Jed and I haven’t been blogging much because behind the scenes we have been researching and writing reports on Social Local Media business models. Those reports are now starting to come out and I am pleased to announce the publishing of “The Social Media Management Evolution,” our look at the rapidly growing industry devoted to …

This week I sat down with Matthew Goldman of ATTi  to explore how executives can better manage their companies’ reputations while Mike was busy moderating a panel at Mediabistro’s Socialize conference on developing real-world products at the intersection of mobile and social. Mike also told us Facebook reported reaching 250 million mobile active subscribers.
Jed told us …

This is the first in a series of interviews we will be doing with executives focused on Social Local Media
While much has been made of how social media is changing consumer behavior, advertisers are struggling to keep up with and make sense of this shiny new toy. Matthew Goldman is the executive director of product …

While we were recovering from ILM East this week, Google decided to unveil +1, the search engines answer to social networking. Not all were impressed. It’s about time, though. We have been waiting for months. While some industry experts suggest the symbol is Google’s answer to Facebook’s Like or Twitter’s tweet, I’m still digesting the …

Google launched +1 today, basically its answer to Facebook’s Like button. When you click on a “+1″ icon displayed on a URL, it shows up in Google search results when you are signed in. And if you have social connections within the Google empire (e.g., Gmail contacts) you will see which of your connections has …

I just stumbled onto a post (thanks Twitter!) from 2009 by Ross Mayfield, Co-Founder of SocialText, called The Social C.R.M. Iceberg.  It’s a long piece but Mayfield’s insights and anecdotes about how social engagement is empowering organizations is worth the time for any of you who are pondering your company’s social strategies.
Some excerpts to whet …

We had a big week at ILM East. The conference got under way with David Weinberger focusing on the use of social media by local businesses. In the post, Rick follows the keynote by Weinberger, the author and the senior researcher at Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Harvard University. Gail Goodman CEO at Constant …

Yipit’s presentation on Group Buying analytics this morning highlighted a high-performing daily deal from a Canadian butcher. Quite accidentally, I stumbled on some customers who didn’t like how the business had treated them and started slamming The Butchers on Yonge Street online.
One thing I have noticed about deal hunters — they are cranky and vocal. …

Liveblogging the social events panel at ILM East.
Kevin Hartz, the CEO and founder of Eventbrite, is speaking on how the ticket-selling service is riding social media to about $500,000,000 in ticket sales this year.
Hartz starts with a slide that shows how as algorithmic search matures, social discovery is growing rapidly. Eventbrite shows a similar trajectory. …

LivingSocial stepped up to the plate Thursday with the ultimate daily deal. On the blog this week, Peter tells us that for every $5 donated for Japan Relief to the U.S. Red Cross, LivingSocial will match it.
Social dominated much of the news this week. I looked at how Google slowly continues to reveal its social …

Jordan Muela pointed out a new Google Social Search feature showing up in the SERPs. As you can see from the screenshot Google appears to be asking searchers to link their Twitter profile to their Google profile by encouraging discovery of friends’ comments in the SERPs.

According to Aaron Wall of SEOBook, this is Google’s way …

James Moran of the daily deal aggregator Yipit presented this slide at SXSW on Monday and I thought it would be of interest to post it here:

Facebook just took the next step in its Facebook Deals service by announcing that it plans to test Groupon-like offers.

The service will get started in San Francisco, San Diego, Dallas, Atlanta, and Austin, Texas, the company said last week in a statement. It will be part of Facebook’s existing Deals program, which lets businesses offer specials to users. With …

On the blog this week, Mike B. covered the big news about Foursquare’s new app and introduced us to Lolay. Jed shared some thoughts about the deal between Bing and The Dealmap to aggregate deals while AT&T announced its own group buying platform as did The NY Times. Jed also answered some questions about social media data …

I first came across DemandForce because it was popping up in Google Maps a couple of years ago. DemandForce was started in 2003 by Rick Berry and Sam Osman to help dentists and auto shops market themselves online. Today, with more than 7,000 clients across a variety of local service verticals, it is a fast-growing …

On the blog this week, Mike B. noted that Google Hotpot had added new social features to Google Maps for Android, other platform to follow. Hotpot users can now tweet their GOOG Places ratings and reviews on Twitter, or ping nearby friends. And just to show how complicated the whole local world is getting, …

Not sure it’s the right audience, but this tweet by the Red Cross is now the top tweet for #TigerBlood.

I give them a Type A for creative use of current events to increase awareness.
Can your business ride @CharlieSheen to the top?

One of the slides we presented at last week’s Social Local webinar was from my Local Reviews Ecosystem post. We sped through it and given the brouhaha that has been bubbling up between Google and reviews sites like Yelp and TripAdvisor over the past year, I thought it might be of interest to repost it.

As …

This week we officially launched the new Social Local Media Continuous Advisory Service (SLM CAS for you acronym junkies). Thanks to the hundreds of you who joined our kick-off webinar yesterday. One of the topics we covered in the webinar was how to measure ROI from social media campaigns (always a good thing). This week we …

We’re discussing it on the Social Local Webinar today and Will Scott sent me this presentation on the subject
Likes to Leads – Actionable Social Media Analytics
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