Heidi Cool

Flicker all the way, man. - Tibi Puiu

Flickr is way better than Picasa Web Album, with much more options, hands down winner - Jaap Willem via twhirl

Flickr's been great. I played around with Picasa awhile back but Flickr just does what I need it to. - Heidi Cool

would love to know what percent of archived photos are ever looked at again .. a small percetage i bet - Gregory Lent

Smugmug. - Robert Scoble

i've been a happy Flickr Pro user since they launched Pro. it's the functionality, simplicity, and API. - ~C4Chaos

if you are willing to pay, I agree with Scoble - go with SmugMug - even has an easy way to upload from the Picasa desktop app if you already use that - Frederic

Smugmug looks pretty cool for a paid service. Flickr's nice and Picasa's too, managing through Flickr is pretty powerful and the API gets it used almost anywhere (local apps/inserting in blogs by using plugins etc.) - Zu aka ElijahBailey

Flickr for general use (as kind of portfolio), Picasa Web Album for specific use. - Daniel Schildt

I'll take Flickr any time, thank you! - Tibi Puiu

Haven't come across many who do that but yeah, it sucks. - Maki

I haven't seen that. What do you mean? Switching from full posts to excerpts? - Heidi Cool

Yeah, it sucks, especially when their posts are quite long. It is uncomfortable to people who doesn't have high speed internet. - Didik Wicaksono via twhirl

I don't even read feeds anymore. :) - l0ckergn0me

I don't find it annoying. Some blogs make a living out of their on site traffic. RSS advertising did not prove itself until now and services like FeedBurner only recently started to implement AdSense. Personally, I don't care if you use your excerpt or full feed. Write a smart, intriguing excerpt and I'll visit the site for sure. I prefer to read blog posts on site and not in my reader. My reader is only meant to aggregate and keep me updated. One click won't hurt me. Is just like clicking on ads.----> - Alex Cristache

At times, when I read a good post, I'll click on one of the ads. By doing this I know that I repay the writer, even if in a small way, for his effort and time took to write a good resource. - Alex Cristache

@heidi that's it, I completely agree blogs make a living out of the page views, but their ad spots aren't that badly priced either, I mean be kind to the readers, there more than enough people who will land on your pages - Dobromir Hadzhiev

@Dobrimir: Some feed subscribers won't visit the website or visit rarely, and this has been confirmed by many people. I do respect my readers' options and I now publish full feeds, but, as a reader, I'm not asking that as A MUST from bloggers. After all, they respect their readers enough to publish free content / advice. It's a "help me to help you" situation. A balance between offerings and demands would be good in this case. Sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn't. It's a matter of personal choice. - Alex Cristache

Also, I don't see Plurk becoming as useful as Twitter (ex: the journalist story, etc.) - Rubin Sfadj

Plurk is overwhelming to me. If I step away for 10 minutes, I will have over 100 missed messages. - Reem Abeidoh

I agree. I really love the concept, but after just a few days I was overwhelmed. - Sara

I wasn't paying much attention to FriendFeed at all until the rooms got going. I'm not on many mailing lists anymore but I do see a lot of the social media services as being the next generation of Usenet News. Many of the same capabilities are there but with more features. And it's Web based so we're grabbing users who've never heard of Usenet. - Heidi Cool

NpTech folks did an experiment with a room and here's some of our learnings http://beth.typepad.com/beths_... - Beth Kanter

i see the ff rooms like an ad hoc message board. what I can't figure out is how to monitor it well. I need notifications, not rely on myself to log in and see what's new. - Rob Williams

just another stop to make. I am lazy. Push it to me. - Francine Hardaway

The rooms are nice, and certainly afford a little more interactivity than your traditional message board with the API (I'm using Twhirl). For a group such as ours, I think the jump can be made to it being a viable alternative to mailing lists. Of course, you are then adding another service that we need to keep up with. For power social tool users like some of us are, no problem. Outside of the power users or those outside the social media circle? No way. - Ed Roberts via twhirl

No. It is better than was what there before, but still missing enough to replace a useful mailinglist. it is basically still about filtering and storing. - Nicole Simon

i'm finding it mostly useful for private rooms, the public ones much less so... - Jeremy Toeman

i like it, but i dont like the integration much at the moment. But how could that be better? i dont use them much often. The system should learn what i like, see last.fm and bundle that in a automatic set of same topics... in a better UI - Alexander Oelling

I wish I could get specific alerts when I'm following specific threads - Howard Greenstein

this is fantastic feedback folks - very glad to hear it - thank you! - Chris Heuer

viable only if your audience 1.) knows the room exists 2.) is notified to check for updates and 3.) audience actually acts upon notification and reads content posted to the room. Friendfeed is not mainstream yet, so this could prove challenging and ineffective for mailing list replacement; however, if you have an early adopter audience, then give it a try! - Susan Beebe

... - Anthony Farrior

When I take the time to do the research for a post or article, make sure all sources are reliable and accurate, format the researched material into a readable article, make sure there are no typographical errors and then post it to my blog, you bet your a** I own it. There is such a thing as copyrighted material and just because words, videos, audios and music are on the world wide web, does not mean the whole world can use them. Try using some of Disney's material without permission and see what happens. - Sharon Bray-McPherson

What is your intentions with Social Media? Do you use it to advocate a cause, be it self expressionism or activism? - Igor The Troll

Do you think when Edgar Allen Poe wrote the Raven he cared about who owned the content? The more people reproduce it the more people read it. It is the message that has value not syntax. But if you are so concern with ownership why not make your content private? It can be subscriber based. You can also only allow trusted and invite individual to read your secret writing. It is all about choices and what are you trying to achieve. My house is open and my message is public. No secrets and nothing to hide! - Igor The Troll

Didn't say I wouldn't let people reproduce my material IF they credit the source they got it from. Using your logic, I suppose it would be ok to do a full day's work and let someone else collect the paycheck. And yes, that's what I am trying to achieve with my writings, because that's what my business is about. - Sharon Bray-McPherson

Good for you! That is your objective and you should exercise your rights. But I think your creativity speaks for it self and people know who has written the material. The more people read what you have written the more renown as a writer and content producer you become.If someone would copy off my blog and claim it their own more power to them! Because I am me and no one can imitate me! I think even Google knows who I am! lol But please if you do not feel comfortable with this, you do not need to agree with - Igor The Troll

Of course crediting the sources is desirable and proper etiquette. Let's hope everyone respects each other and helps each other. But free share would be the best for the world community. - Igor The Troll

@Igor The world won't know it is your material if the scrappers of your content do not credit you. They represent your content as their own. It is plagiarism. - Reem Abeidoh

Reem, I am not worried about scrapers. When you have solid content and strong PR nothing can touch your site! But that is just me having confidence in my own work. Mu, what do you think? - Igor The Troll

The search engines, and therefore the world do manage to work out where the work was first published so this is more a case of moral indignation than a practical problem. - Andy Roberts

Search engines do not always work out where the work was first published or do they indicate that. I have seen scrapper sites outranking the original site. Why do you think Matt Cutts himself recommended that a permalink to the original post be placed within the scrapped content so Google can figure it out? It IS a practical problem. - Maki

PR is "Professional Relationships." Social Media is just "relationships." I know when a PR person writes something (or calls or emails) that he/she wants me to pass along that message. When someone writes something here they don't care. That's a huge difference. - Robert Scoble

PR is about sending a message. SM is about sending a message, getting a response and creating a conversation - Britney Mason

I agree with all all the comments here, and will also say that when I've contacted people for a PR purpose, I've still thought about it as a conversation with a human being, not so much as a "pitch." That's why the concept of "social media" and social networking came easily to me. I had always worked that way. - Cathryn Hrudicka

I agree with both Britney and Cathryn. I think there has a been a long-standing division between the "practitioners" and "professionals" in the PR industry. Now that the primary media distribution medium has merged with the primary communication channel (it's all happening online), the differenence between the two groups has simply become more pronounced. PR and social media are both about telling stories. The only difference is in the editing. A common criticism of PR is that there is too much editing, or spin. A common criticism of social media? Not enough editing. - Steve Lynch

aren't we just splitting hairs at this point? For PR, social media should be viewed as a channel, much like dailies, broadcast and radio are. Then within the channel each community approached with unique tactics. You wouldn't approach FORTUNE the same as CNBC or Forbes the same as C|Net. One emerging trend coming from GenY and its impact in the workforce is the lines between professional and private lives are blurring. This is just happening in PR. This isn't Bernays PR world. - matt ceniceros

Social Media by definition is about using technology to communicate and interact in new ways and share elements like text, photos, videos. It's not a new form of comm, rather new forms of delivery, and new tools to do so. PR and media are well suited for social media from a "professional" standpoint because the rely on delivering the elements of a story. I agree with Matt, it's more of a channel at this point. Bloggers are not necessarily journalists, but they are influential in their space (ie.Scoble) - Jason Kintzler

Social media = our shared community view of the world. Traditional media = someone is selling something. - Dion Hinchcliffe via twhirl

PR is a purposeful effort to gain attention to a specific company, product, or service. Social Media is a nebulous term generically applied to blogging, social networking, online communities, and anywhere else where an individual can have a voice. There isn't any form of appropriate comparison, because they are completely different things. - Jeremy Toeman

I would say that social media is a tool that can be used as a conduit for PR, one is the channel, the other is the message. - Jackie Peters

I agree with Jackie PR is about getting the message out, typically on a professional level as Scoble indicates, while social media has created yet another distribution outlet for PR as well as many other communications. The trick for PR professionals is to recognize that social media is a two way street and is not merely an outward push of information. They should also use it to respond to readers and to keep an eye out for public opinion regarding their organization/product/service, etc. - Heidi Cool

I agree with Jason, social media is just merely the channel, and each channel is a tactic. The overall strategy should be influence marketing, utilizing each of these channels to achieve your business objectives whatever they may be. PR really has no place in social media except as an additional source of information. People only trust companies to get the facts about their products which creates awareness. Everything else is almost always drawn from research and conversations with objective third parties. - Devlin Dunsmore

A bland video on YouTube is useless. Same goes for a pure PR based corp blog. If companies are going to use social media for anything of value it has to be influence marketing. Engaging your customers at different points in the funnel in different parts of the web is the only way to establish new and strengthen existing customer relationships. - Devlin Dunsmore

In this conversation thread the assumption is that the dynamics of social conversations and messaging will remain the same. The question we need to ask is "Would we there be market for professional PR in 10 years from now given the rise of social media?" I think the hurricane of two way communication revolution with instant feedback is building up and what we have seen so far is only tip of the ice-berg. There is a good chance that top-down one way megaphone style messaging may be history in a decade. - Vic Podcaster

PR is the tool used to establishing and maintaining your brand / image / culture; whereas, Social Media is all about engaging your audience and fostering deeper community ties that relate to your brand management. So PR is the upper layer (formal) and the SM layer is more person and intimate layer (informal). - Susan Beebe

PR evolved to influence the media controllers, just as advertising evolved to piggback on the media flow. Both practics evolved to influence consumers indirectly, because direct consumer interaction wasn't practical. Social media now allows direct engagement, and has evolved in an environment where consumers reject manipulative influence. This is a problem for PR and adverstising, but not terminal. There will always be a need for businesses to create and advocate their own message. But "influencing the influencers" is not going to cut it. "Blogger Relations" is not going to cut it. PR and advertising need to explore ~direct~ consumer engagement for what it really is--not just a "channel". Those who have always been about human relationships get it. Those who have been about manipulative influence won't. - Chris Kenton

@Chris - BINGO!! real authentic relationships are must...no fake manipulative crap. - Susan Beebe

pr is manipulation, one way, ..... social media is exposition (as in exposure), two way (or more) ... - Gregory Lent

I think in the context of corprate outreach, social media is a public relations conduit. Yes, there are different rules, but social media is a communications mechanism, not some separate animal altogether. Two cents. - Jason Falls

pR, if you take it back far enough, is the delivery f information to the public, and social media is an interactive too used to deliver it, just like TV or a newspaper, only two way. Long way of saying I agree with Jason. And manipulation came fairly late to PR. - Francine Hardaway via twhirl