LunaWeb Launches New Site

After many hours, delays and modified direction over the past two years, we have proudly launched our new website at LunaWeb.net. It’s a complete redesign from our old site, and it connects with several new dimensions of our online presence.

LunaWeb Home Page

Redesign

We’ve changed from the old design completely to include a much more colorful interface and Flash on the homepage  to keep things interesting – but if you don’t have Flash, don’t worry, you’ll get a static image. We tried to create an updated, clean and friendly overall look.

Social Media

Social Media made a huge impact on our new presence. We took advantage of tools which allow us to make the site more interactive and conversational. We’ve brought in a Twitter feed that not only shows our tweets, but shows what others are saying about us. Videos that we switch out occasionally will be featured prominently. We also have links that give you one-click access to several of our Social Networking presences so you can join us in the conversation.

New Pages

You’ll find a few new pages on the site that we’re especially proud of. Primarily, new content reflecting our Social Presence offering (we have the most experienced and largest department of Social Media in Memphis). You will also find a link straight to our blog (this very one), which we regularly update with related information. There is also a portfolio page that will give you a quick peek at some of the websites we’ve created for our clients.

There’s a lot more new to be seen. Thank you for taking a look at our new home. We hope you like the changes.

The post “LunaWeb Launches New Site” by lunaweb is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Thoughts before Oprah’s Twitter debut

There’s a rumor going around that Oprah has gained control of her eponymous Twitter handle, and that she’ll be posting her first tweet during the show tomorrow. You can imagine what kind of immediate impact that this will have on the service.

As a result, we’ve been thinking a lot about the recent explosion in popularity of Twitter.

There used to be a standard progression for people making their way through social media.

The online presence of the first digital natives seemed to evolve from writing online journals read by only four or five people to maintaining MySpace and Facebook profiles with a few dozen friends on to full-fledged blogs and Twitter accounts accessible by the general public.

“Digital Natives at Work” by Gerard Bierens on Flickr.

Though other sites and services empowered them to take those steps, Twitter seems to have been the triggering mechanism for making social media into a more truly mainstream phenomenon.

Twitter’s simplicity took the focus off of the means of communication and put it right onto the communication itself.

It may have been that simplicity, along with the suddenness of communication via Twitter, that led mainstream media to embrace it as a way to get information to consumers as quickly as possible. National Public Radio and the New York Times, for example, have been using Twitter since the network was still in relative infancy.

Even celebrities of all kinds have embraced Twitter, from TV Host and comedienne Ellen Degeneres to basketball player Shaquille O’Neal to songwriter Colin Meloy.

Twitter has officially broken down the barriers between the common person and celebrity. We here at LunaWeb have to wonder if this is why people who haven’t really dipped their toes in the waters of social media are now doing cannonballs into the deep end of Twitter.

If so, this marks not so much a gradual evolution in people’s progression through social media as a sudden mutation.

Whereas the digital natives eased themselves in, this new flock of Twitter users seems to be jumping right into using publicly accessible forums.

It’s exciting to watch. Especially considering that many of these new users aren’t digital natives at all. They’re immigrants to the internet world. By jumping in like they have, they’re expressing a newly empowered willingness to learn a new – online – dialect.

Once these new digital immigrants are acclimated and fluent, however, and they decide they need something other than what Twitter has to offer, where do they go?

Will they behave like a flock of migratory birds, moving almost as a single organism, or will they simply quietly disperse, as though the party has ended?

One (completely unresearched) impulse, based on Facebook’s near-simultaneous bump in membership, is to say that this new social wave is like a flock of birds. It’s not exactly predictable, but it undulates gracefully, pulsing with each new possible direction.

"Flock of Birds" by Picture Perfect Rose on Flickr.

Here at LunaWeb, we’ve been giving a lot of beginning social media lessons to our clients. We’re thinking about opening these up to the public. If you’re part of this new wave of users, please sound off in the comments. Let us know what you’d like us to cover.

blogpost by lunaweb is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

April’s Social Media Expedition Breakfast is Wednesday!

We all know the song, many of us have been on the ride; it is a small world, after all. With Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other social media sites popping up and making their way to the mainstream every day, it keeps getting smaller. And we’re the ones shrinking it.

What makes us as a species so drawn to creating these connections between one another, whether we even know one another or not? What is it, from a psychological perspective, that drives us to online meeting spaces?

Kris Markman, Ph.D., from the University of Memphis might have an answer. She has been studying the the social impacts of new media since 2001. She’ll be the guest speaker at April’s Social Media Expedition Breakfast, 7 a.m., April 1 at the U of M Holiday Inn. Her presentation will be titled “A Species Driven to Connect.”

A veteran of public radio, Markman is currently collecting research about independent podcasters – those producing programs unaffiliated with traditional media at all.

Be sure to RSVP for this breakfast at MeetUp. Admission is $20, or $15 each for you and a guest.

blogpost by lunaweb is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Social Media Breakfast #7

It’s hard to believe, but the Social Media Breakfasts seem to keep getting better! This month we had our largest group yet meet at the Crescent Club in Midtown Memphis for what promised to be a great way to start the morning. There were plenty of familiar faces mixed in with a great group of Social Media newcomers.

LunaWeb President, Dave Barger, hosted the event and kept everything running smoothly, as well as answering questions on all thing Social from a crowd that eagerly supplied both answers and inquiries. After some initial discussion, long time Social Media Breakfast attendee, Bob Hazlett, gave a hilariously informative presentation on Social Media campaigns gone wrong entitled, “You Suck at Social Media.” He effectively walked us through the best of the best on down to the abysmally low in Social success (from Zappos shoes to Microsoft’s twitter presence).

As always though, the best of Social Media Breakfast happened before and after the official presentations. Staying true to the idea of being “social” there were plenty of opportunities for networking, catching up, meeting new connections, and sharing new Social Media information.

You can already RSVP for the next Social Media Breakfast on the MeetUp page. And be sure to check out photos from SMB #7 here! If you haven’t already been to one of the Social Media Breakfasts, talk to one of the people who have. We’ll see you at the next one!

Protect Your Face

The advent and prevalence of social networking has torn down many of the personal barriers that were once considered universal social norms.  It has redefined what we consider to be personal information and what we will publicly post on the internet.  This has allowed people to create real connections that, just a few years ago, distance and technology would not have allowed.  It does, however, raise some security concerns that demand we exercise social responsibility when taking advantage of what Web 2.0 has to offer.

Over the course of its existence, Facebook has been a benchmark for security among social networking sites.  However, within the last few months even Facebook has fallen victim to the worst of the web… SPAMMERS! Now that we have your attention, please refrain from spiraling into a panic, deleting all of your social accounts, and retreating into the mountains.  Not only is Facebook fighting back against would-be evil doers, but there are simple actions you can take to protect yourself while out in the social spheres.  These are straight from the security experts over at Facebook.

• Remember, Facebook will never ask for your password in an email, Facebook message, or any medium that isn’t the login page. Though you will need to re-enter your password when you set a security question, change your contact email, or send a virtual gift.

• Be extra aware of weird Wall posts. Don’t click on any links—on a Wall or elsewhere—if you don’t know where they go.

• Set a security question for yourself on your Account page. If somehow something malicious shuts you out of your account, you will need the answer to that question in order for our User Operations team to let you back in. (If you’ve already set your security question, you won’t see a prompt for it on your Account page.)

• Be extra aware of what website you are using to log in to Facebook (and other websites). Phishing websites can be made to look like other websites (like the Facebook log in page), and might try to disguise their urls. Be smart: www.facebook.com.profile.a36h8su2m8.info/login starts out looking like a legitimate Facebook website, but that a36h8su2m8.info part means it’s fraudulent. Set and use a browser bookmark to make sure you always log in from facebook.com

• If you see a Wall post that looks like spam on a friend’s Wall, tell the author to delete it and reset their password immediately.

• Use a modern web browser to benefit from anti-phishing protection

• Check out opendns.com. This is another method for blocking specific domains that host phishing sites.

If you think you’ve been phished or find a phishing site,

• Reset your password on your Account page.

• Report the issue to Facebook here.

• Submit phishing sites here and here.

Ways to Utilize Social Media

As members of the technology industry, it is important that we keep our clients up-to-date on the latest and greatest trends in technology, especially when they can benefit the client. Of course there are different needs for every client, and not each industry is going to have the same online marketing plan. We do our best to understand the specific needs of the client and develop recommendations based on those needs.

Two clients we have created social media presences for are BTE Racing and Mantia’s restaurant-two very different businesses in two very different industries. Therefore, the plans for each varied quite a bit.

Mantia’s, owned by Alyce Mantia, is a local mediterranean-style, cozy restaurant/international market that also hosts cooking classes and wine tastings. To show that friendly atmosphere to the online world, we wanted videos and photos galore. By promoting a Facebook presence in the restaurant, as well as using Facebook ads, we were able to grow the number of fans of the Facebook page. In less than one month, Mantia’s, the small, local favorite, had over 40 fans. The page itself was getting a great number of views, ranging from 20-150 per day, which we were able to find out using the Facebook insights. 

The short video (18 sec.) below appeared on Mantia’s Facebook page following her “Turkish Delights” cooking class.

 

BTE Racing, is an international company, manufacturing race car automotive parts for customers across the globe. To enhance the online presence of BTE, we created a Facebook page-also promoted by Facebook ads-a social network, blog and YouTube channel. BTE representatives maintain the creative content of the various entities, while we designed the customization of each platform and monitor the activity.