Baruch College Social Media Panel Recap

This afternoon I attended a panel discussion at Baruch College in NYC. Lots of students out and about with the summer-like weather NYC is currently “enjoying”. The audience was made up of Baruch students, staff, and others from the community. The panel was titled, “Yes We Can: Going Viral in a Social Marketing World!”, moderated by Les Blatt and featured the following panelists:

• Howard Greenstein
• Steve Rubel
• John Havens
• Peter Himler
• Ken Zamkow

They showed a bunch of videos that have gone viral including Will It Blend and Kobe Bryant jumping over a car. Howard setup a page with a variety of viral videos on Delicious. They talked about some videos from Celebrity Apprentice about ALL detergent that didn’t provide the expected results.

Here are my notes in bullet form…

• Ken Zamkow is going to be launching a new site called Fash911.com soon – he didn’t provide many details except that data analysis will be a big part of the site/service
• Rubel called Second Life – “Digital Vietnam”
• Rubel wonders where social ends and media begins
• Higgins believes the best way to go viral is to make the community the star
• Greenstein noted that companies should market on social networking sites where their customers are now and move with them as new networks and services come into play

At the end of the panel, Steve was asked his thoughts on mobile. He noted that utilities and productivity applications will be big winners this year. I completely agree with Steve on this – especially because more paid apps are launching so there’s no need to worry about monetization via advertising.

Overall it was a good panel. I would have liked to see more specific tactical discussion on seeding viral content but I am confident the students in the audience got a taste of online viral social media.