We have definitely hit the age of participatory media.  Old mass media is very sick and broadcast methods of interruption marketing have gone from annoying to impotent, but I don’t agree with the idea that mass media will die.  It will be re-engineered like all industries must in this time of change.

According to the loud mouths in the media, the birth of TV was supposed to kill radio.  Then cable TV was supposed to kill standard TV.  Then VCR home recording was supposed to kill visits to movie theaters.  Now the internet and video games are supposed to kill TV.  It’s just more ‘look, the sky is falling’ hoo-hah.  (And any opportunity to use the word ‘hoo-hah’ is one I’ll take because it’s fun to say.)

Even newspapers will never die.  The industries of the past are crumbling and newspaper subscriptions will continue declining, but they’ll always be around in some fashion.

That said, the era of participatory media is in full force.  It was a babe when blogs and YouTube hit the scene, but  now it’s how young people get most of their news.

As generation Y is poised to dominate the population in a few years, all communication and business marketing methods are shifting to two-way or multi-channel platforms like blogs and Twitter.  Gone are the days where advertisers could win the day by shouting unwanted messages to an unsuspecting public or when you had to wait until TV told you what was happening in your world.

I’s all about community, transparency, trust agents, authenticity and tribes.  Although, for now the signal to noise ratio is still way off as old school people and companies still try to use new multi-channel platforms to broadcast obnoxious marketing messages no one wants without being genuine contributors to conversations people are looking to have.  If they aren’t helping, they’re hurting.  But they’ll learn, or they’ll die.

On another note, you probably remember the famous “Wassup” superbowl commercial in 2000.  What you may not know is that is was originally a short film done by a college student and then Budweiser hired him to remake it into a commercial with beer.

Watch the original ad below and the follow up to it in 2008 with the same actors.  Note how this user generated content (UGC) powerfully conveys information about how the world changed in eight years.  Then think about how much information you’ve learned in the last week or month from UGC videos, blog posts, Twitter tweets and other sources.  It’s a brave new world.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I just read a London Telegraph article mistitled “The Social Media Revolution is Going Nowhere.” It included statements like

No wonder the company has yet to make any money, while Facebook, too, has yet to deliver on its financial potential. None of this is to say, of course, that the internet hasn’t had a profound impact on individuals, companies and interactivity – but the fact that typical Twitter users are older than initially believed means that businesses will need to rethink how they use it.

I wrote the following comment to the article and felt it was worth reposting here:

The trouble with this, and so many other articles on Twitter, is that it’s a myopic view. There are so many different valuable ways that social media is being used and opening previously closed doors of connection and collaboration.

Have you watched the latest viral video on what’s happening right now with social media? http://bit.ly/11gDZC

Yes, 40% or more of what’s on Twitter is babble. So follow people who provide the signal you want and unfollow the noise. Isn’t what traditional media gives us arguably 40% or more babble and nonsense? That’s part of why more people choose not to give so much time to traditional media. If you don’t choose your friends and co-workers wisely isn’t 40% of what they talk about just babble? When humans communicate it’s never 100% valuable content.

As far as the ‘tips’ at the end of the article, they’re in the same vein of all ‘tips’ given for social media. They all boil down to ‘don’t be an idiot and use online communication and relationships with the same common sense way you handle your offline relationships.’ ‘Duh.’

Something people miss a lot in trying to cover this space is that it’s a ‘both/and’ proposition to traditional media and offline communication tools. It’s not ‘either the old way or the new way.’ There are times where each is helpful and they compliment each other like allopathic medicine and alternative medicine.

The perspective that social media has to be judged as better or worse than other ways of connecting is a false starting point that leads to more false opinions based on limited information and even less experience using the tools.

I’m guessing that the author of the article and the authors of the negative comments are not daily social media users. When you’re using these tools regularly you tap into their worth and understand as well experience the personal and professional benefits of using social media.

Socialnomics has put together a video driving home the reality of how social media is fundamentally shifting how we communicate, connect and consume culture in the 21st century.  Share it with anyone who tells you that social media is a fad, technology is isolating people rather than facilitating face-to-face meetings, or that Twitter is stupid.

One of the most significant shifts that social media is driving is the spirit of collaboration rather than competition in some business spaces and in intellectual property systems.  These are both driving scalable innovations that will benefit everyone.  What you don’t know won’t hurt you, but it will leave you in the dust as life moves forward with amazing changes.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Stats from Video (sources listed below by corresponding #)

1. By 2010 Gen Y will outnumber Baby Boomers….96% of them have joined a social network
2. Social Media has overtaken porn as the #1 activity on the Web
3. 1 out of 8 couples married in the U.S. last year met via social media
4. Years to Reach 50 millions Users:  Radio (38 Years), TV (13 Years), Internet (4 Years), iPod (3 Years)…Facebook added 100 million users in less than 9 months…iPhone applications hit 1 billion in 9 months.
5. If Facebook were a country it would be the world’s 4th largest between the United States and Indonesia
6. Yet, some sources say China’s QZone is larger with over 300 million using their services (Facebook’s ban in China plays into this)
7. comScore indicates that Russia has the most engage social media audience with visitors spending 6.6 hours and viewing 1,307 pages per visitor per month – Vkontakte.ru is the #1 social network
8. 2009 US Department of Education study revealed that on average, online students out performed those receiving face-to-face instruction
9. 1 in 6 higher education students are enrolled in online curriculum
10. % of companies using LinkedIn as a primary tool to find employees….80%
11. The fastest growing segment on Facebook is 55-65 year-old females
12. Ashton Kutcher and Ellen Degeneres have more Twitter followers than the entire populations of Ireland, Norway and Panama
13. 80% of Twitter usage is on mobile devices…people update anywhere, anytime…imagine what that means for bad customer experiences?
14. Generation Y and Z consider e-mail passé…In 2009 Boston College stopped distributing e-mail addresses to incoming freshmen
15. What happens in Vegas stays on YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook…
16. The #2 largest search engine in the world is YouTube
17. Wikipedia has over 13 million articles…some studies show it’s more accurate than Encyclopedia Britannica…78% of these articles are non-English
18. There are over 200,000,000 Blogs
19. 54% = Number of bloggers who post content or tweet daily
20. Because of the speed in which social media enables communication, word of mouth now becomes world of mouth
21. If you were paid a $1 for every time an article was posted on Wikipedia you would earn $156.23 per hour
22. Facebook USERS translated the site from English to Spanish via a Wiki in less than 4 weeks and cost Facebook $0
23. 25% of search results for the World’s Top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content
24. 34% of bloggers post opinions about products & brands
25. People care more about how their social graph ranks products and services  than how Google ranks them
26. 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations
27. Only 14% trust advertisements
28. Only 18% of traditional TV campaigns generate a positive ROI
29. 90% of people that can TiVo ads do
30. Hulu has grown from 63 million total streams in April 2008 to 373 million in April 2009
31. 25% of Americans in the past month said they watched a short video…on their phone
32. According to Jeff Bezos 35% of book sales on Amazon are for the Kindle when available
33. 24 of the 25 largest newspapers are experiencing record declines in circulation because we no longer search for the news, the news finds us.
34. In the near future we will no longer search for  products and services they will find us via social media
35. More than 1.5 million pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) are shared on Facebook…daily.
36. Successful companies in social media act more like Dale Carnegie and less like David Ogilvy Listening first, selling second
37. Successful companies in social media act more like party planners, aggregators, and content providers than traditional advertiser

If you still don’t understand what social media is this will help:

Click here to view the embedded video.

On most Tuesday nights I volunteer with SnapImpact on making an iPhone app called iVolunteer (see the app on the lower right corner of this blog) to help you find local volunteer opportunities.  More than 50 people have contributed in some way to this project.  One thing I love is that our ages range from early 20′s to late 60′s which reflect very different perceptions.

Last night I was talking with a product marketer in his 60′s who is just starting to look at getting on Facebook and Twitter because his kids are encouraging him to do it.  He was asking me about how Twitter is helpful to businesses and I remembered a big generational lap I’ve seen in how we frame the value of social media.

After I explained the revolutionary aspect of easily and exponentially building relationships with customers and targeted people his response was, “but what company has the time to do that?”  To which my response was, “What company doesn’t have time to do better customer service and build loyalty and lifetime value with their customers?”

This is a key hurdle for many companies to jump.  When you see how Zappos, Comcast, Dell, small design firms and others are exploding their businesses with social media you see a few examples of how dozens of companies are creating loyalty.  It’s not hundreds or thousands yet because most companies still don’t ‘get’ it.

We’re moving out of a broadcast (telling) marketing environment into a relationship (listening and then sharing) marketing environment.  This is very hard for bigger, older, traditional companies and industries to understand.  So when they see these new tools they’re still thinking in old ways and trying to use them in old ways that are ineffective and counterproductive.

In the 80′s we began complaining that the promise of technology giving us more leisure time was a myth.  What people aren’t seeing today is that social networking is solving that problem, or at least getting much more benefit from our time, by creating more frequent connections to people around the world.

Twitter facilitates more in real life connections with people in your tribe than monthly networking events ever hoped for.  Facebook allows people to share personal updates with hundreds of friends in a split second.  YouTube allows us to learn from TED videos without attending the conference. Personal blogs allow people get deeper understanding of your personal and professional talents.  And there are many other benefits to these and the dozens of other social networking sites.

I’m teaching unemployed people how to find job leads and communicate with HR directors and C level executives through Twitter.  This was not possible 3 years ago.  Social media will evolve into tools that help companies design product offerings based on direct consumer requests instead of unscientific market research in the future.

The flow has shifted.  It’s time to learn how to befriend customers and treat them like citizens rather than broadcast messages about your product’s greatness to them like sheepish consumers. Companies will soon learn to engage with their audience on a peer level or they will be out of business.

So you finally got on Twitter and feel like you have nothing worthwhile to say.  You’re not alone.  I have clients asking me what to say on Twitter all the time.

First off, you really are more interesting than you think.  Just as you’re harder on your physical appearance than others are, you’re harder on what makes you cool too.

Secondly, tweeting (typing and broadcasting up to 140 characters) is like public speaking.  The #1 sin is to bore your audience.  Tweet what you find entertaining or informative and you’ll be adding value to the Twittersphere.

Here are the Top Ten ways to dive deeper into the Twitter conversation:

1.  Follow interesting people and do what they do. If the people you follow on Twitter aren’t educating and informing you then  search out the people who do.  I follow moms, CEO’s, entrepreneurs and high school kids that I learn from and share with.

See what types of conversations you respond to.  If something makes you smile or laugh, it will make other people feel good too.  Start or join those conversations.

2. Become a more conscious observer. Whenever you hear a funny response in your head to something you just saw or heard or felt tweet that.  Again, if it amuses or informs you it will have the same affect on others and they’ll appreciate your sharing it.

3. Comment on current events. If it’s in the news or your friends are talking about it that means people are interested in that topic right now.  Use Twitter Search to see the Top Ten trending topics people are tweeting about at any given moment.

You probably have a unique perspective on things that are happening.  Maybe not and you truly are the most boring person alive, but I doubt it.  Boring people aren’t interested in connecting on Twitter.

4. Write like you’re talking to your best friend after having 2 glasses of wine. This one is tricky.  Tweeting while intoxicated isn’t always a great idea since what’s funny while drunk isn’t always funny when you’re sober, but sharing authentic thoughts is a great way to attract interest.

5. Comment on other conversations. It’s much easier to join a conversation than to start one.  If you have insight or experience or an opionion (and who doesn’t?) then tweet it.

6. Ask questions. People on Twitter love to help.  If you’re having trouble with work, computers, parenting, your car, whatever, mention it.  I had a Time Machine backup problem and @bldngnerd even created a Camtasia video to help me out because it was easy for him.  Now I’m giving him props every time I teach people about Twitter.

7. If it makes you emotional tweet it.  When something makes you pissed off, laugh, cry, vent to your friends or causes celebration in your heart it’s going to connect with others.

8. Link to content you like. Always add a personal comment, but tweet links to blog posts, news articles, YouTube videos, TED talks, this blog post, or any other online content you browse and find value in.

9. Send appreciation to others. Everyone wants to be noticed, understood and acknowledged.  When you read a tweet that moves you reply publicly to that person.

10. Tweet what has your attention. Mention great books, films, TV shows, sporting events, concerts, theater shows, conferences and events that you like.

If you still can’t find ways to add value to the Twittersphere then let me know and I’ll consider starting an annual award for the World’s Most Boring Person and add you as the first nominee.

Ironically as I help companies and professionals to build and manage their brands I’m undergoing a personal re-branding.  Later in the post I’ll go into why you need to pay attention to your personal branding. Now I’ll fill you in on how this post came to be.

A few days ago I began the process of being called “Brett” instead of “Sopan.”  Fifteen years ago I went through the same process but in reverse with the names.  I legally added “Sopan” as my first name thinking it suited more of who I was and who I wanted to be.

As I am increasingly working with very high level professionals it seems more fitting to have a name that’s easier for people to pronounce.  It’s also nice to not have to spell and re-pronounce my name every time I introduce myself.

Sopan is a unique name and therefore a good memorable brand.  But judging by the same confused look I get every time people hear it for the first time, and the high frequency of times it’s mispronounced, it has drawbacks also.

When I was a radio DJ I was told that “Brett Greene” sounded strong and sexy like “James Bond.”  Whether that’s true or not, hearing it from a beautiful girl gives the memory weight in going back to that name.  Strong and sexy are good characteristics for any personal or professional brand.

The best comments to this change so far have been:

“Puff Daddy went through it too. From Puff Daddy to P Diddy to Sean Combs and back to Puff Daddy!  No big deal!”

“Don’t worry about the name thing.  Prince went through this too and everyone liked it better.”

“What – no more ‘You don’t mess with the Sopan?”

“It doesn’t matter what you’re called.  What matters is what you answer to.”

So why does this matter to you?  Because it’s the 21st century and your personal brand will help you to sink or swim professionally.

If I have two candidates for a position and one of them has an interesting blog, insightful tweets on a Twitter account and a strong LinkedIn profile (which few know how to create) then I’m hiring that person.

A resume and good interview skills aren’t enough to get a great job these days.

The same goes for people I’m going to hire.  I’ll hire the person who is powerfully presenting themselves as an expert over the person who doesn’t even have a basic website.  This isn’t just me, this is reality now.

We live in a time of radical transparency which I love because it makes bullshit a lot harder to hide.

When you fly your flag you’ll attract your tribe and connect with more and more people internationally that will contribute to your personal and professional lives.  It’s a great time to be alive and the best time ever to be in communication online.

People live online and often get to know about new friends and business associates through social networking and new media.  If you’re not swimming in this pool, which means being in the conversation, not just putting up a profile, then you’re not in the game.

Like it or not you are a brand.  If you don’t get this then I invite you to read this Fast Company aritcle on “The Brand Called You” and Dan Shawbel’s Personal Branding Blog to get up to speed.

What is your personal brand?  Who do you want people to think you are when they Google you or when they say or hear your name?

Are your unique gifts, talents and expertise on display where people can learn about them? What are you doing today to build and manage both your personal and professional brands?

Asking these questions today will affect the results in your life for many tomorrows to come.

Click here to view the embedded video.

In the year leading up to this talk, the web tool Twitter exploded in size (up 10x during 2008 alone).  Twitter co-founder Evan Williams reveals that many of the ideas driving that growth came from unexpected uses invented by the users themselves.

As of today Twitter has jumped to 8 million users – a 33% increase over last month.  FaceBook is up to over 175 million users.

To understand the significance of this major shift in influence, lets reflect on  what it’s taken in the past for traditional media to grow.

To get to 50,000,000 users it took radio 38 years and TV 13 years.  To reach the same numbers of users with new media it’s taken computers 4 years, the ipod 3 years and FaceBook only 2 years!

…and today we’re not even going to get into the power of user generated content fueling their exponential growth, interest and viral marketing capabilities.

It’s Wednesday morning and I’ve already attended a Tweetup with about 20 people, the first Boulder Beer and Blog (both of which I learned about on Monday on Twitter) and the biweekly Boulder Open Coffee Club .

I’ve also missed the first Boulder Denver New Tech meetup held in Denver and the latest iVolunteer meetup. Tonight I’ll attend IgniteBoulder .  On Friday morning I’ll be at the Boulder New Media Breakfast. Friday night I’m stopping by the iPhone Dev Camp for iPhone application developers.

Who says technology is alienating people?  It must be people not using technology or people who don’t like connecting with people.

The mission of Meetup.com is “to revitalize local community and help people around the world self-organize. Meetup believes that people can change their personal world, or the whole world, by organizing themselves into groups that are powerful enough to make a difference.”

In these meetups you’ll find yourself meeting interesting people and having conversations that you’d otherwise never have.  They give you a pulse on your community and professional industry that you can’t get anywhere else because it’s much bigger than meeting up with a few friends or colleagues.  This is the case whether the focus is wine tasting, hiking or technology.

While Meetup.com is an amazing social networking tool that helps to facilitate over 2,000 groups in  local communities, what’s even cooler is that local groups and individuals are going beyond Meetup.com’s model.

With Twitter people are spontaneously saying “I’ll be at this place at this time if anyone wants to meet up” to set up a meetup with anyone on Twitter in the area.

There’s also the power of Facebook to reconnect us with old friends which isn’t any less valuable than the face to face meetings created through Twitter, Meetup and grass roots meetings organized by just throwing up a wiki or a website and emailing friends about the event.

Podcamps, barcamps and unconferences are even better than Meetups.  You get together on a Friday night and figure out the groups interests for topics to cover on Saturday and anyone in the group may end up being a presenter.  Many versions of podcamps are popping up because you just pick a topic and invite people to tell their friends and show up.

I’m very inspired by how people are coming together to create community, to do charity work and to support each other.  It can’t just be my community that’s doing this.  Maybe this was happening five years ago and I just didn’t know about it, but today there’s an amazing fire spreading that’s bringing people together in great ways.

Check out Meetup.com today to see what’s going on in your neck of the woods and if there isn’t a group already started to cater to your interests then start one and get in on the fun.

Yesterday I had the pleasure of being interviewed on BlogTalk Radio for the Secrets of Her Success show.  The topic was sharing secrets and shortcuts to Twitter success.

In an hour we covered a lot of ground that will hopefully be helpful to newbies and Twitter veterans alike.

Click here to listen to the show.

Darcy Volden Hoag, the host of Secrets to Her Success, has worked with Joe Vitale, Bob Doyle and other internet marketing stars in creating and implementing business coaching programs for internet marketers and online businesses.  It was great to talk with someone who has a strong internet marketing background about social media tips that are helpful for everyone.

This was the first time I’ve been interviewed specifically about Twitter and how people can get the most value out of it.  I’m glad that anyone can listen to this at their leisure to get a deeper understanding of the power of Twitter.

In the future I’ll be doing more talks on social media strategy to help you build a powerful and authentic online presence.  They’ll be posted here so watch for them.

If you have questions on social media or influence related topics you’d like to hear more about let me know and we’ll do some talks on them for you.

As the old phrase “technology is killing face to face communication because everyone is buried in a computer or mobile device” continues to be spoken by some, it simply doesn’t ring true for people who are actually using social networking sites.

Yesterday we saw a stunning example of this in Australia with emotional tweets bringing people together through the disaster of the major brushfires they experienced.  How do you not have a visceral feeling reading: @Ingenue_Em: “I’m crying over the #bushfires – how can whole towns be decimated? Over 100 souls lost now, could be up to 200.”

That’s the power of 140 characters of text read by friends and strangers alike.  Anyone who has a pulse, and didn’t work in the Bush administration during Hurricane Katrina, will feel a connection and empathy reading tweets like that.  And because Twitter is both instant and international people near and far were able to connect and help each other.

It’s interesting to read the the ABCNews.com article on this to see how traditional media is following social media because no news outlet has enough reporters to be on the scene of an unfolding event, but citizens with cell phones and Twitter accounts are everywhere now.  Old and new media are converging to give us the best of both worlds.

On a similar yet different note, on Thursday, February 12 over 175+ cities around the world will be hosting Twestivals – meet ups for people on Twitter to tweet, meet and give.  For $10 you meet up with others on Twitter, get a free drink and raise money for clean water charity.  Visit www.Twestival.com for details on the city nearest you.

Here’s why this is a must attend event:

• On 12 February 2009 175+ cities around the world will be hosting Twestivals.
• The events are raising money for charity and the chosen charity is clean water.
• The Twestival is organized by volunteers who twitter and 100% of the money goes to charity.
• It all started in London under the idea of drinking and socializing and doing good for others.
• It was mainly organized in less than two weeks using Twitter.
• 1.1 billion people don’t have access to clean drinking water. 1/6 of the world. 80% of all sickness starts here.