the Web Chef's e-Bytes

10 Facebook Facts from SeeWhy,Inc.

Large Company Digital C-Suites Rare

Two recent studies point to the lack of adoption of digital tools in the C-Suite.  One study conducted by Forbes Insights found a significant difference in Internet utilization based on the age of the respondents.  Not too surprising this study found that C-Suite participation in social media tools was lowest among those 50 and over.  Among the 50+ crowd only 4% were likely to blog weekly compared to the under 40 segment where 56% of executives did the same.  Using newer microblogging tools like Twitter was common with the under 40 group, where 56% read or generate posts daily, compared to the 50 plus segment of only 3%.

Meanwhile UberCEO looked at Fortune 100 CEO participation in social networks and found it to be very slim according to MarketingVox.  Of the total only 2 had Twitter accounts (with one being basically inactive), 13 had LinkedIn Profiles (only 3 with more than 10 connections) and 19 personal Facebook pages.  UberCEO found that no CEO in the Fortune 100 group had a blog that could be easily located by searching on their name.  Here's a slide presentation of their research along with some recommendations that Fortune 100 and other C-level executives should note as they develop their social media strategies with their corporate communications teams.

Fortune 100 CEOs and Social Media

View more documents from Sharon Barclay.

Recipe Management - Online or Offline? Print or Software?

As the Web Chef and a food afficionado, I'm always interested to read about where consumers are finding food tips and recipes and how they are using online and offline tools to manage, organize and share their recipes.  I've been a devotee of Epicurious.com for a number of years, but also enjoy the pleasure of clipping and trying recipes from the Food section of local and national papers. 

Lifehacker had an interesting poll and review of the benefits of using online recipe management vs. traditional offline print.  Of the 1580 votes, Lifehacker found that 36% of respondents weren't ready to move away from their print-based note cards, binders or notebooks.  They continued to like these "old fashioned" ways as part of their cooking process. 

My partner and I are part of this group.  Even though we designed our kitchen during our remodelling and expansion project to include a Cat5 Internet connection and a pull out shelf  for a laptop, we've found that the "traditional" mode still works best.  (Besides that the shelf is now full of our overflow of Penzey's Herbs and Spices) We use a set of binders where we can take recipes from print sources (taped to a three hole drilled sheet), from friends, from online sources (printed out) and combine them into a binder indexed by major ingredient. 

Lifehacker blogger Jason Fitzpatrick reviewed the online tools including the top four were rank ordered by survey respondents with these results - Other (18%), Evernote (17%), Other (18%), SousChef (14%), AllRecipes (9%) and Big Oven (5%).  

So what other tools are out there? 

I was curious so I did a search and came up with quite a few including 23 indexed and referenced in DMOZ..org and a few others that are either software or web-based:

• Food (online community and recipe storage)
• LivingCookbook (software for Windows)
• MacGourmet (software for the Mac)
• MasterCook (software)
• MyRecipeCircle (online community)
• OpenEats (online community)
• Recipezaar (online recipes)
• TasteBook(create your own cookbook)

You can also find a ranking and review of ten tools at TopTenReviews, where BigOvens ranked #1, followed by Living CookBook and MasterCook Deluxe. 

Photograph of soup is from stock.xchng.

Web Tidbits - comScore Year in Review, Facebook

comScore has released the 2008 Digital Year In Review Report.  The report can be downloaded from their site by filling out some limited information.

In social networking news, Facebook celebrated its 5th birthday with a bang as it now has passed mySpace as the number 1 SNS according to Compete.

LinkedIn Connections Widget

I'm investigating a possible feature for a client that I think is very interesting. It is a LinkedIn widget that can be attached to an article that will in turn tell you who is in your network at companies referenced in the article. You can find out more by viewing this video that shows the use of the widget at Business Week.

I tested the widget at an article on Business Week that was discussing the Circuit City closure and liquidation sale. When I went to the LinkedIn Connection widget it brought up 3 "friends" at Best Buy. I'm not sure why Best Buy was the connection that came up since the story was really about Circuit City and found that none of the three were my friends.

Here's a screenshot of the three names that came up when I clicked on the widget.

New Article in Wisconsin Technology Network - Conferences are brought to life with social computing tools

I've written another article for the Buzz Networks column that is published by Wisconsin Technology Network. The new article "Conferences are brought to life with social computing tools" describes the ways that web 2.0 tools can be incorporated into your meeting strategies to engage and connect with attendees.

Paul J Gibler

Web Tidbits - Web 2.0, Photo Sharing

I've been remiss in posting to this blog. 

Here are a couple of links to articles and resources that I thing you'll find interesting.

State of the Blogosphere - Technorati, Day 1 of their 5 part series on the status of blogs.  Today's report covers "Who are the Bloggers?", with the next 4 days expanding on the topic.  Among the findings are that North American bloggers are 57% male, 59% above 38 years old and 74% college graduates (yeah!  I fit in).

Beyond Blogs - Business Week writers and bloggers Heather Green and Stephen Baker refresh their popular 2005 cover story "Blogs Will Change Your Business" with "Beyond Blogs", a refreshing look at some of the many tools of social computing that are having an impact within the enterprise and among consumers.

Photo Sharing Sites - Looking for photo sharing sites beyond Flickr?  Check out this listing and evaluation on Photography Bay of 45 sites.

Wacky Widgets Continue Growth

Fortune reports on the extreme valuation that T.Rowe Price and Fidelity have projected in Slide, one of the top widget producers given their recent $50 million, 9.1% stake investment in the firm.  Their 50 million widget users, with many more projected to be on the way, are seen as providing a potential monetization opportunity well beyond the keyword ad results associated with search engine giant Google.  With "engagement marketing" becoming the new mantra on the web, it is felt that what better tool to generate engagement then one where the user elects to interact for play, content acquisition or other purposes.

The article also references RockYou, "Slides" largest competitor. 

In other widget news, The Wall Street Journal references Gigya a widget distributor that recently raised $9.5 million.  In a brief report compiled by Scott Austin of VentureWire, the Journal states "The publisher can track the number of times a widget is installed, where it is placed and how many times it is viewed, among other metrics."

For more on widgets see my article "Widgets - web components for plug, play and pay" in Wisconsin Technology Network. 

Paul Gibler

Web Tidbits - Social Networks

The BBC reports that AOL has acquired Bebo, the third most popular social network in the U.S. for $850 million.  The acquisition will give them a foothold in the emerging market for advertising and marketing through social networks. According to the article Bebo has "40 million viewers worldwide who view an average of 78 pages per day each."

AdRants reports on the beta launch of socialthing!, a Boulder, CO-based company that will aggregate social media sites into a single view.

iMediaConnection author Jere Doyle has an article titled "Find the right social network for your brand" that gives some tips on evaluating demographics and marketing opportunities through social networks.

Web Tidbits - Online Music and Video, Widgets

The Wall Street Journal reported today "Web Tools to find Your Inner DJ" on some of the developments in the online music space.  Among the trends and sites that they referenced were the following:

• Music Streaming Sites - Jango, Pandora (I've been using this one for awhile and love it. )
• Music Search Engines - seeqpod, songza, SkreemR
• Music Social Networking Sites - imeem, last.fm, iLike, MyStrands

Widgets
iMedia Connection has a video clip introducing widgets and the role that they can play as part of your marketing strategies.  You can see the video at: Widget Marketing 101. Also see their article "Do Widgets Spell Doom for Portals?"

For more on widgets see my article "Widgets: Web Components for Plug and Play" at Wisconsin Technology Network.

Online Video
CoolzOr has a posting on a new service called Hey!Spread that allows you to upload your promotional videos to 17 sites saving you the hassle of individual uploads.