Blogger Dinner Photo

Hopefully Jim comes through with the video of our philosophical discussion on the existence of Jeremiah (we have a Facebook group dedicated to the question, too.) Meanwhile here’s our sans Jeremiah group photo, from Dennis.

Note: Jim just called, and he’s got the video on Blip.tv…I’ll be adding that as soon as I can get access to my email. Dennis has added it to his post.

Updated: Thanks to Jim for sending me the video link via Twitter.

Twitter Knitter Dinner

I just got back from a blogger dinner with Jim Long and Dennis McDonald. Jeremiah Owyang organized it but wasn’t able to attend. There was this little matter that he had thought he was traveling to the DC area yesterday, but then realized he wasn’t arriving until late tonight. We’ll have more on that, including an interesting video, in the next few hours.

It should be good, because it was shot by Jim, whose day job is as a videographer for NBC News. We had a really good conversation tonight, and Jim showed us his new venture, craftynation.com, which is a social network for what Jim calls the “Twitter Knitters.”

Speaking of Twitter, Jim’s in love with it, and he regularly tweets about what he’s doing at work. Last week he went on a round-the-globe trip with Defense Secretary Gates. I’ll look forward to following his feed…and Dennis‘.
Dennis recently did a post asking whether Facebook is going down the tubes because it’s new openness has wrecked its simplicity. I understand but don’t share his concern because people decide what applications they want in Facebook, customizing it to their needs. He also is concerned that putting too much original material behind Facebook’s walled garden doesn’t make sense: if he’s going to write something, he wants it to be on his blog where anyone can see it. I told him about the WordPress.com application for Facebook, which solves that problem: you can post to the blog for the wide world, and the fact that you’ve done it shows up in your Facebook news feed. Of course, that’s only for WordPress.com, but eventually applications will be written for other blogging platforms.

Thanks to Jeremiah for introducing us. None of us had met each other before, and none of us had met Jeremiah. It’s the power of new media and social networking that got us together for a truly enjoyable discussion tonight.

I see on Twitter that Jeremiah says he’s hung up in Dallas, with his flight delayed due to thunderstorms. A likely story!

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Frost & Sullivan Sales & Marketing Conference

The Frost & Sullivan Sales & Marketing 2007, East Executive MindXChange starts today in Alexandria, Virginia. Here’s the agenda for what looks to be a highly interactive learning experience. I’m looking forward to participating in a Tuesday afternoon panel moderated by Grier Graham of TechDirt, Inc. Other panelist include Peter S. Mahoney, Nuance Communications, Inc.; David Doucette, Fairmont Hotels & Resorts; Rick Short, Indium Corporation; and Jeremiah Owyang, Podtech.net.

I’ll be sharing highlights and insights from the conference here over the next few days.

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Review: Facebook WordPress.com Application


The new WordPress.com application for Facebook is great because it brings the blogging and social network functions together on one platform. Previously, I could include a link to my Facebook profile on my blog, and on my Facebook profile I had a link back to my blog. But now they are tightly integrated; here’s how my my blog appears in Facebook:

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(It will be interesting to see how this post appears in Facebook, and whether graphics like the logo are displayed.)

Many of the comments on the post announcing the new WordPress application focus on the amount of screen real estate it takes, and I’m sure some more customizability will be added. But it’s a great start.

I think I likely will be going straight to my blog to do the posting, though, rather than posting from within Facebook as I did yesterday. The perfomance for posting within Facebook was kind of sluggish yesterday, which is why I think WordPress must have taken out the graphical formatting buttons (or any formatting, for that matter) from their Facebook app. I can see how that would have slowed things down, kind of like software emulation of a computer operating system (e.g. VirtualPC for Mac).

So now the interface is cleaner, like this…

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…but it would be hard to do anything but basic text posts.

The value of the WordPress application, though, is bringing together the long-format posts (and yes, I know, this one is pretty long-winded) with the social networking capabilities of Facebook, all in one spot.

If you’re on Facebook and want to add me as a friend, click here. If you’re not on Facebook, you should be: click here to join.

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Facebook WordPress Application

I’m really glad Jeremiah Owyang is one of my friends in Facebook, because when I go to my Facebook home page I see what he’s been up to, and the latest thing is adding the WordPress application for Facebook.

So, I’m writing this post to my WordPress.com blog from within Facebook. Some people talk about Facebook being another walled garden like AOL, but this is one way it’s significantly different.

As I see how this shows up on my Facebook profile and how these are integrated, I will have more comments. But for now, thanks for the tip Jeremiah, and I will look forward to being on the panel with you at the Frost & Sullivan event next week.

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