Hyper-Networking

Sree Sreenivasan a Columbia University journalism professor and WABC-TV's technology reporter came into to our office today and gave a phenomenal lecture on New Media. I have taken some of what he talked about and adapted it into some my own thoughts. Please feel free to comment!

Having a website is one thing. Having one that generates traffic on a constant basis, now that's the challenge. Consider the amount of websites we visit on a daily basis. Now consider how many more we don't visit.

WHY?

We all have our little nest of websites we hit up to get our daily fix of information, whether it be a blog, forum, or a news corporation. So for the most part we ignore the rest of the content out there. If you're really itching to know about something outside your nest, you'll probably go to Google and search it. You'll probably look at the first 5 or 6 results and possibly go to one of those links.

But what about all those other sites that might have an even better answer to what your looking for? You'll probably click on nbc.com when you could be clicking on johnsmith.com. The problem for johnsmith.com is that it didn't show up in the Google seach results until the 6th page.

So being a popular website is about having the most money and resources?

Absolutely not. In fact paying Google to have your website show up higher in a search or as a sponsored link is a waste of money. What you need is an audience. Where to get one is the fun part. Sreenivasan tells to look around at the technology being produced for the web. He's talking about things like Facebook Apps, Twitter, Flock, Kayak, etc. All of these tools are free and widely used among the internet community. The audience is right in front of you, all you have to do is join the crowd. Have a news site that you keep updating with awesome articles? Start Twittering the headlines to your friends, update your status on facebook, crete a facebook page, give your page and RSS feed, email the story to bloggers.

Remember all those times you've heard your friends in Business world talking about "Networking" being the best way to move up in the world? Well however shallow or pretentious they might have sounded, they're actually right on the money (no pun intended). Networking is taking a new form, and it's happening on the web. People are making business deals because a friend on Linkedin recommended their online product to some investors that were his friends on Linkedin. A small blog that reviewed the newest first-person shooter for the X-Box gets picked up by one of his/her readers and they write an article on Wired.com (hopefully CITING and LINKING the credits back to that blogger). That blogger might in turn blog the fact his posting was mentioned on Wired.com and link back to Wired.com, and so on and so forth.

This is Hyper-Networking. Obviously not a real word; I made it up. But who knows maybe someone will read this post and reference the word and.....well you get the point.

With so many people to meet at the touch of a keyboard, opportunities are endless. We should always be looking at ways to get our ideas out there, by any means necessary.

Please visit Sree's site, it has a great list of things to try. Happy Procrastinating!