Social media, online marketing hints, tips and advice – Liz Hover's Diary of a Web Gal (Winnipeg)

As a web manager and internet fan it will come as no surprise to you, dear reader, that the recent comment from Prince – declaring the internet is over – made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

What is this dude on?

It doesn’t take a genius to see that the internet is well and truly not over. In fact, I would posit that the web has only just begun.

But like I said, it doesn’t take a genius to work this out which is why I’m so surprised at Prince.

Here is an artist so entirely out of touch with 21st century communication that I’m astounded he still has an active fan base – I guess we have Purple Rain to thank for that.

His comments left me wondering if dementia had set in.

Honestly.

No rational human could say things like: ‘I really believe in finding new ways to distribute my music,’ and in the next breath completely diss technology. What is he thinking? Carrier pigeons will fly copies of his CDs around the world?

Get with the times little man.

First, I’ll admit that this is pretty much a duplicate of a post I made today over on the National Screen Institute’s website.

But not entirely.

I don’t think much of Google Buzz, ok?

I love Google, for the record.

The basic premise: Google wants in on the social media thang. Google Buzz is their trump card.

Or something.

This is my comment on the proposition, not the product.

According to Google’s official blog:

Google Buzz is a new way to start conversations about the things you find interesting. It’s built right into Gmail, so you don’t have to peck out an entirely new set of friends from scratch.

If you think about it, there’s always been a big social network underlying Gmail. Buzz brings this network to the surface by automatically setting you up to follow the people you email and chat with the most. We focused on building an easy-to-use sharing experience that richly integrates photos, videos and links, and makes it easy to share publicly or privately (so you don’t have to use different tools to share with different audiences). Plus, Buzz integrates tightly with your existing Gmail inbox, so you’re sure to see the stuff that matters most as it happens in real time.

So far I’m not that impressed with it – largely because I only use my Gmail accounts to log in to Feedburner, YouTube and a bunch of other Google-operated sites.

I’m also a prolific Twitter and Facebook user and don’t see the sense in adding yet another network to the list.

Sure, I can add my Twitter account so my tweets appear on Buzz but I’d rather folks just follow me on Twitter.

I can see the benefit for regular users of Gmail. Send mail and chat with your pals all in one place. Which makes sense.

Are you using Google Buzz? Let me know what you think.

Thanks to my friend, the wonderful Erica Glasier, for the illustration at the top of this page available under a Creative Commons License.

Apologies to those of you who read this link via my Twitter stream. This seemed like such a great article with so much food for thought I had to post it here too.

Noupe – a website I regularly read – posted an article about how the web might look five years from now.

The Future of the Web: Where Will We Be in Five Years? is an insightful look at emerging trends and some that are already sticking.

Some highlights include:

• There are a few unsurprising predictions such as the growing influence and use of social media (a term, some of you will know, I think is silly). What this means is social interaction on the internet will be an even bigger feature of the web spaces we visit.

• Our never-ending fight against spam and fraudulent internet behaviour may well increase but I don’t think we’ll ever really be totally safe from this stuff.

• As a chick who spends a large (some might say, excessive) amount of time online I heartily look forward to better and more online film and TV content.

• And Microsoft’s world domination of our PCs may be over sooner than you think. With Google set to launch a Chrome operating system we’re looking at a virtual online office as our operating systems move online.

This is all very exciting stuff. But as Noupe points out, predictions fly around the internet at the speed of tweets so there’s no telling what the future really holds.

Over at Mashable, writer Adam Ostrow asks if social media is making corporate websites irrelevant.

Remember the dotcom era?

Websites were the thing. And then it all went arse up.

Adam wonders if corporate websites are still useful today with the rapid growth of spaces such as Facebook and Twitter. More and more brands are using those sites to market their products and push their message. Should we even bother with a website?

Let’s look at it another way.

Corporate websites need to do much more to pull in functions from social media sites that add value to their own online space. A company always needs a home base. It’s where you can find all the bits. This is such an exciting time in website and marketing development. Companies should be clawing at API (application programming interface – that’s the thing that lets you and and me build stuff on our websites using bits of Facebook or Twitter or myriad other cool social media sites.)

One problem with the social web is the fragmentation of everything. At some future point we’re probably gonna want to reign things back in. Just a little. API and our corporate websites are where we’ll do it. Sure, corporate websites will go through some transformation along the way but ultimately we’ll want a tidy place where we can find all the parts without going all over to find them.

A website is still key to your brand and probably always will be. Your portfolio of online space will get bigger but ‘the website’ gives it all a home.