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Our Klout Stars series highlights top influencers and how they got to where they are today.

About:
Sumaya Kazi is the founder & CEO of Sumazi, a service built on top of Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter that empowers your network to introduce you to the people who can change your world. Sumazi was selected from more than 1,200 international startups to compete at the prestigious TechCrunch Startup Battlefield where it won the Omidyar Network award for “Startup Most Likely to Change the World.”

Sumaya is an internationally recognized innovator, leader, speaker and award-winning entrepreneur who has recently been recognized by Reuters and Klout as one of the “Top 50 Most Influential Executives on the Web” — the second woman behind Oprah. She has also been recognized by BusinessWeek as one of America’s “Best Young Entrepreneurs,” CNN as a “Young Person Who Rocks,” Silicon Valley Business Journal as a “Woman of Influence” and by UTNE Reader Magazine as one of “50 Visionaries Changing Your World.”

Previously, Sumaya served as the senior social media manager at Sun Microsystems, where she was responsible for the global strategy and implementation of social media. While at Sun Microsystems, Sumaya founded her first startup, The CulturalConnect. It grew from one weekly e-magazine to five weekly e-magazines and published more than 800 interviews of amazing young professionals in the for-profit and not-for-profit industries to a readership in more than 100 countries.

Sumaya has a strong passion for progress and has been deeply committed to the nonprofit community. She has served as a mentor for BUILD, a nonprofit social venture that empowers underprivileged and under-resourced high school students with an education in entrepreneurship. She is also on the steering committee for the San Francisco Muslim Women’s Giving Circle and on the advisory council for Jolkona Foundation (a Bangladeshi led non-profit). Sumaya graduated from UC Berkeley. She is a Bangladeshi-American residing in San Francisco, California. You can learn more about Sumaya on her website. You can also subscribe to her on Facebook or follow her on Twitter

1. How did you get started in social media?
I studied marketing and strategic planning at UC Berkeley. While I didn’t know exactly what my career path was going to be at the time, I knew I was fascinated with the marketing industry.

After graduation, I spent a year at a high-tech PR agency. There, I found myself increasingly frustrated with mainstream media, which inspired me to start my first company. The CulturalConnect started as a media platform dedicated to young professionals around the world. It spotlighted amazing stories of young business and nonprofit professionals with the goal of re-defining what success looks like in different ethnic diasporas.

At age 22, I was recruited as the youngest manager in the Global Communications division at Sun Microsystems. My day-to-day role was initially to support our executive management as well as handle the analytics and measurement for my division.

However, because of my experience building the CulturalConnect and using the tools of that time — MySpace, Friendster and Facebook (which was only for college students then) — I understood early on how businesses could benefit social media platforms. I became the crazy kid who kept coming up with all of these crazy ideas of how Sun could use Myspace or Facebook or YouTube for their business objectives. My vice president didn’t exactly know what opportunities there were with social media at the time, but she liked my ideas and we decided that I would be a social media manager; so I became one of the first social media managers that existed at a Fortune 500 company.

I started driving strategy and implementation of social media just for my division and then the program quickly grew to support social media for the entire global company. I led social media for over 5 years.

In 2009, Sun was acquired by Oracle. I began consulting startups and large companies on their social media strategy and the following year after realizing there was a huge gaping hole in how individuals and businesses connect with the people they need, I decided to start Sumazi.

While Sumazi was still an idea on a napkin, we were selected from more than 1,200 companies to compete at the prestigious TechCrunch Disrupt Startup Battlefield, where we won the Omidyar Network award for “Startup Most Likely to Change the World.” We got interest from our first angel investor, one of the founding team members at YouTube, and I then decided to quit consulting and start working on Sumazi full time.

2. In what ways does social media play into your current job or industry? Do you have any examples?
Sumazi is building the technology for the next generation of social media. Sumazi is built entirely on top of existing social networks: Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and soon mobile. Sumazi is in the business of making life-changing introductions. From my experience at Sun Microsystems and the Cultural Connect, I saw a lot of the pain points on how businesses and organizations can connect with their users, as well as tap into their users’ networks. From a consumer’s perspective as well as a user’s perspective, I want to be able to leverage my networks and my extended networks to help me at the time of need. Sumazi is really focused on solving these problems.

3. What does influence mean to you? Who influences you the most online, and why
If someone is influential to me, I either care about or respect their opinions around a topic of interest. It carries more weight in my sphere. Someone can be influential in my life, even if they don’t have a lot of friends or followers. I believe influence is a combination of importance to somebody’s life, impact and respect for their opinions. They might not always say something that I agree with, but I respect their opinions enough to consider that an influence to me.

I respect and have followed people like Tony Hsieh (Founder of Zappos), Michael Arrington (Founder of TechCrunch), Padmasree Warrior (CTO of Cisco), Rania Al Abdullah (Queen of Jordan) and Oprah. There’s probably another 100 entrepreneurs or nonprofit leaders that I also follow closely online that I consider influential to me.

4. What recent social media trends do you think are interesting or helpful?
I’ve definitely seen a trend with companies focusing on the intersection of social, consumer and mobile technologies. More and more, new companies are being built just on the mobile device and never needing a web component. I’m also seeing a new crop of social media companies that are trying to figure out how to make use of all the rich social data that exists today to help facilitate smarter decisions about new connections and purchases.

The innovation in the social media world is so quick to change that it’s fascinating to see how fast this space is growing.

If you are also interested in Sumazi, we are currently giving early access to Klout users. Just go to http://beta.sumazi.com/early/home.

Connect with Sumaya on Twitter at @sumaya

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Our Klout Stars series highlights top influencers and how they got to where they are today.

About:Benedict is the oldest of three kids of immigrant parents in a Filipino family from Stockton, CA. His first language was Tagalog and learned English from Sesame Street and when he started pre-school. Benedict made my way through high school, then to college at CalPoly: San Luis Obispo, CA where he started in Aerospace Engineering and switched to Teaching.

Benedict has worked at two private English schools in San Luis Obispo where he worked with students from 16-80 years old that came from all around the world to be immersed in an English program here in the USA. After teaching, he became a flight attendant and also co-founded CS Toys International with a physical store in Japan and two web stores (CSToysJapan.com) and smaller satellite (CSToysUSA.com) where we use social media to interact with our customers. Benedict is also the on again, off again mayor of San Francisco International Airport on Foursquare. Find him for some at SFO for some random swag!

1. How did you get started in social media?
Back in high school, I found out about the Internet and never looked back. Back in the day it was all about local BBSes and using Compuserve, Prodigy, or AOL to get online. I remember using AOL v1.6 for MS-DOS to connect to the Internet with a 9600 baud modem. I frequented many chat rooms and made many online friends and chatted via AIM, MSN, and Yahoo Messenger.

I used to share photos on my self-published website. It was a lot of work. Friends always wanted me to send them pictures. Social networks made this easier. I started out on Friendster where most of my friends already were then moved to MySpace and Facebook as many people have done. Those sites made it a lot easier to share. More friends have popped up online on one network or another. These networks made it easier to share, connect, and stay in touch with friends here and abroad.

At one point in college, I worked an 11PM-7AM shift at a hotel and being online kept me sane. It was easy to connect with a friend in Europe or Asia while all of my North American friends were asleep. From then on, social media became a must to keep in touch with old and new friends both near and far as well as making new friendships and connections. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Foursquare…I love it all.

2. In what ways does social media play into your current job or industry? Do you have any examples?
Since I work as a flight attendant, it was normal to be away from home and friends for days at a time. My computer and phone were my windows to the world. I’m constantly meeting new people from many different places. Rather than exchanging phone numbers, many now exchange Twitter handles and Facebook friend requests now to keep in touch with me.

3. What does influence mean to you? Who influences you the most online, and why
Influence is a trust. Some people influence you more than others, the same way you trust some more than others. I’m more apt to take a suggestion from someone in my circle than a review that I read or a spokesperson telling me to do so. Most of the people who influence me online also influence me offline.

My cousin @heycheri and my brother @brianwcorpuz influence me for too many reasons to list.

My combination SF Bay Area/San Diego crew of @lehea1212, @sdwifey, @eyemusing, @sukhjit, @richandcreamy, @csix, @mymelodie are the people I like to hang out with when I’m at home in or my second home of San Diego.

I also have to mention my Foursquare friends. Foursquare really brought me back into social media. I love the game aspect. I’ve made many online/offline friends via Foursquare including @nutzareus, @dwaynekilbourne, @rocktique, @redbridgeonline, @lesliempr, @funtobehad.

Calvin Lee, @mayhemstudios is one of my biggest influencers. We met at an event in Las Vegas and clicked in person. We have overlapping social circles and have hung out at CES and SXSW amongst other events. I want to be like Calvin when I grow up.

4. What recent social media trends do you think are interesting or helpful?
I see a huge trend with location based services and smartphones making recommendations for you. Foursquare has turned from a game into a recommendation engine. I like finding out who or what is around me. I can look up a certain type of food I am hungry for and see what restaurants my friends have gone to or left tips at. Foursquare’s radar feature also lets me know if I have a listed “to-do” nearby.

There are newer apps like Banjo that tell you when friends or people you follow are nearby based on the location data in their public posts on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Highlight is another fun app that recommends possible connections for you based on someone you have been nearby during your day. I opened the app on my flight to SXSW, and Highlight had listed the person that was seated next to me on the flight. We connected.

I also like another app called Zaarly for buying/selling/requesting locally via push alerts. I’ve seen a couple good deals come up such as someone stuck in an office requesting a certain coffee and paying $15. There are quite a few requests for rides as well, mostly to SFO Airport. When I open the app and determine where the request is made, I can decide whether I can take them up on their offers.

I can’t wait to see where the next paradigm shift takes us. I try to stay up to date on the newest networks and try new ways to stay connected.

Connect with Benedict on Twitter at @superben

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Our Klout Stars series highlights top influencers and how they got to where they are today.

About: Alexander Howard is the Washington Correspondent for O’Reilly Media, where he reports on technology, open government and online civics, from mobile technology to health IT to social media. He tells his mom that he writes about how the Internet affects government, and vice versa. Howard was born in upstate New York, moved to Philadelphia in the mid-80s and went to Colby College in Maine, where he studied biology, sociology and built his first webpage in 1995. Howard remain intrigued by technological change and quite taken with ideas, good cooking, the great outdoors, notable books, big black dogs and media of all kinds. More on his background and biography can be found on his personal blog.

1. How did you get started in social media?
I started interacting with people online in 1992, using a bulletin board system (BBS) and a modem in my high school computer room. I’ve been logging on ever since, though the computers and connection speeds I use now have thankfully dramatically improved over the past two decades. While I built any number of webpages in the 2000s, I’d place my “start with social media” when I started experimenting with blogs in 2004, after Blogger.com launched. The big departure point, however, was when I was hired as an assistant editor at WhatIs.com in the beginning of 2006 and started blogging, podcasting, and writing about nearly every aspect of enterprise IT professionally. I joined Facebook that year and Twitter in March 2007, out of professional and personal interest. My approach initially was to try to be helpful, thoughtful, interesting, and relevant, including many links. That turns out to be a solid strategy.

2. What role does social media play in your current job or industry?
Here, I’d refer to two interviews I’ve given, with Zach Braiker and Elisa Gabbert:

In general, social media (or collaborative technology, as some now prefer in the enterprise world) is deeply woven into the fabric of both my work and personal life. On the IT journalism side, I use social media to find sources, provide live coverage of events, gauge sentiment, distribute content, track news and fact-check stories. When I’m not focused on work, I use social media to stay in touch with friends, family, former colleagues and classmates, find out what’s happening around whatever city I’m in or check on the status of events or government services. Basically, I try to use the various platforms to get smarter and tap into the zeitgeist around events or ideas.

In 2012, I’m still enjoying exploring and experimenting with what the right approach to each platform, from blogging to Twitter to having family, friends and subscribers on Facebook and Google+ to tumbling or staying LinkedIn to my professional network or sharing video on YouTube.

3. What does influence mean to you? Who influences you the most online?
Influence means that someone’s work, opinion or perspective matters to me in a given context, professional or personally. My father’s influence, for instance, has resulted in me deeply caring about good writing. My uncles have inspired me to be a better outdoorsman. My publisher has encouraged me to focus on substance and work on stuff that matters. Influence means that what you say or do has a substantive impact upon the world, from simple outcomes like someone clicking on a link or sharing content with their network to world-changing examples, passing a historic bill into law, starting or ending wars, or inspiring a young scientist to work on inventing a cure for a disease or a device.

In terms of who influences me, who I’m following on Twitter or circling is a start. Individually, I’d include people like @MarcAmbinder, @SusannahFox, @TimOReilly, @SteveSilberman, @baratunde, @acarvin, @alexismadrigal, @TimBerners_Lee, @BrainPicker, @MarkKnoller, @rmack, @ethanz, @mathewi, @JayRosen_NYU, @palafo, @TimOBrien, @NYT_JenPreston, @glichfield, @NiemanLab, @participatory, @zephoria, @evgenymorozov, @patrickmeier, and @ahier.

I could list dozens upon dozens of other people. And that’s just on Twitter. My latent network of email and phone contacts is much broader and deeper — and it’s not an influence graph I want to map out online.

4. What advice do you have for someone who wants to take their online presence to the next level?
First, understand why you want to do that and in the service of what cause. Are you a musician or artist? A writer or editor? A government or industry executive? Are you a parent that wants to connect with other fathers or mothers? An athlete who needs sponsors to support training? A nonprofit that wants to change the world but depends upon donations? Do you make things and want to find buyers or other makers? Are you a politician that wants to get elected? Or, once elected, to serve the interests of the people you represent?

Each use case will have different context for what “the next level” of online presence means. In general, beware of snake oil and false promises. You can spend a lot of money on expensive websites, snazzy mobile apps and integrated media campaigns across search and social advertising platforms and still not accomplish your strategic purpose.

As with any community, listen first to see what conventions for a given platform exist before you dive in. On Twitter, I highly
recommend staying away from any services that promise more followers. Twitter monitors accounts that use them and may suspend or penalize accounts that have done so in the future.

Cover the basics. Fill out your bio, putting your real name in so you’re searchable and linking to an informative landing page will help enormously, no matter what social network you’re on. So will integrating all of your social media and online accounts into your email, your blog, website, or other social networks.

“Taking it to the next level online” is tied to who you are offline. They’re not so different these days. That said, being interesting and gaining influence online isn’t so different from other media or platforms. Online, you have less time to grab people’s attention in fast moving social streams. That forces brevity of thought and with on Twitter but you can write much more elsewhere. Posting pictures or relevant, topical stories is effective across platforms. Most people don’t have lives that are inherently interesting, so you’ll need to pick your spots and be thoughtful about what’s worth sharing.

Stay away from the cliche of talking about your lunch, unless it’s a dispatch from a foreign country or a special event at an unusual restaurant (add that picture!) — or if you’re a chef, food critic or foodie that shares new discoveries.

One effective method for growing an influential network relevant to a given topic is to follow hashtags or lists and then to reply or comment upon tweets, updates or posts by the supernodes in that community, resharing posts that are relevant to your intended audience. Ascribing authority in real-time search is both qualitative and quantitative. It’s important to work on both angles.

Connect with Alexander on Twitter at @digiphile