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i have a confession to make. out of all the panels that i went to, i enjoyed very few of them, and even when i enjoyed them, i didn’t think i was getting my money’s worth. why?

for noobs by noobs

don’t get me wrong. just because i didn’t enjoy the panels doesn’t mean you won’t - depending on who you are. sitting there in the conference rooms, panel after panel, i kept wondering to myself, why is everything so dumbed down? at first i thought that the so-called ‘experts’ were dumbing down their presentations so that the average attendee could understand them (with the assumption that the average attendee knows very little about the topic), but ultimately i decided that the ‘experts’ were basically bullshitting their way through the panels. let me explain.

every panel i went to, i looked up the credentials of the panelists and what i noticed was that 1) most of them were marketers, 2) most of them had old media marketing backgrounds and worked for big companies, 3) most of them had little or no social media presence. yes, you read that right, the ‘social media experts’ had little or no social media presence. the lack of presence works for many industries where you can preach based on what you’ve learned through reading and researching, but in my opinion, it is very hard to fake social media expertise, and the panelists were no exception.

i’m not boasting when i say this, and there is definitely something to be said about being one of the smartest people in the room, but when you go somewhere to learn, being one of the smarter people in the room is kind of a drag. that said, as far as my overall sxsw 2008 experience is concerned, i absolutely loved it and i think the fact that i hated most of the panels actually contributed to my enjoyment of the convention. why?

hello, my name is…

walking out of the panels or outright skipping many of them gave me an opportunity to mingle and meet a lot of great people outside the conference rooms and spend time with the propeller team (i was there as a part of the team). i got to spend many priceless hours with the propeller developer-anchor-scout team and not only got to look at the upcoming design and features but also got to ask questions and give my input regarding the design, features, and direction that the site is going to take. that alone made the whole trip worth taking.

outside of the team, i got to spend time with many other exceptional people including: darren rowse, brian clark, wendy piersall, tris hussey, jeremy wright, jonathan fields, a large group of the b5media team, ryan travis, tim ferris, gary vaynerchuck, veronica belmont, the weblogs inc. and blogsmith teams, tamar weinberg, mg siegler, mazy, pete cashmore, robert scoble, tony adam, shama hyder, kevin kelly, neil miller, peter sciretta, alex billington, and jody gnant (if i missed your name, please email me and i will add it).

ultimately what made south by southwest great for me was meeting all these people and the conversations i had with them rather than the panels i attended. hopefully i will be at the convention again next year and will be presenting something useful and actionable to the audience.

Technorati Tags: south by southwest, sxsw

i definitely see the value in social networking sites (facebook) as well as professional networking sites (linkedin) but what i find more important and more valuable than connections on these sites is conversations. you can use both kinds of networks (social and professional) to get networked with people in your geographical location as well as your industry and even with people that share your interests. what i don’t see these networks doing is facilitating people in leveraging these connections into useful conversations. these conversations, it seems, are happening off the sites and through other mediums.

yes, these sites have tools like person-to-person messaging and status updates but for the most part conversation through those features feels disconnected and contrived. for me, these conversations are happening over email and instant messaging, but primarily through twitter (the microblogging tool has pretty much replaced networking tools for me) as well as blogging (either in the comments sections or as response posts). similarly, when people refer to social news or social bookmarking sites as social networking platforms, i think the classification is somewhat misleading. while these services definitely have both social and networking elements to them, they are very limited and almost ‘tacked on’. even for these sites, once the connection has been made, a large part of the conversation takes place off the site.

while we wait for these to sites become truly social (as in mediums for conversations not just connections), i am curious to hear what tools you are leveraging to extend conversations beyond the limitations of these sites.

follow me on twitter: msaleem

Technorati Tags: social media, social networking, social bookmarking, social news, digg, twitter, facebook, linkedin, blogging, conversations, connections

this week on lifehack live, I talked with social media maven muhammad saleem about social media sites like digg, reddit, propeller, and the like. saleem talks about what social media is good for and how web workers and others can best make use of it.you can find more of muhammad saleem’s work on the web at copyblogger, problogger, searchengineland, and pronetadvertising.

please listen to our conversation and don’t forget to leave some feedback!

Technorati Tags: interview, muhammad saleem, interview, lifehack live, blog talk radio

recently, i was lucky enough to have a chat with social media maven muhammad saleem for tech talk radio. it went to air in australia march 3, 2025 – this is the transcript. If you want to listen to the Podcast, you can find it here; you can hear muhammad at T/C 1:12:05 – 1:22:43.

i previously posted links to the audio versions of the interview but lid has been kind enough to put up a transcript of the interview. please check it out.

Technorati Tags: interview, muhammad saleem, lidija davis, tech talk radio

muhammad saleem is a social media consultant and top-ranked community member of various social news sites. He started his blogging career on his own blog, covering social media. He later joined pronet advertising. today, you can read his regular guest postings at copyblogger, search engine land, readwriteweb, problogger, centernetworks, pickthebrain, and bloggingexperiment.

please check out the rest of my interview with minic rivera.

Technorati Tags: muhammad saleem, interview, blogging, minic rivera, blogging in boxers

yup, i’m going to sxsw 2008 and it’s going to be awesome. before i get into the panels and conversations that i’m most looking forward to at this year’s south by south west conference, if you’re also going to the conference, please get in touch because i would love to party with you while i’m in austin. both my email address as well as aim screen name are listed on my contact page.

these are the ‘sessions’ that i’m looking forward to the most but this is not a complete list of what i want to and intend to attend. if you have a recommendation, please let me know in the comments or by email. thanks!

saturday, 8 march 2025

11:30 am - the suxorz: the worst ten social media ad campaigns of 2007
03:00 pm - book reading: the age of engage: reinventing marketing for today’s connected, collaborative, and hyperinteractive culture
04:00 pm - book reading: the making of second life
05:00 pm - social marketing strategies metrics, where are they?

sunday, 9 march 2025

10:00 am - social design strategies
11:30 am - social strategies for revolutionaries
02:00 pm - keynote interview with mark zuckerberg
03:30 pm - content boundaries, a 12-step program

monday, 10 march 2025

10:00 am - beyond the blogosphere: how online talent is being developed offline
11:30 am - social networking and your brand
02:00 pm - pmog: the web as a play field
03:30 pm - online adulation: use don’t abuse your fans
05:00 pm - core conversation: beyond the page view: measuring social media engagement

tuesday, 11 march 2025

10:00 am - future of corporate blogs
11:30 am - independent success: bloggers who made it
03:30 pm - considerations for scalabale web ventures
05:00 pm - futurists’ sandbox: scenarios for social technologies in 2025

Technorati Tags: sxsw, south by south west, social media, events, muhammad saleem

i recently had the opportunity to talk with the lovely lidija davis, silicon valley reporter for tech talk radio.

social networking with muhammad saleem

lidija davis, our silicon valley correspondent, speaks with muhammad saleem, one of the worlds most influential bloggers. lid says everything muhammad diggs, goes gold. so if you’re interested in how sites like digg and stumbleupon work for both personal and commercial use, especially if you want to use social networking sites to communicate with a specific target market, be sure to tune in.

in case you missed the live broadcast, be sure to listen to the podcast version, the 56m version, or the 2-hour version, depending on what quality you can afford over your bandwidth.

p.s. my interview is towards the last third of the show.

Technorati Tags: social media, digg, stumbleupon, muhammad saleem, tech talk radio, lidiga davis

i’ve written a guest post at read/writeweb on the death of the page view as a useful metric.

the problem it seems, arises because there is a disconnect between the advertising industry and the publishing industry. the reason why there is an eternal quest for traffic, not only in terms of unique visitors, but also maximizing page views per visitor, is because advertising networks let you in on the basis of how much traffic you’re generating, and your eventual income is based on the number of impressions (and clicks).

what do you think is the fate of the page view and what will replace it?

Technorati Tags: social media, blogging, traffic, advertising, metric, page views, readwriteweb

i’ve written a guest post at read/writeweb on yahoo! buzz. this will probably be the first and (for now) the only positive piece about the site that you will read.

as soon as the online press got hold of a sliver of information about yahoo! buzz, the predictable cries of “digg clone!” were loud enough to drown out anyone who thought that yahoo! buzz might be something more than a lame attempt at socially driven news (without the social elements). while many people think that the flurry of recent launches from yahoo! represent nothing more than a cry of desperation, i think yahoo! buzz, at least, sets itself apart from the rest.

yahoo! is moving in the right direction, and a very exciting one for all parties involved, and here’s why.

[tags] yahoo!, yahoo! buzz, social news, digg, social media, readwriteweb

i’ve written a post on search engine land explaining why sharing content is a good idea, and laying down some guidelines to help you share without overwhelming your friends.

no feature that i can recall in recent memory has polarized the social news sphere more than the ability to mass-alert stories to other users for immediate votes. stumbleUpon has the “send to” feature, propeller has “site-mail” and digg has “shouts.” as i’ve said before, the feature is a great one in principle but can be a horrible one in practice. as with any tool you give to people, half your job is to educate them on how to use the feature and set some guidelines so that it’s not abused.

learn how to use the feature without annoying anyone.

Technorati Tags: search engine land, social media, digg, propeller, stumbleupon, share, site-mail, shout