In some ways, Kevin Rose and his Revision 3 partner, Alex Albrecht have become symbols of user-generated media. Their podcast show, Diggnation was one of the first out of the gate to build a substantial audience, and most recently, Kevin Rose was selected as one of Tech Review’s “2007 Young Innovators Under 35.” Kevin was selected because of the impact he’s had on the way people consume news through online social bookmarking and community rating or “digging” stories up or down. You can read more about it here, but here is an excerpt:

Digg, mixes blogging, online syndication, social networking, and “crowdsourcing”–which combines the knowledge and opinions of many individuals–to create an online newspaper of stories selected by the masses.

If you are not immediately awe-struck by the effective combination of community and technology then know this – Digg receives more than 17 million visitors to the site each month. Obviously, there is a substantial user-base who enjoy consuming, contributing, and interacting with content in this way. But aside from Kevin’s recent recognition, this is old news.

What really prompted this blog post was a video interview (see below) with Kevin Rose at MIT. It resonated with me because I have recently been doing some social marketing strategy work for a client, and a major part of it is creating and distributing content that can be consumed in a multitude of channels to reach the widest possible audience. Seems simple enough, but a lot of marketers only make it part way, or they leave out one little piece like, providing an embed code for their videos, syndicating content through RSS, or actually going where the audience is to carry the message further.

Are consumers’ habits constantly changing? Are there preferences more customizable? Are you less in control of your brand? Can the struggle to continually be relevant be difficult? Yes-Yes-Yes-and Yes. But in a lot of ways it is easier than ever before to deliver your message, assuming, of course, that it is actually something people can relate to and want to see, hear, and pass on to others.

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Anyone who works within the mobile marketing field knows that there are certain limitations when it comes to engaging and communicating with customers. These limitations are primarily due to carrier restrictions and the technologies that go into mobile devices. Through our membership in the Mobile Marketing Association and our work within the mobile marketing field, we have seen some dramatic improvements over the course of just two years; but the industry still has not taken off like people expected it.

A couple of months ago, every single Twelve Horses employee received an iPhone. During that time, it has been such a pleasure playing with it and discovering what it can do. Of course, there are limitations with it, and you can read a billion blog posts about the things it won’t do but people wish it did. But for any of the faults one might find, they are far outweighed by the leap in mobile web browsing Apple made with the iPhone. It truly is fantastic, and the fact that it also works as a phone, iPod, and video player is just icing on the cake.

How the iPhone will change the mobile marketing landscape is still to be determined, but there could just be a mobile revolution on the way.

Google Analytics, Google Adwords, Google Alerts, Google Reader, Google Calendar, Google Maps, Google Webmaster Tools, Google, Google, Google, Google.

Okay, now that I’ve got that out of my system, I though I’d share this great little video (see below) that friend and fellow horsemen, Josh Kenzer posted up on his blog, Radical Behavior. It is an informative little piece on the benefits of using Google Docs.

Having Twelve Horses employees working from places like Dublin, Ireland; Atlanta, Georgia; Tampa, Florida; Phoenix, Arizona; Salt Lake City, Utah; Reno and Las Vegas, Nevada; and Lake Tahoe, California requires online tools that help us collaborate. Whether it is managing certain aspects of production, compiling feedback and ideas in one central repository, or editing a document in real-time, things like Base Camp and Google Docs really do the trick.