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An award-winning web professional with over nine years in both in-house and agency-side roles. With four years web 2.0 experience, from devising social media strategy for clients through to 1-2-1 online community mentoring.

Viral Loop notes

I just stumbled across a great site, Books Noted, which in it’s words provides “quotations, notes and takeaways on interesting books. These books further our knowledge in a variety of topics from psychology, entrepreneurship, philosophy, business and more. Since they tend to be hundreds of pages in length, these short notes and takeaways will get [...]

Leicester’s history revealed by Google Street View

According to the Daily Mail today Google is extending its Street View service to peer at 95 per cent of homes in the UK.

In honour of this I’ve uploaded (above) a pic taken from a screen-grab of Street View of the spot in Leicester where a memorial plaque to Richard III, who some say [...]

Digital inclusion takes centre stage

A free software widget to allow people to search the web for information on public services in their area is to be launched today by the Directgov website. The Directgov team is taking the opportunity to use what may be the last big public showing for the highest profile IT-related programme [...]

Who are the influencers?

Moving back to valuing social networks, and who are influencers following listening to a Telligent webinar which included discussion on tracking ‘influencers’, I found the following quote from a recent GoViral report ‘The social metropolis’ (pdf) pretty interesting – it’s that passion, not position is what distinguishes an influencer.
Duncan J. Watts, a network-theory scientist from
Columbia [...]

Notes on social media feedback loops

A few slides to layout the principle of different feedback loops between your online community, your site, contributors, readers and other blogs and communities. Any feedback?
Feedback Loops
View more presentations from Stuart Hall.

…And thanks to tweet-feedback from Jenny Ambrozek (@sagenet) for the wider context around the power of feedback loops – see the Fast Company article [...]

It’s OK to lose control

A great example for charities on why social media is both scary (you can lose control of the message) but also powerful (losing control is OK), from an example of a Greenpeace campaign over naming a whale. ‘Mr Splashy Pants’ was the name over 70% of people online wanted, but it wasn’t what the charity [...]

Social networking ability & field sense

Wayne Gretzky-Style ‘Field Sense’ May Be Teachable http://shar.es/m3E8W An application to social networking influence is my thought. Cheers!
My tweet today (above) follows my last blog post on the importance of location, rather than the number of connections, in determining an individual’s influence: “we may have got too focused on valuing networks in terms of who [...]

Valuing online networks – location vs connections

A recent research paper suggests we may have got too focused on valuing networks in terms of who is the best connected. In fact the most influential person in the network comes down to location, rather than connections, as outlined in this blog extract:
The importance of hubs may have been overstated, say Kitsak and pals. [...]

Valuing online networks – is big really better?

An individual’s network may well be worth more in ROI terms than them, say smartFOCUS. Are you valuing the networks of your customers, as well as individual customers?
To value your own online network why not try the ‘Facebook Visualiser’ tool created by Sebastian Van Sande below to to graphically explore your Facebook [...]

Connecting Facebook status updates and fighter pilot tactics

Really liked the link made in the fourth programme of the BBC’s The Virual Revolution between Norbert Wiener’s feedback loop for anti-aircraft gunners in WWII (ie breaking down the division between people and systems, to allow gunner’s to hit their airborne targets) and the radical impact of the status updates within Facebook (and the likes [...]