Another lesson in web 2.0 transparency

I just came across another good case study in web 2.0 transparency via the Ethical Blogger.

The gist of the story: A guy who created a nonprofit organization dedicated to making charities and their operations more transparent, pulls a John Mackey and throws all principles of transparency out the window. 

What exactly did he do? He used a fake online identity to post a question about where to find a good charity and then answered it with the name of his organization using yet another pseudonym. 

The result: he is asked to step down from his position as Executive Director and openly apologizes for his lapse in judgement.

Ikea gets an ultimate citizen marketer: Man who moves into the store

When Mark Malkoff learned he needed to find a new place to live for a week because his apartment was being fumigated, he turned to Ikea and asked the Swedish furniture giant if he could move in. According to the Washington Post, "Ikea was dubious at first, but once they got to know Malkoff -- realized what squeaky, G-rated videos he made and what a good, unpaid spokesman he'd be -- they opened the doors and made a little placard reading "Mark's Apartment" to go outside his living space". Sounds like they realized what a great citizen marketer Mark would make.

You can follow Mark's adventures at Ikea on the Mark lives in Ikea website. Here's the first episode:

Most popular social networks by country

Here's an interesting map from LeMonde which displays the most popular social networks in different parts of the world.

Réseaux sociaux : des audiences différentes selon les continents
LEMONDE.FR | 14.01.08

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New BusinessWeek Article on Corporate Bloggigng

If you haven't already seen this, check out this new BusinessWeek article on how social media will change businesses. Interesting material!

Corporate Blogging & Blogger Relations Slides

I've uploaded the slides from our class on corporate blogging and blogger relations. As always, click on each slide to navigate to the next. This is a big file that may take a second to load.

Jobs in social media

Just in case you've discovered your love for blogging and podcasting this semester: Here's a new social network for people interested in social media jobs and here's another web site with job listings in that area.

Useful RSS mashup tools (especially for converting your blog posts into a PDF)

Want to tweak your RSS feeds a little? Then try out xFruits, an RSS mashup tool that can create PDF files from your feeds, or combine a number of feeds into one.

If you are thinking of including your blog posts from this semester in your physical communication portfolio (yes seniors, those portfolios will be due soon!), you can also use this tool to create a decent-looking PDF version of your blog and then print out the PDF.

It looks like xFruits might be a little easier to use than Yahoo pipes, another tool that allows you to aggregate, manipulate, and mashup content from around the web.