“And everywhere that Mary went, the lamb was sure to go.” – from the nursery rhyme, “Mary Had a Little Lamb”

If Mary = online technology, then the Lamb = Mashable. If you want to be in on everything in Web 2.0 from the beginning, subscribe to the Mashable feed. You’ll get a bite of information about everything happening in the tech world. You can skim 98% of it quickly, and you can click on a link for the other 2% that really applies to you. Very useful tool.

One feature that you will regularly find some gems in is the Mashable interview. Mark Hopkins goes all over the Web 2.0 landscape to find great, useful information. Some examples of what Mark presented at Mashable in the last week of March:

JamBase: 10 years online, a database of 1 million listings, the original social network for live music lovers & producers. Interviewed the owner of JamBase on how a long-time website adapts to the constantly changing social media.

FriendFeed: Mark talked with FriendFeed founders, Paul Buchheit and Bret Taylor about their new FriendFeed API service.

crowdSPRING: a virtual marketplace to find the creative talent to do any digital job you can think of. Mark interviews Co-founders Ross Kimbarovsky and Mike Sampson to find how they have taken the idea of sites like GetAFreelancer and eLance to a whole new level.

Tremor Media: a video advertising company targeting mid- to large-size publishers. Jason Glickman, Tremor CEO, talks about the challenges of video advertising.

Kidzui: New browser targeted for kids age 6 to 11, Mark interviews AJ, his 6-year-old son, and has him play with the browser for an hour and give his thoughts and experiences.

If you want a wide-view lens capture of Web 2.0, go to Mashable and get their feed. It’s a must.

“As always with WordPress, we don’t claim any of these features to be perfect, or to be better than everyone else in the world, but they are done by and for the people and the one thing we do promise is that with every release we listen and do our best to improve.” – Matt Mullenwegg, founding developer of WordPress

WordPress 2.5 gives you many new options in your social blogging. Here is a partial list of the upgrades:

• Cleaner, faster, better organized,less cluttered dashboard lets you really focus on your blog
• Dashboard Widgets
  • Fun stats about your posting
  • Latest comments
  • Who links to you
  • New and popular plugins
  • WordPress news
  • (Customize any widgets to show, e.g., news from your local paper instead of WP news)
• Multi-file upload with progress bar
• Search both posts AND pages — perfect solution if you use WordPress as a content management system
• Tag management — Add, rename, delete, tags, no plugins needed
• Password strength meter
• Few-click plugin upgrades — automatic download & installation of plug-in upgrades
• Friendlier visual post editor — it doesn’t mess with your code anymore
• Built-in galleries — you can embed whole galleries of photos in a post
• Salted passwords — much greater protection against hackers
• Secure cookies
• Inline documentation — explains functions and when to use them
• Database optimization — the process is now a bit faster
• Improved “Add Media” button function

If something goes wrong in your social blogging, it’s probably a plug-in causing a javascript error. A new button allows you to turn off all your plug-ins, then turn them back on one by one.

There’s more. You can read the complete, detailed list of WordPress 2.5 social blogging features.

Social networking is all about value and respect. If you provide good value, you will get respect … and traffic. If you provide questionable – or negative – value, then the members of social networking websites will conclude that you have a lack of respect for them. They’ll either ignore you or ride you out of town on a rail.

So what is “questionable or negative value”? Simple: affiliate links or any other kind of self-promotion. When you join a social networking group and start posting affiliate links, you have just shot yourself in the head. No one will trust you. No one will respect you. Your website will get no traffic. And nobody is going to buy from any of your affiliate links.

OK. So what is “good value”? Simple: valuable information or tools that you give away free of charge. When you join a community and provide “good value”, you are seen as a person who gives good value. So you are respected. If you’re new at this, then your first task is to do a lot of Googling to find valuable information and tools that you can give away free to others in your community. Compile a large list … it’ll come in handy.

The best thing you can do is to actually ask people in the community what they really need. Or listen when they talk to others about it. Then figure out a way to give them what they want. You will gain their trust and respect, which is way more valuable long-term than any affiliate commission you might miss out on today.

Your heart must be pure. Your intention must be to help, to provide value (that word again!). People will trust you when they see that you are genuine, honest, & transparent. But they start out suspicious, because they’ve been burned before. If they think your intention is to do whatever you have to do in order to trick them into buying your stuff, they will know. And they won’t like it. They will beat on you, and they’ll tell anyone who’ll listen what a jerk you are.

On the other hand … if you care, if you bring value to your Facebook community, if you help people, then they will trust you. And they will follow you. You can build long-term relationships with people who will be happy to see you succeed … and may often help … because they like you and they trust you.

Social networking is not advertising. On these social websites, trust is supreme. Blatant advertising kills trust. Providing true value creates trust. And once you have made the connection that creates trust, it’s a natural move for them to go to your website, because they like you and want to know more about you.

That is how to play the social networking game.

Features of YouTube Insight – a free new social marketing tool from YouTube – gives YouTubers detailed stats about the videos they upload:

• How often their videos are viewed by geographic area
• A popularity comparison to all videos in that market in a certain timeframe
• How long it takes for a video to become popular
• what happens to video views as popularity peaks

How does this help you? Use these stats to:

• increase your videos’ view counts
• improve your popularity on YouTube

What if you discover that:

• Your videos are most popular on Wednesdays?
• You have a huge following in Spain?
• New videos that play off previous content become more popular more quickly?

These stats help you make better marketing decisions, such as:

• Tailor your content more to your target audiences
• Post these videos on days you know these viewers are on the site.
• Post your next video in Spanish?

A plan to increase your videos’ popularity is important for all the obvious reasons … including generating more revenue through on-site advertising. More new YouTube features coming soon:

• A specific breakdown of how viewers discovered the video
• Additional statistical information

To see your stats, go to:
YouTube > My account > Videos, Favorites, Playlists > Manage my Videos

Click under the “About this Video” button.

You often hear that each social bookmarking site is different, and it’s best to focus your content on the social bookmarking platform that values that type of content most. Good plan. But how do the different sites value content?

SocialMediaTrader did an analysis of 500 front-page articles from February, 2008, for several different popular social bookmarking sites. The sample size isn’t huge, but results could give you a guideline of the best sites to bookmark your content.

February, 2008 # of Front-Page Stories

StumbleUpon

1. Technology 105
2. Offbeat 93
3. Arts 73
4. Politics  47
5. Lifestyle 48
6. Science 25
7. Videos 24
8. Tutorial 20
9. News 18
10. Business/Make money 17
11. Environment 15

DIGG

1. US Elections 44
2. Tech News  34
3. World News  32
4. General Sciences 30
5. Odd Stuff  28
6. Environment 27
7. Politics  27
8. Comedy 25
9. Movies  24
10. Business 22

Del.icio.us

1. Technology 51%
2. Offbeat 12%
3. Arts 9%
4. Tutorial 7%
5. Business 6%
6. Lifestyle 6%
7. Politics 3%
8. Science 2%
9. Videos 2%
10. Environment 1%

Propeller

1. Politics 68
2. News 63
3. Technology 57
4. Health 48
5. Money 37
6. Humor 25
7. Celebrities 23
8. Do No Evil 21
9. Science 20
10. Personals 14
11. Music 11

MIXX

1. Entertainment 64
2. Politics 59
3. Informative 53
4. Tech 23
5. Business 21
6. Lifestyle 20
7. Other 19
8. Education 13

These stats give you an idea of what each community is looking for, and should give you a start on finding the 1 or 2 sites that give you your best chance of submitting your own niche content that goes viral.