When is sharing information useful, and when is it just spamming off the back of someone else’s community? I ask because when I logged into my Facebook page today to post an update on a future Bonsai Interactive event, I was met with this at the top of my wall (click to expand). It was posted by Claire Reynolds on behalf of the DSNR Media Group. At least I think it’s by Claire on behalf of DSNR, since Claire’s Facebook…

Chris Brogan wrote a post the other day about connecting your Twitter profile to LinkedIn. His take was that it’s annoying, and you should only be sharing some of your Twitter stuff. There are a ton of folks that say you shouldn’t be tweeting about what you had for breakfast, or how silly your cat is. Doing that means you’re not using Twitter right. Then you have folks that say you shouldn’t connect Foursquare to your Twitter account, because no-one…

If I’m a barman, I use a bottle opener to open a bottle of wine. If I’m a hairdresser, I use a comb to style. But this is simple – this is using tools for their specific use. We can all do that. I can also use a bottle opener with my kid to pretend we’re drilling for oil at the beach. Or I can use a comb with a sheet of paper and make a musical instrument. Tools are…

For all its cool connectivity features and business tools, Facebook can still manage to piss users off even when it’s trying to be helpful. Whether it’s new privacy features gone mad, or redesigns to the site itself, Facebook always seems to divide its userbase between happy, non-chalant and hate. Now a new feature for Facebook Page admins – Getting Started – seems to be getting more criticism than praise. I only noticed it when I jumped on to design the…

Third-party Twitter client Hootsuite has just released an update that takes it pretty much head and shoulders above the likes of Seesmic and Tweetdeck, amongst others. The company had already made a substantial update recently, with the introduction of HTML5 compatibility on its Twitter client. This update included site analytics via Google, geo-search options for local tweets, drag-and-drop image uploads and InstaLoad for better performance issues all round. Now, however, it’s upped its game considerably and offers the best Twitter…

A new study from the Pew Internet and American Life Project makes for interesting reading on Gen Y and their presence in social media/social networking. Using the responses from a cross-section of 895 technology stakeholders and experts, including the likes of Clay Shirky and Jeff Jarvis, the survey shows their belief that Gen Y won’t be leaving social media anytime soon. This is in contrast to various opinions on why Gen Y isn’t using social media. According to the Pewter survey, 67%…

I love hearing about cool new start-ups, and Ucubd might be one of my favourites, at least as much as fun factor goes. Standing for “you cubed”, Ucubd is (in their own words) “a mashup platform that allows bloggers and other web publishers to combine popular social media content from YouTube, Twitter, Amazon and others and embed these mashups on their sites or link to them on our site.” So, basically, Ucubd creates a fun info box based on the…

My recent post 52 Cool Facts About Social Media seems to have been a bit popular. Hopefully it helped show some of the reasons why social media is a platform that all businesses should take seriously, and at the very least investigate whether they should be active or not. One of the things I saw as a result of the post were a few emails that said, “Great stats, but how would you use information like that for your business?”…

Businesses spend small fortunes on making their brands presentable.  They polish their message; media train the CEO; and give their website a shiny new look and feel. Everything’s very nice; very safe; very presentable. Ready to be the poster child for Industry X. And then they open their mouths. Polishing is great; training is great; shiny is great. But culture is where the real beauty lies. How beautiful is yours?