SOMEWHAT FRANK

Video: Sarah Lacy Book Tour Hits DC

Yesterday I spent some time with Sarah Lacy, a Silicon Valley BusinessWeek reporter, Yahoo Tech Ticker host and author of the new book Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good: The Rebirth of Silicon Valley and the Rise of Web 2.0. She was visiting Washington, DC as part of her user generated book tour.

Sarah spent time on the AOL Dulles campus in the morning. I sat on a panel with her discussing Web 2.0 Startups to a crowd of AOL Commerce and Shopping employees moderated by Michael Tolosa of DC Tech TV. It was a lot fun as we talked about her book and exchanged various startup stories. In the evening we headed to DC for her user-generated book tour which visited the DC Twin Tech Party hosted by iStrategyLabs and SOMEWHAT FRANK and TECH cocktail were sponsors.

I captured a few photos and video clips which make-up episode 34 of SOMEWHAT FRANK TV. You can check out episode 34 of SOMEWHAT FRANK TV featuring Sarah Lacy (below).

Twitter Acquires Summize Real-Time Search

Yesterday Twitter casually announced on its blog the acquisition of Summize, a Virginia-based real-time search startup calling it "A Perfect Match." I could not agree with them more as they wasted little time and have launched a new search Twitter Search tool at search.twitter.com. If you are a heavy Twitter user then you have encountered problems using Twitter as they at times have had to turn off certain features leaving many to find other means, like Summize as shown in this recent tweet.

The deal is said to be worth $15M stock and cash and depending upon how long the team stays at Twitter they could benefit from Twitter eventually getting acquired too. Congrats to the Virginia/DC-based Summize team who are also DC TECH cocktailers as it does look to be an ideal exit and integration into Twitter.

DC Twin Tech Event With Sarah Lacy July 17th

The Washington Post recently called the DC/Northern Virginia area "Washington's Twin Tech Towns" and Peter Corbett and iStrategyLabs is hosting an event to bring them together for a night of fun at the Twin Tech Party.

Both SOMEWHAT FRANK and TECH cocktail are sponsors for the event which should see a good turnout from The Northern Virginia Technology Council andnewly combined DC Technology Council and Washington, DC Economic Partnership along with the The Greater Baltimore Technology Council.

Sarah Lacy the author of the book “Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good: The Rebirth of Silicon Valley and the Rise of Web 2.0” will also be on hand as she will be in DC as part of her User Generated Book Tour. Sarah Lacy has reported on startups and venture capital in Silicon Valley for nearly a decade. She writes Valley Girl, a biweekly column for BusinessWeek and co-hosts Tech Ticker on Yahoo! Finance. I will have the pleasure of sitting on a panel with her at AOL in the morning then accompanying her at the Twin Tech event as well. Should be a lot of fun.

Drinks will be free only so long as our sponsorship dollars hold up…and it looks like they’ll get used up at the bar pretty quickly, so please consider chipping in. The bar will revert to a cash bar as soon as the tab is maxed. Hope to see you there. Cheers!

Swurl Your Life Together Online

Swurl, a San Diego-based startup, offers a very smart aggregation of all your favorite services that makeup your social footprint online. Swurl is a place to bring all the things you do online together to share in a blog-like format.

Twitter Man Hooks Up With AIM Status

Setting  your status message on a social networking application has become fairly standard but keeping all of your status updates flowing through all your social networks can be somewhat tricky and time consuming. I previously wrote about twitterfeed which I use to send some of my updates from Flickr and SOMEWHAT FRANK directly to Twitter. I also wrote about Matt which helps to post single status updates to multiple twitter accounts. But I just found out about a new way to leverage AIM instant messenger to set my status on Twitter.

Live Video: Personality Not Included Q&A

Watch and interact live over the Web! Today at 7 p.m. EST, I am chatting with Washington, DC local marketing/PR guru Rohit Bhargava the author of the new book, Personality Not Included: Why Companies Lose Their Authenticity And How Great Brands Get it Back. I am excited to be able to chat with Rohit tonight as part of the Network Solutions powered event that SOMEWHAT FRANK teamed up to host.   

I met Rohit last year as he moderated a panel that I sat on with fellow social media experts, Gary Vaynerchuk and Geoff Livingston. You can watch that video here, as I recorded it from a video camera mounted to my head. Interestingly, my three colleagues have all since published books - now doesn't that make me feel like a slacker. :) 

Personality Not Included is different from your typical marketing book and we are going to discuss it at this event. The actual event is sold out but you can watch it below thanks to BlogTV.

Video: Politics, Social Media & Wine Converge

Last week Robert Scoble and Gary Vaynerchuk visited Washington, DC. Robert Scoble was escorted around the city by Andrew Feinberg and met with a few folks on the hill. While Gary Vaynerchuk visited for a book signing. They were welcomed on Wednesday evening with a party that converged DC politicians, social media folks and wine lovers. Peter Corbett from iStrategyLabs was on location talking with folks through the evening.

The event was sponsored by CapitolValley, Scobleizer, Wine Library TV, Somewhat Frank, SocialTimes, Odeo, Freshbooks, and iStrategyLabs.

Video: Inside Intel As An Intel Insider

I got a chance to visit Intel this week as I was selected to the "Intel Insider" advisory board as the leading microprocessor chip maker anchored in Silicon Valley looks  to make some changes in the way they reach out to their customers. What does this mean? It means that Intel has embraced social media and has pulled in a dozen bloggers, video bloggers and social media/community experts to pick there brains on Intel's brand strategy. It means I will have the scoop on products and new developments at Intel. As an Intel Insider I will be a part of the conversations related to leveraging social media at Intel and lend some brand association for my own personal brand to Intel.

Why would I become an Intel Insider? First, I think it is a great experience and should be a lot of fun. Second, I want to be in the know on the latest Intel advancements and technology so I can offer it up to SOMEWHAT FRANK readers. Additionally, Intel will be supplying me with a MacBook Air which they worked with Apple to ensure an Intel chip would fit inside the slim notebook.

Intel Insiders from left: Frank Gruber, Chris Heuer, Brian Solis, Sarah Austin, Christian Perry, Justine Ezarik, Ken E Kaplan, Adriana Gascoingne, JD Lasica

Video: Why I Love Blogging

I recently spoke at BlogPotomac about social media and my love for bright shiny objects. At the event I talked with SearchMarketingGurus.com's Li Evans about why I love blogging. Check out the video (below) and find out why.

Why do you love blogging?

SocialThing 2.0

SocialThing, a Boulder, Colorado TechStars startup that aggregates all your online social updates into one slick lifestream, launched into private beta this past March in Austin, Texas at the South By Southwest Interactive event. I got a chance to get a preview of the product the week before as SocialThing showed off its stuff at TECH cocktail Boulder. I was impressed and have been using it online and via the iPhone version ever since.

Just a few weeks ago, SocialThing rolled out version 2.0 of the product. The previous version was pretty but version 2.0 looks even better than before. It offers users more control of the presentation via the settings. For example users can now sort by friends or by time. Users can also allow others to link directly to a public profile with controls on what appears in the feed. SocialThing has reworked the way they retrieve updates from all your favorite services so that updates are not pulled back in a constant flow but are batched. This allows SocialThing to indicate when there are additional updates that you might want to refresh your page to receive. Additionally, they have rolled out a new iPhone application that allows for on-the-go posting of status and trolling of your lifestream. It is pretty slick.

Join Me On Jonny's Par-Tay

JOIN ME ON JONNY'S PAR-TAY!

I will be talking about startups, Web 2.0, social media, SOMEWHAT FRANK and TECH cocktail on the video show, Jonny’s Par-tay on Wednesday, June 18, 2008 at 9pm EST. The show is hosted live by DC TECH cocktailers Scott Stead and Jonny Goldstein so tune in. Here are the details:

What: A rollicking conversation with Jonny Goldstein, Scott Stead, and you! You get to interact with everyone else via live text chat.

When: Wednesday, June 18, 9-10PM EST

Where: jonnyspartay.com

Be a part of the live conversation as we talk about TECH cocktail, technology startups and more. It should be a lot of fun!

Social Media & Love For Bright Shiny Objects

I spoke yesterday as the post-lunch keynote at BlogPotomac at the State Theater in Falls Church, Virginia. It was a lot of fun and was streamed live on the Web so I actually had family members watching along in Chicago - gotta love technology.

I spoke about my social media life and how it has helped get me where I am today. I also spoke about my love for products or "bright, shiny objects" as I refer to them. I did a brain dump of all the products and services I used routinely. I listed services I use at least once a week. I like to share because sharing is caring - so I wanted to share the list of products with you (below).

Photo thanks to Josh Hallet from hyhu.

White-Label Social Networks Discussed @ GSP

I just moderated a panel discussion titled From Zero to Community in 60 Seconds: White-Label Social Networks at the O'Reilly GSP East Conference. The session took an inside look at the business behind white-label social networks and included the following speakers:

Alex Blum, CEO of Kickapps

Michael Jones, CEO of Userplane (part of AOL)

Kerry Parkins, VP of Products at Mixx.com

Sean Roach, CEO of GotAccess.com

It was a great discussion as we kicked off the discussion by explaining how each of their products or services might be able to help create a social network all about the best baseball team in all the land, the Chicago Cubs. Great job panelist, as we could have gone on another hour or so.

Plurk: Twitter With Vertical Timeline & Karma

Last week, I looked at Plurk, a new lifestreaming startup based in Toronto, Canada. Aside from its creative name, Plurk leverages concepts from Twitter to offer an unique timeline based lifestreaming product worth taking a look at.

Plurk takes on status messaging with a little more structure than Twitter by offering up a set of verbs to construct a status message. It also enables users to share videos and photos from a host of popular video and image hosting sites from YouTube to Flickr. Plurk status messages can also include emoticons for some added flair.

Graphing Social Patterns East 2008: I'm In

Social networking and media have been quite a hot topic for the last few years. I think humans are generally social in nature so the social networking phenomenon online plays into human nature as social networking tools have evolved online. For example, there have been a number of "white label" solutions like Ning, Userplane, Drupal and Kickapps just to name a few that offer out of the box social networking solutions.

I will be moderating a panel at the upcoming Graphing Social Patterns East conference next week discussing white label social networks with some of the leaders in the space in a session titled, From Zero to Community in 60 Seconds: White-Label Social Networks.

The panel includes:

Alex Blum - CEO of KickApps
Michael Jones - CEO of Userplane
Sean Roach - CEO of Got Access

If you have a question you would like me to ask the panel please submit it in the comments section below.