I came across this video late last week and made a mental note to share it with you guys here. Every once in awhile, a designer or blogger puts together a video with stats on the state of the Internet, and this is the latest one. There’s some incredible info here!

JESS3 / The State of The Internet from Jesse Thomas on Vimeo.

Still think the Internet isn’t revolutionizing the way we communicate? Your members need your organization’s voice online!

I recently took a long weekend trip to New York, and when I returned to the office, I had more than 1,000 items to read in my Google Reader.

Slowly, I’ve made my way through them and in the process, I stumbled upon a few links that can really benefit small-staff associations.

A guest on post on Mashable discussed how to deal with negative feedback in social media. This article is full of practical tips and strategic advice for damage control. Social media is, first and foremost, a conversation, so your association should make an effort to join it.  If a negative sentiment about your organization pops up on a social network, do you know how to respond? Do you know who will respond?

This post from Converstations offers a new perspective on Facebook Pages. Would you ever let your members take control and ownership of one of your organization’s social media outposts, such as Facebook? By making the goal of the Facebook Fan page to be a section for and by the community (with the business or brand being the “Fan of the Community”), now we may have something.

I wouldn’t be surprised if your organization’s members created a Facebook Page or Group “unofficially,” before the association got on board. If members already have accounts created at Facebook, it’s only natural for them to want to gather there, making it a “one-stop shop” for all their communication needs.

Rather than reprimanding or ignoring the “unofficial” gathering, try embracing it. Over the last few weeks, the association community has seen what volunteers and members can do, and it’s truly extraordinary. Communities can thrive (or fail) with or without an association backing it up. Your organization should try to help its communities prosper in the cloud (i.e. online spaces) rather than tearing them down.

And if the conversation grows negative, remember to evaluate the offending comment and see if there’s any truth to it. Use it as an opportunity to grow.

Image credit: Flickr

I wrapped up Beyond the Big Three, our series exploring social media outposts other than Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, last week, but we wanted to give everyone a tangible, printable resource to have on hand. Therefore, we’ve compiled all 12 installments into one handy PDF document available for download here!

The 12-part series covered 13 awesome sites:

1. Flickr
2. Delicious
3. Tumblr
4. Posterous
5. YouTube
6. Ning
7. SlideShare
8. Digg
9. Blogs
10. Good Reads
11. UStream
12. FourSquare
13. FriendFeed

In addition to summaries of each outpost, each installment includes some real-life examples of how other associations are using the services.

Download the PDF here, and thanks for reading!

This is the final installment in a 12-part series called “Beyond The Big Three,” which highlights social networking sites other than Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. There are tons of other social media outposts on the Web, and they’re great places for associations to curate content. The previous 11 installments can be found here. Thanks for reading!

I had to search through the archives to make sure I hadn’t already written about FriendFeed — I could have sworn I had! If you’re not familiar with FriendFeed, it’s a really cool tool that lets you post status updates, photos and links (and more!) across multiple social networks, including Facebook and Twitter.

What makes FriendFeed different, you might ask. It combines feeds from other outposts — such as Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and Twitter — to create one complete stream in one place. And it lets you access that stream in multiple ways.

If you already have a Facebook, Twitter or Google account, you don’t even need to create a separate account for FriendFeed. You can use any of your login information for the previous sites, which is pretty convenient!

When you add fellow FriendFeed users as friends, you receive a customized stream that includes their Twitter updates, Facebook updates, videos and links. You can view your stream directly on FriendFeed’s site, through Facebook, via e-mail or via RSS (in a reader such as Google Reader).

Similar to Facebook, there is a “Like” button for your friends’ items, as well as the option to comment.

There are a few different ways to post something on FriendFeed. You can simply update from FriendFeed.com, and direct your update to whichever outposts you’d like. You can also post via e-mail (which works well for attached photos). And FriendFeed has its own version of Twitter’s “re-tweet,” as well. Each entry has a “Share” link beneath it, and clicking that will bring up a box with a few options for sharing it.

So how can associations use FriendFeed?

The site supports “Groups,” which multiple people can subscribe to and receive information from. For example, if your association began a FriendFeed account for the organization and a corresponding group, members could join the group and receive updates from one another and the association simultaneously. Everyone in the group can share things with one another, and leave comments that all members can see. Groups can be public or private.

FriendFeed could be a great way for members to interact while still experiencing the “stream-style” of information, which is becoming increasingly popular. It even reminds me a little bit of the mobile hub ASAE and The Center created for the Annual Meeting back in August — combining everyone’s comments about #asae09 in one place.

But meetings and events aren’t the only times small-staff associations could potentially use FriendFeed. The site is an ideal way for members to interact and share information about the industry. Imagine a “mini-Twitter,” in which only members’ and the organization’s updates appear and everyone can interact within it. Pretty cool.

Rather than just using FriendFeed during your events, though, members can share information all the time — FriendFeed allows them a central location to collect all status updates and one condensed feed from which to view them.

Check it out and see what you think. How could your organization use FriendFeed?

This is the 11th in a 12-part series called “Beyond The Big Three,” which highlights social networking sites other than Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. There are tons of other social media outposts on the Web, and they’re great places for associations to curate content. The previous 10 installments can be found here. Stay tuned.

You may have heard about Foursquare in recent weeks or months; it’s been called the “Twitter of 2010” by some. Foursquare combines two important trends in the social web: location and mobile technology. But if you haven’t heard about it, don’t worry! It’s generally more popular in larger cities right now, but it’s expanding quickly.

Essentially, Foursquare is an application that enables “checking in” at various locations. The application uses GPS to identify where you are and will give a list of nearby places from which to choose, but you can always add a place if it’s not available.

According to its Help page, When you tell foursquare where you are, that’s called “checking-in”. You can check-in from parks, bars, museums, restaurants…  really anywhere. Foursquare then will let your friends know where to find you.

The site aims to help you find friends and acquaintances in your city. There are apps available for smartphones such as iPhone, BlackBerry, Palm Pre and Android, but if you don’t own one of those phones, you can check in using a basic text message – attach your phone number to your account and text your check-ins to 50500.

Besides checking in and updating your location, there are few other parts of Foursquare.

The Mayor

If you check into a certain location more than anyone else, Foursquare will crown you “The Mayor.” Many bars and cafes in bigger cities (such as New York) sometimes give the current mayor some perks, such as a discount or a free coffee. But if someone comes along behind you who has checked in more often, they can “steal” the title.

Badges

According to Foursquare, Badges are little rewards you earn for doing checking-into interesting places. For example, staying out late on a school night or frequenting too many karaoke bars. Foursquare says many badges are tagged to venues. For example, people could tag a bar “karaoke,” “pool table,” etc…

Points

Foursquare awards points for pretty much every check-in. You’ll get points the first time you check in at a certain location and when you add a new venue. Basically, the more you experience, the more points you’ll get. Foursquare says it is still figuring out what to do with the points earned. In December, though, the company donated $0.04 to charity for every point earned.

Since Foursquare updates are tied to locations, when you click on someone’s update, you’re brought to a page that looks like this:

Granted, Foursquare is more popular in bigger cities such as New York, Washington DC and San Francisco, but let’s think about the implications for associations.

What if your organization could use Foursquare for its annual meeting or conference? I know someone else in the association world has blogged about this before, and I’ve searched through archives and found nothing. So if this was your idea, please let me know!

However, thinking back to ASAE and The Center’s Annual Meeting, I think a Foursquare-type application would have been immensely useful. (The fact that the meeting was in Toronto made using our cell phones a little more difficult, but I digress.) The convention center was so huge and after-hours, people were spread out at tons of different restaurants and bars. Using location-based technology might have allowed us to meet even more people!

Foursquare can be integrated with both Facebook and Twitter, so your status updates there can also be read as check-ins. Additionally, check out this blog post (from yesterday!): Five Simple (and Fun) Ways to Promote Nonprofits on Foursquare.

Edit: This post from Mashable just showed up in my Google Reader: How Nonprofits and Activists Can Leverage Location-Based Services. Great stuff here!