As social media continues to win respect and legitimacy in the hearts and minds of executives across the world and more companies than ever are looking to open up a Facebook page to take their brand “social” -a question that is repeatedly asked by brands is: What is the value of a fan? (or a “liker” in today’s terms).

This question is often asked by two very opposing camps. For those against social media, there is an inherent derogatory tone and a cynical smirk they like to use when they ask this question,  however when discussing old media outlets, they never raise this question.

Allow me to explain: When a prospective client wants an indication of the value of a commercial time slot on a given network, the network will generally provide him with viewership stats, meaning, on average, how many viewers of a prized demographic can the client expect to reach during their 30 seconds of air time. These statistics are gathered and measured against market demand, and translated into a monetary figure. Major Television events, like the U.S. Super Bowl, can reap more than 1 million dollars for a few seconds of airtime.

When you take that criteria and transfer it to Facebook, it’s quickly recognized that demographics and numbers are already a feature which the client gets automatically as soon as he begins his social media path . The demographics are super targeted as members have to opt-in to become “likers” and the numbers are plainly visible for all to see. Yet for some reason, because these “viewers” (to borrow a term from television) are not viewing the commercial (post) during an actual television program, their value is presumed by social media naysayers to be less significant. If anything, the interactive nature of Facebook fans should make them more valuable, not less so. For old advertising to assume that stats and demographics are not enough information to warrant a value estimate for social media, is a clear double standard and downright hypocrisy.

“That’s right!” champions of social media will chime in, “Facebook fans far outweigh the value of any television viewer”, and thus you see such value estimates floating around the blogosphere ranging from $3.60 to $136 for the average Facebook “fan”.

The first value is based on a calculation put forth by Vitrue which takes the number of fans and multiplies them by a presumed average of 2 Facebook posts per day. You then take the resulting number of impressions and divide it by an estimated CPM model, meaning Cost per Measure – or 1000 impressions. Vitrue performed their calculation based on a fan page of 1 Million members with a very conservative $5 CPM value to come up with $3.60/ fan. I decided to see how Blonde 2.0′s fans’ value would measure up. Taking our own fan base of 4,270 members X (2X30) = 256,200 impressions per month /1000 X $11 (the average CPM value according to ClickZ) = $23.24 X 12 months = $279 /4,270 = $0.065 representing Blonde 2.0’s average fan value per year based on this formula.

I can tell you, being intimately familiar with Blonde’s fan value, that this figure is not anywhere near the vicinity of being accurate. Our fans are our greatest ambassadors and much of our business is generated though their word of mouth. Now how do you measure WOM? Vitrue’s model falls short in accurately predicting fan value for many companies and this makes sense given that CPM models are generally used to price traditional media ads which represent only a monologue selling a specific product and are not customized to measuring the overall value of social media. Facebook “impressions” are a completely different kind of media where more often than not, the post should be as divorced as possible from trying to make a sale and are more about creating dialogue, brand awareness and positive social conversation which indirectly leads to higher sales.

Then there is the second value model based on a report compiled by Syncapse. They are the ones who came up with the $136.36 figure stated earlier. To get this figure, Syncapse canvassed 4,000 fans from 20 major brand pages on Facebook to find out why they were fans in the first place and how they would describe their purchasing behavior. They used the accumulated data to estimate the fore stated value. The problem with this study is that individuals are notorious for inaccurate self depictions. Compound that little snag with the fact that much of advertising and branding is subliminal in nature, leaving the brunt of its effects to go unnoticed by the viewer, and what you have in the end is a very tenuous figure at best.

So, if these figures do not represent the true value of a fan, what does? The problem with answering this question is that it assumes there is some sort of generic value that every “fan” has. The truth is, there are different types and qualities of fans. There are diehard fans who are dedicated to the brand and would do all they can to promote it and there are passive fans who basically just like to be updated on what your brand is up to – and everything else in between, making a generic figure next to impossible to conjure up at this point. Nontheless, it should be noted that all Facebook “likers” of your brand are more valuable than TV viewers or any other old media audience because they themselves opted to be your fans and part of your community whereas in other media channels they were “forced” to view your brand’s messaging because they fit the criteria of your target audience.

Another important point to emphasize is that the kind and quality of likers that your page attracts is, in large part, within your sphere of influence and control. Through expert social profile management, careful cultivation of budding fans, well timed campaigns and well placed media – likers can be converted from passive viewers to your most active cheerleaders in a few short months. The operative word here is “expert”. Many companies are hearing all this buzz about social media, and fall under the impression that the mere act of opening up a Facebook page will bring in adoring fans like Kevin Costner’s Field of Dreams. The truth is, it is far more complicated than that, and takes acquired finesse that only develops with time, experience and expertise.

The value of a Facebook fan is more than just a number. It is equal to the same value you would place on someone who has agreed to become a part of your brand’s daily on-going activity for the long term and even promote it to his friends and family on occasion. The value of a Facebook fan is the same value you would place on someone who actually cared enough to show you he likes you or your actions. The value of a Facebook fan cannot be measured using the same measurement system as old traditional media. It calls for a new form of measurement which takes into account a whole new set parameters including the “liker’s” level of engagement with the brand, duration of being a “liker” and more. The value of a fan in my mind, well, is priceless.

I have heard numerous stories of companies that checked up on potential job candidates and dismissed them based on information the companies found about the candidates on the Web. This age of openness where anything and everything can be shared has created a whole new more careful and cautious breed of social media users. Or has it?

A quick search on Google of people who have been fired for social media revealed this shocking and reasonably comprehensive list of people fired due to blogging, Facebooking or Tweeting.

The length of the list is shocking yes, but not scary. What is scary is what’s been happening lately in terms of social media affecting national security. The case of an ex-Israeli soldier is nothing compared to what happened on April 5th, 2010. WikiLeaks – the website that publishes anonymous submissions and leaks of sensitive governmental, corporate, organizational, or religious documents – leaked footage of a US Apache helicopter attacking civilians in Iraq in 2007. WikiLeaks again sparked controversy on July 25th, 2010, by releasing thousands of documents called the Afghan war diaries, which went into classified details about the state of the US war in Afghanistan.

The debate on how far freedom of expression should extend is an old one. Yet social media appears to be adding a whole new set of factors to be considered in this discussion. The ability to instantly disseminate information in a viral fashion has created a very real dilemma for institutions and countries that require a degree of discretion to survive. The problem stems from the fact that it is not possible to police and control the entire internet nation. Furthermore, in a nation without borders, who would be in charge of such policing?

As it is with all new and powerful tools, it will take time for the rules and regulations of social media to work themselves out. However it is obvious that democratic countries now face the issue of whether or not they will enact some sort of measures which will keep social media users from jeopardizing national security.

The fact that social media’s mandate will have to be defined by governing bodies in some manner over time is a certainty. Social media is one of the most powerful tools out there today, with great corporations, and even political trends, bowing to the power of its collective force – but in the great words of Spiderman’s uncle Ben: “With great power comes great responsibility. ” Most of these instances of social media run-a-muck can be avoided with users utilizing some sort of common sense. For example, if you’re serving in the military, it might not be a good idea to check-in on Foursquare. The same unwritten laws of human decency, courtesy and responsibility, still apply even after the birth of social media. In an age where “sharing is caring” – how much sharing is just too much sharing and how should institutions/countries control this endless sharing of information without becoming dictatorships?

For those of you who haven’t yet heard of MMA, it probably sounds like some form of fancy business degree from the Wharton school of business – But for those of you who count themselves among the fighting aficionados of the 21^st century, you must know that MMA stands for “Mixed Martial Arts”; the global phenomenon that combines such sports as Boxing, Kickboxing, Wrestling and Jujitsu, into one multidimensional adrenaline fest.

Even if you’re not a fan of violent tests of human will and ability, one can still learn a lot form MMA as far as what it can teach us about businesses fighting for recognition in a hot new industry where no one yet has any particular edge. In other words, how a company can effectively peacock to make itself an obvious standout from the rest of the pack? As a case-study, I would like to run through a quick inventory of LowKick, one of many MMA companies, but unique in its decision to take the road less traveled by, in a clear gamble to achieve its desired differentiation.

The potential market value for MMA is huge, and for good reason. MMA is gaining traction worldwide as the latest global sensation, and is already considered to be the fastest growing sport in America- hands down. It edged out NASCAR for the coveted slot in 2009, and added it to a growing list of yearly accolades.  These include a record breaking $222,766,000 of Pay-Per-View earnings in 2006, and an impressive trouncing of boxing in betting revenues for the first time in 2007. It’s no wonder so many companies are looking for a piece of the action. A quick search on Google for MMA websites will turn up a veritable directory of MMA portals, with such industry recognizable names as SherDog, MMAFighting, to name but a few. So what is LowKick’s strategy to earn a spot all its own amongst such tough competition?

LowKick, is a relatively new MMA community portal founded in 2007 by Itai Librider and Itai Arbel.  From the get-go, the Itais realized that any attempt at being recognized as the best MMA portal at doing the same things as everyone else, would basically amount to an exercise in futility. Even if they did succeed, it would be like being the best Vuvuzela blower at the world cup, no one is really going to notice. Instead, the boys at LowKick decided to go in a completely different direction. As opposed to trying to be recognized as the authorities on MMA commentary, they passed the torch on over to the fans, granting them the soapbox rights to stand and be heard. Their efforts go way beyond the traditional forum model, where diehards engage in heated debate in the back annals of sports history which no one will ever see, hear, read or care about. A mind boggling 60% of LowKick’s content is fan generated. With such a model, there is always the question of how to control site quality? – LowKick solved this issue by tapping into the natural competitiveness of the MMA fan.  Essentially, the members themselves vote on what is considered the most quality driven content through their mouse, with the most popular content being featured on LowKick’s home page. So although the content is very similar to that of other MMA portals, with fans being able to upload anything from opinion statuses, to entire articles, pictures and videos – The degree of respect given to fan generated content and having it serve as the driving force behind the sight, is certainly unique.

LowKick’s understanding that their golden goose lies in their fan base, has led their site to resemble a sort of MMA version of Facebook in many respects. Even their competitions are reminiscent of the social platform giant, only with a little more testosterone built in. You won’t see an MMA fan playing “Name that tune”, even if it will win him a shiny new iPad. What you might see though are MMA fans crashing your server to play “Name the tune of Brock Lesnar’s walk out theme”.

Perhaps the most telling feature in LowKick’s arsenal that demonstrates this fan focused mentality is their “Picks” section. If there is one thing MMA fans like, its predictions. They like making them, they like hearing them, and more than anything else, they love the 20/20 hindsight ability to debunk them. Fight fans agree that MMA is the most exciting new development to hit the combat sports since Athens beat Sparta in 371 BCE, but agreement basically stops there. From which fighter is the pound for pound greatest athlete to hit the octagon, to which gym produces the best fighters – ask any two MMA fans a question and you’re bound to get three different opinions.  That’s why LowKick’s fan picks are so exciting for the average MMA fan. Every fan is given the fighting chance to have their opinion reach the top of the rankings. Whenever a member makes a prediction on which fighter will win in an upcoming bout, his pic’s are tracked and tallied so that he can earn prediction points over time. Aside from winning cool prizes, a member with an accurate track record can build a homegrown reputation as a professional pundit, commentator and critic – and people will start to listen.

What you’re basically looking at then, when you summarize LowKick’s business model, is the functioning reality of an MMA based company adopting social media. There are already countless blogs, vlogs, fan made websites and fan based Facebook pages dedicated to MMA. There are also a plethora of professional MMA communities. LowKick though, is perhaps the first example of an MMA portal leaving the controlling stake of their portal’s direction in the hands of the fans.

This bold experiment of LowKick’s; to pin their hopes of success on the adoption of a social media based strategy in a fiercely competitive industry, is definitely a gutsy one. They have certainly managed to differentiate themselves, although the jury is still out on whether or not this uncharted approach will yield results. However, there are some telling indicators that point to their being on to the right track. LowKick already boasts a healthy 1.8 million monthly views and a 45,000 member fan base – But the most powerful indicator might be the $250,000 dollar round of angel investment LowKick has recently procured. If there’s one hint that companies look for to let them know they’re moving in the right direction, it’s whether or not investors are willing to put up the capital. As fight promoters have always told agents looking to get their fighters on a good card, it’s all about what people are willing to pay good money to see – The old saying rings just as true when it comes to gauging a startup’s chances – “Money talks”.

This post was originally posted on socialmedia.biz on August 4th.

We began working with easy-forex to combine their forex trading and social media activity back in February, 2010. We knew right away that teaming easy-forex’s expertise, vibrancy, and fresh approach to FX with our knowledge of the nuts and bolts of social media would invariably produce a winning combination. When we first took stock of easy-forex’ social media efforts, it was clear they had already recognized the value of social profiles and had already laid the groundwork for us on Twitter and YouTube. We knew too though, that easy-forex’ full potential was only beginning to be actualized, and so, we set out to create a home for their traders, a place where they could come and chat with one another regarding their trading habits, methods, tips and strategies – basically, anything and everything related to forex.

easy-forex has always made an effort to be on the cutting edge of trading innovation, and we made sure that bloggers were made well aware of this fact by letting them know all about easy-forex’ great customer service and any releases of new products, all through our blogger outreach campaign. This consisted of an extensive search and mapping effort to find the most relevant and high-profile blogs read by the target market. We created a blogger kit detailing easy-forex’ most promising products/services and set our sights on the top 90 bloggers in the tech and forex industry. Our efforts paid off and we received coverage in such tier 1 blogs as VentureBeat, as well as GoMo News and Currency Trading. We were able to reach over 500,000 unique readers with easy-forex’ compelling story of how their unique approach was impacting online trading. Our story was also heavily retweeted and shared by others, furthering its overall social ROI.

Speaking of Twitter, we worked very closely with easy-forex to procure real time actionable trading data, directly from their dealing room, to send out as tweets. This close relationship added industry relevant substance to our tweets which set us apart from the average FX tweeters and contributed to a spike in  easy-forex’s twitter following by 25% within a mere two month period.

Taking off in all these various directions simultaneously, with each venue showing an exponential growth rate, we created an easy-forex Facebook page to act as a central hub for all our forex trading and social media efforts. We use the social network as a coalescing tool with which to announce and trackback any and all forex trading and social media collateral including blog posts, videos, tweets, news feeds, and discussions, keeping the page active and alive. Our easy-forex FB page also served to replace the typical forex forum pages traditionally used as a place where traders can come to share their thoughts. By replacing the traditional forums with a Facebook style setting, the discussion is made more real and more personal. It also serves as a barrier preventing any anonymous person/competitor from writing whatever they like without taking responsibility for their words. On social networks, where one has their picture posted, their information written and is connected to friends and family, one feels a responsibility for their actions and words, and will think twice before posting something.

Since launching the easy-forex page at the tail end of February 2010, we managed to go from zilch to over 5,000 fans. An easy-forex YouTube channel features easy-forex’ Emma Andreou’s engaging and informative daily dose of FX happenings and has built a growing loyal audience. In three minutes these forex trading daily videos cover the top 10 market reports, saving hours of research for individual traders. A LinkedIn group was also opened with the same daily diligence for sparking group interaction and information sharing, within and amongst all easy-forex’s members.

We also built a blog for easy-forex where we publish forex related news and market views. Here too easy-forex became an active partner in helping us to build their brand by encouraging their own FX specialist to write and participate in the blog. Their keen insights and bold predictions have led to the blog becoming a weekly must read amongst the easy-forex community and beyond.

One of the main goals of our social media activities has been to create full transparency between easy-forex and traders via our discussions on all our social channels as well as the information we provide on our blog.  This massive online presence within social networks as well as blogs, not to mention the sharing of our content by others, has had the added effect of helping easy-forex’ SEO efforts.

It’s important to note that across all our platforms, members are by no means passive assets. easy-forex’ campaigns are highly interactive with broad open channels being kept for our various online communities on a daily basis. After all, happy members are the best ambassadors your company could ever ask for, a fact whose full reach and value is beyond measurability.

Take our first easy-forex Facebook campaign for example. The campaign was called easy-forex’s, “Fantasy Team”, and began June 8^th – 2010, designed to coincide with, and build off the internationally popular World Cup soccer games. The campaign content consisted of asking our Facebook members to create their own fantasy soccer team, using as random and as outrageous a selection of personalities that they could think of. Participants were encouraged to get even more creative by presenting their selection in the form of doctored photographs with superimposed heads, or upload video versions, or any wacky way that their imaginations could conjure up.

The results beat all expectations. In the three week duration of the campaign, easy-forex’ FB member count increased by a staggering 2,600 people, approximately 50 submissions were entered, and easy-forex received over 800 lead applications requesting more information about their company. All in all, a super successful and highly interactive campaign combing forex trading and social media efforts.

easy-forex and Blonde 2.0 have only begun to scratch the surface of the great potential waiting to be uncovered in the realm of forex trading and social media. We are hard at work thinking up new creative ideas and campaigns which can help take us to the next level of our social media activity with easy-forex. Stay tuned for what comes next. We promise to keep things interesting.

When companies are trying to figure out who they want to market to, they usually think in terms of quality; meaning high end B2B sales to large corporate customers – Or quantity; meaning high volume B2C sales targeting the individual consumer. Who do you think gets lost in the mix? – That’s right, small business.

The reason for the neglect of the small business market stems part and parcel from the notion that this market has neither the ability to afford the high priced items reserved for big business, nor the volume to justify the push of lower end items. However, as it is with all matters of value, the truth of this perception is directly related to the breadth of one’s vision. If you view small business as a Hodge-Podge of unrelated individual vendors, each struggling to make it on their own in a sea of corporate waters, then yes, small businesses is less attractive than the higher end B2B markets and the voluminous B2C markets. If on the other hand, you have flexibility of vision and can imagine each small business as a piece of a unrealized collective whole, you may just have stumbled upon one of the greatest untapped markets out there, where large numbers combine with the need for high end competitive services – Essentially the best of both worlds.

Soho OS, a new and innovative social and business management platform, was one of the first to recognize the full potential of this unformed market. They set about converting individual small businesses into a “virtual corporate” whose size is dictated by the number of their members, whose borders span every corner of the globe where small businesses and an internet connection can be found, and whose talent pool is as deep and individualized as the business owners are themselves. Their strategy for creating a virtual corporate out of disparate parts was built upon the bold and unprecedented move of offering a fully stocked suite of core business services free of charge, a “Premier package” of cutting edge technology offered as an SaaS “pay-as-you-go” service, and a host of social media services built right into the platform.

The genius of Soho OS was to create an advantage out of a handicap. The size handicap of small businesses meant there was always a need to rely on a dependable network of capable business associates. As such, small businesses have evolved an inbred ability to form rock solid partnerships with each other. Soho OS has taken that ability into the social media age, giving it a global standards boost, and real-time capabilities.

New Job Market

A company like Soho OS was born with innovation in its veins and can never sit idly on one advantage for too long. Proof of this lies in the fact that mere weeks after opening up their closed beta with a fully revamped UI, Soho OS is announcing a partnership with Donanza, an online marketplace for freelancers to vie for projects. Projects are mined from over 300 separate web sources, and tens of thousands of new projects are added each day. Donanza offers a whole new measure of value for Soho OS users in that now they not only have the ultimate tool to manage their businesses; they have a fantastic resource with which to secure new business directly from the Soho OS interface.

New Bloggers’ SMS Widget

Soho OS is also announcing a new bloggers widget providing free SMS service for their readers. The idea is to show one small feature of the mix of features which Soho OS offers its users and enable bloggers to give their readers added value and a further reason to keep their pages open. You can check out the widget on my blog (look right).

What I love about Soho OS is that they are perpetually trying to think out of the box with regard to their own services. Large companies are usually very happy with their products, using them in a linear fashion without having a need to adapt them to other opportunities. If a new need crops up, they simply build another product. Small businesses don’t have that luxury and therefore try to milk each and every product of its full potential before considering other ideas. Soho OS did the same thing here. They already offer SMS service but thought, “What else can we do with that?”

If for no other reason than these clear demonstrations of vision and drive; you should want to trust your business in the hands of such entrepreneurial spirit. Make sure to stay tuned as Soho OS continues to innovate and revolutionize the way we think, work and communicate with one another.

on Sunday I gave a lecture at The Marker’s Customer Experience Conference. I spoke about: “The relationship between the brand and the consumer on social networks: From flirt to love.”

How should brands engage with consumers on social networks? You’ll see that the relationship between brands and consumers on social networks is very similar to the relationship between couples.  The presentation displays three examples of  brands that handle their social media efforts differently. HP, the third brand, clearly exemplifies how giving back to your community, being responsive and listening before selling is the best policy. Please note that the presentation is in Hebrew.

Have you ever looked at a photograph of a captivating figure, with vivid detail and exotic settings, and thought to yourself ‘If this person could talk, what would they say?’ That’s the question that the people at Fotobabble asked themselves before creating their innovative application that allows you to upload an accompanying audio message to your photos, effectively creating a sort of digital scrapbook.

The idea of attaching text to photos is as old as photography itself; however text can never fully capture cadence, tone and sincerity, all things that add value to the viewer’s experience. The benefits that such an application can bring to the personal consumer market should be self evident. You can share memories and experiences with family and friends, framing the message and tone of your pictures in ways that text can never do. With Fotobabble, your pictures can tell your story the way you remember it.

However, Fotobabble has set their sights much higher than on the personal user/ sentimental market.  Fotobabble believes it can also be used to better frame the message of brands and companies, public personalities and celebrities. Imagine logging onto a major organizations page and having their slogan actually talk to you. Customers are used to seeing the ‘Face’ of a company, but now they can hear the ‘Voice’ as well. The same goes for celebrities and public personalities, or pretty much anyone who wants to tell a story through their pictures, but in their own words. Even the journalism industry could theoretically adopt such an application, replacing dry captions with vibrant monologue and further framing the tone of the news.

The possibilities are many. For starters though, Fotobabble is teaming up with iVillage, the popular women’s social media community, to launch two promising campaigns. The first targets the personal/ sentimental market, asking woman to upload pictures with a theme focusing on beauty, fashion and confidence, hitting at the heart of iVillage’s members’ interests.  The second campaign is building on the personal /sentimental market as a foothold to break into the celebrity market. This ‘All Star Moms’ campaign asks mothers of celebrities to upload images with Fotobabble , discussing advice, tips and even recipes that helped them turn their kids into the stars they are today.

In the microsite for their campaign, visitors can see and hear the motherly advice of such celebrity moms as Robin Paul, mother of NBA sensation Chris Paul, as well as the mother of late night funnyman, Jimmy Fallon, and pro skateboarder Ryan Scheckler.

Sometimes there is a fine line between a good idea and a realistic one that will actually catch on. With high profile moms eager to pitch in for the ‘All Star Moms’ campaign, the evidence seems to indicate that Fotobabble is on the right track.

What I think is really great about this sort of application is that you never really know how far it can go, and where it might pop up next…

“Can I see your license and registration please?” “Certainly officer, but please don’t click on the picture, I was drunk when I recorded it.”

The Pivot conference is revving up again, scheduled to hit the Big Apple on the 17^th – 19^th of October, 2010. If you have anything to do with the marketing sweet spot of 18 – 34 year old generation ‘T’ (Techies), then you should definitely consider stopping by.

Why?  5 reasons for you:

Reason 1- First off, Pivot is the premiere brouhaha where ad agencies and brand marketers gather to discuss the styles, attitudes, preferences and technologies of said age bracket. Let’s face it, the trends in this marketing demographic change faster than Facebook’s privacy settings. So if you want any form of a heads up about what was, what is and what will be, for the hipsters of hi-tech, PIVOT’s a good place to start.

Reason 2- Need we mention that the fastest growing industry on the web is social media, and still, SM giants like Facebook and Twitter have yet to monetize themselves to the point of profitability (poor guys). Pretty much all of them are primarily looking toward advertising models to turn that around and reach projected revenue marks in the tens of billions. It’s probably a good idea then to hear from the proverbial horse’s mouth (i.e. The ad and marketing industry) exactly what kind of models we can expect to see being used to hit these mammoth numbers.

Reason 3-Then there’s social gaming. One of the hottest sub-sectors of of social media today. If there is one thing that has effectively lobotomized the greatest minds of business school theorists, it’s the meteoric rise of social gaming. No one could have predicted just how popular it would become, but people like Evan Cohen, GM of Foursquare and scheduled speaker at Pivot, are probably your best bet for the inside scoop on where social gaming is going. Which brings us to reason #4.

Reason 4- Some of the most qualified names in the industry are going to give their take on the above issues and more, including (but not limited to):

• Brian Solis, Founder, FutureWorks
• Samir Arora, Founder, Chairman and CEO, Glam Media
• Evan Cohen, General Manager, Foursquare
• Sam Decker, Chief Marketing Officer, Bazaarvoice
• Esther Dyson, Founder, EDVenture Holdings
• Stefan Weitz, Director of Bing Search (Microsoft)
• Scott K. Wilder, GM Communities, Intuit
• Michelle Bonat, CEO, RumbaFish
• Wendy Lea, CEO, Get Satisfaction

How many reasons is that so far, 4? What was that last one? Oh yeah:

Reason 5- Blonde Readers will receive a 20% discount when you register with this promo code:

T2BAP201

Why? Because we’re awesome and we take care of our own. Stick with us kid, and life will be good.

So in conclusion, if you want to be on the dishing out end of being able to say to your friends “That’s so five minutes ago” instead of on the receiving end – and if you’re between semi to very cool … Then make sure you’re at PIVOT.

Since I have become addicted to Foursquare recently, the location check-in service, I set upon finding the best tips to get to the top of Foursquare’s leaderboard while playing fair.

Here are the top 5 tips I can give you:

1) If you want to become mayor, check-in to places which you know that you’ll be able to check-in to frequently, as many times as possible. Didn’t find your place on Foursquare already? Add it. Don’t forget and don’t neglect for someone else may steal your mayorship from you.

2) Foursquare resets its leaderboard on Sunday nights so make sure to start early in the week.

3) Check-in to new places because these grant you 5 extra points.

4) Get familiar with how to unlock your special badges and work on unlocking them. Here are two great badges lists:
TonyFelice.Wordpress.com and TheKruser.com

5) Don’t cheat. For the sake of the community, don’t check-in to places if you’re not really there. This only hurts the whole user experience on Foursquare.

One feature I feel is missing in Foursquare: Once I check-in to a place, I want the app to scan all my contacts and tell me the 5-10 users who are closest to my proximity at any given time. This will enable users to maximize the potential of meeting people in their network more frequently and make for a more cohesive user-base.

And finally, here’s a good, short Foursquare tutorial for you:

This post originally appeared on The Next Web on June 14th, 2010

If I were to ask you to put a face to the major players involved in foreign exchange, you’d probably think: Male, 50’s or 60’s, graying at the sides, stern faced, three pieced suit, European.

Right or wrong, I’d bet any currency you want that you didn’t conjure up a 25 to 35 year old male with long hair, jeans, and some extra cash to burn on the side.

Yet, if social media continues to infect the forex market as it has begun to do, the latter image could very well be the “face” of the next major FX player.

How could this be? Let’s backtrack slightly to put things in perspective.

When people refer to the “Major Players” of forex, they’re usually referring to any one of the following six institutions:

1. Central Banks - Control countries’ monetary policy with the attempt to grow their respective domestic economies.
2. Banks - Trade billions each day in hedging maneuvers or in speculation attempts to capitalize on price fluctuations.
3. Multi National Corporations - With global business operations, forex is an excellent tool for MNC’s to mange payments of international accounts.
4. Hedge Funds - The massive liquidity of forex makes it an irresistible market for large fund managers to dedicate significant portions of their portfolios toward currency speculation.
5. Retail Brokers - Usually individuals or small groups managing multiple accounts for a total daily trading volume averaging in the billions.
6. Speculators - These are the individual traders who attempt to profit through the close watch of currency pair movement by buying or selling pairs based on pricing trends.

Although forex is technically a completely free market – in theory leaving all six major categorical players operating on a level playing field – there remains a perceived difference, in much of the public’s view, between the first five institutional players and the individual speculator/trader.

Having an a priori understanding that every major player has their own modus operandi in foreign exchange (central banks -stabilize, MNC’s – hedge, fund managers – speculate etc.), many would-be traders believe that the individual speculator suffers from a significant handicap next to these forex juggernauts in two key respects.

First, your average individual trader often lacks the deep financial coffers available to larger institutions, affording them a far smaller margin for error. In an aggressive bull market, such security protection can lead to risky pair movement trends triggered by larger institutions that individual traders should be more cautious of, when considering whether or not to jump on the trend wagon.

Of course free market defenders will say that individual traders should know better and be more incisive in their trading, pinpointing the particular nature of specific catalysts driving major market shifts instead of behaving more like a sheep in a wolf pack. The fact remains however that the individual trader needs to proactively search for the what, when and where of market influencing forces while larger institutions have entire teams dedicated to these tasks.

Which bring us to our second handicap, mainly lack of manpower and the subsequent knowledge gap. Large institutions have top professionals scouring the news for trend indicators and are perpetually planning their strategies based on informed daily, monthly and quarterly outlooks – while at the same time maintaining a diligent watch for unforeseen game changers.  Certainly the same information (if not the expert factorial analysis) is out there for the sophisticated trader to pick up himself. However, for the uninitiated, who have no clue as to what to be looking for, let alone where to find it, this reality created a stigma fostering trepidation amongst would-be traders and a degree of cynicism amongst novices.

So, the rise of the internet saw the dismantling of one barrier preventing average people from entering forex (lack of adequate funds to afford a brokering service), only to be replaced by another (lack of knowledge and resources for informed and influential trading).

In some ways, this new barrier was seen as even more restrictive than its predecessor in that it took the form of a perception. Born and harbored by the online user themselves, in their mind, online brokerages were viewed as borderline versions of respectable brokerage houses – at best, or a slightly more dressed up version of online gambling – at worst.

However, just as the advent of the internet has removed the physical barrier to forex, social media is steadily removing the perceptual barrier, and all accompanying stigmatisms to boot. The ability to collaborate trading strategies and market predictions while tapping the overall global knowledge base, are all advantages social media is bringing to the table for online trading firms. Social media established the infrastructure necessary for a truly global online forex community that could eventually lead to a virtual collective trading block, matching (and potentially dwarfing) the trading power and influence of those major institutions we mentioned earlier, when it comes to driving market shift.

At this point, any predictions about the long term effects of social media on global forex remains speculative at best, but there is no denying that current trends are making such an eventuality seem ever more likely. To illustrate these trends we’ll take a look at various social media efforts of some leading forex service providers in the online world, to see how each of them are using social media to change the way people trade:

• eToro - eToro is an online broker, connecting its internal community via a built in chat feature to their platform. The chat allows eToro members to canvas anyone else on the platform for insights into choice currency pairs, daily trends, trading strategies or anything else people are willing to share over a chat network. They also provide an inside look at their top traders’ current positions on major currency pairs, giving new traders a peak at what’s hot amongst the pros.
• Currensee - Currensee is not an online broker but rather an information sharing platform. Its goal is to make it easy for traders with similar trading interests to find each other and connect. Connected traders from different parts of the world not only share insights and strategies, but can actually see each others’ positions in an easy to read layout, allowing them to collaborate efforts in a team-like framework. Like eToro though, you have to be a member in order to take advantage of their service.
• Daily Forex - Daily Forex is also an information service and does a decent job of making order out of chaos. By providing guides and reviews for the many forex resources on the web, Daily Forex helps online users evaluate the various brokers, courses, auto trading platforms and signal providers, so users can choose what best suits their individual needs. They also post news updates and informative articles on everything to do with forex.
• easy-forex- easy-forex is an online dealer who opted not to reinvent the wheel, and instead has taken full advantage of all major social media outlets to create a highly active community of traders. YouTube is used to post recaps of yesterday’s activity and expected trends for the coming trading day, while a daily blog provides expert views and advice on the latest news and events. An active discussion group is maintained on LinkedIn and is used to engage other industry experts while forming strategic connections at the same time. Facebook is used as a central hub for their community providing easy-forex with a direct line of communication with its members and also gives members a way of connecting with each other. Twitter as well is used as a quick way to disseminate real time trading updates to their followers in the form of news, tips and any other useful tidbit able to be summed up in 140 characters or less. Using the most popular third party social media outlets instead of in-house platforms has significantly broadened easy-forex’ reach, allowing them to experience significant community growth since beginning their social media drive.

All these social media efforts add up to a major trend shift in the focus of online forex service providers. Aware of the stereotypes created when forex suddenly opened up to the average person, Online trading companies are quickly racing to close the gaps that make individual trading any less of a rewarding experience than that of trading with a major institution. They’re also coming to the collective conclusion that social media is the best route to achieve this goal.

Strategies like the ones we depicted, especially those that keep an eye out for the most popular current social media tools like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, have the best chance of not only bringing online forex to the same respected level as that of a traditional brokerage house, but can even go as far as to create a new breed of “major player” in the FX market, one of the people and for the people.

C’mon, just the possibility of seeing central bank officials in jeans and T-Shirts is enough to want this to work.

Disclosure: We proudly manage easy-forex’s social media activity.

How do you measure the ROI of social media? This is a question that we are often asked by companies that want to enter the social media realm but are afraid or unsure of how to prove its success to their superiors. Wanna show your bosses that social media works? Here is a great video from Erik Qualman (@equalman) at Socialnomics which showcases several social media ROI success stories.

Here are the top ten facts you should remember from this video:

1) Gary Vaynerchuk grew his family business from $4 million to $50 million using social media.

2) Wetpaint/Altimeter found companies that widely engage in social media surpass their peers in both revenue and profit.

3) Lenovo has experienced a 20% reduction in activity to their call center since they launched their community website for customers.

4) Burger King invested  less than $50,000 in their Whopper Sacrifice Facebook application and received an estimated return of over $400,000 in press/media value. They received 32 million impressions as a result of this campaign.

5) Blendtec quintupled sales with its “Will it Blend” series on YouTube.

6) Dell has already made $3 million in sales via twitter (I’ve heard this number has already increased to $6.5 million).

7) Only 18% of traditional TV campaigns generate a positive ROI.

8 ) 37% of generation Y heard about the Ford Fiesta via social media BEFORE its launch in the US. 25% of Ford’s marketing budget is spent on digital/social media. They are the only US auto company that didn’t take a government loan.

9) Naked Pizza set a one day sales record using social media: 68% of their sales came via twitter and 85% of their new customers.

10) Software company Genius.com reports 24% of social media leads convert to sales opportunities

As Alex Bogusky, Co-Chairman of CP&B says: “You can’t buy attention anymore. Having a huge budget doesn’t mean anything in social media….the old media paradigm was “pay to play”. Now you get back what you authentically put in. You’ve got to be willing to “play to play”.

71% of companies plan to increase investments in social  media by an average of 40% because:

1) It’s low-cost marketing

2) Getting traction

3) We HAVE to do it

If you don’t do it, you can be certain that your competitors will.

“Think of Twitter as the canary in the coal mine” Morgan Johnston, JetBlue Airways

“Our head of social media is the customer”, McDonalds

The time for social media is now.

Many companies are using their blogs, campaigns, videos and general outreach to engage with their community in various ways. When companies do think of community contribution in one form or another, it usually takes the form of comments or a like. uTest, the world’s largest marketplace for crowdsourced software testing, is flipping this notion on its head. Believing that an open and global community can offer a knowledge based resource which no closed off company can match, uTest’s community has become one of its most prized assets. To nurture this “asset”, uTest has demonstrated a keen understanding that if you want to have an active community base, you need to engage your community and get them excited about engaging you back. In this post we’re going to focus on three uTest programs structured with just this sort of sensitivity in mind, i.e. that community communication and utilization is a two-way street.

1. The Bug Battle- Bug Battle is a brilliant campaign which actually makes testing interesting for even the non-hardcore, techy individual. Bug Battles pit uTesters against each other in a contest to diagnose a select number of popular web, mobile, desktop and gaming applications in search for the one most in need of a good bug exterminator. Competitions take place quarterly and the latest one sought to uncover the buggiest geo location software from amongst three choice contestants; Foursquare, Gowalla and Brightkite (results due out in mid-June…stay tuned). uTest community members really get into this one. They relish the competition alone, but if that were not enough, there’s always the not-too-shabby prize money of $4,000 to keep them annoyingly giddy for the few short weeks that the competition is under way.  For participating companies, battles usually generate a healthy amount of press, a scrubbed list of prioritized bugs (given free of charge, upon request) and many are pleased enough with the results to become regular uTest clients.
2. Crash Courses- Another relatively new and cool initiative is uTest’s “Crash Courses” for testers. Instead of going through an official certifying body or training company to create their training material and content, uTest turned to select members of their community to seek out top testers with serious bona fides in both experience and the best testers ratings.                                                                    Using the community itself to source their wisdom and talent, uTest was able to ascribe instant credibility to their courses while giving their community exactly the kind of courses they wanted.
3. uTest Blog- uTest makes heavy use of its community with its “guest blogger“ program. Members not only contribute to the blog itself but also play a hand in its direction. Votes are taken on key content issues such as who should be interviewed, and what questions should be asked for the uTest monthly Testing The Limits column featuring outside experts, execs and authors. uTest’s openness in allowing uTesters to continuously contribute to their posts has contributed to their blog becoming a must read in the app-testing world, and has led to the landing of a “Top 5” finalist spot in the “Best Corporate Blog” category of the 2009 Open Web Awards as well as winning the Hive Award for the best blog of 2010 in the “Business Software” category.

What’s most interesting about these programs is their broad demographics appeal across the global testing community. Advanced testers, who have already done their time in the testing trenches, are not necessarily looking for the same community experience as your bright-eyed and bushy-tailed new recruit. By affording veteran testers the opportunity to become Bug Battle judges, course designers and guest bloggers, uTest has created the equivalent of a corporate advancement track for their community, significantly increasing the uTest community’s time frame of relevance for active community members. Creating a community with a mass appeal for its market and which allows its members to actively influence the community itself, uTest has earned a die-hard following of some of the best software testers in the world. Consequently, uTest is now the benefactor of a top tier pool of talent with which they can offer superior testing services to any prospective client. Grant your community a voice to speak and a hand to act, and they will grant you their talent. A solid winning strategy for any company wishing to optimize community utilization – tested and certified by the experts themselves.

1) Over 50% of the world’s population is under 30-years-old. 96% of them have joined a social network.

2) Facebook tops Google for weekly traffic in the U.S.

3) Facebook added more than 200 million users in less than a year

4) The fastest growing segment on Facebook is 55-65 year old females

5) Youtube is the 2nd largest search engine in the world

6) Ashton Kutcher and Britney Spears have more twitter followers than the entire populations of: Sweden, Israel, Switzerland, Ireland, Norway and Panama.

7) There are over 200,000,000 blogs

8 ) 25% of search results for the world’s top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content

9) 60 million status updates happen on Facebook daily

10) We will no longer search for products and services. They will find us via social media.

Facebook is more than a social network. It’s a platform that has changed the way we view content on the Web, the way we connect with other people and brands on the Web and the way that we express ourselves on the Web. Now with all the latest developments that Mark Zuckerberg announced during F8 and Facebook’s collaboration with partners such as Yelp and Pandora, we see that Facebook is bringing to life the vision that we all had of a future Web 3.0 where we no longer need to look for information but information finds us. Connections between people and between brands and people are happening everywhere on the Web. Facebook is connecting all these points together into what they call “The Open Graph”.

Zuckerberg writes on Facebook’s blog:

“We think that the future of the web will be filled with personalized experiences. We’ve worked with three pre-selected partners—Microsoft Docs, Yelp and Pandora—to give you a glimpse of this future, which you can access without having to login again or click to connect. For example, now if you’re logged into Facebook and go to Pandora for the first time, it can immediately start playing songs from bands you’ve liked across the web. And as you’re playing music, it can show you friends who also like the same songs as you, and then you can click to see other music they like.”

Facebook is enabling partnering websites to add the like button to their platforms and serve us content based on our interests. From now forward, the Web will be divided for us based on what we like and what we don’t like. At the same time, it’s also enabling us to connect with others who share the same interests as us across various platforms – not just Facebook.

Facebook’s Director of Platform Product Bret Taylor (previously the founder & CEO of FriendFeed) said during F8: “Once you put these ‘like’ buttons all around your site, the like buttons power a whole suite of social plugins, an “activity streams” plugin will show all activities from the Facebook user’s friend list on that third-party site. A “recommendations” plugin will provide suggested content to users. “It’s not just 10 most e-mailed articles, this is truly powerful recommendations.”

Facebook launched its Open Graph protocol with 30 partners thus far. This is a major step for Facebook as now my personal dislikes and likes are not only to be found on Facebook but rather they travel with me across various sites on the Web.

What does all this imply for the future? Does this mean the end of any small amount of privacy we still had left on the Web or is this the best thing since sliced pie? I must agree with the latter. For a long time now I’ve praised Facebook for all of its improvements and developments throughout the years. I think that Facebook does an amazing job at continuously improving its platform and this is the reason for its success. As Facebook continues to increase its user base (already at 500 million users worldwide), it continues to get better over time. Facebook is at the heart of the open graph, connecting all the dots. The only drawback? The fact that Facebook controls this Open Graph. One must be a Facebook user to enjoy all this and it will become harder over time for people to opt out of becoming a part of this revolution. A truly open platform, not controlled by one commercial company may be thought of as a more ideal situation but I must admit, that given Facebook’s leadership and innovation in the last few years, I trust Facebook in leading us on the right path to a universal open graph where all people and brands are connected in the best way possible.

When planning their future Web presence, businesses today must make sure to keep the Open Graph in mind. They will have to do so in order to survive in the digital space. With such information overload that users face today from various streams, brands will need to optimize their Web presence based on the information they gather from the Open Graph in order to maintain and increase their client/user base. Otherwise, these companies won’t stand a chance. Social engagement, social data mining, social and geo-targeting those are the keywords to remember and the terms that will lead us forward in this social revolution we are embarking on. All the information we view on the Web will increasingly become more personal, more targeted and at the same time, more open. This idea may be scary to some who fear for their privacy but I believe in the long run will only serve us all to better manage and retain the massive amount of data and increasing number of relationships (with both people and brands) that we need to deal with on a daily basis.

It’s official: AOL and Digital Sky Technologies Limited (DST), one of the largest Internet companies in the world announced just now that they have reached an agreement for DST to acquire ICQ.

There have been rumors spreading for a while now regarding the acquisition of ICQ by various sources, however, now it’s official.  Tim Armstrong CEO and Chairman of AOL said: ““As AOL continues its turnaround effort, we’re fortunate to find a great home for ICQ with DST…. DST a leading innovator in the Internet investment space and has a significant presence in the markets where ICQ is strong.”

A few words about DST: Founded in 2005, DST is one of the leading investment groups globally to exclusively focus on Internet related companies. DST, together with its affiliate DST Global, also hold stakes in major Internet world leaders such as Facebook, Zynga, and now ICQ.

ICQ has played an integral part in my life as I am sure in the lives of many others. I was one of the first users of the program, I also served as ICQ’s Marketing Manager for 4 years from 2002-2006, and now, Blonde 2.0 manages all of ICQ’s social media activities. I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate ICQ and wish it much luck on its new path.