On June 11th, Brainstorm Principal Jim Wolfe will conduct a presentation for university admissions professionals at the North American Coalition for Christian Admissions Professionals (NACCAP) 2007 North American convention held at Biola University in Southern California. The session will focus on Web 2.0 and the cultural implications of online social networking when marketing to GenMe individuals.

“This presentation has been in great demand primarily because institutions and corporations alike are becoming increasingly aware of the potential dangers and opportunities of the social networking phenomenon,” according to Wolfe.

Admissions professionals will learn how to leverage Web 2.0 techniques and engage with this illusive demographic.

For an in-depth exploration of how Web 2.0 can affect your enterprise, contact Brainstorm. For a download sample of the Brainstorm higher education presentation, click here:

Brainstorm Web 2.0 | 52KB pdf

Twitter.com asks us, simply, “What are you doing?”

What’s a Twitter?

Twitter is an online social community tool that allows people to update friends—and strangers—worldwide about specific moments in their lives.

Users can send updates directly from the Twitter website, text message them from a mobile phone, or instant message them via AIM, Jabber or Gtalk.

Gaining Traction

Hitwise UK Research Vice President Heather Hopkins wrote about Twitter’s surge in popularity in a recent article, but noted a sharp downturn in market share of overall UK internet visits. Her findings indicate Twitter may still be gaining in US popularity against other internet community sites.

(Click charts for larger view.)

Well-known Canadian blogger, Kate Trgovac, has a Twitter widget on her popular MyNameIsKate blog.

Even presidential hopeful John Edwards is Twittering.

Growing Concerns

Power blogger Steve Rubel of Micro Persuasion has written extensively about Twitter lately. He’s even used “addicted” to describe his fascination with the trendy social connection tool. But in a recent article, he suggested Twitter’s lacking revenue stream may prove problematic when US-to-overseas SMS charges roll in.

Twitter has alternately been referred to as micro-blogging, a toy, and a revolution. The question is whether it is a nascent niche player or a bona fide long tail fixture in the social media landscape.

It’s far too early to tell if it has reached its maturation point so early in its life cycle or if the crowd mentality of social networks is just being dismissive and fickle regarding this new concept.

A Twitter Takeaway

Advance preparation and rapid deployment are key in reacting to emergent social networking trends. As you develop integrated marketing strategies, consider augmenting them with a flexible, at-the-ready, component plan designed to capitalize on Twitter-like opportunities as they arise.

Image Source: Inju

Online radio is rife with Web 2.0 listeners. According to Techcrunch, content demand for two French-based online music entities, BlogMusik and RadioBlogClub, was so intense that both elected to go off-line this week in search of more robust and secure server space.

But What Right Do They Have?

Unfortunately Techcrunch was mislead by messages on both sites. Turns out the French Government organization SACEM—a regulating body representing original music composers, authors and publishers—mandated both companies go offline over usage fee disputes and copyright infringements.

The Irony of It All

Ironically, one commenter requested that Techcrunch remove a RadioBlogClub widget embedded in the article claiming it was illegally streaming a Prince tune.

Odder yet, Techcrunch France got the SACEM angle of the story correct (If you don’t read French, consider using the FireFox translator add-on we featured).

Pandora’s Box

Online radio is a burgeoning marketplace as suggested in our recent article about online radio sites Last.FM and Pandora.

But pressure to satiate the socially-driven, “I want it my way and I want it now” appetites of online listeners often leads to purveying ill-gotten content. And resolving Napster-like licensing and jurisdiction issues on the global stage remains an elusive task.

For now, I’m content to don my headphones, order up an up-tempo set on Last.FM and watch the drama unfold.

Image source: Patrick Q

On March 7th, the Million Penguin authors laid down their collective keyboards, completing Penguin Book’s A Million Penguins wiki novel experiment.

The Numbers

In all, 1,500 authors made 11,000 edits and 75,000 people logged 280,000 page views on the Million Penguin wiki site during the month-long project.

Penguin’s Chief Executive, John Makinson, called the Web 2.0 experiment, “Not the most read, but possibly the most written novel in history.”

The editors plan to convert the 1,030 page community-written novel into an ebook. Click here to give it a read.

A Classic

Whether the collective wiki writers produced a Pulitzer Prize winner remains in question. However, as a social networking archetype, it’s already a classic. The Penguin wiki novel is, if nothing else, a harbinger of communal brand marketing models to come.

Second Life—the self-described 3-dimensional online digital world imagined, created, and owned by its residents—is a community in nearly every sense of the word.

With the addition of an estimated 20,000 residents a day, Second Life is booming. Measured in Linden dollars, its virtual economy— up more than nine times in the last year—would be one of the fastest growing in the real world.

Think only GenMe millenials hang out in virtual worlds? Think again. As the pie chart shows, about one-third, or over one million of January’s 3.1 million participants are 35 and older; nearly 360,000 of them are over 45.

The following figures are taken from Second Life Statistics* for January 2007:

• Virtual Economy: The number of user-to-user transactions increased 37% to 6.1 billion
• Virtual Area: Land mass expanded 23% to 361 square kilometers
• Real Time: Logged user hours increased 47% from 7.3 million the previous month to 10.8 million
• Real Trade: Buyers and sellers traded goods and services worth just under USD $5 million
• Real Citizens:
  United States 31%
  France 12%
  Germany 10%
  United Kingdom 8%
  Netherlands 6%

Fortune reports many large corporations are investing a portion of their 2007 budget on marketing in Second Life. IBM holds meetings there.

Still think it’s a virtual world?

*Source: Second Life.