You know we love you. We care for you, we defend you at every opportunity. We tout your good points and how people have used your service to save lives, raise money for good causes, act as a customer service funnel and generally bring us all closer together.
But you’re letting us down.

Already we are just giving up for the day if you’re not there when we need you. We’re starting to meet new people on other services and finding other ways to network with our friends.

Every day more and more people are saying bad things about you, hosting Twit-outs and moving in droves to FriendFeed. Thing is, FriendFeed is not Twitter and we want to be loyal, we want to help.

It’s time for an intervention. We know you’re trying, and you are few, but we know you just got some funding to help you update. Add to the team. Get an evangelist (or an apologist?) who can put out some fires.
Cut off the API access for a bit, just until you get things under control. We’ll understand – for a while.

Here’s what some of your loyal users think you could do to fix it. Maybe they’re right, maybe they’re wrong, but surely you could take a look and see what they are saying?

• How about Complex Event Processing?
• Fav.or.it’s view
• Is it the rich API’s?
• Is it too many followers? (is it all Scoble’s fault?)
• Is it Rails? (We think not)
• Flow-based Databases?
• The caching problem. We’ll do it ourselves for now.

BlogRovr is a pretty nifty blog aggregator, and when used with the Firefox Add-on it’s easy to see how it can become addictive. Though I miss the “Share” feature in Reader, being able to “Twitter this” right from the page is a viable alternative since most of the people I’d share with in Reader are on Twitter as well, and now they’ll be able to comment right back.

Another nice feature is the ability to import an OPML file of your feeds, either from Google Reader or pretty much any other collection of feeds.

Easily the best feature is the “related posts” that shows you related content on the blogs you’re watching. Surf your favorite blogs and as you read, related content pops up in a sidebar box. You can scan the related headlines, read an excerpt, and if you want to read it, BlogRovr opens the link in a new tab preserving your place on the previous site. BlogRovr also shows you a list of tags associated with a post, so you can quickly scan for tags you might want to follow.

If you spend a lot of time looking at particular niches, BlogRovr may help you find some new blogs, and it easily keeps you up to date on related posts on all your subscriptions, which makes researching or just plain keeping up to date on what’s new much easier.
Who am I reading? View my BlogRovr list here.

Data Portability?
BlogRovr makes it easy to access your favorite blogs from anywhere, anytime and on any computer.
If you’ve been using BlogRovr for a while, odds are good you’ve got a lot of stored data about your preferences in sites, topics and browsing habits. This is convenient but it’s also got a lot of potential for BlogRovr to deliver you even more information like sites that you might like, or deliver ads for products based on your reading habits. This has some people asking questions about the recent acqusition of BlogRovr by BuzzLogic and whether or not you own the data about you, or if it can be sold to advertisers to use to target ads to your desktop based on your preferences.

There are a load of viewpoints on this out there. Should you be able to remove your data from the database or opt out of advertising if you don’t want it? Or is it finally a way for bloggers to monetize their level of influence? Should we just give up on privacy if we want the convenience of this kind of service?

Already using BlogRovr? Add us to your feedlist!

Napa Valley real estate developer Barbara Bryson is documenting this vineyard estate as it is built with pictures and a “construction diary” detailing the special touches and the love that shows in every inch of this 7 Million dollar estate (which will be ready for sale in Fall 2008) right in the middle of Napa’s Oak Knoll appellation.

We created a website to showcase the project as it grows and designed it with the CMS capabilities of WordPress in mind so it can easily be updated and maintained as the final touches are put on, and the property goes up for sale. Visit the site for Terra Dolce Napa and let us know what you think.

You know, we’ve loved the web and watching the online community grow for over 12 years. We’ve been active in many roles over the years and it’s never been as exciting as it is right now. Social Media may seem like another buzzword to some, but for us it’s been a way of life for a long time, and it’s finally come of age. Products are exploding on the market so fast it’s a full time job just to keep up with it.

You’re probably reading this because you either are part of that community and just checking in, or you’re looking for places to learn about social media and how to integrate it into your marketing plan.
For that second group, here’s a little bit about what we do. Perhaps we can help you?

Social Media Strategy Development- Develop a strategy for getting your message out with the greatest potential for social media engagement. We do this by looking at your existing content, branding and marketing goals and develop a plan that is a part of your overall marketing and communications strategy.

Community Outreach- Reach out to the Social media community to build awareness of your message through communities, bloggers and create relationships with the influencers in related social networks.

Content optimization – Optimize existing web-pages and content-including video, press releases, inter-actives and web content- to maximize re-distribution and discussion.

Campaign Management- Managing your on-line campaign from social media outreach to search engine optimization and marketing and AdWord campaigns.

Monitoring and Reporting- managing these campaigns takes diligent monitoring to maintain the quality of information and effectiveness of ad campaigns. We use state of the art monitoring systems to manage your campaign and “listen” to how the message is being received.

What are the advantages for you?

Increased Revenue- The more eyeballs that see your message and the more often they see it, the more opportunity there is for them to hear you and get engaged.

People are listening- Focused interest and increased user engagement returns in user loyalty and higher traffic as well as increased revenue.

Amp up the brand- With the cacophony of ads and media on-line, your message needs to be delivered clearly, in multiple venues and often to get your brand to stick in user’s heads. Entering into the conversation can help users develop a knowledge of you and your business that will get your brand heard.

Quality traffic- There are lots of ways to increase traffic, but what you need is quality traffic. If you sell buzz saws and you get a lot of traffic for people looking for Buzz Lightyear, what value is that? We drive traffic based on who you are.

Competitive data- Most likely you are not alone in your message. We can show you how you rate against your competition, and help you keep track of their social media presence too. Find out what they are talking about and market changes at the speed of the web.

Heard enough? Call us. We can build a strategy for how you want to engage–within your budget. 415.990.3991

Everywhere I go people are asking me if I can build a Social Media Release Template for them.
Social Media News Releases are all the rage in the PR world right now. Just sending out a PDF with the basic information on it, or actually FAXING press releases to your media contacts is just not going to cut it anymore. It’s time to adjust to the market. Journalists have less and less time to get to press and they want all the information they need in one place. Now. They don’t want to have to email back and forth for days for pictures or to ask if there is any video.

Where did the idea come from?
The concept was inspired by Tom Foremski of Silicon Valley Watcher. Todd Defren and Shift Communications picked up the idea, and who better than a PR house to run with the idea and use their own tool to create a whirlwind of interest?

The company quickly released a template (download it here) and then a very Web 2.0 online tool to build your own Social Media release (PRX).

What makes a social media release effective?
In short, a well developed Social Media News Release will make it easier for a journalist to put together the information they need quickly, so they are more likely to run with the story. It will also provide a consumer with all the info they need in a medium they are getting more and more used to.

Social Media News releases are designed to take advantage of a number of social media distribution tools like Technorati, del.icio.us, StumbleUpon and Digg and make your release search engine friendly to boot. You can add links to your favorite bookmarking or rating sites and boost the visibility of your company to a much broader audience than traditional releases. Some sites offer rss feeds to their releases, so journalists can subscribe and instantly get the new releases as soon as you post them.

A good media release doesn’t stop at just the release itself, it reaches out and stimulates discussion, offering differnet viewpoints through varying media. You have an opportunity to take advantage of all of your social media outlets. For example, you may have images on Flickr, Videos on YouTube or a Facebook or Twitter account. Take the time to link to and from these elements with the press release. These cross links increase the probability that someone will discover one or all of the parts of the release, and hear your message. They may also start to talk about it using thise same social media tools and help start a viral marketing program you could dream of.

OK, I want one. Now what?
It’s an idea whose time has come to be sure, but for some companies building a Social Media News Release seems like a huge effort. If you don’t have the in-house talent to build a custom layout, here are links to a couple of options to get you started.

Get a free account at PRX Builder. Click a button, fill in in the blanks and voila, a Social Media Press Release.
This page has links to the API so you can run it on your website and a WordPress Plugin that allows users to build the PRX right in WordPress.

Conversation Marketing Offers an XHTML version as well, available in a zip file so you can just download it and click away.

Can we build it? YES, we can.
If you don’t want your releases to look like everybody else’s, we can easily design one specific to your needs. It’s not rocket science, but a simple layout that needs to be coded. You want a different look and feel or layout by department? You want it easy to update? Whether you are looking for an HTML page you can modify, a WordPress page or a MS Word doc you can turn into a PDF, we can do it for you.

So what are you waiting for? Get rid of your old press release and start sending a Social Media Press Release. Time to get to work.

If you don’t have kids yourself, it can be intimidating to go into a maternity store or a kids store to find that special gift for a new baby, or even a young niece or nephew. What does a newborn infant wear? What size do you get? What kind of toys are safe for a baby?

That’s where Savvy Auntie’s Melanie Notkin comes in. She’ll help you find the cool stuff for kids of all ages and look cool doing it. She’s also creating an online community that will offer advice from a range of experts so you can learn the ins and outs of raising kids so you’re not totally in the dark when the kiddies come to visit.

The website is due to launch soon, but Melanie Notkin, Savvy Auntie founder has her blog up here, with stories of her adventures as an entrepreneur and her inspiration for the site, as well as her Cafe Press shop with lots of fun logo items to show off your Savvy Auntie-ness. Check it out and sign up for the beta launch of the new site!