We have asked some of our friends and colleagues who attended technology and new media conference South By Southwest Interactive (SxSWi) to share their highlights and takeaways from the conference, which wrapped up earlier this week.

Today we share the second part (of four) by guest correspondent Susan Bratton:

Blogging and Reputation Tracking:

Blogging was a core conversation with Rohit Bhargava, Henry Jenkins and Dave Taylor, who all consider it tremendously important in the corporate social sphere.

Dave’s tips on how to stay current in the blogosphere are particularly helpful:

• First, he uses an online reputation keyword tracking tool called Filtrbox. [I use Trackur.] Many simply use Google Alerts. If a blogger is writing about one of Dave’s key areas of focus, he comments on the blog to “stay active in conversations.”
• Secondly, he recommends bookmarking http://search.twitter.com in your browser, so that each time you visit the page, perhaps once a week, it displays updated search results for all the keywords you track. Dave builds a search query into the search box that integrates all of his key phrases. He suggests using quotes around each of the words or phrases you want to track. Then he encourages you to incorporate capital O, capital R, as an ‘OR’ statement — you have to use it in CAPS. This accurately delivers results for the conversations about which you want your perspective included. See who’s saying what and jump into the fray.

Rohit Bhargava underscored the importance of having a corporate blog that is contributed to by many voices from within the organization. It showcases the range of [your company’s] expertise, and keeps the blog fresh – a vital attribute for keeping an audience coming back for more.

Dave Taylor also cautioned against relying on one person to consider diversifying – remember when Scoble left Microsoft? Now who do you associate with MSFT? Can you name anyone?

And instead of assuming your corporate communications person should “own” your company’s social persona, Rohit counsels his clients to award the opportunity to people within the organization who are passionate about social media. Creating a communication platform is a marathon, not a sprint, so make sure those responsible for “radiating the conversation” have the appetite (and endurance) to do so, for a very long time.

MIT’s Henry Jenkins, being a prolific thinker and writer, also lauded blogging as “the best platform for communicating deep discussion,” and uses it to “stay relevant” between publication of his books. (He has nine and counting.)

In the next installment, we’ll look at what the experts have to say about social networks and online communities.

Guest correspondent Susan Bratton is the CEO of the Personal Life Media network. I know her through the time I spent on the board of the Association for Downloadable Media (ADM), where Susan is Vice-President of the organization. She was also instrumental in setting internet advertising standards in helping create the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB).

Susan’s interviews will also be blogged by Aaron Strout, CMO of Powered here.

We have asked some of our friends and colleagues who attended technology and new media conference South By Southwest Interactive (SxSWi) to share their highlights and takeaways from the conference, which wrapped up earlier this week.

Today we share the first part (of four) by guest correspondent Susan Bratton:

Susan says: SXSW is “old home week for the social media set.” With an exhibit hall, bar camp-style conference content and too many parties to count, a very tech-hip crowd descends on Austin.

I had the good fortune to be asked to produce a series of podcasts for Powered, Inc., an Austin-based creator of communities for big brands (disclosure, I’m on their advisory board) called “Community Powered.” I interviewed fourteen of the most highly considered luminaries/speakers at SXSW about the intersection of brand and community.

These are the insights I thought particularly powerful from my experience. I think you’ll find some great advice, ideas for consideration, differing viewpoints and some technical tips to help you stay on top of the social set-changes.

I interviewed:

Patricia Martin, founder of LitLamp Communications and author of “RenGen”
Guy Kawasaki, co-founder of AllTop and author of “Reality Check”
Lee Odden, CEO, Top Rank Online Marketing
Angela Benton, Founder and Publisher, Black Web 2.0
Henry Jenkins, Director of Comparative Media Studies, MIT
Chris Brogan, President of New Marketing Labs
C.C. Chapman, co-founder of The Advance Guard
Dave Taylor, founder of AskDaveTaylor.com
Rohit Bhargava, SVP Strategy and Marketing, Ogilvy 360
Tara Hunt, Marketing Lead-Partner Platforms, Intuit
Cathy Brooks, Consultant, Other Than That
Dave Evans, co-founder of Digital Voodoo and author of “Social Media: An Hour a Day”
Aaron Strout, CMO, Powered, Inc.

I was able to contrast the responses to a select handful of discussion points across this group of deep thinkers, pundits and technologic experts.

The interviews are short – focused on these five questions:

When you think of brands/companies who have a well-executed social media strategy, who comes to mind — and why?
If a company wants to create a solid social networking community around their brand, what are the most important things they should know/do?
What one pearl of wisdom can you share for a brand [that’s] just getting started in social media marketing?
What area of social media really turns you on right now?
What are the two things you are focused most on accomplishing at SXSW?

I noticed some similarities among responses, but not as many as I would have expected. These pundits definitely have their own, unique perspectives — and sometimes disagree.

Some shared perspectives:

• Blogging continues to rule.
• Twitter was the crux of a lot of conversation.
• Facebook Fan Pages were spotlighted.
• And what excited me most was the mobile social application space.

In the next installment, we’ll get to the heart of the matter, and talk about corporate blogging, and tracking your reputation online.

Guest correspondent Susan Bratton is the CEO of the Personal Life Media network. I know her through the time I spent on the board of the Association for Downloadable Media (ADM), where Susan is Vice-President of the organization. She was also instrumental in setting internet advertising standards in helping create the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB).

Susan’s interviews will also be blogged by Aaron Strout, CMO of Powered here.

The U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) has announced the four winners of its online video contest, “My Culture + Your Culture =?”.

ECA launched the contest in December 2008, to “encourage cross-cultural community building and mutual understanding” via the Web and social media platforms. The initiative also aims to attract new members to its ExchangesConnect social networking site. Since its launch in October 2008, ExchangesConnect has drawn over 8,400 members from 170 countries.

For the contest, members of the ExchangesConnect community were invited to submit a 3-minute video addressing the “my culture + your culture = ?” theme. More than 170 videos were submitted in all. The community voted on favorite entries, and a panel of judges — all alumni of ECA exchange programs — ranked the “top 40” videos. ECA selected two foreign and two American Grand Prize winners, including one adult and one youth winner in each category.

The contest winners are:

• Jose Vinícius Reis Gouveia of Recife, Brazil, age 16, for “Human Colours”
• Bijoy Thangaraj of Bangalore, India, age 23, for “My Culture + Your Culture = World of Wonder”
• Grant Jirka of Columbus, Nebraska, age 14, for “Winning Team”
• Tim Peters of Wheaton, Illinois, age 22, for “A Friend in Nanjing”

The winning videos can be viewed at http://exchanges.state.gov or http://connect.state.gov.

The international winners will receive a two-week, all-expenses-paid exchange program to the United States and the American winners will receive the same to an overseas destination. In addition, winners will receive multi-media software (provided by the contest co-sponsor Adobe Foundation), and will be honored at an event later this year.

Podcasting network Wizzard today announced preliminary totals for 2008, posting record revenues of $6,108,140, an increase of $944,649, or approximately 18%, from 2007 revenue figures. Executives from the compay point to the ongoing growth and expansion of their media and podcasting services and healthcare operations.

Download requests: Of particular interest to our readers, Wizzard announced podcast network results for the 4th quarter of 2008 and the first two months of 2009. In the fourth quarter of 2008, the Wizzard Media Network received 307,648,694 download requests for episodes ( up from approx. 270 million requests during that same quarter in 2007). The Q4 numbers contribute to the more than 1.2 billion download requests in all of 2008.

Adding Shows: During that time, Wizzard’s publishing platform also grew by over ten thousand new podcast shows, to approximately 17 thousand. For comparison, 2,831 new shows were added in 2007.

Audience size: Wizzard Media Network’s audience grew from approximately 10 million “unique individuals per month” in 2007 to 15 million unique indiv/month in 2008. The total number of unique requests for podcast downloads throughout 2008 reached approximately 35 million.

Advertising: Wizzard increased network ad impressions in the last quarter of 2008 to 8.8 million ads delivered (vs. 5.5 million ads Q3 of 2008).

During a time of economic downturn, and declining revenues among older, more established media, it is heartening to see podcasting networks like Wizzard (and Blubrry, and Personal Life Media, among others) sharing news of growth in audience size, number of series, and interested advertisers and sponsors.

Ad-supported online music service Spiral Frog suspended operations yesterday, nearly three years after its launch.

SpiralFrog launched in Summer 2006 to much media fanfare, painting itself as a free alternative to .99/song iTunes, and as a legal alternative to illegal file-sharing sites. At that time, SpiralFrog CEO Robin Kent said, “Offering young consumers an easy-to-use alternative to pirated music sites will be compelling…. SpiralFrog will offer those consumers a better experience and environment than they can get from any pirate site.”

Kent was fired in early 2007, however, and the site finally officially debuted in September 2007, announcing a loss of $3.4 million (on revenue of $20,400) by November of that year. Subsequent rumored acrimony between staff and founder Joe Mohen did not advance the success of the music site.

Building the SpiralFrog business on ad-supported Windows Media DRM’d music never quite caught on with listeners – or advertisers.

CNET reports that “SpiralFrog has ceased operations and assets have been surrendered to creditors. To keep operations going last year, the company issued secured notes in order to borrow at least $9 million from several hedge funds and others.”

Router and networking behemoth Cisco today announced its plans to acquire the privately-held Pure Digital Technologies, the makers of the popular, inexpensive little Flip Video cameras.

Cisco calls the reported $590 million acquisition “key to Cisco’s strategy to expand our momentum in the media-enabled home and to capture the consumer market transition to visual networking.” Ned Hooper, senior vice president of Cisco’s Corporate Development and Consumer Groups continued, “This acquisition will take Cisco’s consumer business to the next level as the company develops new video capabilities and drives the next generation of entertainment and communication experiences.”

Flip Video cameras sell for around $100 – $200, and over 2 million units have been sold since their introduction in May 2007. [The newish Flip Mino cameras pictured at right.] The devices record up to 60 minutes of video, and even without bells or whistles, have built in software and USB connectors to sync and upload videos, by way of your computer, directly to video sharing websites.

In addition to the $590 million purchase price, Cisco will provide up to another $15 million in what it terms “retention-based equity incentives” for continuing employees.

Cisco has long been regarded a giant in business networking solutions. This planned acquisition of Pure Digital, however, is the latest in a series of moves away from business computing and into the more lucrative and growing home and consumer electronics market. The Flip deal follows acquisitions of set-top-box maker Scientific Atlanta, and of Linksys, who make networking devices for the home market. At CES this year, Cisco also announced the upcoming release of a “Wireless Home Audio System.”

Rob Greenlee, Microsoft Zune podcast producer, has passed along information about the new Zune podcast directory:

“Podcast feed URL’s can now be submitted to the Zune digital media entertainment platform through the new Zune.net web-based podcast directory. This new podcast directory has over 12,000 podcast feeds online now and also accepts podcast reviews to be added to a podcaster’s show page. Here is the direct URL address to the new web-based podcast directory at Zune.net – http://social.zune.net/podcasts/ .

“So, if you are a Apple Mac only user you can now get to the Zune directory via the web. And those who create podcasts can now visit the site and submit their feed. Podcasters can get active, [encouraging their listeners and viewers to submit] reviews and comments about their podcast on their Zune.net podcast directory pages.

“Podcasters who have active feeds in the Zune podcast directory can also direct-link to their podcasts in the Zune 3.1 Marketplace software by visiting this page and search for their podcasts – http://social.zune.net/links/ZuneLinks.aspx or can link directly to their web-based page.”

This is the first new podcast directory to come online in a long time, and I’m glad to see (at least a tiny little) reaching out to all the podcast creators who do their work on a Mac.

The ability to submit reviews of podcasts, for display on the podcast series’ page, is a great one for helping podcast viewers and listeners discover which shows to download.

When his weekday show was suddenly cancelled in a sweeping format change, nationally syndicated radio host Adam Carolla launched a free daily podcast -  a podcast with a quarter million listens within 24 hours of the first episode posting.

Wednesday, live streaming video service Stickam announced that it “will be the exclusive streamer for Adam Carolla’s live podcast [starting] Wednesday, March 25, 2009 ”

The show will stream at 5:00pm PT (8 pm Eastern) at www.stickam.com/adamcarolla. Viewers can watch Carolla and his guests as they record the podcast (from multiple locations)Viewers also have the capability to interact with them via Stickam’s “real-time interactive chat feature.”

Stickam is a live-interactive-streaming video service that works with any Java-enabled mobile device, with  over three million registered users. Stickam.com’s Live API allows anyone to integrate all of Stickam.com’s live video streaming services into Web sites and applications. Stickam.com also offers PayPerLive.com, a live video streaming platform for professionals.

Movie and television mega-database IMDb is adding a new category for Web TV series, Galacticast creator Casey McKinnon says after a conversation with the head of the Amazon-owned site.

“Today there are dozens of web series listed on IMDb, but they continue to be listed as TV Series. At SXSW this year I asked Col Needham, IMDb founder and managing director, for an update in person on whether they plan to start a category for web series.

“The answer is a resounding yes. In the second or third quarter of this year (anytime between April 1st and September 30th), IMDb will roll out the ability to tag a submission as either a web series or an individual (one-off) online video.”

Needham was at South By Southwest Film Festival this week, where he talked about setting a ambitious goal of adding “one-button streaming” for all the titles it indexes. The site already streams some full-length TV shows and movies, along with trailers and other entertainment-related features.

We’ll be interested to watch this new category develop, especially what the qualifiers will be for web video series to be included in IMDb. With thousands of series in production, with a vast range of polish and quality, it will be a challenge to define what is a “real” web series.

The Committee to Protect Bloggers is reporting that blogger Omid Reza Mir Sayafi has died in prison in Iran. Omid was sentenced in December to three years in jail.  Omid was accused of “insulting Iranian religious leaders and spreading propaganda” against the Iranian state.

Human Rights Activists in Iran (translated from Arabic by Hamid Tehrani at Global Voices Online) says “the reason for his death has not been announced but he was in very bad psychological condition.”

The CPB takes the conjecture a step further: “Considering torture and other types of mistreatment are par for the course for free speech prisoners in Iranian prisons, Omir’s death may well have been a direct result of Iranian government actions. Considering the government usually places bloggers in prison with the most dangerous criminals, his death may only have been an indirect result. Either way, the men of the government of Iran and its prisons have a lot to answer for.”

We will update this story as we are able to confirm the circumstances of Omid’s death.