Surprisingly, Oakland was named #5.  Sandwiched between London and Tokyo.  This created quite the hubbub with bloggers, news media and travel writers alike.  The HuffingtonPost.com even labeled Oakland as the “coolest new kid in the country”.

Dlvr.it’s corporate headquarters are located in the downtown area of Oakland, California called Old Oakland.  Old Oakland is comprised of historic buildings that date back to the 1860s and provides a historic setting with thoroughly modern amenities that is close to San Francisco and is conveniently located in the Bay Area, according to the Old Oakland management companies website.  Wikipedia states that the Old Oakland neighborhood continues to gentrify as a ‘downtown lifestyle’ district, more bistros and boutiques have cropped-up, as more market-rate condominiums have been constructed nearby, and as transit-oriented development retail and housing become more and more in demand.

I have to admit that I have not always been a fan of working in Oakland, partly due to the bad press.  You have to be living in a remote cave to not have heard about crime in Oakland and the constant police presence and news teams in the air reacting to the Occupation Oakland movements.  My feelings towards Oakland are not helped by my commute which cannot be made with public transportation. Good days an hour, bad days…well, ugh.  However, I have started to appreciate Oakland and all it has to offer.  In my recent holiday card to family and friends, I mentioned that I really do enjoy leaving my bucolic life in my hometown of Sonoma to experience urban life.  I have made friends with local shopkeepers and restaurant staff.  I love walking around Lake Merritt with co-workers and finding hip places to shop (recent favorite is Oaklandish).

The urbaneness of the area attracted Dlvr.it’s founders to Oakland a few years ago.  Most of us commute in from the “burbs”.  What keeps us in Oakland, besides the awesome companionship of our fellow employees and work life, is the great weather, the great farmers market right outside our front office door, tasty restaurants, nightlife, popupshops (yep, I like to shop) and now, most recently, it’s ranking as a destination spot. Very cool.  Quite an honor.  Congratulations Oakland!

Quick Tip #1: Don’t flood your social media networks. People are interested in having a conversation with you not just listening to you “talk”.

Don’t send a status update for every song you listen to. Make your posts compelling or interesting. For example, explain why you like the song. What if every update in the Facebook ticker showed up in your Facebook stream?  Your friends would ‘hide’ you. Or worse, ‘unfriend’ you. If you care, don’t over-share.

The relationships and interactions you have on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn vary based on how the network is used. Imagine if everything you pinned on Pinterest was sent to Twitter or Facebook? Social media sites are different kind of parties, be a good considerate guest.

Words to live by if you happen upon a flooded social stream, “If you come to a flooded road, turn around, don’t drown.”

How do you avoid these social gaffes? Use dlvr.it to get the right content, to the right people at the right time.

eMarketer claims Content Marketing is a key digital trend for 2011. Join Dlvr.it February 16th & 17th at Dlvr.it’s Content Marketing Conference in Berkeley, CA. You’ll discover how social media is forcing brands to think like publishers to remain competitive.

You’ll hear from people who are transforming brands to think like publishers including Unilever, Johnson & Johnson, Pitney Bowes and others.

Recently added speakers include:

• Luca Penati, Managing Director at Ogilvy PR,
• Simon Kelly, CEO of Story Worlwide
• Sally Falkow, PR Trainer of the Year & Sr. Fellow – Society for New Communications Research
• Ardath Albee, CEO & B2B Marketing Strategist at Marketing Interactions, Inc
• Andrew Susman, CEO of Studio One Networks

We’ve made some recent additions to our stellar speaker list, so be sure to check out the final lineup and agenda.

SAVE $300 when you register before February 14th. Learn More

Confirmed Speakers for the Content Marketing Strategies Conference Include:

Flipboard makes content from major publications (including Sports Illustrated, Washington Post and Bon Appetit) readily available to Flipboard users in its signature ‘glossy’, sleekly-designed format. Now you can easily create a magazine-style Flipboard version of your own blog or site using dlvr.it – and make it available for anyone to read on the iPad. All you need to get started is a) RSS/Atom feed(s) for your blog or site and b) a Twitter account.

To Flipboard-enable your blog, simply sign up for a dlvr.it account – and use your RSS/Atom feed and your Twitter account during the sign up process. Flipboard users will get your Flipboard-enabled content by simply subscribing to your Twitter account via Flipboard. dlvr.it will automatically post your new content as you publish.

Here’s an example of a Flipboard-enabled blog served via dlvr.it:

Thumbnail images

When posting a Shared Link in Facebook, you may include thumbnail images in the items you share. These images will display on your Facebook page, right next to your content. This Facebook feature contrasts with Twitter, which only allows up to 140 characters of text (any images are hosted on other services and available via a link in the tweet).  The addition of an image can enhance your content and engage users with a visual connection to your headlines and text.

How do I control which thumbnail is posted?

When posting a Shared Link, Facebook will automatically detect an image from the page you are sharing and include the thumbnail in your post. This approach generally works quite well. However, some users prefer additional control over thumbnails. In addition to Facebook auto-detect, dlvr.it users can now choose from three additional thumbnail options:

1) Many publishers embed images in their item content and prefer to use these instead of the images Facebook auto-detects. Select “Auto-Detect from Item Content” and dlvr.it will scan your item and include the first image we find as the thumbnail.

2) Some publishers and bloggers prefer to include the same image – say a logo or photo – with each Facebook post. Select “Manual” and enter the URL of your image. We’ll include this image with all items posted to Facebook.

3) Don’t want to include an image with your shared links? Select “No thumbnails” and we’ll post your content as shared links without thumbnail images.

If you’re already using Ping.fm to update your social networks, you can now super-charge your content distribution with dlvr.it’s advanced content delivery controls and analytics. dlvr.it users posting via Ping.fm will continue to enjoy dlvr.it’s real-time stats and content optimization tools.

To add Ping.fm as a content output, you’ll first need your Ping.fm application key. Log into your Ping.fm account, go to http://ping.fm/key/, and copy your Desktop/Web key. It looks something like this: e28f9183d63a38c8aa614b564234e480-1261369374

From dlvr.it, add a new destination to a Route and select Ping.fm. Enter your Ping.fm application key and an account name (you can enter any account name you wish – this field is simply to help you label your Ping.fm destination inside of dlvr.it). Finish setting up your Ping.fm destination and start delivering content to all your social networks.

Meet J.E. Skeets

If you are a sports fan like us, you know it’s the NBA playoffs so we were excited to have a chat with J.E. Skeets NBA Blogger and podcaster at the Score.

Skeets is one of those colorful bloggers I talked about. His creative and snarky writing style often has me laughing. We first met Skeets when he was working as a Yahoo! Sports blogger.

Bio: NBA blogger/ podcaster at The Score
Twitter: @jeskeets
Blogging since: Jan. 1, 2005
Dlvr-in’ It since: January 2010

Q 1. Dlvr.it: “How did you get started blogging?”
A 1. Skeets: “A friend bet me I couldn’t write a new post every day for a year. The blog was originally called “J.E. Skeets” and was a hodgepodge of observations, photos and videos about random, quotidian topics. Later, I started writing exclusively about the NBA, which in turn scored me writing gigs at AOL, Deadspin and Yahoo! Sports.”

Q2. Dlvr.it: “What is your favorite team/subject to write about?”
A2. Skeets: “The NBA and/or the hit 1986 BMX movie “Rad.”

Q3. Dlvr.it: “Why you use Dlvr.it?”
A3. Skeets: “Because other products weren’t delivering my feed to Twitter reliably. I was looking for something to be there when I needed it the most. Thank goodness Dlvr.it was there to “adopt me” and play catch in the backyard.”

Thanks J.E. We appreciate your business.

If you’re Dlvr.in’ It and want to be profiled, tweet us @dlvrit.

A few official Twitter departments use dlvr.it to syndicate their content to Twitter. We appreciate their support.

According to PostRank, the the half-life of a story on the Internet today is roughly 50 minutes. If you believe that to be true, the value of real-time is extremely important. The faster you get your content syndicated before the competition the better. Or, because distribution is moving more real-time, is it causing content to have a short shelf life? Newer content pushes older content out of view.

In a recent CNET post, Tom Krazit discusses the evolving nature of real-time search and in it, touches on some very key points to its counterpart – real-time publishing. When you create content to be distributed and syndicated, you design it with a purpose – even if it is just for entertainment or distraction with no particular audience in mind. Today’s SEO trackers and search engines pick it apart and dissect it to find an appropriate audience, distinguished by tastes, likes, dislikes, activities – a veritable content community.

The point in creating public content is to get it seen, correct?

Well more and more services are being created to make sure that happens – we built dlvr.it to help you customize your distribution while other services like Bing and OneRiot collect your content and present it front and center when a relevant real-time search query is made. In fact, the technology around this search is getting so good that they’re dissecting status updates as two individual search-significant pieces of information: the link shared and the actual message in the status. The link is filed into one relevant search bucket and the status, if it holds any weight, can be filed into another.

As you publish with tools like dlvr.it, your content isn’t just finding its own way to people who want to read it. Rather, the technology for selecting relevant content as it’s published is becoming more powerful as audiences continue to conduct real-time searches, but the tools that bring value and relevancy in real-time content flows are still in their early stages. For now, real-time web technology centers around the social, since human actions are what drive information at such instant and immediate frequency. Maybe one day it’ll be the other way around, but while real-time is powered by the socialized content, we can be sure that the relevancy will only continue to improve, refining the reach of your content, and defining your audience.

Our mission is to give users a way to easily distribute content and navigate today’s complex media landscape. Most of you out there rely on manual updates, making it really tough to reach your audience wherever they are . We take content from RSS feeds and a number of other inputs  and then automate the distribution to outputs including Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Identi.ca and Tumblr (with many more to come). If you’re a developer, you can use our new API to create inputs.

You can mix and match to your heart’s delight by taking content from multiple sources and route them to one Twitter stream, or take content from one source and send it to several outputs. The best news is, you can distribute in real time (we’re PuSH enabled) -  just hit publish and it’s out there. After all, on the real-time Web, an hour is an hour too late.

We also know that today, measurement and growth is more important than ever on the social Web. That’s why we have built a broad suite of measurement stats, bit.ly integration as well as  Omniture and Google Analytics support.

For new users here are the goods:

• Use any RSS feed, our API or post directly from dlvr.it to input content
• Distribute content with any combination of Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Identi.ca and Tumblr
• Real-time content syndication via PuSH (pubsubhubbub)
• Sophisticated filtering enables targeting of content and customized posts
• Unified tracking and measurement of social media distribution in a single dashboard
• Auto-hashtags added to posts for easier discovering and viral growth.

To get started, go here: http://dlvr.it