Great use of a #hashtag during the Super Bowl

The Super Bowl was alive on nearly all social networks this year as never before. And that created an excitement about the game and the brands that advertiser there in a whole new way for folks connected via social mediums, namely twitter, which set records for its traffic.

Sure there were the Super Bowl ads – #superbowlads or #superbowlcommercials.

And, of course, the Super Bowl food – #superbowlfood

There was the #brandbowl – which was all about how brands were strutting their stuff and being perceived.

Oh, and there was a football game – #sb46.

All had their own discussions going throughout the game.

There were plenty of commercials that also rolled out their own hashtags – #solongvampires appeared on the end of an Audi ad, and then was the #makeitplatinum for the introduction of Bud Light’s new Platinum brew.

But the tag that caught my eye was one that actually had some utility and community service to back it up. That hashtag was #whatworks, and it was championed by GE. The site aims to “Share the great people, places & things that work to help get America back to work.”

Fun with Instagr.am – my favorite new app

If you own an iPhone and haven’t used Instagr.am, you’re missing a great social media opportunity.
It was voted the app of the year in 2011.
Essentially it just lets photographers add one of a couple dozen effects to a photo before sharing it with people in their social circles.
Here is a photo of some post-it notes that I took at work. The edited Instagr.am photo is on top and the original is below it. Something about it that I really enjoyed. Love to hear your feedback.

Why your Twitter account has no followers

There are plenty or reasons that people are ignoring you, your brand or your comments on Twitter.

It could be that you’re too pushy, always asking for the follow.

It could be that all you post are retweets – someone else’s thoughts and messages.

Or it could be that you are just boring. I’ll admit, some days I’m not sure what my followers find amusing about my updates, but they stick with me.

Regardless, there are a handful of things that any Twitter user can do to start building a better brand for themselves on Twitter. It starts with adding a profile picture if you haven’t done that yet.

Here’s a great blog: 8 reasons no one follows you on Twitter.

And remember, these are not optional.

What’s up with WhoSay?

So every celebrity under the sun seems to be making their way to WhoSay, and the general public is still saying Who What?

Ok, you’ve likely heard of the site if you pay any attention to celebrity tech news. And it seems the smartphones of the rich and famous (and the things they do with them) are a story unto themselves sometimes.

I’ve had more than one person ask me recently about the celebrity, invite-only site, and I wasn’t really sure what to say.

I at first thought it was the latest trendy website for in-the-know (and those who want to be) celebs to catch some of the limelight that Ashton Kutcher and @Oprah garnered when they became Twitter’s trendsetters in the younger days of the microblog site.

Now even gray-haired media mogul Rupert Murdoch is tweeting, so what’s a standout celebrity to do to set himself apart?

Have you discovered ifttt?

No, that isn’t a typo. ifttt.com is a real web site that stands for “if this, then that,” and it’s a pretty cool way to cross-train your social media to share content.

What if you wanted to archive all your tweets in Evernote? You can do that.

Say you want to download each Flickr or Instagr.am photo you upload into a Dropbox folder on your desktop. You can do that.

You want all PDFs sent to a certain e-mail address converted into a format that can be read on a Kindle? Yup – you can do that, too.

How? It’s all done with an “if this, then that” structure. Pretty basic code-speak, actually. And of course the program just marries up data from one program to another. But the genius is that the programmers created what they call “digital duct tape… allowing you to connect any two services together.”