News Release: RIPPLE6 LAUNCHES FIRST INTEGRATED SOCIAL MEDIA BASED CONSUMER RESEARCH.

Social Insights™ enables marketers to tap into existing social networks for digital ethnographies.

Ripple6, www.ripple6.com, a leading provider of social media services to enterprise class marketers and web publishers, announced today the launch of Ripple6 Social Insights™, the first service that enables marketers to tap into online communities for consumer insights and conduct ongoing research within existing social networks.

With Social Insights, a company establishes a space that’s available across multiple community sites. Members of these sites are recruited to the space, where there are multiple levels of interaction and insight potential. Added learning is enabled by an overlay with Ripple Analytics, the industry’s only embedded word-of-mouth analytics tool.

Marketers are searching for a better way to gather consumer insights,” said Sang Kim, Ripple6 CEO. “Social networks create tremendous opportunities and we’re inviting marketers into them. This service is at the forefront of a transformation in research, from artificial settings to more natural and authentic environments presented by online communities.”

Each implementation of the program allows researchers and members to communicate in a private setting that’s integrated with the member’s social network. They can post and comment upon messages, photos and video, as well as with one-to-one private messages. In addition, a separate “Observation Room” is created for the research team to privately share opinions and suggest deeper probes for the moderator.

“This is a smaller, faster, and nimbler research model than the community interaction methods otherwise available today,” said Ned Hickok, President and Founder of N3 Research & Consulting. “It expedites the functions of a focus group and then extends their benefits by drawing on groups in their ordinary surroundings and using the technology to generate a deep understanding of what they’re saying and doing.”
Social Insights is a component of Ripple6’s enterprise social media platform, a set of solutions that help companies implement their business strategy in social media.The software utilizes the company’s patent-pending Ripple technology to develop consumer engagements and relationships, deploy social marketing and generate consumer insights.

Social Insights programs run for a minimum of one month, but can run much longer. The pilot program is available now, including the company’s MomJunction.com property and it taps into all of Gannett’s 80 local MomsLikeMe.com properties. For more information, visit http://www.ripple6.com/platform/socialInsights.aspx

MomsLikeMe Celebrates its 80th Site-a-versary!

This week our partner Gannett brought up their 80th site in the www.MomsLikeMe.com network.  This is the largest interconnected network of local social media sites in the world today.  We’ve actually finished the rollout with over 80 total sites!

What makes MomsLikeMe so uniquely successful is the that fact that all of the sites are interconnected.  For Users this means a single login at any site gives them access to all of the content on every one of the sites.  When a mom in Indianapolis finds something she likes in Baltimore, she can “Ripple” it to her group of friends back home. And her friends can share it with their friends and on, and on.

Now, because we’re dealing with moms and children and sensitive data, any user can limit use of their information, photos, etc.  As a matter of fact, a mom could decide that any info, could change from being public to being private, even after it’s been shared with others.  So we’ve given moms a great deal of control over their data, photos, and the things they write about and share online.

Control over your data, how it is used, who has access to it, especially after you have released the data publicly is exceptionally important when we create online social networks.  We’ve built it into the Ripple6 platform so our customers and most importantly the users, don’t need to worry about it.  Get in touch with us if you’d like to know how we do it.

So if you’re a mom or you have one, or know one, (and if you don’t fall into one of these categories let me know too) let your mom friends know about www.MomsLikeMe.com and have them check it out at one of these convenient locations:

MomsLikeMe.com has over 80 convenient locations to serve you:

• Alexandria, LA
• Appleton (Eastern Wisconsin)
• Asbury Park (Jersey Shore)
• Atlanta
• Baltimore
• Bangor, ME
• Binghamton, NY
• Brevard County, FL
• Boston
• Buffalo
• Burlington, VT
• Central Jersey
• Charlotte, NC
• Cherry Hill (South Jersey)
• Chicago
• Cincinnati
• Cleveland
• Columbia, SC
• Columbus, OH
• Dallas – Ft. Worth
• Des Moines
• Denver
• Detroit
• Elmira, NY (Twin Tiers)
• Ft. Collins, CO
• Ft. Myers, FL
• Grand Rapids, MI
• Great Falls, MT
• Greensboro, NC
• Greenville, SC
• Hartford – New Haven
• Hattiesburg, MS
• Honolulu
• Houston
• Indianapolis
• Ithaca, NY
• Jackson, MS
• Jackson, TN
• Lafayette, IN
• Lafayette, LA
• Lansing, MI
• Little Rock, AR
• Louisville, KY
• Los Angeles
• Macon (Middle Georgia)
• Miami – Ft. Lauderdale
• Minneapolis – St. Paul
• Monroe, LA
• Montgomery, AL
• Muncie, IN
• Nashville
• New York City
• Orlando
• Pensacola, FL
• Philadelphia
• Phoenix
• Pittsburgh
• Portland, ME
• Portland, OR
• Raleigh – Durham
• Reno, NV
• Rochester, NY
• Sacramento
• Salem, OR
• Salisbury, MD
• San Diego
• San Francisco (Bay Area)
• Seattle – Tacoma
• Shreveport – Bossier City
• Sioux Falls, SD
• Springfield, MO (Ozarks)
• St. Cloud (Central Minnesota)
• St. George (Southern Utah)
• St. Louis
• Tallahassee, FL
• Tampa Bay, FL
• Washington, DC
• Wausau (Central Wisconsin)
• Westchester (Hudson Valley)
• Wilmington, DE

Now I need to figure out what to get someone for a 80th site-a-versary.  Do you have any ideas?  Please let me know in the comments.

Photo credit:  Flickr, Uploaded on August 8, 2005 by ritchielee

Going Back to School

Going back to school for anyone can be an interesting experience, bringing up the memories and the emotions of those halcyon days when you were carefree. The days when you explored the furthest reaches of the mind, (and possibly the body ) The days when you considered the great questions of the human condition. You had deep discussions with your friends long into the early morning hours, arguing over the pros and cons of the greatest ideas of history.

But for most of us when you go back to your old school you never get a chance to revisit these old pursuits.  The pursuit of knowledge, the pursuit of looking for ways to improve the human condition, to better the world. That is, for most of us. But not for Sang Kim in his recent visit to Columbia.

Our CEO, Sang Kim, was invited back to his Alma Mater, Columbia University this week.  Sang had the distinct pleasure of explaining how social networking worked, and how Ripple6′s social network platform works in detail to a class full of students of Columbia’s prestigious School for International and Public Affairs (SIPA). And he had the pleasure of the return of one of those early collegiate discussions about how social networking can benefit people from the perspective of international affairs and public policy.

The discussion ranged far and wide covering topics about how Social Media in general, and specifically Ripple6′s platform could help to solve some of the world’s problems. And we now believe that Ripple6′s technology can help with some of these problems. So we’re going to do some work here at Ripple6 to see what we can do to make our technology a little more friendly for public policy and charitable organizations. We can’t discuss specifics now, it’s a bit too early. But we can tell you that we’ll do our small part to help make the world a little bit better.

What do you think Social Media can do to help the public and charitable sectors? Why don’t you let us know in the comments below?

Tweetup with Social Media Mavens at Ripple6

Last night Ripple6 was pleased to host our first Tweetup*, welcoming many of our friends and social media Mavens.  Unfortunately the Tweetup’s date was dictated by Geoff Livingston’s (of the famous Livingston Buzz blog and author of Now is Gone an excellent read I highly recommend) travel schedule so it conflicted with Rosh Hashanah and many of our friends weren’t able to make it.  (We’re going to try to arrange another Tweetup soon.)  But we were very pleased to have all of the wonderful friends and soon to become friends there.

*Tweetup: A Tweetup is a meeting of friends who know each other mainly on www.Twitter.com  It’s highly anticipated because we get to meet face-to-face after conversing electronically for months, or years.  Meeting people on Twitter and getting to know them is easy, meeting face to face is often much harder.

The evening’s entertainment was provided by Geoff Livingston and Greg Verdino who are brothers from different mothers.  If you don’t believe me just see for yourself with these timeless pictures:

We want to thank everyone who made it for making the Tweetup a great evening:

Geoff Livingston, CEO Livingston Communications, and blogger

Charlie Oliver, ArtofTalk.TV

Greg Verdino, Chief Strategy Officer, Crayon, and Blogger

Jane Quigley, Relationship Director, Crayon, Blogger, and Socializer

Kathryn Jones, Producer, Synchronis.TV

Liz Pullen, Blogger, spiral-scratch.blogspot.com

Matthew Caldecutt, Account Director, Trylon SMR

Nichelle Nickels, Bookkeeper, Small Business Blogger, Keeping Nickels

Phillip Robertson, Director of Marketing Communications, ooVoo

Rick Liebling, Global Director of Client Management, Taylor

And Chris, Ed, Katie, Rich and Zack from Ripple6.

We hope we’ll see you all again real soon.

Social Best Practices- An Ongoing Series

Welcome to the exciting new series on Social Best Practices brought to you by Ripple6!

OK, ok so it’s not really exciting, but it is interesting if you’re into blogging and social media or social marketing stuff.  So we’ll call it the new INTERESTING SERIES ON SOCIAL BEST PRACTICES.  We’ll be running

an ongoing series of articles on best practices in social media, social networking and social mark

eting.  Which is why we are calling it “Social Best Practices” rather than “social media best practices”  because that wouldn’t cover the marketing or networking aspects of the whole thing.  And since Ripple6 is as much about the marketing and networking as about the media, (what the heck does the term “social media” mean anyway?) we needed a broader name.  Thusly, we’ve settled upon Social Best Practices.

If you think you’ve got a better idea for the name of the series let us know via the comments below and we’ll give each suggestion careful consideration before rejecting it.  Because this is a social place and that’s what we’re looking for, social interaction.

So back to the subject at hand, Social Best Practices.  We’re going to try to cover every area of the Social online scene here and keep updating the series.   Including but not limited to the following areas:

Best Practices for:

• Business Blogging
• Managing Online Social Networks
• Branding Online
• Managing Online Social Groups
• Participating in Online Social Networks
• Online Social Marketing

Now one way that we could do this series is to write a bunch of articles.  We’d start by reading the best articles on the subject from a couple of dozen bloggers.  Then we’d have to rehash and boil down the stuff they wrote into some short pithy articles.  But there’s a problem with that, (no it’s not that it’s a lot of work- but there is that ) the problem is that many of these excellent writers have already done that.  So we’d be reducing the reductions, leaving you with almost nothing.

So we’ve decided not to do that.  Instead we’re going to give you a list of the best of the best articles on each subject with some comments on what’s in each.  Then you can get it straight from the horse’s (bloggers) mouth (keyboard).

Today’s series starts with the list of the Best Online Social Bloggers.  We’ll make our selections here and you can comment and add your considerations.

BEST ONLINE SOCIAL BLOGS

• Mashable The best and most prolific blog covering the entire social online arena.
• Chris Brogan Chris constantly writes excellent how to articles with the best links and ideas to make you a better social animal.
• Read Write Web Consistently one of the very best blogs discussing online social issues
  
• Web Strategy by Jeremiah Owyang Jeremiah has a firm grasp on the state of the industry and his insights are invaluable.
• AllTop’s list of Top Social Media Blogs This a cop-out because AllTop isn’t a blog, but rather an aggregator that collects feeds from the top blogs in many categories.  But it’s really hard to pick the best of the best, so we went with AllTop as a really good list.

What do you think?  What should be added to the list?  Let us know in the comments below…