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!

Happy Friday! Did you have a good week? I did! As always, there was lots of great reading in the association world this week.

1. This is sort of a lengthy article, but I think it’s worth the read. Tapping into the Nonprofit Board’s Talent offers some great advice about how achieve better board relations. The article makes a great case for why your board should be involved in strategic and business operations. New perspectives can be a good thing!

2. Bruce Hammond wrote a great post on how not to fundraise. After an interesting experience with a certain university, Bruce shared some tips for making sure you target the right people in your fundraising efforts. Fundraisers should be trained and data should be carefully studied to prevent awkward situations or potentially losing a donor.

3. Over at ASAE’s Acronym blog, Joe Rominiecki wrote a post about Third Tribe and wondered whether or not it could be considered an association. Is this subscription Web site anything new? Is paying monthly a model associations should consider? How long will Third Tribe last?

Don't have an awkward elevator ride

4. Jeff Hurt had a few great posts this week, but his 20 things to do to make your conference experience more successful was my favorite. From using the Twitter hashtag to practicing your elevator speech, conferences are all about engagement and meeting new people. Jeff’s post captures this perfectly.

5. I’ve written a lot about how important it is to find your members on the social networks they’re already on, and so have Maddie Grant and Lindy Dreyer. Maddie blogged Thursday about a new tool called Flowtown, which can find your members across social media platforms (for a small fee). Just import your e-mail list and voila! Instant social media insight!

From everyone at MemberClicks, have a fantastic weekend! Let’s finish February strong!

Happy Friday! Of course, the major buzz this week in the association community was the cancellation of ASAE’s Technology Conference and Expo and the emergence of an un-conference, UnTech. Organized by a group of volunteers and supported by several vendors, UnTech was a virtual un-conference and had 500 total attendees — 75 in person and 425 on a Webcast.

MemberClicks is proud to be a sponsor, and although we wish we could have made it to D.C. to participate in the awesome-ness, it is quite a bit warmer in our Atlanta office.

However, UnTech wasn’t the only thing association bloggers wrote about this week. There were lots of other awesome topics covered, so, in no particular order, here’s my top five.

1. Aaron Woloweic wrote a fantastic post about tips for studying for the CAE exam. His five tips will help anyone who is already taking the exam, or thinking about sitting for it. There’s a lot of material covered, to be sure, but determining a schedule adn sticking to it can help you earn that CAE designation.

2. After the Super Bowl was over, Deirdre Reid wrote a thoughtful post about the National Association of the Deaf’s reaction to The Who’s “deaf, dumb and blind” lyric that was sung during the halftime show. NAD posted a message on Twitter saying they would take action against the offensive lyric, and Deirdre wants to know if the person behind the tweet was authorized or just acting under emotions. What would your association do?

3. What’s the best marketing and communication strategy, Scott Oser discussed this week. Does your association understand how to use market research and incorporate the results into its communications? Direct marketing is tricky, and it’s important to get a complete picture of your members, vendors and volunteers.

4. In the first of a five-part series, Shelly Alcorn tackles the economic uncertainty still facing the country (and world) and how it affects associations. Don’t fall prey to hubris and think that your association isn’t at risk. Success can be your own worst enemy and can lead to neglect of the members and programs that got you to where you are, Shelly writes.

5. Finally, after the first day of UnTech concluded, Peggy Hoffman shared some reflections about the power of volunteers and patience of attendees, as well as praising ASAE for recognizing the force that drove the community together. It’s pretty amazing to see the power of volunteers and social media at work.

I encourage you to participate in the second day of UnTech 10. Check out the schedule here, and be sure to follow the action on Twitter with the #UnTech10 hashtag.

Have a fantastic Presidents Day and Valentine’s Day weekend! Hopefully some of you have Monday off — enjoy it!

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 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!