New Social Network User Demographics

There are new statistics out from Pew Internet & American Life Project and reported on eMarketer Daily. These statistics are showing that adults are starting to use social networks. What this means is that even more eyes are there to see businesses online. Social networks provide an opportunity to build relationships with your clients and prospect.

If you want to see these statistics you can find them online at eMarketer Daily.

Online Collaberation

Many Denver DataMan clients wants to learn how they can collaborate with others in their organizations at all or more effectively. There are lots of tools include Goolge Docs, Base Camp, Go to MyPC/Meeting and others. Microsoft's tools have been seen to miss the mark. In the next version of Microsoft Office (Office 14) your Internet browser will now be your platofrm for online colaberation using Micrsoft Office.

The browser based Office will not be a complete version of office but it looks like it will have many of the features that tools curently availbile have and maybe more.

I look forward to seeing more information about what is comming and hope this will make colaberation easyer for everyone.

Starbucks and a Mixed Bag of Consumer Feedback

For those who know me, you know that I love my Starbucks. I have my coffee almost every morning and hold many meetings there. Today I had a less than satisfying experience so I went to the Starbucks website and told them so. It took me a while to find a place to tell them what I was thinking BUT they wrote back with a personal email that required them to have read my post!

Companies make mistakes. The question is how a company deals with them. It should be easy to find a way to send comments to a company. This was not true on the Starbucks site BUT they did a great job in sending a personal email within 4 hours of my post.

Social media means that people can share information easily and with more people than ever before.

My first 23 Days with Twitter:

Twitter is a tool that lets you share sort blasts of information over the Internet. These short blasts are called tweets. Some say that Twitter is social networking, I like to think of it more as blogging, and micro-blogging at that. When someone posts on Twitter it’s called a tweet, tweets can be up 150 characters and are just short updates.

You can see the tweets I have made sharing about work. I have 18 people who follow me(meaning that they get updates when I write a tweet) and I am sure there are others who see my messages. This means that I am getting greater access to people who already have some interest in the things that I am doing providing me with another to remind and inspire my prospects, clients and partners about cool work that Denver DataMan does to help small businesses use technology more effectively.

With all content that I create I try to make sure there is great value in the content. The Internet has content everywhere and adding true value to it is what will make it read and matter in the long run. Twitter is an easy way to add nothing but clutter to the Internet but I am beginning to see that it could also be used to provide value added information.

Next month I will be having a tweet sale. At some point in the month of February, Denver DataMan will announce a sale to anyone who responds to m tweet within 5 hours. I don’t know anyone doing this yet so it will be interesting to see how it goes.

You can watch this video from the Common Craft Show on Twitter, this episode focuses on Twitter from a social approach but it is very good.

Department of Homeland Security Works to the Secure the Internet in the US

As those of you who read my blog regularly know security is something that I find very important. Right now viruses are up, spyware is up, hacking is up and there are many other problems because of malicious computer use. On July 20th the routers for the nation of Georgia.

The Department of Home Land Security has announced that they are going to spend 2.9 million dollars per-year on securing the Internet infrastructure rather than $600K that they have been spending during the past years.

This is good given that security threats are growing and the US Internet infrastructure is crucial for commerce today.

You can read more in this very technical article if you are interested.

Windows 7 Is On Its Way

A question that I get all the time is should I get Windows Vista. The answer is usually, only if you are getting a new computer with a lot of power. Upgrading to Windows Vista has been a bad idea in almost every case. Windows Vista needs a ton of power and has had trouble with older hardware and software. Windows Vista made a lot of advances but the product has been marred by bad reviews and problems that have overshadowed the advancements.

Microsoft has been talking about Windows 7 for some time now but it will be availible as a beta tomorrow. Beta means that Microsoft is saying its ready for people to look at. Betas generally still have many bugs thatr will be fixed before the release of the application.

I hope that Microsoft will fix issues with stability and make Windows Updates less problematic. I also hope that Microsoft will risk upseting people who want to upgrade and either not sell an upgrade or have releastic upgrade requirments. Often times people are told there computer can handle new software that it cant and this just makes people angry when it does not work.

You can check out videos of Windows 7 or read more information. Here is a good article as well with first impressions of Windows 7.

Seth Godin on Social Networks

Seth Godin is the author of the great book on building online communities Tribes and is also a renowned marketer. These are his words about quality of online network connections VS. quantity of online connections.