Here I am banging on about earning love on the internet but being swept up in the chaos that is a career change, I’ve had little time to reflect on the beauties of the WWW.

So apologies for for 4 month hiatus. I’m going to kickstart this baby again but focus on digital media in politics. Be back soon.

If you combine the coverage of Facebook and Twitter – the two have been receiving more coverage than Iraq in recent weeks. See full story here

Facebook and Twitter v Irag

I’m not surprised by the low engagement ratings he’s accorded to Aussie Twitterers.

One of the trends I’m seeing pretty frequently in my current gig is the “let’s whack on some social media so we tackle the online space too” mentality. For me, brands that tack on a “social media strategy” are not interested in having a meaningful conversation with the online population. I’d like to see the term social media strategy completely erased from the digital-marketing lexicon. Strategy implies plenty of behind the scenes planning, statistics, numbers, research and an element of deceit too. It’s also a bit demeaning. I hate the idea of someone sitting behind a 22-inch LCD screen monitoring my online interactions and compiling huge dossiers on what people my age group are talking about. Brands should just catapult themselves into the conversation because if they really and truly want to be part of the discussion, it’s got to be as natural as possible.

So please just drop the strategy and jump headfirst into the space. Learn, learn, learn and make it a long term thing. That way, you’ll earn our respect too.

Check out Myngle – it’s essentially a marketplace for languages where students and teachers can virtually connect and determine whether it’s worthwhile to begin an online language course.

Users employ Skype for video conference tutoring and the site is fully transactional with payment for lessons
processed by PayPal.

The Open Platform provides a suite of services that makes it possible for partners to build applications with the Guardian.

What this means is that third party developers can repurpose content from the Guardian and push it out beyond the Guardian website.

Some of the applications in development mode;

Stamen Design created a crowdsourced news geotagger using OpenStreetMap. Anyone can select Guardian articles and add place tags using their tool. You’ll be able to view a map and see a series of pinpoints which will correlate to specific stories.

Zemanta is a content analysis service that can create links to the open web when you give it text. They created a beautiful search utility that maps related links off Guardian articles to sites like wikipedia, imdb, last.fm

I’m completely enamoured by Zemanta. It’s perfect for anyone compiling research from various media sources.

Type a search term and it’ll suggest relevant tags, links, photos, and related articles. Here’s a screenshot of a quick search on Jade Goody (refrain from laughing please!)

Check out the demo here.

Mashable brought Maggiano’s Twitter feed to my attention. Maggiano offered the chance to win a $100 gift certificate. To be in the running, all Twitterers had to do was tweet “Follow @Maggianos by 5pm CST to be entered to win $100 in Maggiano’s gift certificates.”

During the promotion, Maggiano’s followers increased by 2,000.

Talk about an extremely easy way to get in touch with existing customers, as well as prospective ones.

I’d love to see smaller businesses implement their own Twitter strategy. It’s blatant, invasive, viral but hugely effective, provided you keep at it.

Can you imagine Tuchuzy?

tuchuzy new AA stock, call us now on XXXX XXXX
tuchuzy sale begins today, extended trading hours

And taking inspiration from the above;

tuchuzy – win $200 voucher, tweet “Follow @ Tuchuzy by 5pm to win $200 voucher”

Earlier this month, I was assigned a project – to develop a fact sheet on the top 15 social bookmarking tools and websites.

For the uninitiated, here’s a convenient definition ripped from Wikipedia.

“Social bookmarking is ‘a method for Internet users to store, organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web pages on the Internet’”.

Some of these sites have caught my attention because they’ve pushed the line that they’re democratizing news – a different kind of democratization that MM referred to when speaking about Yahoo’s newswire function.

So on the one hand Yahoo is promoting the democratization of news through free & open access.

And on the other, sites like Reddit, NewsVine and Mixx allow users to determine what makes the front page by way of the popular vote (or in this case, the click!). Democracy in action.

Some commentators have lamented the loss of the journalist -gatekeeper function but I don’t see fourth-estate journalists losing out. The credible, substantiated, fact-checked stories still have to come from somewhere. It’s just publication, circulation and the end user experience that will continue to evolve.

Thankfully, sites like Polyvore and Chictopia bring this conversation to life on my screen and allow me to indulge and to live vicariously.

Part of me feels like these sites validate this hobby of mine because there are hundreds of thousands of users actively involved in the
discussion. The red faced embarrassment pales pretty quickly when questioned over my hobby;

“Just look at the site stats and the activity!

Case in point, Polyvore launched in 2007. Today it has 600,000 registered users and 2.5 million unique visitors per month.

There are 22 page views on average per visit and users spend an average of 10 minutes on the site.

Anyway here’s a rundown of Polyvore and Chictopia - two sites that bring my closeted closet conversations online (and to life, ironically)

Polyvore

Polyvore gives free rein

Chictopia

Open yourself up to criticism

My thinking took on a political turn though, after the kerfuffle Twitter caused in the South Australian parliament and the US Congress.

Keeping in mind our local pollies have to balance their representative, legislative and parliamentary roles, Twitter can be a simple yet effective way of keeping electorates in the loop about what you’re up to.

At the end of the day, you’re only worth what your electorate thinks of you and I think Twitter has the capacity to humanise our local politicians – to essentially make them much more likeable.

It certainly worked for Demi and Ashton.