Brad Rourke

Category: social networks

  • Community Builder? Read This

    One of my entrepreneur and social web heroes, Seesmic founder Loic Le Meur, is among the most open and accessible members of the digerati. He is constantly sharing and praising others. He recently was at a conference where Internet star Chris Pirillo was speaking and the subject turned toward community and community building. Chris had…

  • Thirteen Intermediate Twitter Tips

    Here are some Twitter tips for folks who have been using it for a while. They are not definitive, more my expression of personal style. Chances are, if you are reading this and are yourself a Twitter user, you have an opinion on some of these, so please push back in the comments! If you’re…

  • Why Social Media Is Like The Telephone Circa 1915

    I have been riveted by a book called America Calling: A Social History Of The Telephone To 1940 by Claude S. Fischer, a sociologist at my alma mater, UC Berkeley. The book is just what you think – a study of social responses to the rise of the telephone as it went from a new…

  • I Don't Want Your Email Address Unless We're Friends

      This was sort of odd. I met someone recently, and he gave me his card.  I later sat down to start entering the info in my contact files.   Usually, in such a situation, I would shoot them an email about how nice it was to meet them, etc. As I was processing the…

  • What You Should Know, At A Minimum

    Do you know how much traffic your web space gets? Do you know which pages are most popular? Do you know how many of your emails get opened? Why not? I am always surprised when I talk to the leader of an organization that does not know these basic things. (I don’t mean day-to-day knowledge,…

  • Explained: Why You Tweet So Much

    Someone unfollowed me on Twitter the other day. You don’t get a note or anything when that happens; I just happened to notice. It doesn’t bother me, but sometimes I like to know why. My guess is that they were seeing too much volume in my updates, and it was overwhelming their Stream. Fair enough.…

  • What We Can Learn From The White House's Missed Opportunity

    By now you’ve heard about the Air Force One flyover in New York City that has turned into a PR train wreck for the White House. Those of us in the nonprofit and philanthropy worlds can learn from it. What Happened Someone wanted to get a money shot of the President’s office-in-the-air near the Statue…

  • Why You Need A Link Sharing Strategy

    You need a strategy to get this link-sharing to happen in order to spread your messages. There appears to be a sea change beginning (especially if you add in demographic analyses), where people rely more and more on information coming to them from trusted connections — not because they read it in a newspaper.

  • How To Be Nice Online (In Praise Of Smileys)

    In my very first job, I worked for the field office of a large organization. It was 1990, and we actually had email. This was long, long before email was ubiquitous. It was a curiosity. One day, our boss’s boss’s boss came into town for a series of events. When it was over, he sent…