This past Wednesday ICUC Moderation Services sponsored and attended our third – and best yet - BlogWell event on this year’s tour. Past tour stops ICUC has sponsored and I have personally attended included Cincinnati and Seattle, both good events but this event was different – it was great. I suspect its close proximity to Chicago and the McDonald’s Campus location of this event drew a more senior level crowd then I have come to expect from BlogWell events, and this was a positive for ICUC and other sponsors such as Radian6 and Marketwire. (more…)

Quickly approaching August, the beginning of the month marks the third in a series of sponsorship events for ICUC Moderation Services. August 11, 2010 will see CEO, Keith Bilous and business development manager, Dustin Plett in Chicago to the next BlogWell event. (more…)

One of the great things about social media is its ability to make us all a bit more self-aware and responsible or at least accountable if we truly want to succeed. Co-founder of VaynerMedia, Gary Vaynerchuk spoke at the RailsConf 2010 about how social media is ultimately leading us to a better place. (more…)

Social media brings what is already broken about a company to the forefront. It cannot save a bad product. And it will not act as a substitute for traditional media hits from a public relations angle. However, pretty soon there will be no difference between traditional and digital and executives who can’t hold their own in the field or don’t have the policy to support it, will be far, far behind the rest.

We have seen great examples of companies using social media and the Web to respond to crisis management including, Maple Leaf Foods and Dominos. We have also seen a few what not to do’s involving United Airlines and BP. (more…)

What may have once been thought of primarily as a resource to finding new talent and recruitment tool, is now a major social networking tool for business professionals across the landscape. Relying on three main lines of business including advertising, software licensing and subscriptions, LinkedIn has been proudly turning a profit since 2007 and has plans to prove an even greater value to its user base.

Arvind Rajan, vice-president of International for LinkedIn says that professionals and students are using the platform in four crucial ways that really separate it from other social networks. (more…)

We have all come to expect that every few weeks Facebook changes its privacy settings or adds a new feature that requires you to read a new portion to its ever-growing terms of service document. What you might not have known is that Facebook’s default is social.

While this concept may have stopped some dead in their tracks at yesterday afternoon’s mesh conference panel on Privacy in the Age of Facebook - I felt like the smartest person in the room. It’s a social networking site for goodness sakes.

The debate flared, and I even heard a completely uncalled for Manitoba joke (the butt of all Canada jokes, how original), regarding the complexity surrounding an ever-changing platform with a CEO who believes 100 per cent in sharing. (more…)

There is much more to be concerned about online these days than cyber-bullying and identity theft according to Mesh Conference speaker Joseph Menn.

Author of Fatal System Error: The Hunt for the New Crime Lords Who are Bringing Down the Internet, gave a rousing talk this morning regarding private security researchers who are at the front of today’s cyber-war.

Details of two hackers who risked their lives to fight the seemingly endless list of bot nets, which are sucking information and causing economic concern around the world. Menn highlighted four major concerns and what precautions users can take to protect themselves.

For more information, I hear the book is on sale on Amazon.com - and readers can expect a more detailed post from Snoo.ws, coming soon.

Mesh Conference 2010 is taking place this week at the MaRS Centre in Toronto, Ontario and ICUC Moderation Services will be there to take in the world-class discussion on how the web is affecting media, marketing, business and society as a whole.

Mesh is an annual conference that runs because its five founders; Mark Evans, principal ME Consulting, Mathew Ingram, senior writer GigaOm.com, Mike McDerment, CEO FreshBooks Online Invoicing, Rob Hyndman, business lawyer Hyndman I Law, and Stuart MacDonald, founder TripHarbour.ca believe that Toronto deserved an place where people could share their enthusiasm for the digital world. (more…)

This article has been re-posted from www.dustin2to.com.

Last week I spent the better part of four days in Seattle. The latest Blogwell event was there and I always try and make the most of this travel by meeting with as many agencies and companies as possible in every new city. (more…)

ICUC Moderation Services has just returned from its second BlogWell event on how big brands use social media held in Seattle, Washington on May 5, 2010. Presented by GasPedal and the Social Media Business Council, and hosted by the Microsoft Corporation at their incredible Redmond campus, in The Mixer building, attendees were certainly not disappointed. (more…)