Where to start?

 

The rapid and continued development of new technologies can be very confusing.  A French blogger, Frederic Cavazza, has provided a good starting point here for those trying to quickly understand this new social media landscape.  (Click underneath the image for a larger version).  He categorised several of the most popular technologies and explains their uses on his blog (in English!). For example if a company wants to use new technologies to publish information, he lists the tools available are blogs, wikis, microblogs, news tools and lifecasts.  

However a company may just initially wish to start off by listening to what customers are saying about their products in various forums. It can easily do this by monitoring various forums and searching for references to their products on the internet.  It is worth noting that there are also companies such as Nielsen, who specialise in monitoring brands on the internet. 

Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff have written an excellent book on social technologies called Groundswell.  Several books have been written about this subject but I found this very focussed and appreciated its almost text book format.