Wired on Twitter

An interesting article on how Twitter is using the open source spirit to construct its business model.  

www.tinyurl.com/twitterwired

"Become a Bike Vigilante"

Boston Bikes is an initiative by the City of Boston, MA to streamline the stolen -bike-recovery system. The utilize Facebook and twitter to use the populace of Boston in Bike Recovery Efforts.

It works this way. A Boston Biker registers their bike with the city. If there bike is stolen, they can log onto the websites and report the theft. An alert is sent to police, bike shops, school securities, and hospitals. In addition, the alert goes out to their Facebook page (402 fans) and their Twitter feed (317 follower). This accounts for hundreds of additional eyes across the city looking for your bike.

On their website, there is a "Follow Us" link. The heading on this page encourages users to become a "Bike Vigilante": engaging citizens to become more active citizens by utilizing citizen media. This blog is partly focused on finding pragmatic uses of social media. The problem with stolen bikes is that there is no system of consilidation. There are not many cities with an underground stolen bike ring with a mob like organization. Incidents are frequent but solitary. And the entity charged with finding that bike, the police, can't spend a week on finding a stolen bike. Or stopping everyone they see with a bike that looks similar to one reported. By using Facebook and Twitter, bike vigilantes are already deployed throughout the city. Tax dollars are not being used to find a needle in the haystack since vigilantes tend to work pro bono. In addition, Facebook and Twitter accounts are free, and the city already pays for someone to work on the city website along with server space.

However, that does not mean they didn't pay for the idea. They could easily have hired or were approached by a consultant who said that they had a low cost way of curbing the stolen bike problems in Boston.

Is Google Turning Into a Social Media Company?

Is Google Turning Into a Social Media Company?: "

Perhaps Google’s stiffest competition in the immediate future is not Bing and Yahoo, but rather it’s Wikipedia, Twitter, Facebook, etc. Just as we no longer search for the news (24 of the top 25 newspapers have shown record declines in circulation) in the future we will no longer search for products and services rather they will find us via social media. Google has made billions by being the masters of the search world. As these new social media players look for potential revenue streams, monetizing search will certainly bubble to the forefront for the executives.

This will occur on two main fronts a) consumers searching for products and services b) companies searching within the millions of conversations and meta data to garner relevant and real-time customer feedback as well as potential leads and sales. One of the most powerful items about Twitter is the ability for companies to go to search.twitter.com and put in relevant brand or product terms and being able to have insight into what is being said about their product or service. This is one of the main drivers behind why Facebook has been adjusting some of their platform to be more in sync with Twitter. Facebook understands there is “gold” in these conversations.

Speaking of adjustments. Google has made advancements in their search algorithm over the years as well as adjustments to other products. However, for the past few years they haven’t been pushed hard by any major competitor and they haven’t made many MAJOR adjustments to their core business. You can’t blame them, why fix something that isn’t broken. As a result they’ve also been able to supply the world with many free tools that we use in our day-to-day lives. However, as a result, search hasn’t advanced as much as it could have if there was a more competitive environment. Also, people care more about what their friend thinks than what an algorithm does and that is where social media has a potential advantage on Google in the future. However Google is looking to close that gap as evidenced by some of their adjustments:

Google Wave: This is Google’s collaboration tool to combat Twitter and Facebook – some have dubbed it 21st Century e-mail. Computer World’s Sharon Gaudin titled in article “Google’s Wave could prove a threat to Facebook, Twitter.” This same article quotes analyst Rob Enderle, “Thus Google, with its marketing clout and good name, may have a good shot at disrupting the likes of Facebook and Twitter, “This represents a displacement threat for everybody,” Enderle said. “Everybody in this space — Twitter, Facebook and MySpace — is nervous at the moment. If they’re not nervous, then they’re missing the memo. The market hasn’t settled and when it’s not settled, then something like Wave could come in and make headway.”

My take: The biggest hurdle here is that it may be too bleeding edge for the masses. If they make it easiest enough to use for Mom & Dad to adopt than they have a home run on their hands. That is what has been one of Facebook’s biggest successes – the mass adoption by older generations.

Google SearchWiki: In Google’s words SearchWiki is a way for you to customize search by re-ranking, deleting, adding, and commenting on search results. With just a single click you can move the results you prefer to the top or add a new site. You can also write notes attached to a particular site and remove results that you don’t feel belong. My take: Too much burden placed on the user to supply relevant input that can easily be leveraged by other searches. I believe you also need a Gmail account for this to show up. Also, hardly anyone knows this exists. The beauty of a tool like Facebook Connect is that it easily resolves a problem (people don’t want to have to enter logins/personal information for various sites) with limited effort on the user’s part.

Google Hot Trends: Similar in concept to top Trending Topics on Twitter this functionality or box shows up whenever you type in a search term that is one of the top searched on items in the past few hours. “Trends is all based on a different kind of tweet. Instead of the 140 character tweet, it’s the 20 to 25 character tweet, the keyword search. And those come in much faster than tweets do. In our view, that’s the highest fidelity information for trending topics,” said RJ Pittman, director of product management for consumer search properties at Google.

My take: Yahoo had a similar, less robust concept with Yahoo Buzz several years ago. I just find it interesting that Google is perceived (whether it is true or false – I’d argue false) by the public as following Twitter (no pun intended) with this offering. Great article by Danny Sullivan can be found here

Google Sidewiki: In Google’s Words, “Google Sidewiki allows you to contribute helpful information next to any Web page. Google Sidewiki appears as a browser sidebar, where you can read and write entries along the side of the page. Instead of displaying the most recent entries first, we rank Sidewiki entries using an algorithm that promotes the most useful, high-quality entries. It takes into account feedback from you and other users, previous entries made by the same author and many other signals we developed. More information on Google Sidewiki

My take: This is a game changer. There are other companies that have been trying to tackle these “layers” on sites, but with Google now in the game it signals that Google is really getting serious about social. Websites aren’t going to like this loss of control, but it should be a big win for the user if done properly. To make it truly social it should allow the user to highlight or bring to the front specific individuals that they trust. Look for social media companies to get more search oriented and look for Google to continue to get more social.

Erik Qualman is the author of Socialnomics which has made the Amazon #1 Best Seller List. Click here to order Socialnomics.

"

Listening

http://www.radian6.com/blog/2009/10/how-much-time-does-it-take-to-listen/

Listening is an interesting issue when dealing with Social Media since it deals with two different forums:  forums created by the company in which users/stakeholders can offer opinions on the state of the organization and forums created by the users/stakeholders, who determine the purpose and function of the forum.  Listening in the former sense can be routine since responses can be controlled.  For instance, mystarbucksidea.com is owned by Starbucks who has set the discursive purpose:  give you ideas to Starbucks.  It is based on additive measures to improve the company and its practices.  And Starbucks has a hold on that discourse in that forum.  

Then of course, there is stopstarbucks.com, which is blatantly out stop Starbucks.  Ooh!  Don't forget starbucksunion.org, which is bent on uniting Strabucks employees to help maintain fair treatment for employees.  These blogs our out of Starbucks' hands.  

Not all independent forums are negative, they work well to illustrate the point.  Fighting against independent Forums is nonsense.  Creating indipendent forums out of benefit for your company instead of rallying against naysayers is smart.  Each type of forum requires a different approach:  MyStarbucksIdea, listening is expected since Starbucks owns the space.  In the other forums, customers have to be convinced that Starbucks is listening.  Engagement is crucial and must be active other wise, the users of these alternative sites may be alienated and be discouraged from taking part in any Starbucks forum, including buying coffee in their store.  

The Social Media Organization

The Social Media Organization: "

I have a tendency of over simplifying things in my head. It makes life easier that way. Below is a list of what I call a social media organization and represents various job functions in the enterprise, with one or two phrases describing each. Here is a more thorough description of each of the social media roles.

• Social Media Strategist: defining strategy, little to no execution


• Community Manager: Customer facing,direct engagement with end users, face of the company


• Social Media Manager: hybrid role; and may define strategy as well as execute


• Public Relations: influencing external bloggers, blogging


• Social Media Metrics: measuring social media, both on & off domain, reporting


• Legal: ensuring FTC laws or followed, providing guidance on user generated content on corporate domain


• Privacy/Security: protection of online corporate assets, privacy law enforcement


• Customer Support: respond to customer issues on the social web


• Ad Sales: selling ad space within a social network or community


• Employees: social participation on behalf of a company, not measured and done in the free time

Depending on the size and culture of the organization many of the above job functions may be shifted around. Does this make sense?  Am I over simplifying it?

"

Social Media Jobs

Allison Driscoll is a blogger for Mashable.com, and an interactive copywriter (still not sure what that is) and a social media consultant.  Particularly, she focuses on both Facebook and Twitter.  According to her bio on Mashable, "has parlayed her love of writing and fascination with Facebook into a career as a social media blogger and online strategist."  Well shit.  Isn't that what I'm trying to do?  

Inappropriate language aside, there is a professional network out there that values understanding social media as a tool to be implemented professionally.  There are people out there who are going into work places, pitching social media strategies, and then getting paid.  And they all are blogging.  At least they better be.  Recently, I have been posting links to interesting social media articles on my Twitter feed.  After my first post on social media, I acquired a new follower:  dreamsystems (Dream Systems Media), an online communication consulting firm.    

The word consultant seems to be the magical word.  It seems to have the perfect combination of ambiguity and pragmatism.  It seems like the perfect identity for a post-graduate professional writing major.  Professional writers (not necessarily technical writers) have a large body knowledge about communication and networks (not to mention equipped with the ability to write very clear and effective prose) that can be applied in multiple environments.  The problem often is we really can define what we do in a concrete cover-letter like manner without a job opportunity to provide context.   That's why I love the flexibility of the word consultant.  

Social Media Consultant seems to be a great way to define what we can do.  In addition, with the state of the web, online communication consultants are having to no less and less about coding (which is still helpful).  So, professional writers, who lack the coding knowledge of information architects and the technical knowledge of computer engineers or HCI specialists, can find their niche in a less technical web that requires sound communication practices.