Posts from — January 2008

Hi I am Kristen Munson and I am the owner of Social Media Mom. I am a social media consultant in the St. Louis area.

I am also one of the founding fathers of a total home site called Shakadoo. I had the privilege of building this blog portal to 50,000 page views in a period of 4 months and when I realized my strength lies in social media, I left Shakadoo to pursue a career in internet marketing.

I live in St. Louis, Missouri where I run my interactive marketing firm, Kmunse Marketing,  as a social media consultant and blogger. I take my professional experience and I show bloggers how to make money with their blogs.

I have a wonderful husband and four great kids. One can usually find me car pooling, meal making, and at sporting events if I am not blogging.

To contact me, please e-mail kristenmuns@gmail.com.

Mom-to-mom wisdom is all over the place in the social media realm. Moms are blogging, sharing photos, sharing videos, and organizing groups, like never before, in order to connect with other moms with similar interests.

I found this space to be so constant, engaging and extremely interactive that I have put together a list of mom-sites that I consider to be pertinent in the realm of social media. While some sites are geared toward women in general and some are geared toward parenting, all have strong “mom” foundations. If you know of a networking site for moms that is not listed here, please feel free to e-mail me or leave a comment below as this list will be updated throughout the year.

Digg-like mom sites with voting

1. Sk*rt - Find news, ideas, information, and cool products. PR 5
2. Mom Blog Network - A place to discover new blogs and share content. PR 5
3. Bringr - Women can “bring” stories and vote. PR 5
4. Saty - Women’s user voted content portal. PR 2

Mom networking sites with ratings

1. Capessa - Real women. Real stories. PR 6
2. Parents Connect - Parenting advice. PR 6
3. Minti - Advice, friendship and community for parents. PR 6
4. Maya’s Mom - Connect with parents, share pictures, get advice. PR 3
5. Mom Junction - Personal mom network of information. PR 6
6. Cafe Mom - Moms can make friends and express themselves. PR 6
7. Babble - Community for a new generation of parents. PR 6

Mom networking sites with no voting or ratings

1. Blogher - The community for women who blog. PR 6
2. MothersClick - Connecting. Learning. Sharing. PR 6
3. Mommyland - Supporting all moms. PR 2
4. Operation Mom - Share, meet, schedule and more. PR 4
5. The Mom Bloggers Club - Where mom bloggers converge. PR 5
6. BabyCenter - Community with parenting advice. PR 6
7. ClubMom - Community with product information for moms. PR 5
8. Connecting Moms - Share, Support, Empower, and Connect with other moms. PR 4
9. Mom Logic - Comprehensive wiki community for moms. PR 4
10. Kaboose - Discussions on parenting, family and blogs. PR 5
11. SisterWoman - A support network of women. PR 6
12. BMums - Friendship network for mothers only. PR 0
13. MomSpace - Local and national network for moms. PR 4
14. Real Live Moms - Membership community for live networking with other moms. $57.50/yr. PR 5
15. WestCoast Mom’s - Moms connecting with moms on parenting and career. PR 4
16. Mommy-Talk - Moms and moms to be message board community. PR 3

Niche Networking Sites For Moms

1. CincyMoms - Moms networking in the Cincinnati area. PR 6
2. Peachhead - Moms networking in the Los Angeles area. PR 5
3. Work It, Mom! - Community of professional moms. PR 5
4. Mocha Moms - Network for moms of color. PR 5
5. Mamasource - Connecting moms by local communities and cities. PR 3

Directories For Moms

1. 5 Minutes For Mom - Free listings for mom-owned stores and sites. PR 6
2. The Mom Blogs - Free directory of moms who blog. PR 5
3. Blogs By Women - Directory of women bloggers with $4 fee. PR 6
4. Blogamama - Free blog directory for moms. PR 4
5. The Mom Salon - Free directory of the smartest mom blogs. PR 4
6. Pajama Mommy Community - Free directory of mommy blogs. PR 4
7. MotherDreams - A free directory for work-at-home-moms. PR 4

As I mentioned above, if you know of a site that reflects the rise in social media and geared towards moms, please let me know and I will add it to the list. And be sure to check back at the end of February for another list of social networking sites in a specific category.

Brian gave 10 great reasons to do interviews on your blog, so I took his advice and choose someone that I am quite fascinated with to do my first interview at Social Media Mom, Doug March.

Doug is one of the great minds behind the tattletale Twitter site, Twittertale, and the more recent Politweets, a site for political tweeting. Doug was gracious enough to find time over the weekend to do a candid e-mail interview with me, so without further ado, I’d like to introduce Doug March!

1. Tell us a little about your background, and how it prepared you for your break into social news sites?

In school I studied 3d modeling and animation (digital imaging at the University of Dayton), the internet was just a blip on the map at the time. We knew about it but people were not sure yet how to use it (circa 97/98). Post graduation I moved to the washington DC area and spent most of the first 7 years working as a contractor for the US government (Booz Allen and BAE Systems). Most of my work was design related. Creating various web based training sites, communication materials and conference materials. Those 7 years were beneficial to my career but it wasn’t till I read Jeffery Zeldman’s book “designing with web standards” that I started to see the light and understand what the web really is. I then began working on my own personal site, taking part in others and started hanging with the web community in DC.

I honestly don’t see myself as “breaking into social news sites”, In regards to Politweets a group of friends saw a need and we tried to help and close the gap. Between some conversations and then watching what people were saying and doing on twitter, we came to the conclusion that politweets needed to happen.

I also really don’t see the difference between social news and regular news. Sure NBC, ABC, CBS, FOX and CNN have more money and resources to provide a service to you, however citizens also have a voice and those voices are being heard on sites like digg, mixx, reddit and other so called “social news” sites. All news is social so I have a hard time putting it in silos. The real power is getting stories out there that don’t fit into the 30min slot that the nightly news provides. That is what happens with the sites I mentioned and I also am starting to see that happen with politweets.

I personally have seen many stories break on twitter. The announcement of the iphone SDK, Heath Ledger’s death and many others of varying topics.

2. Are you pleased with the usage and turnout on Twittertale and Politweets so far? What are your goals?

Yes I am, I am really overwhelmed by all the kind words that people have posted online. It is a great feeling to see something that you created helping others or in the case of twittertale just allowing a quick laugh and a break from a normally hectic day.

Generally my goals are finding solutions to a defined problem. I know, I know that sounds like marketing speak. People are always referring to me as “the idea guy”, I think i just like to solve everyday problems. Twittertale doesn’t really solve a problem, some might say it causes one. You probably won’t see much changing on that site, we have talked about creating some fun charts and graphs but due to time I think more time and energy will be spent on Politweets and other ventures.

It was really cool to see Twitter post Politweets on their blog. It was sort of like “the father acknowledging the sons accomplishments”.

3. Besides foreigners swearing in English and being interested in American politics, what are some other trends you’ve noticed from analyzing tweets?

#1 thing is how people outside of the national news want to provide information. You would think that politweets would highlight a lot of negativity in politics, people like to complain for some reason. Except the exact opposite was seen, it has provided a place for citizen journalists to go to find and share posts. I believe we have made a number of connections that might not have been made without the site. I have even had people tell me that they signed up for twitter, used it for a bit but wasn’t till they saw politweets that they found the benefit from it.

4. Twittertale is a fun niche site, have you seen an increase in naughty word usage on Twitter since you launched Twittertale?

Not really, at first everyone was “testing the system” which provided a spike. I would say we might have created a meme though. I do see a lot of people saying “fucking bitch balls” or just “bitch balls” a lot. That order represents the top 3, 4 and 5 most said curse words on twitter, so that has been a lot of fun watching.

5. What, in your opinion, is the long-term solution for the monetization of Twitter and are there plans to monetize Twittertale and Politweets?
That is a great question. A number of people have come up to me and said “I didn’t understand twitter until I saw your sites”. What did they mean by that? Well twitter by itself is limiting in characters but not in usage. This is one of its greatest assets. People want more features but I believe it is close to feature complete. There is now a “river of information flowing though it” (see this post and associated links — http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/doc/2008/01/08/lets-call-it-a-twiver/ ) I am not quite sure how, but here lies the solution to monetization. One possible solution is creating small niche communities that come together around one topic (those already exist and can be seen by politweets and frozen peas/peaple) and then messaging them with unobtrusive advertisements that are more help than harm. I am not sure if you are familiar with “the deck”, but that has to be the best advertising model out there. A group of sites that believe in a set of products and unobtrusively advertise those products. I love google but how often do you think a contextual advertisement on a site has also been something that that site has used and supports?

6. Do you participate in any other social media sites and if so, which ones?

Yes I do, a lot actually (username is generally always marchdoe)
flickr,
last.fm,
del.icio.us,
pownce, and upcoming.org
just to name a few.

The only one I am not a member of is facebook, and don’t see that happening anytime soon. I am not sure why I never signed up, perhaps it is just the case that I have enough “noise” in my life.

7. Tell us about Min, Gabe and Jason and Character140?

Min and Gabe are amazing ruby on rails developers that I work with at revolutionhealth.
Jason is a front-end developer that works at mixx.

Gabe = ducktyper/
has created a lot of cool stuff, one site being dclicio.us/

Min = thoughtsatsix. Min created a cool iphone app for DC Metro riders called - meenster.

Jason sixtwothree blog.
Jason has been one of the key players bringing together the DC Tech Community, he started refresh-dc.org and also was one of the organizers of the first barcampdc.

We are all friends who have a passion for the internet and when the idea came to mind they were excited to make it happen.

Character140 is just a name to operate under, a collective of individuals that have come together to create sites based on mobile/sms technology.

8. What will happen to Politweets when the election is over?

Hmmm I haven’t really thought about that. It is really hard to say. That won’t be for another 9 or 10 months and a lot can happen in that time with technology. Hopefully we can keep it going and expand on the ideas we have for it. A local organization The Sunlight Foundation does a lot of great work enlightening citizens of their elected officials actions. Perhaps we could lean in that direction and help contribute to the great work they have already started, but with twitter as the engine behind it.

9. What is your interest in reality cooking shows and any chance you are looking to develop a Twitter-like site that has to do with cooking or food?

I love to cook and I enjoy the various shows out there about cooking. I won’t miss an episode of Top Chef and am really looking forward to the next season. As of right now I am not working on a twitter-like site for cooking or food. I will say that I am working on something that is food related. It is just in the beginning stages and when the time is right I will share.

An idea does come to mind though, perhaps a twitter restaurant suggestion app would be something that could be quite fun. Call it a “real time yelp.com“.

We also have a site in DC called “the dc concierge”, how cool would it be if you could send a tweet to a username “I am on 12th and m street and I am feeling like Italian, where should I go?” and get a response right back. I know this probably wouldn’t scale, but it def could be fun.

Oh I am also working on getting a reservation at the French Laundry, any suggestions on how to make that happen would be great.

10. Any advice to those looking to use the open API of Twitter to start their own sites?

I have some good friends in the film business. Mark and Jay Duplass (wrote and directed the Puffy Chair and another movie coming out called Baghead), I will always remember talking to them about “creating things”. It wasn’t till Mark and Jay just started shooting everything they could think of that they made it to the next step. They would shoot a short movie a each day over a summer. Whatever came to mind that day was the movie. They thought one of the movies was really good and showed it to friends, and on a whim decided to send it to Sundance. Low and behold it got into the festival (This is John = name of the movie).

I think we all should prescribe to that. Just create, find what you like and just make things. Sure “some of it is going to suck” (their words not mine) but you are going to create a lot of things that many people are going to enjoy. So just create, open your computer and make things. The things you are proud of share with others, post to the internet, print out and share with friends. Nothing but good can come from that.

I really believe it is easy to “talk”, but very hard to “do”. So put those words into actions and your work will be noticed.

Doug, it has been a privilege to get to know you and I so appreciate the time you took to share with us. I hope you will keep us posted on new endeavors and continue to “let us know what you are doing” in the world of microblogging.

photo via nowsourcing

Tech talk can be just that; tech talk, and if you’re not knowledgable of tech things then some valuable information can easily be lost in translation. That’s one reason why I appreciate Jeremiah Owyang’s blog. Jeremiah goes out of his way to interpret web strategies for us less techy folks by providing us the real meanings and impacts of today’s technology advances.

An example of this can be seen in regards to Facebook’s most recent “techy” announcement…….

“This JavaScript client library allows you to make Facebook API
calls from any web site and makes it easy to create Ajax Facebook
applications. Since the library does not require any server-side code
on your server, you can now create a Facebook application that can be
hosted on any web site that serves static HTML. An application that
uses this client library should be registered as an iframe type. This
applies to either iframe Facebook apps that users access through the
Facebook web site or apps that users access directly on the app’s own
web sites. Almost all Facebook APIs are supported. The exceptions are:”

Jeremiah does a fantastic job of explaining this in layman’s terms…..

“This means that web owners can now embed existing Facebook applications
easier than before. Now, in addition to being able to create an
application/widget that will sit on Facebook alone, you can now easily
embed it on your own website (in addition to leveraging the social
features that Facebook offers)”.

Essentially, what this means is you can now bring the Facebook community to your own website. A portable community, if you will. But some analysts claim that even with over 15,000 Facebook applications, there is still too much entertainment and not enough substance for corporate websites. We shall see, with the opportunity to create applications and now this announcement, I would venture to say that more sophisticated and appropriate apps will soon be targeting a more corporate audience.

I am a huge fan of StumbleUpon. In fact, I am 88% addicted to StumbleUpon and I love it when I come across something a fellow blogger has stumbled and it moves me to blog about it. A good example of this would be one of Muhammad Saleem’s latest stumbles regarding the presidential candidates……..

“Stumble The Candidates” lets you to choose your favorite candidate for
the 2008 USA Presidential Election Campaign and stumble him/her using
StumbleUpon. This way you can show your support to your favorite
candidate, cause the more stumbles a candidate gets, the more is the
probability of his profile being shown to StumbleUpon users. Happy
Stumbling!

Evidently, this site was set up just for Stumbling the Candidates and has no affiliation with StumbleUpon.com. Every candidate is on the main page with the thumbs up button at the bottom, and each has his/her own individual page that you can stumble as well. You can also leave comments regarding your opinions of each candidate which I think is an interesting idea considering the banter between Obama and Hillary as of late.

Social media has made election 2008 extremely interesting in the fact
that it is not only about each candidate’s position on issues but it
is now about the conversations they have with voters and each other. Never before has the conversation sparked so much interest in the presidential candidates. For example, Buzz Networker is doing a series on each candidate’s MySpace profile. So far Kevin has reviewed Hillary and John Edwards and coming next is his review of Obama.

If you’re having a conversation regarding the presidential candidates and have taken part in how social media can play into the election of 2008, leave a comment and let us know all about it.

Yesterday the social networking site, Digg was down for a “brief period” while they performed some type of maintenance to the site. Rather than just posting a “down, come back later” message to diggers, Digg decided to list a few sites that they recommend.

“Digg will be down for a brief period, while we make some changes.
While not digging, the digg crew recommends:”

• Amar Grow-a-Brain
• Anton Escher and the Droste effect
• Beth TechCrunch
• Brian L Rush
• Brian W khaaan!
• Chris Hockey Rodent
• Dan Black Crowes
• Daniel Top Left Pixel
• Dwayne potrerohillsf.com
• Eli GeeksOn
• Isabelle I Love Bacon
• Jay Revision3
• Jim Byelp
• Joe Cautionary Tales of Swords
• John paidContent.org
• Kevin Purple & Brown
• Kurt MovieLens
• Maggie The Sartorialist
• Matt E xkcd
• Matt VH Zimride
• Micah SuicideGirls
• Mike M Atom Films
• Mike N They Might Be Giants
• nbwt BBC News
• Nicole The Bastard Prince
• Ron MadSciNet
• Scott RouterGod
• Stephen C woot!
• Steve F pearljam.com
• sbw Eve of Understanding
• timeless Kuro5hin
• Will F Machine Thinking
• All Digg the Blog

Is it just me, or are these sites lacking something? You would think that with a site like Digg and the qualtiy content that comes in, the “crew” would have some inspiring recommendations. As it is, one site hasn’t even been updated since October 15th, 2007, one site is a an album of scantily clad women with tattoos and body piercings, one link is to the landing page of an actress up for an award for a movie from 2006, and one site has a video on YouTube that satirizes the use of swords.

Note to Digg:

If your site is going to be down for any length of time and you deem it necessary to give your users a list of sites to check out, let me make a suggestion: Take a few of the top 100 users and list some of the sites they author or like.

Did anyone else happen to check out any of these sites while Digg was down? What were your thoughts?

The bloggers at Social Media Training have a very interesting project going on. Due to the fact that social media is becoming a topic that no professional communicator can afford to ignore, SMT has developed a wiki that will hopefully become a great resource for those looking to evangelize social media in their organizations.

The unique part about this particular wiki is that they are tapping into the knowledge of social media users to create social media training and everyone is invited to participate in this one……..

“What should a ‘Social Media 101′ course cover? What
tools should people be aware of? How should we use those tools? What
are the pitfalls? What are the basics that everyone in your
marketing/communications department should know?”

A few bullet points have already been added but surely there is so much more to social media that should be added. Check it out. Ad your ideas by signing up for this wiki and let your social media voice be heard.

My teenagers spend a lot of time on the internet coddling and cooing their Facebook pages and as I walk by with an armful of laundry, I sometimes glance at the computer screen to see just what they are up too. Unfortunately for me, it appears to be all in code. Teen code that is, and confusion ensues. What is a mother to do?

Thanks to MSNBC, I can see clearly now because the rain of confusion is gone for good with a very comprehensive list of acronyms and expressions that teens use on their web pages. Things like………

”
ROTFL- Rolling on the Floor Laughing

RU- Are You?

RUMORF- Are You Male Or Female

RUOK- Are you Okay?

SorG- Straight or Gay

SWDYT- So What Do You Think?

TDTM- Talk Dirty To Me

THX or TX or THKS- Thanks

TLK-2-U-L-8-R- Talk to You Later

TMI- Too Much Information

TOM- Tomorrow

TTYL- Talk to You Later

WTF- What The F***

WTG- Way to Go

WYCM- Will You Call Me?”

Okay, so I knew that “LOL” meant “laugh out loud”, and that “ROFL” meant “rolling on floor laughing”, as I’ve actually used these terms in comments I’ve made on blog posts before but I had no idea that “LMIRL” meant “let’s meet in real life” or that “P911″ meant “parent alert”. These codes are good to know and you can find the whole list here. Consider yourself hip on the things of teenagers, for a day anyway.