Top 3 social tools right now?

1. Ifttt.com
2. Buffer
3. Hootsuite

Top 3 reasons to be an expat in London?

1. It’s so easy to get to the rest of Europe
2. Amazing museums
3. Castles!

Top 3 Euro startups to keep an eye on?

1. http://Spotify.com
2. http://Soundcloud.com
3. http://www.peerindex.com/

Top 3 reasons you like working at Waggener Edstrom?

1. Being at a larger independent agency gives us the size to do really cool stuff without a lot of the pressure of the big public agencies.
2. We have great clients.
3. We have great people.

Top 3 funny English sayings?

1. A shed load (meaning a lot)
2. When they say diary instead of calendar. The first time you hear an exec say, “Let’s get that in the diary,” try not to laugh.
3. Pretty much anything said with an English accent is funny.

Top 3 things that drew you to a career in social media?

1. I’ve always been interested in how communications technology affects our culture.
2. I’m ADHD and that works to my advantage in this space.
3. Being a geek is cool and I get to work with other geeks.

Top 3 favorite RSS feeds?

1. GigaOm is my favorite tech blog right now, I even subscribe to their Pro version, they have some great reports.
2. I really like Pando Daily and their Pando Ticker feed.
3. HBR has the best business blogs IMO.

Top 3 social media pet peeves?

1. Whining
2. Complaining
3. Spam

Top 3 things you love about blogging?

1. Comments
2. I like writing. It helps me think
3. Geeking out over tweaking WordPress

Top 3 reasons why today’s social media agency could kill yesterday’s PR agency?

1. More efficient
2. Good results for a little amount money
3. Lack of legacy

Top 3 reasons why yesterday’s PR agency will kill today’s social media agency?

1. Better processes
2. Big media results with big impact
3. Strong relationships with clients

Top 3 benefits to crowdsourcing?

1. Audience participation
2. Tapping into latency in the workforce
3. It forces companies to be more collaborative and transparent

Top 3 reasons everyone should be using Path?

1. Path is where social media people go to not talk about social media.
2. You can choose to post to Facebook and Twitter if you want. It’s efficient.
3. All the cool kids are doing it.

Top 3 social media predictions for 2012?

1. Crowdsourcing and Gamification are going to be better together.
2. There will be a backlash to social media analytics. The cost of measuring and analyzing isn’t always worth the benefit.
3. As much as people complain about losing their privacy, they will give up even more of it because that transparency enables huge benefits in collaboration.

(He loves doing annual predictions and you can see all his predictions here.)

Top 3 social media hotspots in EMEA?

1. London
2. Berlin
3. Turkey

Top 3 kooky titles for a social media professional?

1. Director of New Media*
2. Web 2.0 Strategic Lead*
3. VP of Social Media*

*These are all the titles he’s held over the last 6 years.

Top 3 reasons why you miss Seattle?

1. The people
2. The mountain and trees
3. The music scene

Top 3 things you’d tell your 2006 self about the internet today?

1. Blog more, earlier and use more video.
2. Facebook is going to be bigger anyone thinks.
3. Learn how to code.

(You can see his video on that topic here.)

Here’s how to enter:

1. Be sure to follow @Hyph_En and @ZAGGdaily on Twitter.
2. Tell us – How do you stay charged at work or while traveling?
3. Tweet your answers to @Hyph_En and @ZAGGdaily. Be sure to include the #sparqmeup hashtag in your tweet.

You can enter once per day via Twitter (Wednesday, Feb. 8th through 11:59am PST, Monday, Feb. 13th). Winners will be announced Monday, Feb. 13th!

You must live in the United States to be eligible.

The top two (2) best answers will be chosen so feel free to be funny and witty with your answers!

Good luck!

If you know me, I’ve speculated in the past that Steve Jobs didn’t like social (media) at all. He was a private man. Although he was known to reply to random customer emails written to steve@apple.com from time to time, the thought of having Apple get involved on say… Facebook… was probably his worst nightmare. Afterall, Apple didn’t need to. They had become wildly successful in their marketing strategy since the release of the iPod.

But if you’re successful already with your marketing efforts does that mean social isn’t for you or your company? Absolutely not. Social media is much more than just an avenue to market your brand, services and products. And because so, here are three reasons why Apple should now be involved in social media:

1. Accessiblitiy to Customers

The Steve Jobs Era is over. Apple, it’s time to get on board like everyone else and make yourself more accessible to your customers. Sure, you do a great job with your Apple Stores, but people want to engage with you online too.  Time to light up the @Apple handle on Twitter and start engaging with us. It’s going to be weird at first, but you can do it! You can stand to learn a lot from us people – every other brand in the world does.

2. Transparency with Customers

Apple… you guys are divas. We get it. You’re also so secretive. With Tim Cook as the CEO maybe you’ll be open to having a team of community managers tweet out fun stuff about what’s happening on 1 Infinite Loop from time to time? Much of what social media is all about is transparency and having fun. I’m not suggesting you leak out new product images on Facebook, but showing us the inside of your company’s personality could be a great thing!

3. You Owe Us

Yeah, I said it. Apple, you owe it to us to be on social. We, the consumers, are the reason why you’re on track to hit 40Billion+ in revenue for this quarter. As I look around my house right now, I realize that between my wife and I, we have: two iPods, two iPhone 4′s and two MacBook Pros and one iPad. I’m an Apple fan boy at heart, yet, I can’t go on your Facebook page and tell you how much I love you guys? #FAIL. It’s nearly 2012. You OWE it to us to have a Facebook page at least.

I’m not into doing prediction posts for the New Year, but my gut tells me Tim Cook’s leadership will usher in a newly revised marketing strategy that will include social media. When this happens, there’s sure to be one lucky agency out there to sign with them.

The first of its kind and just released today, TJUNKS allows Foursquare users on Android to share a video of their check in. Simply visit the Android Market, download the free app, and put it to use by checking in to any location. Once you go to a location and check in, there will be a button on the share screen where you can take a video of the venue, then upload. Simple as that! All of your TJUNKS followers will receive your video and it will also pop up on the TJUNKS TV live stream. Sharing capabilities are similar to Foursquare photo check in’s where you can post to twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, and tumblr, so share the place you’re at, whether it’s a restaurant, bar, store, or other venue. Fear not iPhone users, TJUNKS will have a version available to you soon as well so sit tight!

Is this something you foresee yourself using? Why or why not?

Cull.tv is similar to Pandora in which you can create music channels you enjoy, just  with a visual appeal of music videos. Not only do you get to customize your own music video channels, the unique thing about Cull is that they have engineered it to stream music videos that sound well as they transition.

So where’s the social aspect of this you may ask? Well, you can create your own channels and share them with your friends, right within your account. Set up your own channels, stream them to listen to your favorite tracks, or play Cull off your tv for an added visual affect at an event you may be hosting. It’s free, it’s fun, and the music enthusiast inside of you will be pleased.

If you register for Cull.tv with Facebook, you’ll get two exclusive channels. They create a channel tuned to your tastes from your Facebook music likes and another channel full of videos posted by your friends to Facebook.

Since they just launched, we encourage you to check them out and leave them some feedback and of course, feel free to submit your channels to Cull at contact(at)cull(dot)tv. Follow @Culltv on Twitter to receive updates as well.

What kind of music video channel will you set up?

Now, coming from someone who works at a Social Media Agency I can tell you that this is no easy thing to do. It’s actually amazing and quite possibly an anomaly if truly achieved all organically in nature. Clients of ours would die to achieve a quarter of that growth in eleven days, and these are nationally recognized brands we’re talking about! Still, as I write this the Crock Pot Girls page has already been “liked” more than 2500 times and they are now at 610,369 likes.

The remarkable thing about this is that these girls didn’t seem to do anything special. They just filled a felt need. There are no fancy bells and whistles to their Facebook page: no interactive tabs, no “Like” us for a chance to win an iPad – just a couple of pictures of three ‘soccer mom looking’ women holding their crock pots. It appears that all they sought to do was harness Facebook for a free community page so they could share their recipes with the world and have the world share their recipes with them.

I’m actually thrilled that this is still happening on the Internet. The Crock Pot Girls prove that some things still do not need to be bought. Because communities cannot be bought.

Unfortunately, if you’re hoping to get one from the Best Buy or HP site – you likely never will as they have been sold out since Saturday. You can sign up for an alert on HP’s site to be emailed when the stock is replenished, OR you can lurk on the Best Buy or the HP site and hit refresh forever hoping to get one. Either way, with a killed off OS why bother? It’s all about the apps and with no developer community or updated app store you’ll be SOL.

The most distinguishable thing about Spotify when compared with Grooveshark and Pandora is that it’s an application that gets installed on your MAC or PC. Unlike many of the other music services out there that are exclusively web based, Spotify is installed locally on your machine to become your end-all music player – even replacing iTunes if you allow it to. It’s designed to retrieve all of your already purchased music and neatly index your albums/songs into a Spotify library. So, not only is it a music service like Grooveshark, it’s an intelligent music player that will index all of your personal music as well.

With it’s social window pane on the right hand side of their app, Spotify allows you to see all of the music your friends on Facebook listen to if they’re on Spotify as well. Even more, you can subscribe to playlists around the world like Spotify’s own Rolling Stone 100 Best Songs of the Decade which currently boasts more than 12k subscriptions. Sharing your playlist with with your friends has never been easier – just be sure you authorize Spotify for use with Facebook or this feature obviously won’t work.

Full user control to hand pick virtually any song/album you want to listen to is the reason why Spotify will take a lot of the market share away from Pandora. This is the number one reason why I like it. You can search for any song, listen to it, and play it over and over again. You can’t do this with Pandora’s radio stations. Search for songs and create a playlist. It’s like owning the music! It’s brilliant really.

Pros – Clean UI. Full user control. Listen to what you want, when you want. Social aspect is fun and not intrusive to the overall user experience.

Cons – Advertisements more frequent than Pandora. Subscription tiers ($4.99 and $9.99) are far too expensive for what you get. No mobile streaming capabilities with the $4.99 suscription? Lame. Not as intuitive as Pandora and Grooveshark for the tech timid. Would be nice to be able to play all without adding to a playlist or queue.

There you have it, a quick run down on Spotify. To find out what all the hype is about you can go to Spotify.com and request an invite, or google for “Spotify invites.” I’m sure you can figure out a way to get one.

Similar to the coupon sites, you can find deals ranging from restaurants, bars, entertainment, sports, or even a town car service for the city of your choosing. Lifesta is quite socially connected as well so you can keep up with new deals posted on their twitter and facebook fan pages.

Whether you are looking for a past deal you missed out on, are moving and can no longer use your coupon, or just won’t have time, throw your deals up on Lifesta and get some money back!

Hilary Duff seen here on the left Owling before sending this tweet.

What is it?

“Owling is actually more of an indication of how big planking is,” said Ben Huh, founder of the Cheezburger Network of sites and blogs.

Watch the video below to find out.  Start keeping an eye out for all of those nice areas to start perching on. You gotta get yours in before someone one ups you. It’s all about who Owls first where.

“Planking is dead, donsies, it’s so first quarter 2010… this summer it’s all about Owling.”