Did April Fool’s Day come early and I just wasn’t told? How can this possibly be real? (emphasis mine)

We don’t have a description written for this yet, but the job is to be a “high touch” point of contact at Twitter for the burgeoning number of celebrities on the service. We want to make sure they’re happy, using the product effectively, etc. This person is probably pretty junior (it won’t pay a lot) but hopefully familiar with working with “Hollywood types.” They should be tech savvy enough to answer questions and solve basic problems (though they can fall back on our tech support). And they should definitely present themselves (and the company) well on the phone and in person. They should be proactive but not pushy. It might make sense for them to be in L.A. but to come up to SF often. Obviously this is a very sweet gig for someone. The challenge will be finding someone who is good at the schmoozing but also humble and a fit with our culture. [source]

Image: PRPhotos

So, let me get this straight. The growing empire that is Twitter, the one still living off the VC funds stashed in the bank and that interest (because, come on now, 50M has got to be generating some good income, even in this economy), is looking to hire someone who, for all intents and purposes, is a community manager, yet not one for the “army of passionate users”, but for the Ashton Kutchers, Demi Moores and Britneys using the site?

Does anyone else see what’s wrong with this picture or is it just me?

I can’t help but wonder if this is truly real, or if it’s a bad April Fool’s joke that got leaked by TechCrunch two days early. I can only hope that’s the case - the job “has been placed on hold” according to JobScore - especially considering the fact that Ev Williams and I have spoken several times regarding the company’s need for a community manager , (my desire to fulfill that role, of course) and his continuing reluctance to hire for that role. I’m sure the HR process would be intesely overwhelming when they finally get around to hiring for that role, but I would certainly hope Twitter would consider a real community manager before they hire for this “VIP Concierge”.

You’ve heard every single social media/web 2.0 expert/pundit/blabbermouth/evangelist repeat it ad naseum:

Companies in this new world must be honest and transparent with their publics or face the wrath of their consumers. 

In this case though, the “wrath” might just be mere annoyance. 

Apple said that the reason they were pulling out of MacWorld is because they were scaling back on conferences. The direct quote from their initial release is: “Apple has been steadily scaling back on trade shows in recent years, including NAB, Macworld New York, Macworld Tokyo and Apple Expo in Paris.” 

Speculation about the ‘real reason’ Apple had pulled out was because of the rumours swirling around CEO Steve Job’s health, and yet today, Jobs sent out an open letter to the Apple Community.

Dear Apple Community,

For the first time in a decade, I’m getting to spend the holiday season with my family, rather than intensely preparing for a Macworld keynote.

Unfortunately, my decision to have Phil deliver the Macworld keynote set off another flurry of rumors about my health, with some even publishing stories of me on my deathbed. [source]

Apple now claims that it was a political decision not to have Jobs to deliver the keynote. All of which means that yet again, Apple isn’t being completely honest and upfront about Jobs’ health. 

What’s up with Steve, how he’s feeling, or why that even matters is of no consequence to me. Apple will be fine, with or without Jobs at the helm.

What’s bugging me about this is that the company couldn’t, or didn’t anticipate their community’s response to the other guy giving the MacWorld Keynote, when it’s always been up to Jobs, and then they pulled out of MacWorld all together after this year? And they didn’t anticipate that this would cause any kerfuffle at all? That the tech reporters, Apple reporters and pundits and the entire fanatical Apple community wouldn’t put all of this together and wonder what was really up?

Apple has built a large, loyal fanbase. They’ve created their own little cult, and have had years and years to get to know this group, to understand how they internalize information and repeat it, and yet, they’re still stumbling, the way they always have, over some pretty basic tenets. 

(image source: Wikimedia Commons)

I spent the weekend working on a Christmas gift for our families. Photos were edited, accounts created and by Sunday afternoon, I was ready to start doing the layout for my Blurb book.

It didn’t really take me too long before I got frustrated, mainly with myself and the software and our interaction. I tweeted my annoyance and then promptly went out to run a few errands. An hour or so later, around 430 or 5 pm, my phone trilled with a message

“@colleencoplick what are you trying to do? i’m blurb’s marketing director - maybe i can help.”

On a Sunday afternoon. Of the US Thanksgiving long weekend.

I was floored.

I got home, and replied to  Mike, who pretty much immediately hopped onto GTalk with me and helped me through my software troubles, got me set on the right path, AND offered me $50 off my order with a personalized discount code. I was amazed and delighted that he was so responsive.

Turns out that Mike has a daily Twitter search that he runs to see what’s being said out in the world, and he saw my frustrated tweet. Talk about utilizing social media tools the right way! He’s tweeting as himself, but is there to help the community in any way he can.

It’s amazing when you run into a company using social media the right way, but combines that with outstanding customer service! Blurb should definitely hang onto Mike, he’s pretty fantastic!

Hi again! I’m back from my whirlwind trip to the south, (or the upper south as some referred to it as), and I’m getting back into the swing of things!

I was on the flight home last night and going through my usual pre- and post-trip blogging workflow practice, and came across and article on CNet about Evan William’s presentation at Web 2.0 recently. While Williams didn’t give a straight answer to The Valley’s biggest question (though, did you really expect he would? He never gives a straight answer, always holding his cards close to his chest): ‘How will you make money??’ Caroline McCarthy reports that Williams gave some strong hint, and that hint didn’t include advertising.

Overall, it’s looking like Twitter is going to look at a corporate model, where companies like Woot and Zappos, who are already using the service, will be charged for a corporate account.

Williams is still maintaining that Twitter is simply a communications channel, and not a community, which still bugs me. I am of the mind that he’s not really seeing the big picture - sure, Twitter may have started out as a simple communications tool, but it’s morphed into something much more.

Twitter could give corporations access to analytics and data unavailable in free Twitter accounts, something that could undoubtedly be enhanced by its acquisition of search app Summize earlier this year. [source]

However Twitter decides they’re going to start making money, I’m thinking that perhaps the sooner they roll out that model, the better, at least so the naysayers and pundits stop speculating, which is resulting in some slightly bad press.

You’d think that the crushing defeat that Obama delivered McCain recently, partially using the power of social networking, would have been taken as an example to other politicians on how to run a successful campaign using social media.

Apparently, local politicians in Vancouver’s civic election didn’t get the memo.

Vancouver is electing a new mayor and city council on November 15th, and the Vision Vancouver candidate, Gregor Robertson’s camp began to “spoof”his opponent, Peter Ladner on Twitter.

A quote from Robertson’s spokesman claimed Vision Vancouver wasn’t trying to pass off the account as Peter Ladner.

“Clearly, it is a spoof,” Ian Baillie said. “I don’t want people to think we are trying to impersonate him because we are not. We are trying to point out in a funny, humorous way some of the ridiculous things he has said.” [source]

Once the Vancouver Sun article landed, and the spoof came to light in the heavily-campaigned-at local Tech Community, there was a flurry of activity and controversy on local twitterstreams. Unfortunately, the outrage didn’t have a tag, but you can see the search string, and watch the drama unfold here.

There’s a fairly well defined protocol for spoofs on Twitter: @fakeNAME, like @fakesarahpalin, @fakejohnmccain. By hijacking his opponent’s name, Robertson crossed many protocol lines and undid almost all of the campaigning he had done in the tech community.

After a little exploration, it looks like the Vision Vancouver camp still hasn’t learned their lesson. They have created a new  twitter account at @fakepeterladner. Ok, so fine, yes, you followed “the rules” but it’s still not good politics or campaigning to take pot shots at your opponent. You want to bring light to some of the things your opponent has said? Fine. Do it in a debate, when he’s got an opportunity to respond. Debate the merits of your platform, and tell me why I should vote for you, not what the other guy has done “wrong”.

The lessons to take out of this? Register your name and your company name in all of the social marketing sites right away. Not owning your own name could come with serious consequences. And, if you’re trying to get people to choose you over another option, don’t try to win that vote by point out what the other guy is doing wrong.  In this age of transparency and honesty, you just look petty and childish.

Ok, I know it was more than just social media, but he certainly had the best, well organized and strategic social media campaigns I’ve ever seen. It was truly brilliant.

I found an article about the guys behind MyBO, which details their strategy and how it motivated voters. it’s quite a good read! I’ve got a call into Blue State Digital’s PR team and am requesting an interview so we can find out what happens now with Barrack’s social media strategy.(image credit: Mr.Wright, on Flickr, under creative commons.)

This evening was Vancouver’s monthly Third Tuesday, where Mhairi Petrovic, the founder of Out Smarts, explained how to sell social marketing to the traditional marketing decision makers. Raul (aka Hummingbird 604) live-blogged the event.

The information was fantastic, and I thought it needed a wider audience. The full post from Raul is here, but the salient points are below.

Some of the primary objections to social media that traditional marketers have to social media include: 

1) “We already use social media” Complete misconception -  having a website or a facebook page is not participating in social media.  

2) Perceived as a tool for only the younger set. This is a misconception. Yes, MySpace was adopted by young music lovers. The over 35 demographic is the fastest growing sector of the users of Internet. Social networks for professionals are the fastest growing social media segment. 

3) Social media does not apply to me. Technorati and its State of the Blogosphere report stated that they have 133 million blogs in 36 countries. 100 million people on MySpace, 140 million people on Facebook, 20 million photos on Flickr. You have to join in the conversation, before you get left behind.

4) Social media as simply a fad. It’s got no long term/staying power. The case of Friendster is commonly cited as the example of social media being a fad. This is only one case, but the first blog is dated 1982 so it’s not a flash in the pan. If you don’t start using these new technologies NOW you, and more importantly, your business, risk getting left behind.

5) The need for transparency and the fear of losing control of your brand. Those that need to control every press release and make sure that what is being said meets the party line think that social media is too risky. Business owners who think that participation in social media makes you vulnerable and means that you lose control of your brand need to learn this is not the case. Participating in social media means that you actually get more control than you may have had previously - you can respond to any negative comments and move the discussion to your corporate blog.

6) The need for privacy. LinkedIn and Facebook have privacy settings. Set appropriate limits both in terms of who to add and what information you put out there. You control the content. Don’t put EVERYTHING if you feel that it may infringe on your privacy. Use these tools appropriately, understand that you’re in control, and limit your risk by using these technologies in the right way.

7) “Social Media is just fluff.”  People say that Facebook is just fluff - all those zombies and bunnies and garden patches! But the sheer volume of people using it, shows that there is relevance in it. There is a lot of fluff in TV but that doesn’t stop companies from spending billions in advertisements in these media. Your company can benefit from social media if you implement the tools appropriately.

“I don’t have time for social media”  This excuse allows people to negate doing something that they have to do. You can’t afford not to at least consider what your competition is doing with social media and to find out what you can do with social media. You can reach your customers more effectively through social media and by building community. Overall, a social media campaign costs less than a traditional campaign. You may need to hire someone to help you navigate the social media waters and to do it correctly, but that cost will only be a positive investment. 

9) “The only professional way of doing it is the traditional way.” Social media tends to be seen as either “for, or by amateurs”. Social media strategists are considered snake oil salesmen still. Social media is NOT only for amateurs, it’s not an appropriate comment at all. For people who only do traditional marketing, they should transfer the budget for those projects to social media for one month to see how it effects it.

10) “Show me the money. Where is the ROI (Return On Investment)”. There is a dearth of information (publicly available - what has been the return on investment in social media?). Wal-Mart episode - got bad marketing. Mazda did a similar thing. Despite their huge presence, they still had to lay off people and cut off costs. Social media-based marketing is not the end and be all, but it is a component that you can use in your marketing arsenal. Traditional marketing campaigns are even harder to measure in terms of ROI.

Mhairi’s main and central example on huge ROI for using social media - a UK company “ WigglyWigglers” that engaged in a great social media campaign. This is a gardening company. They have a podcast, YouTube channel, a blog, a newsletter and they use them actively to share information on the worms for gardening. The result: they now have over 40,000 podcast subscribers, 43,000 newsletter subscribers, more than 800 friends on Facebook, customers in New Zealand and North America, they’ve improved their Google Page Rank massively, online sales 50% of their total sales, and they’ve done this all with a 97% reduction in their advertising costs. That really proves the ROI on these technologies.

The bottom line is that traditional marketers can no longer ignore the benefits of social media. All the results attest to the fact that traditional, old-school marketers need to learn some of these tools, and harnessing these tools can only benefit you. 

Jack Dorsey and Evan Williams are doing a bit of a dosado. @Ev is taking @Jack’s spot and moving into the CEO role, while @Jack becomes Chairman of the Board.

“We’re entering a new phase now and there are new kinds of challenges ahead. Healthy companies acknowledge the need for change even during the best of times,” Williams wrote. “As Twitter grows both internally and externally, we took a good look at our path forward and saw the need for a focused approach from a single leader.” [source]

Hrm. Translation? Time to actually start playing the game for real. Step up to the plate. Man up. Grow some balls. Pick your cliche.  Any of them will work.

Twitter is still Silicon Valley’s poster child for “cool service, but um, how’ya gonna make money!?”

According to Caroline McCarthy at The Social, “Twitter is growing fast, and closed a $15 million funding round in May. It weathered an engineering shake-up this spring and has managed to largely overcome its well-publicized server problems. Plus, Twitter has become a staple in tracking political zeitgeist–cable network Current TV displayed real-time “tweets” onscreen during the presidential debates.” [source]

All that’s true, but in the end, Twitter’s going to have to step up and get it done. No more of this random, fluffy stuff. They still need a community manager, and they have to figure out exactly how it is they’re going to monetize.

Now, Ev is the guy who invented Blogger, which, granted, has become a wasteland of temporary sites, spammers, link sites and companies who aren’t really into blogging enough to actually put their blog on their own site, at one point, that was the height of blogging technology. I have faith, based on Ev’s track record, that he’ll get something sorted out, but in the meantime, we’re all wondering exactly where this is gonna go. (image source: Twitter blog)

This is a follow-up post for the presentation Lisa Thomas-Tench gave this evening at Net Tuesday. Lisa has worked with community and capacity building organizations around the world and traveled to Africa last year to build schools and work in the communities.

The main thing that Lisa wanted to make sure came across during her presentation was that online supportive international projects are subject to the same challenges as standard, off-line charitable donations. Many people don’t realize this, and tend to assume that because it’s online, it’s going to be easier.

There is an absolute explosion of social networking for social causes type sites out there now, so it’s more important than ever to do your research to find out exactly where it is your money is going.

Like our mantra in social networking, make sure the organization you’re donating to is transparent. It’s vital to make sure that the right people are getting the right funds so that your donation has the right impact. You want to know how much of the organization’s donations (on or offline) are going to marketing, salaries, administration and other expenses, and how much are going to the actual projects and the people running or participating in those projects.

Be aware when you’re looking for a project to support, that you find one that supports local capacity building and has strong, two-way communication. Some projects can do both capacity building and two-way communication if they’re done well.   (image sources: Lisa Thomas-Tench)

Alberto Masetti-Zannini argues that participation mechanisms are key: “NGOs have struggled for a long time to build effective participation mechanisms in the developing world. Relevant and correct information from the bottom of the development pyramid is necessary to make knowledgeable decisions about their work.”

But, Alberto is optimistic: “Indeed, Web 2.0 tools are beginning to change this situation, by generating and disseminating local content and knowledge in an open, shared structure. But are NGOs adopting these new technologies in their knowledge management practices?”

Lisa has a few tips to share with people interested in how best to spend their online fundraising dollars:

• Keep it small by using sites like Dreambank
• Keep it personal. Micro loans from sites like Kiva keep your donation personal, and goes directly to the people you’re trying to help.
• Research and take your time before you donate. All of the projects need to have the backing of an actual charity. You can’t just throw up a project and get people to give you money. Look at sites like Give Meaning to help you find worthy projects.

There are several ways that social networking and Web 2.0 tools are helping to spread awareness, raise funds, and share knowledge.

• William Kamkwamba has a windmill blog here. My first thought was “what’s a windmill blog??”, but was soon completely impressed by the “About” page:

Starting at 14, rather than accept his fate, William started borrowing books from a small community lending library located at his former primary school. He borrowed a 5th grade American textbook called Using Energy, which depicted a wind turbine on its cover. He decided to build a windmill to power his family’s home and obviate the need for kerosene, which provided only smoky, flickering, distant and expensive light after dark. First he built a prototype, then his initial 5-meter windmill out of a broken bicycle, tractor fan blade, old shock absorber, and blue gum trees. He was able to power four light bulbs and two radios, and charge neighbors’ mobile phones. He then rebuilt a 12 meter windmill to better catch the wind above the trees, and added a car battery for storage, as well as homemade light switches and circuit breakers.

You can help William’s education and engineering projects with a secure donation via PayPal. Through a generous donor’s matching grant, contributions of $100 or more will be doubled! Payments appear as Griot Digital, LLC

• There are several sites dedicated to sharing knowledge, including: Knowledge Management for Development, Web2ForDev, and Development through Dialogue.  
• Share information via SMS and online tools with sites like TradeNet.biz. The goal of TradeNet.biz is to create a platform where farmers and traders across the world can share market information via mobile networks and the web.
• Crowdsource crisis information - who better to tell you what’s going on during a crisis than somene involved?

  Ushahidi, which means ”testimony” in Swahili, is a website that was developed to map reports of violence in Kenya after the post-election fallout at the beginning of 2008. Ushahidi’s roots are in the collaboration of Kenyan citizen journalists during a time of crisis.The new Ushahidi Engine is being created to use the lessons learned from Kenya to create a platform that allows anyone around the world to set up their own way to gather reports by mobile phone, email and the web - and map them. It is being built so that it can grow with the changing environment of the web, and to work with other websites and online tools.

Are there any tools you’ve used in the past that we’ve missed?

Community has been on my mind a lot lately, partly because as I mentioned before, I went to BlogWorld with ideablob.com. They’re an online community where people discover, discuss and share ideas (and they have a $10,000 seed money winner every month).

I spent my weekend talking about ideablob to the BlogWorld community because they recognized that in order to be a community, you have to be a part of other communities – not just your own.

One of the things the ideablob team told me was that one of the most important aspects to their community of entrepreneurs is the support that the members give to each other - the comments, the feedback, the advice, the votes for the ideas that are posted each month. It got me to thinking about the importance of community online, even the community that I have here on my blog and the comments and emails and tweets that you all send me. It provides me with the momentum to keep going.

Ever since jumping into the social media world, I’ve been steadily building my own community online, through joining other communities, just like what ideablob is talking about. It’s really the only way that I can navigate all of the sites, services and even the conferences. When I say “my people” I really mean “my community”.

I’m always astounded at how large the online community is  - I had people walk up to me at BlogWorld and after introducing myself, they filled in my last name and knew exactly who I was. I was constantly surprised. But, community is exactly like that.  Any online community is like that - we’ve all got our in-jokes and things that identify us as part of that community. Heck, use the phrase “fail whale” at a conference and you can immediately identify who the Twitter users are for example.

Just get out there and support the community! Regardless of where your community is: be it twitter, facebook, ideablob or on my blog or yours. Give someone some support! It’s good karma!

Oh, and check out my pictures from BlogWorld Expo of my favorite blobbers in Las Vegas! (image source: me!)