Ron Samuelson, CEO of Samuelson’s Diamonds in Baltimore, uses Twitter – a communication service emblazoned with a  bird logo – to spur business and attributes much of his success of the year-old account to the service.

Samuelson also has used Facebook and personal blogging to reach customers who would otherwise see him as just a guy sitting behind a counter, pandering diamonds.

…

Samuelson’s shop of 10 employees was starting in 1922, far from the days of tweets and Facebook fan pages.

“The crowd I do business with now are very tech-savvy, so we have a full service Web site too, where we drive all our traffic,” Samuelson said.

Samuelson’s Diamonds maintains its commitment to cutting edge communications technology for business contacts and customers.

An image of the article is available here: Tweet your way to free marketing, advertising.

First, for those who are a bit ‘Web 2.0 Illiterate’ we have: A Social Media Glossary! (I even learned something. What’s a Quantcast? Will I ever need to know? These and other questions answered…)

Secondly, an insightful opinion piece: Six reasons why Facebook is losing its way ; (Let the Betting begin! What is Xobini? This has some info.)

I have a take on this myself. Facebook is very reliable about some information, like, who your friends are, where you live, whether you’re male or female, your name, and even your social connections. But it isn’t very reliable about your preferences and your hobbies (and most of all, your needs!)

This means in layman terms that if you as a marketer or advertiser want to reach people, you will still be shooting blind. Is it better than putting ads on specific blogs, sites or networks? We’ve tested it out, and we have to say, inconclusive. The dividing between guys and gals, the fairly decent area network accuracy, the age information – very good! But better? Currently the ‘ad software’ on facebook itself is nowhere near what Google has, and competition is still lower (so we can’t say what your bang for your buck might be in the long run.) Jury’s out.

Also, for fun: Twitter Fail Whale Tattoo is Awesome, Kinda (And THIS. Plus a tons of nerdy tattoos. What is the ‘fail whale‘? You will have to use Twitter to find out.)

Have a good weekend, folks. We’ve got ‘secret projects’ to work on over here!

Wikipedia says,

Social media are primarily Internet- and mobile-based tools for sharing and discussing information among human beings. The term most often refers to activities that integrate technology, telecommunications and social interaction, and the construction of words, pictures, videos and audio.

That’s pretty much it. Social media services let us share information using the internet. Unlike a blog (like this) or email, they are a common place – a website usually – where discussion takes place. Sort of like those Roman forums. (Unsurprisingly, one of the earliest social media services, which is still around, is called a forum.)

Now, most services focus around being able to communicate quickly, and to be able to get a ‘community’ view of everyone you’re connected to. That is, you will be able to see a summary of what your friends have been saying or doing. All services nowadays have privacy settings that allow things you do to be restricted or even private. Many services also double as publishing tools, allowing your updates or posts to be viewable and searchable across the web.

I’ve used a number of these in my day, and they vary greatly in popularity and in features. Some that are around now include Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, Bebo, Plaxo, LinkedIn, Identi.ca, Plurk, Hi5!, Mashable, Orkut, Friendster and quite many more. (For a list of popular social networks, this is a good place to look.) Some sites that weren’t social networks became so over time (Flickr, YouTube) and there are even aggregation services (FriendFeed, Ping.fm) that allow you to send or see posts or updates from different social networks in one place.

As for actual daily usage, there aren’t great statistics yet, but there are in almost all cases dedicated users of all of these networks. How do you figure out what network to get on? Usually you get invited by a friend. Because, that’s why you’re on there – to communicate. Services like facebook and orkut offer ‘groups’ which represent common interests among their users, and even more you can create ‘events’ and send invitations through the service. Usually you get updates of your choosing through email, because perhaps you don’t log in all the time.

The thing that is most interesting to us, and even as customers of others, is the ability to express interests. Sometimes you come to a web site and you see a banner ad – maybe it’s for computer servers. But whatever it is, it is rarely something you’re looking for or even interested in. Most of what annoys us about ads – junk mail is all about this – is that it is all about stuff we don’t want or couldn’t care less about. However, with the ability to express interest in things either by writing out a series of interests or by making one’s self a ‘fan’ of different products or businesses or people – it allows advertisers themselves to stop wasting time on people who don’t want their product anyway. And believe me, never seeing another ad for male enhancement (at least until I’m 60) sounds good indeed.

Mostly what’s in it for all of us is connectedness. Plus, for us men out there, something that automatically reminds you when somebody’s birthday is coming up saves us a lot of trouble. (Now if it could only remind us of anniverseries.) I don’t know that they are the center of our political and social life (yet) but they certainly have shown themselves to be anything but a fad.

The only question that remains at the end of the day is, which ones will stand the test of time? Recent news suggests that the social media trend is lasting, but some services are going to either be changing or disappearing for good.

What’s my favorite service? Easy, compadre: it’s Twitter, hands-down. Ron’s a big fan, too.

Have a great holiday, folks.

It’s interesting to come into industries which are typically very distant from the hi-tech world, and help them make use of the newest technology. My end of this deal has typically been the internet, web design and development, and with Samuelson’s my role has been mostly that.

I have to say I’ve been lucky, as when I arrived a half a year ago, we were already well into the action. The guys were already on Facebook and had created groups for their interests, and were involved in other services like LinkedIn.

Wordpress, when you need to publish something, anything...

By the by, this blog runs on a delightful piece of software called WordPress. I would suspect (though my research powers fail me) that a good 25% of blogs are running on it. It’s pretty simple for those of you who don’t know. You go to WordPress. You register. You make a new blog. Then, you log in and write what’s going on with you, and press ‘publish’. Basically no technical skills involved.

Anyway, I’ll be posting on topics relating to my expertise. Don’t worry – I’ll keep it interesting.