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Minnesota Microblogging

October 20, 2008 By Steve Borsch

Every day there seems to be an uptick in the number of people who are online and interested in connecting with friends, family, colleagues or others where even a digital relationship might end up as meaningful.

The continued growth of social networks is the strongest indicator of that trend, but the explosion of microblogging is another that bears watching, is worthy of your participation sooner-rather-than-later, as it’s already beginning to shift how early adopters in Minnesota are connecting with one another.

If you’re reading this blog post — whether directly on Minnov8, through an aggregated feed like the one at CentralStandardTech, or a publication we support with our content, MinnPost — you’re already familiar with blogging.

Though blogging is still one of the best ways to connect with people, inexpensively self-publish, create search engine friendly frequently updated content, or be a ‘container’ in which one can place value and position oneself as a a thought leader, good blogging requires significant time and effort in order to build and maintain an audience.

Microblogging, on the other hand, is a method to quickly publish small snippets of commentary or value — usually 140 characters or less that is somewhat like a persistent instant message, public in nature — and is therefore much easier to update when the mood strikes. Add to that the ability to make a brief comment and include a web link URL if so desired (so people can go out and read or view what you’re pointing them to on the Web) allows anyone publishing in this way to have their “followers” or audience quickly read that snippet, comment on it, forward it on, or let it stream by as other content appears from other followed microbloggers.

Minnesotans have embraced microblogging and its promise is that it will help to shift the way we all connect with one another, are alerted to items of interest, and even to collectively be engaged in running commentary like what has been exhibited during the various presidential or vice presidential debates where people were making real-time comments sent over Twitter….  [Read More…]

Filed Under: Internet & Society, Tweets

MIMA Summit Packs The Depot

October 3, 2008 By Graeme Thickins

As practically every man, woman, and child in the Twin Cities must know by now, the Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association (MIMA) held its annual conference Wednesday, themed “Feed“. These folks are marketers — they know how to hype, as they’ve been telling us for what seems weeks now that the event was sold out.  Prior to that, they promoted that it would sell out and the positioning was…so click and pay, friends, or you will never be able to live with yourself.

As you can see from Phil Wilson’s Unsummit post, there were those who ignored the hype and chose to do their own (free) concurrent event at a nearby pub, thank you very much. (Okay, many of them were too cheap to pay the big MIMA fee.) And the MIMA folks actually cheered them on (even from the stage the day of the two events), since they felt bad they couldn’t have accommodated more people. But the venue — the very nice Depot downtown — could literally take no more. (MIMA has vowed to find a bigger site next year though that won’t be easy — maybe the Convention Center?) This year’s attendance, I believe, was something north of 700. MIMA’s membership is now about 950, but the Summit’s attendees also included some non-members and invited speakers, of course.

So, how did the event go?  This was my first year attending (they have not given press passes to us lowly bloggers in the past), so I went courtesy of my employer, to do some serious working of the crowd.  My assessment: the hype didn’t quite meet the reality as far as the overall content, as quality conferences go. But this is an association, after all, not a professional conference producer. And don’t we all kinda forgive a certain percentage of marketing build-up most of the time?  Nonetheless, the logistics were handled quite well, and my hat’s off to the MIMA officers and their band of volunteers who pulled this thing off. (I’m sure they’ve worked out a lot of bugs over the several years they’ve sponsored this event.)…  [Read More…]

Filed Under: Events, Social Media, Tweets Tagged With: MIMA

Minnov8 Gang Podcast – Episode 3

August 23, 2008 By Steve Borsch

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins, Garrick Van Buren, Phil Wilson

After vacations and business travel this summer, we carve out time on a Saturday morning for another Minnov8 Gang podcast with Episode 3.

In it we talk about several Minnesota startups and companies (including our own, with some admittedly self-serving comments!):

– PartnerUp Being Acquired by Deluxe Check

– Former HighJump CTO, Steve Kickert’s new company Riverock and his first product launch OnePlace

– Watching for new companies in stealth mode like BeWiki

– DoApp, Cullect, ComicTwit, Localtone Radio

– Social Media Breakfast, Twin Cities group

– Julio Ojeda-Zapata of the Pioneer Press (personal blog; TwinCities.com) is writing a book being released shortly, “twitter means business: how microblogging can help or hurt your business” (book jacket here)

– Minnesota Ultra-High_Speed Broadband Task Force (Minnov8 posts about this initiative here and here).

Thanks for listening!

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The Podcast
https://media.blubrry.com/minnov8/minnov8.com/site/wp-content/uploads/podcasts/20080823_M8_Gang_3.mp3

Podcast: Download (Duration: 58:23 — 34.0MB)

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Filed Under: Developer Hub, Emerging MN Companies, Minnov8 Gang Podcast, Startups & Developers, Tweets

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As of April 2017, Minnov8 posts and podcasts are now an archive as this site is no longer actively published. Thanks to all of you who have been reading and listening since our founding in 2008!

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