This is an infographic from breakingcopy.com. Great site, check it out when you get a chance.

This is pretty accurate and does a good job in not showing all possible networks out there as these are now the major players in the game (maybe minus Tumblr). I wouldn’t be surprised to see one of these come off the table soon (LinkedIN, Foursquare G+) through acquisition or being shut down due to competition passing them by.

Google+ is still pretty new in the scheme of things. I’ve yet to find an audience on there that isn’t on twitter. For me, this infographic for me is partially true. The one workflow arrow that is lacking is the length of the message I’d like to convey. More or less than 140 chars? The ability to write more than 140 chars are Twitter’s strength and hold-up. Message length and threaded conversations (trying to see what someone else is responding to is difficult to follow). The audience on Twitter is right for digital and sports talk, but the medium is limiting to tell longer form opinions.

Facebook is another story as I have so many personal friends from High School and College that get tired of my work geek speak I find it counterproductive to post a lot of sports or digital notes on there. The audience (digital audience, not sports audience) is on Google+ and I’ve used it to be an outlet for longer form geek speak. It is no replacement for personal sharing like Facebook (nor do I need one yet), nor do I think it will become one.

Episode 005: Dan Harbison of the Portland Trail Blazers from Jonathan Dusing on Vimeo.

I was able to do an interview with the guys at Row27 on their VCasted show: The Row Show. This is their 5th episode and I’m really impressed with not only their content (Interactive Sports Marketing Tips) but the production is killer. Nice After Effects (I think) transitions and graphics. Just like websites, it isn’t all about the design, it’s about the content that goes in the design… but the design helps augment the content. This can be said about their show.

We discuss Live Video Streaming, CoverItLive for live blogging during the playoffs, the relaunch of iamatrailblazersfan.com, passive engagement vs active engagement, how Toyota’s Hybrid Social Net (preview blog post) was an inspiration for a feature in the iama and more.

We used Skype and the audio got a little funky. Sometimes I looked like I was in a 70′s Kung Fu movie. I look tired. Man, that was right before Game 6 and we had been up consistently until 2am getting stuff done for the site.

Big props to Jason and Jonathan for showing the intiative and starting this. Thanks for reaching out. Let me know anytime you would like a guy that talks a lot, looks tired and will try to throw his voice. I know a guy.

This past weekend I did an interview with Arian Karimian for USA Today about Twitter. He created an article and posted it online, here’s a link. It was interesting to remember why we started using Twitter and seeing now where we’re at.

We started using Twitter in 2007 right after we got the #1 pick in the NBA Draft. Immediately I knew we would be getting a TON of more traffic to the site. I wanted to create an extremely robust experience for new fans that were curious about the team. The big question that people would be coming to ask, Will it be Oden or Durant. I went to the guys at Substance and asked, how fast can we create a microsite for this subject.

The guys at Substance rocked and created an amazing microsite that took about 14 days to create. One of the features was a Twitter Feed. I had heard about Twitter, but saw the application for us immediately when they framed it in the site. It totally makes sense as a way to pull back the curtain and let them know what is going on, especially during closed door events like draft workouts.

Back in 2007, there wasn’t @replies, only broadcasting. But as soon as those became functional bringing in conversation into the application made sense. We had a period where we didn’t use it as much as we do now, but I would say 50% of our Tweets now are @ replies.

Another feature that wasn’t around in 2k7 was Twitpics and the like. A picture tells 1,000 words, let alone 140 characters. If that was available during the draft, that would have gone a long way.

We plan on continuing Tweeting, during the playoffs we’re using it to keep the conversation going with fans and also promotion different pieces of engaging content on our site (like live game blogging, play-by-play modules, and post game live video stream). We’ve promoted the hashtag #uprise and you can see the Tweets from the people using it to showcase if they’re talking about Trail Blazers Playoffs 2009.

I see us continue to use Twitter and integrating it more into the design of trailblazers.com and especially the new version of our social network iamatrailblazersfan.com. Being able to push content out of iama, or bring Tweets in is a project for the summer to get ready for the 09-10 season. Seeing such a mainstream influx of Twitter users (1,382% year over year in February) we’ll need to incorporate the ease of use of that platform into iama. Even for my own sake, I don’t want to have to update two or three different sites. I want to update one, Twitter, and have that update iama and Facebook. Or vice versa, update Iama and have that update Twitter and Facebook.

I wonder about Twitter being such a mainstream phenomenon. I think that a lot of people are going to check it out, see their favorite celebrity Tweeting and leave about a couple of months. I’ve heard a lot of people that “don’t get it”. Not all people are content contributors. Even celebrities aren’t content contributors unless it is good content. Now you’ll be more engaged in the mundane content that they create (ate some cake for example) than a random person, but after awhile, that won’t become interesting. That’s why Shaq has been so successful. He’s an interesting person. He writes interesting content. Not all people can carry that… that’s why when people really really want our players to Tweet. If they can’t do it consistently or make it interesting, I don’t see why they would want to on either side.

Here’s an old post from June 2007 about using Twitter.

I’m sure some of you have watched this. It has been floating around for awhile, but I was reminded of it when I was on Pat Coyle’s blog today. You forget how many times this Fat Boy Slim song is used for things like this, but I still actually like it.

I try to keep the number of RSS Feeds that I subscribe to a minimum. I have read about people like Robert Scoble that read some insane number of RSS Feeds a day, I just don’t have time. I find that if don’t read the RSS feed in over a month, I dump it. I look it almost like subscribing to someone’s email list. If I haven’t read their email in awhile, I should really unsubscribe… unless it is IMPOSSIBLE to unsubscribe (I’m looking in your direction eHarmony… subscribed for purely research purposes, I swear). A blog I have recently subscribed to their RSS feed and have been extremely happy with is the blog bokardo.com. Written by Joshua Porter, author of Designing For the Social Web, the blog details examples of good and bad design throughout sites that are in the Social Web space (ie Web 2.0 sites). Below is an example of his review of the homepage of Freshbook’s homepage.

I still need to pick up his book which was recommended to me by David at Substance.

This is a space that I continue to look at for inspiration. A lot of the social networks and social sites that have been built out have been built with development in mind, but the experience or UI is secondary. How will people use the cutting edge functionality that your company has invested in if your design and UI was the last thing that you looked at, and didn’t invest really any money or time in… that is a bridge that a lot of people like to cross after they have gone live with their site. I think this is a mistake. In this day in age, there are so many sites out there, first to market IS extremely important, but having your users understand how to use it is equally important. If you turn people off once they get there, you’ll have a hard time with them being a regular user. Then your competitive advantage is wasted because you will have to rehaul your design and relaunch.

This approach is how we are looking at iamatrailblazersfan.com v2.0. We’re bringing in a lot of new features, so our UI and design needed to be really solid to support these features and to make it easy for people. The team at Substance has been amazing and I’m really excited to bring their designs to life over the summer. We will learn a lot once we get live, but if we just went with some generic skins, the Trail Blazers brand wouldn’t sing in the site and fans would become frustrated. We will of course need to change, evolve and learn once we go live, that is inevitable. BUT, because we took the extra time with the UI, I believe (and the focus groups we’ve held believe) that this will a design that will support the community.

Tags: socialnetworks, iamatrailblazersfan.com, substance

Great post on TechCrunch today talking about the future of social networking (I Saw The Future Of Social Networking The Other Day)

Mike Arrington talks about a company that he has seen that could be diving into waters that Facebook and MySpace have yet to fully embrace, Mobile Social Networking. Yes, there are mobile version of both of these sites, but neither harness the power of your mobile phone.

The mobile phone is an amazing device that continues to get crazy cooler as the months go by. Not once have I ever regretted waiting in line and dropping cash on my iphone. There are few things these days that I at least don’t double guess myself from purchasing later (ahem, Netflix… at times). Back to my point… mobile phones are no longer your phone, they are your microcomputer. You can do a run a ton of apps on your smartphone that eliminate having to use your laptop. So this is quickly becoming a replacement in someways, and in others an augmentation to people’s digital experience (web, video, photos email).

If you have this microcomputer everywhere, why not have your web experience be in relation to where you are at. You see more and more mobile phones tying in GPS (Boost does this, iPhones Google Maps has a triangulation feature). Having contextual information of the people that you are having online relationships while you are interacting physically. Arrington’s thoughts:

Imagine walking into a meeting, classroom, party, bar, subway station, airplane, etc. and seeing profile information about other people in the area, depending on privacy settings. Picture, name, dating status, resume information, etc. The information that is available would be relevant to the setting – quick LinkedIn-type information for a business meeting v. Facebook dating status for a bar.

So picture being in arena at a Trail Blazers game and you fire up your iPhone. You are able to do a multitude of things on your phone, watch instant replays from different angles than what was on the big screen, get coupons for the merch store, and firing up your social network to see who in the arena is there that night. A map comes up  and shows all your friends’ thumbnails and where they’re sitting in relation to you…  so you can say “hey”! You could also see in general others at the game that you might not have met yet, or the guy who sits next to you that you’ve become friends with is on iamatrailblazersfan.com, but you never knew.

The game operations people can see use this to create a better experience based on the psychographics of the people in the arena that night. A snapshot of tonight’s crowd might say that 85% of the people sitting there that night are fans of Jay-Z, so they’ll play more Jay-Z that night. All of this could be possible.

It sounds like Arrington saw a start-up that is harnessing the iPhone SDK to make this happen. I’m really excited to see what happens. I really think this could be an awesome addition to existing social networks for Facebook, LinkedIN, MySpace, Flickr and also niche sites like our iamatrailblazersfan.com or MyColts.net.

Having something like this only available for one phone is a problem. It would need to be cross carrier/cross model. Alas, that is a problem with our system in the states, standardization is lousy on mobile phones. That’s for another post.

Two things stood out for me today…

1) Passion – I was on a panel today with Paul Colligan at Searchfest 2008, and he has passion for what he does. He has several podcasts and is a person neck deep in social media/web 2.0. If you ever get a chance to pick his brain about all things in the Web 2.0 space, do it. I will blog tomorrow about the presentation.

2) Over-reaction. Wow, there was a TON of buzz on Techmeme and blogs throughout the internet about the SWSX interview of Mark Zuckerberg (founder/CEO of Facebook) and internet reporter Sarah Lacy. People were just SLAMMING her on the blogs and in the audience at this session of SXSW. I’ve linked to the video from allfacebook.com. I guess after all the hype, I was disappointed as she didn’t do that bad of a job. She kept it casual and tried to have a conversation with Mark. She obviously has a past and tried to showcase some of those stories. Yes, she does a lot of self-promotion of her book, and no, she doesn’t get extremely technical… but by no means deserved the rousing she got. Someone in the audience heckled her for asking bad questions and then turned around and asked the most generic question in the world “What is the biggest obstacle to Facebook”. That’s like asking a band your interviewing, who their musical influences are. If you know who your subject is, you won’t find out anything new, therefor it is a question just to ask one.

She could’ve improved this interview if she would’ve had some specific direction on where she wanted to take it, rather than a fire-side chat with Mark. That I think would have shaped up better.

** UPDATE ** WordPress makes it way too hard to post video on your blog. Seriously, I wanted to embed the flash video from Viddler and it is taking too much time to hunt around for a plugin. I don’t freaking care that WP is “protecting” us. Thanks, I’ll start looking for another platform. In Blogger I could work on html in my posts. This is retarded, and no, it isn’t user error. I’ve been searching for 1/2 an hour and this looks like a common issue. Poop on WP today.

** UPDATE #2 ** Scoble has blogged about the Sarah Lacy/Mark Zuckerberg interview. Pretty solid post (as usual from Scoble). Great point by him… know your audience. She didn’t, and therefor went in directions that they didn’t like. Of course, unlike what these people are used to, they couldn’t just go to another site, they were “stuck” there in person. Also, after consideration, there is a way to handle heckelers and that was not the way. Either don’t acknowledge them, or have a solid comeback. She did neither. Having been in radio where most interviews are live, I’ve seen my fair share of really bad interviews, and this my friends, wasn’t THAT bad of an interview.

Ohhhh, the web. It brings us all together. We talk to each other on email, IM, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace… and probably something crazy that I haven’t heard of. Buuuuuut… people who like the web, and who talk about the web like to go to conferences. Probably to meet others because they bore their everyday friends talking about “social graphs” and “api’s”, or so I’ve been told.

So, I’m in San Diego at PacNET, our ticketing provider’s (Paciolan) annual conference. I’ll be presenting about Web 2.oh and how we’ve been using it at the Trail Blazers. PLUS, I’ll be talking about SEM (we’ve done a little of that) and multi-media with your websites (we do that too!). I think I’m going to be tired of talking, and if you know me, you know that doesn’t happen often.

Another sweet ass conference is in New York right now… Sports Marketing Web 2.0 conference. My colleague, Pat Coyle has put this together to bring the people who bring sports marketing onling… all in NYC. This is a series of conferences that we’ll all be trying to put on over the next couple of weeks. I can’t wait to be able to attend one (I’m in San Diego for PacNET, read the paragraph above)… so I’ll have to wait until March. It’s a bunch of guys and girls from sport teams (most of them pro teams) and talk about the good and bad things that are going on in our world. We’re shooting for one to be in San Francisco in March. Who wants to go? If you are interested in this space, let me know, I can invite you to the Sports Marketing Web 2.0 social network. Yes, the guys who like to develop social networks have a social network. It’s like putting a mirror up to a mirror that reflects that mirror into a mirrrr….. ahhh my brain broke.

I’ll be speaking at an Internet Strategy Forum on February 20th… we’ll be talking about what clients want out of agencies. And I’ve seen both sides so I’ll have to change order myself when scope creep sets in… wait, isn’t that supposed to happen in private? I’ll also be presenting at SEMPDX, SearchFest 2008 on March 10th. I did it last year and loved it. This year it’ll be at the Portland Zoo! Sweet ASS! Should be fun. I’ll have an update as we get closer.

Oh yeah, Jack has a new video up. He’s dope.

What a crazy last couple of months. We really have had no downtime here at work…

1) We took on the interactive marketing for the Rose Quarter. This is no small feat as there are a lot of events that go on at the Rose Quarter.

2) Upped our coverage of the team in the off-season (Jim Taylor, BlazersEvangelist, traveled to New York and Las Vegas to cover the draft and summer league)

3) Brought in a new email marketing tool, Eloqua. This tool has some really remarkable features including a good integration to CRM and automated work-flows for drip marketing campaigns.

4) Greg got hurt. This one was tough since there was so much buzz about all the guys coming back early and playing together. Greg doesn’t get out on the court, but we will cover his comeback (video features of his rebhab, checkins with the trainers etc) and will be able to involve him more than if he was playing.

5) Launched our new season campaign titled “Rise With Us”. Pretty cool in that it goes beyond the organization. We will be placing cameras in the hands of the players, fans, employees to show what it means to be a part of this team. We should capture some really exciting footage of locker room talks, fans getting ready for the games, players on the road. I’m excited to see some of the stories unfold. More about Rise With Us in a future blog post.

6) Make It Better. This is relaunch for our Community Outreach program. We are launching this today and is to show how the whole organization “Makes It Better”. I think it is really cool all the work that the employees here take part in on a weekly basis. From the weekly projects in the summer to the larger projects during the season. One of those large in-season events is coming up on Monday next week (Harvest Dinner). We will be feeding over 5,000 homeless people here at the Rose Garden. The players get involved and man the food line, I think this year I’ll be helping with haircuts. I doubt I’ll be giving haircuts, that duty ended in college… probably helping with crowd control.

7) Upcoming Greg Oden Bobblehead night (Friday, November 9) and 90 & 92 Heritage night with Drexler, Porter, Williams, Duckworth and Kersey (Tuesday, November 13).

I don’t want to turn this into a promotion of all the events the Trail Blazers have coming up. More of, wow… there is a lot of work that has been done here at the organization… and still a lot more to come.

Iamatrailblazersfan.com continues to grow (over 8,500 members) and will be working on getting more this season. This is going to be a focus of mine in the next couple of months on how we can improve involvement in the social network. I will save all my current thoughts about social networking in upcoming posts, but they include: Facebook (I’ve found really good value so far with FB), LinkedIn (Is this like collecting baseball cards?), Twitter (one of the reasons I haven’t blogged in awhile), blogs in general, and finally Google’s announcement to Open Social.

At Internet Strategy Forum blogging on iphone. WordPress has some funkiness with iPhone so bear with me. Scoble is on stage talking Web 2.0. He’s on Facebook talking shared feed. Great speaker just about why and what os cool on web. I’m going to go and pay attention. I’ll have wrapup.