Mediaboss Marketing

DENVER, March 15, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --Hundreds of enterprise social computing champions from over 20 different industries and representing organizations of every size converged in Denver last week, reporting that social computing is yielding some dramatic benefits.

The second annual conference brought together NewsGator customers, partners and executives for networking, education and sharing of best practices. It featured case studies from Accenture, American Family Insurance, General Mills, Merck, Nalco, Oakley, and OppenheimerFunds.

Presenters covered a wide range of enterprise social computing topics, including the state of enterprise social computing, user engagement strategies, success stories, product integration, and measurement of enterprise social computing adoption. Microsoft speakers Jared Spataro, senior director of product management for SharePoint, and Jason Haggar, senior director, marketing for ISV partners in the US M&O DPE, were also on hand to answer questions about Microsoft's approach to social as well as updates and advancements regarding Office, Office 365, SharePoint and Lync.

"Working day to day within your own company to drive social computing doesn't always present the chance to step outside of your comfort zone to explore new ideas for increasing user adoption," said Steve Brantner, manager, learning & communications at consumer packaged goods company General Mills. "As strange as it may sound, driving social business can actually be a little isolating in the corporate world because it's still early in the adoption cycle. That's why events like the Collective are so valuable because, in addition to seeing best practices live and getting unique ideas that I can bring back and implement, I also make so many great connections with people who are dealing with similar challenges."

The conference kicked off with an in-depth "Boot Camp Workshop for the Social Enterprise" facilitated by Dr. Mike Prevou, president and co-founder, and Mike Hower, chief learning officer, with Strategic Knowledge Solutions (SKS). SKS specializes in expertise development, organizational learning, and knowledge management practices that have evolved in elite companies and military organizations providing organizations with increased competitive advantage.

Attendees later experienced hands-on lab and demonstration stations, one-on-one consulting with NewsGator and its partners, and glimpses into NewsGator's product roadmap. A distinguished panel of customers, vendors and partners also explored one of the more timely topics at the conference: governance, risk and compliance, and how customers can securely and confidently implement social computing while mitigating risk and staying in compliance with existing and new regulations. An inspiring keynote from Jim Blackie of consulting company LRN kicked off the last day of the conference. Through some thought-provoking dialogue and compelling research data, Jim provided the Collective audience with frameworks for governance, culture and leadership driven by the company's HOW approach to principled performance.

Awards were given out to several highly active users of NewsGator's customer and partner extranet "eNGage" for being Street Team participants those customers who go beyond the call of duty to evangelize and promote the benefits of enterprise social computing. eNGage participants as a whole met a challenge from earlier in the year to reach 100-percent profile completion by the start of the 2012 Collective. To reward the achievement, NewsGator announced it would make a significant charitable donation on their behalf. eNGage participants chose The Nature Conservancy as the recipient. NewsGator's Partner of the Year award went to PointBridge (now Perficient).

"This year's Collective demonstrated what we're seeing globally, across industries; that social computing is now a strategic competitive imperative for organizations. Rolling the 'social fabric' out to the entire enterprise is now a must-have, not a nice-to-have," said JB Holston, president & CEO of NewsGator. "A lot of the organizations at the Collective are well along their social computing journeys, so their insights, examples and best practices help fellow attendees learn from one another. We have seen the exchange of valuable, practical knowledge attendees can immediately use in their own organizations."

NewsGator extends a special thank you to the Collective sponsors who made this year's event possible: Aspect; Avanade; AvePoint; Cardinal Solutions; Cognizant; Colligo; HiSoftware; Kontiki; Microsoft, Orbital RPM; Pariveda Solutions; PointBridge (now Perficient); Portal Solutions; Rightpoint; STATERA; Strategic Knowledge Solutions (SKS); StoredIQ; and Vizit, Inc.

About NewsGatorAs a Microsoft Gold Certified and Depth Managed Partner, NewsGator is helping over three million paid users in industries across the globe propel the future of productivity. NewsGator Social Sites delivers robust social technology to the enterprise with proven scalability and security to flagship clients like Accenture, Adidas, Deloitte, Ericsson, General Mills, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Kraft Foods, Merck & Co., Unisys Corporation, and the US Army. No other social software vendor can rival our deep integration with the entire Microsoft stack reducing your total cost of ownership while increasing adoption, collaboration, and innovation. And for all that, Microsoft honored us as its 2011 US Partner of the Year. We're making SharePoint and Office365 social. Follow us on Twitter @newsgator and at http://www.newsgator.com.

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2012 NewsGator Collective Brings Together Social Computing Vanguard for Networking, Education and Best Practice Sharing

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By Heidi Leder, Techlicious.com

Even if you weren't tuned into the tech festival SWSX, you may have been thinking it would be easier to ignoresocial networking sitesand hope theyll go away. They wont. The age of social media and openly sharing information to find others with shared interests beyond geography is here to stay. While navigating tween and teen years in real life can be precarious, its equally important these days to learn the process of finding and defining oneself in the online realm as well.

The best social media sites for kids and tweens (ages 7 to 13) adhere to the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), which regulates how much personal information sites can ask from kids under 13 years old, among other things. Likegood kids' online gaming sites, most of these sites require a parental account, or for parents to prove they are who they say they are via a one-time credit card verification (typically requiring a $1 fee). It's a good step toward keeping your kids safe online.

With the popular Togetherville site shutting its doors after being acquired by Disney last year, many kids and parents are looking for a similarly safe-yet-fun place to hangout online and practice savvy social media skills. Here are some social networking sites for kids and tweens that give them some freedom to explore the social media realm while giving parents the control to monitor and guide their process:

giantHello Previously called FaceChipz, giantHello is a social gaming network for tweens that comes very close to mimicking the social networking look-and-feel of Facebook with similar profile pages and layouts.

ChipzCo, Inc.

Once you friend another tween, you can leave comments, send private messages, join groups, update your status, upload photos and more. Users even have a news feed and can follow tween celebrity Twitter feeds.

Kids need to share invites with their friends in real life via email or by printing out an invitation code to friend them on the site, so everything is connected through the real world.

To establish an account, parents must verify their identity via the usual credit card charge, or via the last four digits of their Social Security number. The gaming experience is similar to what you find on Facebook.

Continue reading here:
Safe social networking sites for kids

BY DEON J. HAMPTON

RUTHERFORD Municipal firefighters must now monitor what they post on popular social networking sites to ensure that they aren't revealing information from fire scenes not privy to the public.

The Borough Council has passed a resolution to create the social media policy at the request of the volunteer Fire Department.

Fire Chief John Melfa made it clear that the request was a preventive measure and not a result of any inappropriate postings.

"Even though we are volunteers, there is still a code of ethics which must be followed," Melfa said.

Postings on social networking sites can lead the public to assume that the firefighters are speaking on behalf of the department, Melfa said of the 74-member staff.

Under the new policy, firefighters can have user accounts on sites such as Twitter and Facebook, but they aren't allowed to reveal any information about fire scenes.

Officials said the policy came about when firefighters were recently discussing ways to improve the department. Melfa said the department must keep up with evolving technology.

Email: hampton@northjersey.com

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Rutherford asks its firefighters for restraint in social networking

According to a new poll from the Pew Research Centers Internet & American Life Project, self-described liberals are twice as likely than self-described conservatives to block material on social networking websites that they find politically disagreeable.

Thirty-six percent of social media users said they have blocked, unfriended or hidden someone because of politics, but left-leaning participants were far more likely to havetaken that action to express disagreement about a friends political views.

Liberals are the most likely to have taken steps to block, unfriend, or hide disagreeable political messages, Pew concluded. In all, 28% of liberals have blocked, unfriended, or hidden someone on SNS [social networking sites] because of one of these reasons, compared with 16% of conservatives and 14% of moderates.

Sixteen percent of liberal users said theyblocked someone who posted something specific that they disagreed with, compared to eight percent of conservative users.

Liberals are also far more likely than conservatives 11 percent compared with 4 percent to completely delete friends from social networking sites because they disagree with their politics.

There has been no word nor will there likely be any about whether liberals will enjoy reading this story. Many, if the Pew study is to be believed, will just block it from their news feeds.

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Study: Liberals more likely to block social-media friends over political differences

Time for Newt to exit the race

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Study: Liberals more likely to block social-media friends over political differences

A "Facebook" for tattoo lovers? Surely the social-networking bandwagon is already full to tipping. But hold on--the photos section here seems tailor-made for this community. And beyond.

I pity the fool who says social networking has jumped the shark.

Sure, Mark Zuckerberg has a hoodie with weird totemic symbols hidden on the inside. But if he were truly hard core, he'd have a Like icon tattooed on his neck and the word "HACK" inked in all uppercase black letters from one shoulder to the other.

You can bet members of the tattoo-themed social network the TatSpot don't mess around with wussy iron-on transfers. These people go the distance, as evidenced by the photos on the site.

A tattoo-themed social network? You're probably thinking, "OK, the whole social-media thing has really jumped the shark." But why not? After all, I'd wager there's a forum or chat room or virtual who-knows-what for just about every wired subculture on the planet.

And though many of the TatSpot's different areas (videos, events, blogs, and the like) have yet to be filled out with posts (we got an e-mail announcement about the site just today), the aforementioned photos section seems to be off to a colorful start and appears tailor-made for this community.

And beyond. The photos section is a fascinating little journey for anyone, tattooed or not. As new as it is, you'll still encounter a cornucopia of iconography, from Mr. T to an unknown soldier to Mahatma Gandhi. And we suspect this will only get weirder and more wonderful with time.

The only problem I have with the site is its name. My CNET colleague Jeff Sparkman came up with a far better one: InkedIn.

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TatSpot: New social network gets under your skin