29th March 2008: Social Media Breakfast: Singapore

If you use social media in any way (blog/podcast/use Youtube/use Flickr/use Facebook/etc), come for Social Media Breakfast: Singapore next Saturday, 29th of March 2008!

This is a little experiment that Derrick Kwa (from Adventures in Social Media #1) thought of doing, and was generous enough to invite me along for the ride. The objective of the breakfast is simply to meet like-minded people who are into the social media scene, expand your network and of course have fun. It doesn’t matter whether you’re interested in social media from a business standpoint or a social standpoint, everyone’s invited because you never know who you’d meet!

Currently Derrick and I have two rules:

1. Everyone’s equal. When it comes to Social Media Breakfast, there’s no difference if you’re a CEO or a student. Everyone has something of value to contribute and everyone should be treated that way
2. Law of Two Feet applies. If a particular conversation or discussion is not getting you what you want, feel free to move on.

Both are nods to PodCamp rules and we’re sure they’re not hard to follow!

Finally, we will be borrowing an idea from Jeff Pulver regarding personal tagging. I’ll let the man explain it himself:

The venue we’re looking at is either going to be TCC at SMU or Frujch. Either way it will be in the SMU area, so it’s pretty convenient. Also, because it’s our first time trying this out there are no sponsors involved, so you have to pay for your own breakfast and we hope that’s not too big a problem! We’ll clarify the final date and time within the week.

So if you’re coming, leave me a comment or drop me an email: uniquefrequencyATgmailDOTcom or message me on Twitter and we’ll see you on the 29th!

Twitter 201: Epilogue

I kept these till the end because I was toying with the idea of creating something like this, but decided I simply didn’t have the time. Here are 2 video guides to using Twitter. Enjoy!

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.

Twitter 102, Fighting Procrastination With Productivity

As a follow up to my Twitter 101 post, I came upon 2 articles featuring Twitter this week:

• Marketing Pilgrim has a pretty interesting article about how Twitter is used in the classroom:

Twitter is a way to record thoughts and ideas that you search – it’s a history
Twitter connects you to a larger world outside of the classroom and even the country
Students can follow people who do what they want to do or who they admire and get a sense for their job and life
Twitter can improve writing and punctuation

• ReadWriteReb also has an article on Twitter as a platform for serious discourse, mainly in the context of news.

There’s some controversy about the classroom article because the students in question are 6th Graders, and I think that’s fine. Let them be exposed to Twitter at an early age and all that. But more importantly, who’s going to teach people like us? I think I have 2 friends (in the similar age group) on Twitter, and unless that number grows to reap substantial network externalities, it’s hard to see that catching on.

Similar sentiments regarding news. Running a Campus Radio station, sometimes it is hard to get the most updated news. Wouldn’t that all change with Twitter? However, again, it depends on whether sufficient people are using it to highlight news, for anything to be really gained out of it.

Next up, if you’re someone who is guilty of procrastination (as I am), here is a free ebook by Fruitful Time called Stop Procrastination Now and here’s a guide to Lazy Productivity. I found them both to be pretty helpful.

Finally, if you were too lazy to check out Jaffe Juice #102 for the Scrabulous jingle, Ariah was kind enough to provide the youtube link, so watch it right here. Trust me, you won’t regret it.