Web 2.0 is all about going out to your market and talking directly with your customers and prospects. It’s about building connections, collaborating, sharing information – being more transparent than you have been in the past – and getting prospects and customers more involved in your business and with each other than they have been before. – From Marketing Ideas You Can Copy

Ultimately speaking its not about the tools, as much as how you desire to contribute to your community locally, nearby, and around the globe. Here’s a guide from the Fedex Global Citizenship Blog

Giving Back To Your Community

Try to focus on one or two issues, and develop a plan for evaluating charitable requests and focus in those main areas. Your Chamber of Commerce or local United Way may have done a community assessment study about the most pressing needs in your area. Give your employees a say and remember it’s all right to start small. Remember that philanthropy doesn’t need to be something you “do” after the business day ends, it can also be integrated into the way your business operates.

And across the aisle much can be learned from non-profit organizations as well. While a business is in business to make money, there ultimately can and should be a greater good that the owners of the business aspire too. If this is the case then perhaps there is a place to,

Think like a Nonprofit

What have you learned from this elaborate dance?

May I suggest that many of us simply want to be valued by as many people as possible, and furthermore know why…?

Historically speaking time, distance, and ease of transportation have limited the number and type of people we relate too. Those boundaries are dropping fast. Crossing cultures, timezones, and distances are as easy as walking up to your computer. With tangible limitations gone, we find ourselves bumping up against the intangible ones. Religion becomes a common grouping point, interests also, there are also perceptions and feelings about everything from the minutia of daily existence to political parties and the presence of aliens. Some have suggested that social media is ultimately a narcissistic enterprise, “what is in it for me” but I would suggest that bigger question is how do I fit in with the greater whole. Who do I respect, why do I respect them, and what must I do to fit into the crowd. There is definitely an element of personal responsibility but it comes within an element of responsibility to the ever evolving community.

How to engage in the midst of this chaos?
– Provide a call to action and a narrative played out continuously which conveys the value of being apart of that narrative.

– Listen to the community, as you are ultimately their servant. Do you genuinely care? Yes you maybe a businessman or a leader, and yes you have to make decisions based on the best interests of your organization but carefully consider what guides you in those decisions. That decision framework is more obvious than you know. If you have an agenda it will show.

– Provide a vision for a better future and provide results. Make sure you continually revise your strategic planning to ensure those results keep happening.

– Communicate the three points above!

The community is ultimately platform agnostic. It is enabled and empowered by certain online platforms, but ultimately will continue to surge forward relentlessly regardless. Facebook, twitter, and rest can rise and fall on a dime – what will you do maintain contact with those important to you?

Photo Courtesy of niallkennedy

Maybe and maybe not. The reality is that while email is ubiquitous and considered to be passe on so many levels it still serves as the underlying notification platform for other services such as twitter, facebook, friendfeed and such. In many ways the online worlds equivalent of our modern day highway system; road construction is not popular but you sure appreciate getting where you want to go with a minimum of hassle after its done.

This is where Mozilla Raindrop comes in. Mozilla known for it for its Firefox browser and Thunderbird email client is attempting to imagine what would happen if the messages coming in from all these services were categorized according to what you considered important and if possible accessed directly through existing APIs. In essence using alternate routes of travel already built, and giving you a complete dashboard for your online communications. Check out the video below for the initial thoughts and ideas that Mozilla has put forth.

Update: Ars Technica just posted a comprehensive review of Mozilla Raindrop here.

Introducing 10/GUI

Its ironic that we actually see a semi-return and or an addition to the keyboard, this time with the possibility of using all 10 fingers instead of 2 as in touch typing. Will it catch on? Only time will tell but the opportunity to maintain a relaxed posture and use the existing features of the human hand offer an appealing possibility.

On slightly different note, with the introduction of Google Wave there has been some interesting discussion about its usefulness regarding management of “noise.” I.e do I really need to know what everyone else is thinking precisely at the moment they are thinking it.

While the philosophical questions remain, lifehacker published a list of possible best use cases for Google Wave. It should be interesting to see how many of them actually pan out.

Education: Increasing Interactivity and Collaborative Learning
Healthcare: Getting the H1N1 Vaccine Out Faster
Transportation: Controlling Air Traffic
Journalism: More Complete and Collaborative News Reporting
Saving Babies: Protecting and Helping Children
Creative Pursuits: Collaborative Storytelling
Family Life: Updating Loved Ones on Health Issues
Research: Getting Results Faster from Around the World
Foreign (and Mother-in-Law) Relations: Translating Real-Time
Fun: Organizing Little League
Disaster Relief: Saving People Stuck on Rooftops
Events: Planning a Wedding
Family Life: Organizing a Busy Schedule

Thoughts, ideas, inspiration?

What do you think?