In this 20+ min presentation, Jeff Jarvis offers interesting insight into how to listen to the conversations your customers are having and benefit in the new world of Google.

(Click here if you can’t see the video.)

BRITE Conference on Vimeo.

Like it?

Get Jeff’s book here:
What Would Google Do?

Click to see a bunch more Jeff Jarvis on YouTube.com

Altera Performance Group - New Media Marketing & Technology

The Rocky Mountain News is publishing it’s final edition today. They are done.

We recently launched WeLoveSteamboat.com, a community user-generated content site about why we love Steamboat, for Wild Horse Meadows. I have been amazed at the traction and interest the site is getting. Over the past few weeks I’ve had the opportunity to meet with Steamboat business owners, community leaders and other interested parties to introduce and discuss the site and how they can participate and benefit. The response in these meetings & conversations has been 110% positive, enthusiastic and appreciative. People are excited about the opportunity that they can participate in the story of Steamboat. They are excited that a resource is being created that they can share with friends on FaceBook and others around the world. We even created free, branded WeLoveSteamboat.com video widgets for businesses to add to their site which gives them instant Steamboat content.

So as the Rocky Mountain News publishes it’s last edition today I’m sharing this terrific article about the future of media.

Article:

February 19, 2009

Clinging To The Past Is Not A Strategy

Posted by Adam Singer in Opinions, Randomness

How do you feel about Viacom suing YouTube for a billion dollars?

How about the RIAA pushing ISPs to hand over user data?

What about the Wall Street Journal editor claiming Google devalues everything it touches?

And now Hulu Hollywood pulling content from Boxee?

In each of these cases (and throngs of others), these organizations only succeed in:

* Destroying their public image with an onslaught of negative publicity

* Demonstrating how out of touch they are with our world

* Positioning themselves as companies clinging to a past that is no longer a reality

* Slowing down progress in an ultimate, inevitable transition that can’t be legislated or sued away

* Turning their back on tools which enable a profitable and prolific future that can actually makes their users happy

* Branding themselves as draconian

* Standing on the wrong side of the future media crossroads

The future of content does not belong to those who try to lock it down, sue, or otherwise impede the direction of an open information society. We’re pretty much already that, and it’s a beautiful world for companies who organize around making content open and accessible.

Unfortunately those in the previous guard making the decisions can’t see beyond their myopic view of the past world they built empires on top of. That world doesn’t exist anymore, and no amount of lobbying can put the genie back in the bottle.

The never-ending parade of drama we see every day of battles between old media and technology are difficult to read because the new tools around us are so exciting and enable so much. Not in terms of piracy, in terms of possibility for everyone to have a voice. We have given birth to a long tail of influence, authority and content – which has been enabled to thrive due to technology that old media would be happy to see go away. The truth is, everyone can thrive here, but the problem is those with power have grown complacent and can’t view a world where they are not king.

This is creating much more than a PR nightmare. The music industry is in big trouble right now because they ignored the shift. Print media is suffering the same fate. Hollywood is making similar missteps. And, as history repeats itself, the reality is none of these industries are as permanent as you make them out to be in your mind. Media has always changed with technology, usually with a fight. Scribes were put out of work with the advent of the printing press, the telephone killed the telegraph, video killed the radio star. You know the story.

Allowing the natural flow of society to shift to the most efficient forms of media and communications due to advances in technology is the path we must take to improve our world at the macro level. Creating unnatural barriers in an attempt to block advancements in technology merely because it disrupts a business model is doomed for failure. Embracing the shifts and building businesses around them is the logical move.

Long term, the examples above won’t even matter. We’ve built a world of citizen-powered media, and many smart organizations within industries are diving in and providing professional level content in an open format and profiting quite well from it (it can be done). Right now it’s a bit disjointed but if you’re a part of this you can literally taste the future of communications. I’ve said this before and I stick with it: it has never been a better time to be a talented content producer of any type.

While equilibrium is reached and the big players take a scorched earth, ignore the past strategy – you have a tremendous opportunity to quietly build something amazing that thrives in an open-information economy.

Please visit Adam’s terrific blog at www.thefuturebuzz.com.

Altera Performance Group - New Media Marketing & Technology

Here are 5.5 apps that I highly recommend for real estate professionals (only one is real estate specific).

1. Evernote – Free (with a paid option)

Evernote for the iPhone is part of a larger system of applications for managing all the digital information in your life. From research to notes to the great bottle of wine you want to remember, Evernote can handle it. You can set up different notebooks in Evernote to organize your stuff. So for example I have a notebook of iphone pics I’ve taken of wines I like and another notebook for some project research. Evernote even has OCR to recognize text in a picture. That means that photos are now searchable via a simple text search. Evernote has a desktop component for Mac or PC and a cloud component so your data is always available. The iPhone app is really well done and allows you to enter data into your account via text, voice notes (that you can listen to later) or by taking a snapshot with the iphone camera. The real benefit with this app is that your data/info is always with you, searchable and you have the ability to add to your stuff at anytime.

www.evernote.com

2. Easy wifi – Free

iPhone users get free wifi access at all at&t wifi hotspots which is great. But logging on at said hotspots is pretty difficult. You have to jump through several hoops and it can take a bit to connect. Easy wifi does all the logging in for you. Just set up your account once and launch the app when you want to get online. In a matter of seconds, you’re in. This isn’t a huge deal but it’s one of those small things that makes your life a little easier.

Easy WiFi (iTunes App Store)

3. Twitterific – Free

If you’re on twitter you know that one of the keys is tweeting in a timely manner. Twitterific has an easy to use interface and allows you to use the iPhone camera to attach photos to your tweets.

Twitterific (via App Store)

4. Camerabag – $1.99

Camerabag is an iPhoto photo enhancer. Snap a photo with the iPhone and you can choose from 9 different filters to jazz up your iPhone photos. You’re iPhone snaps will look better and more unique than just the standard pic.

CameraBag Site

5. Trulia Real Estate Search – Free

Wanna see the future of real estate search? Get the Trulia app. The online real estate portal Trulia has created a great app for the iPhone that allows you to search in a numberof ways including by using the phone’s GPS location. In another city and curious what’s for sale around you? Fire up the app and you’ll get all the listings within a radius you specify. Plus you can save searches and save favorite properties. It has integrated google maps to see your favorites on a map.

Tulia Real Estate Search for the iPhone

5.5 Google Earth for the iPhone - Free

You’ll hold the world in the palm of your hand with this app. It is surprisingly powerful and the resolution is incredible. It even has the ability to tilt just like it’s desktop counterpart. The app takes advantage of the GPS function so you can zoom inn on your exact location.

Google Earth for the iPhone

Have any apps you can’t live without? Post em in the comments!

Altera Performance Group - New Media Marketing & Technology