Apple’s iPad is falling victim to the hype machine, creating fanboys and detractors each day. The bottom line is, that like the iPad or not, we need this type of device to support societal changes that are already beginning to happen. This tablet device category, in which the iPad is one of many emerging devices, doesn’t aim to replace your laptop or desktop, not even your netbook. The iPad is gunning to make paper obsolete.

In thinking a lot about the potential of the iPad and other like tablet devices as well as what is happening in our world today, a specific use case for the iPad came to mind. Today I am sharing it with all of you in the hope that we can make it a reality.

One of the most antiquated pieces of paper right now is the resume. People talk about how computers and technology have become a critical component of of most jobs. If this is the case, then why are most of us walking around with paper resumes and no way to actually showcase the work we do?

Lets change this.

Now Is Finally Time
I believe that this is a problem that hasn’t been able to be solved before, because we didn’t have the technology to solve it. Companies like Visual CV have tried. The problem is that these service besides lacking important features, were meant to be consumed by someone in front of a computer. Computers aren’t around in most job interviews.

What If Every Job Seeker Could Present Like Steve Jobs?
The biggest issue with LinkedIn and Visual CV some of the most popular digital resume services, is that they have no presentation aspect. When Apple unveils a new product we are all in awe of the presentation and the fan fair of this new invention. What if we could all be Steve Jobs when we present our most important product: ourselves. The iPad gives us that ability.

This idea started after seeing what Wired has planned for the iPad.

Changing The Employment Game
Imagine if you walk into a your next job interview and instead of unzipping a folder and pulling out a paper resume, you took out an iPad and your resume looked something like this:

Imagine with me here that you walk into a job interview. First you introduce yourself. Next you take out an iPad and set it on the table between you and the person interviewing you. You turn it on and your resume appears, but this isn’t the same boring text resume that you have always used (though it is there if they want to see it) Instead they see a clean screen with different skills sets they had identified as being important to the job.

You touch an icon that is about communication skills and it opens video of you giving presentations, along with slide presentations that you have used in the past. This completely changes how people get to present themselves. Imagine that you are an accountant and could open a spreadsheet to show an example of an important problem you solved with just one touch.

If someone walked into meet with you and did this, wouldn’t you hire them? I would. Better yet this information actually tells us what the person can do, unlike an hour of idle chat and trite questions.

Whose Coming With Me
It is up to us, the early adopter community to help make this a reality. This couldn’t be done before. The iPhone is to small and laptops are too clunky. The time for this solution is now.

Do you want to help make this happen? Then e-mail me: kipp.bodnarATgmailDOTcom Do you want to use an app like this in the future to help land a job? Then please leave a comment below.

This is a great recap by my good friend Wayne Sutton about this past weekend’s Word Camp in Durham.

14 things I learned about Matt Mullenweg and WordPress at WordCampRDU | Social Wayne, Wayne Sutton ’s Blog.

If you don’t have time to read his post my big conclusions are:

1. Videopress is a game changer. I may start using it for all of my video hosting o nthe Web. The player is great and open source. Matt says we wil lbe able to customize it in the future.

2. P2 as a theme is a brilliant idea. It basically also you to blog super quickly from your page without going to the dashboard. I like it so much I have started to use it on my personal blog: KippBodnar.com.

3. WordPress is rewriting their iPhone app from the start and it sounds like it will be a huge improvement!

A big thanks to everyone who shared knowledge at Word Camp RDU!

Note: This post was written prior to Facebook’s formal announcement detailing which data sets will be accessible by third party developers.

The web is flooded with news everyday, most of it trivial, but every once in a while we get a day that is a true game changer. Today is that day for all marketers. Today Facebook will announce changes to its API allowing third-party developers to access user submitted information from Facebook for use in their applications. You are asking yourself right now, what do geeky API calls have to do with marketing? Everything.

Now that you have read my previous post about API marketing, I hope that you are beggining to see the implications of Facebook’s announcement. Facebook with more than 200 million users is the largest social network on the Internet. API data has gone primarily under the radar until now because most applications offering APIs had much smaller user-bases. Twitter is the application that made API’s popular.  It has more than 3,000 applications built on its API but it only has around 13 million users. Facebook in addition to having a huge amount of users also has a vast variety of data from text, images, videos, etc.

Opening The Walled Garden

Until this most recent announcement of API changes Facebook as been considered a walled garden in which you had to be a member logged into Facebook to share information and once logged out the information was not accessible. Companies have had access to most user submitted information.  This includes information on sites like Twitter, Digg, message boards, and niche social networks thanks to tools like Google Blog Search, Filter Box, Radian6 and other tools built to monitor user submitted data. However, Facebook and its mountain of data remained the kid by itself standing in the corner.

Why is Facebook doing this?

Understand that these changes to its API offers Facebook the greatest potential for monetizing of their platform. Their has long been discussion about the lack of effectiveness of advertising in social networks and Facebook knows this. Lets be clear, really brilliant people work at Facebook, they know what they are doing. They understand the true value they have is in the data not eyeballs. I have said this before but it is worth repeating.

The social web economy is about data and relationships relationships not about eyeballs and impressions.

That being said this API announcement is the first step for Facebook to monetize its data. For example, Twitter users that use desktop applications are currently allowed 100 API requests per hour. Sending a tweet, looking up a profile, doing a search, are each one API request. Facebook could potentially set a free level of API request activity and then charge developers for additional API requests. This is a simplified monetization strategy but could be the foundation for the approach they take.

Implications For Brand Marketers:

If you are a marketer, your job changed today.  Today Facebook gave you the keys to a luxury sedan of consumer insight and data. Most commentary surrounding Facebook’s API changes will be detailing what developers can do with the new API. Their will also be discussions about the validity of building a business on another company’s platform. This post though is for marketers, especially the non-geek marketers, the people that may not even know what an API is.

Marketers have spent years trying to determine what their customers want and what triggers actually lead a consumer to by a product. This has been done through market research, focus groups, surveys and a host of other methods used to collect customer data. Today the social web has flipped that process because now consumers are freely submitting their own information onto the web and the organizations that can effectively collect and analyze it and use it to build positive relationships with consumers will be successful.

Facebook has opened the spigot on the web’s most robust source of social consumer data. Here are some examples of how this data could be used by brand marketers:

• Incorporate Facebook data into existing social media monitoring systems for added insight
• Company’s like Ford that have dealers that sell their products could build applications that sort by location consumers talking about buying or needing a new car and what they are looking for. This information could be used to provide insight to the dealer on local customers as well as their opinions of dealer’s advertising and marketing.
• Create an extensional of current CRM sales tools that incorporates individuals Facebook updates and data into their CRM profile in real-time. This could be used to make more relevant sales calls, meetings and help build relationships.
• Aggregate and display how consumers are currently using your product to showcase uses to potential consumers from a trusted third-party.

Above are only some quick thoughts and more possibilities will be known once Facebook releases its updated API documentation later today. If you are a marketer you must realize that user generated data is key to future consumer insights and building brand advocates. Today Facebook has handed you something you have long been looking for…

In the toady’s 30 second attention span world, we spend much of our time asking each other what is next. In marketing it was the web, then search, then blogging, then social media, but what really is next? Last week David Armano, made a big announcement that he was going to join Jeff Dachis and Peter Kim at the Dachis Corporation to focus on social business design. After reading David’s post it spurred me to write a post I have been kicking around in my head about the “future” of marketing.

Companies have always needed a platform to communicate with their customers. In the past that platform has been many things: media, billboards, advertisements, blogs, fan pages as well as a a host of others that I am forgetting.  Social media has been a breakthrough for many organizations because it removed the gatekeepers from the marketing equation and allowed them to publish their information directly to their customers on their own schedule.

In a world without media gatekeepers where does marketing go next?

API’s Are The New Marketing Platform

If I was a CMO, I would take some of my marketing budget from traditional media buys and creative work and use it to hire a small group of extremely talented web developers that have experience using API’s to develop simple and easy to use web applications. API stands for application programming interface and it serves as a platform for web applications to interact and share information with other applications. A practical example of this are Twitter clients like Tweetdeck and Seesmic, though they reside on a desktop, they use the Twitter API to send and receive tweets, which means that you don’t have to go to your Twitter.com page to use your account.

The future of marketing is about companies developing useful applications for their customers that extend web services that the customers are already using. This replaces the current model which is to use web applications to communication with customers.  The problem with current social media marketing is the noise. A company is one of thousands, sometimes millions of users and it is easy to get lost. Developing applications via API’s provide a way for companies to break out of the crowd and at the same time create value for customers.

Brands will need to become conduits that facilitate consumer communications instead or interrupters that intermittently drop in advertisements.

Imagine if Pepsi had built the first great Twitter desktop application instead of  Tweetdeck or Twhirl and millions of people were using the company’s application to use Twitter. This transforms Pepsi’s role from a company that is trying to communicate amongst millions of Twitter users, to instead providing one of the handful of major applications used by millions.

I mention Pepsi, because they are a company that has began to create web applications using APIs. An example of this is the Pepsi Zeitgeist which used the Twitter API to aggregate relevant tweets at SXSW 2009.

Today’s economy is putting web startups in difficult positions, the demands have never been higher to produce great applications with less development staff.  This provides a golden opportunity for brands who have money to spend in the form of  marketing budgets. If brands use a portion of their marketing budget to hire API developers then they have the power to partner with developing web companies to help them improve how consumers use the service while in tandem changing consumers’ perception and awareness of the brand.

Marketing As A Service

Developing third party applications based on API’s is the extension of an idea that has long been kicked around often referred to as “Marketing As A Service”. Brands have been trying to execute on the idea of marketing as a service on the web, but normally it is with small stand alone applications that are developed as widgets or are a component of a campaign microsite. This isn’t a bad approach, but developing and extending existing web services through API’s offers much more opportunity. Plus these services already have a predefined and organically growing user-base.

The ROI of API’s

What is the ROI of this? The biggest appeal of using API’s as a marketing platform is that brands have a mountain of data at their disposal. Instead of knowing that a customer came to a sales page, brands can know what type of information customers are interested in, how they like to communicate with their friends, keywords that cause them to take action, and countless other data points that would render the best market research obsolete.  Data is just the beginning. The long-term brand awareness that is driven from positive user experience can build stronger brand advocates.

Flip It And Reverse It

Developing on the APIs of existing web services is only the beginning. We live in a world that now has expectations of open and available content. The natural extension of this will be for companies themselves to release their own API’s to allow their customers to create and develop applications. This goes against most current thoughts on inbound web marketing, but understand that empowering customers with information, empowers word-of-mouth marketing. This approach applies to all businesses not those that are web-based, but rather anyone who has a web-based tool or component for their organization.  Obviously this concept will have many hurdles for some organizations, especially from a legal standpoint.

Not A Replacement

Developing on API’s and using other marketing as a service approaches is not a replacement for social media marketing or even traditional marketing, instead it offers the ability to provide consumer value in a more meaningful and complementary way then other current forms of marketing.  It would be difficult to leverage API’s as a marketing platform if brands did not have other traditional marketing resources to help drive exposure and users to the applications that have been developed on the APIs.

Looking Back At The Future

The ideas discussed in this post aren’t new ones, they have been at the heart of successful marketing, the Web simply provides a cheaper and faster way to execute these ideas. In the way that software as a service (SAAS) businesses are changing the software industries business model and increasing profitability, marketing as a service on the web has the same opportunity to improve ROI and change the industry.

I challenge you to think about the roles APIs have for your customer-base. Would this approach work for you? Do you think this is the future? If not, what is?

Twitter is really hot right now, which means the number of third-party applications developed using the Twiter API is growing rapidly. One of the largest sectors for growth is the desktop Twitter application market. Most people that use Twitter do so through desktop applications instead of the Twitter web interface. Most Twitter desktop applications are built using Adobe’s AIR platform and use the twitter API to allow users to send and receive messages and use Twitter search.

With the announcement of the Seesmic desktop application the space is beginning to get crowded. So which one should you use? Which on is the best?

Those are two very different questions. All of the major Twitter applications need improvements and depending on the type of Twitter user you are will impact which application you like the best. I am going to go through and list the pros and cons as well as “who” should use the top 4 applications: Tweetdeck, Yahoo Sideline, Seesmic, and Nambu. Additionally, I have included a video walk through of all of the apps if you would like to get some additional feedback.

Note: All of these applications are currently free.

Tweetdeck

Pros: Tweetdeck in recent months has emerged as the gold standard for Twitter desktop applications because of its layout, twitter search features, 12seconds.tv integration and overall design and performance.  When compared to the four apps reviewed in this post Tweetdeck has been in development the longest and as you would suspect has a deep set of features and a refined design. Tweetdeck integrates most of the URL shortening services along with tweet shrink which helps shorten your message to fit the 140 character limit.

Cons/Suggested Improvements: For an app that feels polished and is out of beta, I have had a lot of problems with it crashing in OS X. Additionally Tweetdeck can be a big RAM hog and really slow down your computer. The black color scheme does not blend well with other applications windows and needs to be changed.

Who Should Use It: If you have a powerful laptop and desktop with plenty of RAM and want the feel of a polished app with all the bells and whistles then Tweetdeck is the desktop app for you.

Yahoo Sideline

Pros: Yahoo maybe in decline, but it still has people that build clean useful applications. Sideline which allows a user to track search terms and trending topics on Twitter search is fast and extremely stable for a new app. It is easy to use and the design aside from the color scheme is spot on. The tabs for saved searches work well and will make sense to most users because they are like the tabbed web browsing experience.  The ability to add multiple search terms under one tab is also a key feature.

Cons/Suggested Improvements: Sideline is a one-trick pony, despite the fact that it is a good trick, the lack of other features won’t work for some users. Sideline is strictly search, to reply to a tweet that you see in Sideline, you must click the reply button, but it will take you to your Twitter.com page to actually type and send your reply. Sideline also doesn’t have many other features that regular Twitter users have come to use heavily like direct messages and URL shortening.

Who Should Use It: Sideline really only serves a niche of the Twitter comunity. It is best for companies that want to monitor but not participate in Twitter and for Twitter “power” users that are following too many people and need a better way to filter tweets.

Seesmic

Pros: Seesmic desktop is clean, has the look of an OS X application and is very user friendly. Though just released and still in beta you can tell the app has been well conceived. Seesmic desktop supports multiple twitter accounts, provides single or multi column viewing options, and allows for new columns of saved search terms. Additionally it lets you group people for further filtering and supports many popular URL shortening services. The left hand navigation makes it easier to access columns and is faster than scrolling like Tweetdeck users have to do.  It also features a mute button for the sound effects, which is a nice touch.

Cons/Suggested Improvements: From the start you can tell the Seesmic’s new desktop client is still in beta. It is buggy and needs further tweaking. Having to click to add a link versus just having a blank below the message box will be a turn-off for many Tweetdeck users. For me and many others the inability to adjust column width and placement easily is the biggest usability hurdle the app faces. Columns are not wide enough, but at the same time individual tweets are taking up too much space.

Who Should Use It: People who do or did like using Twhirl will feel at home with this app, as will users who still haven’t fully embraced the design and UI of Tweetdeck. Seesmic though much like Tweetdeck seems friendlier to new users, but will likely not convert many loyal Tweetdeck users.

Nambu

Pros: For Mac users Nambu is a Twitter client that has burst onto the scene and gotten a lot of early adoption and positive feedback. Though Nambu uses columns like Tweetdeck and Seesimc the remainder of the user experience is different. The message composition box is on the bottom instead of the top. One of Nambu’s killer features is the ability to search and filter words within columns, meaning you could see all of your replies about a certain keyword instead of having to hunt and peck for them. Nambu also supports one or multiple column viewing as well as URL shortening. It uses growl to check for software updates. Instead of offering shortcuts such as replies over profile images it has an action icon on the far right of each tweet and action icons at the top of each column.  It is a clean refined app that doesn’t crash and runs really fast.  It also threads replies in the sent messages column which is really nice!

Cons/Suggested Improvements: Nambu is Mac only so it is going to leave a lot of folks out who use PCs. Additionally the compose box should be bigger and I am not a huge fan of having it on the bottom. The action icon with the drop options still seems a little out of place and needs to be refined.

Who Should Use It: Mac owners who want a native desktop app that is lightning fast and packed full of features will love Nambu. Long term users of Tweetdeck and Twhirl will be thrown off by the UI changes but if they can stick it out will be rewarded with a strong user experience, but few will probably have the patience to.

For an additional look at these four applications please take a few minutes to watch my video walk through:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Did this review help? Which app will you use?

Right now FriendFeed is currently a nerds only hang out. For FriendFeed to grow it needs to add mainstream users. The recent release of the new beta version is trying to accomplish that, but it is still missing a few things. I have 3 (really 4) suggestions to FriendFeed on how it should change its beta design and features.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Do you agree? What did I miss?

Skype a few years ago as the hottest messaging client around, it was eventually purchased and then experienced a decline in its user base. People traditionally have used Skype for making free or very cheap voice calls to their friends and family. Today Skype generated a lot of interested with the release of its iPhone application, which allows user to make free calls to other users from their iphone.

Here is a video the show my initial review of the app.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Will the Skype iPhone app get you to use Skype more?

Hunch is a new start up that launched at the end of last week, that has been getting a lot of attention. Hunch is all about helping people make decisions. After using the site for about 24 hours, I am pretty blown away by its simplicity and relevancy. I have my complete thoughts and walk through in the video below.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Do you use Hunch? What do you think?

Some corporations get it and others don’t. While at SXSW Interactive this past week Chris Brogan organized a flash panel with social media leads from some of America’s most well-known corporations including Pepsi, JetBlue, Crocs, AMD, Best Buy, and General Motors. I was able to record the entire panel (note: it is shaky in the beginning but then I switch to a tripod) and I recommend watching the video as these companies had strong insights about using social media and integrating it into large corporations.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The theme they all talked about is humanizing the brand. To humanize a brand in today’s two-way communication world, you have to personalize your brand.  When personalizing a brand their are three important steps: listening, engaging and creating value. How does your company do these three things? How could they do it better?

What was you favorite nugget of information from the panel?

Big thanks to Chris and all of the panel speakers for putting on this event.

FriendFeed made “liking” things cool, but Likaholix is trying to make “liking” its own activity. Started by two ex Google employees Likaholix tries to apply the simple action of liking and commenting on everything into one place one place on the web.  The site is in currently in private beta so you must request an invite to start using the service. I started using it yesterday and did a quick walk through or the service here:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Overall, I really like the overall idea of Likaholix, but currently it is lacking the viral component that will help it to develop a solid user base. I plan on using the service heavily over the next few weeks to see how it scales. After a day of use here is a list of my comment, thoughts, questions and suggestions.

• How are they going to handle duplicate submissions? Already seeing a ton.
• They need to redesign user page and expand the user profile. The profile page needs to be more individual.
• They need an iPhone app
• The bookmarklet is great, but would love to see a FireFox extension.
• They need to integrate with other services and do it soon. For example if I checking to a location on Brightkite, I want a away to easily like it on Likaholix
• Liking of people needs to be distingished better from liking categories.
• Comments need to be integrated with Disqus the way FriendFeed is set up.
• They need to refine the tastemakers feature, needs to be clearer how to become a tastemaker and their should be different levels.
• Need to have an API for third party development.