Common Paradox Tech Blog

Chris Allison is a social media strategist at NeboWeb, where he helps clients make the most of the social web. You can follow him on Twitter as the voice behind @Neboweb.

As social media marketing becomes more widely practiced, the questions of the day are less frequently focused on the benefits of social media and more often focused on its implementation. Justifying social media to superiors is no longer the marketer’s biggest challenge.

Instead, marketers are being challenged not on the potential benefits, of which there is ample evidence, but rather on how to get those benefits. Where to start?

Social Media as a Catalyst

With this challenge in mind, it’s vital to understand that social media is neither the end nor the beginning of any marketing effort. Rather, social media is a catalyst that works most effectively when it is finely woven into the fabric of a brand’s other activity.

When putting together a puzzle, it helps to take a look at the big picture on the front of the box. Likewise, when putting together a social media strategy it’s necessary to zoom out a little and examine how social media will fit into the context of your other business activities. Below are four pieces of the puzzle that brands can mesh with social media to maximize results.

1. Cause Marketing

The socialization of the web has made it evident that brands that want to succeed online must feel and act like humans, not like desperate, distant corporations. Accordingly, some social media marketers have taken on the role of teaching brands how to be human: don’t say stupid things, don’t feed the trolls, and don’t dominate the conversation – pretty fundamental stuff that somehow got lost during the incorporation process.

However, guidelines for not screwing up aren’t enough for brands to really benefit from social media. Until you bring something interesting to the table — something that inspires passion, laughter, or curiosity — nobody will care if you have a Twitter account.

One of the most effective, simple ways to get people to care about what you’re doing is to do something worth caring about: get behind a cause. Brands have been benefiting from cause marketing for a long time, but the catalytic nature of social media has brought three additional benefits to the cause marketing table:

Access to increased publicity

The ability to be a vocal activist instead of a silent philanthropist by joining conversations

The ability to bring customers into the support process

Pepsi is one of the best examples of a brand that has recently seized the opportunity to leverage a mix of social media and cause marketing. Their Refresh Everything project incorporates votes from users to decide where Pepsi will donate their funds as well as a variety of other simple social media features: single sign-on, a Facebook Fan Page, and a blog.

By involving users with a voting process, Pepsi has effectively done three things. First, instead of just doing good themselves, they’ve helped their customers do good, which helps establish a very positive brand association. They have also created a situation that will compel users to share with their friends (in order to accrue votes for the cause of their choice). Finally, they have built a feedback mechanism that will ensure the causes they support are also the most popular among their customers (which is great PR).

Brands can benefit greatly from integrating social media with cause marketing, and they can learn a lot about how to get started from the tactics that Pepsi has used.

Disclosure: Pepsi sponsored Mashable’s NextUp NYC: The Future Journalist event.

2. The Offline World

Isolating the impact of social media to the web is an easy mistake to make. It seems natural enough to meet online goals with online activity, but the tangible world of physical objects, locations, and events can often provide a compelling medium to drive fans to engage with you online, or vice versa, you can use your social media efforts to drive activity to guerrilla marketing events like Red Bull’s stash, or simply to brick and mortar stores.

Integrating your social media efforts with real products, store locations, or activities is an important way to acknowledge that you care about the complete customer experience, and that you’re not just in the social media space because it’s popular.

Some of the most successful campaigns, such as Burger King’s Whopper Sacrifice, have been focused on driving the purchase of offline products. Similarly, customer support profiles like Comcast Cares would be much less successful if they didn’t have the power to influence real offline change by working with customer support representatives that can help customers on location.

On the surface, social media may look like a simple set of social networks that people use to communicate, but when marketers look deeper they find that it presents a whole new venue for empowering all of their existing services, online as well as off.

3. Media Coverage

Though citizen journalism and user generated content have proven to be extremely powerful (Iran’s election crisis, Barack Obama’s massive online get out the vote efforts, etc.), it is important to remember that brands can still benefit enormously from traditional media coverage.

When it comes to social media, or any marketing for that matter, brands must find ways to leverage all of their assets in the same direction. Just like the offline world can easily be used for online gain, so too can traditional media be leveraged in the new media space.

Amit Gupta, founder of several wonderful startups like Photojojo and Jelly, sheds some light on how his businesses have benefited from traditional coverage:

Mainstream press is harder to get, but still drives significant awareness, especially among ‘everyday’ people who aren’t spending all day on the internet. And the names of old media carry

significant cache, enough to drive double-digit increases in conversion rates simple because of the credibility their names lend.

I exchanged e-mails with Amit and he was kind of enough to lend some extended insight on what to expect from traditional media. TV, web, and radio are all able to generate fast, measurable results. With these mediums, people are either interested, or they aren’t. There are comparatively few lagging responses. Newspapers and magazines on the other hand, while carrying significant credibility, produce results that are harder to measure because their content is often read over days, weeks, or even months.

The ultimate success of a social media strategy depends on your ability to recognize problems and seize opportunities to solve them. When considering the needs of your campaign, whether it’s brand equity or an immediate spike in interest, consider traditional media as another tool in your toolbox that could meet those needs. However, remember that part of your strategy should involve doing, saying, or making something interesting and worth talking about. If you don’t do that, no amount of good press can save you.

4. Technology

Lastly, your social media strategy is inherently paired with technology. Without technology, social media cannot exist. However, technology’s role in creating a social media strategy often goes understated.

At SoCon10, a social media conference in Atlanta, Carol Kruse (head of interactive marketing at Coke) described the pain her team went through creating a Facebook application, only to find two months later that changes in Facebook’s design would require Coke to restructure the application – a maintenance cost that hadn’t been anticipated. Having a plan in place for making technological changes on the fly is an important ingredient in the fast-paced social media world.

But technology is more than just a potential cost that bloats social media campaigns; it’s also the life that fuels them. Applications like the recently launched MySpace Fan Video are powered by collaboration between experienced creatives and programmers, not just one or the other. Thus, perhaps the most important synergy to be formed by any company delving into social media is one between their technology team, internal or external, and their marketing team driving the strategy.

Conclusion

Synergy is the name of the social media game. Whether you’re coming from a small company or a well-known brand, starting as far back as possible, zooming out and staring at the big picture, is crucial to creating a strategy that makes sense.

These are four of the most important pieces to the social media puzzle. If you can think of more or have something to add to these listed, please leave a note in the comments.

More business resources from Mashable:

- 5 Ways to Avoid Sabotaging Your Personal Brand Online

- 4 Elements of a Successful Business Web Presence

- HOW TO: Implement a Social Media Business Strategy

- HOW TO: Choose a News Reader for Keeping Tabs on Your Industry

- HOW TO: Measure Social Media ROI

- HOW TO: Use Social Media to Connect with Other Entrepreneurs

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, TommL

Reviews: Facebook, Iran , Mashable, Twitter, iStockphoto

Tags: cause marketing, List, Lists, mainstream media, MARKETING, PUBLIC RELATIONS, social media, technology

In an age of user-generated content, the most viral videos are not made by the users, just passed around by them. Below you will find a list of the top ten viral videos of 2009, as tracked by Visible Measures, which counts not only plays on YouTube but also video shared across social networks like MySpace as well as MTV networks and Viacom. The list of the most watched internet videos 2009 below are nearly all music videos, with the exception of the No. 1 viral video, which is the trailer for the movie Twilight Saga: New Moon.  Visible Measures estimates that trailer has been watched more than 592 million times.

All the other videos in the top ten are music videos such as the one for Beyonce’s song “Single Ladies” (No. 2), and thus are also essentially advertisements for mainstream media content.  Even the two Michael Jackson music videos on this year’s list (“Thriller” and “Beat It”) no doubt helped sales of the deceased singer’s albums.  The one “amateur” video is Susan Boyle’s heartwarming American Idol performance, but the whole point of that show is to elevate amateur singers to mainstream status so I am not sure that counts. (Full list after the jump).

Today marks the launch of a new premium content portal experience, with Universal Music and Google teaming up on the VEVO service. Like Hulu before it, VEVO is another significant marker in the “premium,” a.k.a. “produced by professionals,” content space, this time specifically for music videos. Perhaps its closest analogue is Myspace Music Videos, another high-profile content collection from major labels backed by an already popular social network.

With the recent news that VEVO would integrate Last.fm, it’s clear that major mainstream media companies are finally jumping in full swing to bring their content online. It took a lot of time, love and tenderness for major labels and studios to get on board with the iTunes digital download model — and remember that when that first happened everything was slathered in digital rights management (DRM). It’s taken even longer for mainstream media to warm up to the idea of DRM-free MP3s and now, streaming content.

Disintermediating the Media

There’s a great word to describe what’s been happening to traditional media as the Internet increasingly becomes the go-to place to find cool content: disintermediation. Whereas once the pipes that delivered content were almost wholly owned and locked down by a handful of major media interests in almost every corner (music, film, television, books), now the traditional landscape is being upended by a plethora of new sources to find great stuff produced in large part by unknown creators.

On the flip side of that process, mainstream media companies are picking up on increasingly fragmented audiences and realizing they need to get their content online and in front of the eyeballs they once reached elsewhere. At the same time, companies like Google who invested in user-generated content sites like YouTube early on are realizing the value of “premium” content to increase revenue and attract even more audience share.

Enter premium content destination sites like Hulu, Myspace Music Videos and now, VEVO. It’s a sensible attempt on the part of Google to further one of the bigger problems it’s been trying to solve for the past few years: fully realize the revenue potential of YouTube. It’s also an acknowledgement on the part of the megalithic companies who own vast media verticals that even if the revenue model isn’t entirely on par with legacy distribution and licensing channels, they simply have to make some sort of play online and, if nothing else, figure it all out as they go along. And increasingly, they’re banding together in unprecedented partnerships to do it.

Business Models: Ads, Freemium and Subscription

VEVO, like Hulu and MySpace Music Videos, is embracing a free to stream, advertising-supported model. It’s the model YouTube itself has used since its beginnings and seems committed to optimizing and “make it work.” Still, it’s not the only model in town; both freemium and subscription models seem to be making their own headway in the premium content space as well.

Take the recent launch of MOG All Access as an example of subscription-style plays. Right now the $5-a-month service only covers all-you-can-eat streaming via the Web, but mobile support is promised to arrive very soon. Spotify is a currently Europe-only equivalent experiment in subscription music services, and aims to launch in the U.S. whenever it too can convince the labels to get on board.

In the freemium music realm we have Pandora with its Pandora One service ($3 a month for unlimited streaming after you hit your 40 hours of free listening), and Last.fm, whose $3 a month fee nets you uninterrupted listening (the free version will periodically play video ads), ad-free site services, a view of recent profile visitors and a special demarcation on your avatar as a subscriber.

Assuming the larger content portals can make complete advertising support work out (which still appears to be an open question), there seems to be no reason to imagine all three models couldn’t co-exist indefinitely. After all, lunch buffets haven’t put entrees out of business. Consumers approach music (and other forms of content) from different perspectives and levels of interest. If you only buy a few albums a year, you’ll probably be satisfied with an iTunes-style “own your collection” model and/or the occasional streaming session. If you’re a music buff who loves staying on top of every new release in your favorite genres, then shelling out a few bucks a month for a great streaming and playlisting experience starts to sound rather attractive.

Now that VEVO is live (and seems to be getting hit hard with traffic — it’s actually been up again, down again since it first went live), let us know your impressions of the new service once you can successfully access it. Overall, what are your favorite content sites and services in the online music sphere?

Reviews: Google, Hulu, Last.fm, Pandora, Spotify, YouTube

Tags: Google, music, online music, premium content, universal music, vevo, youtube

Ned Desmond has gone fishin’ and he wants you to Go FISHn too. Today, Desmond launched a fishing site for the Facebook age. You can sign in with your Facebook ID, share fishing stories and photos with your friends, ask questions to fishing pros and the community, and review all the gear in your tackle box.

Go FISHn is an enthusiast site for people who love to fish—and there’s an estimated 30 million recreational anglers in the U.S. alone who spend about $45 billion a year on gear, supplies, and trips. “Nobody has done a good job in enthusiast sites,” says Desmond, who is the former president of Time Interactive and was once my boss (we launched a magazine together).

There are other social networks for fishermen such as Angling Masters, Fishing Files, and the Fishing Network where people can share fish tales and photos. But they seem to be modeled more after MySpace than Facebook. Go FISHn isn’t trying to create a new social network. “People fish for the challenge, but also for the companionship,” says Desmond. Go FISHn starts out by connecting you to your fishing buddies on Facebook (and, yes, it has a Facebook Fan page as well).

This post is part of Mashable’s Fab Five series with Jalen Rose, which highlights trends in the social media space. Jalen Rose is a former 13-year NBA star and current ESPN basketball analyst but may be best known for being a member of the famous University of Michigan Fab Five.

With 2009 coming to an end, I thought I would take a look at some of the year’s best sports moments in social media. This week, I’m talking about YouTube videos. Each of the following sports moments was captured on video and uploaded to YouTube for all of the world to see. As a result, millions of people have watched these videos this year. So, without further ado, here are my fab five YouTube sports videos of 2009.

1. Trick Shot Mastery

The only thing missing is the whistling from the Harlem Globetrotters’ theme song! This took a tremendous amount of practice, no doubt. Amazing shot after amazing shot with style, flair, and oustanding range! Shaq actually challenged this young fellow to a game of H-O-R-S-E after seeing this video.

2. Vijay Singh Hole in One

I’m no golfer but I wouldn’t suggest trying to emulate this shot. I don’t think golf balls are made to skip off water. Either way, Singh managed to pull off one of the craziest sports moments of the year, and perhaps one of the craziest golf shots of all time.

3. Hardest Hitting 6 Year Old

This youngster puts the “pop” in Pop Warner football! He blows up plays like he was shot out of a cannon. Watch out for this future all-pro in the making — he’s NFL bound!

4. Women’s Soccer: New Mexico’s Elizabeth Lambert

I certainly don’t support the kind of behavior exhibited by the young lady in this video. However, the footage of New Mexico’s Elizabeth Lambert punching, tripping, and pulling the hair of her opponents is a video that has swept across YouTube (and mainstream media) in the last month. Whether I support her actions or not, I have to admit that this video was one of the most memorable sports moments of 2009.

5. Usain Bolt Sets World Record

Usain Bolt is a machine. This was one of the most spectacular moments in all of sports this year, and maybe ever. Racing against a group of world-class sprinters, Bolt dominated his “competition” and set a new world record in the process.

Honorable mentions: Lebron’s Playoff Buzzer Beater, World’s Longest Basketball Shot, Manu vs. Bat, Crazy Georgia U. Fan

It was hard to narrow down my list to just five, and I know I missed some great sports moments from this past year. Which video that I did not include most deserves to be there? Add your picks in the comments.

More sports resources from Mashable:

- 5 Athletes Who Would Have Been Social Media Mavens

- 5 Social Media Athletes to be Thankful For

- How the NBA is Using Social Media

- Sports and Social Media: Where Opportunity and Fear Collide

- Football Tweets: 20 Must-Follow NFL Players on Twitter

Reviews: YouTube

Tags: fab five, jalen rose, List, Lists, social media, sports, videos, youtube

2009 was a year of ups and downs for Yahoo search. While we wait for the Yahoo/Microsoft search deal to take effect, we know that Yahoo still holds firm as the number two search site, with 18.8% market share (to Google’s 64.9%) according to October data from comScore.

Interestingly enough, Yahoo has just followed Microsoft’s lead and released their top search data for 2009. They’ve just published their top 10 overall searches, as well as a top lists across a number of different categories like mobile, the economy, and Obama-specific searches.

While Yahoo top searches definitely depict some hot memes and internet sensations for 2009 — think Michael Jackson, Megan Fox, Twilight, and Cash for Clunkers — Twitter is surprisingly absent from all of the top 10 lists. Clearly, Yahoo searchers are a very different bunch when it comes to their curiosity around the micro medium that made such a macro impact on pop culture and mainstream media this year.

The Top 10 Searches

Top 10 Overall Searches for 2009

1. Michael Jackson

2. Twilight

3. WWE

4. Megan Fox

5. Britney Spears

6. Naruto

7. American Idol

8. Kim Kardashian

9. NASCAR

10. Runescape

Top 10 Mobile Searches for 2009

1. Megan Fox

2. Mobile Games

3. Michael Jackson

4. Movies

5. Rihanna

6. Mail

7. Lady Gaga

8. NFL

9. Ringtones

10. iPhone

Top 10 Economy-Related Searches for 2009

1. Coupons

2. Unemployment

3. Stimulus Plan

4. Cash for Clunkers

5. Student Loans

6. IRS Refund

7. Foreclosures

8. Government Jobs

9. Bernard Madoff

10. Health Care Bill

Top Obama Searches for 2009

1. Obama Inauguration

2. Obama Biography

3. Obama Speech

4. Obama Stimulus Plan

5. Obama Family

6. Obama Health Care Reform

7. Obama Approval Ratings

8. Obama Facebook

9. Obama Overseas (a roundup of his numerous travels)

10. Obama Dramas (a roundup of controversies)

Top 10 Celebrity Farewell Searches for 2009

1. Michael Jackson

2. Farrah Fawcett

3. Patrick Swayze

4. Natasha Richardson

5. Jett Travolta

6. Billy Mays

7. David Carradine

8. Steve McNair

9. Jade Goody

10. Ted Kennedy

Top 10 Sudden-Fame Searches for 2009

1. Jon & Kate Gosselin

2. Erin Andrews

3. Susan Boyle

4. Kris Allen & Adam Lambert

5. Nadya Suleman

6. Carrie Prejean

7. Governor Mark Sanford

8. Portuguese Water Dog

9. Falcon Heene

10. Sonia Sotomayor

Mobile Becoming Mainstream

The only social media related search to crack any of Yahoo’s top 10 lists is “Obama Facebook,” which does point to a public curiosity about politics and social media. But, while “iPhone” and a number searches related to people who fascinated the web, like Susan Boyle and Balloon Boy, Falcon Heene, made their marks in terms of search, social media doesn’t appear to have prominently factored into the search equation for Yahoos.

It’s probably fair to conclude that Yahoo searchers are more mainstream, less interested in Twitter, and more curious about pop culture, than Bing searchers.

One interesting thing to pay attention to, however, are the Yahoo mobile searches for 2009. A careful look at this category paints a very compelling picture for the rise of the mobile web and its adoption by mainstream users. There is a definite overlap in popular searches for the web and mobile, which supports findings and predictions that the mobile web is taking over the world. Searches also highlight a growing mobile demand for consuming multimedia content, especially games and entertainment, on mobile devices.

Reviews: Bing, Twitter, twilight

Tags: 2009, Search Data, Yahoo Search

The year is 1963. It’s November. At 1:40 PM ET, CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite comes on the air. “In Dallas, Texas, three shots were fired at President Kennedy’s motorcade in downtown Dallas. The first reports say that President Kennedy has been seriously wounded by this shooting.” Rapidly, everyone in America descends upon the closest television set to tune in.

Thankfully, we have not yet had a tragedy of that magnitude in the age of the realtime web. But we will. It’s just a matter of time.

If it were to happen today, most people would still turn to their TV sets to get the most up-to-date information on such an event. We saw that on September 11, 2001. But a large number of people would also now turn to the web. And there they would likely find the information they were looking for faster than those watching on television. We’ve seen it time and time again recently.

Limiting the time it takes to reach the desktop from the moment the PC is turned on (no pun intended)  may not be the holy grail of personal computing but it is something that merits attention. Google is just not chasing distant dreams in the “cloud” with its Chrome OS. It is also trying to address – or exploit – the growing mass resentment of slow boot times. In fact, the focal point of most reports about Google’s operating system in the mainstream media has been its ability to boot in just 7 seconds.  Not that tech-savvy people don’t like quick boot times, but this is wonderful publicity as it is simple enough to stoke the curiosity of tech greenhorns, the majority.

A bloke only identified by his Twitter id “Hexxeh” was able to boot Chromium OS (open source  version of Chrome OS) natively from a USB key. He has uploaded the image file of the operating system so others can burn it to a USB Key and begin toying with Chromium themselves. According to our friends over at Engadget, the USB version takes less time to boot than its virtualized counterpart. It took them few seconds to hit the ground running on a Dell Mini 9. Hexxeh has created a website for distributing the bootable image besides a simple set of  instructions for Windows, Mac, and Linux users.

Many of you know that we’re unveiling the Beta version of Boxee in a few short weeks (Dec. 7th to be specific) – and we’re hard at work to get the Beta ready for you.  What you might not know is that we’ve invited some very special people to join us to talk about their [...]

It’s not too often that legacy media learns a new mass communication tool along with its audience. But that’s exactly what’s going on now because of Google Wave. Although it’s still invitation only and in preview, the real-time wiki collaboration platform is being used by some media companies for community building, real-time discussion, crowdsourcing, collaboration both inside and outside the newsroom, and for cross publishing content.

Google Wave may seem familiar to older users of the Internet, who have been using the parts that make up the whole of the platform for years. Wave, however, brings those pieces together cohesively to allow users to share photos, embed videos, and converge other Google applications such as Google Maps and Google Calendar to create customized blocks of user-editable content on the fly. Here are four ways that newsrooms are using Wave.

Using Waves to Foster Engagement

Using Google Wave allows newsrooms to reach out to their audiences and invite their active participation on news stories. In the process, waves become a vehicle to create an engaged local community who can also play a role in the newsroom. That may redefine how news is gathered, reported and presented to its audience, blurring the boundary between newsroom and community bulletin board.

Chicago Tribune’s RedEye blog started its first public wave on November 10, and since then it has attracted more than 300 blips. Following that success, Stephanie Yiu, RedEye’s web editor, and Scott Kleinberg, senior editor of digital and print, now lead a half-hour public wave session every day.

“It’s a lot more live than Twitter because it’s like you can see people typing and everybody gets to know each other,” she told me. “It’s really about connecting with our readers on a new platform. We’re learning with our readers and moving forward together.”

RedEye sends out tweets promoting each wave with a link asking Twitter followers (those that have access to Google Wave) to join the conversation. Yiu told me the daily wave is a discussion about RedEye’s cover story. During the last 10 minutes they ask participants for suggestions on how to make the wave better.

What makes Google Wave so useful is the community building aspect, according to Yiu. “The great thing is once it ends at 11 o’clock, it keeps on going. They keep on talking,” she said. Yiu is hoping it will be a cool way to get feedback, such as movie reviews, from their readers that that they can also run in the RedEye print product, which is something they’re already doing with Twitter.

Using Waves As ‘Town Squares’

Robert Quigley, social media editor at the Austin American-Statesman, has started two public waves so far. “People are enthusiastic and they want to talk about news. I was surprised how much discussion there was about the news,” he said.

However, said Quigley, the challenge right now is keeping public waves on topic. If they get more than 50 blips discussion grinds to a halt, reported Quigley. He added that in order for Google Wave to work during a news event, there needs to be the ability to moderate and or easily spin something into another wave and link to it in the first wave to keep it on topic. He stressed Google Wave is in its early stages and in preview, but there’s definitely potential with it, so these are issues that could be addressed in the future.

“We’ve been looking for years for collaboration with the public in a meaningful way and this could be the tool,” he said.

Quigley is eager to keep pushing the envelope with Google Wave to see what it possible. He told me, for example, that he wants to try a participant’s suggestion to embed a Google Calendar with links to waves listed within it so users can follow that calendar with the wave schedule. He also hopes to try the map gadget the next time Austin gets hit with an ice storm. He said he would embed a map into a Google Wave and then people could report conditions at their house. Users could edit the map as weather conditions change.

Google Wave has the potential to become a virtual “town square,” where otherwise separate gadgets applied to content created by journalists and enhanced by the wave’s users can be used to provide an accurate, detailed description of what’s happening locally.

Wave as a Newsroom Content Planning Tool

Chris Taylor, online editor at TBO.com, is also the online breaking news editor in charge of planning content for his converged newsroom (which includes the Tampa Tribune, WFLA-TV and TBO.com). Each night he emails a content budget to the deadline team, but he is now also using a daily wave that others in the newsroom can add to, edit, etc. Taylor said there are about 15 people on this wave and he has requested more invites from Google to get more people involved.

The daily wave accounts for all the content the newsroom knows is coming or is chasing down. There are about 40 stories in a wave and each story gets a paragraph and after each story is a blip. “Anything we can do in a newsroom of this size [to help] the content we produce to keep from falling through the cracks is a plus,” Taylor said.

When Taylor comes into work in the morning he can immediately get caught up on the status of all items in the newsroom budget by checking the wave. He said reviewing the wave at his desk takes one-tenth the time of having meetings.

“I think using it for this will get people comfortable with wave, which is my ultimate goal,” he said. “As we get more comfortable with it, we’ll be able to be where our audience is.”

Turning Blog Posts Into Public Waves

Andrew Nystrom, senior producer of social media and emerging platforms at the Los Angeles Times, collaborated with social media reporter Mark Milian on the blog post “How Google Wave Could Transform Journalism” that ran on the newspaper’s web site a couple of months ago.

Among some of the ideas listed in the post were: collaborative reporting, smarter story updates, live editing, discussing while reading, and a transparent writing process. Nystrom said in an email interview they’re looking at all the potential uses that Milian posited in the blog post. In a case of “eating his own dogfood,” so to speak, Milian even embedded the post as a wave and it has since received more than 350 blips.

“That experiment was definitely an eye-opener. My understanding of Wave has always been that it’s a valuable tool for small-team collaboration. So to see it succeed as a larger-scale crowdsourcing tool was unexpected to say the least,” Milian said by email. “People quickly swarmed the wave and provided a ton of really smart insights. Things we had never thought of.”

He added that they’ll definitely do more of this and that it’s just a matter of identifying which topics would benefit from collaboration.

“Ideally, every post would plug into wave because I love the inline commenting system. But I don’t want to flood the ocean,” according to Milian. “When we do another piece on Google Wave, or on something that begs for crowdsourcing, you will definitely see it in Wave.”

Reviews: Google, Google Maps, Google Wave, Twitter

Tags: Google Wave, journalism, List, Lists, mainstream media, media, News, trending, wave