WhatFinger


I have been digitally reborn

I should have known



I was having dinner with my son and his family at Mo’s, my favorite burger hangout. As we were talking, his youngest daughter, Olivia, was working the keyboard of an iPhone like a telex operator on speed. Olivia is 4.

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These are not genes she inherited from her grandfather. The world wasn’t always this way. I grew up listening to The Lone Ranger…on the radio. We shared our (dial) telephone line with an 80-year-old spinster who lived down the street and cleared her throat when she wanted to use the phone. The troubling part was, you never heard her pick up the line in the first place, and so didn’t know how long she had been listening in. Don’t misunderstand, I don’t pine for a return to those halcyon, pre-digital, days. While I considered applying for social security benefits as digitally disabled, it would not have been entirely honest. I have three websites, handle tsunamis of email from every corner of the globe and holster the meanest Blackberry West of the Pecos. So I thought I was, if not on the cutting edge, at least in the mainstream of digital denizens. I have actually sent a few tweets in my day and have the “TinyURL” icon on the address bar of my browser (and know that word is not a misspelling of a dog’s name). And then a friend of mine, in a random act of kindness, made me a Facebook page. But, since this is a confession, of sorts, I had never been to the page until a few days ago – a web-crime, I am informed, equivalent to dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. But I have been digitally reborn. A friend sent me a video on social media. And my son put me in touch with one of the top social media experts in the country. She is the director of social media for an international sales and marketing corporation that generates more income than the Galactic Confederacy’s inter-planetary drug trade. She kindly spoke with me for an hour or so, and I read the book she co-authored on the subject. The light finally went on. While I know this is a ghastly cliché to you of the Digital Generation, for those that have not yet dined on the full course digital dinner – there has been a massive paradigm shift in marketing, advertising and PR. Massive. Social media is essentially an umbrella term that embraces the use of text, voice, pictures, graphics, audio, video and other means of communicating with friends, potential business clients, or anyone for that matter. The use of these tools to communicate and connect with others is called social networking. World-class brands facilitating this digital communication revolution in the last few years include names like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. Normally, I would say, “Stop me, if you are familiar with this,” but, while you may be intimately familiar with social media, my guess is that you may not be aware of where I am going with this email. First, a few statistics for those who may not be entirely up to date on the size and extent of what has occurred. (Note: these figures are changing daily).
  • 3 out of 4 Americans use social media today.
  • 2/3rd of the global Internet population visits social media networks.
  • Social Media has overtaken pornography as the #1 activity on the Internet.
  • 1 out of every 8 couples married in the U.S. met via social media.
  • 96% of Millennials have joined a social network. (Millennials are those individuals that were born between 1977 and 1995. Also know as Generation Y, Echo Boomers, Gen I [Internet] and The Digital Generation.)
  • Whatever they are called, there are 80 million of them and they will soon account for the majority of Americans. And, I repeat, 96% of them have joined a social network..
  • But the fastest growing segment of the social media users is those over 35.
  • There are 200,000,000 Internet blogs.
  • Kindle books outsold paperback books last Christmas.
  • 24 of the 25 largest newspapers are experiencing record declines in circulation.
  • There are currently more than 500,000,000 Facebook users.
  • If Facebook were a country, it would be the third largest in the world, behind China and India.
  • 83% of all companies use Facebook.
  • 5 billion minutes ( 83 million hours) are spent on Facebook every day.
  • YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world.
  • There are 100,000,000 YouTube videos viewed every single day.
  • Twitter averages 50 million tweets per day.
  • Ashton Krutcher and Britney Spears have more Twitter followers than the entire populations of Sweden, Israel, Switzerland, Norway and Panama.
This universe may appear daunting at first glance, particularly if you are not fully established in an integrated social networking structure. But one of the reasons I am writing this, is to let you know that a company in Florida (Ricther 10.2 Media Group) has put together a service that does all of this for you with a product they call the Social Media Press Kit (SMPK). Their service immediately establishes your presence in the social media universe and drives business to your digital door. It works for businesses large and small and is cost effective even if you are a one man / woman home based business. The Social Media Press Kit they built for On Target Research instantly established our presence on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Slideshare, Flickr, Delicious, and others with the result that we received more reaches for our services in the last two weeks than we have received in decades. My wife, who is the International President of The Earth Organization, a non-profit environmental group, signed up and got immediate interest from several prospective donors when her SMPK was launched just a few days ago. You can see On Target’s Social Media Press Kit by clicking the “button” below. You can also find out more, by clicking the link of Darcey Hollingsworth, the company’s President, listed here. My strong suggestion would be for you to call Darcey and discuss your situation with him and see for yourself if this might be beneficial for you. It certainly was for me. All of Darcey’s contact data is in the link above. Be sure to tell him I sent you. If you do not have a social networking presence or what you have isn’t fully coordinated and providing you with new sales prospects, this is the service that will do that for you. I am honestly having a hard time keeping up with all the reaches. The service is refreshingly effective and shamefully inexpensive.


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Bruce Wiseman -- Bio and Archives

Bruce Wiseman is the co-founder of a company that oversees the business and financial affairs of some of the biggest names in Hollywood. He writes and speaks on matters of international finance and banking with particular attention to the oppressive activities of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Bruce has also been an advisor and consultant on the subject of market research, branding and positioning.


He writes a market research newsletter on market research and positioning for such publications as Government Technology and Hotel and Motel Management.


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