While there is an inflation of social media consultants due to the recession, some are doing a great service to their employers.

Roger Smith Hotel is a small boutique hotel in Manhattan. I would have never heard about it if they didn't embrace social media strategies. They have a blog, twitter account for both the hotel and Adam Wallace their social media manager. In fact I got in touch with them through twitter. The hotel has a blogger's rate - which provided Buzz marketing for (almost) free. Social media gurus such as Chris Brogan stayed at the hotel and wrote about it - what better PR could one get? They also encourage tweetups and other social media events in their facilities.

I will not be staying at this hotel in my trip to NYC next week, as they ran out of the rooms I was interested in. But I would never have considered them, or even heard about them, if they didn't embrace my community in such a great way.

Makes you think that there is still a lot to be done in the over hyped but exciting world of social media.

Women in Media Project profiles influential, decision making and visionary women in the new media business. Our first profile is Kathryn Velvel Jones, from For Your Imagination. Why is she on the list? Read to find out.

Who Are You and What do you do? My name is Kathryn Velvel Jones and I am currently the Vice President of Branded and Sponsored Entertainment at For Your Imagination, a leading online media studio which develops, markets and distributes high-quality original Internet TV and web video series.

Tell us a bit about your background and history: At the core I am an actor. The most misunderstood thing about being an actor in NYC is that the hard part is getting the job- the hardest part is getting the audition. Despite reviews like "spectacular" and "excellent", despite a strong resume and a relatively prestigious education, there were some years I sent out over 1000 pictures and resumes only to get one audition and after ten years of struggling just to get auditions. Therefore I decided it was time to take charge of my own career and create my own opportunities. This new found sense of inspiration and purpose quickly led me to web video, a medium in which for a small amount of money and a great deal of focus and passion, I could greenlight my own projects. In 2006 I began producing and co-hosting a video podcast and quickly became immersed in the world of online video and social media, including serving as a co-organizer for Podcamp NYC. But it was in April of 2007 that I had my real aha! moment. One morning as I perused my twitter stream I saw a tweet by Chris Brogan announcing a live streamed talk show that afternoon with Chris and Jeff Pulver. Chris and Jeff's show was a revelation. The immediacy of the technology was simply amazing to me, and the sense of community that live streaming created was palpable. As I watched Chris and Jeff respond to viewers calls and chat messages in real time my heart began to pound,and I knew that there was something about this specific technology that spoke to me. 5 months later my company, Synchronis.tv premiered the first scripted web drama to stream live on the internet. Utilizing three cameras mixed in real time and streamed live to uStream my cast and crew of 20 produced ten, 10 minute episodes of the original drama "35". Although we streamed all all ten episodes on the absolutely tiniest of budgets, "35" was covered by The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Mashable, Truemors, numerous blogs, and was a featured podcast in iTunes. It's hard to say who has inspired me most in the online world of self-starting entrepreneurs, but it was undoubtedly Jeff and Chris' first live broadcast that changed my life.
Most recently, along with my producing partner Charlie Oliver, I produced an unprecedented Live Webathon, Real Women Respond to Palin. This 8 hour online live event attracted over 17,000 unique viewers to the live stream and was covered in The Huffington Post among many other blogs.

What is your current position? What is your day to day work? As VP of Branded and Sponsored Entertainment at For Your Imagination I spend my days communicating with media buyers, brands and artists in pursuit of both sponsorships for our series as well as creating product integration and branded series opportunities for advertisers. What I love most about my job is the incredible team of people I get to work with.

Why did you chose new media as your field? Above and beyond my job at FYI, one of my greatest passions is to help build a much stronger and more accurate voice for women online, especially in online video. To that end I am currently working on a new series, Value Proposition, about an all female, all redheaded tech startup. This funny, moving, smart series chronicles a driven group or female entrepreneurs as they wade through diminishing budgets, unexpected law suits, unscrupulous VC's and ever changing expectations in pursuit of their dreams of IPO success. The series is comprised of both edited and live episodes, is aimed at the extremely lucrative and currently underserved female market as well as at the first adopter/technology crowd, and is currently seeking sponsorships.

Where will you be in 5 years? In five years I hope I have succeeded in more fully harnessing the accessibility and creative possibilities that social media and the web have to offer. I hope that my work will have inspired other women to enter careers in technology and online video, and that I will have participated in making online video more daring, more creative, more community based and more interactive.

How can our readers contact you? If you wish to get in touch with me please contact me at Kathryn at foryourimagination.com .

Why is she a part of the list? Kathryn brings with her passion, innovative storytelling, and extraordinary execution capabilities. As part of For Your Imagination, she also have the ability to execute bigger projects than before. We are looking forward to see what's next on her project list.

Social Media Jungle took place at Jeff Pulver's office on the 13th of November.

Here is Chris Brogan's presentation from the event:

Additional videos could be found here.

Following Yosi's request, here are my Facebook tips and tricks:

1. Be careful with whom you connect - so you can keep the network personal. When someone I don't know asks to connect with me, I always email him/her and ask how do we know each other, and why should we connect. If I don't get an answer, I ignore the request. This way I can feel comfortable with writing a status message such as "Kfir is having a bad day" without feeling, well, bad.

2. Create groups in areas that are not saturated, and you can add value to the community - when I signed up for Facebook, I felt that there is a need for a Vloggers group. So I've opened one, and reviewed it periodically. I've met a lot of interesting people through this group, BUT

3. Don't nag people in the group too much - this is Facebook, not Ning. Learn from Chris Brogan's Grasshoppers experience.

4. Choose the applications you use carefully - don't Myspace your Facebook profile. I check all the applications I find, but I am very careful with the ones I keep on my profile.

5. Invite your friends only to useful or fun applications - and no, Zombie is not one of them

6. Constantly review the groups you are member of, and engage in the discussions there. Nothing new here - this is a social network, so, be social.

7. Try to be a member of up to 30 groups - so people can see what are your topics of interest.

8. Initiate discussion threads between your friends - but don't spam them. This is a great way to create a conversation with your friends not only you are talking with people you like, you are also helping them to connect amongst themselves. Did we mention that this is a social network?

9. Make your profile interesting to read - I invested a lot of time in creating a profile that not only provides information but make people read it through. Applications like iRead, friends wheel, flixster, and wordpress plugin (if you have a blog) bring my profile to life.

10. The most important tip of all - use it as a part of your social media toolbox - mesh it up with your blog, create events that are relevant to your day to day live, share your posts and video material and so on. it is like a snowball effect - one effort feeds the other and increase the impact of your online and offline social activities.

How do YOU use Facebook? What are YOUR tips and tricks?

Want to know more? Subscribe to my RSS feed or email list.

Technorati Tags: chris Brogan, facebook, internet TV, tips and tricks, social Networks, social media, ning, Yosi Taguri

[digg http://digg.com/tech_news/Vloggers_group_in_Facebook/blog] Yes, I've joined Facebook too. You can find my profile here.

After the brainstorming in Podcamp Europe about how to increase internet TV viewership, I was concerned with ways to continue the discussion while not in a face to face event.

Couple of great things happened soon after:

• Several bloggers wrote their opinions and got amazing comments (see this post for more details).
• Chris Brogan had his 100 comments project around a similar topic - don't forget to visit and comment on his post.

In order to continue the conversation I am proud to announce the opening of a new Facebook group titled Internet TV, Vbloggers and media disruptors.

The aim of the group is continue discussions about key issues of the industry such as monetization, production tips, content marketing, industry perspectives and everything that is important to the community.

It is a group where YOU create the conversation - so get involved and present your ideas and dilemmas!

We are planning to use this group as a hub to additional activities such as Skypecasts, group chats etc. If you have ideas on how to increase involvement and create additional value through this group - email me, or better yet - write it on the group's wall.

The group is open to all Facebook members - if you are not there yet, it now allows everyone to register.

Thanks to all the new members,and see you there!

Technorati Tags: Internet TV, Video Share, Facebook, chris brogan, social media, monetization, vloggers,

My friend Chris Brogan posted a great article in his blog about the difference between Video, Audio and text for content creators.

Here are the highlights:

1. Video is good for visual information - and that's why interviews are often cut in the middle as they are boring to watch. it is an important point in my opinion especially for DIY content creators, as interviews are one of the cheapest content type to create.

2. Audio creates deeper relations between the listener and the speaker.

3. Text is a great tool to provide information as is.

Another important observation Chris is making, is that there is no one medium any more - you should use different types of media to deliver your message.

These are just the highlights - please go to the original post for more details.

Technorati Tags: Chris Brogan, audio, text, video, blog, vlog, podcast

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My friend Chris wrote an insightful article in killerapp about the role of meta-aggregator in the online video market. The story is simple - there is a major problem today for both content creators and viewers - find something good to see. There are a lot of shows, and it is hard to find the good ones (and I've blogged a lot about what's good for me - though not sure it is right for every one). Meta aggregator (like Network2) are solving this problem by being both platform agnostic (meaning that you can find there content from Blip.tv, Veoh, YouTube etc) and getting rating from users and editorial team in order to find good shows.

Being platform agnostic is a key issue in my opinion. The market is not dominated by a major platform yet, so from viewers and content creators point of view there is a need to both consume and distribute media across all platforms. Also, inclusion of main stream media shows in these sites is crucial, as it will help smaller content creators to be found (people who are looking for the latest 24 episode will also see indie production based on their taste).

How can these companies make money in this model? Well, some meta aggregators will go the advertisement path, and some will take the distribution path.

I wonder how this segment will unfold.

Podcamp Europe is just around the corner, so don't forget to register. The event takes place in Stockholm, on the 12-13 of June. Nice weather and great company guaranteed. Hope to see you there!

Yesterday, Jeff and Chris had a live broadcast at Ustream. The whole thing was as 2.0 as possible - people were notified by twitter, and later by blogs, then shared photos of it.

Jeff just published an excellent post on that. The thing I found most interesting was his comparison to the early VoIP era:

"....as people started to call-in from all over the world, it hit me that we were playing with technology that was as disruptive to the future of Media as my use of Internet Phone back in April, 1995 when all I need to talk to people around the world was software, connectivity and a computer. Back then the press considered all of us "hobbyists" and the telecom operators thought we were playing with "toys" yet what we were playing with was the underlying technology that would change the face of communications forever...."

I find it hard to explain to the Average Joe what is so special in the changes the media world is facing. I am certain I will use this example in the future.

I will publish soon a post called "Media Revolution for Dummies" - stay tuned.

In the recent months we see new ways to deliver web videos to your television. Apple TV, and Tivo's new features are just two examples of this trend. With new Media Centers out there, we can assume that this trend will increase in both magnitude and importance.

How will it affect the world of independent content creators? I believe that this process is a double edge sword:

1 . We will see more exposure to independent content creators - as shows like Ask a Ninja and Something To Be Desired will be shown on living room TV sets, one of the major barriers of entry to these new media creators will be removed - people won't need to watch video online, but in their regular TV. Though seems logical, I believe that this process will take some time to happen. Though Tivo users are not necessarily early adopters I still believe that it will take some time till my mother will use media center. Therefore, it is not clear how many new users will start watching web shows, as I assume that media savvy early adopters already watch them.

2. Production quality will rise - though current production quality of indie content creators is very good, when moving from small video screen in a web site to full blown TV format, things change. In the 3D animation company I had in the past, we had a clear distinction between productions for internet, mobile, television, and cinema as the effort to create high quality show is correlated with screen size in some aspects. Small details are more apparent.

3. And it will be harder to beat the competition - today most people do not expect the same level of product from internet video as they expect from television show. When users will be able to see a web show, and a minute later another episode of Studio 60 or Prison Break, their level of expectation will change, starting with script level, through actors, and general production value. This is THE major challenge for indie content creators in my opinion - as they begin to be an alternative to regular television.

4. Indie content creators will change the type of content they are creating - from short, 5-8 minutes flicks, to longer formats. The attention span in television is longer than in the internet, and people are willing to watch longer formats there. However, it might prove to be the killer of this industry. Longer formats are usually more expensive, and complicated to produce. As production cost and complexity rise, the competitive advantage of indie content creators, the ability to create quality content cheaply, is lost. Time will tell if there are enough talented creators to face the high profile, high cost productions out there. It might be that this will be the first wave of Creative Darwinism, when only the most talented content creators will survive.

How do you see it?

More to come...