Mediaboss Marketing

GUEST AUTHOR BLOG: How social influence marketing is about to change your business by Mark W. Schaefer author of "Return On Influence: The Revolutionary Power of Klout, Social Scoring, and Influence Marketing."

Source: McGraw-Hill

The latest trend is not being set by advertising executives, creative teams, or marketing wizards. Its emerging from the powerful and passionate voices of consumers, and the companies that are finding and measuring their ability to create buzz.

Influence has been one of the most studied aspects of politics, marketing, sociology, and psychology and yet it has never really been measured in a statistically valid way. Until now.

People creating content on blogs, Facebook and Twitter is an action. Having a link clicked, or a message tweeted, is an effect. Finally, there is something to measure in this field. In fact there are billions of actions and effects to measure and compare every day!

In the online world, the ability to move an idea or opinion through an engaged online network creates influence. To the extent a company can measure content moving through this system, we would be able to quantify one sliver of influence.

And that is historically important. Influence has been democratized.

Some of the biggest and brightest marketers and brands like Disney

Mark W. SchaeferAuthor, "Return On Influence"

Essentially, this is creating an entirely new marketing channel to complement traditional methods. And it's cost-effective too. Early results from case studies show the cost per impression is as good, or better, than paid advertising and it is ORGANIC since it is being generated by people who already love the brands.

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Social Influence Marketing is About to Change Your Business: Author of 'Return On Influence'

Pakistani Parliament House

Last week we reported on the controversy over Pakistan's Request for Proposals for a sophisticated Internet censorship system. The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority has vowed to stop the distribution of "blasphemous and objectionable content" over the Pakistani Internet, and was seeking a system capable of blocking up to 50 million URLs. Internet freedom activists rallied against the proposal and secured commitments from several major IT vendors not to bid for the project.

Now the Pakistani government appears to be backing away from the proposal. A member of the National Assembly, the lower house of Pakistan's legislature, told the Express Tribune that Pakistan's Ministry of Information Technology had withdrawn the project "due to the concern shown by various stakeholders."

Yet the Pakistani officials in charge of the proposal have yet to confirm the reports. A spokesman from the IT Ministry told the Express Tribune that it would release a statement on Tuesday, but Ars was unable to find such a statement on the agency's website.

Critics of the censorship scheme hailed the news, but warned the fight was far from over.

"While these reports are promising, there is still a possibility that the Pakistani government could try to covertly implement a similar system," said Mike Rispoli, a spokesman for the advocacy group Access. His group collected more than 18,000 signatures opposing the scheme.

Rispoli called for new legislation prohibiting the Pakistani government from implementing such a censorship regime in the future.

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Pakistan backs away from proposed censorship system

19-03-2012 20:12 http://www.lockergnome.com - Every week (if not every day), people ask me if they should buy the new iPad (and that's been since before there was even a new new iPad). I know that I really like my iPad — but you might not. It really all depends on how you might like to use such a device. Could it make a good replacement for your laptop? Again, that's an answer that can vary from person to person. So, can an iPad really replace your laptop? Here are a few key usage areas to consider. You can watch the entire live TLDR episode here: youtu.be http://www.gnomies.com http http://www.lockergnome.com profiles.google.com twitter.com http://www.facebook.com

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Can iPad Replace Laptops? - Video

Although enterprise social networking (ESN) products that replicate Facebook-like and Twitter-like functionality for workplaces have been around for about five years, Microsoft sees a big opportunity in that market, to which some feel the maker of Windows and Office has been slow to respond.

The value of ESN is undeniable in enhancing employee collaboration and communication, but many ESN implementations have failed to deliver on their promise for various reasons, such as lack of integration with third-party business software and poorly planned deployments, a Microsoft official said.

Microsoft's approach will be to increase enterprise social features in SharePoint, as part of an integrated, organic collaboration platform that also includes Lync, Outlook and its Office productivity applications, said Jared Spataro, Microsoft's senior director of SharePoint product management.

"We believe social technologies will be incredibly important in transforming the way people interact with organizations. But we also think much of the discussion happening in the industry today, led by the pure play, standalone social vendors, is somewhat misguided," he said.

"Social shouldn't be implemented just for social's sake, but for business sake. It shouldn't just replicate Facebook for the enterprise, but rather focus very squarely on task completion, on helping people get their jobs done," Spataro added.

Spataro declined to give specifics about how this vision and strategy will be manifested in Microsoft collaboration products, but said that SharePoint has been gaining enterprise social features since its 2003 version, continued adding them in its 2007 and 2010 versions, and will pursue a "people-centric" model going forward.

"The first 10 years of SharePoint's life were very clearly focused on documents. It was a document-centric system. That's exactly what the industry wanted at the time," he said. "As we look towards the next 10 years of SharePoint, we want to maintain that document strength but we're also going to increasingly become a people-centric system."

Vendors like NewsGator have provided ESN capabilities to SharePoint for years, meeting the demand of customers who weren't satisfied with the native social collaboration features of the product.

"There have always been places where the partner ecosystem has been able to innovate faster than we have, so they produce solutions on top" of SharePoint, he said.

However, some like Forrester analyst Rob Koplowitz feel that Microsoft has been slow on the uptake.

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Microsoft Says SharePoint Isn't Late to Enterprise Social Networking

While the great and the good of gaming were slipping on rented tuxedos and clipping on bowties last Friday for the BAFTAs, something great and good was happening in Oxfordshire - with a speaker even the Academy would struggle to get on its guestlist.

After strutting around the White House and living it up on Air Force One with Barack Obama, David Cameron's first public speech back on UK soil took place in the somewhat less presidential surroundings of the Blue Boar pub, Witney.

By now I'd like to think you will have heard about Special Effect, the amazing charity whose mission is to help people with disabilities to play and enjoy video games through accessible technology. I'm a vice president, and it's an enormous privilege to help get the message out about the life-changing work the team does.

That's what's special about Special Effect. It's not one product you're rolling out for everybody to use, it's a huge amount of individual effort to create that magic moment."

David Cameron, PM

British Prime Minister he way be, but to the people of West Oxfordshire, where Special Effect is based, he also happens to be their local MP. On Friday he heard all about an incredible little girl called Charlotte Nott - and watched this video.

When Charlotte was three she contracted meningitis, which resulted in her losing all four limbs. But that's not enough to stop her gaming, as that short clip so powerfully demonstrates.

Moreover, it highlights in a little over a minute the importance of Special Effect's work and stresses the fact that there is no one-size-fits-all solution - every disability is different, and every person the charity works with receives technical assistance tailored specifically to their unique needs.

The results, though, are always the same: joy, and the liberation of being able to enjoy something alongside everyone else - crucially, on a level-playing field.

It doesn't hurt to have the Prime Minister as your local MP. But, whatever you think about his politics, Cameron has taken a keen interest in Special Effect because he knows all too well the difference its work can make.

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From PM to Players: The Word Is Out On Accessible Gaming