Barak Obama, newly elected president of the United States of America, used Web 2.0 to his advantage in the 2008 US election race. He has also been called the first president of social media. He blew away a portion of the US voting market that John McCain didn’t make even the slightest impression on. It’s amazing what social media actually did for Obama’s campaigning. The extent to which he gained exposure across numerous popular social networks was, without a doubt, the reason his message was delivered to more US citizens than he could have ever reached through merely touring the country and giving speeches.

I found out about Twitter search from Seth Godin’s blog. I had been shooting the breeze with Twitterfox before that. In blissful ignorance, I was oblivious of the existence of the twitter.com sub-domain, with a search prompt that allows anyone, Twitter member or not , to search through all public tweets using keywords in the age-old search engine style.

The search portal gives users advanced filtering similar to that of larger search engines, with ‘advanced search’ that allows one to specify date ranges, chosen sets of keywords, language, twitter members, referenced twitter members and location.

Seth Godin wrote that we should “think twice before buying SEO services from a general purpose ad agency”. He analogised this with getting a hammer specialist to do your nail work, rather than hiring an artisan in general handicrafts.

In his post scrutinising Google`s interest in buying TV ad space, he says that he feels it a mistake to add too many tools to your belt. He claims that “By diversifying their toolset, they’ll get less good at their core skill”.

This is a topic very close to my heart, as I believe that SMO, ORM and SEO are all interlinked and need to be used together to benefit the client. As an account manager, I always try to ensure that my clients are fully aware of what each of the services entail, how they complement each other and how the combination of these can rocket your marketing efforts sky high.

Social TNT blogger, Christopher Lynn, posed the question of blog posts. In his scenario, a stressed exec would facilitate the writing of posts, or commenting on forums, or monitoring of Twitter or Friendfeed, in his or her absence, and later return to add flavour to the work. Public response to the proposal was generally negative, as it would be dishonest without full disclosure. An honest CEO would add, “Written by CEO and Second in Command”, or something like that, to the finished work.

Picture Credit: Toothpaste for Dinner

Viral marketing has proven to be very successful for many online companies, so long as they get it right. That`s the trick though: to get it right. There are many reasons why viral marketing can sometimes hit the mark, and will at other times slither into underground territory where no one takes any notice of it. Finding the right playing field can be tricky, but once you`ve correctly targeted and researched your market, your viral campaign should be set to go. Only the right target market will catch on to the intent of the campaign, so double check that you are distributing/introducing it into the appropriate social community.

Social Media has positioned itself as one of the most unrestricted forms of online communication to emerge over the last couple of years. It allows members of different communities who have similar interests to participate in conversations with experts and fellow industry affiliates to discuss a variety of topics, which span thousands of issues among the various communities.

I think the underlying principle that applies to the success of social network friendly media is that something can always be designed to appeal to a chosen set of people; talent not required.

It`s about as easy to carve a given concept permanently into peoples` minds as it is to shoot comatose fish in their respective barrels, especially with the free technology available today.

Anything that manages to stimulate the senses, has some power over the sensor. Stimulation has to be interpreted, and human kind will often show off talent for total misapprehension, and louse up the message.

Some people don`t like short stories; they think that they don`t tell a complete tale and that the 10 or 15 minutes it takes to read them are a waste of time. I love short stories. I think that there is a lot to be said for brevity, plus it`s very convenient to be able to read a complete story in the time it takes for supper to cook or your better half to finish reading the news on the net. Some enterprising individuals have taken short stories to the extreme, however, as Ryan Paul reports in Ars Technica. These people are using microblogging services - Twitter and Identi.ca - to write short stories in episodes to 140 characters or less. Matt Richtel, a writer for the New York Times, is a pioneer in this field and has dubbed his project “Twiller” writing, as in a cross between thriller and Twitter writing.

A couple of weeks ago it looked very much as if Google would acquire Digg (at the not insignificant price tag of $200 million). Many people in the search/social marketing world thought that the deal was pretty much done and dusted, people such as Gyutae Park, from Winning The Web, who went so far as to compose a list enumerating the ways in which the Google-Digg deal would affect the internet. Even though the deal fell through or was called off, or whatever (who knows what`s going on the world of virtual acquisitions?), Park still believes that a Google-Digg is on the cards, and he is not alone.