Dreamforce turned my head!!

 I don't often have the chance to get out of my academic bubble - so when I was invited to join the Radian6 team them at Dreamforce - I jumped on the opportunity!

I was given the chance - to speak in front of an audience from practice - not students - god forbid! - about how social media listening can transform how universities interact with prospective students, alumni, and fans.

I'll save the content  of the conversations  for another post - because I need to ruminate a bit on those - in this post, I want to focus on what I learned at #DF12...

1. Social CRM is transforming large, medium , and small organizations. Leaders who have used social to communicate with their stakeholders are realizing real competitive advantage from participating in authentic conversations about their products and services.

2. Industry needs workers who are trained to think deeply about strategies for deploying social in organizations.  A skilled "social"workforce will know more than how to use communicate -  it will understand the ecosystem of resources, skills, and analytics neccessary to elicit value from social media and strategies.  To fill the workforce gap, academics need to bridge marketing, communications, and computing disciplines to create the "social worker" of the future.

3. Academics and industry need to interact - to learn more about how to effectively leverage social across public, private, and non-profit organizations.  In many ways, industry is leading academe in developing tools and strategies for deploying social media strategy - however, academic research can contributre insight in many ways - from providing rich explanations for why images evoke more responses from tweets to explanations for why messages go viral across platforms.

I learned more through hanging out and meeting the folks who are shaping the "social ecosystem" in four days than I could have in a year of reading - it was truly an amazing experience!

Tigers for Tigers

Since 1997, Clemson students have worked to preserve the future of wild tigers. With just under 4000 tigers left in the wild, Tigers for Tigers works to create awareness universities and coordinate tiger preservation efforts across the world.  To do so, they are partnering up with the Global Tiger Initiative.

So how can social media help with that effort? In cooperation with our students, the global tiger initiative, and kids from my neighborhood, we constructed searches for conversations around tiger preservation on the social web.  We drilled into five issues:

1. Tiger facts
2. Locating Tigers
3. Tiger tourism and economic development
4. Preservation
5. Poaching

We are using these searches to surface images of wild tigers in popular society, to visualize the locations advocates for tigers, to identify potential trafficking in tiger parts, and to understand how citizens of 'tiger countries' talk about tiger preservation in their own voices.  

We are leveraging the command center to visualize the location of the conversations, identify influencers, evaluate sentiment, and think about the timing/share of voice of pro vs anti preservation conversations.

I'd just one example of how social media analytics can contribute to advancing not only the social enterprise ... But also the human enterprise of building a better global society!

You won't find us on Facebook ...

Where you won't find my students!

Fall is here, students crowd the sidwalks, and another semester begins ... Football is in the air ... Even though I am a year older, the students stay the same - smart, young, and a bit nervous about the real world.

In chatting with the my students, I learned that Facebook is for their parents, that they stalk each other on Instagram, that Pinterest is still sort of cool, and that they are acutely aware of privacy (but they still don't like Google+) ...


Twitter seems to be evolving as the medium of choice for private conversations ... Change is in the air ... and I suspect that it always will be for businesses that engage in social media....

Oh, and you never ever hear tell of  Flickr ... or Bebo ... or Myspace ... Ping ... or Pair ...

I'm looking forward to a semester of conversations about how the social enterprise can, and is changing, the world ... I suspect that by December, the students will have transformed my view of social and its implications for the world.

SMLC finds a winner in Eureka!

Eureka! Brings students to campus to work with faculty and graduate students for a month. It's unique in that the student hss not yet enrolled in classes - they are tabula rasa - a smart blank slate having their first Clemson experience!  We wanted to get a fresh set of eyes in the lab to glean a new view on the power of social media listening.

The SMLC landed the smartest student in the Eureka! Program to work on a summer project visualizing social conversations around the congressional elections.



Jim Burleson, Jim Bottum, Jason Thatcher,
Kaci Bennett, Dustin Atkins
The Summer Social Media Listening Team!

Kaci Bennett spent July hanging out around our lab thinking about how to effectively search and visualize around the election.  With some help from Jim Burleson and Dustin Atkins, she drilled into the congressional race in Florida's 22nd Congressional District, found that absent geocoding it is difficult to capture the full conversation about the race, and that while political scientists often say all politics are local, denizens of the social web view local politics through the lens of the national race.
Along the way, we like to think that Kaci learned alot about how social media is transforming society - through learning to use the Salesforce.com Marketing Cloud!

Kaci also used Piktochart to create a really cool infographic based on her listening to the election!

Our team wishes her the best as she moves forward in her Clemson experience!  We also wanted to thank her parents for letting Kaci share time with us - in her final summer before leaving for college! 

SMLC powers US Computing Olympiad team learning...

In June, Brian Dean, Associate Professor of Computer Science, brought some of the smartest high school students in the United States to the Social Media Listening Center for a visit.

Our Olympians suffered through this fat old professor pontificating on how social media presents opportunities for computer science - to not only make a few bucks BUT also to extend understanding of the human condition.

The Olympians weathered a rapid fire discussion of how tools like Radian6 enabled analysts to glean meaning from big social data, listened as I rambled on about issues tied to aggregating data across multiple APIs, and feigned interest when I explained what real-time analytics means for business.

Then, I did the demo - and the Olympians really did get excited.  For some reason - the kids really dig cows - maybe more than the US computing olympiad? - we built a search that included terms ranging from moo to bessie to where's the beef... cows ... cows ... and more cows ... I am still trying to figure that one out :) ...

The Olympians left happily chatting about social its connection to computer science.  I was left feeling optimistic about the future of computing in the United States.  Those kids are smart!

Later in the week, the Olympians used data pulled from that Radian6 API to visualize their own conversation cloud around computing - check it out!

Fox Carolina runs "Is Pinterest Just for Girls" Piece...

So, where we left off, we posed the question of is "Pinterest Just for Girls" to a class of Clemson undergraduate students.  The class composition was 90% male, mostly active in intramurals, testosterone filled, and mortified to be required to use Pinterest for three works for homework.  For our debrief, Dana Wachter of Fox Carolina turned up & filmed the class discussion - you can find the article here.

The class had a strong, laughter filled, negative response to assignment.   Unanimously, they reported the assignment made them uncomfortable.  Unanimously, they reported that they had learned something about their friends and technology by doing the assignment.

Some kids relayed that they'd inadvertently used their Facebook login to register for Pinterest ... which had resulted in them posting to their wall each time that they'd posted pictures ... which resulted in their "friends" commenting not on their post ... but more on why was a guy using Pinterest?

One student relayed that his friends harassed him for doing the assignment - so much so - that he changed course midway through - and posted "macho" content about cars etc.

Another student relayed that the second the assignment was graded ... he was taking it down ... because a lot of misconceptions were emerging about him, as a result of his activity on Pinterest.

Yet another student relayed that every student should have to suffer through what he'd suffered through ... because you learn alot about how not to use technology.

After 45 minutes of rancorous, laughter filled, misbehavior, we finished the debrief with three conclusions.  First, Clemson Athletics would not be able to use Pinterest to recruit male athletes - in fact - one student went so far as to assert that we'd lose prospects if Dabo Swinney created a Pinterest page (now there would be the real Pinterest challenge.  Second, Pinterest had real commercial potential as a portal for pushing folks towards information and products - if you knew your audience well.  Third, a student group was going to take the next step and use Pinterest as the enabling technology in their group project.  The irony?  Team Pinterest included some of the absolutely biggest haters of Pinterest :)

Stay tuned!  More on this later!

Clemson Students are Wicked Smart with Radian6

So, a group of my kids in creative inquiry just rocked my world.  They're beating the snot out of the market using Radian6 to predict Forex.  Here is the abstract from their project!

Kudos to the kids.  I need to turn over my retirement account to them!

Here is their abstract for the project:

Forex, the foreign currency exchange market, is very similar to Wall
Street’s stock market, except instead of measuring the health of
corporations, Forex gauges the welfare of countries and their
respective units of currency. Through the broker, Forex.com, an
American adult (i.e. an 18-year-old college freshman) can run some
day-trading experiments with real money on a 50:1 leverage. By
observing the graphs of the currency value fluctuations, one can
conjecture as to which currency in a pair will dominate in the near
future and attempt to profit on it. After some intense research and
crude experiments in 2011, a practice account was opened with TD
Ameritrade in order to dissect the trend between the Forex market and
Twitter posts. In particular, the fluctuations of the EUR/USD pair
were scrutinized, and models were fabricated in order to turn the
Twitter feed into a consistent profit.

Clemson "presents social" @ SC11

SC11 poster crafted by Barbara Weaver, CCIT Lead for the SMLC

While standing up the Center, the SMLC team participated in SC11.  SC11 is the International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis. 


A team of faculty, staff, and graduate students had the opportunity to meet with the "IT Crowd" and discuss how to better visualize, research, and teach about the Social Web.  We had a chance to meet folks from Dell's command center and learn more about how they're using to connect with their customers.

Next Fall, we're looking forward to participating in SC12 in Salt Lake City, Utah - and showcasing how the Social Web synchs up with HPC to generate value for Clemson University and Higher Education!

Students' Will to Lead: Emerging Technologies Group Project

Rather than a traditional firm and technology analysis, my students have opted to do an applied group project that examines how to leverage value from new, social technologies.

This agreement was brokered after a) students noting no online buzz around Clemson's "Will to Lead" capital campaign and b) a discussion about authenticity and an online web presence.  Rather than artificially creating a buzz (e.g., hiring a consulting company to orchestrate a campaign), my kids suggested that an emergent, authentic, student-led campaign might generate more attention and excitement amongst young alumni.  Through telling their stories on multiple platforms about how the Clemson experience builds leaders, my students hope to catch the attention of their peers & engage them with the capital campaign.

So, keep an eye on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Youtube, and Amen for a buzz around Clemson students and Leadership ... it'll be interested to see if the kids can create a larger voice around our capital campaign than the experts :)

We plan on using Radian6 to compare the student-driven campaign with the advancement-driven campaign ...

Here is the project:

By now, everyone should have found a team for the group project. I need all y'all to have a team representaitve send me the following by 6 PM on Wednesday:

1. Team roster
2. Platform that you'll be using (facebook, pinterest, etc.)
3. Theme of your piece of the campaign. This can be a couple of sentences. If I require clarification, I'll ask for it.

I'll provide initial feedback on the themes & platforms over Spring Break.

We will come back together the first week of April to discuss progress, challenges and goals.

The final week of the semester, each group will submit inoformation on how to access their project e.g., location on the platform ... such as twitter handle, url etc., you will also present your campaign to the class, discuss its objectives, and explain why itdid/did not realize them. You will provide in the presentation a final assessment of whether the project yielded a deeper understanding of the business value (in terms of Students' Will to Lead) of using Social Media.

Grades will be based on a) peer evaluation (20% - did you do your part?) b) faculty evaluation by moi (40% - did your demonstrate effort, thought, and an understanding of the platform? Did your group innovate? Did your group have fun? and c) class evaluation of your project evaluation (40% they will use similar heuristics as noted in point b).

If you have questions, please ping me ... I'm happy to answer them.

This project is designed to be fun, get you thinking about how to extract business value from these different social media platforms, and to help us all learn a little bit more about Studnets' Will to Lead Clemson.

SMLC featured in workshop @ UGA

I recently visited the Terry College of Business @ University of Georgia and gave a talk about the SMLC to their Department of Management Information Systems.  I really enjoy the lively intellectual community @ UGA  - the Information Systems Faculty actually like each other, they like to talk about ideas, and they care about their students.

Over the course of a two hour presentations about the founding of the SMLC & what we do ... questions surfaced about the ethics of "Listening" surfaced - Are we spying?  How do you listen responsibly?  Who else is listening? How do you teach kids to listen? How do we build this into our curriculum?

While we didn't answer all of these questions (many were posed by me as part of the presentation :), my position is that if academics ignore listening, we're like ostriches with our heads stuck in the sand.  The Social Web has emerged as a rich source of data, ideas, and opportunity.  Academics need to a) know what folks in industry are doing, b) study the implications of listening (be it by Smuckers around Grape Jelly to the DARPA around terrorist activity, and c) engage in a discourse with practice about how online communities form, evolve, and dissolve on the Social Web... The lingering question is will academics rise to the challenge?

My day @ Georgia ranks right up there as highlight of my year!  Thanks to Elena Karahanna, Nick Berente & Dale Goodhue for being great hosts!

SMLC featured in the Echo!

The Echo featured the SMLC in its February 29th edition.  The Echo reaches tens of thousands Clemson Alumni around the world!


Our thanks to the folks @ the Echo for getting the word out about the good work that we're doing in partnership with Dell and powered by Radian6!

Jim Bottum & SMLC Featured in InformationWeek

Early, early on a Tuesday morning, I participated in a conference call with Jim Bottum, our CIO, and David F. Carr, of InformationWeek. Carr requested the call to discuss the opportunities created by the SMLC @ Clemson.  His article nicely summarized Bottum's vision, the activities of our Creative Inquiry students, and touched on a few of my research interests.  He gave a great shout to to the folks @ Dell and Radian6 for their work with the SMLC!  Thanks to the folks @ InformationWeek for sharing what we're doing with the world! Read the Article!

SMLC in Hong Kong

The folks at Hong Kong Polytechnic generously sponsored me to visit & work for a week as a visiting scholar.  I'm going to spend the week learning about their research, exchanging ideas, and specc'ing out next steps for how to collaborate on Social Media research.

While there, I'll be presenting our work @ the SMLC in partnership with Dell and powered by Radian6!  I'm looking forward to seeing how my peers in Information Systems, Marketing, and Management view opportunities afforded by examining the implications of listening for organizations in the United States and the greater world.

Thanks to JJ Hsieh and the folks @ HK Poly for letting me share Clemson, Dell, and Radian6's work on powering the social enterprise with a new audience!

Dana Wachter Interviews Emerging Technologies Students

Dana Wachter, of Fox Carolina, visited my emerging technologies class to discuss how students viewed lurking ethical issues tied to copyright and revenue generated by Pinterest! 

Students shared their views on who Pinterest appealed to, joined in a rich discussion about whether Clemson Football should sponsor a Pinterest page, and relayed their tales of joy & woe about the "Is Pinterest just for girls?" assignment.  

All of the students enjoyed having Dana join our for the day!  She really enrichened that last day before Spring Break!

Thanks Dana for connecting Clemson students with the world!

Relevant Links

Pinterest Revenue Model

Pinterest and Copyright
Pinterest and Flickr

Thinking Creatively with Radian6: Individual Projects

@ Clemson, the Creative Inquiry (CI) the program teaches students critical thinking skills.  Each course is customized around different research questions, themes, skillsets, & whatnot.  


My CI is powered by the higher ed program @ Radian6.  The folks @ Radian6 provided access to their insights dashboard, training to individuals & groups on how to effectively conduct searches (Thanks Genevieve Coates!), and a tremendous opportunity for our students to learn about how to analyze & leverage the power of social media. 


So what do kids learn?  How to search a vast dataset pulled from the "Social Web" & extract interesting insight or stories. That there is a potential for their assignments to be seen by the public, raises the stakes of the game ... Thus far, the response has been tremendous!


Here is this semester's individual project assignment: 


Sent on March 3 @ 8:13 AM: 


I have received most of your individual project topics (hint hint). If I haven't, please share it with me (hint hint). Here is the deliverable for the project:

You will write a blog post around your topic for Radian6 that incorporates analysis from the Radian6 Insights dashboard (insights.Radian6.com). Here is the Radian6 blog: http://www.radian6.com/blog/ 

Here are exemplars of blogs from Radian6: 

http://www.radian6.com/blog/2012/02/wanna-trade-nhl-tradecentre-blows-up-social-media/
http://www.radian6.com/blog/2012/03/the-sweet-story-of-crowdsourcing-social-media-baby-names/
http://www.radian6.com/blog/2012/02/putting-a-ring-on-social-media-engagement-a-meme-proposal/

Here is your challenge & potential reward 

The Challenge: the post must be INTERESTING & EXPLAIN what you learned about how to SEARCH & ANALYZE the social web ... it must be written in a way that someone who isn't in school would go - hey - that's pretty cool ... 


So, if you're looking @ Jeremy Lin ... one of the great parts of his story is the support from his family ... so you might want to narrow your search to jeremy lin & family, create a conversation cloud, and compare in a chart what people say about jeremy lin & family to jeremy lin & harvard ... I'm just brainstorming here :)

The Opportunity: once completed, all of the blog posts will be forwarded to Radian6's higher ed program. If they like it, your post (with some tweaks - they are the marketing experts after all) may be published on their website. 

So, here is an opportunity to demonstrate your chops @ social media listening, powered by Radian6, &, if its particularly good, shared with the entire world! 

The assignment is due on April 1. The J-team (Jason, Jim & Julie) will review them & provide feedback by April 10. We'll work on finalizing the projects & getting them to Radian 6 by May 1.

E-mail if you have questions: jason.b.thatcher@hotmail.com

P.S. if you are interested in a longer term project, like the NFL draft ... let's talk b/c it runs past the end of the semester :)

Forbes Website Picks up Story on Clemson's SMLC

Forbes Magazine, a pillar in the literary community, featured the press release about the SMLC on its Website this week. For my students, and me, this has been a story about a quirky little class that has received A LOT of attention.

What's really cool?  Absent the help from Dell, the CyberInstitute, or Radian6, we'd still have been ** talking about ** as opposed to actually ** LISTENING to ** conversations on the Social Web.

Complaints that academe has sold out to industry feel more than a little specious at times like these ... Absent industry support, it would be much harder to teach students the critical thinking and applied skills necessary to survive in our changing economy ... with government stepping off the bus ... and underfunding higher ed ... it's as natural as a duck swimming in water ... to turn to industry for resources necessary to teach those skills ... and realize Thomas Green Clemson's vision of equipping our students to become leaders for South Carolina's next 100 years.

Eureka! SMLC submits proposal to ENGAGE with Clemson Honors Students!

The Social Media Listening Center is recruiting entering freshmen from the Calhoun Honors College to participate in the Eureka! program.  We want to build a team to study the 2012 congressional elections.  We're particularly in learning about differences in the social media discourse between newly constructed districts (with no incumbents), recently constituted districts (with incumbents), and existing districts (with our without incumbents).

Our team is going to listen, analyze, and evaluate whether different patterns of discourse are manifest across districts - in simple terms, does having an incumbent or existing party machine change the nature of social media's impact on the election?

This AWESOME project holds the potential to connect offline action with online conversations ... If we can grab enough helping hands, we'll follow these districts through the election in November!

Part Two: Pinterest: Is it Really Just for Girls?

After watching a week of online and offline debates about Pinterest ... I issued the Pinterest challenge.  My emerging technologies students have been asked to create pinboards about Clemson Athletics to see who would "pin" or "comment" on their pics.

Students were given one day to:

1. Sign up for Pinterest,
2. Create a bio,
3. Create a Pinboard about any aspect of Clemson Athletics - from coaches to NCAA sports to players to tailgating.
4. Post at least five pieces of content to that Pinboard (with appropriate attributions) ... they thought would attract followers ...
5. Submit their pinboard to the instructor.

I then assembled a list of pinboards for the class to follow.

One week later, students will:

1. Report how many "pins" and "followers" they had acquired (and their gender) ... 
2. Select their top five and bottom five pinboards from the class.
3. Assess whether Pinterest was really just for girls?  (e.g., could Pinterest could be used to market, collect data from, or generate value among more than women).
4. Evaluate Pinterest's claim that they weren't sure about how they make money ... but they'd get to it ... 

To sweeten the pot, I threw in two boxes of Girl Scouts cookies AND a hall pass to play golf on a sunny spring day.

Come back in a week, and find out, what happens ... when a bunch of college students are offered a sunny spring day and a couple of boxes of thin mints ...

As part of my Pinterest Challenge ...

Greenville News Features the SMLC

Anna Simon of the The Greenville News featured the SMLC on Sunday, February 25th.  Her article emphasized that the CyberInstitute created the SMLC to be an interdisciplinary workspace for students and faculty to search and visualize over 200 million real-time social media powered conversations.

If the many visitors to the lab are predictors of future use, the vision of students using the lab to study and research the Social Web will be realized.  We've had folks from the College of Engineering and Science, the College of Architecture, Art, and the Humanities, the College of Business and Behavioral Science, Advancement, Campus Security, the Board of Trustees, and many other parts of campus attend demonstrations of the Center's capabilities.  To a person, they are blown away by the reach of Radian6's social dataset.  We amplify this reach with our ability to simultaneously project up to seven different real time visualizations of social conversations on six 42 inch monitors and two HD quality projectors.

Why is this important?  Because understanding how to leverage the Social Web requires developing a curriculum and research agenda that helps folks not only to talk, but also to visualize, listen,  and engage in meaningful "social" conversations.  When we build a better understanding of how data moves across platforms (e.g., twitter, facebook, linkedin etc.) and are able to convert that into meaningful information, then we will achieve a deeper understanding of how to the online meets the offline and shapes the economic future of South Carolina. 

Clemson students "get creative" with Radian6!

Recognizing the power of social media, our students have quickly embraced the importance of learning to use cutting edge software in order to better understand the world around them.  Student-driven team projects are examining:

• links between the social web and the stock market,
• myths and reality of Clemson athletics,
• patterns in "social conversations" around Fortune 100 companies, 
• and how to support law enforcement in South Carolina.  

Our student projects are powered by enterprise level access to Radian6, which lets them learn how to search, analyze, and interpret the Social Web.

Our student projects are part of Clemson's broader Creative Inquiry initiative, that helps them build research skills that they apply in the real world AND contribute to the FUTURE of South Carolina!

Stay tuned for more on individual projects in the coming weeks ...

The SMLC is a "SOCIAL EFFORT" by the Clemson Family for the people of South Carolina!!

While built in partnership with Dell and powered by Radian6, the Social Media Listening Center (SMLC) received University-wide support from students, faculty and staff.

From the moment that Jim Bottum introduced the idea to the opening of the SMLC, the Clemson Family rallied around the concept and contributed ideas, time, and resources.

• The CyberInstitute provided financial and staff support for all phases of the project.  
• The Department of Management in the College of Business and Behavioral Science offered the space necessary to host the Center. It sponsored three Creative Inquiry teams during the 2011-2012 academic year that examine how to better search and understand the implications of the social enterprise and social web for organizations. 
• The Department of Communication Studies in the College of Architecture, Art, and the Humanities helped create a vision for the Center.  It's faculty have integrated the Center into courses that examine how to better analyze the social web as well as leverage it for public relations.

The folks involved in the project goes far beyond Institutes and Centers.  Faculty, project managers, A/V specialists, facilities, creative services, purchasing, admin assistants, and many more members of the Clemson Family contributed to building the SMLC.  We all recognize that Social Media and the Social Enterprise are here to stay.  We are committed to helping Clemson students' learn to listen & secure their place as leaders of the economic future of South Carolina!

Salesforce.com Foundation & the Social Enterprise

Rodney Patterson of the salesforce.com foundation attended the opening of the SMLC.  We're looking forward to partnering with Rodney to learn about how we can partner with salesforce.com to teach our students about the social enterprise!  We're looking forward to building classes that integrate tools like Radian6 & Chatter into a broader social media curriculum!

SMLC opening video: #ClemsonListens

Eddie Bennett and Dave Dryden of Creative Services @ Clemson produced this short video for the SMLC opening.  The video celebrates Clemson's partnership with Dell and Radian6.  

Eddie did a great job composing the video, snagging screenshots, and responding to questions/queries.  Another example of how student's creativity powers #ClemsonListens!

Part One: Pinterest: Is it really just for "girls"?

One Monday, as part of a class exercise on Web 2.0, my students offered up Pinterest as an example of business that creates value through users providing content.

Not being familiar with Pinterest (and I guess that I was the only one in the room that wasn't), I was surprised by the split in the responses of men and women.  

Women were really enthusiastic - saying it was interesting, worth looking at, a great way for sharing ideas, to identify new things.  

The men?  Crickets chirp!  

I've never seen a split, on gender lines, that was quit so stark around a website.  Not even when I was suckered into pulling up Chatroulette during class ... Here's where it gets interesting?  

I asked - who has a Pinterest account? 

Nearly every hand in the room went up.  Some slower.  Some faster. Some macho guys almost blushing.  Others pausing to make sure the guy next to them raises his hand.  

One of the back row cloud blurted out - "We have accounts so that we know what they [the women] are looking at!"  Among the men, this unleashed a flood of murmurs, nods, and affirmations ... with some of the more liberal men saying that wasn't the whole truth of it ... 

I made a note to self, looked it up on Wikipedia, requested a Pinterest invitation ... and found an engaging, yet puzzling, experience ... It reminded me an awful lot of my one of sisters' bulletin board ... and of another sister's scrapbooking ... 

So, as I mused about how to incorporate this new piece of the Social Web into my class... Pinterest is picked up by Mashable ... suddenly, the web is buzzing with questions ... folks are asking what is the business value of Pinterest?  The technorati from the offline to the online discussed Pinterest, either stereotyping it as for women or bristling that it is stereotyped as "for women'?

Hm.  In the coming week, I found myself describing & talking about Pinterest with my merry band of MBA students (many of whom are only marginally younger than me :-) ), discussing it with visitors to the SMLC, at lunch over a quesadilla, and being asked - why, why - should firms care if only appeals to women?

Add caption

So, we go full circle.  

I return to class on Monday and I suggest that Athletics (which yielded zero hits) needed to leverage the power of Pinterest to promote sports @ Clemson.  The crickets stop chirping, the back row cloud thunders - why?  what value is there in Pinterest?  Would it turn off football recruits? If coaches, players, and fans posted to Pinterest?  We never did reach a satisfactory resolution.  

So, this week, my students get a new emerging technologies assignment about the Social Web - they're going to post on Pinterest and see who can generate the most * MALE * traffic @ Clemson athletics ... 

Stay tuned for an update!