Monitoring is only one piece of the puzzle, however. It’s important to find out who is saying what, and where the conversation is happening so you can respond appropriately.

Here are a few tools to help you manage multiple social channels:

• Awareness Social Marketing Hub is a platform ideal for larger social media campaigns with multiple people monitoring and executing the program. In addition to aggregating social network information, the Hub allows marketers to set up workflows in order to coordinate efforts across a marketing team.
• CoTweet is ideal for companies who have multiple people contributing to their social media campaigns. In addition to organising and monitoring your Twitter and Facebook pages, it allows you to assign updates and social streams to members of your team based either on their expertise or who is “on duty” at a certain time.
• Expion is built with multiple-location business or franchises in mind. Expion allows corporate offices to oversee and manage each of their locations’ individual social media accounts while still allowing store managers or franchisees to have some control over the account. This helps brands maintain continuity across locations while still allowing for regional-based promotions or content relevant only to the local stores.
• HootSuite is a tool that allows you to manage multiple social media channels through one dashboard. If you have a company with more than one contributor to your social media program, HootSuite is a good solution.
• NutshellMail is a tool, much like TweetDeck, which helps you track all of your social media channels. Instead of constant updates, NutshellMail sends you a single email per day describing your accounts’ activity.
• Ping.fm is the most popular site for aggregating your social media channels. It allows you to simultaneously update accounts like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Flickr through their web interface, text message, email or instant message.
• PostRank aggregates what is happening with all of your content across the web in a constantly updated feed. This way you can see what type of engagement your content is getting across different channels right as it happens.
• Seesmic allows you to manage your Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Ping.fm, Foursquare and Google Buzz accounts all from one simple interface. Whether you want to access your social networks from the web, a desktop application, or your mobile phone, Seesmic has a solution.
• Sprout Social manages multiple social networks from one dashboard, allowing you to optimise your outreach in each channel, identify people interested in your brand and convert them to loyal consumers.
• Syncapse SocialTALK helps you control your presence across different platforms, manage multiple social media accounts from one platform, establish multiple user access levels, and monitor incoming traffic.
• thisMoment, via their recently introduced Distributed Engagement Channel (DEC), uses thisMoment’s publishing platform to combine their design, your content and multimedia user generated content into one “channel” that can be pushed to many different social media outlets.
• TweetDeck, like HootSuite, provides a way to track many of your social media channels on one dashboard. It can be a time-saver and a productivity-enhancer, assuming you’re not easily distracted.

Game Dynamics are constructs of rules and feedback loops intended to produce enjoyable game-play. They are the building blocks that can be applied and combined to gamify any non-game context.

Early examples of gamification are based on rewarding points to people who share experiences on location-based platforms such as Facebook’s “Place” feature, Foursquare and Gowalla.

Gamification is used by marketers and website product managers as a tool for customer engagement and encouraging desirable website usage behaviour. Gamification is readily applicable to increasing engagement on sites built on social network services. One site, DevHub, increased the number of users who completed their online tasks from 10% to 80% after adding gamification elements.

Below are listed 47 game dynamics. The challenge comes from taking these mechanics and employing them in a website setting. If you have some good examples, please feel free to post a comment.

1. Achievement – A virtual or physical representation of having accomplished something. Achievements can be easy, difficult, surprising and funny and can be accomplished alone or as a group. Achievements are often viewed as rewards in and of themselves.
   Example: A badge (Foursquare, Gowalla and Booyah), a level (Tiny Wings and Angry Birds), a reward (Fruit Ninja), points (Doodle Jump and Pac-Man), really anything defined as a reward can be a reward.
2. Appointment Dynamic – A dynamic in which to succeed, one must return at a predefined time to take some action. Appointment dynamics are often deeply related to interval based reward schedules or avoidance dynamics.
   Example: Cafe World and Farmville where if you return at a set time to do something you get something good, and if you don’t something bad happens.
3. Avoidance – The act of inducing player behaviour not by giving a reward, but by not instituting a punishment. Produces consistent level of activity, timed around the schedule.
   Example: Press a lever every 30 seconds to not get shocked.
4. Behavioural Contrast – The theory defining how behaviour can shift greatly based on changed expectations.
   Example: A monkey presses a lever and is given lettuce. The monkey is happy and continues to press the lever. Then it gets a grape one time. The monkey is delighted. The next time it presses the lever it gets lettuce again. Rather than being happy, as it was before, it goes ballistic throwing the lettuce at the experimenter. (In some experiments, a second monkey is placed in the cage, but tied to a rope so it can’t access the lettuce or lever. After the grape reward is removed, the first monkey beats up the second monkey even though it obviously had nothing to do with the removal. The anger is truly irrational.)
5. Behavioural Momentum – The tendency of players to keep doing what they have been doing.
   Example: From Jesse Schell’s DICE 2010 talk: “I have spent ten hours playing Farmville. I am a smart person and wouldn’t spend 10 hours on something unless it was useful. Therefore this must be useful, so I can keep doing it.”
6. Blissful Productivity – The idea that playing in a game makes you happier working hard, than you would be relaxing. Essentially, we’re optimised as human beings by working hard, and doing meaningful and rewarding work.
   Example: From Jane McGonigal’s TED Talk wherein she discusses how World of Warcraft players play on average 22 hours per week (a part time job), often after a full days work. They’re willing to work hard, perhaps harder than in real life, because of their blissful productivity in the game world.
7. Cascading Information Theory (also known as Progressive Disclosure on the Web) – The theory that information should be released in the minimum possible snippets to gain the appropriate level of understanding at each point during a game narrative.
   Example: Showing basic actions first, unlocking more as you progress through levels. Making building on SCVNGR a simple but staged process to avoid information overload.
8. Chain Schedules – the practice of linking a reward to a series of contingencies. Players tend to treat these as simply the individual contingencies. Unlocking one step in the contingency is often viewed as an individual reward by the player.
   Example: Kill 10 orcs to get into the dragons cave, every 30 minutes the dragon appears.
9. Communal Discovery – The game dynamic wherein an entire community is rallied to work together to solve a riddle, a problem or a challenge. Immensely viral and very fun.
   Example: DARPA Network Challenge; a competition that explores the roles the Internet and social networking play in the timely communication, wide-area team-building, and urgent mobilisation. The cottage industries that appear around McDonald’s monopoly to find “Boardwalk”.
10. Companion Gaming – Games that can be played across multiple platforms
    Example: Games that be played on iPhone, Facebook, XBox with completely seamless cross platform game-play.
11. Contingency – The problem that the player must overcome in the three part paradigm of reward schedules.
    Example: 10 orcs block your path
12. Countdown – The dynamic in which players are only given a certain amount of time to do something. This will create an activity graph that causes increased initial activity increasing frenetically until time runs out, which is a forced extinction.
    Example: Bejewelled Blitz with 30 seconds to get as many points as you can. Bonus rounds. Timed levels
13. Cross Situational Leader-boards – This occurs when one ranking mechanism is applied across multiple (unequal and isolated) gaming scenarios. Players often perceive that these ranking scenarios are unfair as not all players were presented with an “equal” opportunity to win.
    Example: Players are arbitrarily sent into one of three paths. The winner is determined by the top scorer overall (i.e. across the paths). Since the players can only do one path (and can’t pick), they will perceive inequity in the game scenario and get upset.
14. Disincentives – a game element that uses a penalty (or altered situation) to induce behavioural shift.
    Example: losing health points, amazon’s checkout line removing all links to tunnel the buyer to purchase, speeding traps.
15. Endless Games – Games that do not have an explicit end. Most applicable to casual games that can refresh their content or games where a static (but positive) state is a reward of its own.
    Example: Farmville (static state is its own victory), SCVNGR (challenges constantly are being built by the community to refresh content).
16. Envy – The desire to have what others have. In order for this to be effective seeing what other people have (voyeurism) must be employed.
    Example: My friend has this item and I want it!
17. Epic Meaning – players will be highly motivated if they believe they are working to achieve something great, something awe-inspiring, something bigger than themselves.
    Example: From Jane McGonigal’s TED Talk where she discusses World of Warcraft’s ongoing story line and “epic meaning” that involves each individual has motivated players to participate outside the game and create the second largest wiki in the world to help them achieve their individual quests and collectively their epic meanings.
18. Extinction – Extinction is the term used to refer to the action of stopping providing a reward. This tends to create anger in players as they feel betrayed by no longer receiving the reward they have come to expect. It generally induces negative behavioural momentum.
    Example: Killing 10 orcs no longer gets you a level up.
19. Fixed Interval Reward Schedules – Fixed interval schedules provide a reward after a fixed amount of time, say 30 minutes. This tends to create a low engagement after a reward, and then gradually increasing activity until a reward is given, followed by another lull in engagement.
    Example: Farmville, wait 30 minutes, crops have appeared.
20. Fixed Ratio Reward Schedules – A fixed ratio schedule provides rewards after a fixed number of actions. This creates cyclical nadirs of engagement (because the first action will not create any reward so incentive is low) and then bursts of activity as the reward gets closer and closer.
    Example: Kill 20 ships, get a level up, visit five locations, get a badge.
21. Free Lunch – A dynamic in which a player feels that they are getting something for free due to someone else having done work. It’s critical that work is perceived to have been done (just not by the player in question) to avoid breaching trust in the scenario. The player must feel that they’ve “lucked” into something.
    Example: Groupon. By virtue of 100 other people having bought the deal, you get it cheaply. There is no sketchiness because you recognise work has been done (100 people are spending money) but you yourself didn’t have to do it.
22. Fun Once, Fun Always – The concept that an action in enjoyable to repeat all the time. Generally this has to do with simple actions. There is often also a limitation to the total level of enjoyment of the action.
    Example: the theory behind the check-in everywhere and the check-in and the default challenges on SCVNGR.
23. Interval Reward Schedules – Interval based reward schedules provide a reward after a certain amount of time. There are two flavours: variable and fixed.
    Example: Wait n minutes, collect rent.
24. Lottery – A game dynamic in which the winner is determined solely by chance. This creates a high level of anticipation. The fairness is often suspect, however winners will generally continue to play indefinitely while losers will quickly abandon the game, despite the random nature of the distinction between the two.
    Example: Many forms of gambling, scratch tickets.
25. Loyalty – The concept of feeling a positive sustained connection to an entity leading to a feeling of partial ownership. Often reinforced with a visual representation.
    Example: Fealty in World of Warcraft, achieving status at physical places (mayorship, being on the wall of favourite customers).
26. Meta Game – a game which exists layered within another game. These generally are discovered rather than explained (lest they cause confusion) and tend to appeal to ~2% of the total game-playing audience. They are dangerous as they can induce confusion (if made too overt) but are powerful as they’re greatly satisfying to those who find them.
    Example: hidden questions / achievements within World of Warcraft that require you to do special (and hard to discover) activities as you go through other quests.
27. Micro Leader-boards – The rankings of all individuals in a micro-set. Often great for distributed game dynamics where you want many micro-competitions or desire to induce loyalty.
    Example: Be the top scorers at Joe’s bar this week and get a free appetiser.
28. Modifiers – An item that when used affects other actions. Generally modifiers are earned after having completed a series of challenges or core functions.
    Example: A x2 modifier that doubles the points on the next action you take.
29. Moral Hazard of Game Play – The risk that by rewarding people manipulatively in a game you remove the actual moral value of the action and replace it with an ersatz game-based reward. The risk that by providing too many incentives to take an action, the incentive of actually enjoying the action taken is lost. The corollary to this is that if the points or rewards are taken away, then the person loses all motivation to take the (initially fun on its own) action.
    Example: Paraphrased from Jesse Schell “If I give you points every time you brush your teeth, you’ll stop brushing your teeth because it’s good for you and then only do it for the points. If the points stop flowing, your teeth will decay.”
30. Ownership – The act of controlling something, having it be your property.
    Example: Ownership is interesting on a number of levels, from taking over places, to controlling a slot, to simply owning popularity by having a digital representation of many friends.
31. Pride – the feeling of ownership and joy at an accomplishment.
    Example: I have ten badges. I own them. They are mine. There are many like them, but these are mine. Hooray.
32. Privacy – The concept that certain information is private, not for public distribution. This can be a demotivator (I won’t take an action because I don’t want to share this) or a motivator (by sharing this I reinforce my own actions).
    Example: Scales the publish your daily weight onto Twitter (these are real and are proven positive motivator for staying on your diet). Or having your location publicly broadcast anytime you do anything (which is invasive and can should be avoided).
33. Progression – A dynamic in which success is granularly displayed and measured through the process of completing itemised tasks.
    Example: LinkedIn uses a progress bar to motivate you to complete your user profile, whilst Mendeley combines the progress bar with a statement suggesting what content needs to be completed: “Fill out your research profile to increase your impact in the Mendeley network and to enable your colleagues to find you.” Levelling up from Paladin level 1 to Paladin level 60.
34. Ratio Reward Schedules – Ratio schedules provide a reward after a number of actions. There are two flavours: variable and fixed.
    Example: Kill 10 orcs, get a power up.
35. Real-time vs. Delayed Mechanics – Realtime information flow is uninhibited by delay. Delayed information is only released after a certain interval.
    Example: Realtime scores cause instant reaction (gratification or demotivation). Delayed information causes ambiguity which can incentivise more action due to the lack of certainty of ranking.
36. Reinforcer – The reward given if the expected action is carried out in the three part paradigm of reward schedules.
    Example: Receiving a level up after killing 10 orcs.
37. Response – The expected action from the player in the three part paradigm of reward schedules.
    Example: the player takes the action to kill 10 orcs.
38. Reward Schedules – the time-frame and delivery mechanisms through which rewards (points, prizes, level ups) are delivered. Three main parts exist in a reward schedule; contingency, response and reinforcer.
    Example: Getting a level up for killing 10 orcs, clearing a row in Tetris, getting fresh crops in Farmville
39. Rolling Physical Goods – A physical good (one with real value) that can be won by anyone on an ongoing basis as long as they meet some characteristic. However, that characteristic rolls from player to player.
    Example: Top scorer deals, mayor deals.
40. Shell Game – a game in which the player is presented with the illusion of choice but is actually in a situation that guides them to the desired outcome of the operator.
    Example: 3 Card Monty, lotteries, gambling.
41. Social Fabric of Games – the idea that people like one another better after they’ve played games with them, have a higher level of trust and a great willingness to work together.
    Example: From Jane McGonigal’s TED Talk where she suggests that it takes a lot of trust to play a game with someone because you need them to spend their time with you, play by the same rules, shoot for the same goals.
42. Status – The rank or level of a player. Players are often motivated by trying to reach a higher level or status.
    Example: White Paladin level 20 in World of Warcraft.
43. Urgent Optimism – Extreme self motivation. The desire to act immediately to tackle an obstacle combined with the belief that we have a reasonable hope of success.
    Example: From Jane McGonigal’s TED Talk. The idea that in proper games an “epic win” or just “win” is possible and therefore always worth acting for.
44. Variable Interval Reward Schedules – Variable interval reward schedules provide a reward after a roughly consistent amount of time. This tends to create a reasonably high level of activity over time, as the player could receive a reward at any time but never the burst as created under a fixed schedule. This system is also more immune to the nadir right after the receiving of a reward, but also lacks the zenith of activity before a reward in unlocked due to high levels of ambiguity.
    Example: Wait roughly 30 minutes, a new weapon appears. Check back as often as you want but that won’t speed it up. Generally players are bad at realising that.
45. Variable Ratio Reward Schedules – A variable ratio reward schedule provides rewards after a roughly consistent but unknown amount of actions. This creates a relatively high consistent rate of activity (as there could always be a reward after the next action) with a slight increase as the expected reward threshold is reached, but never the huge burst of a fixed ratio schedule. It’s also more immune to nadirs in engagement after a reward is achieved.
    Example: Kill 20 ships, get a level up. Visit a couple locations (roughly five) get a badge
46. Viral Game Mechanics – A game element that requires multiple people to play (or that can be played better with multiple people).
    Example: Farmville making you more successful in the game if you invite your friends, the social check-in.
47. Virtual Items – Digital prizes, rewards, objects found or taken within the course of a game. Often these can be traded or given away.
    Example: Gowalla’s items, Facebook gifts, badges.

You can read more about “Gamification” on the Gamification Wiki or on the Wikipedia Gamification page.

The second aspect regards building ways that enable fans of a brand or company to promote a message themselves in multiple online social media venues. Fan pages in Twitter, MySpace and Facebook follow this model.

The final aspect is based around online conversations. Social media marketing is not controlled by the organisation and it is naive to think it ever could be. Instead it encourages user participation and dialogue. A badly designed social media marketing campaign can potentially backfire on the organisation that created it. To be successful social media marketing campaigns must fully engage and respect the users.

Only recently Nestlé fell foul of trying to control a conversation on Facebook about their alleged use of palm oil, by stating users should not parody the Nestlé or Nestlé-owned brands’ logos.

…we welcome your comments, but please don’t post using an altered version of any of our logos as your profile pic – they will be deleted.

Of course, this contributed to people doing exactly that, whilst Greenpeace also fanned the flames via both Facebook and Twitter!

Social media isn’t just about big networks like Twitter, Facebook and MySpace, it’s about brands having conversations.

(Lloyd Salmons)

How does this all translate into a social media marketing strategy? Here are some thoughts:

1. Listen to Conversations — Tap into the online conversations to find out what people are talking about, where they are talking and with whom they are talking.
2. Establish a Share of Voice — There are a multitude of conversations happening every day, indeed every second. When you join the conversation, what share of the voice do you have, or indeed want to have?
3. Set Goals and Benchmarks — Using the information and insights gained from following and engaging in conversations, you can then set the goals you’d like to pursue in social media.
4. Find Bloggers and Communities — This is really an extension of point 1. You have to know where the conversations and discussions are taking place so that you can allocate time and effort and get the best return on time invested. Finding the conversations isn’t as hard as it sounds; the first stop would clearly be via services such as Twitter and the faithful, yet still important, RSS feeds.
5. Identify Key Influencers — What and who are the key influencers? Where can they be found? What are they saying? Understanding the social graph–the connections between people–will also allow you to identify who the key people and organisations are.
6. Develop a Content Strategy — Success in social media largely depends on the quality of your content, whether this is generated by you or bookmarked or cited on blogs and services such as Twitter.
7. Pick the Right Tools — What tools should be using? Should you be on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn? What about MySpace and Bebo? Do you know your target audience and market? If so, what tools are they using? Twitter is fundamentally different from Facebook, which is in turn fundamentally different from LinkedIn. They may all be classed as “social media”, but apart from some cross-over, they have their own target markets.
8. Create and Deliver Compelling Content — This is the difficult part. Once you know where the conversations are happening and what is being talked about, you need a content strategy and bright ideas. These bright ideas need to be compelling and naturally flow. Contrived content won’t pass muster amongst your readers and followers. You need to contribute and enhance the conversation, not repeat it verbatim.
9. Engage and Facilitate Conversations — Social media is all about two-way conversations. The writer is no longer preaching to an audience, the audience is now a fundamental part of the equation. Readers are no longer passive bystanders, their responses to your content serves to enhance the content and your ideas.
10. Measure the Results — With all this social interaction comes a multitude of data; tweet history, web analytics etc. But what does it all means is the crucial question. Social media ROI can be measured, but what you measure is really up to you; whether it is tangible metrics such as sales and website visits, or intangible metrics such as influence and clout.

A well-planned, managed and authentic social media programme, based upon listening and responding to your audience will result in deeper and stronger relationships with your customers and brand stakeholders. By tapping into and implementing the knowledge and ideas of your customers and followers, you will be able to deliver what the customer wants and your products will vastly improve.

• Building a Social Media Team by Amber Naslund. If you’re considering deploying a team to tackle your social media efforts, this is a great read. It discusses why you might need a team, how to assemble one, roles and responsibilities, and more. It includes a look inside Humana’s social media “Chamber Of Commerce” and how their interdisciplinary team is driving social media efforts at their company.
• Content by Cory Doctorow. Doctorow, one of the voices behind the blog Boing-Boing, is well-known for his opinions on technology, DRM, and the future of content. His ebook is a collection of some of his best work and is an insightful read.
• Customer Service — The Art of Listening and Engagement Through Social Media by Brian Solis. Engaging with and empowering your customers as an extension of your marketing efforts isn’t new. However, in the era of social media, there are new tools and philosophies to more effectively listen and engage with customers and cultivate a more significant community, enhance your brand, build relationships, and hopefully create evangelists along the way.
• Fish Where the Fish Are – Mapping Social Media to the Buying Cycle by Chris Brogan. This ebook is meant to get you thinking about how social media ties to the more traditional buying cycle. It’s a quick read that can help introduce you and your team to social media.
• Getting a Foothold in Social Media by Amber Naslund. A rundown of some of the basic, fundamental elements of building a social media plan, especially directed at smaller and medium-sized businesses, but certainly consistent for companies of any size.
• Let’s Talk — Social Media for Small Business by John Jantsch. The latest version of Jantsch’s great book includes a lot more information about Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. He also offers some thoughts on managing the social media beast.
• Social Media and Network Starting Points by Chris Brogan. Organisations have a lot to consider once they decide they want to jump into social networks and social media. There are many opportunities to slide off the rails, or worse, to let the effort fall into disarray. Brogan offers some thoughts based on a question he received about guidelines, a toolbox, and how to grow a community.
• Social Media Time Management by Amber Naslund. If you’re struggling with information overload and how to sort your priorities in social media, this ebook will give you some practical, actionable ideas for managing the firehose. It includes some thoughts on resource allocation and time commitments for social media strategies inside a business, as well as 9 strategies for keeping the social media monster manageable.
• Social Media Tips — Sharing Lessons Learned to Help Your Business Grow by Jeff Hayzlett from Kodak. Hayzlett and his team put this book together to share some of their thoughts and firsthand experiences using social media for their business. Hayzlett takes the time to use social media like Twitter and Facebook because in today’s media landscape it’s vitally important to be where your customers are. Kodak has always embraced this marketing philosophy, and today that means being active in social media.
• The Art of Community by Jono Bacon. Bacon is the Community Manager for Ubuntu, one of the largest open source software projects. In this book he talks about the ins and outs of building, cultivating, and managing a community from the ground up. This is a must-read for anyone interested in community development.
• The Essential Guide to Social Media by Brian Solis. An executive outline of social media tools and resources needed to listen and participate, guiding PR, customer service, product development, and marketing.
• The New Rules of Viral Marketing by David Meerman Scott. The smart marketers profiled in this ebook tell you exactly how they used viral marketing and provide advice in their own words.
• The Simple Web — A Philosophy for Getting What You Want by Skelliewag. As bloggers and Webmasters, we want most or all of these things: more visitors, more subscribers, more comments, more money, more inbound links, and more people saying good things about us. Our wants aren’t in question. It’s the how that gets us. It’s the how that has us reading a dozen blogs a day, trying to find the answer (or at least a little piece of it).
• The Social Media Starter Kit by Amber Naslund. This great book covers some of the most popular social media tools and technologies, including Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and blogging, as well as some productivity and supporting tools to make social media task management easier and more fluid.
• What is Social Media? by Antony Mayfield. This book answers one simple question: What is social media? From iCrossing, this book runs down all the basics, from how social media is being used to providing definitions of the ever-changing jargon that personifies social media.

(via Pamorama)

But what makes up a web community; what makes them successful? Below I discuss the four C’s of community: Content, Context, Connectivity and Community.

Content

A current meme when organising or building a website is the catchphrase Content is King. A big shift in the web in recent years has been the way websites are constructed. Today it’s a necessity, and indeed best practice, to separate form from content. In one hand you have the compelling content, whilst in the other you have the presentation, be it in the form of HTML and CSS, Flash or RSS, amongst others.

Quality content is one way in which you can make your website stand out. It is also a great way to attract the people who are needed to form the elusive community that your brand is hoping build. When considering community initiatives, there are three questions to ask: Where will the content come from; for example community driven or syndication? Does it provide indisputable value; does it have a unique selling point (USP)? Can a regular flow of quality content be maintained? Even pre-Web 2.0 initiatives have to focus on keeping the content itself fresh and relevant.

Web accessibility and search engine optimisation are also vital, so having content completely separated from presentation means a number of assistive technologies can make better use of the content, whilst the web robots can also readily consume the information.

Context

Context means understanding how people use your website, where they are in the user-journey and serving them the right experience at the right time. Well-designed applications and functionality have great opportunities to deliver on context.

For example, FriendFeed‘s iPhone version, which is simply a re-worked web interface, is perfectly designed for contextual usage on the go. Similarly, Remember The Milk updates the interface explicitly for mobile and iPhone users, whilst also syndicating the content to applications such as Google Calendar. (It is questionable whether user-agent switching is good practice, but that is a whole new blog post.) Conversely, Delicious makes no attempt at changing the user interface for iPhone or Nokia N95 users since the iPhone and N95 have full web-capabilities through their respective web browsers.

In some instances the context in which the content is displayed will require reduced functionality. For example, the Last.fm mobile site does not allow you to play music, but simply search music listings, view recommendations, events and friend listings, and edit settings. However, through its API, Last.fm is able to offer its data and platform to third party developers to aid the building of new applications and communities, thus changing its context.

Connectivity

Connectivity is the ability of a system, whether that is a web-based community or a device like the iPhone, to connect with little or no modification. In the realm of communities, the ability to easily connect to your peers is the Holy Grail of the application.

Successful communities thrive on fluid, hard-to-measure activities that are, in the purest sense, relationship-based. It’s not all about mass communications — although Twitter and YouTube are both bucking this trend — but more about the micro-interactions. Designing experiences that support thousands of micro-interactions means that the community is able to function, unhindered, almost indefinitely. Facebook lends itself expertly to micro-interactions through the user’s ‘wall’.

Companies are turning to communities as the new customer relationship management (CRM), but this requires people to mind them. Organisations such as 37Signals and WildBit very effectively use Twitter to broadcast service updates and sometimes apologies, whilst the BBC and The Guardian online use it to broadcast links to new content.

Continuity

People often don’t like change, but communities that thrive often do so though evolution to meet the needs of users. Communities need to be flexible to evolve while still providing a valuable and consistent user experience which can be sustained. Too much of a radical change will almost certainly have a detrimental impact upon visits, at least initially.

Building communities is the new marketing for a brand, whether that is through wholely-owned properties or 3rd party social media services such as Twitter, WordPress or Ning. The starting point to any community is finding a niche that is currently underserved and serving that community better than anyone else. But Brands need to know a few things before they head down the community path. The web is saturated with communities. Some are thriving, while others have come and gone. Creating a community is not like your average marketing campaign that you can ditch it is a failure. If the community is successful the four C’s of content, contect, connectivity and continuity will have to be maintained and indeed, developed.

Creating a brand and blogging are two important steps to getting yourself known, but are of little use if you do not actively build relationships through networking.

A good friend of mine, Rob, has some great advice: Get to the pub. When a project comes up and someone wants a Flex developer, you want to be front-of-mind.

Of course networking is more than simply going to the pub, it’s talking to friends and colleagues online, it’s attending conferences and groups. In essence it’s about ‘getting out there’.

Build Online Relationships

Many of my contacts are not from the London area, but include locations such as Brighton, Edinburgh and Birmingham. Added to this, I have international contacts in countries such as Australia, Belgium, New Zealand and the United States.

Clearly it isn’t easy to call up these people and say ‘do you want to go to the pub’. Therefore, building online relationships is a must. There are a whole host of services that essentially let people understand me as a person, not just a work colleague.

I use, to varying degrees, services such as FriendFeed, SocialThing, BrightKite, Jaiku, Meebo, Bebo, MySpace, LinkedIn, Facebook, LibraryThing, Cork’d and Dopplr. Indeed, you can find links to my most-used services in the footer of my site.

Take a look at the links in the footer and get to know me. You may notice that all the services are registered under my brand name. Again, this allows people to draw association with the profile they are looking at and me. It also means that if you want to follow me on one or many services, it won’t be hard to find me.

Attend Local Meetings and User Groups

Attending local ‘geek’ meets is a great way to meet like-minded people, exchange thoughts and quite possibly find work. These meetings can be found on the Yahoo! service Upcoming.org and on Meetup.com.

On the odd occassion, I may be found at meetings such as the Web Standards Meetup, the ColdFusion User Group, London Geeks, the London Flash Platform User Group, the Flex London User Group etc. (I do have a life outside my work, honestly!)

Attend Conferences Related to Your Industry

Conferences are really an extension of local user groups and meetings, but they allow you to network with a wider, often international, audience. It is quite possible to spend a few days a month attending conferences, so chosing ones relevant to you are key.

In the past I have attended, Adobe MAX, Scotch-on-the-Rocks and CFDevCon, but there are a tranche of other conferences that could be equally relevant such as CFUnited Europe, 360Flex and Flash on the Beach.

Conferences provide a varying degree of networking and job opportunities, but if anything they provide a great sneak-peek into what other people are working on and in what direction the industry is heading.

What’s Next

In the final part of this series I will introduce methods by which you can advertise your business.

A decade later it was the turn of a much-evolved AOL to speculate with the purchase of a small and upcoming social networking website, Bebo, for $850m (£425m). This has raised a number of eyebrows since AOL has been a struggling web-portal after its merger with Time Warner, added to the fact that the real value of social networking has yet to be realised or understood.

Both deals in their respective decades offer to the casual observer a paradox of the Internet revolution. Whilst both email and social networking have the premise of being the next big thing which aides revenue generation, it is dangerous to assume that each service can standalone and generate revenue in its own right. Webmail, now over a decade old illustrates this perfectly. Microsoft, Yahoo!, Google and AOL all have their respective webmail services with advertisements stratefically placed to entice the user to click through, but these are a small part of the bigger networks. The offer of email, free archiving, address book and calendar is cheap to deliver, but its primary purpose is to keep the user engaged with the brand and its associated websites, making users more likely to visit the affiliated pages where advertising is more effective.

For instance, I am a fully signed up member of Google and access their email, chat, documents, analytics, webmasters, adsense, adwords, calendar and checkout applications, etc, some of which have advertising and all of which support the core Google search pages through branding. A similar example can also be said of Yahoo!. I again frequently use Yahoo!s MyBlogLog, Flickr and Upcoming services, which serve to re-inforce the Yahoo! brand and web portal.

Social networking will become a ubiquitous feature of online life, but that does not mean it is a business.

From whence came webmail now comes social networking. The implicit values of social networking services such as MySpace, Facebook and Bebo have been increased by the big internet and media companies such as News Corporation, with their purchase of MySpace for $580m (£290m) in 2005 and Microsoft’s $260m (£130m) investment for a 1.6% share in Facebook, in late 2007 (valuing it at an enormous $15bn/£7.5bn). But valuing these online services so highly does not mean that there is a valuable revenue model; Facebook’s revenue for 2007 was a mere $150m (£75m). Sergey Brin of Google also admitted that the monetisation of their Orkut service and social networking in general was proving to be problematic (they also have a contractual agreement with News Corporation to offer advertising on their MySpace service).

Facebook has also been met with criticism and difficulty when trying to monetise its service with a project called Beacon. Facebook’s idea was to inform users’ networks whenever an item was purchased therefore creating what is in effect a recommendation system, or algorithmic word-of-mouth. Users rebelled and privacy advocates shouted loudly, the service was axed and Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder, was left to apologise for an innovative idea badly implemented.

Whilst social networking does have oportunities to make money, it is unlikely that it will be pots and pots of money. The value of the service, however, is not monetary, but as its genre suggests, it is social. We have already seen how people can connect to past and present friends, but a social networkings strength is in its ability to forge new relationships, business or personal. Social networking has made explicit the connections between people, which has lead to a whole ecosystem of applications built on their APIs which allow users to interact.

But should users really have to visit a specific website to be social?

I often comment that there is something profoundly wrong when people are forced to spend their lives updating their profile to keep in touch with their so-called friends. What happened to the good-old-fashioned telephone? Why don’t people simply arrange to meet up and go for a drink to keep in touch? Of course, with everyone’s increasingly busy lives, it is possible to argue that posting a tweet via twitter, posting an article on a blog or updating your Facebook profile, allows you to continue a real relationship with your friends, whilst not actually needing to see them every Friday or Saturday night. This is a good thing, right?

Another problem presented by today’s social networks is that they are an enclosed ecosystem, at least to users. Whilst Facebook and LinkedIn, in addition to a whole host of others, have provided APIs for developers to encourage them to interact with their services (this has been particularly successful with Facebook) the same cannot be applied to users. The various social networks, until recently, have been reluctant to allow users to pass data between competing services, afterall, this data is core to the success, or indeed failure, of a site. This is understandable since the networks’ huge valuations depend on the sites maximising revenues and page views, so they need to maintain a tight control. As a result, keen Internet users maintain a plethora of online accounts.

2008 will see a change in how people access social networks.

The opening up of social networks, lead by Google with their Open Social API, is set to bring about an evolution in this medium. This change is following the historical standardisation of popular services. First it was email with webmail, which in the early days was restricted to individual ecosystems, for example AOL and CompuServe, then it was instant messaging, with individual services provided by Microsoft, Yahoo!, Google, AOL and Skype.

Further developments include the Data Portability Working Group, whose mission is to put all existing technologies and initiatives in context to create a reference design for end-to-end data portability. In short, allow users to move their data around competing services. Others are pushing OpenID; a plan to create a single, federated online sign-on system that people can use to access many websites.

The opening of social networks is likely to accelerate thanks to the first tentative, yet bold, steps made by webmail; the first social network. As a technology, webmail has become old fashioned, but its younger sybling, the social network will revitalise not only webmail, but online communication and advertising. Through social intelligence, marketers and advertisers will be able to target adverts for items that we are more likely to want. This will not only boost the users online experience, but provide a more targeted revenue stream.

The fight for social networking dominance has been running for several years now, but it shows no sign of letting up.

With the increasing importance of Rapid Application Development (RAD) and the popularity of the Ruby language driven by Ruby on Rails, this user group aims to assist developers in defining their role, provide information resources and a chance to meet fellow developers and provide a centralised network within the community.

To join the group and start networking, simply click on the link below:

UK Ruby User Group:

http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/31026/79705D6CDE7C

It is clear that RIAs offer the potential to fundamentally change the user experience and in doing so, yield significant business benefits. However, in order for RIAs to be widely employed, and for more companies to receive these kinds of returns, technologies to build RIAs will need to appeal to a wider range of developers. The ability to cost effectively create rich, engaging user experiences that support corporate objectives and reach a broader developer audience without sacrificing development productivity require a new generation of RIA tools. These tools are being developed by a large number of organisations with Adobe, Microsoft, Google, Apple and Sun leading the way with the AIR/Flash/Flex combination, Silverlight, Gears, Quicktime and JavaFX respectively.

The new generation of RIA tools being developed by the likes of Adobe and Microsoft must do the following to allow developers to truely harness the power of RIAs in the commercial environment:

1. Allow developers to write applications using familiar development models to utilise and extend their current skills without requiring them to adopt entirely new or different skills
2. Use standard and standards-based technologies
3. Use industry specific programming models and patterns
4. Use and/or leverage the existing IT infrastructure through wrap and reuse rather than rip and replace
5. Provide pervasive, familiar programming models and an expressive user interface across platforms and devices; and
6. Allow developers to create a solution that delivers scalable, secure, high performance solutions that are bandwidth efficient

These new RIA tools will need to provide the features that enhance IT developer’s abilities to be more creative and to accomplish RIA development with the same or less effort than the tools they use to create other types of applications. What is required are the tools that can help developers achieve these objectives without relying on only HTML or other scripting languages, or having to learn a completely new development approach.

Two vendors which have the technology and capaibility to fully deliver Rich Internet Applications are Adobe and Microsoft. With Microsoft’s Silverlight and XAML, developing rich internet applications to run on Windows platforms will progress at a fast rate. In turn, Adobe has had a head start with the aquisition of Macromedia and the subsequent addition of Flash and Flex to its product offering. Flash and its relative ubiquity across platforms and devices ensures that RIA development and production will be accessible to a large user base and as such puts Adobe at a distinct advantage over Microsoft.

So what is the distinction between a leader and a manager? Will the definitions help?

Leader noun

• someone or something that leads or guides others.
• someone who organises or is in charge of a group.

Manager noun (abbreviation Mgr)

• someone who manages, especially someone in overall charge or control of a commercial enterprise, organisation, project, etc.

Does this help me…not yet!

Both a manager and a leader may know the business reasonably well, but the leader must know the business to a finer degree and from a different view point. They must grasp the underlying market forces that determine the past and present trends in the businesses niche, so that they can generate a vision and strategy to bring about its future development and growth. A crucial sign of a good leader is an honest attitude towards the facts and objective truth. Conversely, a subjective leader obscures the facts for the sake of narrow self-interest, partisan interest or prejudice.

Effective leaders continually probe all levels of the organisation for information, challenging their own perceptions and validating the facts. They talk to their constituents and employees to find out what is working and what is not. They keep an open mind to the knowledge they gain. An important source of information for a leader is the knowledge of the mistakes and failures that have been and are being made within their organisation.

Leaders conquer the context, the turbulent and ambiguous events that conspire to blur the facts, while managers surrender to the events in a reactionary manner.

Leaders investigate reality, taking the pertinent factors and analysing them carefully. On the basis they produce visions, concepts, plans and programs of change. Managers adopt the truth from others and implement it without regard to the facts.

There is a profound difference between leaders and managers. A good manager does things right whilst a good leader does the right thing. Doing the right thing implies a goal, a direction, an objective, a vision, a dream, a strategy, a path, a reach.

Many people spend their lives engrossed in the ‘rat-race’, attempting to climb the corporate management ladder in a vein attempt to beat mediocrity and make a difference. Unfortunately, many find themselves climbing the wrong ladder. Most companies and organisations become over-managed through this constant, unending, highly competitive race and under-led by those who lack vision. The managers accomplish nothing or the wrong things beautifully and efficiently. They climb the wrong ladder.

Managing is as much about efficiency as leadership is about effectiveness. Managing is about how things need to be done, leadership is about what things need to be done and why these things should be carried out. Management is about systems, controls, procedures, policies and structures whereas leadership is about, trust, vision and hum capital, people.

Leadership is about innovating concepts, inspiring others and initiating projects. Management is about carrying out these visions and managing the status quo. Leadership is creative, adaptive and agile. Leadership looks to the future whilst also being mindful of the bottom line.

Leaders base their vision, appeal and integrity on a careful estimation of the facts, trends and contradictions. They develop the means to re-define the status quo so that their vision can be realised, hopefully, successfully, whilst also enrolling others into the vision of the future. Without, other peoples buy in, a vision will stall and a period of transition will ensue. Leaders, therefore, have to empower others to accomplish the over-arching goal whilst also rewarding their achievements.

There is a profound difference between management and leadership, but both are important. To manage means “to bring about or succeed in accomplishing, sometimes despite difficulty or hardship“. To Lead means “to guide in direction, course, action, opinion, etc.” The distinction is important.

The most dramatic differences between leaders and managers are found at the extremes. Poor leaders are despots while poor managers are bureaucrats. Leadership is a human process and management is a resource allocation process. Both are important and in many instances managers need to also perform as leaders. Indeed first-class managers have significant leadership ability.

So where does this leave me? My opening gambit included the words “…an important aspect of my role is managing expectations, ideas and developments…” this must naturally lead me to a combination of both a leader and manager. Indeed, in my new role as a web development consultant, I have to set directions for developing concepts and applications whilst also planning, organising and promoting effective action of the task at hand. So I could say I am in a period of transition. In the past few years I have learnt much from those I consider mentors, whether they were aware or not. I have seen how things are managed and lead and from these experiences have built upon my own skill-set. I can neither categorically say I am a leader or a manager, or say what I would rather be; this is something that can only come with time.