THE FRIENDLY PEOPLE of the world are weaving humanity together through social networks towards an end(s) none of us can see as yet.

It’s one of the MOST fantastic revolutions the planet has EVER seen. Within the social fabric of the internet humans have a distinct opportunity to turn the earth into a place of peace and unity. In fact, even the naysayers have united with the lovers in this by participation in social networks.

BRAND HUMANIZATION IS EVIDENCE OF THE REVOLUTION OF LOVE! In an attempt to humanize, brands are getting very creative in reaching the hearts of their followers.

See the following two ads for an example!

THE PEACEFUL BEAR AD: (click here to watch)

THE WEAVING OF LIKES INTO REAL LIFE (click here to watch)

Typically in times of crisis the masculine goes into a fight or flight action. BUT NOW, the individual is FIGHTING FOR and FLYING TO the tribe(s) and circles oriented around his/her HEART! Go to your tribe today and fight with them to weave this world together with your contribution. Do it! Do that REVOLUTION OF THE HEART!Remember those great ads where everyone sang together while drinking their favorite cola?

FURNISH IT WITH LOVE! (click here to watch)

YOUR SOCIAL GRAPH IS FURNISHED WITH LOVE AND YOU DID THAT! In your social network, you now have all the characters you need to achieve what you are looking for AND there is no time better than the present to begin and FINISH!

For aid in how to hurdle typical obtacles I highly recommend ShipIt by Seth Godin!

As one of my dearest friends says, “Bushido! Do it now because the time is right!” It is a revolution of the heart that is afoot!

Popularity: unranked [?]

Last night I sat with a client in LA discussing the growth of social networks, social monitoring/intelligence projects AND transparent social eco-systems. We agreed with one another that no matter how transparent the eco-system of social networks becomes, there really are countless skins of the onion left to peel off. And that applies from the individual to the corporate level.

Could it be that complaining about transparency in social networks IS REALLY FEAR OF IDENTITY TRANSFORMATION? I submit to participants within social networks that your very participation in the social fabric of the internet IS a transformative act.

“Social-networking sites, blogs, online discussion forums and online journals represent modern arenas for individuals to write themselves into being,” writes Theresa Sauter. “A lot of people see social networking as a new way for people to interact but I’m interested in examining it as a way to form an identity and understand ourselves,” she added.

The potential of an increasingly transparent eco-system in social networks is an OPENING OF THE HEART. This opening is a kind of humanizing of all that was once mechanical and commercial. And, as a result, phenomena like brands, corporations and products take on a living nature as brand ambassadors, community managers and Chief Customer Officers interact with customers in a dialogue format. Communication between the “storied heights” of corporations and the humans that buy from these corporations has NEVER had such an opportunity for intimacy.

How does this work? We now have numerous examples of major international brands who have realized the necessity of humanization. Pepsi’s Refresh Everything project, Nokia’s Shot By Fans project AND Zappos, Best Buy and Jet Blue Twitter-customer-service portals are ALL great examples of brands relating on a one-to-one basis with their customers in helpful and generous ways. DTC’s “Drop Everything For Love” campaign is one of my favorites, where people logged in with stories about how they had “dropped everything for love”. The best stories were awarded with the opportunity to do just that.

So here’s a direct challenge and invitation to the CEO’s, GM’s and MM’s of the world: Would you drop everything for love? Consider the benefit of falling in love with your customer and steering your brand(s) in a direction that ATTRACT and enroll him/her/them in the process of brand vitality through intuitively designed reward-driven campaigns. We must hunt for dollars as the leaders of corporations with a responsibility to our shareholders AND we must also create a brand culture that fosters generosity, reward and a community/environment of friendliness. In a world where “friending” and “following” have catapulted customer equity beyond brand equity AND elevated customer lifetime value over current sales, IT BECOMES THE RESPONSIBILITY OF BUSINESS LEADERS TO CREATE HOSPITABLE BRANDS. The identity of corporate culture AND brand presence has never had a more favorable environment for transforming identity and re-making the world.

Virginia Satir, the fabulous author of The New Peoplemaking, writes, “I believe the greatest gift I can conceive of having from anyone is to be seen by them, heard by them, to be understood and touched by them.” Brands that design/implement product, communication and sales strategy BASED upon listening to their customer WILL win. Listening IS the action that opens every petal of the human community and gives individuals and brands passage to the heart of vitality and re-productivity.

Popularity: unranked [?]

By Nathaniel Hansen (dedicated to Terri Plewa, one of the planet’s most exciting and rising webutantes)

Gathering intelligence to inspire meaningful and actionable social programs is priceless. ~Brian Solis

Crowd-sourced content sprinkled with fairie-dust by expert producers will find its way via social-intelligence experts to decision-makers within global brands seeking top-of-mind status updates characterized by organic virality. This is the wave of the future and it is called TRANSMEDIA: a brand (advertiser/sponsor), a cause (giving back), an audience/tribe (customer) and their beloved content (the soul of the community), all wrapped up in online communities designed to facilitate a blend of virtual and physical interaction — the archetypes ruling each of these tribes require pro-creation on all levels AND digital-media midwifes mind-children by the billions every day.

The opportunity in the social fabric of the internet is to access deep need via listening tools and deliver heart-fare direct from niche-specific content producers direct to audience members accompanied by messaging from that tribe members’ favorite brands. This is what Saatchi + Saatchi identified when they came up with Lovemarks vs. Trademarks AND it is what GoogleTV will be selling advertisers on by the droves through the coming 24 months.

Colin Donald, of FUTURESCAPE.TV writes, “Facebook and Twitter buzz affects TV ratings, while broadcasters that use the social networks for viewer engagement are effectively sharing their audiences with them. The social networks know in real time how people react to TV programming – this is an essential supplement to Nielsen-type viewing data.”

Developing content that matches at the location where audiences are trending in their interests is THE most forward thinking activity by marketers currently AND the social fabric of the internet gives us real-time intelligence on this. Social monitoring tools combined with temporal analytics tools offer strategists opportunities in this area.

YOU are the next Oprah!

And Oprah should show the world this via her new cable network, stepping aside to allow 100 hosts and hostesses to lead her shows. She should crowd-source her content AND advertisers using social intelligence gathering and acknowledging the dynamic movement of attention and related influence. Those around her who only understand the old methods of marketing will fall away and those around her who get how audiences gather around content will ascend. Her new media channels will be a template for how GoogleTV operates and she may become the tribal leader of TRANSMEDIA.

Of course, Oprah’s media advisors may not do what I just wrote about…which will open the door for a competitor of hers to overtake her in multi-tribe and brand loyalty. An intelligent Director of Strategy for Oprah’s new cable channel would not raise the cost of the network BUT would rather show Oprah how the cost may be cut in half or more through intelligent useage of free/inexpensive third party tools and solutions.

A perfect example of how advisors take from wealthy leaders may be seen in the recent building of Jack Canfield’s personal social network at GREAT COST to Canfield Companies by advisors focused more on money than practical and, quite honestly, more effective FREE delivery.

More money needs to go toward effective Chief Customer Officers, brand ambassadors and social intelligence officers than fancy “custom” tech that ALREADY has a FREE and proven counterpart.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Excited to be included in JWT’s Social Media Checklist 2010 at JWT Intelligence.

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By Brian Solis

If you were to look at Social Media the United States and many other parts of the world, you would believe that the world of Social Media was flat, dominated by social continents including Facebook, Twitter, blogs, YouTube, and Flickr. As we zoom in, we visualize other established and emerging social services that depict provinces and outlying settlements of our social atlas.

Upon publishing the original Conversation Prism, which was the culmination of a year’s work documenting and organizing the social web by usage and conversational patterns, the world responded by creating Conversation Prisms specific to each country. I shared several new social maps in “The Landscape for International Social Networking.”

(read more here)

Popularity: 4% [?]