How big is your social media footprint... how much is too much?

Greetings friends.  As I sit here writing this, I am juggling.  Not juggling chainsaws, knives, or anything else tangible--- but juggling my many faces in the "blogosphere" , "social networks", "inter-webs"... whathaveyou.    I am doing this because I feel that it is important for not only my social life, but for MY brand.  My brand is an identity based on my outide-looking-in image which is an amalgamation of Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, my blog, Delicious, Linked In and I am sure a few I have forgotten.  Of course we all know this is important... CNN and Fox both tell us so... but how do these resources become such a part of who we are? and How do they help us in the "real world?" In my case, I mention my own brand.  The truth is, everything today is about brand whether it's your own, your company's, or an alter-ego brand such as my friend's "fat kid at camp" moniker.  It is all about that image and everything that surrounds it.  This means in order to be truly engaged, you have to Twitter, be on Facebook, Myspace, blogs, etc.  Here is where it gets really fun/tricky though.  In order to truly be a part of the global conversation you have to be on these various networks, but your message must be original (not contrived).  Classic Marketing 1.0 techniques will not gain you traction in this world.  Marketing in social media is all about creating a conversation with your consumer.  It is about the human side of marketing.

While this works for our personal, corporate and alter-ego brands--- one of the venues this type of social marketing really applies itself is in the marketing of bands. The catalyst for this post happens to be the great post  I read this morning on "Hit Singularity" .  This is a great overview of free, easy social networking that can really make a difference.

10 Fast and Free Strategies To Market Your Band (Without Resorting To Spamming People On Myspace)

Social media diagram

This is probably one of the most complete descriptions I have seen thus-far in the social-media-as-promotion movement.  Short of writing a book on it like Barack 2.0, this is short, sweet and to the point.  The fact remains that in order to succeed in the virtual world, you must have a strong footprint.  Following the points mentioned in the blog above will help you to create that footprint.

Yo Ho, Yo Ho a Pirate's Life for me (not really)

AAARGH! So just in case you have been under a rock for the last 5 days, the ruling is in... the founders of Pirate Bay have been found guilty in a Swedish court of law.  They have all been sentenced to one year in prison and will have to pay approximately $3 Million in damages (after the appeals process- if the ruling stands).

So what now?

The facilitators have been stopped, but what does that mean for all of the users (Pirates) populating Pirate Bay?  What does this mean for the bay?  Will it suddenly dry up?  No.  In a word... No.  This really means nothing.  The Swedish courts have placed their finger in the dyke... they have stopped the spillage for a moment, but the flood waters will remain.  The Pirate Bay remains active... servers housed safely outside of Sweden... and the pirates sail on.

There is a lot of debate going on over whether the founders of TPB were injustly convicted... whether the ISPs should be held responsible as well.  I think there are a lot of people at fault here including all named previously and in some way, I would love to see them held responsible.  However, I am a realist.  I understand that the times are changing and our industry needs to find better ways of making a living (outside of suing).  Ultimately,  the results of the pending appeals will leave a legacy of rulings that will affect the way our courts view file sharing for years to come.  The next few years will no doubt be an interesting lot...  time will tell.

As a sideline to this story, there has been a recent study stating that "pirates" are 10 times more likely to buy online music than law-abiding non-pirates.  The number of participants in the study was rather small (less than2000), but I find it quite interesting and wonder if this is in fact the way it is... according to the comments below the story- the pirates doubt it as well.

stealing intellectual property has never been so easy

[caption id="attachment_190" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Music Pirate"]Music Pirate[/caption] Last week i was introduced to a couple of websites that are disturbingly good at what they do. Someone innocently emailed them to an industry email list i am on asking for people's thoughts on their legality. I commented first and was the recipient of a hellstorm of comments from people defending these website's existence.

The websites: TuneNabber.com and ClipNabber.com are just what they sound like. Tune Nabber allows a user to enter the URL of any streaming audio/video content and "nabbs" it by making a MP3 copy of the audio and making it available for download on your computer. Clip Nabber does the same thing except it actually copies the entire video clip and makes it availablefor download to your computer.

All of my conventional wisdom tells me that both of these are taking content placed in a fixed broadcast format and changing the formatof that content, thus violating the rights of the content owner. Well, my esteemed brethren simply blew up on me when I made the statement "To me, they are clearly facilitating copyright infringement." Stating that these sites were no different from Tivo, tabbed browsing or even a browser's "save image as" function in that they simply "time-shifted" the video and/or audio making it possible for a user to watch it at a later date.

I would be fascinated to hear what anyone else has to say on this subject. To me, although it seems like a black and white matter- I do realize that all of copyright land tends to stay in the gray.

Mobile SMS Business Cards?

So today I am sitting at the Leadership Music Digital Summit networking with a few new media/developer dudes and upon our obligatory card exchange was taken quite aback. As I asked the gentleman for his card he simply replied "text my name to 50500 and you will have my info." To me, this sounded like "these aren't the droids you're looking for." What Jedi mind trick had I just stumbled upon...? contxts.com

This fantastic service actually allows you to create your own "business card" that can be texted to contacts via SMS. I went on immediately and created my own. In case you were wondering... text "randallfoster" to 50500.

All in all, I must say the site was quite easy to use. I am a fan of web simplicity and this is definitely a simple interface. It appears that there is more development to come that will help you keep the contacts you have collected and I look forward to seeing those changes. For now though, the site is FREE, simple and it works well. Plus, you'll never have to worry about leaving your cards at home again.

Check out this review on Mashable... or if you are a tweeter, you can follow them at http://twitter.com/contxts