Best links to learn about blogging, social media, Web 2.0 and technology in China

DATELINE: Beijing (Oct. 18, 2007): There is a small group of expats who speak fluent Mandarin and are extremely knowledgeable about social media, Web 2.0, etc. in China. Three of the best are Sam Flemming, Jeremy Goldkorn and William Moss. Here are their blog/sites, along with some other great resources.

Danwei
http://www.danwei.org/

Imagethief
http://news.imagethief.com/blogs/china/

CIC
http://www.seeisee.com/index.php/sam/

China Web 2.0 Review
http://www.cwrblog.net/

Ogilvy China Digital Watch
http://digitalwatch.ogilvy.com.cn/en/

Silicon Hutong
http://siliconhutong.typepad.com/silicon_hutong/

Proxy servers

You have to know about these in order to get to sites like Technorati.com, which is blocked in China.

Anonymouse.org (server in Germany)
anonymouse.org

I take it all back... Canadians are cutting edge when it comes to Web 2.0

Well, open mouth insert foot - as they say. It's true that in Tris Hussey's [podcast interview] Monday Blogging 101 session at Toronto's mesh conference some of the questions seemed charmingly naive (i.e. in a time warp way). But the rest of the conference was an eye-opener.

This was an un-conference conference where audience participation was strongly encouraged. Audience members (who were primarily Canadian and ranged from geeks to corporate marketing and e-commerce types to VCs) spoke up articulately about Web 2.0 - what it means to them both personally and from a business perspective.

If you think the Web 2.0 thinkers, strategists and implementers are all in the U.S., think again.

My favorite presenter was 16-year-old Canadian high school student Gary King. (Check out his blog at kinggary.com.) He was one of the lucky winners of a 15-minutes-of-fame slot. Meaning he got to stand up in front of the sell-out crowd of 400 and tell us what he does -- and why.

Frankly, I was so mesmerized by how articulate and poised he was, I can't remember exactly what he said. Suffice it to say that he can code in PHP, etc. and I suspect got multiple summer job offers out of his 15-minute presentation.

Edelman's Steve Rubel gets a close 2nd for his cogent riffed responses to Stuart MacDonald's questions, in one of the featured sessions.

As does Tara Hunt (now "chief blogger" for Silicon Valley startup Riya.com) for her engaging presentation on pinko un-marketing. She really got the audience going after showing a video clip of 17-year-old bowiechick [links to video on youtube.com] demonstrating the cool things you can do with Logitech's Quickcam Orbit MP.

Apparently Melody's clever video has been downloaded 250,000 times. So... viral marketing for Logitech, right?? Or is there something more here? (Did Logitech engineer this somehow? Does Melody have any idea of what she's put into motion??)

AND if I can return for a moment to my "Canadians are nice" theme, I gotta say this was one of the best organized conferences I've been to, well... in memory.

Blog knowledge center by Cymfony

Here's a great resource page with information about business blogging. Links to studies, best practices, Top Tens, Top Elevens, etc. Prepared by Cymfony, a market research firm that uses a proprietary content analysis engine to scour the Web. BTW, if it isn't totally obvious, creating a knowledge or resource center with links out to other sources is one of the best ways for a company like this to market itself.

I've added the page to my own Blogging 101 resources.

You'll also find links to resource pages on CGM (Consumer Generated Media), PR Measurement and Web 2.0.

[via Business BlogWire]

Web 2.0: Consumers are now producers

It really just boils down to that. Even non-geeks will begin to understand, I think. For example, digital cameras - almost ubiquitous now - mean uploading to your computer, then uploading to Flickr or your blog, etc. That's what "creating Web content" means, if you've been puzzling over the phrase. It all just flows together. As Doc Searls put it in his opening remarks yesterday at the Syndicate conference in San Francisco:

"The biggest fact about the live Web: individuals are in charge. The group we used to call consumers are now producers. The demand side is supplying itself. Dealing with that fact, and taking advantage of it, is the biggest challenge and opportunity for everybody who wants to succeed in the live Web."

Wish I could be at the conference. Sounds fab. Hey, Doc. Say hi to Jonathan Schwartz from me! I've emailed back and forth with him for an interview for The Corporate Blogging Book (see Hugh Macleod's cartoon). But haven't had the pleasure of speaking with him in person.

Ask Jonathan Schwartz (Sun Microsystems' President & COO)
Ask Jonathan about the ROI of blogging by a top exec or CEO. Assuming it can't be measured precisely, how do you justify the time it takes to write a thoughtful blog, which he does?

SyndicateQNA

Catching the Web 2.0 bug on WordBiz Report

OK, I admit it. Sometimes I latch on to the new new buzzword... and I've done it with Web 2.0. But honestly, I'm finding the concept fascinating. Here's what I wrote in the current issue of my newsletter, WordBiz Report:

In simple terms, Web 2.0 is an emerging version of the Web that's more user-friendly and more useful. Some say it's new; others say it's part of an evolution. I think it sounds "new"!
 
You'll experience it through user-generated content (blogging is one example), easy-to-use collaborative tools (wikis are an example but they're not "new") and the ability to customize your use of the Web.

There's a whole techie thing underlying Web 2.0 (having to do with building software applications) but I'm not even going to try to go there.

Read the whole issue here to get useful links and three free downloads.

Seth Godin and crew soft-launch Squidoo in viral Web 2.0 style

You gotta love it. Seth Godin and the smart crew he's assembled have torn a page directly out of Seth's books to soft-launch his new online company, Squidoo. No traditional PR, no advertising, just viral blogging via his new e-book, Everyone Is An Expert [31-page PDF], that explains (sort of) what the service does. I was lucky enough to get a copy from his Editor-in-Chief Megan Casey, when she emailed the e-book out last week. Sorry it's taken so long to get it up.

In the e-book Seth talks about creating "meaning" out of the mess of information you get when you search for something on the Web. Squidoo is all about finding what you're really looking for. Because an expert has compiled information for you in a way that makes sense and is immediately useful.

And who are these experts? Well, as the e-book explains, anybody can be an expert. Squidoo's Web 2.0 platform enables you to create a "lens" - a special kind of Web page that points to links and information about your expertise. But it's not just links. That doesn't  describe it properly. It's RSS feeds and other stuff that automatically update your lens page for you.

(And it's Web 2.0 because Seth & co. are building it from other stuff that's already out there. I'm just trying to decipher what I've read in the e-book... )

Here's the clearest explanation thus far, from the Squidoo blog, of how a lens works:

It’s a guide (like about.com) and a reference (like wikipedia.com). It’s a place for personal expression (like typepad.com) and an open platform for real people (like del.ico.us).

Tantalizingly, the e-book closes with a list of URLs that link to sample lenses. But they don't go live until Oct. 18th!

Here are two of them:

http://www.squidoo.com/samples/royalties

http://www.squidoo.com/samples/sethgodin

Full disclosure: I'm also incredibly lucky that Megan, formerly of Penguin Portfolio, has continued to work with me as an editor on The Corporate Blogging Book. Seth lured her away from Penguin in July.

Technorati: squidoo

David Weinberger on blogging and Web 2.0

I had the pleasure of interviewing David Weinberger last night for my book. David's one of the co-authors of The Cluetrain Manifesto and a fellow this year at Harvard's Berkman Center. We ended up talking about whether blogging was part of the something "new" that is Web 2.0. No, David opined, it's not. Although Web 2.0 "expert" Tim O'Reilly suggests that it is. Weinberger's point is that the "making your voice heard" part of blogging is really what the original Web was all about.

What's new, he grants, are the RSS pings and the discrete links for each blog post. And tagging. All of which can be mixed up and re-combined in Web 2.0 ways. It occurs to me that since blogging is still "new" for many companies and organizations, it doesn't really matter to them whether it's Web 1.0 or 2.0. Anyway, read his thoughts on blogging and Web 2.0 here.