And next Google product to walk the plank could be Google Alerts - thank god there is a terrific alternative (Mention) and even if Google Alerts lives and it was all just a rumor, I staying with mention.

Thanks so much for the shout out for the guest post!

Mitch - aren't FLIP cameras wonderful!! Thanks for writing about the Network Nonprofit - we appreciate it!

Roger: I'm glad you liked the reflection questions. Worked very hard on those!!

Thank you so much for your kind words and the review. Hope the book helps you with your work.

Thanks for the pointer to your post! So true. The conference was inspiring and great reminder about making time and space for mindfulness. It sounds like you're much better about that than me!

What have you discovered?

Thanks for sharing your insights here. I used to track things annecdotely as well, but when I actually committed to putting it in a spreadsheet and looking at and thinking at it - I got deeper insights about what worked and what didn't.

Thank you Becky! You've been a terrific friend and colleague over the years - all ten or twelve or 15 of them...I lost count!

that's good point .. now have to figure out how to point people over to it at the Itunes store .. :-)

Yes, the main value is to identify influencers. He had examples of it being used to evaluate against a social media strategy. You have to understand sna to get the most use of out it.

Terrific post! I came across your post by serendipity while I was thinking about the importance of sand boxes. I think the ideas are related. For this to happen, you need do need an organizational culture that values serendipity. The first point: (Include room in your time and budget for cultivating topics, people, and events that will not have a direct correlated return but fall into your general range of business) is hard for many nonprofits because they are under-resourced. Time has to be spent working in deliverables. But, I'm convinced that time invested in serependipity - as you describe - does pay you back. But, leaders in an organization need to be convinced of this. Making me think of the ROI of serendipity.

@afine If you click through to link to the experiment that Geoff and I did, you'll see the theory may not pan. In my case, the followers were added from the Twitter SUL - not through relationship building. I don't have the capacity to know the followers, network weave, - its beyond the dunbar number. That doesn't create social capital. Yesterday on Twitter, Kathy Sierra had a couple of really insightful points - she said that the number isn't necessarily meaningless. A very clarifying point - that the number is meaningless unless there is CONTEXT. Why is the number of followers increasing? or decreasing? What insights does that provide? Reminded me of a post I wrote awhile back about harvesting insights with metrics http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/2009/01/using-metrics-and-insight-harvesting-to-track-and-improve-your-blog-content.html

Great post! See you tonight!

Thanks so much for adding your thoughts to the discussion! I'll add this post the wiki.

Thanks for the shout out!

Jason: Thanks for sharing this information - do you have a case study or would you like to do an interview? Beth

Oh, please tell more about you're thinking - looking for examples of social program delivery .. have something you are planning?

Joanne: Thanks for your comment! There is actually a Twitter List API - so expect all sorts of fun stuff. I think sesmic or some other aps have started to incorporate it - stay tuned. B

Ping me when you share your slides - would love to see your presentation. B

If you are with an association and want to know about social media, connect with Maddie Grant. She's one of the most knowledgeable!