Three Minds On Digital Marketing @ Organic

What's Been Happening This Week...

Can You Feel The Twitter-mania?
Love it or hate it, people just can't stop talking about Twitter. Over the weekend,Twitter proved itself again as a valuable tool in citizen's journalism when it was first to pick up the story and spread the photos of the Toronto propane plant explosions. But just as more people are flocking to the site, Twitter decides it's about time to set some limits to just how many people you can follow. 2000 people might seem like more than anyone would ever want to follow, but for certain users, and I'm not just talking about Scoble, this cap could be devastating. The biggest blow (unless Twitter makes an exception) will be for the #1 followed person on Twitter, Barack Obama, who is surprisingly not using Twitter as part of his big VP announcement. Even though politics and social media seem to really be coming together, apparently most brands still suck at Twitter.

Who's Playing Social Network Catch-Up?
The social network races continued this week with some interesting and unexpected twists. Apparently, Imeem is now beating MySpace as the #1 music social network. In a strange turn of events, fastest growing network out there. Don't celebrate yet! Even with all this growth, social networking is reportedly leveling off in North America. It seems like everyone has a different angle on the Comscore data.

This story is sure to continue to be interesting over the next few months as new players enter the social space. Now that Movable Type is going social, every blog can become it's own social network. The field is quickly becoming cluttered and many are hoping the times of data portability are right around the corner. Otherwise, our online identities are going to become even more unmanageable.

Is PR Friend or Foe?
Speaking of new players in the space, did you ever wonder how bloggers find out about all these technologies in the first place? Well, some of them stumble upon it on their own. Some get recommended by their friends and peers. However, an increasing number of bloggers are closely connected with the PR world, and are getting told about these technologies from people that represent them, people with a vested interest in getting exposure for their clients.

This has been the subject of much debate over the past week. It started with a post on MicroPersuasion claiming PR as obsolete. Then, Scoble, Mashable, and ReadWriteWeb all chimed in with their own take. Many come back to the point that PR is evolving and good PR these days is about listening. It's about playing matchmaker to bloggers and giving them the stories that will inspire passion and not playing the game of how to get to the top of Techmeme.

That's it for this week

Marta Strickland