PR Communications

How Quora’s Social Interaction Design Answers Questions

Quora is an elegantly designed social network for and system for classifying things, people and is a powerful search tool. The main problem Quora seeks to solve is how users get best answers to questions.

The site uses a social network to enable the connection between users and experts who can answer questions, but also the functional design of the website encourages and helps to find people easily who have expertise on a topic. This is important because people who are associated with a topic are much more likely to answer questions related to that topic.

 

Here’s an overview of some of my thoughts about how the functional design of Quora helps to solve users primary issue of getting answers to their questions:

• Users in Quora follow topics. As a user you can also follow other people who are following a topic.
• You have the ability to private message people in Quora, this enables users to have private back channel conversations about topics, questions, and other issues.
• When you answer a question in Quora you are by default indicating your expertise or interest in a topic. Quora gives users the ability to ask people to answer questions, and makes suggestions as to who you should ask to answer a question related to a topic. People who have previously answered a question are more likely to have answers and have an interest in answering a new question related to a topic.
• Quora uses gamification tactics to encourage people to answer questions. Users gain credit points when other users ask them to answer questions. You can also spend points to ask other users questions. Users set the amount of points it costs to answer a question received from another user.
• There are other ways in which to gain credits that help to promote questions. If you make a request to a Quora user to answer a question, and they answer the question. If someone votes on their answer, you receive credits. I'm not sure if the amount is currently set at a certain amount or it varies depending on the individual, but I've seen +10 credits for every vote. If someone follows a question you asked, you receive credits.  I've seen +10 credits for every follow. For one of my questions I received 50 followers and received 500 credits. Therefore whether you wrote the question, or not, it is in your interests to promote good questions because you receive credits.
• Quora is also a powerful search tool. When you create a question in Quora, initially you enter your question into Quora’s search box to determine if there isn’t already an existing version of your question. If you find an existing question, you remove the need to ask a new question. In addition, the search tool results point to related topics and people who are interested in a topic. As a user you may decide to just read the existing answers from another question, read around the topic, or query people because of their expertise with and interest in a topic.

Wikipedia Comparison

• The goal of Quora is to answer questions about a topic, while Wikipedia’s goal is to give accurate referenced information about a topic. This means Quora and Wikipedia compete around topics, but don’t compete when it comes to how information is sources and presented on both websites. Quora users can give unsubstantiated opinions, especially when questions call for opinions, while Wikipedia encourages users to give information that’s accurate and can be substantiated by secondary and tertiary sources. While you have the ability to collaborate on Wikipedia, you don’t have the ability to direct message. On Quora you do have the ability to communicate privately with other users.
• Quora’s gains a lot from being a social network. It is important because private messaging changes the value of a social technology, from providing information, or even communicating publicly about a topic, to a utility to directly communicate with other Quora members. If you start building relationships within the social technology, having the ability to communicate directly and privately gives users another reason to come back to Quora beyond the value of the information found there, you also return for the people you can find, and the people you can communicate with publicly and privately.

LinkedIn Answers Comparison

• LinkedIn restricts the available topics to questions to certain existing business related topics. While people can ask any question within the LinkedIn Answers system, the limited number of topics is a major difference between LinkedIn Answers and Quora, as Quora aims to enable any user to write any question on any topic.
• LinkedIn Answers users are encouraged to write answers because the people who ask questions have the ability to vote for user’s answers as a best answer. Those best answers appear on the LinkedIn user’s profile. There’s an incentive to gain many best answers because that recognition can establish users as an expert on a topic. LinkedIn rewards people for giving a good answer. Quora rewards people though its credit system for answering a question, and by having the community vote up an answer. Quora also increases the likelihood that an expert on a topic will answer more related questions to a topic. In the suggested people to ask a question feature, users can see how many questions people have answered related to a topic.

Social Media Curmudgeons Beware

I’m getting tired of the social media marketing guru bashing meme. Have you heard the meme? Basically, someone states that social media consultants don’t consider marketing, and are focusing on followers instead of sales. Also, those gurus probably haven’t been in social media for very long.

Well, I started looking at social media for marketing in 2003 and I’d say it did not take me that long to get up to speed, and apply what I’ve learned in marketing to the media over the years. I would have thought most people who are social media marketing consultants and gurus make sure they include marketing in their approach and thinking and don’t focus on followers. Otherwise they would starve…

Isn’t it also a little bit mean spirited to bash other people? Though certainly, I have some colleagues who are important influencers who bash other people.  I’m not saying you are intentionally being mean spirited but I bring up the issue because I wondered, if you use the meme, you had considered that your message might give the wrong impression. In this climate of an election year maybe we all think it's okay to go negative.

However, have you considered that if you start hearing the same meme from everyone:

• Clients are going to tune out.
• Any gurus who are not talking the talk of marketing and social media, soon will be. Oh, and they will probably be bashing other social media gurus as well!
• I always suspect the point of the meme is to get the reader (client) to not pay attention to other gurus, and buy from the person who is being the curmudgeon. Hey, maybe we should have a rule, if you use the meme you have to give three recommendations to people you respect who know something about social media marketing, then you’d prove that you’re not just selling something and don’t have a conflict of interest.

Anyway I digress… I think the social media guru bashing meme needs a re-shoot, it sounds too much like what everyone else is doing, and it is beginning to be too repetitive. Instead, how about focusing on how you do social media marketing. Even though I’m not an engineer, given my Dad was a computer programmer from the 1960s and I have other relatives who are in technology,  my familial connections have always given me the inclination in marketing to open up the marketing process hood and see how things are actually managed, and measured, and how we build a better marketing mousetrap. Instead of bashing other people how about educating what works in social media marketing, and sharing that with the crowd.  

Brand & Media Content Gardens Augment Revenues By Monetizing Social Networks

Robin Carey, publisher of Social Media Today writes a great story about the progress the Wall Street Journal is making with digital strategy, in “Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Social? Not The Wall Street Journal”. Here are my notes of the synopsis of the article, and ideas from the story, but read the article in full to get the complete story:

• WSJ.com has 1.3 million paid subscribers out of 50 million monthly visitors.
• The average subscription is $207 annually
• The WSJ had a wake-up call when its Tiger Mother story on its Facebook page had more comments than the paper's online website, at over 50,000 comments.
• The Journal is testing what works on Facebook with access to Journal content from the social network.
• The Wall Street Journal's WSJ Live YouTube video is an interesting development with 8 million monthly streams. Journalist Skype interviews are a mainstay of the network. Content works for the web, mobile and tablets.

 Several points stand out for me:

Content Strategy: The importance of building a content strategy that is effective within each social network. From the article, you can look at Facebook and YouTube. I see lessons for content optimization, and syndication. Robin also commented in the early part of her article problems publishers, marketers and website managers have with the proliferation of channels and content opportunities. An effective content strategy can address those issues.

Monetize Within Social Networks: As a social network if you are going to partner with content producers give them options to make money within your network. Apple is one of the best case studies with the developer network for apps on the iPhone. I wish Linkedin would do more to provide organizations with ways to make money through their groups. I have long believed that one nonprofit where I used to be a community manager for the group’s LinkedIn group should be able to charge for any jobs posted.

Tactics For Developing Columnist Ready Content: Columnists are a good idea as I've discussed previously for Content Gardens, its free content, and the accomplished writers brag about their publication more widely, and potentially more new places than a paid journalist, good for new social readers and SEO. However, if you need to generate content, video content can be produced cheaply and quickly with tools like Skype. That's one way to build relationships with potential influencers who may eventually become those accomplished columnists for your content garden, and enable journalists to easily produce content, that can be shot, and then once vetted in the marketplace of social sharing written up for good text articles.

Content Garden Definition: Maybe I should expand the concept of content gardens to include your whole content strategy within social networks if you syndicate or optimize the content on the main website to the network.  

The White Whale Is Dead, Long Live The Whale

Moby Dick... an important book in American literature, but one I have to admit I've never totally enjoyed. My problem was never with the story, rather the long sections in the book on dissecting whales and the intricacies of the whaling industry, by the gods, boring beyond belief; who cares about the machinery of whaling I wanted to the story to flow, and I thought the interludes stopped that flow.

While I remember the story fondly, I shuddered at the thought of those long sections on whaling, until that is I attended a musical called, "The Whale," based on Herman Melville’s famous book. To my surprise I enjoyed the musical; the reason why, was because what got me excited was that the author of the musical managed to make the parts I found most boring the best part of the musical, he turned the content on the implements of death into something more digestible.

Jeremiah Owyang recently wrote a blog post that's caused must discussion amongst bloggers, people on Google+ and in social media land. He suggested the golden age of tech blogging was over and gave four reasons as to why he believes this is the case.

•     Trend 1: Corporate acquisitions stymie innovation:
•     Trend 2: Tech blogs are experiencing major talent turnover:
•     Trend 3: The audience needs have changed, they want: faster, smaller, and social
•     Trend 4: As space matures, business models solidify –giving room for new disruptors

 I agree with Jeremiah..

 I disagree with Jeremiah...

Agreement: The Era is Over…

 If a Golden Age can be defined as that period when a new technology or social media first appears upon the stage before being eclipsed by new technologies and social movements, then the golden age of tech blogging is over. The golden age of blogging is over because conversation no longer resides just on blogs in the dominate why discourse did when blogging first blossomed ten years ago. Now conversation never completely resided on just blogs, but for social media, blogs dominated early on because they quickly outpaced traditional forums. Blogs are a collection of different websites, and as such if you talk about the same topic and theme on several or 20 blogs you can easily dominate the public discourse. That's why around 2002-2005 we saw an explosion of blogging, and its impact on society and the election of 2004.

Part of the reason for the impact of blogging was because blogging fits well into how the eco-system of the web works. Most people use search to find things, so it is important to get a ranking on a topic if you want to be heard. To get that ranking, you need keywords, and links from other websites that include those keywords. That describes a blog discussion amongst a blogging community.

The same factors still come into play today, but now we've seen the rise of other social media technologies, that can get found in social. Or because of the size of their own eco-system give people additional opportunities to share and be found.

Because of these new social networks, I agree with Jeremiah, the Golden Age of Tech blogging is over, the strength of blogging is still important, but there are other sources and networks where you can find conversation.

Disagreement: The Era Continues…

Yet, I disagree with Jeremiah, blogs are still important, precisely because they are not involved with a social network, and also give people the chance to write content in a way they want it written, not necessarily confirmed by the dictates of a social network run by a 3rd party, though Jeremiah is not saying that tech blogs are not important, but that the Golden Age is over.

The Golden Age of Social Media

Just as The whale, the musical, made a book more palatable for this reader, social networks have made content and conversation more engaging than existing networks of Tech Blogs. I argued as such on Neville Hobson's post about this discussion. That doesn't mean the old medium is going away, it just means that people prefer to receive their content in different packages. Rather than the end of a Golden Age of Blogging, we have entered a new age if social media.  

Dell Hell & Biz & Tech Strategy 2.0 Story

Richard Binhammer of Dell and I have been crossing swords on Twitter… something I did not intend to do, rather my questions to colleagues in social media land were never really to Richard or Dell, but a deeper question about social media, its value, and it’s limitations as a way of communicating, as opposed to the overall value of business and tech strategy.

If you are new to the story about Dell, social media, customer service and strategy here’s a recap:

•  In 2005 Dell had problems with customer service, but those problems with customer service were because of underlying structural problems with Dell products, and customer service.
• Wrong product set, and issues with operations.
• Dell fixed the structural problems, and ramped up social media as a way to communicate those changes.
• As a result Dell became the industry’s poster child for corporate social media.
• The company was held up high as an example of a company that used social media well and had ROI and value out of the effort.

The Dell story wasn't really just about a social media though; it was really because a crisis in social media ignited wider customer negative sentiment against Dell, Dell listened, which resulted in the company making significant changes.

Yet Dell had once been the number one PC manufacturer, but in recent years has lost ground to other competitors, I was wondering if fall from grace were part of the underlying reasons for the crisis in social media?

Dell Hell 5^th Anniversary

Looking back last year in 2010 on the 5 year anniversary of Dell Hell, I looked at how Dell was being covered in the media. 2010 did not look like a good year; the company had lost more ground to rivals, and was getting criticized in the media for its overall strategy.

“As the consumer market shifted away from traditional purchasing models, HP built far better computers than it had for years, and Dell lost its way, the company was marginalized. Its dominance gave way to HP, and after a short fight, Acer. Today, Dell is the world’s third-largest PC manufacturer and it’s trying desperately to catch up with HP and Acer,”

from Dell`s Strategy Challenge: 10 Things We Don`t Get About Dell

 “"[Dell] seems to have lost sight of what it's good at and how to find new opportunities to leverage that." This is in sharp contrast to the Dell of yesteryear, he says, which confidently won "customers who valued its tightly run business model," designed to churn out economically priced computers with a snap of the finger,”

from Dell's Diversification Strategy: 'A Day Late and a Dollar Short?' 

"When the warning signs start to appear that your current strategy is reaching its expiration date, resist the knee-jerk impulse to put all your energies into saving the bottom line. If you have to cut, then do so -- just make sure you're putting as much, if not more, emphasis on creatively attacking your bigger strategic challenges,"

from the Harvard Business Review's Dell's Cost Cutting Is Not a Growth Strategy.

 “Dell is taking some big risks that could turn today's triumph into tomorrow's tragedy,”

from Why Dell's Small Business Growth Strategy Could Backfire

This week I saw an article by Geoff Livingston and Jason Falls about Dell's social media efforts. And while good, I had to ask, wait, isn't the bigger question about Dell’s overall strategy and how social media is influencing their structure, biz strategy and tech strategy?

I asked Geoff and Jason this question, and Geoff challenged me to read his book, and cc'd Richard at Dell.

Challenged by Richard Binhammer on twitter I hit the search engines looking for media stories about Dell and showing an uptick in sentiment. There are some high spots. Dell now has a multi-billion business through resellers. That touches me having started my career working for resellers and tech companies in the late 80's and early 90s.

“Four years after its formal channel entrance through PartnerDirect, Dell now generates close to a third of its sales through partners,” from Beyond the tipping point

http://www.channelweb.co.uk/crn-uk/interview/2112833/tipping

Sam Trendall of CRN asks Kathy Schneider, Dell’s EMEA director of channel marketing and programmes about Dell’s reseller program, “Sam: How hard has it been to win over partners with long-standing relationships with HP, IBM, EMC or others?...” “Kathy: The mid-sized partners are more flexible, the bigger ones have more concerns. But now they are saying: ‘For two years we have blown them off, we can’t any more. Other resellers are winning business with Dell.’ We are on track to be a $2bn business,”

from Dell: We have turned a corner

But Dell continues to decline when it comes to the rest of the PC market, getting edged out by other rivals.

Oct 13, 2011, “Lenovo has taken a thinly veiled sideswipe at market leader HP after Gartner figures confirmed it is now the world's second-largest PC maker,”

from Lenovo ousts Dell as PC number two

November 30, 2011, “According to IHS, Lenovo shipped 12.5 million units, up 14.5 percent from 10.9 million in the second quarter. HP retained the lead with 16.3 million units, but increased its shipments only 5.9 percent sequentially. Dell had a weak quarter with just 1.3 percent growth to 11.3 million PCs and dropped to third place,”

from Lenovo Passes Dell as the World's No. 2 PC Maker

“Chinese PC maker Lenovo surpassed Dell to become the world's second-largest PC brand in the third quarter, with HP still retaining the top spot, according to IHS,”

from Lenovo passes Dell to become No. 2 PC brand worldwide

Dell’s growth was down by 7.2% in the 3^rd quarter of 2011 from the previous year, from Apple's Share of U.S. PC Market Leaps to 12.9% in 3Q 2011

Dell had been the number one PC manufacturer for a lot of the last decade, HP took the spot in the last few years, and now Dell is heading for number 3, from Market share of leading PC vendors

Now it seems to me this maybe more a matter of the economy, and Dell's channel strategy overall, or is this fall from category leader, and the number two spot because of a failure of tech and biz strategy?

The PC business after all is a commodity business, and maybe it doesn't really matter if you are good at social media, but what’s more important is your company's ability to reduce expenses in operations, or develop a tech strategy that puts you one step ahead of the competition.

“News of its consumer netbook cull comes less than two weeks after it emerged that Dell had canned its 7in Streak tablet PC in the US. Earlier in the year, the 5" version of the device was also axed,”

from Dell axes consumer netbooks

Dell like many other companies dabbled in the tablet market, but like many other rivals to Apple, the response was to jump in fast without thinking about their overall product portfolio.

Dell is still a Fortune 500 company, a multi-billion dollar company and has strength in social media, but I ask has too much effort been put into innovation around business process instead of technology strategy?

I think I can say that if a company is a category leader then the goal would be to maintain that leadership; but are structural issues the real cause of the overall loss of confidence in the company's products, exacerbated by social media. As a result Dell had to work harder using social media to mend fences, while rivals may not have had to exert themselves with social media quite so strongly, and as a result could expend more time on technology and business strategy instead of resolving larger communications issues? But in turn was it also because those competitors did not have the same structural and strategy problems as Dell?

I don't know and I'm not sure I'm qualified to even discuss some of these issues, but I read the press, and I get back to a fundamental question when it comes to social media. What's the ROI? Did Dell make money on its social efforts; is it just a cost of doing business? Or are Dell's problems with biz and technology strategy over the last ten years the more important issue to watch, while social media however successful is just a distraction? In some ways if you look at how the company is trending you’d almost say social media dealt a blow the company has not recovered from.

Apple’s Success With Tech Strategy

I don't pick on Dell because I dislike the company; rather it is a case study. And to contrast Dell with another case study; against Apple, here's a company that's done amazingly well; they have a superb technology strategy. Apple’s product portfolio for innovation cannot be beaten. Each product where they have achieved leadership has won through technology leadership on platform technologies, which are then leveraged from that product to the next. iPod, to iPhone, to iPad. iTunes, to touch screen, and the iOS to name but a few technology platforms. Yet Apple is famously not a great social media participant, but that lack of participation doesn't appear to have harmed the company.

Maybe the lesson for companies is do a good job for your customers, and think about leading the category that’s most relevant and you don't have to worry so much about getting into a social media crisis, but put a foot wrong on your core products and strategy, and beware.

The Dell Social Media Story

When I was writing my case studies about Dell in 2007 and 2008 what impressed me about their story was that Dell was not just running up the flag of social media, but also attempting to tackle structural issues. Dell addressed some of the criticisms made in social media, and then used social media to do business and communicate those changes as a way of doing business, that was the story. But as I could not describe the Dell social media story a few years ago without looking at strategy and structure, I cannot return to the story and not ask about the fundamentals because that’s what the social media story was always about, not merely whether Dell used social to communicate with customers, but what they were talking about.

Therefore my questions to Geoff and Jason were that, what about the fundamentals? What’s changed? Did consumer insights from social media influence Dell’s tech and biz strategy? Some things certainly have changed, a new reseller strategy that’s humming, but instead of being the number 2 PC manufacture they are now number 3. What is Dell doing wrong? Has social media helped, hindered, or been a distraction? Or doesn’t it matter what comms and marketing do with social media if R&D, operations, and executives don’t get their biz and technology strategy right?

Searching For Social Media Agency Category Leaders

Dave Wieneke of UsefulArts.us and I have been discussing who are the product leaders for social media products and services amongst agencies and product companies?

As a first step we talked about developing a list of categories as defined by the industry. So we've decided to start a research project where we will catalog the agencies providing products and services in social media, define the categories and then determine which companies are the categories leaders.

Here's a quick category leadership definition:

"Category leadership can be defined as the company with the most sales in a product category."

I think it's important to understand who the leaders are in any industry because that will inform the industry on what it takes to become a leader. That's fairly obvious in Tablet computing, Apple's the category leader at over 90% market share, but for social media agencies, who would you think is the category leader in the U.S. and how did they obtain that position? Not so obvious, partly because you have to define what services each agency provides and distinguish between social media and more pedestrian services like public relations.

I'm sure this will involve a nice debate about whether social media is new, different, and can be separated from marketing, public relations, interactive, SEO etc.

We also thought that by defining categories, we'd actually discover new categories of service and products. The space is evolving so rapidly it's tough to know what's growing, and what's just the latest darling of the moment. Both Dave and I would like to get a better handle on the most important categories, and what's becoming important that will help us in our own research, and work, and the industry.

Now it's going to be difficult to get revenue data because many of the companies are privately run, but estimates and customer counts may help with the process.

Let's start the process off by thinking about what categories are in the industry, here's a short list that will grow:

• Social Media Content Creation
• Social Media strategy
• Social Media Monitoring
• Social Media engagement
• SMO

Dave and I intend to have an open discussion back and forth between our blogs, but we'd be happy for you to join in, and discuss the categories, and leaders.

Without Classes for Social Media, Students Seek Internships,

As a Founding Fellow of the Society for New Communications Research, I attended the 2011 SNCR board meeting here in Cambridge Massachusetts; we had a great dinner at a local restaurant in Harvard square. As part of the board meeting all of the Fellows were asked to give our opinion on trends in social media.

In response to a question about the level of knowledge amongst Millennial about social media, Dr. Nora Ganim Barnes, Umass Professor and Chair of the SNCR Research Committee, stated that marketing students don't have the necessary training and classes in social media and digital media to be prepared for the new media workforce. She went onto give her opinion that Colleges and University marketing and communications leaderships value theoretical research over applied social media research. And that currently social media research for marketing is still in its early stages, the Professors not having had very much time to form opinions and research on  As a result even if a professor achieves wider recognition in the social media and media community from applied research on social media there's less payoff to the professor because theoretical research is favored.

Dr. Ganim Barnes explored the state of social media education in the U.S. when she developed a program of classes on social media, and to put the classes together she looked at what was currently available in the United States; she did not find very many classes on social media being held. And so she developed her classes from scratch.

Marketing and communications students are not being prepared for the new communications, and as a result only those students, while at college, who realize that they much educate themselves are taking steps to secure internships in social media, to gain the necessary experience and expertise they need to land jobs in marketing and communications once they graduate.

Social Media & Online Community Conferences In 2012

Social media, social media, social media....the drone has been relentless for the last few years, certainly since 2008 when the Election season brought even more resources to social media, and I think the penny dropped for many marketers.

For the last four years I've been writing my post on next year's social media & on-line community conferences. This year took more work than last, there are more conference, double the number from the previous year. Though I'm sure I missed a number of conferences from later in the year in 2011, I do think the numbers are a good gauge of the industry. There was a big drop in conferences last year, here are the # of conferences for the last four years from my blog posts:

2012 64
2011 24
2010 43
2009 23

While social media has gone mainstream, I think a sign of the integration of social media into marketing in general are the growing number of specialist conferences about social media. My favorite specialist conferences included Social Media in the Pharmaceutical Industry, Inside SocialApps 2012, Social Media for the public sector, and Fitness and Health Bloggers Conference.

And my personal favorite, I think it has something to do with the kittens.... BlogPaws 2012 - Pet Blogging and Social Media Conference.

Please use this post to plan your itinerary or 2012 speaker submissions.

Below is my list of social media and community events for 2012, if you see a conference I've missed let me know, also if you noticed a twitter account that partners with a conference ping me at @johncass and I'll add the account to the post.

List of Online Community & Social Media related conferences for 2012

1. Jan Using Social Media to Communicate (UCISA), January 18, 2012, Birmingham, UK.
2. Qualitative Online 360: 2nd Annual conference, 18-19 January 2012, Milan, Italy.
3. Altitude Design Summit, January, 18-21, 2012, Salt Lake City.  @altsummit
4. Inbound Marketing Summit, January 22-23, 2012, New York City. @ IMS_Conference Emerging Media Conference, January 23-26, 2012, San Francisco, CA. @wappow
5. Beyond Enterprise 2.0, January, 24-25, 2012, Amsterdam. @kgsglobal
6. Social Media in the Pharmaceutical Industry, January, 24-25, 2012, Copthorne Tara Hotel, London, UK.
7. iStrategy, January 31 - Feburary 1, 2012, San Francisco, CA.  @iStratBuzz
8. Advanced Social Media Strategies, January 31 - February 01, 2012, Marriott Bloor Yorkville, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
9. DomainFest Global 2012, January 31 - February 2, 2012, Santa Monica, CA.  @domainfest
10.  Feb  SoCon12: So Connected, February 2-3, 2012, Atlanta, GA. #socon12 @
11. Online Marketing Summit 2012, February 6-10, 2012. Hilton San Diego Bayfront, San Diego, CA. #OMS12 @omsummit 
12. Enterprise 2.0 Summit, February 7-8, 2012. Cercle National des Armees, Paris. #e20s  @enterprise20
13. Social Media Strategies Summit, February 7-9, 2012, Las Vegas, Nevada. @GSMIonline
14. Inside SocialApps 2012, February 8-9, 2012, San Francisco, CA.
15. Socal Media Week, February 13-17, 2012.  London, Hong Kong, Miami, New York, Paris, Rome, San Francisco, Sao Paulo, Singapore, Tokyo, Toronto, Washington DC. @socialmediaweek
16. 5th Annual Social Media for PR and Corporate Communications Conference, February 14-16, 2012. MGM Grand Hotel, Las Vegas, NV. #ragansocmed
17. 4th Annual Gravity Summit Social Media Marketing Conference at UCLA, February 22, 2012.  @gravitysummit
18. CROWDSOURCE 2012: The Mass Collaboration & Distributed Work Executive Summit, February, 22-23, 2012, Miami, FL.
19. BlissDom 2012, February 23-25, 2012, Nashvile, TN.
20. DesignBloggers Conference, February 26-28, 2012, Los Angeles, CA.  @designblogconf
21. 2012 Summit on Customer Engagement, February 28-29, 2012, San Mateo, CA.
22. March Social Learning Conference, March 1, 2012, London, Uk. @slconf
23. ThinkVisibility, March 3, 2012, Leeds, UK.
24. 9th Annual 2012 Media Summit, March 7-8, 2012, New York City, NY.
25. FT Digital Media Conference 2012, March 7-8, 2012, London, UK.
26. SXSW Interactive, March 9-13, 2012, Austin, TX.  @sxsw
27. The Corporate Social Commerce Summit, March 13-14, 2012. Boston, MA. #scomm12
28. #smtulsa Conference 2012, March 15-16 2012. Tulsa, OK. @socmediatulsa
    DrupalCon, March 19-23, 2012, Denver, CO.
29. Social Media for the public sector, March 21-22, 2012. Melbourne Park Function Centre, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia 
30. DGI-CONFERENCE 2012 - EUROPEAN AFTERNOON - Social Media and Web Science:The Web as a Living Space , March 22-23, 2012, Dusseldorf, Germany.
31. M2C: What's Next in Marketing, Media & Advertising? March 26-27, 2012, Grand Elysee, France
32. Socialmedia WorldForum, March 27-28, 2012, Olympia, London, United Kingdom. @SocialNetworkWF
33. Socialize: Monetizing Social Media, March 29-30, 2012, New York, City. 
34. April Where Conference, April 2-4, 2012, San Francisco, CA.  @where20
35. Hispanicize, April 11-13, 2012, Miami, FL. @hispanicize 
36. YouToo Social Media Conference, April 13, 2012. Ohio.
37. 9th International Conference on Information Technology : New Generations, April 16-18, 2012, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA 
38. eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit, Toronto Ontario, April 23-26, 2012  @emetrics
39. Social Slam: The Evolution of digital Meida for Business, April 27, 2012, Knoxvile, Tn.  @smcknox
40. May 
41. NorthernVoice, Vancouver, BC
42. Mom 2.0 Summit, May 3-5, 2012, Key Biscayne, FL.  #mom2summit @mom2summit
43. European Beer Bloggers Conference: May 18-20 Leeds, UK.
44. Social Media Summit, May 23, 2012, Harrisburg, PA. 
45. Doctors 2.0 & You, May 23-24, 2012, Paris.  @doctors20
46. June The 6th International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media, June, 4-8, 2012, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland. @icwsm
47. NXNE Interactive, June 11-17, 2012, Toronto, Canada.
48. TBEX '12 - Keystone, CO, June 15-17, 2012  @tbexevents 
49. Travel Blog Exchange: TBEX '11, June 11-12, New York City, New York.@tbex11
50. Enterprise 2.0 Conference, June 18-21, 2012, Hynes Convention Center, Boston. @e2conf
51. BlogPaws 2012 - Pet Blogging and Social Media Conference, June 21-23, 2012, Salt Lake City, UT.  @BlogPaws
52. Type-A Parent Conference '12, June 22-24, 2012. Charlotte, NC. 
53. Fitness and Health Bloggers Conference, June 22 - 24, 2012, Denver, Colorado.  #fhbc12
54. Luxury Interative, June 26-27, 2012. Bridgewaters, New York, NY.  @luxinteractive
55. July Evo 12: Evolution of women in social media, July 12-14, 2012. Park City UT. @evoconf
56. Beer Bloggers Conference: July 13-15, Indianapolis.
57. August BlogHer 12, BlogHer '12, August 2-4, 2012, New York City.
58. Wine Bloggers Conference: August 17-19 in Portland, OR.
59. International Food Bloggers Conference: August 24-26 Portland, OR.
60. The 2012 International Conference on Advances in Social Networks Analysis and Mining, 26-29 August, 2012, Kadir Has University, Istanbul, Turkey.  
61. September Medicine 2.0’12: 5th World Congress on Social Media, Mobile Apps, and Internet/Web 2.0 in Medicine, Health & Biomedical Research, 15-16 September, 2012, The Joseph B. Martin Conference Center at Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA.
62. October BlogWorld & New Media Expo, October, 2012 Las Vegas, Nevada. @blogworld #bwe12
63. BarkWorld Expo, October 25-27, 2012 in Atlanta, GA.
64. December Search Marketing Expo conference "SMX Social Media Marketing," 5-6 December, 2012. Las Vegas, NV. 

Thanks to the Mashable Intern who asked me if I had a 2012 list of social media & online community conferences available, the question reminded me I needed to put this list together!

If I missed any conferences, let me know, I will add them to the list.

Social Media With David Christopher

David Christopher is the Social Media Business Leader for EMEA at Oracle Corporation where he heads up the Social Networking and Business Collaboration (SNBC) program. His role is to develop and deploy social media strategies that will greatly enhance communication and collaboration with customers, partners and employees, thereby creating a more socially connected Oracle.

David's worked at Oracle for 14 years. I recently had the opportunity to chat with David about his work at Oracle.

David explained that with the recent mergers and acquisitions this has brought a lot of fresh ideas and opportunities to connect employees via social networking. He is developing and driving initiatives to spread adoption in an effort to break down silos and encourage communication and work between different business units across the enterprise.

A lot of David's work is to encourage more crowdsourcing, as a result of his team's efforts; a lot of behavioural changes have occurred that has seen more people engaged from different parts of the business.

One of the initiatives is to encourage more Open Collaboration through a dedicated social platform encouraging employees to contribute from across the company. People can either actively participate (request to be part of the project team), or passively participate (contribute from the sidelines). With 100’s of projects available there is a wide range for employees to engage with, based on what interests them. One of the most popular ones right now is the creation of an Email Charter.

Another initiative David is working on is an effort to identify and educate Social Adoption Champions in every business unit in Oracle. Part of the reason for this effort is to build a culture at Oracle where the various generations (X,Y,Z) can communicate and collaborate more effectively.

The result of David's work with individual business units has seen less reliance on email and more dependency on social technologies. Part of the effort is as simple as giving people new ways of working. For example, instead of sending a presentation to everyone on a team to review by email, simply depositing the presentation in an online workspace and making it accessible by the team reduces email significantly.

Social Chat – The Modern Day Water Cooler Conversation is another initiative encouraging more crowdsourcing opportunities leading to innovation. This initiative uses the OraTweet tool (an internal Twitter style tool) to encourage employees to submit ideas for discussion and to vote for their favourite. The topic with the most votes is the chosen discussion topic for that week.

You can read more about David’s work at Oracle, and with other companies, via his StopThinkSocial.com blog or follow him on Twitter @davidchris

Best Buy Blog Misses Ethics Mark

The Best Buy Ethics blog was the subject of one of my blog posts recently. I thought the content strategy of describing instances of errors of judgement by employees was a communications blunder, and and as a result I received a lot of feedback from the community.  Here's a synopsis of some of the comments on my blog, and some answers by back channel messaging from several senior colleagues in communications: