You can hear our latest Virtual World conversation with Jim Mora at the Radio NZ website (for a limited time), but if you’ve no time to listen, here’s a summary:

• Jim asked us about what we do .
• We looked at some research showing social media/social networking may not be so mainstream after all. Research firm Synovate found that 56% of people surveyed in 17 markets around the world didn’t even know what social networking was . Interesting.
• Also discussed briefly was another piece of research, showing baby boomers aren’t using social networking – but a blogger from Ogilvy challenges the assumptions behind the research.
• Marie talked about Ponoko ID , the new offering from Ponoko which lets you buy just about anything, custom-made, from around the world.
• Marie also discussed Purple Spheres , an exciting creative project sponsored by Orcon. In a nutshell- eight creative geeks got together in a house in Huia and just created stuff. The end result, some amazing art, including an on-screen animation that dances with a real live person! Better still, most things at Purple Spheres was done using Open Source software.
• Our site of the week was joi.co.nz – which not only has great small business marketing advice, but is also a great example of a business blog. Joi Design get their most qualified leads and clients through their blog. It’s all about networking and thought leadership. Leads from a blog (or an email newsletter) know how you think, and are less likely to want to shop around for the lowest price.
• And Jim played the tongue-in-cheek song, You’re No-one if you’re not on Twitter !

If you want to try out Twitter , feel free to follow us. Simon and Marie both Twitter fairly regularly, and you can find other people to follow using the search function on Twitter . Search by location or interest.

We’ll be posting more information to this site soon about Twitter and other emerging forms of social media, so make sure you’re subscribed to stay on top of everything.

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