Open The Dialogue

A few weeks ago, I gave a presentation to the interns at MWW Group’s headquarters in East Rutherford, NJ. I spent the majority of the time discussing the fine art of blogger outreach, and at the very end, I asked if anyone had any questions. Immediately, the interns jumped on the opportunity to talk about Twitter. Although Twitter is celebrating its third birthday this month, it is still seen as the mysterious new kid on the social networking block, and a large number of people still question it as being a fad.

Despite suspicions that this could be a waste of time, brands (whether companies or individuals) are staking their claim in Twitter. They are interacting with friends, fans and followers on a regular basis through this unusual stream of conversation.

Today, the Wall Street Journal’s The Decoder blog posted an interesting article on entering the Twittersphere from the perspective of their senior technology editor, Julia Angwin. She shares her experience as a newbie on Twitter, giving a less-technical explanation on how to use Twitter than is commonly found on Twitter articles today. She does mention how some brands are interacting on Twitter, but for the most part she describes the experience from an individual’s point-of-view, which is incredibly helpful for someone who has never used the tool. It’s difficult to wrap your head around how to use Twitter for your client when you yourself have never used it. The article isn’t perfect, and leaves out some nitty-gritty information on Direct Messages or how @ replies actually work, and she fails to mention trending topics or hashtags.

Nevertheless, for someone who has opened an account and is facing “0 following, 0 followers,” this is a good anecdote of how to get started and how to keep going.

Still looking for more ways to get grasp on the Twitter phenomenon? Check out this short and sweet video, courtesy of Common Craft.

Another great video from Gary.  He speaks the truth, kids.  It’s all about ratios (do you really want 500 passive people or 25 passionate people?) and the kind of people you want to help.  Yes, help.  Rarely is anything successful on the web when you design it to need people.  Instead, try making something people need.

Celebrities using Twitter is all the rage right now.  Rightfully so, it gives them a hungry, always-on audience which they can control the message with.  Something a lot of them might not be used to these days.  Fan favorite, P.Diddy broke on to the Twitter-scene not too long ago in only a way Diddy could:  trying to raise his spirits via the bedroom.

Starting two nights ago, he’s updating semi-live from recording sessions for his new album.  Pointing out that lots are asking him to do live Ustream sessions, etc. but, respectively, he says that he needs to edit his stuff because it’s hard for him to watch his mouth and doesn’t want to end up on “CNN” (even so, some NSFW language follows):

Besides the obvious mainstream exposure for Twitter, why does this matter?

As the night went on, P. eventually got around to an early breakfast – at 6am – sampling different fried chickens.  Popeye’s & KFC.  At the end of each video throughout the first night, Diddy asks his audience to reply to him on Twitter about the questions he asks in each.  Someone from Popeye’s was listening and last night’s session started off with a delivery from them and Mr. Combs himself asking KFC to step-up.  Classic opportunity for engagement and getting your product in front of captive, dedicated audiences.  It’ll be interesting to see how either brand takes advantage of the rapid celebrity involvement and speed at witch this technology moves.  Quite honestly though, the bigger story is how quickly this might change the celebrity “endorsement” game.

Where do we go from here?  We’re only a “tweet” away.

Facebook has been making some waves this week with the big announcements about the home page redesign as well as pages turning into profiles, etc.  However, in what will surely be the most annoying news of this first week in March, they’ve also allowed their Apps platform to use the Chat function.  From TechCrunch:

Aside from adding an enhanced social element to applications, the new feature could also help apps go viral much more quickly than they would using the standard Email invite system most Facebook apps employ. Developers can now present users with a list their friends who are online (even those that don’t necessarily have their apps installed), who they can then send invites via chat messages. Invites sent over chat have a greater sense of urgency and intimacy, so it’s likely that they’ll be more effective than invites sent through the site’s Email system.

While both Apps and Chat on Facebook are great, useful tools, putting the two together like this will definitely annoy a lot of people (myself included).  Chat on Facebook might already be seen by some as annoying on its own.  I can’t imagine getting an IM from someone asking me to save them from dysentery on the Oregon Trail is going to create lots of new converts to Facebook in general.

Sure, you can turn off chat but what if you actually use it to talk to other people?  There is no “invisible” setting (yet).  Essentially, what this Apps platform update has done is pigeonhole anyone who uses Chat on a regular basis and alienate those who only want to use it selectively.

Is it Friday yet?

Photo credit, smanography.

Late last week, Radian6 instituted a palate of new features designed to amplify its already robust social media monitoring services. The updates are outlined in detail on the Radian6 Power Shift blog, but since a large part of DialogueMedia’s D.Insight digital media monitoring suite is powered by Radian6 technology, I wanted to quickly highlight one of the most significant additions of the overhaul: comment monitoring.

By tracking comment threads across the Web, Radian6 now detects most major venues of conversation online — forums and micromedia have been available for some time. Comments are, in many cases, the most important part of a blog. They echo the sentiment of the market and are therefore more directly representative of the of public position that a blog post would be on its own.

The opportunity presented by this level of granularity is an unprecedented one for brands. Where once monitoring conversation online was only sure to be time consuming, we can now ensure relevant data in a timely fashion — which is to say, if you’re not following the conversation, it’s time to get started.