One of the best things about the connective power of the internet is the rise of Peer-to-Peer services. Airbed and Breakfast is in fact a connection back to how it used to be before commercial entities ruled our lives. People helping people and in return they could do the the dishes for you and stay with a real local. It is good to see this coming back and if you are scared of people you shouldn’t sign-up for this but if you think that people helping people is the way to strengthen the world than this is a great way to participate.
How it works

It’s simple. Nice folks, folks like you, list their guest rooms, futons, and even couches on the site and set a price per night. Adventurous travelers looking for a place to stay can search the listings for an accommodation that’s just right. When they find a match, guests can book your room via credit card. You receive a notification to check out their profile, and decide if the guest is appropriate for your pad. When you accept a guest, contact information is exchanged, itineraries emailed, and the transaction is completed confirming the reservation.

35 Examples of Corporate Social Media - via Mashable

• Blendtec
• Adobe maintains a list of interesting company related websites and conversations on the social bookmarking site Delicious.
• Best Western sponsors a blog,“On the Go with Amy,” where the author travels the country writing about her experiences.
• Cadence recently relaunched its website that now prominently promotes the company’s community.
• Cisco hosts 12 blogs addressing a variety of audiences for their global business.
• Coca-Cola Conversations is a blog written by company historian Phil Mooney that focuses on Coke collectibles
• Dell leverages a variety of social media platforms for customer engagement, including an island in the virtual world of Second Life.
• Ford publishes news releases with lots of multimedia content and employs a social media news release format to display them in their newsroom.
• Fujifilm recently launched a social network to build a community of photo enthusiasts around its newest camera.
• GM uses blogs to communicate directly with its customers around topics ranging from design to green tech.
• H&R Block created a Facebook fan site to aggregate its social media activities, engage customers and offer tax advice/resources.
• HP used Twitter to power a scavenger hunt at a recent conference.
• HSBC built the HSBC Business Network to connect entrepreneurs using blogs, videos and forums.
• IBM was the first large enterprise to embrace employee blogging and now boasts thousands of blogs related to every facet of its business.
• Intel has also developed many social media touch points with its software communities, which includes blogs, Twitter and virtual worlds.
• Intuit sponsors the Tax Almanac wiki, where anyone can find and contribute to this resource for tax information.
• Jeep connects with customers via a community page with links to photos on Flickr, the company’s MySpace and Facebook pages and a list enthusiast groups.
• JetBlue employs social media as part of its training for JetBlue University, as this video explains.
• Johnson & Johnson uses this blog to show another side of the company, with frequent video posts and interviews.
• Lenovo launched “Voices of the Olympics Games” to aggregate posts from the athletes competing in Beijing.
• Marriott CEO Bill Marriott posts regular updates and stories from his travels to Marriott properties around the world to fuel the content for this entertaining blog.
• McDonalds maintains a blog to highlight the company’s corporate social responsibility efforts.
• National Geographic uses Google’s new virtual world, Lively, to bring people together around its new show, LA Hard Hats.
• New York Times is beta testing a Firefox add-on that allows users to share and comment on stories through a decentralized social network.
• Nike started a social community on Loopd to connect athletes interested in surfing, BMX bike racing and similar activities with the brand.
• SAP sponsored a global survey of social media professionals to learn more about social media worldwide.
• Sears partnered with MTV to create a social network around Back to School shopping.
• Southwest Airlines employees share their stories and communicate directly with customers through the “Nuts About Southwest” blog.
• Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz’s blog is the example most often cited for what the CEO blog can be.
• Starbucks started MyStarbucksIdea so that customers can submit ideas for the company which are then voted on by other users, the best of which will be implemented by the company.
• Toyota started its own virtual world to promote its products in Japan (site is in Japanese).
• Visa launched The Visa Business Network application on Facebook to connect small business users and to help them promote their businesses to a larger community.
• Wells-Fargo blogs target two audiences; one examines the company’s history and the other is for students interested in getting their finances in order.
• WWE has a Facebook application, among other social networking tools and widgets, to bring fans closer to the action.
• Xerox blogs address several of the company’s core B2B constituencies.
• Zappos uses Twitter for employees to communicate with Zappos customers about their shared love of footwear.

Christine Huang over at PSFK’s new site Marktd breaks down the 14 ways that Starbucks** has changed recently to get back to their roots. Let me give you a hint. It’s mostly about the Coffee!

1. Better coffee
2. Worse coffee
3. The nostalgia effort
4. Banish the breakfast sandwich
5. Bring back the breakfast sandwich
6. A mystery concoction
7. Ditch the music label
8. Ditch the underperformers
9. Re-education of Staff
10. New store design
11. One buck ‘Bucks
12. Discounts to addicts
13. Starbucks Card Rewards
14. MyStarbucksIdea.com

A detailed explanation of these 14 changes can be found at Marktd.

**Seattle’s Best is a DeVries Client

Can’t afford to run advertising on Oprah? Looking to reach Suburban Moms with you messaging?

“Suburban M.O.M. Street Teams” which employ stay-at-home and work-from-home moms from across the country to help market to the same demographic. Miles Of Marketing micro-targets the “Mommy Set”, allowing efficient grassroots product promotion within a close-knit community of those who listen and those who buy.

This well equipped Word of Mouth Force will put ads on their SUV’s, speak well about your products in person and online and distribute products directly to other moms! Soccer games will never be the same!

As the conversations around metrics and interactions heat up, we are building to a split from the digital metrics that have been “approved” for advertising media buys to a new step towards metrics that focus on relationships and brand interactions. Logic and Emotion brings us a very useful graphic that helps build a picture of what is really going on out there is a post-funnel economy. His graphic was inspired by a report put out by Forrester that calls for a new focus on “Engagement”.

“The marketing funnel is a broken metaphor that overlooks the complexity social media introduces into the buying process…. marketers need a new approach. We propose a new metric, engagement, that includes four components: involvement, interaction, intimacy, and influence…. you get a more holistic appreciation of your customers’ actions, recognizing that value comes not just from transactions but also from actions people take to influence others. Once engagement takes hold of marketing, marketing messages will become conversations, and dollars will shift from media buying to customer understanding.”

Digital metrics aren’t much different than traditional metrics. It really just depends on what you are trying to measure. Brand planners have been thinking about “Engagement” metrics for a while now they just didn’t have the quantity of them to choose from and the possibilities are greater with the group mentality that is now measurable online. I think that metrics and measurement should be something that is very clear with your client as you start a program. What are your goals and what are the right metrics to measure them with? If you are dealing with a Media Planner who has been just thinking about Reach and Frequency than the conversation may have to occur at the Brand Level and that is where these “new” metrics will be happily received.

Here are some metrics to measure your campaign. A even more detailed list can be found here.

REACH: Social Media Reach (ex. BuzzLogic), Number of Stories/Posts, Site Traffic , Pageviews, Unique, Visitors , Number of Photos viewed, Videos watched

COMMUNITY INVOLMENT: Links/Trackbacks, Comments, Threads, Registrations, Referrals, Members, Posts , Number of groups, Tags/Ratings/Rank

ENGAGEMENT: Time spent on site, Time Spent within Widget, Contributors, Word count, Completed profiles, Number of Friends

SALES/ROI: Cost per number of engaged prospects, Number of leads, Cost of lead, Lifetime value of customers, Sales

Want to know what the next 5000 days of the Internet is going to bring? Watch this very interesting talk from Kevin Kelly at Ted. (geek alert)

via: Brand Autopsy

Can you read the number hidden in this image above? Can you see the difference in these two images? You might be suffering from some form of colorblindness? Here’s a more complete breakdown from ColourLovers.

Charge your phone or your iPod while you walk around with these solar powered handbags from Noon Solar.

via: Inhabitat

-Jon

Just as media has grappled with, and now leverages, user-generated content (UGC), politics is experiencing its first brush with viewer-generated-activism (VGA)

“I believe that the next President will stand at the end of the Television Presidency and at the beginning of the Networked Presidency in which the President and the people will connect and work to pass their agenda together, where they can and do agree.”

Get married in Sub-Orbital Space. It isn’t the moon, but it’s one of the most unique places available.

The one-of-its-kind ceremony charge includes a photo and video album, original dress, wedding certificate and other ceremonial items. The cost of transportation to and from the launch site, accommodations, a live broadcast of the ceremony to friends and family at a reception hall on the ground, and 4 days of rehearsal is also included in the package. The space wedding services are said to begin in 2011, but they will be accepting applications starting July 1, 2008

Cost: $2.2million
via: BornRich

I am a huge fan of solar power - the sun makes more sense. In fact, I would like to have a solar powered cabin deep in the woods in the not to distant future. With that said, Hawaii Governor Linda Lingle signed a bill on Friday that makes Hawaii the first state in the US to mandate the installation of solar water heaters in new residential construction.

The legislation, Act 204, mandates that new single-family homes built after January 1, 2010 will have to install solar waters to receive a building permit.

Who is next? I guess Washington or Oregon -but- what if someone bold from the East Coast stepped up - Florida?

via: Treehugger

One of the unique things that Starbucks** offers, besides their million of drink choices, is the ability to create a space to meet and gather inside of your community. Living in Brooklyn, I have issues with Starbucks and the commercial culture in which it thrives. Especially, when they end up in a neighborhood that has plenty of coffee shops and community organization. In fact, when I moved into my neighborhood, 7 years ago, there were no Starbucks at all. There were a handful of community driven coffee shops and a place called Halcyon -which will go done in history as my favorite place ever. Well…. I don’t want to sound like a nostalgic “times are changing” and “kids today” type of guy -but- I do recognize that the world is changing and Starbucks despite all of its baggage is indeed really making an effort to help the communities in which they exist it.
The energy shot kings that brought us MyStarbucksIdea, a site that I posted about a few months back, is a great example how large businesses are “listening” to their customers and making changes based on the most popular ideas. Walking to work today, I just noticed that they recently added a “rewards” card program and that idea came from the people on the idea site. Not a innovative idea at all -but- community driven nonetheless. Give the people want they want!

Their latest under-the-radar development is called Starbucks V2V.

“Starbucks V2V is a social network with a purpose to get people to take action by collaborating around events that will enrich their communities, their lives and the lives of those around them.

Starbucks and V2V have come together in a unique partnership based on similar core values. This space is the “fourth place” that extends beyond the four walls of the store to help partners and customers showcase the amazing things they are doing in their communities. This special place fosters creativity, collaboration amongst new friends, and inspiration to make our world a better place to live. Together, Starbucks and V2V are “Redefining Community”.”

I am a huge fan of activating offline community involvement through a meetup like online network and if a Venti triple shot Frapacino is what it takes to get us “Latter Liberals” out from behind our screens to collborating face to face with a live person - I am all for it!

**Seattle Best Coffee - A Starbucks brand is a DeVries Client