your mobile phone tied to social media opens up endless opportunities for support groups, second - 10th opinions, monitoring of chronic conditions, recovery and therapy.

[Note: Krash63 just twittered "Check out http://summize.com/search?q=hot+bloggers for real time twitter on new vs. old media controversy]

Grocery Chain wanted to generate a call to action: Text Deli to xxxxx. after a few weeks tehy sent a text message "Buy 1 Get one Free Rotissery Chicken between 5-6." Activated people instantly. They sold out of chickens but also got an uptick in overall grocery sales at that time.

Sousveillance - The ability to track or watch surveillance tools in your area. This has also led to using the public to watch things from traffic to avian flu.

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Social Media Trends and Forecasts

Stickie Excersize - [words in quotes are stickies on the wall here. I'm trying to capture some discussion too. Add your stickies to the comments. Maybe we'll land on some discussion of those trends]


"Women as drivers of Social Media"
Blogosphere more diverse than other online channels. Due in part to accessiblity. You don't need to be an engineer, web developer, etc. MoveableType, Blogger, and many others of these blogging tools were co-founded by women. (from Elisa Camahort Page - COO and co-founder of Blogher)

Jenna Woodul EVP, Chief Community Officer LiveWorld, Inc - in previous forms, community was destination. Now it is ubiquitous, anywhere anytime. People don't need to challenge their identity by becoming something "Now I'm a Blogger" instead they can choose to enter into this slowly; lurking, commenting, posting, publishing, in steps.

"Making Choices"
Where we have more choices for how to live, communicate, shop, etc. our responsibilities also increase. We are allowed to control more of our lives, but it is scary too.

"Lurking"
How do we use this to understand what is being said in new media?
CDC has added blogs and discussions to their media monitoring. In other words, not what are people saying about CDC, but what are people saying about bird flu, pandemic, etc.

"Kindred Souls: Geeks and Wonks"
Activists are finding a strong voice online. When meeting offline, there is an awkwardness. Wonks enjoy using the medium when talking about how to affect change and how to talk about issues.

Clarissa: We have a tremendous number of activists who want to get together, however they don't always want to be the ones to contact the lawmakers. Clarissa is simply using the existence of the network to influence lawmakers. "We can bring this network to bear on issue xyz"

Break for Lunch...

Picking back up here...

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Liveblogging the workshop continued...

Continuing the Large Group Social Networking Workshop...

10:50...
We are getting big kudos for our liveblogging, that's nice! I'm so glad our organizers changed their mind about internet access today. Maybe we can have it tomorrow. Can we please?

10:57...
We are also long overdue for a bio break. Please send messages to our organizers that breaks are nice...

Questions:
Q:Is it fairly common that orgs or companies are using this (twitter) for a marketing tool?

Jerry: companies,campaigns, associations all have twitter accounts. Follow em or don't, its up to you. Imagine, ads you ask for, not are beaten by. (I hope there is only one more question)

Q: I wonder what this does with the psychology of the individual

Jerry: the notion of the indiv is very new, one century or so. Also it is very American, Horatio Alger. Now we are moving to a collective consciousness (hive mind, group think, etc.) I think this brings us back to his first slide titled Global Brain. [not a bad explanation. I rather like it. Is this the opposite side of the pendulum though from say Mob Mentality?]

BREAK!!! Back in 15...

11:20 - Open discussion "Old Media vs. New Media" - Richard Adler and Ray Durazo (Chairman of the AHA Communications Committee (?)) [My notes here are scattered. I'll post now, but update later. If you can stand my ramblings read on, otherwise come back tonight after I've absorbed all this]

"Taking a brief step back to take what we have learned about Web 2.0 and put it in the context of traditional media opportunities."

Ray, in the recent past 1/10th of 1% of the world controlled what the world knew. An editor decided what was relevant and his/her staff went out and wrote about it. So a very small number of people were the gatekeepers to that knowledge. Now millions are deciding what is relevant and have the ability to spread that knowledge. In Robyn Landry and his business to influence what the media reports on 'us' but those gatekeepers are being replaced - complicating their efforts.

TV and radio, newspapers are struggling to keep up. Ray believes that there is a generation in H.S. right now who will never pick up a newspaper. We can go on the internet right now to find out what is going on right now. To Ray there is no question that old media is going out the door.

Ray distingushes Good PR people from bad. ACS, AHA, ADA, pr good, corporate PR, like lobbyists, bad. "The media consumes what people like him push because they don't have the bandwidth to report on them." What you say cannot replace what you are actually doing. New media distinguishes those and creates transparency into what you do over what you say.

I've heard people say, "become transparent before someone else MAKES you transparent." I think that is what Ray is getting at.

Richard asks "what is the role of PR in this changed environment" Ray is glad he's about to retire. He has no pat answer. Warns you have to get past trying to put a shine on things. It is incumbent on you to do things and communicate them with sincerity. There is a future for PR because they are the face of the organization

Someone asked Ray, "if you were Pr person at Enron what would you have done?" Nothing, they would have fired me instantly, they would have put a gag order on my and I would have had no future. Integrity is crucial to this role.

Ray says that we can rely on the self policing taking place in these new media. He also believes that people will gravitate to the reliable sources the same way they did with old media.

Rachel Maguire of IFTF asked "it is one thing for the gatekeepers of weather to go away, but aren't there one's like JAMA who won't be so easy to let go?" Ray asked Tim Gardner (future AHA President) to answer.

Tim: Credibility in science is crucial, [as is relevance to a volunteer organization.] How do we let more of the science into the dialog without diluting our credibility? Nancy adds that we are looking into how relevant is the peer review to the end user? Open Science is questioning this (see Scientific American article on Science 2.0 from April)

Spectrum we are dealing with Certainty to Speed to Market. It is tough to balance, you go too far to the side of Certainty and you are late, you rush to market too fast and you sacrifice reliability.

11:56 Social Media: Trends and Forecasts
The Large Group is invited to write down ideas on sticky notes. A panel of experts will help identify key trends and directions of change in the area of social media. We'll play several rounds of jotting down ideas on stickies and clustering them on wall charts.

[not sure whether liveblogging will hold on this one, but if it does, it will happen here]

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Large Group Meeting for Social Networking

The large group meeting is finally here. The agenda is packed and so is the room. I'm very pleased with the turn out for day one, having Market Leaders, Volunteers, National Center and Affiliate Staff as well as IFTF staff and their traveling band of experts.

Follow along here as I try to "Live Blog" the workshop.

8:30 AM - 9:30
Introductions took the better part of the first hour. We have more than forty people in the room. Judging from many of the member's comments, everyone is impressed with what they discovered from the homework assignments and everyone found how web 2.0 can help them with their specific concerns. I think the overall theme would be "freedom to fail." In Robyn's opening comments she challenged us to "Fail fast and continuously improve." (I mangled her quote, so maybe I'll hear it again and update it here (already I'm failing - SWEET!))

Among the comments is also a lot of worries about time to get to know and interact with all the social networks and media and tools. Mark Shoeberl also brought up something I hear a lot and that is "this is interesting stuff, but after signing up, I don't ever go back." Vickie Peters said, "I would rather be out in my garden than online." To me this means that relevance is crucial. Ok Duh (live blogging is hard. bear with my mastery of the obvious please.) But really, we don't need to be signing up just because it is there. We need to find the tools and applications that are relevant to our goals and purposes.

9:30 -
Jerry Michalski - Social Networking 101
Jerry spoke with us when we went to Palo Alto last month. He's a huge proponent of social networking, he says that right now we are experiencing a "Cambrian explosion of innovation." Jerry loves twitter and has gotten our core team doing that often. (Go sign up if you haven't and follow me at xian3000. I'll add our other colleagues names here so you can join the network.)

Jerry is talking about the way transferring money has changed in places like Nigeria. Where once they entrusted couriers with cash (hope he doesn't stop at the pub or grocery on the way) and are now passing phone minutes which can be sold or cashed, thereby making the phone a small and much more secure bank.

Weaving a global brain - one of his slides I'll be absorbing before trying to paraphrase. He constantly uses the term Dendrites to describe participants in social networking who become parts of the overall "Global Brain." This is about crowd sourcing or group sourcing, and touches on the wisdom of crowds. Being able to stay connected to others, share your thoughts and experiences at any given moment allow the greater group to build on the experiences shared. Reminds me of something I heard about Ants and how they use scent trails to show where they are going. As a path of ants becomes successful (i.e. the found the sugar) more ants follow it, making the trail "hotter," which calls more ants who make it even hotter. So what started as one ant's accidental discovery becomes a single file line of all the members of the ant hill bringing food home quickly and efficiently. (I think this is what this means)

A Map
Jerry has a sort of chronological map of people and products that have lead to what we are talking about today. It starts with Personal Web pages (circa 1994) and links to Justin Hall (94) (missed the reference while taking notes here. Google it and fill me in on the comments) then points to Weblogs which emerged in about 1997 that got RSS going which allows us to quickly and easily aggregate a lot of stuff without keeping up with myriad web pages. Next on the map is Ward Cunningham inventor of (among other things) WikiWiki in 1995. This is the birth of things like Wikipedia.

He mentions other services like Flickr and Del.icio.us (a bookmarking site I've been using for our Social Networking group.

Mashups - combination of these cool tools. First one HousingMaps.com - takes craigslist and google maps to build a homemade mls.

Manyeyes. I lost track again, but it sounds like a cool tool where people add analysis of anything they are interested in and open it for discussion and commentary. Check it out.

Open discussion is around the emergence and destruction of social networks. It is an organic flow that moves and is guided by social movement. "How to keep up with my kids?" "it was once MySpace, then Facebook, now what?" The organic nature of these tools and networks change behaviors but also illustrate behaviors that have always existed. Now they are revealed. Once they said "never trust people over 30" one day they may say "never trust anyone who doesn't have embarrassing moments shared online." We all have them in our past, we have all shared them, why can't you?

Moving on to Weblogs - you are reading one now and hopefully commenting or posting yourselves, so I'm going to take a short break to listen (and check twitter)...

Wikis - how many of you have used the Wikipedia? It is horrifying and wonderful. There is a great opportunity to learn and share what you area expert at. At the same time, it is terribly intimidating and shut people out just by its sheer size. (I have heard only hatred among our volunteers. The health info and science can be weak) Some other wiki examples Jerry discusses are

TaxAlmanac.org (intuit)
BarCamp.org("unconferences") you will see a long list of bar camps going on all over the world.

Check em out...

Web 2.0 describes a break with first generation web tools and apps. Its not that there are these sites where there is social networking, but that social networking is becoming ubiquitous and expected as parts of all web apps - more or less. These tools make you more interactive, more connected, more social, more open, more complicated and unpredictable.

Mentioned Prodigy, remember them?, at the last minute they added email and discussion boards to their services. This ended up frustrating Prodigy when people used the boards to bitch about their unsatisfying service. Web 2.0 should embrace these behaviors, or at least make us resigned to the fact that we are not in control of our brand image and now we get to hear how much... See "Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky.

Looking up those links put me a bit behind. Now we are looking at cute pictures of kittens. Not sure how we got here, but he is showing how people can comment on Flickr images directly as well as adding comments on the page. If you like cuteness, go to cuteoverload.com. I am wondering for those of us who don't like cuteness if there is a site "bring on the ugly" and if I should reserve that url yet.

This is funny, Meighan Girgus just brought me her laptop trying to start a facebook page. Facebook was showing an error message that read "You are ineligible for a facebook account!" WOW! What's in HER background that Facebook already knows about? Maybe one of you could start an account for her. We need her on board!

Another important concept to understand, Tagging. Get to know this. You can see it being used on blogs, flickr, youtube and many other places. You can tag things and subjects and see what other stuff has the same tag. I think this is where the cuteness thing came up above. I would like to see us using tags with our content. It will certainly facilitate find our subjects when we start sending out via RSS and other open channels like that. We will be using the tag heartfuture08 for our workshop. Find us later on places like Del.icio.us, flickr (maybe) and blogs like this one.

Jerry's Media Sharing list:
Photo Sharing: Flickr(now a part of Yahoo! p.s. Jeuno is a genius flickr contributor. You might just know him)
Video sharing: YouTube (Now a part of Google)
Link Sharing: del.icio.us (now part of Yahoo!)
Document Sharing: Google Docs (still a part of Google)
Library sharing: Shelfari
Event Calendars: upcoming (Yahoo! again)

Between blogging and instant messaging is Twitter. This is also known as nonaoblogging or microblogging. In Twitter you follow people like you follow a blog. As opposed to IM where you have to agree to pair before communication can happen. I put up my twitter name above, so check it out. Follow me and when you do, I'll decide whether or not to follow you. My choice. No offense Mike if I don't follow you back ;)

Founders affiliate has a twitter account you can follow. They are using it really well too. Check em out at foundersheart

Summize is a search engine for twitter conversations. Commenters, tell us what Comcast is doing with this. Sound like genius customer service, but don't tell Yolanda, she'll want to do it yesterday.

Moving the over-long post here...

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Mommies and Social Media

Some insight from a colleague at Edelman on Social Media and Mommies

·         Twitter is growing in popularity among Mommy bloggers and bloggers in general. The microblogging on Twitter gives PR professionals the opportunity to get to know bloggers before engaging with them. We follow a number of mom bloggers on Twitter. Recently, we noticed that one of them “tweeted” about bagel sandwiches. Because we were already following her, we were able to then reach out to her about a new Kraft product, Bagel-fuls. The blogger was thrilled that the team reached out to her with such a relevant product and she was interested in receiving a sample! An ever-expanding list of mommy bloggers who are on Twitter can be found here.

·         Many mommy bloggers love free stuff (don’t we all?). And if they like it, they often like to give it away to their readers to try too. Giveaways are an easy way to get your product in the hands of your target audience – the blogger’s readers. Blogger giveaways are now getting additional coverage on giveaway blog sites, such as Prizey, which features lists and links to mommy blogger giveaways online.

·         The popularity of mom blogger product review sites is growing too. Product reviews are an easy way for mommy bloggers to try your product and let their readers know about it. Be sure to read all blog policies about how they want to receive product.  Some blogs, for example, only want product information (they then purchase the product themselves, to avoid bias). The Domestic Diva is a popular mommy blogger product review site that reviews mom- and kid-friendly products.

·         Something else that mommy bloggers love? Getting together! Graco (makers of strollers and car seats) has been doing a terrific job bringing mom bloggers together and getting them to write about it. They even created a section of their site dedicated to the “Graco Get-Togethers,” with photos (also on Flickr!), embedded video from the events, and links out to bloggers who have written about the events.

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