Not that surprising, since tech firms have always been some of the earlier companies to leverage new media. Because new media people are naturally early adopters of technology, and tend to share their views on virtually everything, this makes a lot of sense.

Microsoft's inability to control the discussion on Vista shows a real failure of them to join the social marketing discussion. Their latest attempt Mojave just exemplifies that. At first I thought it sounded like an interesting idea, however watching the videos I am unimpressed. The users all seem low tech, they are being walked through instead of actually playing around with the operating system. This just comes off as a heavy handed rehash of the "coke challenge".

Interesting site, that uses a google mashup to create a mapped news and blogging service. As location based services on cell phones become more widespread groups that are creating geo-located content are going to be sought out. The lead on this site is wrote "Ghost Maps" and I think that this is definitely a site to watch.

BermanBraun will develop and maintain an entertainment-focused Web site — the company calls it a “destination” site — within the MSN portal. The new site, as yet unnamed, is scheduled to make its debut in early 2009. It will blend advertising with entertainment news, games and original video programming.

This is the second part of an interview with Jim Calhoun, CEO of Popular Media. We are already doing a lot of this for our clients. There are some good benchmarks in here from some of his case studies.