Social media has been making headlines--not just in the technology news, but in more mainstream topics like business and politics. As with most mainstream reporting about technology, the good stuff tends to be buried in confusion and hyperbole. Nonetheless, social media, from the now venerable Wikipedia to more recent developments like Twitter, are making real and significant changes to online publishing and communication. Those of us at the forefront of information technology have a professional responsibility to understand these developments. I promise to keep this presentation hype-free, but I also think you'll walk away with an appreciation of how these new (and not-so-new) technologies affects us as technologists and thought leaders. Author note: this presentation was originally delivered internally at Endeca.

1. What You Need To Know About Social Media Daniel Tunkelang Chief Scientist, Endeca

2. Overview

3. Wikipedia

4. Not just the world’s best information resource http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1291/634984110_9fb230962c_o.jpg

5. Wikipedia is a living entity Over 7.4M edits per month (May 2006) http://valuewiki.files.wordpress.com/2007/02/chart.png http://stats.wikimedia.org/

6. Vandals and spammers and bots, oh my! http://seemikedraw.files.wordpress.com/2007/08/wizard-of-oz.jpg

7. The neutral point of view (NPOV) Neutral point of view is a fundamental Wikimedia principle and a cornerstone of Wikipedia. All Wikipedia articles and other encyclopedic content must be written from a neutral point of view, representing fairly, and as far as possible without bias, all significant views that have been published by reliable sources. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view

9. Wikipedia and the link economy Top sites referring traffic to http://endeca.com/ :

13. Blogging http://www.innovationfactory.nl/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/blogging.JPG

17. Technology Blog / News Aggregators

18. Do you care to comment? http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/youtube.png

20. Social Networks http://www.v4technical.co.uk/images/v4_social_networks.jpg

21. Are social networks a fad? http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive/phd062307s.gif

22. Fiddle faddle, those are good numbers! http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/3/facebook_ready_to_pass_myspace_in_worldwide_traffic

23. But are they matters of consequence? http://www.angelfire.com/hi/littleprince/images/businessman.jpg

24. Should we keep it professional? LinkedIn’s simple philosophy: Relationships Matter Your professional relationships are key to your professional success.

26. But keep it professional! http://www.geekculture.com/joyoftech/joyimages/1041.gif

27. Twitter http://koltner.com/thumper026.jpg "Why, don't you know? They're twitterpated."

29. Who cares? http://twitterfacts.blogspot.com/2008/09/3-million-twitter-users.html 4M+ users and rapidly growing

30. Real companies are using Twitter http://images.businessweek.com/ss/08/09/0908_microblog/

31. A watershed moment for Twitter

32. Three personal stories

33. Syndicating my blog to a larger audience

34. Serendipitous customer support—and PR

35. Networking by “crashing” conversations

36. Caution: Twitter is a work in progress Scaling issues—both for servers and for user attention.