I use GMail as both my primary personal email client and via Google Apps for all of Bet Smart Media’s email. I’m generally impressed with most of Google’s offerings (calendar aside- a post for another time!). Today was no exception. I finished typing up an email to a colleague and hit “send”. I got this nice notice from Google:

As it happened, I didn’t actually have an attachment that needed attachin’ for this email, but what a nice feature to have. Name me one person who hasn’t forgot, at least once, to add an attachment to an email going out to a large group of cc’d recipients after referencing it in the text! Why doesn’t all email software include this simple check for such a common mistake?

Good on ya Google! Sometimes it’s the little things…

Screenshot

Google spends billions of dollars indexing the web for their search engine. Facebook will get the web to index itself, exclusively for Facebook. The entire Internet will be turned into a tributary system for Facebook. And it all flows from a simple “Like” gesture.

Facebook’s New Social Plugins:

Like Plugin – This plugin is simple and requires no login. It will show visitors to your site, which of their Facebook friends have engaged with your site recently. If a user likes something on your site with this button it automatically appears in their Facebook profile as well.

Activity Stream Plugin – This displays a filtered view of the Facebook News Feed containing updates from only your site.

Facebook Login Plugin – It works like the existing Facebook Connect login button, and it adds photos of your Facebook friends who have already joined the site.

Social Bar Plugin – A toolbar that is added to the bottom of your site. The Social Bar includes a Like button, friends who like the site, as well as Facebook chat.

Recommendations Plugin – A plugin that shows recommendations of items or content that visitors to your site may be interested in, based on recommendations from Facebook connections.

->Read more about Facebook Social Plugins @ Facebook Developer Blog.

In addition to these newer features, there’s another Facebook feature I’ve been meaning to blog about for awhile now. It’s a simple link Facebook displays below your albums or pictures called: Share this album with anyone by sending them this public link. Essentially you copy and paste this link into an email or website and, voila!, you have instant photo sharing with people who aren’t on Facebook!

You can have a look at a recent album I created by clicking on Grant Storry Through The Years. The significance of this new and simple to use feature is that it opens Facebook up to competing with photo specific sites like Flickr.com, Google’s Picasa, photobucket, and shutterfly.

Yes, Facebook is definitely a company to watch. Several years ago, after Microsoft invested in Facebook giving the company a $15 Billion valuation, I wondered how the one-trick pony would live up to the hype. After all, social networks have come and gone from Friendster to, arguably, Myspace. The direction Facebook is now headed, permeating it’s features throughout the Internet, now gives me some perspective on what Facebook’s endgame vision is. With traffic passing Google this March and shares trading at $17 Billion, Facebook is king of the hill.

From an online marketing perspective, competition is a good thing. Many online marketing gurus are turning to Facebook to round out their online ad budgets due to the affordability of Facebook ads over Google PPC Adwords. In addition to a cheaper place to advertise to well over 400 million Internet users on Facebook, the new social plugins allow us to engage customers and prospects at a whole new level.

Take my ridiculous Facebook Album, for example. I created all those photos on a site called Yearbookyourself.com by Jostens. Jostens is a class ring and yearbook production company. What a great use of social media & viral marketing by creating a microsite to “Yearbook Yourself”. The site allows you to either upload a pic of yourself or take one using your webcam. You can then edit your photo and fit it into either male or female classic yearbook photos from decades spanning the 60s-2000. You can then save the resulting photos to your computer or connect them directly to your Facebook account with a simple button click.

All photos are imprinted with a url to Josten’s microsite. Instantly, Jostens has the 400+ million people who are part of the Facebook community promoting their brand and driving traffic to their site in exchange for a goofy picture of themselves. Heck, they even have people like me blogging about it and spreading the word as well. Therein lies the power of social media marketing done right. This could get very interesting over the next several years, provided Facebook doesn’t scare everyone off with privacy concerns…

Quickly, the biggest change for me over the last month in 2010 has been leaving my corporate job as Senior Manager, Global Online Marketing and venturing out on my own as an entrepreneur. This path has been one I’ve been wanting to walk down since childhood and I’m very excited to begin the adventure and get to the point where I’m writing my own paycheck. I heard a great quote this morning at Yoga, “Find a way to get paid for doing what you love. Then every paycheck will be a bonus.” — in the 2 short weeks I’ve been doing what I love, I can safely say this is so true.

Finally, Jesse Learmonth just sent me a link talking about the C100 in Silicon Valley, an organization made up mostly of Canadians leaving down there to help Canadian technology companies get access to all the resources Silicon Valley has to offer. C100 is a non-profit, member-driven organization dedicated to supporting Canadian technology entrepreneurship and investment. It’s refreshing and encouraging to see greater linkages and resources for us Canuck-tech entrepreneurs down in California! I sense I may need to make use of their services in the near future

Enjoy!

Pretty much my whole day-job revolves around the Internet and online technologies (currently optimizing ways to utilize them for, what I consider, constructive, non-interruptive marketing). I figure it’s the least of all evils in the world of marketing. Anyway, what’s my point? I guess, where I’m headed with this post, is that it is completely refreshing to look at the same tools, media, and technology that consume my day as a marketer through the lens of a completely different discipline that has drastically different objectives and uses significantly different language to analyse, catalog, and chronicle their use.

Enter the world of anthropology and the video by professor Michael Wesch created in 2007 titled: The Machine Is Us/ing Us. Have a look below:

Pretty cool commentary. I decided to check out more of Prof. Wesch’s stuff and found his antropolgical introduction to Youtube a captivating watch. Have a look at it here:

Why this moved me to blog:

1. I got to see the same old technologies viewed through a different lens. Seeing something awe-inspiring for the first time is always an unforgettable experience. Reliving some of the excitement I felt for the Internet years ago when I first pontificated on all its commercial applications by being able to view the same medium for all of its humanistic applications and impacts is refreshing. [that's hardly to say that I don't realize the human side of the 'net on a regular basis, but sometimes something has to bonk you on your head to shift your presence into a different train of thought, this video did that for me]
2. The production quality is good and content stimulating
3. It’s pretty awesome to see a professor who can really adapt their curriculum and teaching style to connect with their students. They are rare, and I’ve always always appreciated those special professors who can make a course “come to life” for their classes
4. It gives me an excuse to blog and use long, poorly constructed, run-on sentences

Further reading here.

Thanks to Wordspring for linking to this video, reminding me it existed, and the several hours I found myself lost in anthro-speak / analysis.

While it doesn’t “know” a lot right now, the whole engine is built on machine learning that will improve accuracy and breadth with use and time.

I asked it what I should have for lunch and it did manage to figure out I was in the mood for spicey food. I then went to Noodle Box and MAN did lunch hit the spot! Hunch’s hunch was right

Read more here:

VatorNews – Hunch launches today.

The concept of “retweeting” can best be distilled down to this concept: Take a Twitter message someone else has posted and rebroadcast that same message to your followers. Proper “netiquette” dictates that when rebroadcasting this message, you give credit to the original poster. While retweeting sounds great for the original tweeter (since there is usually a link involved), retweeting can actually benefit you just as much, if not more- and that’s what I’d like to touch on.

How to Properly Retweet

Retweeting is very simple. Here’s a quick how-to for you to understand how to properly retweet:

The common syntax starts off with the use of the label: “Retweet”. People also sometimes label their Twitter message starting with “Retweeting”. Either works. The next piece of  your Twitter message is the credit. You can credit the original poster by simply using the @reply syntax, for example: “@originalTweeter”.

Lastly, you should add the link or post message from the original Tweet along with a brief commentary about the link and why it is relevant. Here is a full example of retweeting:

Retweet: @originalTweeter I just found the best blog in the world!! http://tinyurl.com/d9b8gs

It’s that simple. Soooo…. why exactly should you care about retweeting? Read on…

The Benefits of the Retweet

1. Retweeting provides quality content to your followers on Twitter. If you have a profile on Twitter that is more individually focused, people will follow you on Twitter to keep tabs on what you’re up to and what you find interesting online. Because your followers will generally know you in real life, they get along with you and share your tastes and interests. Therefore, the items you Tweet about will appeal to them. Retweets will most likely be in line with what you find interesting and therefore, they’ll appreciate the increased breadth of items tweeted and retweeted. People also follow entities on Twitter that represent businesses or more commercially focused individuals. They follow these “people” on Twitter to gain some sort of value. As a business entity, you can retweet items that are complimentary to what your followers are expecting from you to provide them more value and keep them engaged with a higher frequency of communication.
2. Retweeting will most likely build your “social media” persona brand and increase loyalty to your social media persona.  If you point a follower to an external source that is highly relevant to them, the amount of trust that individual has in your persona will increase. This snowballs as you retweet more links that continue to be relevant to your followers and in line with the reasons they began following you to begin with. The next time you post a link, whether it be a retweet externally or to one of your Internet properties or articles the higher the likelihood your followers will click the links. Do not abuse this trust and you will become an authority and wield the ability to drive traffic to high value content by mere mention.
3. Retweeting provides value to your followers, additionally it catches the attention of the original tweeter or content producer being linked to. Directing traffic to these sources is an act of kindness and active content producers, bloggers, and micro-bloggers tend to return such acts. The more energy you put into driving relevant valuable content to people who are interested in, the more you’ll get back yourself (Google model anyone?)

Happy re-tweeting everyone!!

Update: Just surfing on Linked-In and came across Mitch Joel’s post about Retweeting in the context of branding success. Check out his stuff too. 

Also check out Retweetist for a whole site dedicated “retweet” measurement and tracking. You can also see who the top Twitter users are who have their tweets retweeted the most.