New Blog Location for Mark Kithcart

I'm moving my blog to a Wordpress hosted solution.

The SEO tools are better and the layouts are more flexible for my needs.

So starting tomorrow my blog will be fully functional at www.markkithcart.com

It's up and running now but under construction. It will be completed by tomorrow - Jan 11, 2010.

Sorry to all of the commenters on the blog - those were lost when I migrated it to Wordpress.

The blogger blog will remain but will go back to offering free network marketing tools for those that come in a constant stream looking for them.

Thanks for the support and I look forward to 2010 and beyond in all areas of growth from Social Media to Network Marketing for all of the readers.

So if you are looking for Mark Kithcart - you can find me on my new blog.

Or you can find me on these sites as well:

LinkedIn - Mark Kithcart
Plaxo - Mark Kithcart
Facebook - Mark Kithcart
Twitter - Mark Kithcart

The Coolest Social Media Infographic I Have Seen

This is the coolest thing ever. It is a catagorized social media cornucopia of the different platforms, tools and sites available for businesses or individuals. It takes the vast nature of Social Media and brings it down to a well thought out and easy to understand Infographic. It's called the Conversation Prism.

Best viewed by zooming and dragging the screen to see the detail and each logo is clickable so you can jump right to their site (how cool is that - interactive too!).

Brian Solis is one of the co-creators of this Infographic - I have been involved with sponsoring some tweetups in Silicon Valley he attended. Brian knows his stuff and knows Social Media. In the land of Social Media Snake Oil (where eveyone is an expert...) Brian is the real deal.

Tweeting Cars from Ford - What Next Your Toaster Updates Your Facebook Status?

Wow, CES 2010 is obviously full of surprises this year. I was mildly amused and somewhat alarmed to find out that Ford is unveiling a tweeting car.

This, of course, has some folks up in arms about safety but what does this say about Social Media? We hear that it is a passing fad and perhaps this whole Social Media thing will finally blow over and we can get back to business. But is it?

This new development from Ford seems to suggest the exact opposite of Social Media being a fad or a passing moment on the internet. But it does make sense from one perspective, Scott Monty, uber social media guru, is the Social Media Head at Ford and very much engaged in building the Social Media presence at one of the oldest brands in the world. Scott has done some "experiments" with Social Media while at Ford so far and it looks like they are getting some traction (ROI is debatable).

So, I would love to hear from you - Is Social Media a passing fad or do you have some personal concrete experience and examples to share that indicate Social Media is integral to our lives and also to businesses?

Conversations, Interactions and Authenticity in Social Media

I just watched a video, suggested by Francine Hardaway, The Machine is (Changing) Us: YouTube and the Politics of Authenticity that "woke me up" to what is happening and what could happen on the internet.

A quote from Mike Wesch about the Video & the research:

Nobody there was blindly optimistic, thinking technology was going to make everything better. They were all continually trying to figure out where we are, where we might be going, and the possible downsides and dangers of new technologies so we can use the new technologies to serve human purposes.

For anyone who is really truly engaged in Social Media or is driving to create meaningful conversations online should watch this video. If you are just online to spam marketing messages, spam comments for backlinks or "game the system: i.e. Google & others" then this isn't for you. But wait, yes it is...actually it is more for the spammers and "hit and run" marketing message droppers than anyone else.

This is the best 33 minutes I have spent online in long time.

The internet is evolving and so are we as communicators and information-a-holics. Prior to the internet we had the one-way conversation of the TV only. And the shaping it does to our minds, trends and pop culture is unrivaled until now.

I truly believe we will see the internet eclipse the TV because of the interaction, conversation and authenticity that can now flow from one to many or from many to many.

News is not just News anymore online - it becomes a conversation - albeit a vulgar and juvenile one at times but none the less a conversation that can breathe and give life to a story, event or occurrence.

The video by Mike Wesch, of The Machine is Us/ing Us Fame with over 10 million views and counting, really asks some questions that many of us are not considering but should be given that the internet is playing a HUGE role in our lives and the lives of billions around the planet.

Social Media and the internet have a place now and we have personal control of where it goes and how we choose to interact with it and others. We will always have the juvenile and immature behavior online but we also have a chance to really make decisions to be authentic and connect like we have never had a chance to before.

We can now connect without;

- feeling subconscious
- someone laughing in our faces
- telling us that our thoughts or ideas are irrelevant, or worse - stupid
- feeling the repercussions of revealing more than we would normally reveal face-to-face

This opens up huge opportunities to be authentic and supportive of each other thereby creating new conversations and communities that would have never been formed due to the potential for the lack of authenticity from a one-way conversation (TV), a face-to-face conversation or the distance that would normally separate us geographically.

We all now have a chance to create communities and be something more than what we may show, say or act like when at work, home, school or other face-to-face social situation.

Watch the video and then start your journey to be authentic, be real, create new conversations and create new communities. And then we can potentially create a new future of what social media can truly become.

LeapFish - Where Web Meets World

LeapFish released a new traditional, social and real-time search experience today.

I think a lot of people will perceive this as a release of "just another search engine" if they just read a press release or post and fail to go to the site. That couldn't be further from the truth with this new version of LeapFish. This is the first search engine that allows socialization of all discovered content at the click of a button.

Social media adoption is at unprecedented levels and content is truly becoming "king" as engines like LeapFish allow a simple sharing mechanism that is integrated into the search stream.

From the Press Release:

“Aside from the Web’s growing size and variety there is an emerging duality of “real-time” and “traditional,” which now requires a completely different search experience. One that includes both the content and the “contributor” in the search experience, such that both traditional and real-time searching and sharing are integrated seamlessly in our use of this Living Web,” said Ben Behrouzi."

This, in my opinion, was the missing step to a much larger movement in the search industry that is now moving away from static links and search results to a more dynamic search and socialization experience.

The best part of this release is that the combined searching and sharing functionality is only one of the incredibly innovative features that users will have access to when using LeapFish. My favorite feature is the customizable homepage that have feature-rich proprietary Twitter and Facebook apps that allow me to interact with my social communities without leaving my "personal dashboard to the web".

Go to http://www.leapfish.com/ dive into this new experience and start Living the Web.