K Street Cafe

Nicole Williams of the State Policy Network has launched New Media TV, an online channel for social networking gurus who work for policy organizations, think tanks and advocacy groups. The channel will feature experts who will lead video discussions and share tips on how to better communicate using new online tools.

The ATLAS Economic Research Foundation’s Jason Talley will kick things off for New Media TV with a discussion about Facebook fan pages, Twitter and the social networking aspects of YouTube. Viewers will be able to discuss the video in a live chat on the site.

The presentation will begin today (Friday) at 3:00 pm EST and will be archived for future reference.

For Web 2.0 experts who want to appear on New Media TV, contact Nicole Williams at williams@spn.org.

The Anatomy of a Tweet: Twitter Gets a Style Guide (The New York Times)
Are you new to Twitter? Dom Sagolla and Adam Johnson have written a book that includes user how-tos, tips and tricks, and stories.

MySpace: User Engagement Up, Unique Users Flat (ReadWriteWeb)
As Facebook and MySpace battle it out for the top social media site in the United States, Frederic Lardinois of ReadWriteWeb examines current traffic stats about both online communities.

3 Ways to Harness the Social (Mashable)
Jennifer Van Grove explores three new social media applications that are useful for those interested in exploring and becoming apart of the social media realm.

StumbleUpon Hits 7 Million Users, Quietly 50% Bigger Than Twitter (ReadWriteWeb)
The “social discovery site” StumbleUpon continues to grow, with a membership that is 50% larger than Twitter’s user base. Here is a quick recap of how StumbleUpon works and how it can help your organization find relevant information.

Why Every Company is a Media Company (Mashable)
Rick Burnes of HubSpot examines how the companies that are most successful in the social marketing world take the time to look beyond selling their product. Instead, successful companies like Whole Foods focus on providing content that appeals to their consumers.

Best Practices for Branded Twitter Accounts (Ignite Social Media)
In light of news that Twitter may begin to charge for brands and organizations to use its services, here are a few tips to make the potential future investment worthwhile.

Grammy’s Make New Media Push, But Is It Enough? (PR Newser)
Last night’s Grammy Awards used social media to promote the event, but PR Newser wonders what else could have been done to better connect with fans and viewers.

HOW TO: Live Inside Twitter and Still Stay Productive (Mashable)
As Twitter use becomes more prevalent among social media users, new third party applications have become available to make maximum use of time spent Twittering. Here are 10 useful applications that can help to simplify the lives of Twitter users.

By Carie Lewis

Here at HSUS, our email file is largely skewed to older women. We’ve been in the social media space for 2+ years now, trying to broaden our audience. But we haven’t done much integration of our email file and website to our social media presence because of the fear that the demographic of the two don’t match.

So, when it was time for our annual Spay Day Online Pet Photo Contest, and there was the question of whether or not to invest money in an accompanying Facebook application, there were some skeptics.

Being the social media person at the organization, I was all for it. I knew that as long as the application took advantage of Facebook’s viral features, it would take off. In my mind, this meant:

1 – all functions had to stay within the Facebook platform (instead of taking you to the external site)

2 – the Facebook app had to be a mirror of the external site and not a separate entity

3 – there had to be some function to post a “box” to your profile to show off your pet

4 – there had to be some function to post a “story” to your newsfeed, both when you installed the app and when you entered your pet

Of course, that’s overly-simplified. It took a long time to get it to where it is now. But the time and money were both worth it, as it essentially paid for itself. (more…)

In cased you missed it, David Plouffe, the manager of the Obama campaign, recently introduced Mitch Stewart as the Executive Director of Organizing for America in a video discussion of the future of the Obama grassroots organization. Now housed under a separate department of the DNC, the Obama Administration will use Organizing for American as an attempt to mobilize supporters to pass President Obama’s agenda in Congress.   (more…)

NY Times Exposes 2.8 Million Articles in New API (ReadWriteWeb)
The New York Times recently released an API which allows users to link to articles dating back to 1981 on their own Web sites, opening up new avenues to a vast amount of content. Marshall Kirkpatrick comments that this is a move “away from isolation” for newspapers.

Word of mouth research: 59% of social media users interact with companies on social media sites (Gaspedal)
The use of social media continues to rise, and recent studies show that nearly one in four Americans interact with corporate brands online.

Twitter Chatter During the Super Bowl (New York Times)
The New York Times offers a look at the popular words used on Twitter during the span of the Super Bowl using an interactive map.

10 Ways Social Media Will Change in 2009 (ReadWriteWeb)
Ravit Lichtenberg offers his insight on how social media will change over this coming year, predicting that people’s desire for a holistic social media experience will continue to bring changes.

Last week, The Cato Institute placed a full page ad in many major newspapers with a statement that showed there is not full agreement among economists about Obama’s stimulus plan.

But long before the ink was ever set to paper, thousands of people across the country had already seen the ad, and were commenting on it and sharing it with friends online.

By making the ad available to bloggers before it ran in the papers, Cato was able to generate a media buzz long before our main product even existed. Most of all, we gave bloggers the opportunity to scoop old media giants like The New York Times. (more…)