Normally, my Mondays are less than entertaining. It usually consists of weekly planning and prioritizing, catching up on emails, wearing glasses (not contacts) and an afternoon cup of joe. However, today was different. As I was perusing my usual nerd blogs that I follow, I saw a post about how Rackspace’s servers went down. I didn’t really react because things like that happen once in a while, but this caught my eye:

Yep. That is what you think it is. Justin Timberlake made a sarcastic comment about Rackspace’s servers going down on TWITTER. It’s quite possibly one of the nerdiest things he’s done. It’s almost as though he’s actually a nerd? No, no, can’t be (but a girl can wish). Maybe I don’t give mainstream celebrities enough credit, but I’m surprised and impressed that Mister JT knew what a hosting company was. It just doesn’t seem like his thing, you know? Nonetheless, this whole incidence trivial incidence has made JT several notches cooler in my book.

When Rackspace’s servers were back up and running, he followed up his last tweet with this:

I <3 JT!

There’s more to social networking in a business environment that need to be accounted for and I’m so appreciative that Seth Godin has summed it up perfectly in his Q & A session video. We’ve all heard it a million times, but it’s about quality and not quantity of who is in your network. Unless you have a relationship with substance behind an alias or screen name, it’s all a facade – one that means little to pretty much nothing.

I love Godin’s reference to the internet as a “giant cocktail party.”

As I’m sure you all have noticed, Mac and PC are openly going head to head with each other through their branding efforts. It all started with the playful Mac commercials stereotyping PC users as being old-school and boring. However, the once playful and light-hearted commercial bits have left the building and seems to have joined forces with the dark side. In this Mac versus PC feud, it is Mac that appears to be making the direct and aggressive attacks against its opponent. What happened to the easy-going persona we all fell in awe with?

Before anyone starts to judge me for my seemingly pro PC entry, I want to put it on the table that I am neither pro PC or biased for one operating system over the other. I’ve grown up using Windows and truly opened my eyes to the experience of the Mac not too long ago. As I own both a PC and Mac, I couldn’t tell you which one I would prefer to own if I were in some hypothetical situation where I had to make a daunting decision to only own one. They each have their pros and cons, which makes it difficult to choose. This is why I own both – to get the best of both worlds. (You can have your cake and eat it too!) I’d go into more detail about which aspects of the operating systems give me butterflies in my stomach, but that would deserve an entire blog entry to itself. These are just my observations and surface-level thoughts. =)

Going back to what I was previously saying, Mac looks to be on the offense. It wasn’t until recently Microsoft decided to retaliate by defending their image by revealing that real PC users are diverse and don’t fit a stereotype or mold. And from what Mac’s most recent commercial, “Bake Sale” tells me, they don’t seem to be too pleased with it. Watch a few of their latest videos and see for yourself.

On the flip side, I think Microsoft is making a healthy effort. This video sums it up nicely.

I’m glad to see that Microsoft is finally being proactive about their brand management because they needed it. With Microsoft’s “The Real PC” campaign, you get to see a real human aspect of its users which is a very refreshing. Microsoft is also encouraging people to get involved in this effort by uploading your own PC videos, which could be selected to have aired on TV.

I find the whole Mac and PC rivalry highly entertaining and interesting. It’s something I’ll be watching closely to see how it all unravels.

If you’ve seen the awesome Linux Journal poster (seen below) and want one, here’s your chance. They’re giving away actual posters to those who submit a Mick Jagger impersonation video.

I had a ton of fun making this video and wanted to share. =)

While the idea of Social Media has become a fairly mainstream concept in the startup, internet and technology realm, it seems as though it is finally making an entrance in other industries. In other words, the value of leveraging various online tools such as social networking, social bookmarking, blogging, and etc. are receiving the acknowledgment they deserve for the tremendous amount of influence it can potentially spawn.

The following video below demonstrates and explains how Social Media plays an integral role in marketing and driving business.

An important lesson to note about Social Media is keeping in mind and paying attention to how it is utilized to enhance marketing within the business scope. Many times, I’ve noticed that people place too much effort and weight on tactics. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not undermining the value of any tactical execution because it’s arguably a necessary component of any successful marketing attempt, but there’s more to maximizing Social Media tools than just posting a video onto YouTube, creating an email campaign, writing a few blog entries and submitting a couple of articles to Digg. It’s vital to be aware that each Social Media tool has its own unique personality, environment and sense of community. What this means is that as a modern day marketer, you need to understand the culture of each Social Media micro-world to see how involvement with it will ultimately affect your business marketing goals. You want to know why partaking in some type of Social Media will move you closer to your goal, so that you have the knowledge to do other things to help achieve the aim.

I view Social Media as if it were a watch. It has many moving parts, with gears of different shapes and sizes but each that have their own purpose to tell time. Some gears work more than others, but if one gear breaks, big or small, the entire time-telling breaks as well. In Social Media management, you’re going to find that some tools have a greater value to your operation (which is a-OK) and the beauty of this is to find a balance in all of it. The objective is to effectively listen to and monitor your target audience and cater to what they want and looking for. You need to formulate a Social Media campaign that makes sense to your audience and the people you want to reach out too. Translation: Each Social Media campaign will be unique for every company.

I can’t tell you which Social Media tools are great and worthy, because frankly they’re all good in their own right (and new ones are sprouting daily). But I will share with you that an effective Social Media campaign will be one that fosters a pleasant user experience that provides all the stuff (information, links, videos, online gadgets, advice, podcasts, blogs, people and etc) that they’re looking for and might be interested in all readily and easily available.

Social Media management isn’t about managing your audience, but managing the tools to fit what your audience needs and wants.

Now that we live in a highly sophisticated world of saavy internet users, it’s faux pas for companies and organizations to not incorporate modern marketing strategies along with their traditional marketing methods.

How exciting – Natuba and TechCrunch finally crossed paths! It really is a great photo sharing site, although I have to admit my Natuba experience could probably be a lot cooler if I had an iPhone. It does some fun stuff that my Treo is unable to do. I have two options – 1) be content or 2) give in to the iPhone. I think most people would encourage the latter. =p

Bubblevine is a project I have been working on for a while now and it’s very exciting to have it go live!

The idea for Bubblevine came about at the end of my junior year in college when I noticed how much stuff (perfectly good stuff) was being thrown away all because students didn’t know what to do with it since they couldn’t take it home with them. Walking down the halls of various dorm buildiings, it was fairly common to see piles of bookshelves, lamps, TVs, bean bags, toasters, futons and other items by the dumpster. I remember thinking to myself that there must be hundreds of kids on campus that need stuff like this to furnish their apartment and dorm room. This is the magical moment where I decided to start my own little project to create a website that fosters a campus community where college students can buy stuff and sell stuff with one another.

There is also one other reason I felt inclined to pursue Bubblevine, and that’s safety. Before there was any other alternative, most students resorted to Craigslist. Although the site works, the downfall to it is that you have no idea who’s house you’ll be going to pick up the bargain deal, what their neighborhood is like, how far the place is in relation to you (until you Google it) and the flip-side, you have no knowledge about the person who will be coming to your doorstep to pick something up. During my college years, my experience with Craigslist has been less than awesome – and I’ve had several. There are two specific instances I vividly remember. The first one was when I thought I found a great deal on a TV. It wasn’t too far from me, so I said, “why not?” Not being a San Antonio native, I naively drove into a pretty sketchy part of town. I came out OK, but sometimes I question if it was really worth it. Another not so great experience was when I drove out to the other side of the city for a dinky desk. = All of this could have been avoided had something like Bubblevine existed. I would’ve appreciated a tool like it while I was in school, because there was probably someone a few streets down or even next door who would have been more than willing to sell me their stuff.

On a different note, the site is currently open to a few schools, but once it gains a little more popularity we’ll expand the list.

Here are a couple of videos to watch:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAX1JBY-8Jc]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxQzf1rJe3Y]

If you have any ideas or suggestions on how to promote, feel free to contact me. =)

I’m surprised that the issue of cell phone users with recycled phone numbers being inundated with text messages sent from the Facebook website has only just recently surfaced. I can vividly remember when Facebook launched its new profile text message updating feature because I had a couple of friends who were all over it. Every so often (more like every half an hour), someone’s phone would beep or ring, notifying them of the new wall post by Jane or that Bob just had poked him. It seemed like a good idea at first to have Facebook readily available no matter where you were (and I guess it still is if you’re into that), but only if you’re keeping up with your account. Knowing the nature of young internet users, I had a feeling that this text messaging service would get out of hand. Why? Well, there are many reasons:

• Facebook users LOVE to write on each other’s wall and update their profiles (almost obsessively)
• There are approximately 60 million Facebook users
• It’s always fun to try out a new feature

When you have millions of teenager wall-posting fiends constantly making edits to their own profiles, as well as their friends’, at all hours of the day (I’m guessing peak hours would be anywhere from 4 PM – 2 AM), imagine how many text messages are being sent out in a day? week? a month? That’s a lot of texts. I don’t know what percentage of Facebook users actually have their online account and phone synced, regardless, a lot of texts are flying out. 1% of the 60 million users is even a pretty big number.

It’s good to know that Facebook will be regulating and monitoring their phone number database a little more closely now. It would really be annoying to receive random Facebook updates about people you don’t know and then NOT have the ability to make them stop. Not sure if this is possible, but it would be neat if the Facebook website could detect a phone number being recycled and when it does, have the messaging feature automatically disable. There are other methods I’m sure, but those are my two cents.

It’s not uncommon for everyone to have their own blog, youtube, myspace, flickr and facebook accounts – if anything, it’s very normal. However, have you noticed that these different sites were created to help you and your friends keep track of each other,  but it’s gotten to a point where it’s nearly impossible to do so? Yeah – there are just too many online accounts! Let’s say the average internet user has 5 online accounts and you have 5 friends (although I’m sure you have significantly greater friend pool than that). That’s already 25 different pages you have to regularly check to see if any updates have been made. CRAZY! So, what’s the solution?

Natuba! It’s a website that will compile and aggregate all the updates from your myspace, flickr, rss feeds, youtube and other online accounts all onto one page. That way, rather than giving out 20 or so different URLs to your friends, you can give them one single link. Voila! Simple. Not only will this save you the hassle of typing each link out, it’ll also save you from that feeling of hesitation when you’re faced with the temptation of signing up for a new account.

I had a ton of invites to give away, but they’re updating the site and will reopen soon. Once I get a hold of more invites, I’ll be sure to write another updated post!