(Fun fact: it was Dave’s 62nd presentation in the last two and a half years on social topics, to more than one thousand people.)

Dave talked us through all of the new plug-ins being offered by Facebook to connect the site and its features with sites across the web. The first one on the agenda has already been adopted by around 50,000 sites, and Dave says it will likely be the most game-changing tool of the group: the universal “Like” button.

A user simply needs to grab a snippet of code and plug it in to a site to see the now iconic “thumbs up” appear on a page. When someone visits the site and clicks the button, an item will appear on their personal activity feed and the news feeds of their friends on Facebook, just as it would with activities and interactions within the four walls of the site itself.

Other plug-ins Dave discussed included a comments tool, which will bring the function of commenting — as you would on Facebook in response to a photo, video or note — to external sites, allowing users to leave text comments and, of course, linking that activity back to the user’s news feed.

The fan page widget has gotten a new name, as well, and is now called a “like box.” Other plug-ins include the activity feed, Facepile, Live Stream, Login with Faces (Facebook Connect reborn) and Recommendations.

After the plug-ins, the discussion turned to privacy. Facebook’s recent partnerships with external sites like Yelp and Pandora have made public information that many users thought was only being shared among their friends and connections. Dave noted that one of the main problems with Facebook’s privacy settings is that users have to choose to opt out rather than choosing to opt in.

He walked us through the steps a user would need to take to access privacy settings and discussed each section and potential implications of each — for example, information your friends can share about you. You may think you’re protected because you’ve tightened up your personal security, but your profile details can still find their way out into the public through your friends.

Generally, Dave advised against putting anything remotely sensitive on Facebook; even if you think you have that portion of your profile locked down, Facebook could change the rules of the game at any time, leaving you exposed.

If you want to learn more about online privacy, Dave recommended OnGuard Online, EFF.org and DotRights.org.

Dave wrapped up his presentation with some highlights from his recent trip to SOBCon, including the advice “Quit collecting blueprints and start building something.”

Join us for our next meet-up on May 20, Twilight Camp at Davis Kidd’s Bronte Bistro, and be sure to mark your calendar for next month’s breakfast, happening Wednesday June 2.

RSVP here and be sure to connect with us on Facebook as well. We’ll see you in May!

Dave made reference to one of the phrases that has been a staple of the Expedition for some time: “Social” is a philosophy and a shape-shifter– not just a marketing tool. When it comes to the enterprise, Dave said, “social business’ is the philosophy, and it’s not just about bringing your workplace online.

He talked first about determining the health of your business’s ecosphere. By mapping out all the important nodes of your business — from customer service to clients to providers to marketing — and looking at the connections between them, you can see the ideal version of your business ecosphere and identify current weak points to achieve that ideal.

No doubt several of the nodes in your ecosphere, no matter your business, will be internal. Creating transparency and enhancing communication within the enterprise are just as critical to the social business philosophy as those actions taken outwardly like a Facebook fan page or Twitter handle. Dave ran through a laundry list of platforms and methods businesses may use to achieve this, from wikis to discussion boards to presentation tools like SlideShare or traditional social networks.

Dave then introduced the Expeditionaries to a handful of sites specifically designed for enterprise social, talking most extensively about SocialCast, which was recently adopted by LunaWeb. You can find out  more about SocialCast and others like Yammer and SocialText on this week’s Core Conversation podcast, where we’ll be continuing the conversation on social in the enterprise. You can call in at 11:30 a.m. CDT (646-721-9429) or listen live here.

More essential than the introduction to the tools, though, was the underlying philosophy and benefits of use: creating peripheral vision across the enterprise, sharing knowledge, allowing executives to offer praise and set the tone and pace of business and allowing employees to get help and access data easily are just a few examples.

If you missed out, you’ll definitely want to join us for the Core Conversation this Friday.

After our usual announcements (which, by the way, included SocialCamp), we were treated to a special welcome from Shelby County Commissioner / founder and CEO of Flinn Broadcasting / radiologist Dr. George Flinn who had some kind, generous, and flattering words to everyone who takes part in the Social Media Expedition – and that includes attendees.

It’s easy to get so deep into what you’re passionate about that you lose perspective on how what you do affects the community around you. To be reminded that the relationships and communities we build bring noticeable good into Memphis was a powerful and empowering way to start the morning.

To have Dr. Flinn come and remind us of the good that we are all building is nice. But what would be nicer would be to pass on the good will – and to pass on his closing sentence, “Thank you for making Memphis and Shelby County great.” Seriously. Thank you.

What really made the September breakfast something special was the structure. Rather than have a single speaker, as usual, we embraced a show-and-tell format.

Each presenter shared a single topic, service, program, or idea for about seven minutes. One of the greatest things about gathering people together for is the wide range of experience, knowledge and curiosity that everyone brings to the breakfasts.

Our presenters were, in order, Blake Palmer, Beth Sanders, Matthew Crawford-Trisler, Jonathan Lyons, Dave Barger, and Robert Staub.

Palmer and Crawford-Trisler are both social media specialists at LunaWeb, though Blake will leave at the end of this week for CommercialAppeal.com. Sanders is a freelance design and social consultant. Lyons manages social media in the marketing and PR department for the Peabody Hotel. Barger is President and CEO of LunaWeb. Robert Staub is a small business success coach and host of the weekly Small Biz Show.

Blake Palmer Presenting the Yelp iPhone app

Between Blake Palmer’s talk about the emerging trend of augmented reality applications for smartphones and Beth Sanders’ run through of Evernote, the online/real world service that works as an augmented memory application, we were handed a very interesting view of the future in which technology will aid and combine human tasks and knowledge in ever more helpful, present, and intuitive ways.

Matthew Crawford-Trisler delivered an in-depth presentation about the need for and use of the Free Music Archive, a curated cache of Creative Commons-licensed music which, because it is free – as in both beer and speech – is a great resource for music to use in videos, podcasts, presentations, or to load up your iPod.

Jonathan Lyons talked about how he uses Social Media on behalf of the Peabody to build and expand upon existing relationships in the community, and to positively impact the image of the hotel among Memphians. He had to figure out how to promote the hotel without being spammy, create personal content, and navigate photography rights when covering events. He shared his experience with the blurring line between Returns on Investment and Returns on Engagement.

Dave Barger spoke about the trouble in looking at social media as a way to expand your business’ audience. While it’s possible, he notes that it is a big time commitment. If you’re just stepping foot in for the first time, it’s likely going to be best to focus on existing relationships. Facebook and Twitter are important, but are not the only answer.

Barger recommended the simplified blogging service, Posterous, to communicate with employees and clients alike, along with internal tools, such as Yammer or Socialcast. When it’s time to turn outwards, there’s always services like Ning, which are quite useful, but, Barger warned, only if you’re going to put the time and effort into making it a good resource before the doors are ever even opened.

Robert Staub has put a tremendous amount of effort into his latest venture, Small Biz Memphis, which launches Sept. 18th. The site, built on Ning, promises to be a valuable resource for small business information and for online business networking in a city where most networking is done face-to-face. By gathering as much information as possible about small businesses and events in one place, it promises to be a one-stop shop for small businesses in Memphis.

Each presentation went off without a hitch, and we felt honored to host such a stellar series of presentations. Dr. Flinn had it right when he thanked everyone who came this morning for making Memphis and Shelby County a great place. And once again, we’ll pass that thanks along. Thank you.

Tomorrow, we’re looking forward to the TwilightCamp for August at Bronte Bistro inside of Davis Kidd. The main topic of conversation is going to be the upcoming SocialCamp on September 19. If you want to get involved, this is a great chance to find out more, ask questions and make your opinion heard.

We’re also very excited to announce the speaker for September’s Social Media Expedition breakfast… you. Next month’s breakfast is an old-fashioned show and tell for anything and everything Social Media related that you’d like to share. We accept shiny new toy demonstrations, rants, tutorials and ideas. The only things we don’t accept are mean people and sales pitches.

We’ll be having 7 presentations by 7 people on whatever your able to share with the rest of us. We only ask that you email or call us (888-5862) beforehand, and arrive early enough that we can load your pc-friendly PowerPoint (if you have one) on our projector.

So show us what you’ve got! Whatever get’s you excited about Social Media is fair game, and we can’t wait to see what you have to offer.

May Twilight Camp by LunaWeb on Flickr. View the full May Twilight Camp photoset.

Social Media Expedition’s latest Twilight Camp descended upon Davis-Kidd bookstore’s Bronte Bistro on Thursday. The food was delicious, the company was dear.

It was great fun to chat about new ways to distribute information in a place where printed media still thrives.

It’s funny, but most of the conversation around our dinner that evening centered around feeds. We gathered our minds together trying to sort out how best to use RSS feeds and the social aggregator Friendfeed.

The ease and convenience of using RSS feeds – through readers like Google Reader, Newsgator, and even mail applications like Outlook or Apple’s Mail.app – leads pretty much every regular user of the technology to the same problem: overload.

And while talking about how to trim the content to what’s useful, we also swapped our favorite feeds.

Discussion around Friendfeed centered around how to find real usefulness from a service that essentially aggregates content from other services. Some people were very much in favor of it, and everybody seemed curious.

It was great to see everyone out at the latest Twilight Camp, and we hope to see you again next time. Stay tuned for more information about our next Twilight Camp, as well as the Social Media Expedition Breakfast.

It’s always great to see who all will gather together, early on a Wednesday morning, and make their way to the Social Media Expedition Breakfast.

Wednesday morning, April 1st, found the breakfast at the Holiday Inn at the University of Memphis. After some opening remarks from Social Media Expedition’s Dave Barger, The mic was handed over to Kris Markman, Ph.D., from the University of Memphis, for her presentation, "A Species Driven to Connect."

Dr. Markman’s presentation focused on how society functions with technology. She kicked off her discussion with the idea that social technologies are nothing new. Though they use new tools to cover greater distances faster, essentially, it all sums up to basic communication – Facebook, even as it nears ubiquity, is just a fancy version of cave painting.

Humans, she continued, simply need other humans for survival.

So we communicate as we always have, and we find brand new ways to do it. One pattern Dr. Markman has noticed is that society is beginning to stratify based on those who can more readily adapt to new modes of communication.

This doesn’t say anything about skills or age, necessarily – Markman noted some Pew Internet and American Life numbers that show that economic and social conditions also affect how quickly people adopt new technologies.

Interestingly, these new divisions don’t necessarily fall along the same (age-based) lines we might expect.

For example, podcasting is more common among the Generation X set, even though they aren’t as involved with things like Facebook or Massively Multiplayer Games, that you might find to be common in younger demographics.

Essentially, what Markman seems to be saying is that what makes online communications so interesting is that it’s so difficult to pin down the demographics of it in a general sense, because the information skews from example to example.

After the presentation, we broke into smaller group discussions, including topics such as blogging, Facebook for business, and Twitter. There was even some demand for information about Yahoo! Pipes – if you’ve got an interest in or knowledge of Yahoo! Pipes, please, by all means, join us for the next Social Media Expedition Breakfast, the first Wednesday of May.

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The post "A Species, Connecting" by lunaweb is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

The day was filled with home run presentations, great food, and a big crowd of extremely fun people.  By the end of the day, we had registered well over 100 SocialCamp attendees and even trended as the #1 topic on Twitter.

There was something for everyone to learn, with topics ranging from introductory 101 presentations, to meaty, uber-advanced discussions.  We saw several traditional presentations, as well as panels, core conversation groups, and quite a few spontaneous discussions.

Thanks to everyone who attended, and helped make this all happen.  The planners and volunteers put a lot of time into putting SocialCamp together, and we couldn’t have asked for a better crowd to attend.  We also had a bunch of wonderful sponsors aside from the Social Media Expedition.  Please go and check them out on the SocialCamp Memphis site.

If you were able to attend, leave a comment to let us know what you thought of the conference.  We plan on bringing more things like this to Memphis, and keeping our city on the Social Media map.  Next on the horizon, we have our monthly Social Media Expedition breakfast on April 1st at the University of Memphis Holiday Inn.  There will be more details posted on the Meetup site.

Here’s an ongoing list of blog write-ups from the event:

Skinny White Boy

The Displaced Texan

Team140.com

SocialCamp Memphis

The post "Geeks and Newbies Unite at SocialCamp Memphis" by lunaweb is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Like the Expedition, SocialCamp will seek to address how Social Media plays into all facets of our lives, from business to family, and from faith to politics. It is an unconference focusing on Social Media and Social Networking.  Just imagine a convention where the morning is comprised of designated speakers/topics, and the afternoon is comprised of focused discussions and impromptu presentations that are decided on by the attendees.  There will also be core conversations, very similar to the ones we include in our monthly Expedition breakfasts.  Be sure to register for SocialCamp to reserve your spot.

Speaking of breakfasts, this Wednesday, March 4, is the 1 year anniversary of our Social Media Expedition breakfasts.  This one will be at the Crescent Club on Poplar, and will feature Lausanne Collegiate School’s Stewart Crais speaking on tactics for the safety of minors on Social Networking sites.  These breakfasts have grown tremendously over the past year, and the conversation has only gotten better.  This will be another great opportunity to see what the Memphis Social Media community has to offer.

We look forward to seeing all of our Expeditionary friends at both of these great events.  Come out and join the conversation!

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The post "SocialCamp Memphis a Week Away" by lunaweb is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

The University of Memphis Holiday Inn was buzzing extra early this morning, with another record breaking crowd joining us for this month’s Social Media Expedition breakfast.  Over 50 people braved cold weather and early morning to be a part of the growing community of Memphis social media users. Thanks to Matt Ceniceros, a member of FedEx’s media relations team, we received an insightful glimpse into what large businesses are doing to take advantage of the growing Social Media space.  Matt had some great anecdotal support of his company’s use of corporate blogs and the success that it has brought them, so far, in multiple branches of their industry. Core Conversation time is always a favorite, and this meeting was no exception.  Topics covered included Business Blogging, Community ROI, Social Media 101, Beyond Facebook, and Best  Practices.  These smaller groups are designed to allow a mindshare discussion on specific topics, wherein Expeditionaries can engage in focused conversations, drawing on the mutual expertise of the group. As always, we want to thank everyone who attended and helped make this another outstanding breakfast.  We appreciate you all being a part of the conversation with us, and can’t wait to see you next month for the 1 year anniversary of these morning gatherings.  You can already RSVP.  Be sure to find us on Facebook as well! Mark Your Calendars: Upcoming Events Thursday, February 5th – SocialCamp Planners (5:00) ** Saturday, February 7th – Business Boot Camp (all day) ** Thursday, February 12th – Twestival to raise money for water (5:00 until) Thursday, February 19th – TechFuel Mixer ** Thursday, February 26th – eMarketing Group * Wednesday, March 4th – Social Media Expedition Breakfast *** Friday, March 6th – SocialCamp Memphis – Mixer ** Saturday, March 7th – SocialCamp Memphis – Main Event ** March 13th- 17th – SXSW South by Southwest Interactive (Austin, TX) * Organized by Melanee Hannock ** Organized by LaunchMemphis *** Organized by LunaWeb, Inc.

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The post "Social Media Expedition Breakfast – February Edition" by lunaweb is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.