I’ve heard the stories at least a hundred times: My Great Grandma Tsiryl dry-heaving over the side of a steamer ship as they rolled up into Baltimore Harbor in 1904. A pregnant Great Grandma Esther stoically clutching the belly that held the baby that would one day be my grandfather while ocean waves battered the hull of the last ship out of Europe before World War I.

Two different women from two different places, and yet they shared such a similar experience with each other and with the thousands upon thousands of other Jewish immigrants who left Eastern Europe for American shores. They crammed their lives into small suitcases – sometimes with incredible forethought, other times in great haste, they kissed their families goodbye, and on trains or buggies or by foot they traveled over hostile terrain toward distant harbors, and ultimately onto ships that would take them excruciatingly slowly, slowly, slowly away from the achingly familiar.

Cue Itzhak Perlman playing something in a minor key

And like so many others who left the cities and shtetls of Eastern Europe during those fragile years at the turn of the 20^th century, my Great Grandmothers made it work.  They gave birth to American babies. They raised their children in broken English. They played Mah Jong and drank coffee with other landsman in cramped apartments in big cities far away from their childhood friends. They waited for letters from their families. They dreaded the inevitable telegram. They celebrated mitzvahs and simchas at the synagogue. They sat shiva. They buried their own on foreign soil.

You have to be an optimist to pack up and move for a life unknown like that and survive.

And not only did they survive, they thrived as they grew roots in a new world.

For me, it’s different. I wasn’t escaping pogroms and persecution.  I took a freaking stretch limo to the airport because I have delusions of grandeur.

My worldly goods amounted to three suitcases, two carry-ons, one purse, a laptop player with a battery life of 12 ½ hours and a Smartphone.

My voyage was 14 hours, not 14 days, and I spent most of it spent Tweeting from the airplane like a rockstar.

Can't a girl get some #peanuts around here?

Unlike my Great Grandmothers who started from scratch, with Facebook and Twitter I am connected 24/7 to my life back home – clinging to moments and milestones in real time, ten time zones away.  In some ways, it's a good thing:  When Krystal posts "10 centimeters, people! It's show time!" I know her baby is about to be born (and by inference, that she got that epidural she swore she would never in a million years get, because seriously, no woman in hard labor without an epidural can post on Facebook, believe you me). When Aaron's grunge band plays their first gig, I get to see pictures of the show right away thanks to Instagram. I even know what Michelle had for lunch.  (Girl sure loves her #Sushi!)

In a culture of openness and (over)sharing, Facebook is a great way to keep the intimacy going even when you live on the other side of the world.  And yet, it's really a false intimacy, because friendships are really built on a series of moments large and small cobbled together in shared  real space and not online.

Who needs a cafe when you can hang out with your homies on Facebook?

So I guess this begs the question:  How does Social Media change the New Immigrant Experience?

Unlike my Great Grandmothers who tumbled headfirst into their new lives and were forced to learn a new language and make new friends, With my Android phone and my iPad (I carry both because Heaven Forfend one should run out of battery or stop working or fall in the toilet and I should be disconnected from Facebook and Twitter) I carry my old life with me  like two virtual security blankets.   When I ride the train, I update my Facebook status, and send tweets instead of interacting with the passengers around me.  Headphones complete my self-imposed isolation while I listen to (English) music and watch (American) videos on Youtube.

Hey, who needs to integrate, when I can be in two places at once?

But over the last year, I've learned  you can't really be in two places at once, and as much as I try to keep up with my friends in the virtual world, they're moving on.

And so am I.

Fortunately, there are ways that Social Media can actually make it easier for the New Immigrant to integrate.   Meetup groups either on Facebook or through other online channels like Meetup.com or Yahoo Groups are a great way to connect with people going through similar struggles.   And since the goal of these communities is to get you to meet in person, joining these groups is a baby step towards getting off the freaking laptop and into the cafe (or bar!) in the real world.

I've also found that when sharing your own struggles online in a public way, others going through similar things can find you. (And so can internet stalkers, for that matter, but that's another post for another time.) But seriously, over the last year,  I've made several "IRL"  friends here in Israel through Facebook, Twitter and other online arenas, and I am grateful to these Social Media channels for helping me get off the internet already and start living in real life.

A Facebook Friendship IRL.

Happy Monday, Everyone!

We hope you had a peaceful, relaxing, and enjoyable weekend.

Now, go get your coffee on,  and check out these links.  We hope you find them as interesting as we did!

First of all, our client, Babylon.com, just started a new series on their blog called "My Life in Translation"

"How many of us have found ourselves visiting or even living in a country where we can barely speak the language?  Sure, while It’s an adventure to navigate new cultural terrain without being able to communicate the way you would ordinarily in your homeland, it is certainly not without its challenges."

Four months ago I went through a life changing experience: My first daughter was born, and I fell immediately in-love with the little adorable baby that became an important part of our (now mostly sleepless) life.

From the moment she was born, my wife and I photograph and videotape her, using our iPhones, and our DSLR camera.

At the same time my parents aren't getting younger. My father turned 72 this year, and my mother 66. On his 70th birthday, I made a short film about him, as an excuse to both hear and document the story of his life. We went through old photographs that were lying in our living room drawers, and with each picture came a story, about love, war, family, and friendship. Most of these pictures were older than me --from the 50s and 60s -- telling the story of his life as an immigrant, young tank commander, husband, and young father.

Not surprisingly, I love gadgets, applications, and great sites. That's why I upload my daughter's pictures to Flickr and Facebook, and save all of them in our centralized media hub, and I also back it up using Dropbox. I use Twitter, Foursquare and serendip.me to tell the story of my life - places I've been at, songs I've heard, thoughts I've had at a specific point in time.

Up until now, I was certain this is enough. We have all those cameras with their amazing images, those fancy video cameras, these smartphones that are actually point and shot cameras that can also call people. But something is missing:
When you look at it from an historical perspective, all these sites and gadgets lose their sex appeal. The reason is simple - in 40 years perspective, suddenly Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, hard disks and iPhones seem like not the best way to store memories.

I don't know what will happen with Apple, Yahoo!, Twitter and Facebook 40 years from now.
I don't know if the images I am taking now will be compatible with the technology 20 years from now.
I don't know if my media center's hard disk will survive the next 5 years.
And maybe, just maybe, Dropbox will go out of business.

There is a missing link in our digital age. There is a crucial element that is not guaranteed in our advanced technological environment. It is a simple thing: the physical element of our memories. The real life scrap book. The image, printed on a paper.

Yes, I know, these physical representation of our memories can be lost or destroyed. In fact, history teaches us that the physical element of our memories could be easily destroyed (such was the case of the Library of Alexandria).

However, if there is one thing that is for certain, it is that we will be able to see the pictures of our lives in the future. It is not a matter of file formats, web applications, and smartphones. Our eyes will still be able to see pictures. Our fingers will still be able to feel the aging paper they are printed on.

Think about it, next time you look at your hard disk full of those priceless images of your life.

The recently launched Quora grabbed my attention as soon as I started using it. I find myself spending more and more time on this question and answers site and it seems that I am not alone.

What makes it so awesome?
1. Authority - I am still amazed with the depth of the answers on the site. Let me give you an example - a question was asked about  the causes  failure of AOL Time Warner merger. While on Facebook and Twitter such a question would be answered by many, but not the most knowledgeable, on Quora, Steve Case (AOL chief at the time) himself gave his point of view on the matter. When a person asked how did Amazon decide to enter the cloud computing market, Amazon's CTO answered him directly. What else could you ask for? In a sense, the fact that content is edited and removed if not informative enough, makes this platform so great.
2. Content discovery - Quora is all about topics and people. You can follow a topic or person over time and continuously learn more. This is just awesome. I follow the topics I am interested in, and people I value their opinion and knowledge.
3. Ease of use - first time you use it, you already know how to find relevant questions, as well as post your own.
4. Diversity - whenever I login, I find a question about SEO techniques, followed by a philosophical question about the meaning of life. As a guy who loves to read random Wikipedia articles, this site is a great way to learn about topics in the world around us that normally we don't stop to think about. This thread is a great example.

I love Quora - it's a key part of my online toolbox. If you didn't try it yet - I highly recommend you do.

Take a look at this diagram:

North American marketers see major improvements when integrating email marketing and social media efforts. This is another proof that the power of digital marketing lies in channel integration, and not in short term campaigns. As social web marketing requires an ongoing nurturing of branded online assets (brand's Facebook page, Twitter account, on so on), the biggest advantages are for those who combine different channels to utilize these assets.
This information also sheds light on the expected announcement of Facebook Mail today. My friend Yaniv Golan have some interesting thoughts about this move.

In a world were marketing ROI becomes critical for brands success, the combination of strong branding tools with direct marketing tools provide major advantages to the ones who use them well.

Related articles

• 360 Degree Marketing Redux: How the Social Web is Changing the Marketing Communications Ecosystem (gauravonomics.com)
• Three Strategies for Ethical Email Marketing (teachstreet.com)
• 35 New Social Media Resources You May Have Missed (mashable.com)
• Why Email Marketing Still Trumps Social (webpronews.com)

In a time and age where I can chose whether to listen to a brand or to read my friend's status update - how can a brand get my attention?
In my opinion it is all about big ideas

Isn't the big idea dead already?

Mark Earls believes that big ideas are dead, over used, and that we should focus on small tests and campaigns. However I am talking about differnt kind of big ideas. I am not talking about a short lived one time gig. I am talking about deeply rooted concept at the heart of the brand, that affects its dealing wiht customers, the product they build, and  the way they treat their customers.

What is a big idea?

Big ideas are concepts that beyond a product or one's daily life, that are more important than price or features. Big ideas are ones who change the way we look at life and society. Big ideas are ones that are powerful enough to make the man on the street listen to your message. A big idea is that one story that brings value to people - not only consumers.

In some cases brands are not openly stating their big idea. In some cases they don't even realize their big idea until the community, their users, tell them it exists.

Let's take Twitter for example. Twitter's big idea is communication without boundaries. This idea fueled the Iranian uprise, which in turn personified this idea. As stated before, it was a false hope in my opinion. Still it was amazing to see the energy that this idea brought to the community.

Canon and HDSLR are  another example. Canon released their 5D Mark II DSLR camera with the ability to shoot HD videos. This quickly materialized to another big idea - everybody can be a filmaker - now in an affordable way.

What isn't a big idea?

Well, the product itself. Features, without a wider context, are merely technical parameters. They don't improve ones life. Price is not a big idea - again, unless it is in a wider context, such as in the case of HDSLR cameras.

Also, Fun is not a big idea. Fresh is not a big idea. these are just awesome keywords for a brief. "Like" competitions are definitely not a big idea. Hiring "buzzers" is many things, big idea is not one of them.

The Time is Now

Modern western society is in a unique situation. World War II ended with the good guys wining. Communism lost the battle. Most of the western world is democratic, and relatively liberal from an economic point of view. Governments are losing their position as setters of big ideas. Yes, Obama most used word was change. But at the end of the day, nations are creating less and less big ideas that affect lives.

But people are still looking for bigger than life concepts and experiences. They want to feel that they are a part of something, something bigger than day to day life. They want to be excited!

Someone will fill the void. Brands and companies are the best candidates for that. They have the incentive and money to do it.

So what's your big idea?

Last year, brave citizens of Iran decided they had enough. After a suspected rigged election, thousands of young Iranians started protesting against the elected government. The movement, called the Green Movement, arranged mass demonstrations, and clashed with security forces.
And while the government controlled the media, it couldn't control Twitter.
Protesters, Green Movement activists, and ordinary citizens, used Twitter to coordinate protest efforts, and tell the world what the government was trying to hide.
Blogs, magazines, and newspapers, were full of articles about the power of Twitter, and how important it is in such events.

Year later, the green movement is crushed. Iran's Basig, the ever faithful Republican Guard, crushed the resistance. Demonstrators were shot and killed. Some were jailed and tortured. The first anniversary of the biggest uprise against Ahmadinejad regime ended quietly.

Twitter is an amazing network. I use it every day.
But we should remember that it is just a website, a social network, a communication medium. At the end of the day, Twitter won't bring democracy to countries under dictatorship. It might prove a film distributor that it is worthwhile to bring the latest horror flick to the theater near you. It could help raise funds for nobel cause.
But at the end, as Iran case proves, the gun is mightier than the Tweet.

Related articles

• The Myth of the Iranian Twitter Revolution (subtraction.com)
• The Limits Of Twitter (andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com)
• Iran 2009 protests: Where are the green Twitter avatars now? (blogs.telegraph.co.uk)

A Friend

A lot of exciting things happened recently, and can't wait to tell you all about it. However they affected our blog updates, and we are now getting back to speed with that too...
The incentives of Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is an important tool in online marketer toolbox. Companies big and small use this method to reach new audiences effectively. The principle is simple - Company A provides incentives to everyone online to promote their product. Usually a cut of the deal is paid to the affiliate. Companies such as Amazon provide dedicated links and widgets for these partners who in turn distribute them to their audience.
Besides Amazon and other well known brands, many found affiliate marketing a profitable business in other business line such as diet and nutrition and investment tools . In many cases a small operation of two to three smart people, with strong knowledge in SEO and PPC can make a lot of money in these activities.
Affiliate marketing is in many cases more a science than art. Where everything can be measured, smart affiliate marketers optimize their efforts again and again to reach the best conversion rate possible. The ability to instantly measure every activity as well as reassign resources makes it a very dynamic business.
Some in this business are using tactics that are ethically questionable such as fake blogs and spam.
Brands are interested in creating meaningful relationships with their audience, in order to make their brand affect buying decisions.
In short, while affiliate marketing is all about one night stands with customers, branding is more like a long term relationship.
Efficiency of Social Media
Social channels are all about creating meaningful connection with current and potential customers. Unlike other channels, here the brand is acting within the personal space of the customer. That's because people go to Facebook and Twitter to talk with friends and family, and not necessarily in order to consume content. The content they do consume is usually recommended by friends, or sent to them based on their permission (such as joining a Facebook page of a product or a brand). In social channels it is all about trust - brands can increase the trust of their target audience while engaging with them and giving them value. These channels offer many for affiliate marketers as well. Do a little test: twit several times about forex and diet and see how hoards of great looking, well endowed women follow you and offer you to get rich and fit in less than 10 days. Many find it rude.
This is the risk for brands. Let's say that Joann, 19 yo, beautiful brunette just offered me a unique diet that will make me the hottest guy around, and when I click the link I am getting to a reputable brand's page - how would it make me feel re this brand? Would I continue to trust it? And let say that I am looking for info about a company and see that the only mentions on twitter are by Joann and her friends - would I trust that company? And if all the raving reviews about this company are from blogs that look like fake ones - how would that affect my perception of the brand?
Brands, Short Term Relationships and Incentives
Everyone wants to make money. This is not a shocker. But there are different ways to make money. Some companies are focusing on short term gain, and some are focusing on building and maintaining a brand. The brand strategy takes time and effort. Not only that but association with spam and other ethically questionable tactics can harm brands more than the value of increased exposure gained by using these tools.
While affiliate marketers aim is to increase conversion, brands are interested in creating brand equity - meaning, making their brand count. This is a basic difference in incentives.
So while our imaginary Joann could provide great conversion rate for the affiliate marketer, the brand she is referring to might suffer from that activity even if in the short run they will sell more of their products. And while it was always true, the trust based system of social media increases the potential damage for brands.
So What Can You Do?
It all boils down to strategy. If your company doesn't care about branding - affiliate is the way to go. If branding is crucial, but so is affiliate marketing, consider separating brands, or find ways to impose at least some guidelines on your affiliates. It's tricky but feasible. As long as you know what you lose and what you gain in each strategy, you will be able to find the best way to grow your business.

Apple is continuously  under fire for lack of openness. Once the industry's underdog, as it's market power grows, Apple slowly becoming the target of many attacks, the latest one from Tim O’Reilly.

Interestingly enough, Apple never claimed to be open. Or nice. Apple claimed one thing only - that it knows how to create great innovative products. They aren't cheap. They are good. and that's how the Cupertino based company mange to have 10% market share with 83% market cap in comparison to Microsoft.

The myth of openness
Being open is a business decision. Nothing more and nothing less. Some companies harness openness to cut development cost (open source companies are great example). Some do it in order to cultivate a vibrant development community that in turn increase its value and market power (Google is a good example). But there is nothing sacred or better in openness.

The irony is that one of the most so called open companies in the world, Twitter, just dropped an A bomb on its ecosystem, when it announced the development of desktop and mobile clients. While the blogsphere is attacking Apple and praising Twitter, the industry darling itself single-handedly sent the companies that made it so succesful to the deadpool.

So, let's stop being naive. At the end, it is all about business. The rest is fluff.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Apple vs Google: The Next 10 Battles To Watch (GOOG, AAPL) (businessinsider.com)
• Apple, Inc. market cap now exceeds Walmart (tuaw.com)
• After iPad, rivals offer hybrid hand-helds (bendbulletin.com)
• Silicon Alley Insider: A Open Letter To Apple Regarding The Company's Approach To Conversation With Its Peers And Community (businessinsider.com)

I've written about this event here - and you should be there. I know I will. And because I'd like to see you, here are some last minute codes for free exclusive invitation:
TN67BL1;TN68BL2;TN69BL3;TN70BL4
Each code is limited for 1o invitations only, and some of them were already used - so time is NOT on your side.
See you there.