Social Media At It’s Best In The US Presidential Race

I just got home and was clearing my Google Reader feeds, and Garr Reynolds over at Presentation Zen highlights words, music, images and the power of inspiration with this video featuring Will.I.Am of the Black Eyed Peas with a video mashup with a Barack Obama speech. You might also recognise Common, Harrold Perrineau, Kate Walsh, Eric Balfour, Shoshannah Stern and Amaury Nolasco among others.

Now I don’t claim to be following US politics, and the political flavour of the video is not what gets me. It’s the fact that if you ignore the fact that people in the video are celebrities, we’re living in a world where a group of friends can get together, record a simple video like this on an issue they’re passionate about, upload it on youtube, and get it watched 2 million times in less than a week.

And let’s not forget that this transcends all geographical boundaries. Garr Reynolds was alerted to it by people in Japan, and of course, this post comes from Singapore. I just think it’s amazing we can do all this right now, which would’ve been close to impossible just a few years ago.

Edit: in case anyone thinks this is limited to celebrities, here is another example:

Twenty One. Thousand. Views. In just four days.

Alternatives To Digg & Del.icio.us (No, Technorati Isn’t One Of Them)

Google Operating System posted this earlier this week about yet another aggregator called Readburner, which simply tallies up what’s most shared on Google Reader, and publishes them on it’s website. I’ve already subscribed to the feed, and so far, I like what I’m getting.

If Digg and Del.icio.us are a little to complicated and/or daunting for you (as I must admit, Del.icio.us still is for me), then this will probably be perfect.

And no, you can probably skip Technorati entirely, because not only it is really chaotic to navigate, but according to Steve Rubel at Micro Persuasion, 99% of pings on Technorati are spam. Observing the amount of spam pingbacks I’ve been getting on this very tiny blog alone, I’m inclined to agree. This, coupled with the fact that Technorati’s layout needs some serious work, definitely would suggest that you give it a miss, at least for now. There are other, easier ways to get into the whole social media scene, for observer and participant alike.

Google Reader Trends

 

I thought this was pretty interesting, so I thought I’d share it with you.Isn’t it insane? 671 items over 30 days. And for the last 2 weeks it’s been upwards of 40 items each day. It’s probably more when you count the sites that don’t have feeds (like the blogspot blogs and such) 

Edit: sorry I really wish I could put that full size and avoid clicking on it, but I ran into some sizing problems and this is the best I could do without installing Photoshop!!