New York SBDC Research Network

Here on the blog we’ve been talking about Twitter and have offered some reasons that small businesses might want to participate in the world of 140 character messages. Now Twitter itself is telling you why your business should be tweeting, and what you can get out of the service. Check out Twitter 101 , a collection of how-to information, best practices and case studies for the business twitterer. Why the new info? It looks like Twitter will be rolling out commercial applications for Twitter users , including fee-based analytics and account verification tools in the next few months. Before they ask you to pay for a Twitter service, they want to make sure you understand its value. While we’re on the subject of social media and why you should care, here are a couple of lists on using Facebook and LinkedIn for your business: 32 Ways to Use Facebook for Business 33 Ways to Use LinkedIn for Business

Think that Twitter is all about people announcing what they ate for breakfast? Well, it is. But it also offers more interesting artistic possibilities. Want to know how your favorite author feels about their process? While lots of authors just use Twitter to promote their book signings, the following list includes more than 100 authors who use Twitter to carry on a conversation with their readers and offer some insight: Literary Tweets: 100+ of the Best Authors on Twitter And believe it or not, there are non-celebrities on Twitter with huge followings. They have mastered the story-telling possibilities of 140 characters and manage to make their tweets more useful for the reader than the author. Read more in this Washington Times article: " Short(est) Stories: The Art of Twitterature Means Making 140 Characters Count "

Facebook is not just a virtual community for friends; it has evolved into a networking utility for businesses and professionals. Today, there are over 175 million active users on Facebook with the fastest growing group of users those 30 years and older. College graduates and young professionals, the original target audience of Facebook when it launched in 2004, are now using the site to foster professional growth. Should your business create a Facebook Page and join this growing online community? Below are some thoughts about businesses on Facebook: Ten Reasons to Use Facebook for Business Facebook caters to a diverse audience including professionals and businesses. It is a free online tool to facilitate networking with professionals and businesses. 30+ Apps for Doing Business on Facebook This blog provides a list of the applications available on Facebook and how businesses may be able to use the applications for their business needs. Should your business be on Facebook? “The secret is

The blog post How to Create Triggers That Get People to Spread Your Ideas was the introduction of sorts to a webinar I listened to earlier this month, Viral Marketing: How to Create a World Wide Rave . Both venues made these cogent points: "Nobody cares about your products (except you)...What people do care about are themselves and ways to solve their problems..." "No coercion required...When you've got something worth sharing, people will share it..." The webinar example was a dentist who created a free e-book, Healthy Mouth, Healthy Sex! and ended up more than quadrupling her gross while allowing her to drop her expensive Yellow Pages ads. "Lose control...Yes, you can measure success, but not through business-school Return On Investment (ROI) calculators." Think of the Grateful Dead, who allowed and even encouraged recording at their concerts. "Put down roots...If you want your ideas to spread, you need to be involved in the online communities

The website USA.gov , "Government made easy", has added Web 2.0 tools to the portal: a governmentwide news feed service, a gallery of online gadgets, and a word cloud that depicts the most popular online government content. The Government News Aggregator lets users receive consolidated news and information from across the federal government, delivered through RSS feeds. The Government Gadget Gallery is a collection of gadgets and widgets organized by topic and created by subject-matter experts, which can be embedded in home pages, blogs, and other sites. USA.gov Word Cloud allows one to see at a glance which key words are most often searched.

"We continue to discuss how to best use a single Twitter channel for a 17,000-person agency covering many complex, interdisciplinary issues." This was the first post I read on the EPA's Twitter feed . So apparently we're not alone in trying to figure out this Twitter thing! At least there are less than 200 of us... Want to see how more government agencies are using Twitter? Use the GovTwit directory to find Twitter accounts for state, local and federal, as well as contractors, reporters, academics.

I came across this presentation about using Web 2.0 to increase effectiveness of staff training and communication , which may be of use to some of you. I was more intrigued, however, by the whole concept of the web page it was on, something called SlideShare . "SlideShare is the best way to share your presentations with the world. Let your ideas reach a broad audience. Share publicly or privately. Add audio to create a webinar." It's free, with a maximnum size of 100 MB; supported formats include ppt, pps & pot (PowerPoint), pdf, odp (OpenOffice); doc, rtf, xls (MSOffice), odt & ods (OpenOffice) & pdf. I haven't tried to post to it yet, but just as one accessing extant info, I think it does offer a wide variety of resources.

As some of you know, Roger and I will be presenting at next week's ASBDC conference in Chicago. As part of our presentation, "Blogging for Your SBDC: Implementing Web 2.0 Technologies at Your Center", we've created a page of resources related to blogging and other Web 2.0 stuff. Some of these resources I've blogged about before, but now they are in one place, along with with links to blogs and other 2.0 creations from SBDC centers around the country. Enjoy: Blogging for Your SBDC: Resources (This list is by no means exhaustive, but is designed to give you a few more ideas about how to use Web 2.0 technologies, and how they are being used by other SBDC centers.) Blogs & Blogging: 40+ Free Blog Hosts from Mashable.com Trading Links - Any Real Value? by Gail Hornback Copyright & Fair Use Overview: Website Permissions from Stanford University Existing SBDC Blogs: Clarion SBDC (PA) Knowledgebase Hawai`i Business Research Library News Blog Coastal Bend SBD

A mashup is an application that is developed out of existing APIs (application programming interface). The same way an operating system integrates various functions, a programmer can develop a new service or product out of freely available applications. So, when two or more tools are married you see new products like PolicyMap that uses Pushpin Location Data which gives lots of place data tied to maps. The creators take an existing tool and expand or marry it to another to create something new. Another is Big Contacts that pulls together three different tools to create a new web-based organizer. It consolidates email, phone, documents, syncing and task lists. API Dashboard A source for many, many applications used in mashups. Aimed at designers and programmers, it is still interesting to see the variety of tools that are being incorporated into new applications. It descibes which API are used and has links to the site.

Do you have trouble remembering your Web 2.0 technologies? There are a plethora of collaborative online tools for everyone and every purpose. I'm not sure this will help you keep them straight, but you might discover something new and helpful. Go2Web20.net is a directory of web 2.0 applications and services. The home page displays a screen full of logos for different applications. In the mood to play? Just scroll up or down with the little purple arrows, and click on what moves you. If you're looking for a specific application type, you can either search or browse the tag cloud (click on "Select Tag"). Visually it's a lot to take in, but there's some pretty interesting web applications included here that you might not have found otherwise.

I “attended” a webinar on podcasting a couple of weeks ago. While the focus was on the use of podcasting by libraries, here are a few tidbits that would be useful to anyone: Looking for podcasts to subscribe to? Check iTunes or PodcastAlley . Or even a podcast network like the technology-related TWiT Netcast Network . Want to create your own podcasts? It doesn’t have to be too tricky or expensive. Audacity offers free, and easy-to-use sound recording and editing software. About.com has a step-by-step tutorial, “ How to Create Your Own Podcast ” that will lead you through the process. The Research Network has been pondering how we might use podcasting. Any suggestions for topics you’d like to see?

Ben Ropp, former Research Network intern, recommends these two articles of recent interest in the "Business 2.0" category. Social Media Will Change Your Business "Look past the yakkers, hobbyists, and political mobs. Your customers and rivals are figuring blogs out. Our advice: Catch up...or catch you later." From Business Week. Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business By Chris Anderson. From Wired.

“Don't get too attached to MySpace. You might want to pull up stakes from Second Life, too. And you'll probably want to stop posting inanities to Twitter. Why? All of these sites will be gone before the end of this decade.” Thus begins “ MySpace, Second Life, and Twitter Are Doomed ” a recent PC Magazine article by Lance Ulanoff. We’ve mentioned a lot of Web 2.0 applications lately, but are they really the wave of the future, or just a lot of hype? The author argues that MySpace pages are ugly, and sometimes dangerous. Second Life may not be as big as reported, and Twitter is way too random and useless. As a librarian, I feel there’s a purpose in exploring all sorts of information sharing opportunities, since that’s what we do, and we want to be where our users are. And I also enjoy looking up kids I went to high school with. But while I may have a MySpace page, I rarely go there, and I don't feel any great sense of community. Second Life seems pretty neat, but I don&#

I hope you all enjoyed staff training as much as I did. It was great to meet so many of you, and to put faces to email addresses! Prior to coming to our staff training, I went to the spring meeting of the Upstate New York Special Libraries Association. Our speaker was Stephen Abram, director of innovation at SirsiDynix, president-elect of SLA, and a library futurist. Like our futurist, Abram stressed the importance of continual learning, and the need for librarians to keep up with Web 2.0 and social web technologies. He cited a project conducted by the Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenberg County, where employees of the library were encourage to play with web and digital technologies for 15 minutes a day and blog about their experiences. This project supported camaraderie within the library and in a short period of time, taught everyone some great new skills. Read more about that project here : There are so many new technologies out there that could help us in the way we w