BlogWorld Expo: A Twitter Observation and a Couple of Tips
Got back last night from Vegas where Jamie (or @jamieortiz) and I attended BlogWorld Expo. Met some great people (here we are with Frank – more famously known as the comcastcares guy and Brian Solis one of the social media PR gurus), had fun (of course, it’s Vegas) and learned a few things.
Big aha moment during the Twitter session with Laura Fitton, Stowe Boyd, Lucretia Pruitt and Erin Kotecki Vest is that we are all using Twitter as our news stream. These days, I find stuff out fastest on Twitter. So is everybody else, who is using it. RSS is becoming old news already – that’s kind of scary and a little obnoxious, but such is life in the early adopter lane.
Couple of widgets I saw on the show floor that I intend to try and you bloggers out there should check out:
1. Apture – A very cool rich communication platform that lets you enrich your pages simply. As you type your blog, Apture searches the web based on context and makes multimedia suggestions with easy to use links. Check it out.
2. Picapp - I was very happy to meet these folks. Finally, a site that lets you search for photos (creative, celeb, whatever you need) and with a simple click and copy of the URL you have art for your blog that’s free and legal. They’ve done all the work for you. There is photographer attribution at the bottom of the photo (like that) and a small link if the viewer would like to find more photos (that’s Picapp’s ad and while some may not like the link out, it’s the price we pay for the free photos). Take a look.
Will share more of what we learned throughout the week. Got any widgets you love? Share ‘em!
It was great to meet you!
It really amazed me how much Twitter was such a huge part of this year’s Blog World Expo. Not only were people using it to keep in touch, but most panelists were using it to field questions as well.
Of course, the best ways to utilize it at conferences are to see what parties you’re missing and reading late night after party tweets.
I had an amazing time at BWE08 and I definitely learned my fair share of lessons, too. The people that I got to meet and interview were so awesome, too. Most of their highlights for the event was creating real world connections with their once strictly online friend. Pretty cool – you can check it out here if you get a couple free minutes:
http://blog.hubpages.com/2008/09/its-all-about-the-connections-thoughts-highlights-and-lessons-learned-from-blog-world-expo-08/
See you next year!
Ryan
Great to meet you too Brian. Hope we can chat more next time.
Yes, Ryan, I agree with your points. I had a great time at the show as well. Although the twitter stream was at times distracting me from listening to the speakers and I wondered if it distracted them too. I think your blog points are right on. We were all there to drink the kool aid!