Raising Money From Venture Capitalists

Our last ‘Introduction to Online Communities’ class was held on Monday, April 26, 2010 at Clearstone Venture Partners in Santa Monica. Former USC grad and Managing Partner William Quigley talked to us about venture capital and the best way to get it for a startup. As with our other guest speakers throughout the semester, William shared great insight on what I call the business of money and the Internet.

Now You’ve Got To Ride The Wave, Not Make It

There is no question that new technology tools provoke creative innovation. A clear example of this process is what has happened in the music industry over the last decade. Our Intro class speaker on Monday, April 19, 2010 was Scott Dinsdale, EVP of Sony Music Digital Operations, and he gave us a great overview of what was happening the music and entertainment industries and where they are headed. Here are some of the key points of our discussion:

Four Search Engines You Should Know About

I found this really cool article on Social Media Explorer written by Monica O’Brien about four search engines that marketers should know about. If you haven’t heard of them, you have to go check them out:

Transmedia Storytelling

I mentioned USC Professor and Author Henry Jenkins in a previous blog post, Advice From The Experts, and his work in ‘spreadable’ media. He also penned another term that has been adopted by the entertainment industry called ‘transmedia storytelling.’ Fellow APOC student Susan Lin did a book report on Jenkins’ book “Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide” where he explained transmedia storytelling as  “a process where integral elements of a fiction get dispersed systematically across multiple delivery channels for the purpose of creating a unified and coordinated entertainment experience.”

Twitter’s Big Week

All the social media blogs were crammed full of articles about Twitter this week. On Tuesday, Twitter launched its new advertising strategy called Promoted Tweets. According to the Twitter website, users now see tweets that promote their partner advertisers at the top of some Twitter.com search results pages.  Twitter promises their users that these sponsored tweets will be clearly labeled as “promoted” when an advertiser is paying, and that only one Promoted Tweet will be displayed on each search results page. Users can also Reply and ReTweet the Promoted Tweets like regular ones.

We’re Mobilizing

“We are currently going through an infrastructural change in the mobile industry that will set up the next decade of innovation,” said Josh Levison, Practice Lead for Mobile and Gaming at IPG Emerging Media Lab. He was the speaker in our Intro class on Monday, April 12, 2010. I thought that mobile was going to be a big part of how we move forward in business, entertainment and information, but after hearing Josh’s fantastic presentation on Monday, I realize that I didn’t know the half of it!

Social Networking Zooms Past Email

Check this out! According to today’s Business Insider’s Chart of the Day on http://www.businessinsider.com, email’s reign as the ‘king of communication’ is ending and social networking has now taken its place: