Fire hose outside our office

Twitter has been referenced as a waste of time, pithy non-sense and a time suck.  However, it’s best description for my use is drinking from a fire hose.  There are so many people typing so much information and even with just 140 characters it can be hard to manage.  I’ve written before about my struggles with the Twitter stream, but one benefit the fire hose does provide is tapping the collective knowledge of Twitter.  I agree with Micah that this is NOT necessarily crowdsourcing.  It’s just searching for information or asking a few (or many) people a question and getting an almost instant result.

In the past few months, Twitter has helped me find new restaurants, backup software, news sources, software, home improvement contractors, immediate sports updates and new music.  Why would you search Google for an answer to a question others might immediately give you?   Google has to crawl all those web sites and although its fast, Twitter is faster and I usually know who I can trust.  There is a much bigger discussion over the ascension of real-time search and Twitter’s fire hose provides that too at search.twitter.com.   For detailed research the fire hose may only give you a start, but almost every time I need a simple answer I can poll or search Twitter.

Our society seems to only increase its need for convenience and immediacy, so how do you find quick information?  Do you search online?  Look in a phone book?  Read the local newspaper?  Call or text message a friend?  I’m curious to know.

My topic was “Navigating Social Media” and as I frequently do, I use text polling to find out how the audience feels about the topic we’re to discuss. The first question was “How do you feel about social media?” I felt very prepared for a range of answers since I run a technology company and have worked in a very large IT department in a large corporation.

However, as the first text results came in, I was quickly reminded my how much I differ from Big IT. The first result used profanity which made several in the audience gasp. I responded with, “Ohh, did I not mention there’s no filter? If you want to be silly, go ahead!” As more results flowed in, several said “waste of time” and “huh”, but overall the popular response was networking. You can see the tag cloud of responses here.

I told the audience I agreed many times social media can be a waste of time, but there are some things to be learned from it for us as professionals and for our careers. At this point, I still didn’t have the audience. I could tell there was resistance to the topic, but I pressed on. I talked about the shift in the web from one-way to two-way conversations and what were the latest trends. I tried another text poll which brought on a few more less than desirable responses. I thought humor might win them over and offered a prize to one of the off-color remarks, but no one would claim it. At that point, I knew I had to change course.

While being as tactful as possible, I told these folks how the local twitter community “bashed” their company for communicating so poorly during the ice storm, how I use Twitter first for news and my local tv station second (at best) and how we’re never going back to the way the web was. I explained how several national brands are getting “murdered” online about their products, culture and customer experiences and some (like @mystarbucksidea, @Comcastcares and @Ford) are doing it right.

I can’t say that I won everyone over with the examples, but I did notice many sat up a little straighter and the overall room seemed to change. I re-focused on my original three points and decided to tell some personal stories about my social web mistakes and usage. If you’ve seen me present, I stuck with the same format of funny pictures, lots of screen shot examples and a lively pace. As I moved through the presentation, I realized these folks weren’t against the social web, but were more likely to be fearful or challenged by it’s growth and direction.

Even after some challenging crowd reactions, I still consider myself one of them. Sometimes Big IT is about control and my view of the social web doesn’t jive with that mindset. I also realize Big IT has to have more rules, structure and policies than my company to protect company’s assets, but I still think there’s some middle-ground for them to actually take advantage of these social tools. For now, I eagerly await the survey results and I’m hopeful some folks learned the social web is more than networking and a waste of time.

It’s pretty amazing how quickly Mike’s account of the incident raced through Twitter and Mike’s tweets were even cited by major news outlets.

In the beginning our issue was we knew very few folks and no one locally using the service. However as I mentioned recently, Twitter users now face a very different scenario… how to deal with the masses. You can see based on these stats my usage and follow patterns have drastically changed. That’s no mistake as I couldn’t handle the stream.

Last week I had a cartoon about Twitter and I couldn’t resist sharing this fitting one below created by the smart folks at Hubspot. If you’re wondering why people aren’t following you back, check Shannon’s list (don’t miss the comments either).

Will I be using Twitter in another 650 days? Hard to say since the signal to noise ratio is changing rapidly and I have been known to be wrong about social networks. At this point, I’ll just say Twitter has been a great network to participate in and I can only hope the water doesn’t get poisoned too soon.

I’m starting to get overloaded by Twitter. I really enjoy their service, but I struggle to see what my friends say because my feed is too crowded with my web contacts. Sometimes I get asked did you see what some local person says on Twitter and usually, I’ve missed it.

I started using Twitter in March 2007 and while you definitely need a critical mass (imo) to enjoy Twitter (it was slow at first around Louisville), there has to be a line where too you can’t follow any more. I used to buy into the twitter theory of follow back everyone who follows you, but that made my twitter experience even worse.

A few months ago, I dropped over half of the people I was following, but in that time I’ve added 50 more people who first added me and I personally know. With the Twitter audience on such a rapid growth rate, how do you handle who to follow? Currently I’m following 426 and that’s still too many. This comic strip above reminded me of how we can get trapped into the obligatory friending or following. So what’s your solution?

As promised, I’m posting all the referenced links and the entire presentation you can download here. If you weren’t there, this presentation focused on five main areas… How Social Media Began, Rules of the Road, Top Five Starter, Tools, Metrics for Clients and Personal Metrics (thanks to Scott Monty for the inspiration).

Don’t forget… let’s make our email world a better place! No more !!! ALL CAPS or High Importance. We’ll all be better off without these emotions in email communication.

Finally, here’s a list of Social Media Must Reads.
CommonCraft
Chris Brogan.com
SocialMediaExplorer.com
ScottMonty.com

We know there are lots of fun meetups, so we asked our friends at several web companies to pitch in some swag (t-shirts, stickers, etc) and we’ll be streaming it live on UStream with the always-funny Joe Bennett as emcee for the event.

So show up Thursday, June 12, 2008, from 6:00 – 8:00PM at Fox and Hound Pub & Grille (Map & Directions). You can RSVP on Upcoming, Facebook or DM the twitter account @letstweetup. If you still aren’t convinced, I offer you these three reasons to show up at the Tweetup and read the full details at the web site, LetsTweetup.com.

Our Great Sponsors: Heaven Hill Distilleries, Lijit, Louisville Mojo, Metro Mapper, Mixx, Profilactic, Simple Media, TubeMogul and UStream.tv.

Immediately following the conference, one of the most interesting uses of social media endeavors began. Jim Beam Brands sent Jason Falls (disclaimer: personal friend) to cover Robby Gordon during his NASCAR and Baja 1000 races using all the popular 2.0 tools (Twitter, Flickr, video, etc). I know Jason had high hopes for a major brand like Beam to insert itself into the “conversation” (as the consultants like to say).

Was it a success? I think so and Jason’s data proves it, given they had over 360 followers in a matter of days. My concern is not the size of Beam’s success, but the few missing pieces of coverage for this creative venture.

Jim Beam introduced Twitter into the world of racing, specifically one of the fastest growing sports, NASCAR and a very niche, but loyal crowd in off-road racing. Do you think NASCAR fans are using the latest 2.0 tools? Maybe some, but the majority probably aren’t. Twitter missed an opportunity by not promoting Beam’s efforts to their users. They didn’t even post it on their company blog. Yes, Twitter still is growing at what seems to be a fast rate, but they should elevate the visibility of brands using their tool.

The social media industry, like traditional media seems to be very territorial. Management consultants would describe this as working in “silos.” Each media outlet has its sources for new stories and breaking into that trusted group is tough for anyone pitching a story. It’s my belief, pitching a blogger is becoming just as difficult. Bloggers (like print journalists) like to find their stories from a few sources and since so many do it incorrectly, they become less interested in new sources or stories.

Since the social media industry is in its early stages, there are a few influencers driving the popularity of new stories and trends. It’s well documented that being twittered by Jeremiah Owyang or blogged about by the numerous PR bloggers will boost your traffic (I’m purposefully leaving their names out). The story received a good amount of coverage, but didn’t reach its visibility potential (in my opinion) because the social media influencers didn’t rally around a new source’s story (yes, most of the big names knew about it).

If we don’t support the big brands when they enter, experiment or dedicate resources to social media, we’ll struggle to truly build an industry. We’re all focused on our own or clients’ projects (rightfully so) and those we know and admire (understandable), but we must start promoting and applauding the corporate uses of our tools. If we don’t, our tools become our toys and not vehicles for business expansion.

Truthfully, we’re more likely to tell a brand how bad they executed the use of social media than applaud their efforts. My gut tells me if brands fear our wrath for experimenting, they’re even more unlikely to try our “new” industry. We should rally behind brands and individuals testing our waters, if we don’t, how will all these newly-termed social media consultants make any money?

Photo credit: Sydney Morning Herald

• Facebook’s feed – Possibly Facebook’s greatest feature is it’s mini-feed where the actions of your connections are displayed each day. It’s so nice, MySpace copied it and now LinkedIn has too. Smart move as it’s the best viral tool inside a network I’ve found.
• Corporate news – They’ve partnered with Business Week to integrate news stories into your feed. They’re also “scraping” in stories about companies. For example, if Jim worked at Dell and is your connection, you’ll see news stories about Dell when you visit his profile. Not sure of the value there, but does save a quick online search.
• Platform – If you’re going to steal their feed, steal their the bigger idea and become a platform! Again, not a bad move, but as I understand it… they will allow people to build business (note: not for fun) applications using LinkedIn’s data. I’m very interested in seeing what uses will be created.

I think these moves are in the right direction for LinkedIn, but execution (as always) will determine the success. I do think they are missing a few other key points, so here are a few ideas they should be embrace:

• Lead generation – If LinkedIn could start matching my needs to service providers, I see an enormous upside for all parties. The only leads I’ve seen generated today are job leads.
• Better interface – A common theme I hear about is how “clunky” everything is with LinkedIn. Their search isn’t easy to use. Neither is setting up or managing a group. Interface sounds like an easy fix, but with a mature application, it’s not.
• User input – A major weakness of LinkedIn is the lack of ways to communicate with their company. One sign of a flourishing, active community is a conversation between the users and the product development team.

A combination of driving business and talking to their community would be a nice compliment to their “new” ideas.

Others talking about this topic: Jeremiah Owyang and Andy Beal.

Flickr photo credit: Ulan25

Yesterday’s Twitter “love-fest” had a similar feeling, where many people who commented on Jeremiah’s post, received several new Twitter friends. I personally received over thirty and our web show @dailyidea received several as well. Sounds fun, right? Well, the problem with things that go up? They must come down. Which begs the question… now what?

Since we can’t twitter welcome @, @, @, @ that many times, I’m offering (as is Jason) a suggestion to other twitter users: Link to all the people who added you during the melee. You’ll learn more about your new friends, help their google juice, strengthen a virtual connection and introduce your site visitors to your new friends. Yes, this takes a little time, so I decided to link to each new friend and try to add a short line identifying their blog or Twitter profile.

Now, I encourage everyone to link to your new found friends to spread the love and make some real connections. (Note: many of these links are NOT to their twitter profiles, but I’ve included their profile names). Check out these great new friends!

@JasonFalls – Personal friend who runs SocialMediaExplorer and is joining me in this challenge
@jowyang – Not sure he needs an introduction, since he started this wildfire!
@trishussey – Somehow, I missed Tris at BlogWorld Expo. I’ve heard about Tris before and you can read more about him at Larix Consulting.
@philcampbell – Phil has THE best Twitter background and runs a nightly show called the Gravity and he has the shortest domain I’ve seen www.me.dm.
@skanwar – Based in Toronto, Satish loves Christmas!
@darinrmcclure – Living on the edge of the OC, he was also in Vegas at Blog World.
@vanhoosear – Todd (great name) is a Social Media Practice Leader @ Topaz Partners.
@Spangles – Based in London, this social media enthusiast consults on online and mobile projects.
@mdoeff - Mike is a gadget geek and shares good links.
@chrbutler – Based in Chapel Hill, Chris helps mid-sized advertising agencies stay web smart.
@ncho – Gene Smith writes a neat blog about how the web and its uses are affecting Africa. @mariana_66 – Hidden in the middle of Connecticut, she can help you with your student loan.
@willpate – I’m not shy about loving web video and Will does a great job on one my favorite web shows Command N. He works as the community evangelist at ConceptShare which recently cut a great deal with Corel. Neat guy I want to know better.
@csalomonlee – Based in SFO, has a great blog name, PR Meets Marketing and a wonderful link list on how to pitch bloggers.
@jasonw22 – Based in Boulder Creek, CA… Jason looks to be a heavy Twitter user and takes great pics.
@goaliegirl – Another great blog name, Goalie Girl also known as Angela Robson, consults on IT work and is a hockey goddess.
@TDavid – Another video lover and creator! Creates HD videoblogging (almost #180 episodes) and has a strong Twitter network.
@adelemcalear – Need some good marketing, Adele is for hire. Check out her work with Team Ethanol.
@mjkeliher – Based in Minneapolis, Mike also saw a flood of new Twitter friends yesterday. I love his post on Twitter last month.
@ruperthowe – Rupert videoblogs from his phone. Check out his work as I’m really impressed what that Nokia n93 can do.
@mobilediner – Chris has a unique job as a wireless community developer. I see HUGE opportunities with mobile apps, content, etc. Follow Chris to learn more.
@warrenss – His bio states he’s a social media wanna be.. based is Seattle with a strong network.
@adamcohen – Snitter user based in Beantown. He’s trying like the rest of us to keep up with the pace of today’s web.
@bgolub – Ben is all over the web with his blog, tumblelog and great photography. After reading his blog, I realize I need to introduce him to Profilactic.com. My personal preference for profile aggregation.
@nichodges – My new Aussie friend works at M&C Saatchi and is obsessed with the future of our digital world.
@davidbadash – Great domain (davidinmanhattan.com) where he talks about architecture, design, tech, politics and more.
@conniecrosby – Connie is an info diva based in Montreal and works as a law librarian.
@henre – Henre is a pro blogger from South Africa (where I’m visiting in May). He helps small businesses connect to big customers. Very cool.
@redcatco – Benjamin runs a cool blog that can help your life today! Dig around his site and learn about WOWNDADI. You’ll be glad you did.
@younggogetter – What started as a forum back in 2005 is now a global group of young, driven people.
@conniereece – Connie is based in Austin, TX and writes Every Dot Connects. After a quick read through her blog… she gets it AND likes boas (who doesn’t?).
@barbarakb – Based in Cincy, OH (just down the road from me), Barbara is all over the web and runs Kolbe Market Consultants.

Flickr photo credit: mmmmmmmCHIPOTLE