Digital Biographer™ » digital biographer

A chat about W00tonomy with Tony Purcell April 15, 2008

Posted by David Petherick in : Live, Utterances, brand, digital biographer, mobile, share, social media, sound, streams ,

I had a chat with Tony Purcell of W00tonomy, and though it’d be nice to share it…

Tony has started the first ‘content marketing’ company in Scotland, with the wonderful name of W00tonomy, and found out a little more about where they add value where strategy meets online marketing in the social media sphere.

See http://www.w00tonomy.com/ for more information.

Mobile post sent by davidpetherick using Utterz. Replies. mp3

Amazon’s CTO, Werner Vogels reveals more about ‘The Kindle’. April 4, 2008

Posted by David Petherick in : Live, Utterances, authors, digital biographer, mobile, share, sound, streams, thenextweb, thenextweb2008 ,

I had the pleasure to talk to Werner Vogels at The Next Web on Friday last week in Amsterdam, and asked him about what’s next for Amazon’s ‘Kindle’ product…

Dr. Werner Vogel, Chief Technology Officer at Amazon.com, talks about The Kindle. And what’s next, of course…

Mobile post sent by davidpetherick using Utterz. Replies. mp3

The Next Web 2008 begins… April 3, 2008

Posted by David Petherick in : 2.0, Conferences, digital biographer, social media, thenextweb, thenextweb2008 ,

I’m currently in the break-out area for The Next Web at Westergasfabriek The Next Web Conference, for which registration opens in about 30 minutes. I am here early to grab a few interviews while people are still working out whether I’m worth speaking to or not…

And you know - I’m excited. There’s a buzz already in the hotel yesterday where a lot of delegates are camped, and a few gatherings have already taken place - an ebuddy party and a pownce people meetup to name just two. I of course stayed in with my slippers and pipe, a chocomel and my rss reader. A local free newspaper had an article about QR codes on Wednesday, which made me smile, as I’ve had 400 stickers made up which show a QR code that links to this blog - and have absolutely no other identifying markings.

I am hoping to do a few interviews using sound & the odd little video, and the next web awards are looking very interesting. Watch thsi space, and of course the blog at http://thenextweb.org

I am an Author for “Age of Conversation: Why Don’t People Get It?”. March 24, 2008

Posted by David Petherick in : 2.0, authors, blonging, brand, digital biographer, share, social media ,

274 authors, and I, are going to write a sequel to the hugely successful ‘Age of Conversation‘.

The details about this book, along with a full list of authors, and links to their blogs or sites, is here on Drew McLellan’s blog, and at Gavin Heaton’s Servant of Chaos.

I’m really flattered to be on the same page as some of those names - as one commented suggested, why not just call it “Who’s Who in Social Media?”.

By the way, you should buy the Age of Conversation from Amazon on March 29th, as 1) We’re aiming to get it into the Amazon Bestsellers list and 2) Aiming to raise a sh*tload of cash for charity.

Interesting but useless fact: there are Ten David’s on the author list, Eight Pauls, Three Matts, and Five Johns…

Digital Biographer moooving in the right direction… February 9, 2008

Posted by David Petherick in : Utterances, authors, brand, corporate blogs, digital biographer, googlicious, online identity, share, social media, sound, streams ,

You may have noticed some sound files being added to this blog over the past few days. Well, you’re not alone - the people who run Utterz.com seem to have noticed too, and have created a rotating banner for the site that advertises my content.

I am deeply flattered, and felt the need to reciprocate the attention by writing a little about the site - click the image below to see why I find Utterz such a useful resource to enhance my personal brand online, and do add your own comments when you see the full-size image - you can do so easily thanks to the great Skitch application. I also enjoy the humorous cow metaphor subtly used throughout the site, where Utterz = Udders (Geddit?), so you can ‘be herd, add ‘mooving’ pictures etc.

Utterz - davidpetherick's utterz - Click for full-size view and to add your comments and thoughts

Uploaded with plasq’s Skitch!
Click image for full-size view and to add your comments and thoughts

My Utterz Profile: http://www.utterz.com/~h-davidpetherick/profile.php
HTTV Shortcut: http://httv.biz/utterz/

Why it’s taken me 13 years to decide to attend The Next Web this April in Amsterdam… February 4, 2008

Posted by David Petherick in : 2.0, Conferences, Radio, TV, brand, digital biographer, share, social media, startup, thenextweb ,

I first got involved in online business around 1995, when I first bought a copy of .net magazine, after I got curious about a startup company in the next room of our business centre, who said they were hosting websites.

Back in 1995, most business people I spoke to didn’t know what a website was, let alone what a good one would look like, so I started to learn how to code HTML using a highly sophisticated tool called ‘Notepad‘, and registered some domain names where a committee of actual people decided on whether or not I could own a particular domain name…

By 1998, I was designing and managing sites for companies like The Alba Centre (a Silicon Glen incubator) Scottish Financial Enterprise, The British Blood Transfusion Society, and for dozens of conferences a year.

Of course, the dot com bubble burst around 2000-2001, with so much money following ridiculously optimistic business plans, but many survivors from that period are still strong and active today.

Here comes something new…
But around about 2003, a new type of web site started to appear, as what I considered to be a natural evolution coinciding with the high penetration of broadband internet connections into homes and businesses: sites with features that broadly are known as Web 2.0…

These sites allowed the addition of comment, collaboration, and content from those that use the sites. Blogs began to break news ahead of mainstream media, comments about a book by readers offered more credibility than publishers’ puff, and people began to use video sharing, file sharing, mobile access… and social networks.

Where we stand today, site concepts and names that did not exist a few short years ago are massively successful, and the numbers in monetary terms, and this time around, also in end user terms, are massive. YouTube. Facebook. MySpace. PayPal. Skype. Last.fm. Bebo. And the older companies (hardly business veterans, any of them) still have some smart moves and serious revenue - Amazon, EBay, Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft.

New entities like Twitter, Plaxo, LinkedIn, Pownce, Slide, Notchup and Ning are growing rapidly in online areas that simply could not be conceived a few years ago. The barriers to entry for sites that can grow virally are lower than they ever have been before, and a new breed of VC is eager to find and fund the next big success - and these VCs are not just in the Valley. They are in London, Paris, Amsterdam, Zurich, Milan, Tel Aviv, Stockholm, Dublin, and beyond…

The Next Web HotSpot
This combination of factors forms the business and intellectual hot spot where The Next Web has grown since its inaugural conference in Amsterdam in 2006. This is the showcase for the best of the new web, debating the next moves, providing a forum for the key thinkers, best commentators and important players to meet, and creating a momentum in its own right that has led to thenextweb blog becoming a highly regarded source of news and critical commentary for entrepreneurial startups, VCs and industry commentators in Europe and beyond.

Last year’s Next Web conference included speakers such as Scott Rafer, CEO of MyBlogLog (acquired by Yahoo), Rod Beckström, author of the #4 best business book of 2006 (Amazon Editors’ Picks). Deborah Schultz, former Marketing Director for Six Apart, Dick Hardt, Founder and CEO of Sxip Identity, Michael Arrington of Techcrunch, one of the most influential individuals and investors in the Web 2.0 sphere, Marc Canter, founder of MacroMind and Broadband Mechanics, Tariq Krim, founder and CEO of Netvibes, Felix Petersen, founder and CEO of Plazes.com, Saul Klein, Venture Partner at Index Ventures, VP of Skype and a Founding Partner of the OpenCoffee Club, Tapan Bhat, Yahoo!’s vice president of Front Doors, driving strategy, product management and programming for the primary starting points to Yahoo!, Jeff Clavier, one of Silicon Valleys finest, most respected and leading investors.

This year… more than 700 delegates are anticipated from over 20 countries, and confirmed speakersRobert Scoble, Tech Geek Blogger & Author of ‘Naked Conversations‘, Werner Vogels, CTO at Amazon, and Gil Penchina, CEO at Wikia, and Leah Culver, Co-founder and Lead Developer of Pownce, a social messaging application.

Amsterdam’s ease of access from all over Europe, its cosmopolitan charm and essential cool also add to the list of very good reasons to attend this compelling conference.

Those on the organisers’ wish-list (to be confirmed) include Meg Whitman, President and CEO, eBay; Marissa Mayer - Vice President, Search Products & User Experience at Google; John Battelle - Author ‘The Search’; Esther Dyson; Loïc Le Meur - Executive Vice President and General Manager Six Apart Europe, Marc Andreessen - Serial Entrepreneur, founder of Netscape; Kathy Sierra - co-creator of the bestselling Head First series; Nicolas Negroponte - co-founder and Chairman Emeritus of the MIT Media Laboratory; Eric Meyer - Standards Evangelist; Jason Fried - co-founder, 37signals.com; Kevin Rose - Founder and Chief Architect Digg; Dave Sifry - CEO, technorati; Jon Udell - Web/Internet consultant and author; Jeff Jarvis - Blogger, journalist, publisher and columnist; Chris Anderson - Author ‘The Long Tail’ Jim Clark - Serial Entrepreneur (Silicon Graphics, Netscape, Healtheon, etc); Dave Winer - Software developer, author, blogger.

The time is now…
I’m going to be there, because I can’t think of a more interesting and exciting time for developments in the online sphere. Everything is in flux, and the recent aggressive takeover bid for Yahoo! from Microsoft just goes to show that change, evolution and revolution have become ‘business as usual’.

The inexorable rise in online commerce (97% of those online in the UK bought online in 2007) lets everyone know that the new business battlegrounds are almost all digital, and this conference focuses on who’s going to be providing the tactics, the new weapons, and where the battle lines will be drawn.

Two years ago, around 10 percent of the world’s population (627 million) had shopped online. Today, this figure is up 40 percent to 875 million. Source: The Neilsen Company

See you at The Next Web. Visit
http://2008.thenextweb.org/register/ to register - Early Bird Registrants save €200 on registration for this 2-day event.

Follow The Next Web at Twitter - http://twitter.com/nextweblog

Facebook Business Pages are GO for Search Marketing: they now get Page 1 at Google January 31, 2008

Posted by David Petherick in : brand, digital biographer, facebook, googlicious, mobile search, online identity, search marketing ,

A few weeks ago, Facebook changed something slightly. They made their business pages and personal listings include an extra section in their centre, with the subject of the page written in there. Why? Search visibility.

Previously, my Facebook page was at
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=850265552
Now, it’s at
http://www.facebook.com/people/David_Petherick/850265552

So what? Well, OK, so it’s easier to remember - but it’s also visible to search. The old one still works, but the new one is in the top 20 for a Google Search for my name between long-standing entries at Association For Community Networking and 43 Things.

My Business Page for Certain Host is right up on Google, as you can see below - and that’s a search with more than 7 million pages in my wake.

So if you want to be found for a specific search term, just add a page to facebook, name it accordingly, and convert your customers from there. There is a catch though - I can’t edit my Business Pages on Facebook this evening. I suspect the reason is because this news is spreading…

How is your business page doing on facebook? Got many fans yet? What are you going to do to monetise it, manage it, and keep it fresh?

http://facebook.digitalbiographer.com arrives 12th February 2008.

Digital Footprints: What size boots do you wear? January 26, 2008

Posted by David Petherick in : 2.0, digital biographer, googlicious, online identity, search marketing, social media ,

Pew Internet have published an interesting report, with a topic that’s absolutely my focus, but which I’ve only just had time to absorb. It’s clearly titled “Digital Footprints: Online identity management and search in the age of transparency” and it’s free to download as a PDF from Pew Internet.

The original questions that the report is based on are also available, a very useful measure to allow interpretation of any report - hats off to Pwe Internet for that simple addition, in addition to the report’s methodology being included at the end of the report.

Digital Footprints: Summary of Findings at a Glance

The nature of personal information is changing in the age of Web 2.0.
Internet users are becoming more aware of their digital footprint; 47% have searched for information about themselves online, up from just 22% five years ago.
Few monitor their online presence with great regularity.
Most internet users are not concerned about the amount of information available about them online, and most do not take steps to limit that information.
Internet users have reason to be uncertain about the availability of personal data; 60% of those who search for their names actually find information about themselves online, but 38% say their searches come up short.
One in ten internet users have a job that requires them to self-promote or market their name online.
Among adults who create social networking profiles, transparency is the norm.
More than half of all adult internet users have used a search engine to follow others’ footprints.
Basic contact information tops most searchers’ wish lists.

Source: Madden, Fox, Smith and Vitak. Digital Footprints. Washington, DC: Pew Internet & American Life Project, December 16, 2007.

There are some interesting terms and stats thrown up in the report which I include to pique your interest.

Passive Digital Footprint: Personal data made accessible online with no deliberate intervention from an individual.
“Second degree” personal information is material about you that may not be connected to your real name or is provided by someone else, with or without your knowledge.
11% of adult internet users say they have searched online for information about someone they are thinking about hiring or working with.
19% of adult internet users have searched for information about co-workers, professional colleagues or business competitors.
Most users in search of information about others have some difficulty finding the information they want.
The drive to be recognized online is so strong in certain circles that some parents have even begun to consider these issues when naming their children.

Marketers wake up to social networking, but they still don’t smell the coffee.

Posted by Thomas Power in : 2.0, brand, corporate blogs, digital biographer, ecademy, facebook, social media ,

From Guest Blogger Thomas Power, Chairman, Ecademy.
Originally published 15th January 2008 at Ecademy.

The significance of social networks is now starting to become obvious to the marketing departments of larger companies, largely due to two factors - 1) Traditional advertising channels are proving less and less effective and 2) Marketing and advertising agencies have started to realise where people are spending their time.

They have seen the writing on the wall - with one particular statistic likely to be a challenge for many a marketing manager: “Social networks will become the dominant channel for viral marketing campaigns - email has been the dominant channel for viral marketing campaigns since the mid 90s, but social networks will overtake it in 2008.”

Another fact that’s staring marketers in the face - a tipping point that only has one further hurdle to clear: “In October 2007, Social Networks accounted for 7.7% of upstream Internet traffic to all other websites, making the category the second most important source of traffic after Search Engines.”

The next hurdle of course is for social networks to become a more important source of traffic than search engines. That’s a whole blog of its own, however.

An article in this morning’s Financial Times is entitled “Business urged to woo social network figures“, and uses language very firmly couched in the tradition of ‘moving product’ and the pages of publications such as ‘Campaign‘. This all suggests to me that although businesses may have woken up, they have not actually smelt the coffee - they still have the urge to sell cereals.
(more…)

Koollage: Turn your web content into portable, flexible groupware that looks great on mobile phones… for free. January 13, 2008

Posted by David Petherick in : 2.0, authors, corporate blogs, digital biographer, mobile, mobile search, search marketing, share, social media, startup ,

I have just turned the Digital Biographer blog into what I call a BlogPod in around five minutes with the amazing Koollage service.

The results: you can see below - and you can subscribe to the feed of my Koollage BlogPod, Embed it in your own pages, and of course absorb its contents elegantly on your mobile phone. It looks especially funky on an iPhone, with horizontal and vertical versions specifically to take advantage of the iPhone’s ability to use both formats.

An elegant feature is the ability to conduct a search within the Koollage Editor, and then select search results content added from blogs, including images. Although there might be copyright issues involved in this, fair use is obviously allowed. One of the interesting elements buit in is the ability for readers to add comments to any page in your Koollage content (and you get an email with this comment immediately), and to make your Koollage a group application, meaning that others can collaborate to create and update the content with other Koollage associates.

The service is still in beta, so has a few edges to knock off and features to tidy, but as you can see, it works, it’s very nicely designed, and it’s likely to be very viral. The site where you can join and create Koollage Pods for free, is also a growing community, so you can search for other users and their Koollage Pod (Plog) creations.

I for one can see the travel industry getting excited about using this - a City Guide Koollage of Hotels, Restaurants, and Transport Services made available to travellers hitting the ground at an airport makes sense… and a mashup with a Maps / GPS application would appear a logical move for what is obviously a very mobile application.

What uses you can see for this way on enclosing and displaying information?

Digital Biographer hits TopRank’s “Best Blogs on the Net” list December 8, 2007

Posted by David Petherick in : awards, digital biographer, googlicious, search marketing, social media ,

Online Marketing Blog is TopRank’s internet marketing blog about the intersection of social media, search marketing and online public relations, and is ranked #8 in the AdAge 150 top web sites. Today, the Digital Biographer Blog was listed in their Top Search Marketing Blogs BIG LIST.

I get to show off a nice BIG LIST logo, and our web traffic is already showing some healthy curves and clicks from the listing. My thanks to Lee Odden, CEO at Online Marketing Blog for the recognition.

Please make sure you keep up to date with our news by adding our RSS Feed to your reader, or subscribe via email using the form on the top right to get a summary by email every time there’s something new worth reading here. You can also follow The Digital Biographer on Twitter - all posts added to this blog automatically appear in the twitter timeline.

Facebook Brand Landgrab: Now Open for Ads 2.0 November 7, 2007

Posted by David Petherick in : commerce, digital biographer, facebook, online identity, search marketing, social media ,

I am now a product on facebook. A brand. Or rather, Digital Biographer is. See httv.biz/biographer/.

I have also created a page for myself as a writer (that’s a celebrity, I am pleased to hear).

As such, I can now have fans who can tune in to my messages, news, hear about events and more… quite apart from being able to target advertising very precisely to demographic and geographic groups.

Facebooks Ads are here (and Social Ads), and it’s quite staggeringly simple, and complex, in a layered sense.

Find out more at http://facebook.com/ads/ and see the announcement on the Facebook blog:

You now have a way to connect with products, businesses, bands, celebrities and more on Facebook.
Ads should be getting more relevant and more meaningful to you.
You now have the option to share actions you take on other sites with your friends on Facebook…

… we noticed people wanted to connect with their favorite music, restaurants, and brands; but there was no good place for these types of affiliations to exist. Now, there is a place for them and you can become a fan of whatever pages you choose in order to interact with your passions in new ways. You can post reviews for a local restaurant, buy tickets to a new movie, or be the first to get a heads up about new promotions.

Ads will be getting more relevant and more interesting to you. Instead of random messages from advertisers, we’ve launched Social Ads. Social Ads provide advertisements alongside related actions your friends have taken on the site. These actions may be things like “Leah is now a fan of The Offspring” (if I added The Offspring to my music) or “Justin wrote a review for Sushi Hut” (If Justin wrote this review on the Sushi Hut page). These actions could then be paired with an ad that either The Offspring or Sushi Hut provides.

I can see a lot of ad agencies, ‘new media’ agencies and PR companies reaching for the phones now, asking how can we do this? Where do we start? Well, my number is 0845 658 9058, and I am preparing a 1PrecisePage™ download for release shortly.

The Barcelona Masterclass from Digital Biographer - “Brand New Friend“ from March 8-10, 2008 is the first event to be launched in Facebook as a Digital Biographer ‘brand’ event.

Facebook Retail Landgrab: Now Open for Business (3.0) October 30, 2007

Posted by David Petherick in : commerce, corporate blogs, digital biographer, facebook, social media ,

Facebook now has an even more useful application for Business - and a very simple one: you can now set up an online store to sell your business’ products or services to the 45 million+ people on Facebook.

Cleverly, it allows you to use the ecommerce solution you choose by simply allowing insertion of a payment button from your payment processor. There are 45 million Facebook users out there. I suggest you open up your retail space now - and do remember, this will also act as a name landgrab - I own the extension digitalbiographer - what should you own? The shop setup and rental is currently free…

A picture paints a thousand words: Profile photos arrive at LinkedIn September 27, 2007

Posted by David Petherick in : digital biographer, googlicious, linkedin, online identity, social media ,

LinkedIn, the business networking site, will tomorrow for the first time allow its members to upload their photographs to their profiles.

LinkedIn have announced that you can opt to have privacy of the image, and thus restrict its visibility to your connections, your network, or everyone, and also choose not to see others’ photos in a similar pattern. In addition there is also a cropping and centring tool to be made available to cut down large images to the ‘head and shoulders’ suitable for a profile photo.