Media and Wedia

Last week I ran into my daughter’s room and excitedly told my wife that I thought I may have coined a term (this heady little insight is on my list of things to “do before I die”)….I was thrilled.  I’ve been immersing myself in everything Web 2.0, ever since attending the Web 2.0 Expo.  I was thinking about MIVA, Alot.com, and how interactive Media is being effected by the wave of Social Media.  I was feeling relatively pleased with myself after having labeled my Miva project (We)iva – so that I can track my first 100 days at the company  – and it hit me…this isn’t MEdia, it’s WEdia!  

WEDIA!

I did it! I coined a term…the euphoria was short lived, after I did a quick Google Search and realized the term has been around for a while now.  

Bummer. 

I’m not discouraged – I’m sure some day I’ll coin a term – either way – Wedia is a term I’m diggin’ right now.

Header Image

I’ve been receiving a lot of email from folks asking about my new header image.  The image is actually of me (well sort of). During the Web2.0 Expo in New York there was a really cool “machine” I suppose we’ll call it that would capture your image, and then replicate an image of you – only out of hundreds of smaller images.  It was really phenomenal to see, and a perfect novelty for the crowd at the show.  It was perfectly Web 2.0. The images sweep across the screen to finally hone in on your image.  It was very “Etsy.com – ish”.

Here’s the full image of Myself (you can make out my faceless image holding my camera phone up to take the shot.  Very cool stuff.

Stop watching F-in Lost

The title of this post was a tasty little tid-bit of advice from Gary V of winelibrary.tv fame. Gary blasted this perfectly thought provoking comment during his killer key note presentation at the Web2.0Expo in New York. The audience erupted. We were eating out of the palm of his hand.

I couldn’t agree more with our friend Gary. How many hours do we waste in front of the ole’ boob tube? How powerful would it be to your child’s life if you spend that hour reading and playing with her, instead of watching TV? Or maybe we could (as Gary was alluding to) work on what our real passion is during that time? My passion is being a father. Being around my daughter heals me. My family is my life, and my passion. I don’t want to be just a Dad. I want to be a Dadzilla! Be amazing at whatever it is you do. What’s your passion?

And for the love of God, please stop watching f-ing Lost!

Web2.0 expo continued

I hope my web2.0 Expo overview was helpful and gave you some idea of the exciting things occurring in our industry. I’ll post more in the coming days – in the interim – Here are more url’s that you may already know – but I want to share including some top bloggers and resources:

www.visualcomplexity.com
www.many-eyes.com – take a look at the word most often used in John McCain’s acceptance speech with the visualization chart
www.instantaction.com – owned by IAC
www.nowisgone.com
www.rapleaf.com
www.buddymedia.com
www.rocketon.com
www.smeet.com – Berlin based
www.etsy.com – great business model
www.diggnation.com
www.bringtheloveback.com
www.wearesmarter.org – great message
www.failblog.org – funny stuff
www.icanhascheesbuger.com – more funny stuff
www.drop.io – coolest stuff
www.deborahschultz.com – blogger
www.thisisgoingtobebig.com – blogger and founder www.path101.com
www.socialmediaclub.org
www.briansolis.com

Web 2.0 Expo Day by Day Breakdown

Here’s a quick break down by day
Day 1
Wednesday September 17th
HIGHLIGHTS:

A New York’s Web Industry from 1995 to 2008 From Nascent to Ascendant –
Fred Wilson
This was a terrifically fun blast from the past. It was obvious that Fred has been at the forefront of everything that’s happened in Silicon Alley since 1995 (although he did make it clear that he feels we should no longer call NY’s interactive scene Silicon Alley). It was also apparent that he has great affection and respect for everyone in the industry, and that helped to create a nice sense of community during his presentation. He spoke about how the internet has matured, and how the New York VC scene is currently responsible for 1/3 of funding in the online community – up from a paltry 1/8 of all activity back in 1995.

Building a Personal Brand within the Social Media Landscape
Gary Vaynerchuk
This was the best presentation of the day. Gary took his family company of wine sellers from $4million/annually to $54 Million. He currently hosts his own video blog at www.winelibrary.tv – I recommend you check it out. Gary’s enthusiasm for wine and making money is contagious.

Thursday September 18th
HIGHLIGHT: Repeating some details from an earlier post – but I wanted to show each day broken down.
We are Smarter than me: unleashing the Power of Crowds in Your Business presented by Barry Libert of www.mzinga.com

What an interesting, out of the box type of guy. Barry gave his presentation on the last session during the next to last day (I believe). It was late afternoon, and he was able to actually get us out of our seats and interacting with each other….wow. The main point of his presentation was that “WE are much more powerful than ME”….what a novel idea. A few points that stuck out for me that any company can readily apply to be more “we” friendly:
1. Be Social – Create a forum to open the lines of communication with your clients (Starbucks was cited as a great example)
2. Be Co- Creative – Start idea shares, and encourage innovation
3. Be Open – Start a company blog and join social networks
4. Be rewarding – hold contests – and give back to the community
5. Be Evaluative – Survey, review comments and ratings of your services to improve your product.

An interesting point that Barry made about Twitter and the upcoming election – Hillary Clinton has a few hundred people following her, but she is not following anyone. Barack Obama has a few hundred people following him on Twitter, and he is following MORE than are following him. WOW. We need to open our eyes and ears.

Friday September 19th
HIGHLIGHT(S)
Arianna Huffington was interviewed and made some great points that we can apply to our business:

1. Be Passionate, Engaged, and Excited
2. Screen the comments that you allow to be posted, but pre moderate quickly
3. Open an honest dialogue with your end users or in our case our advertisers and publishers
4. Unplug and recharge (again back to the first point that unplugging was a main theme during the show)

Ben Huh spoke about how simplicity powers large, growing, and complex communities like www.icanhascheesburger.com a compilation of photos with comedic tag lines generated 100% by users. Ben and his team are also working on new projects, and he had this advice to offer companies in the online community:

1. Keep it Simple – it doesn’t have to be perfect – just get it out there
2. 100% user generated is a good thing (we should be talking even more to our advertisers and publishers to find out that they want and need from us).

Also- I don’t recall which day they presented, but one of the most exciting companies I saw present is called www.drop.io they’re a very simple way to share files online, that I feel is the next iteration of social networking. They walked us through a demo where a person can create a “drop” at a specific location in a city – add photos, details about what happened at that location and then share that “drop” with their friends. This is like a social network page on steroids!

I hope this overview was helpful and gave you some idea of the exciting things occurring at the Web2.0 Expo in New York.