Emerging Media Conference 2012

• What: Social. Mobile. Gaming.

• Hotel Kabuji – San Francisco, CA

• When: January 23-26, 2012

• Fee: $978.98 – $1,699

Social Media Strategies Summit

• What: Learn From The Top Thought Leaders in the Social Media Marketing Industry

• Where: Las Vegas, NV

• When: February 7th – 9th, 2012

• Fee: $1,795 – $1,995

Inside Social Apps 2012

• What: today’s leading developers of social and mobile apps and games – The future of app and game growth and monetization on social and mobile platforms.

• Where: San Francisco, CA

• When: February 8-9, 2012

• Fee: $449 – $799

Social Media Week

• What: Your team, advisors, planning committee, speakers, sponsors, event partners and attendees should walk away from the Social Media Week experience and feel as though nothing could possibly come close to being as good or as valuable

• Where: Hamburg, Hong Kong, London, Miami, New York, Paris, San Francisco, São Paulo, Singapore, Tokyo, Toronto, Washington DC

• When: February 13^th – 17^th, 2012

• Fee: TBD

YouToo Social Media Conference 2012
What: Fifth annual award-winning YouToo Social Media conference

• Where: Kent State University’s Franklin Hall

• When: Friday, April 13, 2012

• Fee: $35 – $159

Social Slam

• What: As social media continues to evolve, it’s not just about being on Twitter, Facebook and other networks. Now, businesses need to get serious about how they’re using digital media, how to measure it, and ultimately how it affects the bottom line

• Where: Knoxville Convention Center

• When: Friday, April 27, 2012

• Fee: $79 – $139

Mom 2.0 Summit 2012

• What: A social media event where moms and marketers can have an open conversation

• Where: Ritz-Carlton, Key Biscayne, FL

• When: May 3-5, 2012

• Fee: $349-$449

Social Media Summit

• What: 9 Panels, 4 Workshops. All Free

• Where: Harrisburg University

• When: May 23^rd, 2012

• Fee: FREE

SOCIAL MEDIA CONFERENCE 2012

• What: Social Media Conference is the industry’s largest expo that covers the enterprise social media business

• Where Miami, FL: January23 -25

• Where Beverly Hills, CA: June 21-22

• Fee: $895 – $1,690

EVO 12

• What: The evolution of women in social media

• Where: Park City, UT

• July 12-14, 2012

• Fee: $249-$29

Technology – There are many keyboard shortcuts, bookmark options, electronic devices, and more that can allow you to speed up almost all of your efforts today. Search for the ones that pertain to your niche and insert them into your daily routine.

Breaks – This helps you refresh your energy and effort. Figure out which process works best for you. Here is some technology to help you.

Work periods – Work in periods; use your breaks wisely then go back and finish the task or start a new one with a replenished mind.

Organization and follow ups – Be detailed oriented, and excessively organized. Make it easy on yourself. Included in your organization habits, should include following up.

To DO List/Agenda – This is very useful for many. Whether you are having trouble attempting large tasks, remembering your small tasks or anything related to efficient productivity, this may be a tip you may want to use.

Prioritize – Obviously some tasks are more important than others. Use this tip to help you determine how to go about doing so.

Deadlines – Set deadlines throughout the day to tackle your agenda. After a deadline may be a good time to take one of those breaks.

Procrastination – Use this thought process to help solve this. If you are just starting out on these daily tasks then wait a week or two, in order to determine your habits. If you have already started, acknowledge your bad habits, write them down, and read them every day. Take strides in stopping them.

Attitude – Maintain a happy and enjoyable mood and work environment. Use these guidelines to set a standard for your surroundings.

Be Honest With Yourself – There are many ways that you can overlook small characteristics about yourself and allow them to hinder your productivity. Stay focused and enjoy success in 2012!

Google has made tremendous stride towards becoming the leader of advertising sales. They are the number one search engine, and also own the second leading search engine, YouTube. Amazon cashes in at around $300,000 dollars daily on goods alone. Research has shown that this past year they reached “282 million visitors in June, or 20.4 percent of the worldwide Internet population”. They have built a tremendous rapport with the industry and is one of the immediate website’s people are going to for goods. How does Google plan to overturn them?

Not only do they have the leverage of YouTube, but Google plus is really beginning to make its mark on internet marketing. Your profile offers many features to build relationships and combine your efforts directly to the Google search engine. Google will combine those websites with their already overpower advertising dominance to help build and drive their product search campaign. They will offer a service for one day shipping if you buy a product their product search option. They are reported to be in major negotiations with a shipping company and major retailers like Macy’s

Will this result in Amazon’s declining? Will bidding for keywords, and ad space becoming more tedious and/or too expensive for the small business owner.

» Another piece showing that perhaps privacy online is simply in the eye of the beholder…and that data is not really as invasive as we might make it out to be. [Adotas]

» Angling to exhibit at Affiliate Summit West? You’ve only got two days left to take advantage of special Early Bird Pricing. [Affiliate Summit]

» And if you’re looking to sharpen up your game before January 2012, there’s a little get-together in Orlando happening for social media marketers. [Missy Ward]

» A chunk of Mark Zuckerberg‘s $100 donation to Newark will go to public school teachers. [WSJ]

» Here are 8 Netflix alternatives compared. [CNN]

» Here is a very good primer on how to use Google+ well.

» …and of course here is a very good (and illustrated) primer on how to get started using Google+.

» Twist! Facebook is partnering up with leading news outlets like CNN, WaPo, and The Daily to offer “Facebook editions”.

» Brilliant! Hotmail is banning “common passwords” in a bid to beef up user security.

» The law’s coming down hard on those bbelly fat ads.

» This is how fanboyism works.

» The Performance Marketing Association is hard at work at protecting affiliates from the Amazon tax.

» While another point of view identifies Wal-mart as the driving force behind the Amazon tax.

» Bad news if you didn’t act fast: The Affiliate Summit East Meet Market is sold out! Of course we booked our table. We’re table #24. [Missy Ward]

» Twitter apparently drives 4 times as much traffic to a destination as you think it does; the snark department would probably add, “4 times none is still none.” [Awe.sm]

» 3 brilliant myths of the start-up tech bubble–because we’re definitely in one now. [RWW]

» Mobile’s becoming a bigger force in affiliate marketing. [EConsultancy]
» Spotify’s U.S. launch suddenly makes any coverage of Google+ seem like old, old news. [Spotify]

» 41% of Netflix subscribers say they’ll cancel after its recent DVD-dissuading price hike. [CNet]
» It appears that most New Yorkers have no idea how to save time and money when trying to get to the nearest airport. [The Awl]

But it’s clear that in everybody’s fight to the top, the big three social players in the U.S. are still awkwardly dodging the issue of international reach. That is, in territories like China where the government controls the internet, our top players are locked out of securing a much larger of the world. Clearly celebrities like Cruise, Kingston, and even Radiohead realize that this is a neglected and very big market.

With Chinese celebrities averaging roughly over 2 million more followers apiece than some of the most well-known names in the West, this is a huge market that celebrities outside of China are not being able to reach. And given the rapid rate of development in social (last week, we got Google+, this week we got Facebook’s answer to Google+’s group video chat feature), a contender will eventually stand up and serve as a connection for American celebrities and businesses looking to reach and monetize such a vast swath of audiences.

But existing titans like the big three might would do well in the interim to muse spin-offs of existing products whose sole purpose is to develop inroads into territories where the internet is censored by the government. Once that ground is broken, they can establish a way to bridge users of those spin-off products back to the rest of the ecosystem of their respective apps.

» Google+ could pick up the ball where Facebook dropped it: Corporate communications. [GigaOM]

» Perhaps only time well tell how much lost revenue measures like the “Amazon tax” recently passed in California will net by spurning web retailers. [USA Today]

» Meanwhile, one observer notes that perhaps Amazon isn’t doing everything it can to stop these taxes from passing. [GeekWire]

» Everyone’s all abuzz over Google+, but do they even know how it works?

» Gavin Dunaway claims that the opt-in revolution has an asset.

» You might remember a little show about cater-waiters in L.A. called Party Down. It got canned and so there’s a petition circulating to revive it as a movie.

» Grammar is extraordinarily important even for us affiliate marketers.

» If you enjoy watching the NBA, you could be switching to soaps this season because it seems everyone wants more money and nobody wants to compromise.

» Is your email marketing getting expedited to SpamLand for any of these 15 reasons?

» Ashton Kutcher is butting heads with The Village Voice.

» Meanwhile, Specific Media is enjoying some time in the limelight after snapping up MySpace for $35M–6% of the $580M that News Corp. paid to acquire it.

» Are you watching True Blood? Even if you aren’t? You know that HBO may have launched a potential Netflix-killer.

» Want something more to read? Take a peek at our recommended reading list for affiliate marketers.

How cute — TechCrunch and Mashable got sneak peeks at Google’s latest attempt at building a social network, something that has been rumored about for a year at least (remember Google Me?). I’ll Wave while all the Buzz passes by.

Actually it sounds less like a social network and exactly what Google has said it’s going to do — socialize its core components, but hopefully not in a way that makes users call their lawyers and the Federal Trade Commission lob more penalties on the internet Goliath. Thus the name Google+ is appropriate — it’s pretty much all the Google services you’re used to with more social integration and interconnectedness.

The key component is a black bar codenamed the “Sandbar,” which will be omnipresent across Google products. It enables easy sharing of content with groups of friends and will include notifications, Facebook-style. Also like Facebook, there’s a stream of status updates and user posts on the homepage.

The group assembly technology, Circles, definitely has a leg up on Facebook — you simply drag and drop your Google contacts into circular groups. Then there’s Sparks, a new recommendation/discovery engine. You type in interests, which can be saved for future access and shown to your contacts, and Google provides search results that are based on its Search product, +1 data and popular items going around Google+. Similar to what Facebook does with Bing’s search, the Like button and popular activity.

Hangout is pretty much a chat room that is video enabled — when a user starts a hangout, he or she sends a message out inviting friends for to come jaw for a spell. There doesn’t seem to be a highlighted events feature, but Google Calendar is integrated as a core component.

And yes, Google is planning to release mobile apps with direct access into + services, including ones specifically integrated into the Android mobile operating system. When you take a photo with your Android phone, you can dash it right to Picasa.

For advertisers, it’ll be interesting if Google develops sponsored posts along the lines of Twitter and Facebook, or if there are sponsored Sparks or highlighted interests within it along the lines of StumbleUpon.

For all appearances, Google+ seems likes an adequate Facebook alternative. No doubt Facebook is already revamping its Groups features to compete with Circles. The video chat options I’m sure will lure in those pissed with Skype.

But I keep returning to my thoughts at the beginning of the year — Facebook has become the default social network; about half the U.S. population has a profile and a good percentage of the rest likely don’t want one. Beyond that, I see people reaching out to connect on niche social networks based on interests — pretty much the heirs to message boards, but imbued with all the social goodies Internet users have come to expect (demand?).

With Google+, it’s hard not see parallels between Bing struggling to grab search share from Google. The real differentiator between Facebook and + is Circles, which enables users to easily build smaller social networks, possibly based on interests. Facebook isn’t about meeting new people but managing contacts; in theory Google has created a better system for that.

However, users head to niche social networks to connect with smaller groups based on interests – as well as meet new people. There’s an advantage to getting away from your grander network. (And for marketers, there are far more opportunities to reach influencers on niche social networks.)

It feels like Google missed its chance last year when ire over the ever-changing Facebook privacy policy peaked. Well, it didn’t miss but rather whiffed with the half-baked Google Buzz, which social SVP Vic Gundrota admits failed to live up to expectations.

Circles is certainly useful (which is why I’m sure we’ll see a Facebook equivalent in no time), but is it enough to make users switch over? I mean, I just got my Facebook the way I like it!

Well, maybe not intentionally — Google+ seems carefully designed to lure in Gmail users, who already have “profiles” (just not necessarily public). Opposed to the hacked-on Buzz, which Google pretty much pushed on its users, Google+ seems far more inviting and likely to draw curiosity. Hey Gmail user, here’s a cool thing you can do… But only with Google+.

Mashable’s Ben Parr even wonders if the interest will compare to that when Gmail came out — invitations for the beta are already way gone. It’s kinda ingenious — by not making a social network per se and just socializing core components, Google+ may win you over before you even notice it.

Maybe it’s that kind of thinking that got the FTC anti-trust unit’s attention.

After years of ping-ponging around various industry publications, Gavin Dunaway finagled his way into the senior editor slot at Adotas, a depot for interactive advertising news and commentary. When not penning snarky articles about social media and behavioral targeting, the Washington, D.C. native and George Mason University graduate enjoys playing electric guitar so loud that the walls shake.

This piece originally appeared at Adotas June 28, 2011. It has been reprinted with permission.