A couple of weeks ago a group from salesforce.com paid a visit to Dell. Among other things, they came to discuss their new product “Chatter” that Dell has recently launched internally and who’s virtues Michael Dell has tweeted. Among the salesforce crew was Sean Whiteley, VP of product marketing. I was able to get some time between meetings with Sean and learn more about Chatter.
Some of the topics Sean tackles:
How Chatter has done since its launch on June 22. What type of traction they’ve seen with customers.
How Chatter differs from other internal social media platforms (hint: not only can you follow people; records, objects and information within your business applications have feeds as well, e.g. your notified when a presentation changes or a sales deal you’re following moves to a different stage.)
How the idea of Chatter came up. What role chairman Marc Benioff and his use of Facebook played.
Currently Chatter is tied closely to CRM but it will be tied to other apps going forward.
They believe that many more folks will use Chatter than usesalesforce.com.
Last week at the Enterprise 2.0 conference I sat in on an interesting session entitled “Does Social Media and Marketing Mater?” The moderator was Peter Kim of the Dachis Corporation and the panelists were Greg Matthews of Humana, Ben Foster of Allstate insurance and Morgan Johnston of jetBlue. Each of the panelist discussed how they were using social media at their firms.
After the panel I grabbed Morgan from JetBlue and did a short video. I’ve broken the interview in two, the first part talks about JetBlue’s social media strategy and how its working and the second part addresses the tools and channels that they use.
Check it out…
Part 1: How and Why does JetBlue use Social Media?
Some of the topics Morgan tackles:
Started the social media engagement back in ’07.
The four reasons JetBlue uses Social media: 1) monitoring, 2) engaging, 3) informing and 4) humanizing.
Social media can serve as “a canary in a coal mine.”
The importance of vetting and confirming information before reacting.
FYI if you want to sneak a folding bike on a plane you no longer need to claim its art or bike parts.
Part 2: What tools, technology and channels does Jet Blue use?
Some of the topics Morgan tackles:
When engaging with customers and communities its important to remember that you are a guest of that community and dont try to bull your way in.
They have a Flickr channel which is populated by crew members and helps to humanize the brand.
JetBlue has a YouTube channel where they feature videos generated by JetBlue
Twitter is their biggest channel (@JetBlue). When I did the interview last week they had 730,000 followers, today they are at 780,000. This is a great way to monitor customer feedback and disseminate information.
Morgan is looking forward to seeing how people adapt and evolve existing tools to fit their own needs.
One of the more interesting people I met last week at Web 2.0 was Gaurav Mishra who is visiting the US from India as a Yahoo! Fellow in Residence. As a Yahoo! Fellow, Gaurav is doing research and teaching at Georgetown University in the field of social media. I was able to grab some of his time and learn what he’s up to.
To watch in High Quality: after clicking play, click the “HQ” button that will appear on the bottom.
Some of the topics that Gaurav tackles:
Looking at social media from an international perspective and examining how businesses, civil society and governments make use of it.
The seminar Gaurav teaches is one of the 2 or 3 social media courses that Georgetown offers.
What Gaurav was doing in India before he got the fellowship.
Social media and activism
The analysis and measurement of social media and how to tie it back to business processes, civil society goals or government objectives.
I’m currently attending Web 2.0 here in San Francisco. One of the cooler talks I saw yesterday was given by Scott Monty, the head of Ford Motor’s Social Media efforts. I was so intrigued that I thought I would grab him for an interview. He graciously agreed and here’s the result. Enjoy
To watch in High Quality: after clicking play, click the “HQ” button that will appear on the bottom.
Some of the topics Scott tackles:
Ford’s goal of becoming one of the world’s leading social brands.
Setting content free.
Innovation is made up of small tweaks on existing platforms that build value over time.
How did Ford come to decide they needed a head of social media and how did they pick Scott.
The two things coming up that Scott is most excited about: the Fiesta Movement and the evolution of Fordstory.com into Ford’s social media hub.
BTW, If you want to follow Scott on Twitter, its @scottmonty.
Charlene was at SXSW as a speaker and I caught up with her not long after she finished her session in the main ballroom. You can check out the slide deck she presented below. You can also access the Twitter feed and a summary of the presentation from Charlene’s post. [BTW don't miss the blooper reel at the bottom]
To watch in High Quality: after clicking play, click the “HQ” button that will appear on the bottom.
Some of the topics Charlene covers:
Groundswell: How company leaders can leverage social networks rather than fear them
Which companies are making the best use of social networks
What social tools Charlene uses and her use of twitter (how it got her quoted in the Wallstreet Journal)
What Charlene is most excited about in the coming year with regards to social networks
The Blooper Reel
You may have noticed that there a few cuts in the video above. This is because they were shutting down the show floor and kept announcing it over the intercom. Check out the blooper reel below for proof — and these aren’t even all the interruptions. (Unfortunately I didn’t capture the part when the Elvis impersonator started singing.)
To watch in High Quality: after clicking play, click the “HQ” button that will appear on the bottom.
As I previously mentioned, on Saturday I headed down town to the Austin convention center and SXSW. Although I’ve lived here in Austin for 2 years this is the first time I’ve checked it out. I drove down after lunch and bought myself a day pass to the show floor.
The entrance to the convention center
While the biggest part of SXSW, Music, doesnt start until later this week, the Interactive and Film festivals kicked off on Friday. Film and Interactive had a combined “Trade Show” which ran from Saturday thru today and that’s where I hung out on Saturday.
Although the show floor was a modest size it was chock-a-block full of tech and cinema offerings (here’s the map and list of booths — my unofficial guess would be it was 80% tech/20% film). I hung out there for about four hours catching up with old friends and checking out the various offerings.
Artifacts from the event: Rackspace tube socks, business cards, BarCamp pass, Montana film board leather coaster, a brochure from "Austin's only tiki shop" etc.
As you would guess, social media apps dominated the tech offerings and a lot things seemed to be some derivative of facebook/twitter/craigslist/linkedin with an innovative (or not so innovative) spin. Microsoft had a big booth as did Sun who was showing off its JavaFX.
Don’t touch that dial!
Coming up later this week, the video podcasts I did with Charlene Li of the Altimeter Group and Jason Hsiao of Animoto.
There were a fair amount of apps that looked like this.
Here are a few of the faces from the show floor.
A picture of Guy Kawasaki taking a picture of the Lunarr booth.
The ever helpful Josh Dilworth of Porter Novelli working the press info stand.
Ka’awa was there promoting a tour of singers from Hawaii.
Kevin takes the hand-off. PR firm Porter Novelli gives new meaning to the expression "booth babe."
I came across a pretty funny article in last week’s Time magazine that explained the reason why all of a sudden my old classmates from high-school, college and business school are coming out of the woodwork and joining Facebook. The sub-title (which is missing from the online version) best sums up the phenomenon:
It was designed for college kids. But it took legions of people their parent’s age to fulfill its ultimate destiny.
The article illustrates that the greatest value of Facebook comes not from facilitating connections, but facilitating re-connections.
Facebook is for Old Fogies
Here are the 10 reasons that the author, Lev Grossman, lists to support the above thesis:
Facebook is about finding people you’ve lost track of.
We’re no longer bitter about high school.
We never get drunk at parties and get photographed holding beer bottles in suggestive positions.
Facebook isn’t just a social network; it’s a business network.
We’re lazy.
We’re old enough that pictures from grade school or summer camp look nothing like us.
We have children
We’re too old to remember e-mail addresses.
We don’t understand Twitter.
We’re not cool, and we don’t care.
The article is short and you should read the whole thing. That is of course unless you are an old fogie whereby #5 will stop you.
Posted by Barton George 
