Twenty years ago, a simple document proposed a unified way for computers in a network to display information in a human readable way. It allowed you to easily move from one piece of information to another by simply moving your mouse over a piece of text and clicking it. This simple document, was the precursor to what we know today – hyper links and the World Wide Web. That document, published November 12^th 1990, can be found here.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee – The Inventor of the Web

As a physicist working at CERN, he found that information was hard to access. In the mid 80s, the Internet existed solely as a large network of computers with CERN being one of the largest nodes in Europe. Even though computers using Internet Protocol were able to talk to each other, displaying the information to users was a problem. Reading one piece of information and then moving onto another was difficult.

HyperText and the World Wide Web

Information was structured in a hierarchy. If you wanted to see a paper written by Dr. Joe, you need to figure out which database that paper was stored in. You then needed type in commands and credentials to view it, typically in raw text. Let’s say that Joe referenced a report that his colleague John wrote and it was stored in another database. In order to access this report, you’d then need to connect to that database, type in some commands to find the paper and then it might show it to you using another program. The Internet facilitated the sharing of information but you can see from this example that there was no unified way to show it to you.

Berner-Lee’s document proposed a unified way to show information to the user and a way for users to reference other information easily. Information did not need to rely on a hierarchy anymore. All information could “link” to other information and to each other and there was finally a unified way for computers to show this information. This invention, combined with domain name registration and TCP/IP (both being emergent technologies in the 80s) gave birth to the World Wide Web as we know it.

It’s free

In my opinion, the most important line of this proposal is this: “to provide the software for the above free of charge to anyone.” Lee was working at CERN and therefore, all intellectual property developed there belonged to CERN. This included the Hypertext Transfer Protocol, HTML and the browser developed by Lee. If CERN and Lee followed conventional software development wisdom, they would have charged royalties for any institution or individuals using it.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee could have been rich beyond his wildest dreams but insisted that his work by released into the public domain. This is huge. By doing this, new industries were created.

If it weren’t for this document (and its eventual implementation), companies like Google, YouTube and Facebook would never have been created. Blogs like mashable.com, gawker.com, smashingmagazine.com and your favourite site featuring pictures of cats would never have been possible.

A few notes

Technically speaking, Lee drafted his first memo on Hypertext in March of 1989. His boss wrote “vague but exciting…” on this draft but didn’t let him follow through with his idea. It wasn’t until Robert Cailliau, rewrote and submitted the draft in November 12^th 1990 that they were able to receive approval and funds to actually start the project.

It has been 34 days since Google launched their social networking / messaging / real time update tool. Google buzz lets you “Start conversations about the things you find interesting”. This sounds awfully familiar. While twitter limits its users with 140 character messages, Buzz gives the user more features. But will it be a hit?

Updates are threaded in conversations so your conversations won’t get buried. You can attach pictures right into Buzz. It connects with other sites (Picasa, Flickr and Twitter). Finally, it lets you break the 140 character limit twitter imposes.

Unfortunately, it hasn’t seen the massive growth and widespread adoption Twitter has. Why does Google fail, even with the extra features? First of all, you need a Google Account, specifically Gmail, to enable Google Buzz. This acts as a barrier for users with other email accounts unwilling to make a switch just for Buzz. Secondly, Google isn’t known as a social media giant – it is synonymous with search.

Google’s Social Media Initiatives

Google has a history of trying to gain a foothold on social media while falling short. It sees that users flock to social media sites on the Internet. A recent report by PCmag cited Facebook as “the most popular online destination among United States users”. It wants in. It just doesn’t know how yet.

For example, prior to its purchase of YouTube, Google offered its video service as an alternative to YouTube. It currently offers Picasa as an alternative to Flickr; Blogspot as an alternative to the multitude of free blogging sites, Google Friend Connect as an alternative to – well, pretty much any social networking site.

With Google’s track record of attempts to penetrate the social media sphere, I think it’s safe to assume that Buzz isn’t a Twitter killer. It’s nice to have for existing Gmail users, but it probably won’t go farther than a commodity in a niche market.

One of the best things to help your brand is to engage your audience with a blog. One of the worst things to jeopardize your brand is to let your blog go stagnant.

What does having a blog say about your brand if there’s nothing to read? Nothing at all. Taking the time to plan your blog strategy makes tasks transparent and easy to execute.

Quality vs Quantity vs Consistency

The quality of your posts is, of course, far more important than how many posts you have. However, having a consistent blog keeps you from going stale. Balancing quality and engaging content with a consistent publishing schedule, on top of actually doing your job sounds tough – but it doesn’t have to be.

The first step in having a content creation strategy is to choose a publishing schedule that suits your organization. At Amalgam Design, we chose to publish an article for Bl’Amalgam at least once a week.

Plan Content a Month In Advance

Planning content a month in advance keeps your blog from getting derailed. Sometimes it helps to just take out a calendar and highlight the days you want to publish an article. For each day, decide the topic to blog about. Topics should be related to your industry and should remain within your audience’s interests.

Multiple Authors, One Editor

If you can’t squeeze writing a weekly blog article into your schedule, let others in your organization write too. While some worry that this may damage a company’s identity, on the contrary, it has many benefits:

1. Allowing employees to write for your organization’s blog shows transparency, honesty and trust within your organizational culture.
2. Your employees get to show off their expertise making your organization look more like leaders in your industry
3. It creates a feeling of community and ownership within your organization
4. You share the load in investing time into your blog

Take the time to review articles before posting to ensure accuracy and maintain tone.

Prepare Your Draft In Advance

Creating your draft days in advance ensures that you have plenty of time to edit, proofread and gather feedback from others within your organization. This also helps in the creation of a quality article as well.

Everyone knows that Twitter is today’s social media darling. Twitter allows you to share links, news or status updates to your friends. This immediacy and the sharing of information to your network is the heart of social media. But with Twitter peaking everyone is wondering what the next big social media push will be and how it will affect business. Foursquare and Gowalla are making that push and businesses should be keen on trying these services out. Some businesses are already offering special deals for active users of these services. Why is this a good idea? Geotargeted marketing not only allows businesses to target an audience in the same city, but it also allows business to target an audience to the square-foot. But what do Foursquare and Gowalla do? Rather than explaining their functions, consider the following story:

You and your friends are waiting in line at a restaurant. Bored, you take out your iPhone and turn on your Foursquare or Gowalla app. Before you check into the restaurant, you notice a wings place listed near by. Curious, you take a look at that location’s profile since Gowalla and Foursquare lets locations have their own profile page. Then you notice a tip left by the owner: “Tired of waiting? Next 10 people to walk in get free wings tonight.” It was posted just two minutes ago. Awesome! You and your party leave the never ending line and get the free wings.

Foursquare and Gowalla are location-based social networking sites. They require smart phones, (iPhone, Blackberry or Android) installed with their apps to work effectively. Foursquare and Gowalla are meant to be played like a game and players earn rewrds for checking into locations. Both Foursquare and Gowalla allow Twitter and Facebook integration so whenever you check in, you can Tweet it and post to Facebook at the same time.

So how exactly is it social media? These services rely on your willingness to share your location with your network. You can add comments about places like, “Great pizza and beer here”. Finally, because it’s you sharing these locations with your comments, your network trusts what you have to say.  Here’s a little review on what else these services offer:

Foursquare

Foursquare allows users to “check-in” at locations using their iPhone, blackberry, or Android device and provide a status update. The more times a user checks in at a location, the more badges he or she can unlock. The user can even be crowned “mayor” of a location if he or she checks in at that location the most. However, you can be kicked out of “mayorship” if another user checks in more than you!

Foursquare’s Cool Factor

Foursquare gets pretty competitive. It acts like a real life video game where players compete to be crowned mayor of locations. You’ll find population heavy places, like Union Station, fluctuate in mayorship because of the sheer number of people checking in daily.

Another cool factor for Foursquare is you can add “tips” for people when you check into a place. For example, at Union Station, user FitMusician added the tip: “If the ticket lines are long (esp @ end of month when everyone is buying a monthly pass) there is another lesser known ticket counter in the Great Hall across from the VIA train ticket counter.”

Gowalla

Similar to Foursquare, Gowalla requires users to check in using their iPhone and earn credits. The more they check in, the more credits they earn. Gowalla lets users create “trips” and if others go on one of these trips, they’re tasked to check-in at various predesignated locations. And of course, completing an entire trip nets you a reward.

Gowalla’s Cool Factor

If you can’t find your location when you try to check-in, you can make it yourself. The location you create has to fall under one of Gowalla’s categories. Upon creation of the location, it is assigned a passport icon and you can add a little description for the location. I added Amalgam Design and wrote: “AmalgamDesign HQ. A full service design and marketing firm catering to small businesses. Website design, corporate identity, ad campaigns, and online marketing. Helping small businesses to think big.”

Perhaps the coolest thing about Gowalla is you can leave virtual items for other players to pick up! If you create a spot, and drop an item, you become its “founder”. It’s like a real life scavenger hunt and it gets pretty addicting.

So what?

That’s what everyone said about Twitter during its infancy. The reason why it exploded the way it did was because it fostered direct communication between an average user/consumer and a brand (be it celebrity, product or service). Imagine the possibilities when this direct communication with a brand is paired with the location of the user are at the time.

On January 6^th 2010, Kevin Rose (founder of Digg now turned Angel Investor) posted a 7-minute vlog on his thoughts on Foursquare and Gowalla. In his video log, he shared a story where his buddy got free pizza and beer because the owner of the pizza place noticed they were checked in on Gowalla. He goes on to share that he invested in both companies. By the way, Kevin Rose invested in Twitter in May 2008. This was before CNN started using pushing Twitter heavily and before everyone started noticing Twitter as a powerful marketing tool.

How can businesses utilize this?

Businesses that have responded to Foursquare have been giving special deals to the mayor of their location. At the same time, Foursquare recognizes this and lets their users know which businesses offer specials for their mayor. This gives an incentive for users to compete for mayorship by checking in often, which in turn brings customers to the business. Genius.

Who will win; which is the most fun?

It’s tough to say which service will be the leader in location based social networking. Both Foursquare and Gowalla have a competitive nature to them. In terms of accessibility to its service, Foursquare has apps for all three mobile platforms (iPhone, Blackberry and Android) while Gowalla only supports the iPhone. Mashable seems to think that Foursquare is going to make a big splash as well.

In my opinion, Foursquare is the most fun you can have with location based social media. The sheer competitive nature of kicking another player out of mayorship grants satisfaction. It makes me want to check into every place I visit: be it a subway station, a coffee shop, my work – everywhere.

You are an organization, seeking to build a site that any of your non-tech savvy employees can update regularly. You want a quick turn around – it has to be up and running fairly quickly. Oh, and you don’t have much of a budget. So, after Googling about, you find out that you’ll want an open source Content Management System. Excellent! Problem solved!

Wait, what is it?

I like to explain what a Content Management System does by comparing it to what we’re all used to: MS Word. You open up a document and type. You can add pictures, tables and formatting. You can save documents anywhere on your computer. You can send documents to others to edit.

A typical Content Management System allows you to update content without knowing HTML. It allows you to post the content up to your site without having an FTP client. Your employees can take that content (depending on their user permissions) and edit it. You can tell where you want the content to be displayed: on the home page, on part of the home page, on its own page etc.

And, there are many free CMSs to choose from: the big three I’ve had experience with are WordPress, Drupal and Joomla!.

Great! Now, get one and go do it.

Not so fast! Content Management Systems can be a big headache. They may not always do what you want and they all have a learning curve. There is no perfect CMS. Each one has its own strengths and its weaknesses. Below, I highlight what each system is the best and worst at.

WordPress

Best: First and foremost, it is a blogging platform. You write an article, and it gets added to the front page of other articles and sorted in reverse chronological. You can tag and categorize articles. Finally, WordPress allows (and encourages) comments on your articles.

Worst: It was made to be a blogging system so making it act like something else, say, an e-commerce site isn’t its best use. Though it is possible, with the proper plugins, it will take a lot more time to develop.

Joomla!

Best: Joomla! is perfect for setting up a company site. You write the article, and tell Joomla! where to show it. This is a good system if you want your employees to make quick updates in the “news” section, but have every other part of the site remaining static.

Worst: The backend (where you log in) has quite a bit of a learning curve. So you’ll find that you’ll spend an hour or two getting to know how it works. Also, it is not a community-based system like WordPress. It is meant for you to post stuff up quickly in order to update your visitors.

Drupal

Best: Amazing community building system. Use this if you:

• have a lot of employees that want to blog
• if you have some news sections that need to be updated frequently
• if you’re a school portal and you need your students to log in for whatever reason etc etc

Worst: Though it is the most customizable system, it takes the most time to develop. You may even need to hire a dedicated PHP developer to get your site up and going. Its backend system, by far, has the steepest learning curve. What took you a couple of hours to learn Joomla!, will take you days to learn Drupal’s backend.