If you’re in the San Francisco Bay Area and are interested in learning more of the “how to” behind social media and networking with marketers who have successfully leveraged social media channels, check out “Social Media Matters.” It is a new, monthly event that shows marketers, brand managers, and advertisers how to use social media successfully.  It’s being organized by Covered Co. (one of my former clients).

The first event will cover “Building Brands on Facebook,” and it’s being held at 6:30pm on December 3rd at Fenwick & West’s office in downtown San Francisco.  (more…)

There’s an interesting debate afoot… Could News Corporation (Newscorp) trump Google by preventing them from indexing their various sites including Wall Street Journal, or would this bring down Newscorp by making its content less discoverable?  What would happen if the world’s biggest publishers joined forces together against Google and sold the ability to index their content to the highest bidder?  What would this mean for the Internet and profitability of the web’s biggest publishers? (more…)

After listening to the podcast I did on Wednesday with Motodev on how to incorporate social media into mobile applications, Matthäus Krzykowski,  (a fellow mobile consultant, freelance writer for VentureBeat, and fascinating guy) tweeted: “@motodev @lisawhelan is great, enjoyed the podcast. However, as @danshapiro http://bit.ly/3eRvaK says viral broken is in mobile. Thoughts ?” It’s a good question.  The short answer is “he’s right,” but while the mobile ecosystem sorts itself out, there are things developers can do to make their apps more viral… (more…)

In business development, nothing beats meeting a client, partner or colleague in person. While electronic communication and phone calls are a great way to keep in touch, making time for face-to-face communication is an important part of solidifying a deep connection and/or closing a deal.  Attending industry events and trade shows is a great way to simultaneously catch up with existing contacts and meet new people.  I used to attend trade shows/ conferences to learn about what was going in web and wireless, but that’s less and less the case. The conventional conference format is growing stale, and is less relevant in our ‘real-time information’ driven culture.  The only reason I go to shows these days is to focus on relationships, and it seems I’m not alone. (more…)

Today is the last day of DEMOfall 09, and I’ll be live blogging about what I see.  Please refresh your page regularly.

It’s 9:30am, and we’re close to kick off…

First up Nubli – a 90 second alpha pitch…

• Nubli figures out which emails and contacts are the most important to you and presents them in a prioritized view
• Cuts the clutter in your inbox. (more…)

I’m blogging live from DEMOfall 09 in San Diego California… I’ll also be live tweeting.  The show is about to start shortly.  Please refresh your browser regularly.

The show is starting now… First up an introduction video.

Now the intro to the conference – Chris Shipley and Matt Marshall are thanking partners and talking about the format for DEMOfall 09.  VentureBeat has launched DEMOBeat.  VentureBeat also talking about VentureBeat Profiles, which is the integration of their Profiles acquisition.

Chris Shipley says now is the best time to be starting a company and innovating.  Hewlett-Packard Co is first up to bat… They’re a DEMO veteran. (more…)

The Wall Street Journal reports that Facebook acquired Friendfeed today for for nearly $50 Million US.  Friendfeed is a useful real-time social media aggregation and commenting service, and it’s easy to see why it caught Facebook’s attention.  Over the past several hours there’s been plenty of speculation by tech bloggers about why the acquisition took place and what this means for Friendfeed and Facebook users… (more…)

I recently received an email from a start-up called USCORE who wanted to learn more about my consulting services.  USCORE aims to give high school sports teams who are filming games the ability to easily tag each play within the video with the name of each player involved.  Parents that can’t make their child’s game can sign up to receive MMS messages on their mobile phone that show any play their child was involved in real time.

As part of my due diligence, I agreed to see a demo of USCORE’s product.  After multiple assurances that my mobile number would be removed from their system after the demo and I would never be spammed, I provided USCORE with my mobile number so that they could show me their ‘powerful’ MMS feature.  Unfortunately, the MMS demo didn’t work.  And, yesterday, almost four weeks after I saw the initial demo, I learned how ‘powerful’ USCORE’s MMS feature was when I received at least 139 unsolicited MMS messages. (more…)

Last night, I attended the Mobile Monday Silicon Valley event at the Sir Francis Drake Hotel in San Francisco. There was a panel discussion on “Mobile Monetization,” which drew a large crowd, which seemed in direct proportion to the level of excitement around the topic of monetization.  The panel was moderated by Julie Ask, VP and Principal Analyst at Forrester, an the panelists were: (more…)

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the value of social media monitoring tools in brand and marketing campaign management.  Having now demoed a number of social media monitoring solutions, I’ve realized that while there are a lot of great tools out there, there is still a lot of opportunity for product improvement – especially around mobilization and social media response. (more…)