@BasilPuglisi

Content & Strategy, Powered by Factics & AI, Since 2009

Social Media Topics

Professional Spotlight: Jeff Pulver

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The Social Media Valley, or Long Island can certainly claim some bragging rights with this professional. Jeff Pulver has not only been a contributor to the Digital Age, but a visionary leader in communications (or also the communication tools of Social Media) and specifically the power it has given to people. Jeff’s professional contributions would make him seem like a unreachable giant, but I can tell you first hand that he is all about people. Rarely do you find someone so profound that is down to earth, let alone so approachable that he will greats you in casual clothes with a warm smile and a hand out.

Jeff’s History

Growing up in Kings Point, New York, Jeff Pulver got involved with computers when he was 17.  Later, while working at his first job, an accounting firm, he developed and founded Spreadsheet Solutions Corp. an add-on to Microsoft Excel and Lotus 1-2-3, which he wrote. He also invented the CellSocket – a device which allows receiving and making cell phone calls through land lines.

Becoming interested in the possibilities of Internet Phone, a field that was unregulated at the time, Jeff Pulver put his money where his mouth is and in 1995 started a company that will go on to become Vonage, the biggest VoIP provider. He stayed as minority shareholder and member of the board until 2002. 

Jeff was the head writer of what is called “Pulver Order” about internet communication, which had become the basis for the 2004 FCC ruling regarding Internet Protocol (IP) communications.  Helping shape the VoIP landscape, Jeff set his sights on other implementations of internet communication.

In a 2006 Wall Street Journal profile he talked about Internet Video. “The same DNA that disrupted the telecom industry is well on its way to totally revolutionizing the way the TV, film, and broadcast industry is going to be.” He says in the article.

Seeing himself as an agent of change, he continued in The Wall Street Journal article, his mission is to identify the next big thing in technology.

Jeff Pulver & Basil Puglisi

Jeff Pulver proved himself right when a few years later the “Arab Spring” came to life, facilitated by social media.

For years now, Jeff Pulver organizes and hosts the #140Conf in different cities around the world. In those conferences he supplies the platform and invites speakers for short presentations and discussions about the impact of the internet on different aspects of our lives; on education, media, news, and business.  He calls those conferences “The State of NOW”.

“We are living through what is a truly social revolution.” He says in an interview from a conference in Tel Aviv, Israel on November 7, 2011. “What happens when you are living in a world where hundreds of millions of people can discover each other and communicate directly? What do people feel when they connect, engage and every voice matters? People discover that they can stand up and affect a change without really knowing that they are doing it.”

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubcA-WvCDqQ]

Beside the conferences, Jeff Pulver invests in start-ups: Bloom Studio, BloggersBase, SemantiNet and Seesmic among others. He lives in New York with his wife and twin boys.

Here is another Great VIdeo recordning from UStream – 140Conf NYC

The Next 140Conf in NYC is June 19 – 20

 

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#Ignition2011: Sheryl Sandberg Shares Concerns for Facebook and Women

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At the recent Ignition Conference Sheryl Sandberg shared that Mark Zuckerberg’s greatest fear is lack of innovation. She mentions that the two factors are fueling that fear.

  1. Google has as many job openings as Facebook has current employees.
  2. Facebook lacks the resources of many of its direct competitors.

Sheryl understands that one of Facebook’s immediate concerns involves their need to rely on less product launches in favor of those that have bigger impact. Facebook has a current focus targeting the balance of moving forward in their business growth, while still protecting user-privacy.

Sheryl’s Advice to Career Focused Women

Voted in at number 7 of 10, Forbes awarded Sheryl Sandberg the status of one of the world’s Top Ten Power Women of 2011. Sheryl has some very sound advice for other power women as well. She shares that a woman’s most important career choice is who they marry. She encourages women to find a partner with whom they can share their lives 50/50. She reminds them that in general, men lean forward or continuously focus on the growth of their careers, while many women seem to lean back, and let others take the re

Check out this video with Sheryl’s top three pieces of advice for women who aim to reach the executive suites in their careers.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18uDutylDa4]

She also notes that when it comes to an individual’s GPA, the women tend to remember their numbers as slightly lower than they really were, while men remember theirs as a tad higher. She also admits that it seems in general, people like men who are in power, women – not so much. However, people do actually seem to like Sheryl Sandberg which is proven by the number of people, men and women alike, who flock to events where she will be a key speaker.

The Google vs Facebook Battle Continues

Although she initially deflected questions from Henry Blodget about a Facebook phone at the Ignition Conference, she later relented. She has a desire to see Facebook users able to snap a photo on their smart phone and upload right away to an album, wall, or page. She is worried though that Google’s Android may be a factor in preventing that.

“If you buy a phone, you should be able to share pictures and upload your photos with Facebook, we care that Android works and does that,” she said. “Android has made a public commitment to openness, and we want to see that commitment kept.”

She also mentioned that Facebook is thoroughly committed to providing an app that will work on all phones. She shared that she is currently actively working towards this with every single phone manufacturer to see that it happens. Citing that she believes that all consumers should have a choice, when asked by Blodget about whether or not Facebook is currently building a phone, she answered that she would not speculate on the topic. Although this is by far a mysterious and obscure comment, coming from Sheryl Sandberg, it’s definitely worth giving some attention and perhaps a bit of closer inspection.

note: Special Thanks to Business Insider for hosting such a wonderful event and having DBMEi as their Guest.

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#SMWF: NASA’s ‘Out-Of-This-World’ Social Media Engagement Success

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NASA has quite an impressive social media plan in place that has already created quite a social buzz. There innovative and interactive ideas has gained them a solid reputation for achieving success with social engagement. At the Social Media World Forum in New York, I had a chance to hear Stephanie L. Schierholz, Social Media Manager talk about what NASA has been doing with Social Media, and specfically location based services recently.

NASA Partners with Gowalla

Gowella, a mobile and web service, partnered with NASA in 2010 to provide them with an interactive contest where users check in via Gowalla to help locate four NASA-related virtual items. Those items were a NASA patch, a spacesuit, space shuttle, and a moon rock. NASA displays moon rocks from past moon missions at expositions, planetariums, and museums throughout the world. Moon rocks were easily located when users checked in to any location where an actual moon rock was on display.

Gowlla in collaboration with JESS3 created a special edition of a visual map to help users locate the moon rocks and the other required treasure hunt items could be found by checking in through Gowalla at any one of the over 400 science centers, observatories, nature centers, aquariums, museums, and planetariums that are part of NASA’s large Museum Alliance. Gowalla users that collected at least three of the four required items received a special pin in their digital Gowalla passport.

Plus, the first one hundred people who collected three of the four items also received a hardcopy version of the map in the mail.

Tweets from Above and Beyond

During this impressive social media campaign, NASA also had Astronaut Douglas Wheelock, or @Astro_Wheels, check in from Space Station announcing. “Houston, I’ve just unlocked FourSquares’ NASA Explorers badge.”

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rztX3xZR9go]

Check out the NASA Explorers Badge at FourSquare.

Campaign Statistics

This NASA social media campaign turned up some pretty impressive stats for Gowalla and Twitter. Gowalla had never had a past completed by so many, so quickly. Over thirty-thousand of each of the four required items were located through check-ins, and followers were increased by 4,278 during this campaign.

Since this campaign began more than 10,000 people have unlocked the NASA Explorer badge, and over 130,000 people now follow NASA on Foursquare.

Aside from the statistics, NASA’s campaign on Twitter has had other benefits as well. Some of the photos posted by any given @Astro to Twitpic can be what Douglas Wheelock referred to as ‘life-changing’ such as this photo of the earth’s aurora from space.

Incredible!

You Don’t Have to Be an Astronaut to Learn from NASA

Check out what the social media manager for NASA has to say about their relationship with Twitter and how they engage with their followers, as well as how you can engage yours!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-u_hKhtxAI]

Some lessons that NASA social media staff has taken away from their campaigns may help you as well.

  1. Use Twitter yourself first. Know the format and how it works. Get familiar.
  2. Identify the specific business case for your use.
  3. Locate new resources for growth.
  4. Keep the account active.

“You may not have a spaceship, but your company has a fan base. They won’t think of themselves as fans until they’re in a room with like-minded people. They won’t think of themselves as members of a community until YOU bring them together.”

-David Rosen, @davidhrosen (group VP, Makovsky + Company)

 

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LinkedIn Groups: Analytics, Stats, the data

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LinkedIn is by far the biggest professional social network and the second, after Facebook, in the total registered users in the social network world. 120 million register users as of August 2011 in about 200 countries and in 10 languages.

What started as a place to connect those who are hiring with those who are looking for work, and to do that based on personal contacts and recommendations, offers now much more than that. Users can upload photos to help in recognition, they can follow different companies and get notified when a job in one of those becomes available, and they can form a Group. As of 9 months ago, there were 870,612 groups, most of them employment and business related.

Group enables a limited discussion area and moderation by the owners and managers. It can be accessible to members only, or open to all. It is an effective way for B2B advertising, building leadership and driving traffic to your site.  Groups draw users for a longer session, experts say, and thus enabling a person to introduce himself and become noticeable. This has become a way for a person to establish himself/herself as experts in their field, on top of being a wonderful way to target customers.

Up until now, users only knew the number of people in a certain group, but this month LinkedIn added Statistics to the Group function to show in a very visual way, the most important facts about the group; a summary, the demographics, the growth and the activity of the group.

Within those tabs you can see the information in greater detail; where, geographically, are most members located, how many active members the group has, the discussion rate and how many people joined recently.

This kind of information, LinkedIn thinks, will give new members more in depth information and make the decision process, whether to join or not, much easier.  In marketing, this information gives the business owner information that he did not previously have. If you are a local business owner, the location of the people in the group you are targeting is an important factor.

The statistics shows the growth of the group, a great tool for the group manager, which enables him to see the daily activity and response to ad campaigns.

LinkedIn have been paying attention to its Group function in the past few months, unveiling new features. In November their numbers grew to 131 million members  worldwide and 1 million groups.

Why data?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akLmMAnQDVk]

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Giving Thanks to Social Media

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In the spirit of the holiday I want to give thanks to social media and in honor of brevity I will keep this short.

Social Media has given a voice to anyone with the courage to use it.

Now those with disabilities or handicaps like the deaf have a tool in social media and technology to listen and be heard. Those that have been oppressed have found the road to freedom, even if it is still plagued by trials and struggles.  Those that have passion, compassion and dreams now have hope.

The spirit of America’s founders has been captured by this amazing technology, even if their dream seems to have been derailed recently.  The vision they shared, lives on with new hope thanks to social media and those with the courage to use it.

I recently heard someone describe optimism as something that does not exist in those that think good things will happen all the time, but exists in people who choose to find the opportunity for good in everything.

Social Media and Mobile Technology has given humanity the ability to be at both at its worst and its best.  Surely it empowered those who would do evil (i.e. terrorist), but has also given hope to those that choose to do good.

Social Media is the ultimate system of checks and balances, transparency is not a political tool, but the future of the human condition. We are who we are.  The time for misrepresentation is coming to an end, big brother is not the government, it is the people around you. What you do and how you do it will be decided by those that choose to take a picture, a video and then share it with the world. If you choose to do evil, others will find it and share it. If you choose to do good, perhaps even great, others will find you too. Governments and Media no longer control the flow of information, we as a people do.

However, history shows that the roads to atrocity have been paved by good intentions.  While I am optimistic and thankful for the way Social Media has changed humanity, I share the caution of Eli Pariser.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8ofWFx525s]

Let me close with this thought.

 I am thankful for the powerful voice social media has given me. I am also thankful for the powerful voice it has given to those that disagree with me.

Social Media is not my voice but a tool that helps make it stronger, the first step is having the courage to raise your voice, the second is in having the courage to accept those that would have a dissenting voice. Together you will keep each other in balance, and make the world a better place.

Happy Thanksgiving.

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How Facebook became Pornbook [News]

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Facebook tackled by its own value!

Facebook users where so outraged over the content that they engaged with it! That’s right, Hardcore Porn created a massive engagement practice that spread the content like crazy! As users commented on the photo’s, mostly in outrage, the Facebook algorithm moved the content to the top of the news feed. Users that commented made that material available on their users walls, making a single exploit on one account seen by 10,000 thousands due to the viral nature of that single account.

What happened?

Starting November 14, 2011 numerous Facebook users have noticed something disturbing in their news feed. Graphic porn pictures and disturbing images of sick and wounded animals started popping up as news. The pictures were horrible and shook up those who’ve seen them.

It made the news on November 15, when Facebook users started complaining on other social networks about what they saw. “The images I’ve seen today are enough to make me ill” said one tweet, “I’m ready to deactivate” tweeted another.

Facebook took notice.

Most of the day on the 15th, Facebook was quietly removing the images but admitting they don’t know how the breach happened.

That was enough to throw some experts into a frenzy. They recommend companies wishing to protect their staff from offensive content should block Facebook access to their employees until the problem is solved. Others tweeted they are staying away from Facebook until that time.

Facebook told ABC News on November 16: “We experienced a coordinated spam attack that exploited a browser vulnerability”. And they are working to fix the problem.

The way this spam works, they say, was tricking users to copy and paste a JavaScript code into the address bar, in exchange of free stuff. Once the code was entered, it opened the door for the spammers and to the full address book of the user.

Facebook said this attack was not aimed at stealing identities or credit card information.  All the spammer wanted was to disrupt the service and shake the trust in Facebook.

About the Attack

Who is behind the attack?  There were speculations that an Anonymous offshoot was behind it, but another group posted a video on YouTube at the end of October, claiming they are going to attack Facebook on November 5. Some, who claim to be talking for Anonymous, said they were not behind it at all.

On November 17, Facebook came out with an announcement, which basically said; “We know who you are, and we are coming after you”.

It is not clear how many of Facebook’s 800 million users were affected, however if you consider the average hardcore porn photo found by our users had over 300 comments on them and the average user now has over 300 friends, the simple math says that 300 x 300 x 300 x 300 x 300 x etc, well you get the picture.

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Google+ Pages Open the Doors for Brands and Businesses

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This past June, immediately after Google launched it’s highly anticipated Google+ social network, internet savvy businesses like Ford, Dell and Mashable.com rushed to create pages for their brands. Only to have them removed a few days later. Google’s announcement soon followed: “In the meantime, we ask you not to create a business profile using regular profiles on Google+. The platform at the moment is not built for the business use case, and we want to help you build long-term relationships with your customers. Doing it right is worth the wait. We will continue to disable business profiles using regular profiles. (Christian Oestlien Ads project manager on Google+)

One hundred days later Google delivered on its promise. On November 7, 2011 Google+ announced the grand opening of Google+ Pages worldwide.

Google+ Pages allows businesses, brands, and organizations create their own page and establish a circle of like-minded people who enjoy the brand and want to talk about it. Not only does the page allow having a conversation with brand representatives in a way of personalized customer service, it also allows the group of followers to have a conversation with each other.

As Google+ puts it, when it talks about the customers: “…we want to make sure you can build relationships with all the things you care about—from local businesses to global brands… this means we can now hang out live with the local bike shop, or discuss our wardrobe with a favorite clothing line, or follow a band on tour. Google+ pages give life to everything we find in the real world. And by adding them to circles, we can create lasting bonds with the pages (and people) that matter most.” (Google’s blog)

Not only brands and businesses are involved. Google+ wants to enlarge the circle of users to local business, products, corporations, institutions, organizations, arts and entertainment, sports teams and more. They have been working with businesses since the launch in June to understand the needs and requirements of brand names. You can see the pages of these businesses already active:

  • Dallas Cowboys
  • Macy’s
  • Pepsi
  • Toyota
  • Anderson Copper 360
  • X games
  • Zen Bikes
  • The Muppets

Having pages for brands and businesses is nothing new, but Google+ has a few advantages over the competition:

  • People can recommend the brand easily by pressing the +1 button, and start sharing immediately.
  • A brand can have more than one page. A car manufacturer, for example, can have a page for each of its models.
  • Although Facebook has over 500 million users, and Google+ has, so far, about 50 million, the biggest advantage of Google+ has to do with the billions of queries made every day on the search engine, most of them looking for businesses or services. Google will include Google+ pages in its search results.
  • Direct connect – The easiest way to find a band you like to follow or a product has been amended as well. Typing the sign + before the query will take the searcher straight to the brand page. (Try it with + Angry Birds)

The official announcement on Google’s blog ends with these words: “With Google+, we strive to bring the nuance and richness of real-life sharing to software. Today’s initial launch of Google+ Pages brings us a little bit closer, but we’ve still got lots of improvements planned, and miles to go before we sleep. So stay tuned.

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Facebook Ad Campaigns – Are They Working?

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A World Obsessed with Facebook

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJXOavGwAW8]

With so many potential customers on Facebook, Facebook ads should be a profitable and beneficial to your business. With over 850 million users, and 225 million of those in the United States, there is quite an audience to target through the use of Facebook ads.

How Facebook Ads Work

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yhn0-MrDR18]

The Facebook Ad Marketplace

Like other online advertising options, Facebook ads are a type of marketplace where the user bids on how much they are willing to pay to reach their prospective consumers and how much they will pay if those consumers take action.

Facebook has become a common place for businesses who are using customized Facebook Fan pages to increase the amount of fans on their page, thereby increasing their consumer base. Fans are simply customers waiting to happen. So how do you make sure you are getting a good ROI from the investment on the ads?

Basic Marketing 101 – ROI

To determine your ROI you should take your gross profit, subtract the capital spent on your Facebook ad campaign, then divide by the expense. This should give you a good comparative measure in which to determine which of your marketing expenditures are most effective for your business.

Has Anyone Had Real Results from Facebook Ads?

If you watched the video above, you heard from Bob Ford, a representative for Papa John’s Pizza. He describes how an ad placed on Facebook increased their Facebook fans by 130,000 fans overnight with a one day engagement ad.

Starbucks ran their own event on Facebook ads for World Aids Day and had an overwhelming 950,000 people who agreed to attend the event. Alex Wheeler, a Starbucks PR rep shares, “I think it (Facebook) is really effective because its part as the content experience that people have on Facebook. They can interact with it. They can actually participate. We can have these shared ideals with our customers.”

The Value in a Facebook Ad as Part of Your Marketing Campaign

The ultimate benefit, just as the Facebook developer in the video states, is that Facebook itself provides not only the venue to advertise to direct demographics, but that its very nature encourages other Facebook users to share the content with their network. This means that with an effective Facebook ad campaign, many of your connections could be made for ‘free’ in the form of users who willingly share your content with others. This digital version of ‘word-of-mouth’ advertising has proven to be highly effective for some.

“The conversations are happening, with, or without the brands participation.”

Do you want to be a part of the conversation?

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#SMWF: How Hilton Does Social Media

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Hilton has one message from their industry that rings true into their social media campaigns. Hospitality is social. If it isn’t, the execs at Hilton think it should be. Their studies into how social media integrates with travel accommodations has shown:

  1. Those who travel often are commonly also active on social media networks.
  2. Those who use these channels do expect their favored businesses and locations to be listening, available, and willing to respond via these networks.
  3. Those using these venues are not only interested in deals, but often also travel advice, and to deal with customer service issues.

Hiltons Wide-Reaching Social Network

Hilton has made finding information on an incredible variety of things on social networks of all types, quite easy. They regularly post interesting videos on YouTube that show a myriad of benefits for choosing Hilton accommodations when you head out for your next vacation.

Check out this video about a spectacular special drink created by one of Hilton’s own bartenders at the Hilton Hawaiian Village® Waikiki Beach Resort.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4xZJbW5uBY]

Not only does this create an interest in this location and its amenities, it also builds upon true customer engagement by giving them a real taste of what to expect on their next trip, but also a familiarity that many can appreciate.

None of the above even takes into account that not only does Hilton engage their customers with this type of open information but they have also effectively engaged the employee. It looks like Hilton has taken the proactive stance that many other businesses have by utilizing their current staff to share the big picture through social media networking.

@HiltonSuggest

Social Media Guru for Hilton, Vanessa Sain-Dieguez, helps implement training for their employees on how to use social media to help take care of their customers. In a comprehensive study on using social media with their guest, they noted one very important issue, customers do not just expect their favored businesses to be ‘listening’ to them, but they also expect them to act.

A highly active Twitter account known as @HiltonSuggest stays on the lookout for those who Tweet messages like:

Although none of these Tweets specifically mentions Hilton, @HiltonSuggest still doesn’t mind offering immensely helpful suggestions based on exactly what folks are looking for in the Twitterverse. Also noticable is the fact that not all of the blurbs thrown into the Twitterverse have hashtags, which shows that Hilton is really listening, the replies show that they are also willing to act, even when it doesn’t mean a direct consumer experience for their industry.

It turns out that dbmei author had written an article that had personally touched him and his family, and yes Hilton was behind it! Check it out here.

Defining Social Media in the Hotel Industry

A panel co-hosted by HVS Executive Search and ESSEC Business School Paris was held on February 7th, 2011 to discuss what the rise in social media means for the hotel industry. Attendees were students, hoteliers and other staff, all of whom declared they are active on at least one social media network.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhg4vug1yZM]

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Express Yourself with Prezi.com

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One of the biggest problems public speakers and businessmen face is how to make their presentation sharp, concise and informative without making is dull and uninspiring.

There is a tool that can help do just that. It is called Prezi.com and it enables a speaker to make video presentations that are unique, informative and entertaining.

Developed by the Hungarian architect, Adam Somali-Fischer, in 2001 as a visual aid in presenting architectural designs, the interface enabled zooming in and out of elements on the screen. Since there was no zooming interface at the time, each presentation had to be coded individually.

In 2007, a Budapest University professor managed to convince Mr. Somali-Fischer to develop a publicly available ZUI (zooming user interface) and in 2009 Prezi.com was launched.

Using cloud based presentation software, any text, video or image can be put together into frames. The designer then decides what is important in this image and how close he wants to get to it. For instance; zooming into the dot above the letter “i” will reveal an image that can grow larger and larger, filling the screen. Designers can pan and zoom between images, add music and sound effects.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=fvwp&v=2NsKNL7LJOI&NR=1]

Unlike PowerPoint, another presentation interface, Prezi allows map layout and nonlinear navigation. It can show complex systems in a cognitive and mind mapping kind of way. Although the interface is cloud based it allows subscribers to work offline and save the presentation to their computer on Windows, Mac and Linux.

The designer can pan and zoom, can import media from other sources: videos from YouTube, PDFs and images and create a storyline that will engage the audiences. The presentation can be displayed online and offline and he can collaborate with others, in real time, with Prezi Meeting.

Prezi is a ‘freemium’, meaning customers can use it for free, but they must publish their work on the Prezi site. The Prezi Pro which is the paid option allows subscribers to work offline and they can make their presentations private. Plans start at $59.

The World Economic Forum is using Prezi as part of their media strategy. TED Conferences curator, Chris Anderson, used the interface in his presentation in 2010, as did the British newspaper The Guardian in their new World Map graphics on their site.

Prezi is now available as an iPad app. Now you can create, collaborate and present on the go. There are also publications to help navigate the program.

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