Group Introductions

My name is Barry Hurd. I am the President of 123SocialMedia.com, a niche promotion crew that focuses on business uses of social media by educating decision makers on both 30,000 ft strategic views and tactical information on specific issues. Every week we try to throw out a good "tidbit" item or tool. This week it was CrazyEgg.com, a very useful analytical system that creates a heat map of any site that can be sorted by keyword, destination, time on page, etc.

I head up a B2B publishing group focused around building customer relationships. One of my favorite blogs is the Digital Design Blog from Avenue A/Razorfish. It is worth checking out. http://www.digitaldesignblog.com

I'm the online marketing manager for a commerce software platform company and it's many web properties for various audiences. Today's social media tool I use is Twitter. It provides open access to a lot of people who in turn provide information on other social media tools, bloggers, conferences and has become my de facto RSS reader as everyone posts links to their updated content. Feel free to follow me: http://www.twitter.com/marshallengland

I'm a freelance writer and one of the areas I'm currently writing about is social media. I'm particularly interested in how social networks create community around a given topic. One social network site that I'm studying is CareFlash.com. It is set up to create communities around health events like cancer or a pregnancy. I'm interested in learning more about how you've created or been a part of a special community within a social network.