Social Media is… (and isn’t)

So, since I’ve been doing a bit more speaking and networking recently (see the last post) I’ve been talking about what Social Media IS (and what it ISN’T)

  • Social Media IS a fundamental shift in the ways companies communicate to their ‘public’ and vice versa.
  • Social Media IS a cheaper/faster/(better?) way to communicate and exchange ideas.
  • Social Media SHOULD BE PART of your marketing plan, NOT your entire marketing plan.
  • Social Media ISN’T a panacea. It won’t make a crappy product or service better. You won’t get a million new customers just by having a Facebook page or a Twitter account. You need to work these ‘new’ channels just as you would work the old ones. Actually, even more-so.

What else? Let’s hear your comments on this one.

Want to know what’s happening? Listen to Twitter

Check out this story from Baristanet.com. This is just a snippet that I edited;  you’ll have to click on to read the rest of the story:

Last Friday night… an alert came over from Breaking News Network, which caught my attention:

*Smoke Condition*| Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR), 10 Toler Pl| smoke condition in the control tower has all air traffic shutdown for the airports…

…we turned on the car radio to see if the local news had anything, but heard nothing…

I didn’t think any more about the incident until yesterday, when I read a blog post by Tom Evslin, chief technology officer for the state of Vermont, who happened to be sitting on a plane waiting to take off…Evslin, being a captive to the situation, tried harder than I did to find out what was going on. Using twitter he… (click here to read the rest: http://www.baristanet.com/2011/03/twitter-and-ewr/

 

Has Apple has killed the desktop computer?

Here’s what I mean: when I first started consulting I had two computers – I had a desktop to do the majority of my computing work and I a (less powerful) laptop for my presentations and for when I wanted or needed to work remotely.

When Apple came out with the iPad and now the iPad2 and then a hundred or so plus compatibles, it may have killed the need for the desktop computer. Today’s laptops are just as powerful as the older desktop and have as much power as most people need. If you need extra storage space, hard drives are cheap- you can buy a terabyte hard drive for under $70 and you no longer need to buy an expensive docking station to attach a monitor and a keyboard -you simply plug them into a USB port.

So your laptop is now becomes your desktop and if you want something smaller and lighter and more portable to do to do presentations, you grab an iPad or Xoom or a Blackberry Playbook- that’s going to be the new laptop. You don’t need a desktop unless you’re doing hard-core video editing or something similar. Today’s laptops are just as powerful as 95% of the desktops out there and I think proper desktops, for the most part, will disappear within three years.

PS: I wrote this first on my iPhone using dictation software then did some minor editing on the iPad. No desktop or laptop at all!

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