Translate
SpiceRex finally got the 1,000,000 user, I wonder what will happen to him?
Stay tuned for all the news and info on what’s going to happen now, we’ve been promised some interesting stuff.
And make sure you tweet, facebook, myspace well just spread the word that Spiceworks has made it to 1 million users.
So one weekend I enter the Spiceworks “Show the world your Spiceness” contest with some standard things to start with. Just bits and bobs I found around the office like a moose head and a random set of oversized batteries.
After a while I ran out of ideas and wanted to come up with something new and exciting, I started to think back about things I had done and seen before as well as doing a Google of bits and bobs.
I got creative and along came the SpiceVan failing to get peoples avatars into the windows of the bus I just stuck some logos on it.
Not very exciting, and well not as good as I hoped I tried something else.
The ups and downs of working with social media my experiences with Spiceworks 
First off… This isn’t really all Spiceworks related but just had the idea for a post along these lines and Spiceworks-News is about the only place I could put it. It is however all based on my experience with Spiceworks.
So everyone knows what social media is now days? And that big buzz word of “web 2.0” and companies like Spiceworks are starting to exploit it to market there products and IT conferences like Spiceworld. Places like Skype, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Flickr, Digg and Ustream are regularly used.
So what do I think are the advantages and disadvantages of Social media and networking…
There are many pro’s to social media and well they do outweigh the downs.
A great example of this was at Spiceworld 2009 Austin, I (akp982) was about to receive a Spicies award when Justin Dorfman (from Frugal IT) had the idea of using Skype to allow me to give my acceptance speech. I ran around and got a microphone ready and he ran off to the Spiceworks Staff to hand him his laptop which got pushed onto stage. This was great, I was watching the live stream though Ustream and also talking live to the presenters. It was a very weird feeling I was in the UK and talking and watching people in the US. Without the Ustream chat to get me on skype with Justin and without skype for allowing us to make a “call” it would not have been possible. It was organised so quick the presenters were shocked to hear that I was ready to talk to them.
Social media mainly things like twitter can really help promote your products very quickly by telling lots of people instantly. When Spiceworks 4.1 was released it was mentioned by over 100 people on twitter and Spiceworks are expecting more people to spread 4.5 when it comes out. From this people will quickly write reviews to jump on the back off this and give their blog or website a boost in traffic and hope for some regular readers. Frugal IT is and example of a site that did well at this with there Spiceworld 2009 coverage (http://fr.ugal.it/spiceworld-2009) they were able to get multiple people to tweet, blog and just share their link. With this link spread all over the world, people would then visit the site pickup on the ads and information around the Spiceworld page and may then come back in the future. I know we (Spiceworks-News) jump on even the oddest of things. We often pickup on blog posts about or mentioning Spiceworks and re post the first paragraph in hope for a ping back. Posts like (Getting IT spicey at your church) got a ping backs out there and we may have got another 1/2 visitors (they all add up over time to now around 300 people looking at Spiceworks-News on a daily basis according to Google analytics… if only some of them posted comments).
Its coming, its going to be big. Its Spiceworld London, it all kicks off in:
Lets make Spiceworks want to come back to London by making it a great event for everyone. Lets big it up on twitter lets get it up on google and spread it though the globe with facebook.
We can do this!
We can make Spiceworld London famous world wide.
I know a bit tacky but hay… Got a better countdown we could use? Use the contact form to get in contact with us. I don’t have a great deal of Spare time so using something like above was quick and easy
This made me laugh when I read it on Spiceworks Facebook
Spiceworks has helped Curtis keep it up and get a good nights sleep, maybe it could help you?
Spiceworks Lets You…
Read more and download it now, its FREE! 750,000 IT Pros you could be one of them.
Checkout Spiceworks Facebook profile here
Bob Tarzey, Service Director, Quocirca has posted up on http://www.it-analysis.com/ about Spiceworks and the social media size.
Can social networking actually be useful? There are plenty of claims made about Twitter’s usefulness for getting concise messages to a broad audience or using LinkedIn to track down old colleagues who may be able make an introduction to a new prospect. But what about direct benefits—such as finding quick solutions to problems or getting better deals on products?
It seems that the lesson from systems management vendor Spiceworks is—yes it can. Spiceworks has a business model that sounds very bubble 2.0. It provides a set of systems management tools for free and makes its cash by other means. But can Spiceworks actually return a profit where Facebook, Twitter and many others have not? Spiceworks is a private company with VC backing and does not disclose its profitability, but having gone through two rounds of capital raising, it says it has no need for a third.
Its the morning after the community update and seem seemed to go well (the community is working at least)
We are still awaiting a full list of things that have changed but here are the things I have spotted so far:
Spiceworks News
All the latest Spiceworks news is now shown on the My Community Page to help make sure you don’t miss anything
Points System
Due to the outburst of point cheating the points system has changed.
You can now get points for windows even comments.
Insted of getting 10 points for every post you now one get one point per new topic you talk in, meaning it is more contribution based.
If you fill out all of your profile you automatically get 100 points.
Channels
There are now channels in the community but i have yet to find a full list of them, the networking one is http://community.spiceworks.com/channel/show/3-networking
Channels are aimed to help organise groups, If you visit the Networking channel you’ll see all the topics from groups like Cisco, DNS, etc.
Share-It
At the bottom of all topics there are now social media buttons so you can share something from the community on Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Linked In, and Reddit.
So hopefully Tabrez will post up a list of everything that has changed soon and I can do a full write up, but I think I got most of them.
Tabrez has just posted:
We’re planning on pushing out an update to the Spiceworks Community tonight (Jul 14) at 7pm CST. The Community will be offline during this time. We should be back up in 4 hours. For those of you with S.C.A.D – rest assured we’ll be back and spicier!
Some of the changes you’ll see are:
- A few changes to the point system (I’ll post back tomorrow with the details but in a nutshell: you can now earn points for providing troubleshooting advice and comments on Windows Events)
- We’re testing out a new way of organizing groups around a concept called Channels. For eg: If you visit the Networking channel you’ll see all the topics from groups like Cisco, DNS, etc.
- Topics will now have social media buttons so you can share something from the community on Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Linked In, and Reddit. When you share something you found interesting on Spiceworks you’re also helping spread the word about Spiceworks!
I’ll post more details once we get the release out.
Its going to be a hard time of everyone with SCAD but well fight though it.