Twitter

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Two new approaches to tracking the conversation

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My IABC friend and occasional FIR commenter Kris Gallagher, who works in communications at DePaul University, sent along a link to a new service called CrowdStatus.com. Darren Stuart created the site out of a desire to view the Twitter status of the members of a group he assembled. (Stuart is referring to their current status, not their standing in the group.)

Stuart has created an initial crowd that includes several well-known residents of the social media space, all collected in one place.

I can see some use to CrowdStatus. I could put IABC members in one group, people who post great links in another, and SNCR fellows in yet another. Stuart plans to expand beyond Twitter, which could make the service more interesting, aggregating the status of defined groups of people regardless of whether they come from Facebook, Jaiku, or wherever.

But how often would I visit the site to check the status of each group? And an RSS feed defeats the purpose—I can already get that at FriendFeed.

Would this be useful for you?

I’m also intrigued by Shyftr, which I learned about from Brian Solis. Shyftr positions itself this way:

We’ve built a networking community solely focused on feeds. Feeds have traditionally been cumbersome to find. For the most part users have had to scour the Internet in search of feeds that interest them. Now you can find feeds by searching content brought directly to you through the Shyftr network, as well as feeds that other users follow by viewing their feed list. Do you like feeds that your friends or other users are following? It’s simple to “shyft” a feed and add to your list of content you read on a daily basis.

That sounds useful. While Brian worries about the further fragmenting of the conversation, I’m more interested in the discovery of great content.

More services like this are undoubtedly on the way. It’ll be interesting to see which ones stand the test of time.

Sunday, April 13, 2008

Comcast brings customer service to Twitter

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Scott Monty mentioned in an email to me that Comcast has launched a customer service initiative on Twitter. Dubbed “Comcast Cares,” it seems that the effort is aimed at finding people who are tweeting their complaints about Comcast and offering to help. Whoever is leading the effort then engages in conversations with those to whom she or he is reaching out.

Reviewing the 21 pages of tweets from Comcast going back to April 6 reveals a long list of replies to individuals:

As with any company, the words need to be backed up with action, but if Comcast has taken a page from the Dell playbook, this could be an outstanding example of using social media to improve reputation through proactive customer service.

Twitter doesn’t have to be mainstream for this outreach effort to succeed. The word will spread from those who experience it. Using Twitter to seed word-of-mouth by taking genuine care of customers could be a brilliant move by a much maligned company.

Friday, April 04, 2008

Geoffrey Moore’s curve still matters

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It may seem like I’m piling on Steve Rubel. I’m not, really. I like the guy, admire him, respect him and often agree with him. But re-reading his post on the Pollara survey that shows people trust friends and family more tha A-list bloggers, a line he tossed off grabbed my attention; I’d glossed over it before.

This comes as more of the action shifts to micro communities like Twitter or Friendfeed...

I would challenge this assumption. What action, exactly, is switching to Twitter and Friendfeed? Yes, some action is, but it’s the action of the innovators and early adopters, not the mainstream. The mainstream hasn’t heard of Twitter. They’re still wrapping their minds around Facebook and blogs. And Friendfeed? Way, way too leading edge.

Don’t get me wrong. I love both Twitter and Friendfeed, and am waiting to get an invitation to SocialThing. But I’m an early adopter. I’m a geek (and proud of it).

I’ve just spent two days in Saskatchewan talking to recruiters from several large companies about how to use social media in their recruiting efforts. I did three sessions with a total of maybe 30 people. None of them had heard of Twitter. Not one of them. Neither had my client, a local agency that brought me up to do the talks for their clients. If the recruiters haven’t heard of Twitter, it’s a safe bet the people they’re trying to recruit (such as agronomists) haven’t either (with the rare geek exception). These folks are still just getting accustomed to the idea of “social media,” the label Steve wants us to abandon in favor of just calling it all “media.”

Are we really ready to ascribe our innovator and early-adopter behaviors to others who reside elsewhere—early majority, late majority, and laggards—on Geoffrey Moore’s curve? They do represent the majority of the people we seek to reach through our PR efforts, and where they are today is roughly where Steve was three or four years ago.

I’ve always resisted the idea that the PR social media space is an echo chamber, but if we’re ready to say bloggers are moving to Twitter and Friendfeed—and their readers are following—then I may have to change my tune. 

Sunday, February 03, 2008

Twitter: better than a phone tree

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I can remember several episodes from my life in which I was at the emergency room with my wife, son, or daughter, while family members waited anxiously for word. At other times, I was on the waiting end, pacing and wondering exactly what was going on.

As I write this, my friend and colleague Chris Heuer is at the emergency room. He awoke this morning with pain in his arm. He’d gone through some medical issues before but had felt better over the last week. The issue with his arm led him and his wife, Kristie Wells, to head to the hospital, where his blood pressure—which had been 120/80—has spiked to 170/111. At this moment, he’s in the waiting room and has been for a while; the fact that the doctors at Kaiser-Permanente don’t sense an urgent need to treat him is, Kristie hopes, a good sign.

I know all this becuase Chris and Kristie are keeping their connections up to date on events through Twitter. They could, of course, just use the phone, but not to call everyhone who cares about them. I have plenty of experience with that kind of communication:

“Hi, Mom. Here’s the update. Ben split open the skin on his forehead, where there are a lot of blood vessels, which accounts for the bleeding. But he’s okay. They put six stitches in him, and we’ll be leaving soon. Could you call everyone and let them know?”

Mom, however, only calls my great aunt and my brother. She asks my brother to call my sister and a couple cousins, and my great aunt to call a few others. The telephone tree approach is tedious, time-consuming, results in the dissemination of inaccurate information and relies on each individual to do his or her bit.

Twitter’s strength is in its ability to reach everyone who’s interested in you, right now. The same approach can easily work for business—as some businesses have learned.

My thoughts and prayers are with Chris and Kristie right now. Thanks to Twitter, I’m informed enough to know to send them.

(Note: The photo of Chris and Kristie is from Mary Tsao’s Flickr page.)

Friday, December 28, 2007

Geeking out is part of being strategic

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In a recent episode of Inside PR (one of my must-listen podcasts), co-hosts Terry Fallis and David Jones ran through their Christmas wish-lists. Among David’s wishes was one for “a little more PRiness and a little less geek-out.” David lamented the tendency within the tech-savvy corner of the PR world to get wrapped up in the latest technologies and tools without regard for the value they might bring to clients.

David used Twitter as an example, noting that he only recently joined because a client had asked about text messaging options. “I didn’t just get on it because everyone was on it,” he said. “I’m never interested in these things unless I think they have or will have a use for my client.”

Listen to the 3-minute segment here (especially if you want to know how to pronounce “PRiness"):

The problem is, how can we know what potential these tools have for our clients if we don’t try them?

While David is just now exploring Twitter because a client has asked about it, Dan York has attracted considerable attention with a post that summarizes the value he’s perceived from Twitter since joining over a year ago because it was, in fact, the shiny new object everybody else was joining.

Of course, not everybody can try everything that comes along. Most people have real jobs that consume their time with work their bosses expect them to do. Me? I’m lucky. Part of my job is to try the new tools and toys—the ones Robert Scoble and others write about—so I can advise my clients (not to mention readers of this blog and listeners to my podcast, not just in response to specific requests, but in the development of communication strategies (as in, “You know what would work great to achieve this goal? Using Twitter").

But I’m hardly alone. The new media specialists within any agency should be doing the same as part of their jobs. The line between PRiness and geek-out is getting pretty thin.

Sunday, December 23, 2007

Three signs of change

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The end of the year brings three profound examples of the mainstreaming of social media.

First, there’s the Frozen Pea Fund and all related conversation around Susan Reynolds’ battle with breast cancer. Thousands of dollars have been raised through ad hoc campaign that cost essentially nothing, based on a connection made with people who had never met Susan personally. The grass roots campaign involved blogs, Twitter, Flickr, Seesmic and heaven knows how many other social media channels. Absent so far: mainstream media. (Chris Brogan has written great summary of the whole effort, which Neville and I will cover on Monday’s FIR.

Next, Buckhgham Palace announced the launch of a Royal Channel on YouTube. Queen Elizabeth will use the channel to distribute her annual Christmas message. It’s worth noting that Dwight Eisenhouser was president of the United States when the Queen issued her first Christmas message. At that time, the usefulness of television was still an open discussion topic. Now, Elizabeth has moved beyond TV, reaching directly to the people using a medium that may well get more attention than a traditional TV message might. (The BBC has this story. Neville will add his thoughts on Monday’s FIR.)

And speaking of YouTube, it has also become a preferred channel for everything from mea culpas to public responses. All-Star pitcher Roger Clemens has taken to YouTube to issue a denial that he used steroids (he was listed in the Mitchell Report). As recently as a year or two ago, Clemens would have made his statement on TV, probably in an interview (he’s still planning an interview with Mike Wallace on “60 Minutes").

That’s the thread the connects each of these stories. Clemens, in order to reach his fans, would have had to seek out an interview or issue a formal statement to the press; Queen Elizabeth would have had to go on TV and hope people would watch the live address; and the backers of the Frozen Pea effort would have had to spend a fortune on promotional materials to get the word out. Today, they can reach their audiences directly and effectively. In 2008, expect more mainstream figures and organizations to communicate directly through these channels as a supplement to or instead of traditional media.

Friday, December 14, 2007

Newspaper goes Twitter

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A local newspaper has integrated Twitter into its news offerings, according to an article today in Journalism.co.uk. The Nashua Telegraph (New Hampshire, USA) has created a section of its website for breaking news; the news items are fed directly to a Telegraph Twitter stream with links (TinyURLs, of course) to a mobile version of the newspaper’s website.

A current look at the newspaper’s tweets shows weather information (including school and airport information), along with news about a local murder trial and other information that could be important to local residents:

Damon Kiesow, the managing editor of the paper’s online edition, draws a distinction between the Twitter stream and the regular news updates to which people can subscribe, a standard feature of most online newspapers:

The breaking news feed is specifically designed for mobile phones: it’s very selective, so you’re not going to get 50 updates a day, and it’s news that’s important regardless of where you are.

According to the article, Kiesow sees Twitter as the first layer of information for a reporter covering a developing story; as the story builds, it can be developed into incremently longer pieces for SMS and full-length publication articles.

As long as newspapers continue offering new distribution methods for their content consistent with the way people want to get and consume their news, they should do just fine. The Telegraph is certainly an example of the kind of experimentation newspapers should consider.