VoIP and Live Streaming, in my opinion, have revolutionized the communication industry. Anyone with computer and internet connection can connect with anyone else on the planet, for real time voice and video communications. The clincher? Such tools require a few dollars and commodity internet access –nearly everyone can get in on the conversation.

Skype connects a family
Recently, an Uncle and Auntie of mine recently moved to the Middle East for a off country teaching assignment, in a city known for violence, assassinations and unrest. Yesterday, during a local family get together we were able to arrange a time to call them, and we piped over a video stream to them. We could hear their audio only. I was able to briefly jump into this real world communications with them, as they were half way around the world, and wouldn’t be returning to us anytime soon.

My cousin showed him around the house with the video camera, although the wireless network connection would sometimes drop, they got to experience a virtual tour of what we were doing. Although not perfectly setup, we continue to lower the barriers to communication in real time, and the medium gets richer with each passing year.

Live streaming the human life cycle
I recently spoke with Chris Yeh, the CEO of Ustream (live interactive video), he tells me that in addition to people broadcasting live births on the web, that families are live-broadcasting funerals. Morbid? Not really, some family members who couldn’t be at the service get to participate in the grieving process, in this virtual way to be with their family.

What’s next?
It’s just a matter of time before our traditional home entertainment systems become IP enabled, allowing for PC to TV real-time video and audio to be transmitted. It would be interesting to see the adoption of these tools each holiday season, year after year.

Has VoIP or Live Streaming impacted your family?
There’s so many examples of how these tools impact business, but have you had an experience where these tools impacted your personal or family life? VoIP, live video streaming, what? Share with me in the comments.

Why a career “path”? As there are several steps to take to move into a web management role, don’t worry, with dedication it’s not difficult.

I’m getting more and more emails every day, please note that I read them all but due to the sheer volume, I won’t respond to all. In particular, I’m getting more questions about “how does one become a web strategist, or a web director”. Mary noticed that I started my career in web as a UI designer, much like her current role. She has ambitions to climb into the director’s chair and make calls for the direction of the website.

She emailed me the following and gave me permission to blog it, I’m not going to reveal her last name, but she’s welcome to self identify.

“…I would encompass my questions along a career path. I saw in your career path you started as a designer, I worked as a designer also and then evolved into what was needed as opposed to having a web strategist focus.

I sincerely enjoy meeting with clients and analyzing there needs and assessing the best path to achieve those goals. Currently, however the company I am with I am in resource management and needless to say I am not being challenged. The current structure of the company would not yield itself to my specific career goals.

I still do freelance on the side, design, branding and consulting; I do it because I enjoy it so much.

What would you suggest. How do I move forward, how do I position myself. I sincerely appreciate your help and expertise.

Thanks so much

—Mary”

My Path
Here’s a few suggestions that I have, then I’m going to turn it over to the community to help answer. In 1999-2000 I started by doing what I was good at (well for the time, don’t ask me to return to these skills) and completed many web UI design projects at work. I read up by getting books on the topic and developed a thirst for more knowledge, I started attending events and reading whatever I could get my hands on. I did a few freelance projects with other companies to build out my resume. Eventually, I changed jobs and was able to move into more of a content organization role at World Savings. I was really fortunate to have a great manager Kevin who introduced me to Information Architecture and User Experience Design. Eventually I applied some of those skills and did some larger products…slowly evolving into larger projects to programs. As I moved on to the next role, the need for “Web Managers” in Silicon Valley grew, nearly every company had several websites to manage (external, internal, and customer) and the skills needed became more focused. I finally moved into a web management role, and was then running multiple projects, which now equate a program. A web strategist is really a program director, someone responsible for a series of projects around a business objective.

Supplement your career with Social Media
Blogging became a big part of my daily activity, and I started to write about what I was learning and doing, eventually it was a trigger enough to become a major reason why I was hired at last company, yeah, that’s right, I blogged myself into my next job, and I’m not the first, nor the last. You can ever read the first comment from my former CEO confirming it. Blogging is a way to demonstrate to the marketplace of your interests and passions are, and it’s easily findable by recruiters or others. To some extend this was a factor that made my future employer understand my area of interest, it continues on.

Network and get Educated
I’ll take a picture sometime of my web reading libary, I have nearly 100 books on a variety of web topics, I’ve also subscribed to magazines, and printed out white papers and other types of research docs. There’s a constant influx of content coming in. If I could look back, it would be interesting to see how the content changed as I moved into a management role, at first, it was a lot of photoshop hacks, and now, I’m looking at industry trends and market data. For the last few years, I attended as many web related events as I could, I would often live blog the sessions, which was part of the learning process. Over time, my personal network grew and things really started to happen. If you’re in an area where there’s not a lot of events, attend online webinars, or use social media to connect.

Considerations for Mary
So for Mary, to summarize a path, it’s to take on smaller projects, show and demonstrate success, and then take on larger projects as your role progresses. Continue to learn, and absorb everything you can, be open to feedback, and follow your passions, one thing leads to another. As a designer, you may want to expand out and start to do some user experience research projects. Then try doing some business requirements documents, then meld those together into a website architecture document and lay out a plan. Only then can you apply your mastery in design. Learn to measure the changes of your website, and use that to calculate the success or failure of the project and continue. Over time these series of projects will turn into a program and you can move into full time web management.

The title itself is not important
A Web Strategist can appear in many places, in Marketing, IT, a Product team, a PR firm, in a consultancy or at an analyst firm. Anyone who makes long term decisions for a website, and meets these three spheres of community, business, and technology is in that role. The title may also differ, depending on the organization, so don’t worry about that as much.

Share your experience
The conversation continues in the Web Strategy Group, where there are a few others that have explained their path. So if you have something to add, consider sharing it here, and maybe also in the group.

There was a unique intersection of Social Media and Digital Film creators at Vancouver’s Digital Film conference called VidFest.

I was one of the panelists discussion online identity, where the worlds of Facebook, Online Video and Second Life mixed and mashed, it was great fun, Megan Cole (who takes meaningful photos) did a fantastic job moderating. I really found the debate panel on the Web 2.0 Democracy or Mob Mentality, Andrew Keen the author of Cult of the Amateur made some very valid points, despite his pessimistic attitude. Thanks to Kelly Verchere for all her organization, and Lynda Brown for putting it all together.

There was an unique intersection between the film industry present, and another crew from the social media side, like myself and Bill Claxton (great writeup) from Singapore. There will be a merger between how films are created and then distributed using social media tools like Blip, YouTube then on top of ‘carrier’ websites like social networking sites and blogs. The movie theater or TV is no longer the only ways to consume content.

I was really impressed by the movie showings of Infest Wisely, a film created by multiple directors around the topic of Nano Technology and then Sanctuary, a kind of Buffy meets Vampire hunters, these are films created using digital tools, and released for the web only. If you’re a sci-fi fan, like me, it’s worth checking out.

We had our dates mixed up about a recent announcement, so I’ve temporarily removed one of my latest posts. It will go live exactly as originally posted once I fix my sundial.

In the meantime, check out my favorite flickr photos.

Update: After some time, the site is now live, and I published the post exactly as promised.

This is an apology post, and a request for help.

Sadly, due to leaving of PodTech, some of my video on DV tape will not be published. I really want to apologize to the folks that were interviewed as I took up your valuable time. Although awesome Rocky is publishing just a few more interviews that were already cut, he’s rightfully no longer obligated to edit them as I’m no longer with the company.

If there are any junior video editors out there that are interested in a side project to transfer DV tapes and publish (maybe 10 segments), very minor editing is required. I’d be happy to talk with you, we could work something out, please leave a comment below or email me on the contact page.

Amanda Greets me at Innocentre

The Atrium features products and designs

Communal Cafeteria

Grand Atrium

This is another special Silicon Valley Sightings Asia Edition, view the archives.

I had the absolute pleasure to take a tour of Hong Kong’s InnoCentre (on the Kowloon side) from Amanda Lau, head of Marketing of JiJiJa. This is just days after my tour of Cyberport on Hong Kong Island.

InnoCentre is a government sponsored incubator that promotes emerging companies by providing office space, business amenities like meeting rooms, copier rooms, and even funding –without taking any equity. There’s few VCs in Silicon Valley that can boast that type of model.

For startups, even the little things matter, from impressing clients in a real meeting room (rather than meeting at starbucks) or having a real work space, as you know there are few garages in China, so the garage startup is virtually non-existent.

“He said, “we promote applied R&D through funding schemes, infrastructure support, collaboration with Mainland and overseas research institutes. We also endeavor to grow an innovation culture in the community. Most recently, we launched five new R&D centers, in which the Government will invest over US$256.41 million (HK$2 billion). And we will roll out Science Park Phase 2 starting 2007.” -reports HK Economic Trade Office

There were several floors to this amazing building, which also housed product design companies (University of HK was just a few steps away) and had gallery areas to show off new products. For companies that met their three year goals in the program, they were elligable for funding, to launch their company further. As I understand it, a company has to apply to get this special kind of grant, and a few of the companies I met were happy to be there.

While there are some startup incubators around (I think Francine Hardaway would know) in the United States, I’ve never heard of a government sponsored one with so many benefits.

I met with Amanda, who showed me her product Jijija (Which means chatter in Chinese). They help ecommerce and social networks or even media websites become more efficient by providing behavioral based recommendations. This is a viable model as gestures (unspoken actions) can often be more powerful than what users say they will do. Don’t be fooled by their Chinese website, they plan to head globally, although I have the master list of others in their space.

I also checked out ReSpread an do it yourself email marketing tool that has interesting CRM features, for the email marketer, this is an interesting asset for the small and medium sized company.

I spent times with the founders of another company, who wished to remain stealth, they provided me with amazing insight about the Chinese web culture as it applies to the web, you’re seeing that output in other posts.

I screwed up, in fact this is a very embarrassing, but there’s a lesson to be learned and the majority of you all will benefit, if not be entertained.

As you know, if you add me on Facebook, I’ll add you back.

To me, Facebook is a business and personal networking tool unlike any other I’ve ever used. I’m pretty cavalier and liberal on what I let people send to me, such as dedicating songs. In the past, my wife has dedicated some songs to me, some of them are personal, and some trigger some inside jokes between us.

Recently, someone I don’t personally know dedicated a song to her entire network of friends, which included me. It was called “Girlfriend” and I accepted the dedication, it was then put on my profile page. I’m sure she had no idea of the implications it would soon cause for me.

For a bit of context, her profile picture, which at my age in the 30s is a bit racy, (but for her generation is likely common) bared a bit of shoulder.

She was also from an Asian country, where I was headed just last week…you see where this is going…imaginations can run wild.

My wife saw this while I was in Hong Kong last week, and when you add up all those instances, it paints a somewhat dark picture. My wife wasn’t connect to this girl, and couldn’t see she dedicated to all her friends.

I was slightly amused (but mostly scared) as I received an email from her one night in all caps, ending with the phrase “YOU BETTER GET THAT STRAIGHTEN OUT NOW!” (I’m not allowed to publish the full email, which I think is very, um, colorful)

Within minutes, I apologized, explained my innocence/ignorance/dumbassary, and removed the dedication, I explained I accepted all virtual gifts and dedications without giving it a second thought. She said she would then dedicate a song to me called “I’m a Dumbass” to prove her point. (dunno if such a song exists, but it might as well for me)

Just goes to show the dangers of Social Networks, sorry honey, wasn’t intentional, one should be more careful on how they use social networks for personal, business, family and friends, the context may not fully be apparent to others.

Think that’s bad? I’ve blogged about other embarrassing things I’ve done, such as screwing up Robert Scoble’s keynote in front of hundreds of PR professionals, a little humility goes a long way.

Even a web strategist can screw up too.

Update: Waili sent me this song called Dumbass by Tom Petty, nice.

(Left: Hong Kong Harbor at night)

Summary
I ventured to Hong Kong and met with many of the web industry leaders, below is part 1 of 4 of my Web Strategy Field Report to understand the web sphere in Hong Kong and China. If you’re a web strategist with global responsibilities you’ll need to understand what’s happening in one of the world’s largest internet user base.

Opportunity
To date, there are more Chinese internet users than all of North America combined, and only a portion of China is full online, the potential has not yet been tapped. Simply re-skinning your website in Chinese and adding a ‘.cn’ domain may not be a sufficient strategy.

Purpose
I want to understand the global web better, and am doing what I can to learn more. It’s easy to become very insular in the Silicon Valley bubble, so if you’ve any suggestions, please leave a comment

Methodology
30-60 minute formal or casual interviews. I’ve met several successful Entrepreneurs, Investors, Analysts, Professors, CEOs, Strategists, Bloggers, Podcasters, and Marketers during this period.

Limitations
Please note this field report is incomplete. I’ve neither the time nor resources to do thorough analysis, and do a 360 degrees research. The information and anecdotes collected are from interviews with those that I met. As always, a web strategy and plan should have thorough research completed before starting. If you disagree or have other data points to add (even if it’s just your own opinion, I welcome them in the comments, please don’t be shy).

“The screen is getting bigger for a reason, some kids are playing 4 MMORPGS at once”

declared Yet Siu, the CEO of Outblaze over lunch at a fine seafood restaurant on Lamma island. He’s noticed that some youths in China and HK are playing up to 4 MMORPGs or web games at the same time…each in it’s own window.

“Mini –Homepy (pronounced mini-home-pie) aggregates one’s network”

Is a new feature coming out of South Korea that aggregates one’s network and is like a filter for an individual. If you want to communicate with an individual, you will go to his mini-homepy and leave a message. It’s a combination of a blog, homepage, aggregator, and message board an individual. I did some searches for this product but didn’t find much.

“America has never seen an Alibaba”

On more than one occasion has a few strategists told me about the success of Alibaba. What is this website? It’s an online marketplace for small to medium sized businesses, a site that has no North American relation or comparison. It sports a storefront (free) for any company, and those that wish to upgrade can add video and other features for a fee. Some companies pay up to $5,000 a year. In fact, the company is due to go public soon, and investors are expecting the stock to split within the first 24 hours of IPO. (so I’m told). Ther are 24 million registered users (compared to how many US users) with

“The internet industry is grouped in the Software industry”

Unlike the United States the internet is listed and categorized as a subset of the Software Industry. In the US, internet is often clearly separated from desktop or enterprise software, and we strive to maintain that separation. Over time, this may change in China as well. For many web professionals, they clearly see the web as an evolution to re-purpose desktop applications in the browser, and then the mobile web.

“There are 1.4 million new broadband users in China every month”

During a presentation from China Mobile various stats were given. Although this growth seems massive only 10% of China is on broadband, I believe the stat in United States is around 70-80% (from memory)

Stick around next week, I’ll be releasing part 2. If this was helpful or even if you have some contradictory information, please leave a comment.

Update: I had a great conversation with Carleen Hawn of GigaOm’s Found|READ, she’s summarized much of what I’m reporting back to you all.

Click To Play

Sadly, my schedule has been too impacted for me to attend many of the Lunch 2.0 community events that are springing up just about everywhere. Yesterday, I was at familyoven’s kickoff lunch party, they hosted in gourmet style atop a rooftop in North Beach where they live/work. Dozens met for drinks, food, socialization and most impressively, the VIEW of all of SF on a clear, warm, slightly breezy day. It was easy to spot those used to the cold weather, they quickly sought shade.

What’s Family Oven about? It’s a website focused on recipes, cooking, with social networking and event hooks. I can think of a few people in my family that would be far more interested in a website like this than Facebook. What does it tell you that the largest tags on the tag cloud on the homepage are “Low sodium” and “Holiday”? Each of the recipe pages has recommended or similar types of menus, shows the profile of the submitter and various rating tools. If I were to make a suggestion, I would like to see instructional type of features be added, so step by step pictures and instructions could be added. Here’s my recipe for grilled apricots.

I learned that the two founders started this up on their own dime, and both were software engineers at Tagged, where Terry and Mark Jenn are.

One of the main reasons I came up was to meet Brian Keith in person, we had a brief chat, and I’ll be publishing a video of him in the near future.

I suspect one I start the new job, my time will be so impacted, I won’t be able to attend many of these community events, so I’ll enjoy them while I can.

(View from Forrester’s office. I actually used to live right there on the Foster City lagoon on the left side apartments right on the water, on the right side, you can see the Oracle towers.)

Today I went in to my ‘unofficial’ first day at Forrester. I don’t actually hit the payroll until Monday, but I’m getting my research agenda and had to meet some new clients while in town. The welcome was amazing, Charlene and staff are really wonderful. I’m very excited about the road ahead, and the topics that I’ll be covering are right in my area of focus, stay tuned, more goodness to come.

I’m still getting a lot of questions about my future activity. Yes, I’ll continue to blog, and I’ll still do short videos and twitter and share. You’ll find that now that I have access to real data and research intelligence that I’ll have greater quality to share with you so hang on for the ride!

I’ll be flying out to Cambridge for new hire and analyst training, if you’re in Boston, please try to attend the blogger dinner on Oct 18th, there are already 37 signed up!

Just like I did at Hitachi and PodTech, I’ll be sharing my journey as an employee venturing into a new world, I believe in being as transparent as appropriate, so stay with me!

I don’t want to be American-centric, but I need your help.

If you’ve been reading my blog, you’ll notice that I’ve spent some time in Asia (Singapore, HK, Japan) learning about web adoption and sophistication (Canada too). I really want to be the conduit for my many Silicon Valley readers to know more about what the rest of the world has done, Social Media, and the internet at large is truly a global tool.

I’d like to invite you to share with me some case studies of what other companies have done to use social media (from blogs, social networks, online media, etc) to reach and connect with customers. These stories can either be of success or even hard learnings, so please leave a comment below and let me know, of course, please provide links to the appropriate websites.

Shout out your success with social media in Europe! Tell me: 1) What was the company, 2) who were they trying to reach, 3) what was the problem, 4) what did they deploy, 5) how’d it go? 6) What suggestions would you give to the program, where’s it headed? and anything else you wanted to share!

I’m respecting your limited time by publishing this weekly summary.

I’ve created a new tag called Digest where you can start to track and access these going forward. The hope? To make it easy for a web strategist to quickly scan the activity in the last week. I strive to make headlines on items categorized and succinct.

Need to make decisions about your web strategy? I’m here to help: subscribe to my blog, sign up for emails (right nav), follow me on Twitter, or add me on Facebook (I’ll add you back for each).

Thank you for the feedback and comments last week, (I asked if I should continue this series) In addition to comments, I received emails, and messages in Facebook telling me to continue the digest, which I will do. Here’s my attempt at listening to you, my customers!

Web Strategy Summary
The big story? Microsoft (experienced with online advertising) is aiming to invest in Facebook, valuation may vary. This week, we’re continuing to see much buzz about the Social Graph, and continued segmentation from deployments. While I suggest that segmentation is natural for the web (and a good thing) excessive niche plays may be an indicator of the saturation of the market.

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Money: Facebook and Microsoft in bed
The big story this week is that Microsoft is hunting to invest 5-10% into Facebook, the total valuation of Facebook is now being debated. There are those that are questioning the impact that Facebook has on the widget economy, it’s clear that FB is the Gorilla in the room, although some suggest we should be very worried.

Social Graph: Six Apart to launch Social Graph
This is exciting news, the much buzz-demanded feature called social graph (where users can transport their network relationships from one SoNet to another) will be released from the very open Six Apart. I must applaud them for their excellent reach and connection to getting open ID, and now social graph.

Legal: Teen sues Virgin for mis-use of Flickr image
Every company must be cautious and careful in the images it selects from the open web and social networking sites like Flickr. This youth is suing telecom company for damages as her photo was used in an embarrassing (and should get double fees for using a cliche) manner. By the way, we ran into similar issues at my last company…gotta learn what creative commons is!

Productivity: Ban Facebook? Intel’s public debate
Josh Bancroft, Intel’s top blogger, is challenging the forces at Intel Security to keep Facebook an application for business and personal use. I can think of so many arguments to keep it open, and in fairness a few why they may want to close it, but the opportunities simply outweigh the threats. If they do ban Facebook, they might as well ban the rest of the web, but intel.com

Social Graph: Google to Release on Nov 5th
In a private meeting, Google has told a few that it will release a social graph feature, much like how Six Apart is also going to. Google will leverage it’s popular (well in Brazil) SoNet Orkut, and offer APIs that can connect to it and iGoogle. This will be an interesting battle, many speculate Google will sweep up all the other networks for global domination.

Feature: Facebook to launch IM
Yet another tool to capture our attention inside of Facebook, an IM tool will be released. If you were paying attention, the homepage feed has been asking for AIM login info, so I’m somewhat surprised this has not already happened. For me, I won’t use it, IM sucks too much time.

Segmentation: A SoNet for when you’re dead
Nick Carr reports on the Social Network youdeparted.com where it aggregates your life, and you can leave messages for friends and family after your demise. Cheerful! Now, we just need a SoNet before we’re born (perhaps, you’reborn.com) …someone kick me when we’ve jumped the shark.

Segmentation: A SoNet for Google Earth
A group of Arizona students are in cahoots with a “Major internet company” to release a social networking feature set for the Google Earth product. Why stop there? build a system that can work with all Google products.

Mobile: MySpace to offer mobile version –with ads
MySpace is going mobile, users can now access popular SoNet, although it’s not quite as sophisticated as many marketers may want, true geo-contextual advertising is not here yet. I’d give it a few short years.

Usage: Ning surpasses 100,000 Social Networks
Although not a measurement of quality or activity, Ning announces that over 100k ‘groups’ within it’s product suite have been created.

Legal and Security: Facebook ignores predators?
An open letter to Facebook to pay attention to online predators, hopefully, we’ll hear a response.

3 comments

I had the opportunity to interview Joseph Loong of AOL’s Community Connection (which has blogs, forums, photo galleries, social network features) at Miami’s WeMedia conference at the University of Miami. He’s one of the community folks at AOL Blogs and helps the community become more efficient bloggers and communicators and shares with us the challenges to big media corporations like AOL and what the future holds.

Thanks Rocky for editing!

Click To Play

For the web strategist, successful deployment of a global strategic requires understanding of different cultures and adoption rates. Culture and adoption can vary even from neighboring countries.

Last night, Tod met up with me after the VidFest conference, he brought out several of Canada’s social media folks to meet up, and I was lucky to catch them as they were walking out! Thanks Tod for organizing, Mark’s on an accelerated schedule, Derek was there, and Rachel Newton, Chuck LeDuc, Mark Blevis, Tatsuya Nakagawa, Andrei Iancu, Vern Baker.

I was on a fact-finding mission to find out how the web industry is doing in Canada, the overwhelming response was it was behind the United States, perhaps over a year, due to conservatism and over self-analysis (their words, not mine). I have another video that will be published in the coming weeks listing some of the top web companies.

(Left Image: Gil Roberts of PodTech, Len Devanna and I hang out at PodTech. Oh hey Gil, I’m using the camo pack every day!)

I’ll be in Boston, Cambridge to be specific, at Forrester new hire and Analyst training for a few weeks, and want to take the time to meet the community in Boston that I plan to serve…the Web Community! I’ve helped kick off dinners all around the globe for social media folks, and am finally glad to meet folks in this region.

A few weeks ago, Len from EMC was very interested in meeting Scoble and I, and drove over an hour from the Pleasanton office to meet us. He’s EMC’s Web Strategist, and will be one of the folks leading the social media arena. I know his space well, as I lead the program for HDS, who’s in the same market. Len told me that EMC would really benefit from a community event, so I suggested to let him help organize and sponsor the upcoming event. His hard work will pay off, after selecting a venue and offering to pay for drinks and appetizers, he’s pleased to announce the upcoming dinner.

Please note, with all community events I organize (sponsor or not) there will be no pitching, poaching, or hard demos or sales, the focus is on community.

Who should come? Anyone who cares about the web industry, bloggers, and social media folks. If you can make it, please sign up on the wiki, please note that there’s a limit on how many can attend, so put your name down.

Thank you EMC for sponsoring the dinner!

Update: How many startups are there in Boston? My former PodTech boss John Furrier has a surprisingly large list.

Last week, In Hong Kong, I gave a presentation about Virtual worlds and social media to some of Asia’s top investors. A few folks had a hard time understanding the concept of virtual goods, after speaking with Susan Wu, there are a handful of virtual goods that can be sold. She told me that there are three categories of Virtual Goods:

The Three Categories of Virtual Goods (from Susan Wu)

1 Behavioral goods (such as gifting)
2 Decorative goods (like self-expression)
3 Functional goods, (like wielding a swords that grants super powers)

These goods mean a great deal to the players that inhabit these worlds, and in many respects almost all social systems have goods (bloggers have technrorati, podcasters have downloads).
[Virtual Goods, although intangible, have been assigned personal and social value that members of a virtual world will hold it’s worth ]
For many, it’s hard to imagine that anyone would buy these things, but she also stated that such gifts were already being exchanged in Facebook, from hugs, food fights, gifts, and in a way, even the dreaded poke.

[Virtual goods, and luxury items in real life are very similiar; we’ve placed personal and social value on them, often without any additional physical utility]

In fact, there are entire industries in China that collect gold from World of Warcraft and other games, they then sell this virtual gold on the free market for US dollars. I had dinner with one of the CEOs over a year ago in San Jose.

I gave the analogy that until humans cease in giving luxury goods like Fashion Designer purses or high end watches, then virtual goods will continue on. How does that analogy work? Humans have placed personal and social value on high end gifts (like a diamond ring) that doesn’t serve a higher utilitarian purpose of a cheaper counterpart, then we’ve assigned a ‘virtual’ value to these luxury items. In it’s essence, a handbag from Gucci or Payless will serve the same purpose. Sure, some of the materials may be more rare, or cost more to produce, but that doesn’t equal to higher utility.

I’m so honored and pleased to have met Jennifer Jones, my former colleague at PodTech. We’ve become fast friends over the past year, I remember when we first met in person during my interview, we hit it off immediately! Jennifer draws from great experience crafting the first PR industry, and has worked with many of the greats, including CEOs of companies we all know in Silicon Valley. She’s well connected to the VC industry, and I continue to learn a lot from her insight and experience. Yes, she’s been a major influencer on me to understand and appreciate better the PR industry and strategic marketing.

If you want to hear our discussion about Facebook, you can check out this discussion. I’m glad to be on her show, Marketing Voices, where we discuss Facebook as a new tool for marketers. Rocky, our producer did an excellent job working with the environment (and kept it real with the falling leaves), thanks bud.

I’m pleased to see that Web Strategist Connie Benson is leading the social media charge at ACDSee, a company who has helped with image management for many years. If you’re a web designer, photographer, or artist, you’ve likely used their tools. I was heavily using their products from 2000-2004 when I was doing UI design.

Connie is a fantastic community and customer advocate, she’s been very proactive in her blogging, and added many insights to the Web Strategy Group over the past months. She lists her responsibilities as:

“Connie Bensen will serve as Community Manager for ACDSee. In this role, she is the “voice of the customer,” maintaining a constant dialog with photographers and memory keepers to ensure that the company’s products and services are directly in line with the needs of the people who use them. This conversation is fostered through regular engagement in community events, as well as her enthusiastic participation in online social networks. She also shares her passion, ideas and discoveries related to digital scrapbooking and photography through the ACDSee blog.”

This really gets my excited in so many ways, ACDSee is using social media in a very strategic way to improve products, support, and communication by putting customers first. Gotta love it, and now they’re living it with Connie at the helm.

Her previous blog “Digital Scrapbooking” makes her a perfect candidate for this position. She has a personal blog at ConnieBenson, if you’re in the Community Marketing space, I recommend you subscribe, or you can check her out at work at the ACDSee blog, where she’s already underway. It’s exciting to see a company focused in on customers and using social media tools to connect with them.

Congrats to Connie!

(See Google Map)

This is a special “Asian” edition of Silicon Valley Sightings, a photoblog series I’ve been doing for a few months.

Cyberport, a $3.89 billion futuristic high-tech campus is a mixed use facility that has housing, a shopping mall, and four major towers for tech companies. It’s located on the southern area of Hong Kong Island, right on the water, nestled between green dramatic jade hills. It’s home to companies such as Cisco Systems, CMGI, Hewlett-Packard, Hikari Tsushin, Hua Wei, IBM, Legend (now Lenovo), Microsoft, OutBlaze, Oracle Corporation, Silicon Graphics, Softbank, Sybase and Yahoo!.

“Cyberport is being developed on a 24-hectare site at Telegraph Bay on Hong Kong Island in Hong Kong. The project aims to build a community interconnected by state-of-the-art broadband network consisting of four office buildings, a five-star hotel, a retail entertainment complex and about 2,800 deluxe residential homes, leading to an interactive environment that will be home to a strategic cluster of about 100 companies and 10,000 professionals in the IT and creative industries” -WikiPedia

There are shared media resources (in case you need rendering power from dozens of blade servers) a motion capture facility if you’re going to build games, library and resource center, the official website has more details. There’s a mall for entertainment, there’s restaurants, and a state of the art movie theater that’s frequented on the weekends by the family crowd.

It’s not quite a utopia, as critics of Cyberport have debated the role of the development group, and the actual number of tennents and usage of the campus, success hasn’t yet been declared. “Meanwhile, Cyberport – Hong Kong’s “IT flagship” and Hong Kong Disneyland have been disappointing. The former has little in the way of innovation and exists essentially as another property development rent spinner, not a real IT hub.” reports Asia Sentinel.

Best of all, it’s a 15 minute boat ride to Lamma island, a resort like rural get away with restaurants, beaches and hiking, my friends at Outblaze took me there for lunch, see photos.

Below: Pictures from the Cyberport campus

I got a chance to interview the insightful David Parmet, one of the PR bloggers in the social media space that ‘gets it’. David reviews the classic cases of business blogging for small businesses, such as Stormhoek and English Cut. If you’re not familiar with these case studies, they used social media for their marketing efforts as the primary way to communicate, rather than traditional marketing.

I asked David “What should companies look for when finding a social media consultant”? Tune in to find out his answers.