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Posts Tagged ‘top5jamaica’

3 Ideas on the Immediate Future of Social Media in Jamaica and the Caribbean

Posted by Ingrid Riley on September 4th, 2010

I was asked to speak at what was in fact the largest Tweetup in the Caribbean. There were 300 Jamaican tweeters hosted by the very social media savvy Kingston business hotel, the Jamaica Pegasus. In my role as tech evangelist, I was asked to do a short and pithy presentation on the future of social media in Jamaica and the Caribbean. This is the long form version of the 3 ideas I presented.

Idea Number 1. Four main pillars of the Immediate Future of Social Media in Jamaica and the Caribbean

1. Facebook – As of Friday September 3rd have just under 370,000 Jamaicans and just over 100 Jamaicans business. The majority of those persons and businesses jumping on board within the last year.

2. Mobile phone Apps - Jamaica has a 100% mobile phone penetration, we have one of the highest talk cultures in the world. Blackberry owners represent just about 30% of the subscriber base of the largest telecom provider in Jamaica – Digicel. So it follows naturally that mobile apps would likely do well here from the position of a consumer. But this mobile culture has spawned a mobile app developer community. Just this past month alone I’ve been privy to know of the development and launch dates of 4 mobile apps from Jamaican, Barbadian and Trinidadian developers who will be releasing mobile apps between September and December this year. I’m excited and can’t wait to see how they’ll do in the regional and international market.

Popularity: 8% [?]

Marc Canter, Founder of Macromedia, creator of FLASH Media Player will speak at the technology event Kingston Beta in June.

Posted by Ingrid Riley on May 20th, 2010

Kingston, Jamaica – Thursday, May 20th, 2010 - Marc Canter, Founder of Macromedia, the company that created FLASH Media Player, Dreamweaver, Shockwave; the video game developer; Social Networking consultant and designer; 25 year veteran and serial entrepreneur in the software business; now CEO of Broadband Mechanics – will be the International Guest Speaker at the Kingston Beta, the technology event to be held on Thursday June 24th, 2010 6:30 p.m. at the Spanish Court Hotel.

“We’re excited to have Marc Canter as our first international guest speaker. He’s a globally renowned tech entrepreneur and a keynote speaker with great influence and insight. So we believe the idea and information exchange that will happened between him and our community of technology entrepreneurs and business professionals will be invaluable,” said Ingrid Riley, Ceo of ConnectiMass and founder of the event.

Popularity: 2% [?]

To Blog or Not to Blog

Posted by Ingrid Riley on February 5th, 2010

You can find extensive listings of Caribbean Blogs on top5jamaica.com. You can find a growing list of blogs on CUblogz.com even more so that Cariblogger.com seemed to have dived into the dotcom dead pool. You can follow some of the regularly updated Caribbean blogs on blogscaribe.com and blogjamaica. And You can find a small and growing community of Caribbean Bloggers on Facebook. Last year I was happy to report that there was a Caribbean Blog boom brewing, we had discovered how easy it was to start a blog with wordpress and blogger and we were happy.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Clients and their old media agencies vs new media agencies seeking those clients

Posted by Ingrid Riley on June 8th, 2009

Sandor Panton, the search engine expert, affiliate marketer and entrepreneur behind top5jamaica.com tweeted a powerful question yesterday. RT@top5jamaica said “When will Jamaican companies, event organizers etc. understand that ‘media’ these days doesn’t only mean Gleaner, Observer, TVJ, RJR etc.” In short when will they finally recognise that media now includes the Internet and that the Internet is not some abstract concept that will dwindle into being irrelevant the longer they ignore or the more they downplay its value to a client.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Tweet This: I’m now a believer and a twitterer, here’s why

Posted by Ingrid Riley on March 4th, 2009

I opened my first twitter account on September 4th, 2008. I figured, I’m a technology blogger, I test-drive lots of products, services and website, so why not this-since the buzz was getting hot and heavy. After I set it for my blog siliconcaribe.com, twitter.com/siliconcaribe, I twittered exactly twice there after and abandoned it. I just didn’t get it.
Yet, I was on Facebook, driving my 400 friends nuts with Facebook updates on the road from my Blackberry, at home chilling, when I’m up late working on client projects-whenever and where ever. I use those Facebook updates to do pretty much any and everything. I am using it to share how I’m feeling, what I’m doing, where I’m going, to sharing video links, article links, pointing people to my two blogs, this one and caribbeanstartupblog.com and many times the Facebook update would start a mini debate on a subject, with my friends in turn sharing opinions and other links to videos, articles and websites. Outside of regularly updating my Facebook status I am also a rabid text message sender, in fact most times I prefer to text than talk, my year old Blackberry is overworked and oh yeah my fingers too.