Every month I share a short list of ideas that I think deserve recognition, or at least have some currency in my own sphere of influence .  It’s been a little while since I shared my latest influences, so I’ve included an extra thought this month I hope will introduce you to something worthwhile.

App: Chump Dump. I admit that I have a problem: too many friends and followers on Twitter to keep tabs on those who’s ideas I care about the most. This app should help me attain a better balance (or at least a lower ratio) by helping me loose random twitter followers, particularly those most prolific narcissists currently clogging up my Twitter stream.

Blog: Wonkette. With Election season in full swing, I’ve become a daily reader once again of this DC-based liberal rag with its tongue planted firmly in cheek. Sarcasm runs thickly through each post, pulling together the best (and most embarrassing) news clips from around the blogosphere to add their irreverent take on our nation’s partisan political dysfunction.

Film: Scott Pilgrim vs The World. Comic books, video games, rock and roll; what’s not to love in this romantic comedy? Of course it’s geeky, so I love it.

Meme: Check-in Fatigue. As an early adopter of location-based social media, I’ve been anticipating the growth and inevitable backlash against these platforms as they mature. It’s interesting to watch my friends walk through the same curiosity, excitement, and disappointment as these services start to become adopted by the mainstream, most recently Facebook.  What was first a fun, new way to connect with friends and meet people has grown into an all-consuming competition that frustrates new users with legitimate privacy issues.  Of course I’ll still be playing along, so don’t hate the players (hate the game).

Music: Plastic Ono Band by John Lennon. His solo effort has become the anthem of my summer, driven by irresistible hooks, existential uncertainty, and all the emotional power of a young man trying to plant his roots in the world. Lately I can identify with those themes.

Social Network: Glue. At first the name of this social recommendation engine is puzzling, until you realize it’s apps and extensions help it connect media and the net. The cousin of Facebook’s Liking system improves on their social graph parent, allowing you to add semantic status updates; telling your friends what you’re watching on TV, reading, or listening to.  With the impending closure of my prior favorite Hot Potato following their purchase by Facebook (congrats y’all), it’s refreshing to see former Facebookers go on to create innovative social media outside of the mothership.

Television: True Blood. Sure the series is trashy romp with thinly veiled allusions to sex, drugs, and southern hospitality meeting the occult. It’s also driven by nuanced characters living in the well-crafted universe by writers who keep me guessing at every twist and turn. I’m a fan.

Theory: Transparency. It’s what helped me become interested in becoming a PR pro, and now it’s part of my daily work. So in the interest of full disclosure, I want to acknowledge that I’ve begun working at The Nielsen Company as a Communications Analyst, specializing in Online insights on their Communications team. Otherwise you should consider the opinions I express here as my own ideas, and not necessarily those shared by my employer.

At IDEO’s Humanizing Social Media event in February 2010, we explored the implications of social media on interpersonal communication. Rather than perpetuating the discussion of case studies and e-commerce during Social Media Week, this social experiment left us questioning how the communications shifts have impacted the way we develop new friendships online. Our cellphones were left at the front door and we exchanged our clothes for a plain white t-shirt affixed with buttons which carried tags that describe ourselves, like “blogger” and “geek” in my own case.

It was an thought provoking exercise, and now I can  finally share the results from this experiment with you.  We had a great night at this event, so much that I was awarded the honor of “Person with whom you’d most like to stranded on a desert island with”!  Look for yours truly to take a staring turn during the panel discussions, as captured in this video.

A little further news and notes not quite long enough to warrant a blog post of their own:

• The Case Study of my work on  SpaFinder’s Deal Days event using social media has been published.  Our outreach to bloggers and through social media resulted in at least 1200% increase in word-of-mouth discussion of their brand, successfully launching this event while working to promote their brand and improve SEO.  My responsibilities also included developing best practices for their social media strategy, in addition to helping launch their iPhone app and video production work.
• Following the announcement at Facebook’s developers conference, I tried to answer what  Facebook Open Graph means for website owners, in a post Blue Fountain Media’s blog.  Since then we have an even better picture of both privacy concerns and the benefits of the platform for casual users and developers alike.  In many ways Facebook is poised to become the first semantic search engine by integrating their social network with the rest of the internet.
• BrewNoob.com has officially launched!  Only one year ago I created a Twitter account to share my love of tasty beers, and now it has grown into a blog in its own right.

The best is yet to come, so come back soon for exciting updates as I grow professionally (and personally) online and off.

What difference can one person make simply by asking their friends to make a charitable contribution? Any individual can help change the world, and this story is just another example to prove that (click here to play the video).

For my last birthday I challenged my friends to donate to a cause, People To People International (PTPI), instead of buying me a gift. I used the Causes application on Facebook for fundraising, and was overwhelmed by their support. I’ve written about my efforts before, and have since raised a few hundred dollars for PTPI.

My efforts earned the attention of People To People, who like most non-profit organizations are exploring all the new opportunities for fundraising that social media can offer. We connected though Facebook, where an interview was published highlighting my fundraising efforts in addition to how PTPI has impacted my life both personally and professionally.

We wanted to share my story and inspire others to try the same challenge for themselves, so I flew to Kansas City, Missouri to shoot this video. The birthday challenge has also been the subject of another recent interview accompanying the video, as part of a series highlighting the accomplishments of young people working with PTPI.

Thanks to Scenic Road Productions for creating this video promoting a good idea for a a great cause. And Happy Birthday for my friends at People to People, which celebrates their 53rd year of fostering peace through understanding this week!

I recently had the privilege of being interviewed by a colleague (Zhamilya Gafurr) from Voice of America Russian Service about how young people in the United States use the internet.  Since I’ve been using the internet for at least half of my young life, I tried to explain why 9 out of 10 Americans expect major disruptions to their daily life without the internet. While I wanted to explain how reliant our society is on the internet, you’ll see that something must have been lost in translation back to English:

Says Matthew, “ I’m probably one of those people who panic when their smartphones sits battery, because without a mobile GPS, I can and the city lost.”  Morning of Matthew begins with checking e-mail.  Light lunch – and Mr. Hurst had to stop in anticipation of the bus.  Make sure that the site of public transport District of Columbia has no information about the delay of its route, he can afford to read the latest press.

Earlier this year I wrote about promoting my favorite non-profit cause, People To People, who also posted an interview with me. In addition to discussing my work with them in fundraising, we discussed the impact my years traveling as a student ambassador has had on me intellectually and personally. You can read the whole transcript on their Facebook fan page, where you can learn more about their work to create peace through understanding.

Thanks again to my esteemed colleague Gabe Bullard for the personal recommendation on his blog, which features his expert insight into media and culture that serve as a source of inspiration for this blogger.   I’m also looking forward to sharing interviews from my alma mater (Webster University) and the video we shot for People To People, which I’ll be happy to share here once they are both published.

By now you know the drill: broadcast television is switching from analog to digital signals. There are a few ways to keep receiving television of course: if you get cable or satellite nothing will change, but it you’re still using an antenna signal on an older television you’re going to need a DTV converter box. Fortunately you can get a U.S. Government issued coupon that covers most, if not all of the cost of these new set-top boxes before the transition on Friday June 12th, 2009.

While you probably know all about the Digital Televison transition, chances are you have family members or friends who still aren’t ready, even if they’ve already heard. So the Department of Commerce (partnering with the CEA) consulted with myself, as part of a group of American University students, to get the word out to young people so that we could help those we know prepare for the transition. Using a YouTube video contest, our objective was to strategically reach out to this audience so that they would be ready to help others get equipped in time before the transition. With our sights set on the original February 17th transition date, we were ready to use this contest to target these technology-connecting audiences.

Of course creating buzz with a YouTube contest takes more an announcement and a prize; although our partners had produced an original video and sent out press releases, the contest did not gain traction (or stand out from dozens of others competing on YouTube at any time). So my consulting group needed to do a little more: we created a social media presence for the contest on Facebook and used word-of-mouth marketing to engage potential entrants on YouTube.
We even wrote a script and shot a short video (watch above) mock-entry into the contest to show just how easy it could be to make a qualifying entry. These tactics helped to spur 12 contest entries, 5 videos of which were deemed finalists for the public to vote on the winning entry. More importantly the contest created discussions, both online and offline by contest participants and viewers, about the DTV transition within this target audience.

Ultimately it’s hard for any group to take credit among the myriad of messages supporting the switch, but I’d like to think our tactics contributed an outreach to a key public whose unique role might make the difference. Of course we’ll find out for sure on Friday June 12, 2009 just how many American’s television sets will be left in static.

Picking up on my friend Gabe Bullard’s tradition (in turn borrowed from the Thomas Crone), here’s a monthly list of 7 things I’m enjoying these days. There is no particular order to the list, just a chance to pass along some genuinely worthwhile ideas and trends that wouldn’t warrant a blog post otherwise

Blog: Dork Yearbook.  This is why Tumblr is great;  Like Mortified, only geekier.  I could probably submit my own pics here, except I didn’t have a computer until I was 9 years old.  Just because a good blog doesn’t fit into a professional website’s blogroll doesn’t mean it need remain my guilty pleasure.

Meme: #sillyhats .  It started out innocently enough when @laurenreid photoshopped a whimsical hat on top of @gbullard’s profile pic.  At some point, we’re not sure when, it became a meme of sorts.  You’re more than welcome to join in of course, with the right hashtag.

Music: Cover songs.  All my favorite musicians are making cover songs (or having their songs covered). Nothing new there, except there seems to be a dearth lately, or at least I finally have taken an interest.  This started well before Beck/Sonic Youth’s split-single covering each other’s songs.  Why re-invent the wheel when you can acknowledge your influences directly.

Social Network: FourSquare. Before I moved to DC I couldn’t really use Dodgeball, now resurrected as FourSqaure.  So I was skeptical about the usefulness of the network, versus my beloved Brightkite. Something about the gaming aspect, earning badges like Mayor of local establishments, makes this incredibly addictive.  Try the iPhone app, connect with Twitter, and see you around town!

Theory: Social Marketing. Contrary to the online connotations of it’s name, social marketing does not describe social media marketing.  Applying marketing techniques to positively change behaviors that benefit the public good has impressed me with it’s results. And it’s not Plato’s Noble Lie.

Video: Let Me Twitter That. As if my obsession with all things Twitter weren’t enough, this Andy Milonakis video has become something like a theme song. The video itself is ironic, original, and full of in-jokes that Twitterati will recognize immediately.

Word Game: Scrabble. I never thought I’d give this Hasbro classic a try after the Scrabulous fallout. But now that I can play with friends on Facebook, and make plays on my iPhone, this game is hard to put away.

If you’ve been wondering what’s been keeping me from updating the blog lately, there need no be any mystery: this is the home stretch of final projects for school. Not the least of which is my masters degree Capstone Thesis paper.

Any one of these projects could warrant a blog post of it’s own, and I will be glad to share more about them after each is completed.  In a meantime, here’s a little insight into what a Graduate student in communications can accomplish.

• Practicum: My team has been building a long-term strategic communications plan for Living Classrooms, a non-profit that serves communities in the DC-metro area with hands-on environmental education and workforce development; they call it “Learning By Doing”.  This group does amazing work with young people who live in underprivileged areas, but one of the drawbacks of their success is having so many diverse programs it is difficult for newsmedia to make a clear focused story about what it is they do exactly.
  One solution I have contributed, which fits the group’s communication strategy, is by making a Blog and Twitter for them to get the word out. I’ll cue you in on how we plan to help a non-profit grow as donors face a recession soon.
• Management: We’ve been given a mock assignment in this class, responding to an RFP from the American Red Cross.  Our group has been designing a complete response, including plans for a multi-city festival and a localization model for more than 700 chapters of the Red Cross.  We’ll be competing with another group for the contract in an upcoming presentation, which I’ll try to share here.
• Social Marketing: Diabetes is not “Your Grandparent’s disease” any longer; it increasingly impacts younger people.  I’ve conducted an environmental scan of the issue, and conducted original primary research through in-depth interviews with students.  From there we’ve designed a comprehensive social marketing campaign, that doesn’t just change attitudes but people’s behaviors as well.  I’ve already built a mock-up of the online network presence, which is key to our strategy.
• Seminar/Capstone: My thesis involves original research of a scholarly nature, but with real-world application to the problem of energy conservation.  Although I am exploring an academic subject, exploring through case study and interviews how individuals are motivated to change their behaviors, I am writing it so that anyone can understand the issue.  Hopefully my research will help me build the soapbox I need to come out of my degree with specialization in opinion leaders, agenda setting, and marketing as they apply  to the salient public issues that brought me into PR.

I’ll be sure to tell you a little more about what I’ve learned… just as soon as I finish working through them of course.  Stay tuned.

Here’s a few updates to previous posts, and some news on my professional life:

• The Twitter Internship is soon to become simply An Internship.  Last week I was happy to join New Media Strategies as their intern, starting in May 2009. I’m looking forward to learning more about how they use new media tools, including Twitter where I got their attention to begin with, to participate in online communities where they promote and protect brands for their clients.  I think we’ll be a good fit together since we share the same inclination to try new online tools for ourselves so that we can understand any opportunities they offer for those we represent.
• I have signed up for summer semester at American University.  The two last classes of my Graduate degree in Public Communication will be Crisis and Political Communications.  And since they take place in the evening, it shouldn’t be any trouble for my internship.
• Rock the Vote, which I had previously applied for an internship, has begun to offer a fellowship program for young students like myself.  This largely self-defined fellowship encourages individual innovation using social media to reach young people and engage them in civics.  Although I probably will not be able to become part of their program because of my internship responsibilities, I hope to join their team and help out via Telecommuting over the course of their campaign.  Ask me or tweet Chris Kennedy for an invitation if you’re interested in joining the program.
• To date I was able to raise $195 from 7 donors for People to People on Facebook.  Although this did not reach my goal, it surpassed my expectations, and has raised the bar for non-profits like PTP online.  I am proud of what I could contribute using these social media tools as an individual, and look forward to helping them in the future.

While some of these updates might warrant a post of their own, thanks for letting me be a little self-indulgent.  If you’re dying to keep up on the latest as it happens, why not join me on Twitter already? After all, it did help me get this internship, etc…

Before I turn 24 years old on March 15th, I have been asking my friends to donate $24 to a favorite non-profit of mine, People to People International.  So imagine my surprise when friends from Facebook, some of whom I hadn’t seen in years, donated the suggested amount without having ever heard of this charity before.

Using the Causes application of Facebook can be a great source of new donations for a non-profit like People to People, a Student Ambassador program I took part in for six years (age 13-18).  I was prompted by the Causes application to create a Birthday Wish for one of my favorite causes I had joined as a group member.  After selecting PTP I was provided with tools to promote my birthday wish automatically, including: pre-written status updates, posts to the wall, and private messages to send to friends asking them to give to your Birthday Wish.

Although I was impressed with the ability to utilize the power of my social network on Facebook to gain support behind this cause, I remained skeptical that anyone would give such a large donation for my birthday.  On my Birthday Wish page, I decided to put my money where my mouth was by donating $24 of my own money towards the $240 goal ($24 x 10 donors) I had set.  So naturally I was surprise when one of my Facebook friends from high school has donated the next morning.

So far I have raised at least $96 from 3 people for People to People, who took notice of the new donations almost immediately.  They like me had become excited about the new possibilities for small donors that the Causes application had enabled with the Birthday Wish function.  I was happy to discuss some of the social media tools they had at their disposal.  They also gave me a short interview that promoted others to try using these tools on Facebook.

Although many people are quick to dismiss social media as merely a trend that is difficult to measure actual results, I think this small effort by an individual shows its potential when this communication tool is used appropriately.  In this case the Birthday Wish was more effective than merely randomly asking my friends for donations; it used an effective appeal rather than posting just another link to ignore.  For non-profit organizations, social media like the Causes function in Facebook offers exciting possibilities by connecting the power individual networks with an audience of small donors that were previously much more difficult to reach.  The power of interpersonal communications is meeting the reach of public communications over the internet.

Follow me on Facebook, or learn more about People to People International.