JUNE 30, 2009

Tweetboard is a new application for Twitter that creates “micro forum” discussions on a website by displaying tweets about a topic in a threaded conversation format. It’s still being tested, but from what I’ve seen of the application, it seems like it could be a smart way to add some depth and convenience to blog discussions.

The best applications often see the weakest parts of a service and figure out a simple solution - in this case, the creators of Tweetboard probably saw an opportunity to give tweets some more context by helping users have focused discussions on websites that are connected with their Twitter accounts. Twitter is, after all, a stream of information, which makes it difficult to visualize and track a conversation, especially for archival purposes. Tweetboard allows commenters to publish their comments as a tweet with a link to the location of the Tweetboard conversation. This effectively advertises the conversation in the larger Twitter community and helps drive more traffic to the site using Tweetboard.

With the advent of blogging and microblogging, we’ve seen conversations take the form of comments sections, @ replies and hashtags. Although each method has its own strengths, the threaded discussion format widely adopted by most forums and message boards is arguably the best at managing multi-user conversations. Tweetboard strives to bring more organization to Twitter conversations by adapting the threaded format.

As new web services are developed, we are given new avenues through which to communicate. Unsurprisingly, this can lead to oversaturation and social network fatigue - it is difficult to keep up with multiple profiles on separate sites. However, there has also been a trend towards open profiles. More sites are opening up their API to developers who can explore ways to share information between sites. As these applications form links between social networks and other sites, we get more value out of our online activities. With the link between a blog/website and Twitter through Tweetboard, I can offer my thoughts in a comments section on a blog and then have the conversation fed to my Twitter account, where the subject is then added to the Twitter community’s ever-changing and current mess of topics. Imagine how much more interconnected Twitter’s trending keywords can be if user conversations on other sites are also incorporated: we would probably be able to view busy, active conversations across a greater portion of the internet.

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JUNE 26, 2009

When I was in high school and college, my teachers and professors tried to teach us the importance of research sources, especially in relation to information found online.  They taught us what to look for when evaluating a website’s legitimacy, and how to credit it as a source.  Back then, content without any sort of official association or credential received no consideration.

Today is a different story:  The New York Times reported that Wikipedia is now being listed on Google News alongside traditionally reputable news sources like The Washington Post and CNN.  A spokesperson for Wikipedia said, “Google is recognizing that Wikipedia is becoming a source for very up-to-date information.”

Wikipedia has an entire section of the site devoted to breaking news. Its mission statement states:

Wikinews’ use extends beyond original reports, by providing free, neutral, integrated summaries of the news from elsewhere. It will already be useful even if the subject range covered will be full of gaps—because in these subject areas, we will already benefit from the collaborative wiki model. It will grow to become more useful every day.

Due to the efforts of an enormous community of contributors, Wikipedia is very useful throughout the development of breaking news stories. As more details come out about a news event, Wikipedia contributors update the site with new information and attempt to provide the most accurate, neutral representation of all reports from all sources. This can provide much needed context when the stream of reports becomes too overwhelming. A recent example of Wikipedia’s usefulness as a news source came in the wake of Michael Jackson’s death - reportedly, almost 500 edits were made to Michael Jackson’s Wikipedia page in the space of 24 hours as contributors rushed to provide the most accurate, up-to-date information.

At TMG, we follow trends like those related to user generated content and the power of consumers and Deep Listening.  With that in mind, it’s interesting to see that user-generated content and immediacy are redefining news sources, and that a crowdsourced site can provide some order and context when there is a deluge of information.

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JUNE 25, 2009

We’ve written a lot recently about crisis communications and social media, including setting out six key steps for how companies can use social media in a crisis setting. One of those key steps is to establish - and use - social media channels before a crisis hits. This has many benefits - an audience has already been established; dialogue with key influencers is ideally already underway; and, most important, precious minutes aren’t spent worrying about setting up accounts and establishing handles once the crisis hits.

On June 16, the FDA issued a warning that more than 130 people had reported losing their sense of smell after using Zicam cold remedy products (gel and gel swabs). Matrixx Initiatives, the manufacturer of those products, has withdrawn them from the market.

According to PR Week (registration required), Matrixx has been using pre-existing social media channels to communicate with consumers about the FDA’s report. Specifically, Matrixx has been communicating about “the importance of consumer safety, what steps consumers should take, the research behind the product, the company’s compliance with the FDA, and the fact that Matrixx is willing to share its data with the FDA.”

In addition to a video from Zicam CEO Bill Hemelt on its home page, Matrixx is using Facebook and Twitter to address the situation and reassure customers. Those channels were already in use before the crisis hit, and provided an excellent way for Matrixx to get its message out - quickly. Twitter in particular has provided an extremely effective way to respond individually to Twitter users who have expressed concerns about the product. While this kind of response is time-consuming, it can go a long way toward neutralizing criticism and allaying fears.

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JUNE 24, 2009

News Corp.’s MySpace is undergoing some major changes this month, and people are wondering what it means for its future. Blogging Stocks painted a dire picture yesterday at “The bloodbath at MySpace continues”. It is reporting that about two-thirds of the global MySpace workforce will be fired, going from 450 to 150 employees. Last week, the company slashed about 30% of the U.S. workforce.

Mashable reports that everyone’s default friend, Tom Anderson, will still have a position and an “ambassador role” with the company, though it comes with a large paycut: Dream Job: MySpace’s Tom Gets $500k Per Year to Stop Coming to Work. He’ll still maintain his profile page and will continue to be the face of the company.

It doesn’t surprise me that MySpace had to make tough decisions to keep its business afloat. It has been struggling to keep up with Facebook in terms of unique visitors and monthly visits all year. If you’re wondering how MySpace’s situation compares to Facebook, it’s a completely different ballgame - Facebook has 850+ employees and is actively hiring!

Social networking sites have become a very popular medium for communication - a daily communication tool for some, and not just 18-24 year olds. I have a profile on MySpace and rarely go to it, but I check Facebook everyday and use the Facebook Blackberry application to update my status and upload mobile pictures when I’m away from my computer. Facebook has always been one step ahead of MySpace. In its infancy, you could only join Facebook if your college was an approved network. The exclusivity made it appealing, and Facebook addiction followed. Facebook kept up the good work by having great user interface and adding fun applications. It seems like MySpace is always playing catch up. In a sense, social networking sites are like cell phone providers: you only really need one. It’s most convenient when the people you talk to most use the same company. Sorry MySpace!

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JUNE 23, 2009

Knowing how companies are urged to be transparent in today’s environment, I was surprised to read about Apple’s success despite its culture of secrecy in this New York Times article, “Apple’s Obsession with Secrecy Grows Stronger.” As journalists Brad Stone and Ashlee Vance wrote:

Few companies… are more secretive than Apple, or as punitive to those who dare violate the company’s rules on keeping tight control over information. Employees have been fired for leaking news tidbits to outsiders, and the company has been known to spread disinformation about product plans to its own workers. [S]ecrecy at Apple is not just the prevailing communications strategy; it is baked into the corporate culture.

They continue, ”[Apple’s] handling of news about the health of [CEO Steve Jobs], who has battled pancreatic cancer and recently had a liver transplant while on a leave of absence, is unparalleled.” This issue is a big deal in the corporate governance world because “the biggest question is whether Mr. Jobs’s approach has led to violating laws that cover what companies must disclose to the public about the well-being of their chief executive.” Some say that because responsibilities for day-to-day operations were passed onto the COO, no further information about Mr. Jobs’s health needed to be shared. On the other hand, some argue that Apple violated the law by not fully disclosing material information, e.g., the CEO’s health. Reportedly, the Security and Exchange Commission is “already looking into [Apple’s] handling of Jobs’s health disclosures.”

Not only is Apple dancing in a fuzzy, gray area of material information, but it is also snubbing its nose at transparency. Some find it “a little odd” that they are a technology company that views themselves as innovative. But at the end of the day, has Apple’s lack transparency hurt the company? It certainly hasn’t impacted the bottom line. While Apple’s stock dropped $2.11 to $137.37 on Monday, it “sold a million units of its new iPhone 3G S over the weekend, well above analysts’ forecasts.”

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JUNE 18, 2009

The other night, I got an e-mail about a coffee pot I had listed for sale on Craigslist. The e-mailer left me her phone number, so I gave her a call.

Me: “Hi. This is Steve. You e-mailed me about the coffee pot?”

Craigslist Lady (CL): “Yes. I’m very interested in it if you still have it.”

Me: “Yes I do. I’m here if you want to swing by tonight.”

CL: “Well, I was just talking with my friend and she can’t make the drive with me, so I can’t come by tonight, but I’m very interested in it. I’d come by myself, but my husband is out of town, and…you just can’t be too careful with the things going on on Craigslist lately.”

Me: “Yeah, I understand. I guess the consolation is that most of the bad stuff that’s been happening to people is taking place among those individuals using the…less reputable parts of the site.”

CL: “Not this last one. Did you hear about it? A pregnant woman went to exchange baby clothes with another woman, and when she showed up, she was stabbed. Then the other woman cut her open and took her baby.”

At this point, I stopped in my tracks. What? I spent a few more minutes on small talk with my caller, then said goodbye, promising to work out the details later. I had heard of the so-called “Craigslist Killer”, and had just seen a story on a Craigslist rapist who had recently committed suicide, but I knew nothing about the murder of a pregnant woman and the grisly taking of her unborn baby.

So I Googled it. And there it was.  “Slain mother met suspect on Craigslist.” The details were just like my caller had related:

Relatives of a slain Tigard, Ore., woman say she met suspect Korena Roberts through the Web site Craigslist while looking for baby clothes. Heather Snively’s body was found Friday in the crawl space of Roberts’ home in nearby Beaverton, police said. Snively’s newborn son was pronounced dead Friday at a local hospital.

Snively, 21, met Roberts, 27, on Craigslist and went to Roberts’ home apparently believing she had baby clothes for sale, David Kidd, Snively’s stepfather, told the (Portland) Oregonian in a story published Monday.

The details of this case are deeply disturbing to me on a personal level. My wife and I use Craigslist all the time. We’ve furnished much of our house with items we’ve purchased from people on the popular community site.  Our children have gotten many toys and clothes from people giving them away for practically nothing. My infant son has about a 2 years’ supply of diapers, unopened, in his closet, most of which we got for free from Craigslist or Freecycle postings. I even found my current job and my car fromCraigslist ads.

I can’t say that I’m convinced that the world is becoming more dangerous, but I do think that dangerous people are becoming increasingly empowered to victimize by sites like Craigslist, which encourage contact and commerce with total strangers. A friend of mine who used to prosecute sexual assault cases was extremely wary about letting his wife join Facebook, because of the frequency with which the social networking tool came up in investigations as a tool used by stalkers or would-be attackers. As our lives become more of an open book online and our personal information is easier to access, the opportunities for that to pose a danger can also increase, a fact that many of us either downplay or ignore as we enjoy the convenience of 24/7 connectivity with our chosen networks.

The recent spate of violent encounters between Craigslist users will hopefully never be a problem for most of us who make use of the site, but it serves as a valuable reminder: ease of use does not mean that everyone we’re dealing with is on the up-and-up. That means that using common sense and taking proper precautions are more important than ever.

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JUNE 16, 2009

The recent presidential election in Iran, held last Friday, has sparked a flurry of protests opposing the proclaimed victor, incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.  The protests started as early as Saturday morning after the election, and have gotten increasingly more violent. Most disturbing, however, has been the Iranian government’s clampdown on, and censorship of, the opposition voices raising concerns about voting irregularity and the validity of the election’s outcome.

The Iranian government, however, is no match for the power of social media. From The Nation’s blog The Notion: “I’m not sure what the Iranian regime expected when they fixed the election, but the outpouring of texts, tweets and video from Tehran has sparked a worldwide solidarity movement. ”

From The Baltimore Sun’s Second Opinion blog:

They’re using Facebook to organize marches, they’re posting videos on YouTube to show the world the violence used to quell the demonstrations, and the discussion is so active on Twitter that you can find more than 1,500 messages detailing the actions and reactions from around the globe. Huffington Post has a live blogger who updates his reports on a nearly minute-by-minute basis.

For anyone who dismisses Twitter and Facebook as fads or frivolous, there is no denying their power in getting information out quickly, and, if necessary, anonomously, to an international audience that transcends borders and the reach of government censorship. Whatever the outcome of the protests, those using social media networks and tools to express their anger at the elections have gotten attention around the world - something that would likely have been close to impossible even five years ago.

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JUNE 15, 2009

I have failed you, master.

And by master I mean Gayle, the Queen of Social media here at TMG. Last April she talked about this newfangled thing called Twitter and how she was going to shy away from it. At the time I too was going to resist Twitter, but it’s gotten so catchy as more and more of my blogger friends adopted it. I guess if you can’t beat them- join them, ain’t that right, Gayle?

This new social outlet started grew slowly. First, I had an account simply regurgitating the feed from my blog. Then I slowly started to pay attention to some of the conversations out there on the Tweetscape. Twitter for me grew from a feed on my Google Reader to an occasional check of Twitter.com to a TweetDeckwindow at work. Now my addiction is full blown; this past weekend I installed TweetDeck at home so I can monitor Twitter at all times, like one of those resistance fighters staring at The Matrix.

My recent immersion into Twitter has given me new perspective into the expected Twitpocalypse, a bug derived from the unexpected number of Tweets that was poised to crash the entire system. Like Y2K, the bug wasn’t as bad as expected, but it is a sign of how large this new social media medium has grown.

Despite the avoidance of impending Twitter doom, there are signs that Twitter may be reaching a plateau, or even a decline. Numbers charting Twitter’s growthshows that its growth rate is slowing down compared to other social media giants like Facebook.  So maybe Twitter will one day go by the wayside like Friendster, but for now it still remains a viable and groundbreaking form of communication - and I’m a part of it.

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JUNE 11, 2009

Today, Gayle spoke at the Washington DC Cool Twitter Conferences event about using Twitter for crisis communications. She joined a variety of presenters- from journalists to non profit organizations. Among them were @cnnbrk (CNN), @thefix (The Washington Post), @organicmania, and @caregvr (Foundation For Caregivers). Here are a few notable points that made me think:

• Chris Cillizza noted that his followers want to see his personality and his take on things- not just headlines. As a representative of a major publication, he was surprised to find that his Twitter followers actually cared about the minutiae of his life, because they created a personality behind the brand.
• Mark Stelzner said that social media can promote the “pay-it-forward” ethos… @jobangels has inspired thousands of people to connect and match people up with jobs through the sheer power of community connectivity.
• Our venue for the conference, Busboys and Poets, has also made good use of Twitter for publicity. They spend no money on advertising, and yet have managed to generate a great deal of buzz through smart and extensive social media outreach. They emphasize that customers, especially the younger demographic, have become particularly responsive to the personal attention they get by interacting with the restaurant through Twitter.

It’s been a great day filled with a lot of interesting perspectives- Twitter is really a versatile tool that can be adopted for a multitude of purposes.

For those who missed it and would like to see the presentation, we’ve included Gayle’s presentation below:

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JUNE 10, 2009

There’s Google, there’s Wikipedia, there’s Bing… and now there’s WolframAlpha.

WolframAlpha isn’t your ordinary search engine - it’s a self-titled “computational knowledge” engine.  This internet newborn doesn’t return inquiries with information that already exists on the web, but instead uses snapshots of data that exist in WA’s internal knowledge base. It acquires much of this data from official public or private websites and primary sources.  The goal of the project is to “bring expert knowledge and capabilities to the broadest possible range of people.”  Cool in theory, but what about in application?

I first tested the site with my birthday, April 27, 1984, which resulted in a simple list of statistical information about that day in history.  What about a place like my hometown of Torrington, CT?  WolframAlpha gave me a map, population data, and current weather conditions.  So far, so good, but I wanted to see what else it could do.

I entered “1.21 gigawatts.”  A cool rush of relief and familiarity came over me as I saw a nugget of pop culture information among the list of cold, hard facts. This morsel of information validated the site for me: “power required to operate the flux capacitor in the DeLorean DMC-12 time machine.”

WolframAlpha is definitely an interesting search, excuse me, computational knowledge, engine, but is it any better than Google or Wikipedia?  Perhaps people will appreciate WolframAlpha for its  straightforward and simplistic approach vs the saturated experience they’re used to with traditional search functions.  The site boasts that it won’t give you any commentary, just facts (but the reality is that I can probably find both through Google, and typically, I WANT to find both.)

There are limitations, though.  After I entered “Chevy Volt” and my search returned “WolframAlpha isn’t sure what to do with your input.”  What ?  I know there are official GM sites out there outlining the basic vehicle stats and the company’s financial situation - why can’t it read into my search and give me anything and everything related to my terms?  I wanted to know what the car is, how it works, links to related (official) websites, and more.  I guess I’ll just have to Google it.

What’s your take on WolframAlpha?

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