Dear Hootsuite,

We love Twitter, professionally and personally. It is a fun way to stay connected, an effective way to share good news and to connect with others, and it can be part of a cross-medium SEO and relationship-building strategy.

We have used Hootsuite to manage multiple-user access to shared or enterprise accounts for a while now, and we wrote in 2009 how TweetDeck and Hootsuite are better together. Well, here’s the reason we’re writing you, dear Hootsuite. In the body of that post, we of course shared our passion for TweetDeck and then in comments section of that post, we expressed a preference for a competitor, CoTweet. And, we’re sorry about that, we really are.

You see, when we flirted with TweetDeck it was because of its ability to create lists and segment the Twitter streams we’re following into thematic groups. You do that now. And when we expressed our admiration for CoTweet, it was because we needed to be able to manage multiple users on multiple accounts, and Hootsuite, we think you would admit this yourself, that wasn’t your strength at that point. Yet, in the time since, you’ve really grown, and you’ve made that part simple and added other features that make you the Twitter client we recommend to our clients.

The source of our Ardor: Google Analytics Parameter Presets

Beyond those “keep up with the Joneses” type updates, you’ve really set yourself apart with your Google Analytics integration. We also love Google Analytics, it helps us measure the work we do for our clients, and it gives us lots of web data to dive into and extract value for our clients. And it makes us so happy that you and Google Analytics get along so well!

We often recommend the Google Analytics URL builder to help clients tag URLs used in campaigns for tracking. Well, in the excitement of sharing or scheduling a tweet, it can be hard to remember to paste in all of those parameters at the end. And so, we were thrilled to see the ability to set the parameters as a campaign default when any URL is shortened within your dashboard.

Request – Multiple Presets Please..?!

So, assuming you accept our apology, dear Hootsuite, would you be willing to listen to one pretty-please request?

We love the custom URL parameters so much that we want to use them ALL THE TIME, so we have a request for an extension or tweak to this functionality. You see, we would like to get more specific with our campaign names, well, because we’re hyper about analytics parameters. So, ideally the analytics custom presets would to be configurable at the level of of the account rather than the level of the entire Hootsuite dashboard. You see, if we’re tweeting for ourselves, tweeting for a client, or tweeting personally, we want to be able to use different campaigns to comply with their or our best practices. And, we would prefer not have to remember to reset them every time. We love the “set and forget” pleasure of having the preset there in the first place.

Anyway, Hootsuite, thanks for listening. We sure do appreciate the wise and helpful owl you’re turning out to be.

In case you missed it (maybe you’ve had your TweetDeck turned off or you don’t surf the Amazon best sellers list), Zappos’ CEO Tony Hsieh’s Delivering Happiness came out today.

Disclosure: I’ve long been a fan of Zappos. I have hard-to-fit feet, and I very much appreciate the selection and the easy returns they offer. I’ve also long admired their openness and their zest for fun. I was one of the bloggers who received free advance copies of Delivering Happiness. I wrote my (positive) review of the book on my personal blog.

What I wanted to discuss in this space was the multifaceted, organic social media hoopla surrounding the book launch.

One of Zappos core values is to Build Open and Honest Relationships with Communication. And, this book launch is an illustration of that approach. And, it is a huge signal of the amount of trust Zappos has in its book and its brand to release many books to many bloggers and request honest feedback from across the blogosphere.

Aspects of the campaign

Inviting honest reviews

Ahead of the book launch, the website offered free advance copies to bloggers and provided us clear instructions for an honest review and where to link on the book’s website and Amazon. The Delivering Happiness Book website reader reviews page tallies reviews (though at the time of this writing the last update to that page was June 2, before the requested date to publish blog reviews). Perhaps more telling is that Yahoo Site Explorer sees 6,209 inlinks to the Delivering Happiness Book website as of today at 1:42. Click this link to see Yahoo Site Explorer has found more.

Strong Schedule Planning

1. Reviewers got clear instructions on when to publish their posts – we could have posted anytime, but were encouraged to post this week, today if possible, around the launch.
2. They’ve had happy hours each Friday leading up to the launch.
3. They’ve encouraged Meetup groups to form around the book launch week.
4. And they’re livestreaming the launch party from New York City.

Clear Calls to Action

1. Get connected – become a fan on facebook, follow them on twitter
2. Start a movement – take the pledge to act in ways to increase others’ happiness, instigate/attend a meetup to discuss the book (see above)
3. See encouraged links from reviews “inviting links”.

Now, these links are on the Delivering happiness book website. Why I believe it is valuable to reproduce them here is to illustrate how comprehensive the list is of ways to engage. Their strategy is open: it’s completely visibile and they’ve released their idea out to a larger community, to largely positive results.

Their strategy is also canny, because here on day one of the launch, they’ve had many reviews in blogs, on goodreads, and on Amazon itself, they’ve garnered many many mentions, building excitement. And, they’re doing it with clear calls to action. And, given the sales they’re seeing (#1 on Amazon.com), I would anticipate their advance planning is paying off in selling books and spreading their message.

This week, Twitter unveiled its new revenue model of ‘Promoted Tweets‘. I wondered, what do Twitters 105 million registered users, who make up 600 million searches per day, think of this sponsored advertising that will start to appear in their previously advertisement free space?

To answer this question, I went to our social media ‘listening tool’, Radian6, to take a deeper look into Twitter users reaction to this news since it broke. For this, I’ve hidden the neutral sentiment, which accounts for ~90 of all posts and are generally just links to articles describing the changes, and focus this post solely on the positive and negative sentiment.

It seems most twitter users (78%) that share their opinions on the subject have a positive reaction to it, while only 22% expressed a negative response. Let’s take a look at what some of the good and bad comments have to say:

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Positive Comments

“Thinking of ways that OCHA (and the humanitarian community) could use Promoted Tweets to aid in the coordination of emergency response”

“Would prefer a promoted tweet in which i search for starbucks and kara thrace brings me a coffee. get to it, twitter”

“I think that Promoted Tweets have great potential to *improve* #marketing relevance: http://bit.ly/cLIbR6″

“Bravo will use Promoted Tweets to engage users on shows and will show some user tweets live on TV #aadigital”

“I really like @johnbattelle’s take on Promoted Tweets and resonance http://bit.ly/aCbuNI”

“Favs are dead. The new barometer of success will be Promoted Tweets. It’s like writing movie reviews and aiming for the box every time.”

“So now which firm will be first to claim paid tweet placement services for campaigns?: http://bit.ly/cdbPtt #twitterGetsRevenueModel”

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Negative Comments

“Twitter unveils promoted tweets. Great, I start twittering and twitter starts advertising ”

“So far my impression of Twitter’s forthcoming ‘promoted tweets’ – one big pop up ad.”

“I hope twitters new ‘promoted tweets’ monetization scheme doesn’t cut into my earnings for plugging MORT’S DELI IN TARZANA.”

“I’m all for monetization but fail to see how paid tweets can be the answer. willing to look at it in action, but have serious doubts”

“I’d pay twitter for filters. Tonight I’d block Glee, Promoted Tweets, the # symbol, the letters RT, Lost and LOL.”

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The way Twitter has decided to serve their ads seems very unintrusive, and if they’re actually targeted very well (unlike my experience with Facebook ads so far, which seem to think I’m in extreme need of registering for an online dating site and I should switch my career choice to being on the SWAT team), could actually be very helpful. A Starbucks sponsored tweet telling me which days I can get a venti chai for cheap? I’d love that!

In many ways, Twitter has been an advertising medium this whole time! A platform so well targeted, that it requires the user to sign up, and then seek out each advertiser they wish to follow. Hah, and you thought it was for micro-blogging…

@Moosejaw  consistently writes funny posts, but also push products and promotions.
@MichiganTheater advertises which new movies they’ll be showing this week.
@JoeNBC or @KeithOlbermann give me news updates, but they also promote their TV & radio shows every day
@NewScientist and @PitchforkMedia link me to their website with new and interesting articles, where they make money from ads
@RealTracyMorgan and @JennaMaroneyTGS promote the tv show 30Rock in their tweets

While many of the positive posts were a quick opinion of the idea of paid tweets, followed by a link to an article, it will be interesting to see how sentiment changes over time, and if people continue to complain over the course of the next few months as people become acclimated with Twitters new look. Buzz about this news seems to be dying down already, with the expected initial spike when it was first released, followed by a huge drop off only 24 hours later.

So, what are your initial reactions to the promoted tweets? Do you think it will succeed??

I’m running an experiment to see if the social internet is correct in their collective opinions about the Final Four. Are we to trust what the internet tells us? Afterall, it is the medium that made people think ‘Rick Rolling’, LOLcats and the You Tube series ‘Fred’ were cool. There’s a lot riding on this, internet, so tell me what I need to know!

For this blog, we compiled data from the last seven days, scanning blogs, videos, images, mainstream news, micromedia (twitter & friend feed), forums & forum replies and Facebook. A main limitation here is Facebook and Twitter profiles with privacy settings, and when doing sentiment analysis, we hide the neutral comments.

Let’s check out what the internet says…

Duke is winning in terms of number of posts, followed by Butler, Michigan State, and finally West Virginia. Duke is easily the favorite to win, being the only number 1 seed left in the tournament, and they are getting the most attention online.

Butler is getting a lot of attention also, receiving over 83,000 mentions in the last week. If you’re wondering why I chose the color pink to represent Butler, there are a few reasons, the first of which is Duke shares the same team colors, and gets preferred treatment since they are the higher seed. Also, since they are being called this years ‘Cinderella’ team, I thought Pink was fitting. Lastly, since I am a huge Michigan State fan, I thought I would emasculate the opponent just a little bit. As we’ll see soon, there is a lot of buzz surrounding the Butler Bulldogs right now, but much of the talk is about how improbable their run has been, and not people jumping on their bandwagon.

Michigan Sate and West Virginia both have about 40,000 mentions in the last week, far less than Duke and Butler, but total number of comments is not always the most important indicator, especially online where people can say anything they want, nasty or nice, while hiding behind a pseudonym. And lets face it, there is no lack of opinions in the internets. This brings us to sentiment analysis. Is the content of the comments good or bad?

Lets start with the first matchup on Saturday: Michigan State vs. Butler.

Butler has just over twice as many mentions as Michigan State, but only 5,568 (48%) of these are marked as positive sentiment. In fact, there were actually slightly more negative sentiment posts than positive for Butler! They’re a Cinderella team thats had a great run, but people just don’t have faith in them, and rightfully so! Their next game is against Tom Izzo and the unstoppable Spartans, who’s sentiment analysis shows a completely different picture.

Although far fewer comments than Butler, 5,842 (64%) of the mentions for the MSU is positive. It’s close, but Michigan State wins the battle for most positive posts with 5% more than Butler.

The late game on Saturday is Duke vs. West Virginia.

A 1-seed vs. 2-seed matchup. Being the state of my birth, I’ve become a West Virginia fanboy the last few weeks, but it seems very few others have joined me. The Mountaineers have, by far, the fewest positive sentiment mentions of any of the Final Four teams with 794 (52.1%). And then there is the mighty Blue Devils, with a ridiculous 10,349 (55%) positive sentiment mentions. Advantage Duke. Sorry West Virginia fans…

This brings us to a MSU vs. Duke final. Now there is two ways to interpret the data here. Duke has nearly twice as many positive sentiment mentions as Michigan State, but MSU has a higher percentage of positive remarks.

Lets take a look at the mediums which these positive comments are coming from:

Is there a certain media type we put more weight into than others? I’ve always thought of Twitter as a megaphone that allows people to shout fleeting comments. I literally sneeze in 140 characters. The point here is that micromedia is nice, but doesn’t take a lot of brain power or conviction to type anything. Forum replies, although with no character restrictions, are much the same way. People enjoy bickering and arguing online, and forums provide some sort of organizated platform for that to happen. I think blog posts are created with a little more thought and conviction. At the very least, it gives the space to form an opinion and back it up in a space that you own. Given this, lets see how the positive sentiment for MSU and Duke match up through blogs.

2,613 (41.3%) of MSU’s positive mentions come through blogs. Compare this to just 1,694 (15.8%) blog posts for Duke. Aha! The ‘higher value’ positive sentiment posts favor the Spartans. It’s probably worth mentioning that the bulk of Dukes positive mentions (67.8%) came in through micromedia, meaning if my assumption that Twitter posts were of lesser value, then my conclusion is very very wrong.

Although I want badly to make the data favor MSU, it would seem as if the internets favor Duke. In fact, MSU is broken. Raymar is playing with a missing tooth, Delvon Roe has the knees of a fat 80 year old, Lucas is out with a torn Achilles tendon, Allen has a torn ligament in his foot… they look like the team was mugged in the parking lot. But Tom Izzo still has the faith, and I am an Izzoist.

Alright Duke, It sounds like the championship is yours to lose…

We use several tools hourly at work – Basecamp for project communications, time tracking, and file sharing, our Socialtext wiki for cross project searchable information storage (procedures, lessons learned), our email, IM and shared calendars through Google Apps for Domains. We’ve recently been adding a few other tools to our constellation. They’ve been sneaking in to solve particular problems. We’ve begun collaborating with each other in Google Docs and piloting Google Sites for some project specific collaboration (both available within Apps for Domains).

One of the questions that resurfaces from time to time is how to share status. We have a daily standup meeting and regular project standups (monthly). We schedule quick check-ins with each other throughout the month, and most of us work in a big open room (“war room”) where status is a nerf dart toss, spoken question, or IM away.

However, from time to time we get into a fit of wanting more formal status sharing in the form of a microblogging application. We have messed around a little with Yammer (think of it as a closed Twitter within your corporate network), Google Wave, Campfire (chat integrated with 37signals’ Basecamp product), and updating status in our GChat IM available through Google Apps for Domains.

Here are some thoughts as I consider these microblogging/status sharing tools.This is a quick comparison of the most obvious tools given our existing infrastructure. I added my own interpretation with bolding for my critical decision feature. There are lots more categories I could have evaluated, including smartphone accessibility, but I’m considering the main use case for our team being folks on computers, not on trains nor in cars….

I imagine most of the criticism of this post will be on applications or features I didn’t consider. I’m going to exclude Google Buzz right off the bat because it is not available in Google Apps for Domains and therefore not integrated with our other corporate infrastructure and because I don’t want to be drawn into my personal email interface at work if I can avoid it! Other tools I haven’t tried are Socialtext Signals. Since our wiki is one step removed from our client interactions, it seems the wrong venue even if the tools are interesting. I also couldn’t get it to work in our wiki easily, so I ruled it out. Please don’t confuse this with a comprehensive summary of all available tools. That has been done nicely by others (including Laura Fitton on Mashable and Dion Hinchcliff at ZDNet).

No one will be surprised by this conclusion: which application is better comes down to what features you need. For me, my internal recommendation is for us to start using the “status” line in our GChat better before we jump to a whole new application. I’d like to see us adopt the habit before we adopt a particular tool. And, I don’t want another inbox or screen to check.

The  growing popularity of smart phones is leading to a very fundamental change in the way advertisers reach out to users. It’s generally safe to assume by now that in a small group of people, someone has a smart phone with them. The better question would be is it already in their hands, or still in their pocket or purse.  The evolution of this mobile marketing landscape presents some new and interesting ways that advertising touches us on a daily basis, but it is also boosting the use of a much older technology; the QR (quick response) Code, AKA, the barcode. Apps on new cell phones are now able to read these codes, allowing virtually any traditional form of marketing to easily become a launch pad for a multimedia experience.

My personal favorite use of QR codes is by the Detroit Red Wings. I’m bias, yes, but you find me a better use. I bet you the Colorado Avalanche aren’t doing anything nearly as cool yet. On the big screen, the Wings gave instructions on which free apps to have downloaded, and which page in the program to turn to. What the fans got is a hilarious YouTube video named ‘Kronwalled”, linked below. The best Kronwalling happens 22 seconds in. Anyone that makes that face is really asking for a good Kronwalling. According to the Red Wings, people watching the video through a mobile device watched the video from beginning to end 22% of the time, far exceeding their expectations. They also plan to experiment with and integrate more multimedia placements with their traditional ad mediums.

Another experimental use of QR codes came from the Weather Channel, who surprisingly always seems to be at the forefront of new technology (widgets, phone apps, desktop alerts, and now QR codes). They took this a step further than the Red Wings, putting a large QR code on screen during a broadcast. Scan it with your phone, and it takes you to the Android marketplace, where you can download the weather channel app for your mobile phone. Genius!

Other interesting uses I’ve seen or heard of lately include several restaurants with these codes in their windows. You scan the code, and it takes you to a Google Reviews page where you can read what other people thought, see the menu and hours of operation, and get the link to their website if you want more information. There’s been a few instances of entire billboard displays being a QR code. This approach will work while the idea is new and still clever, but will probably fade as they become more common place.

Also, Campbell-Ewald, the winning agency of the Time Magazine ‘Selling Detroit’ contest, used a QR code in their ad, which will now appear for free in Time Magazine. Their forward thinking likely played a huge role in their winning of the contest and $1,000,000 in free advertising space.

Where else would I like to see this done? How about in news papers? AnnArbor.com is changing the way we see and react to the news, so where could they go next? How could a newspaper use QR codes?

Google is doing some cool things with how we view news. One of my favorite things they’re currently working on is called Living Stories (livingstories.googlelabs.com ). If AnnArbor.com had the QR code on the hard copy of all stories that are still in progress (Iraq/Afghanistan Wars, Local Elections,Healthcare Reform, Haiti Earthquake, Flu Season Information, Frequent Bloggers, etc..), it would allow you to read the article, and if you wanted, you could catch up on the entire backstory.

More than this, lets say you’re reading a hard copy of the newspaper and find an interesting article a friend of yours might enjoy.  Scanning the article code could take you directly to the online copy of the article, which you could then forward to a friend. This would also make it much easier to share via Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, etc. These are the kinds of things that will change the way people interact with newspapers, and what may actually save these dinosaurs from extinction.

Where else could these be used? How about in lines at amusement parks? Building a christmas list or wedding registry? Viewing movie previews after seeing a poster or article about it. There seems to be an endless list of how and where these can be used.

Have you seen a clever use of these lately? How do you think they will be leveraged in the near future?

Ever wonder if your Facebook Fan Page could appear in a search result on Google? Your dreams have come true…if you use Google’s Real Time Search you will now also see Facebook Fan Page posts included.

According to Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan, Real Time Search also includes:
* Twitter tweets
* Google News links
* Google Blog Search links
* Newly created web pages
* Freshly updated web pages
* FriendFeed updates
* Jaiku updates
* Identi.ca updates
* TwitArmy updates
* Google Buzz posts
* MySpace updates
* Facebook fan page updates

So what does this mean for your company? Because you have to know about selecting the “show options” link on your Google search results page. I would like to see the statistics on how many people are selecting it, and actually using the Real Time Search Results. I have a feeling it is under utilized because it is so new, however time will tell!

I found writing my first blog entry an angst-filled experience. Blogging for me is like eating green vegetables. It’s not that I don’t understand the benefits of green vegetables to my health or haven’t heard the positive impacts of blogging. But simply being informed of the benefits does not make the activity any easier or motivate me to do it more.

As a child, I often had to sit at the dinner table until long after dinner was over. My wise mother made it her mission to get me to eat green vegetables, like peas. I had to sit at the table until my plate was clean. Being blessed (or cursed) with a sensitive palate and a strong will, I sat in defiance at the table, night after night, keeping the peas at bay.

I learned two things from my childhood green vegetable encounters that helped me to overcome the challenge of writing my first blog entry.

• Focus on something you enjoy. Faced with a plate full of peas, I found if I took a drink of lemonade, something I enjoy tasting, along with a spoonful of the dreaded peas, I could chase the peas down faster and easier than just eating peas alone. So to make that first blog writing experience easier, I chose my vacation to Paris as the subject. I’ve always enjoyed traveling and as someone who used to work in the travel industry, find travel easy to talk about.
• Don’t wait, just do it. Spending more time thinking about how awful the peas will taste, won’t make them taste any better when you finally get around to eating them. In fact, waiting will likely make your anxiety worse! Have you ever eaten cold peas?

So, get writing that first blog entry. If you need some inspiration, take a vacation!

When Google Buzz showed up in my inbox, I was intrigued yet unsure. After all of the hoopla about Google Wave, I have to admit I never became a convert. Maybe because the invitations were scarce and so no one I wanted to Wave with was available to Wave with me, maybe because among my friends and family I’m an early adopter, so even if invitations weren’t scarce, no one in my inner circle would have Waved with me anyway. Beyond that, the lack of integration with my Gmail inbox was a killer. Another inbox for me to check….it never made it into my routine. I checked it this week, after weeks of inactivity, to find a message from a friend from…weeks ago.#Fail

Google Buzz, on the other hand, is integrated with my Gmail inbox, and in the last two days I’ve already used it more than I’ve ever used Google Wave. So far, I’ve enjoyed photos of a friend’s kid in Chicago, caught some local news – President Barack Obama to deliver the University Michigan commencement address, laughed at some goofy blogs and goofy statements from friends, and I encountered a book that I’ve added to my list of reserved items at the local library (Atul Gawande’s The Checklist Manifesto).

Looking at my Buzz stream on my Google profile, you will notice that it looks an awful lot like Facebook. Same mixture of photos and comments on photos and status updates and comments on status updates. And, since (as yet) there are no Mafia Wars, no Farmville, and no applications to help me figure out what kind of cheese am or what kind of cheese you think I am, it’s actually much more pleasant to dip into.

Yet, until close friends and family are complete Gmail-geeks like I am, I’ll still need Facebook to connect with close friends and family. And, while I am very excited about these tools for connecting with people I already know, I remain convinced that the most open social networking tools, like Twitter, remain the best for businesses to find new customers. Facebook is a walled garden, though becoming less so with its recent changes to its privacy settings making more content public. Google Buzz seems at least semi-walled. Right now I’ve got my Buzz kind of locked down until I decide how it all works.

I’m still exploring Buzz, but so far it seems exceptionally personal and less business-y. Hubspot has provided these recommendations on getting started with Google Buzz for your business. Take a look, let me know what you see, and together we’ll see how it develops.

I am a big believer that the Internet is a tool that needs to be used more for the good of mankind. Watching the Haiti trauma unfold before my eyes on Twitter and Facebook, listening to the connections between survivors, loved ones and lost ones – it made me think about how the Internet has no borders. Humans all over the world build applications to help others survive disaster. Here are a few great examples that I found:

Connecting Vital Resources to the Haitian Victims
1. As you are reading this blog post, a volunteer organization called Ushahidi is helping survivors connect and communicate with the outside world. Ushahidi is a free open source project comprised of developers from Kenya, Ghana, South Africa, Malawi, Netherlands and the USA. Their engine is a platform that allows anyone to gather distributed data via SMS, email or web and visualize it on a map or timeline. Their mission is to create the simplest way of aggregating information from the public for use in crisis response. The site is http://haiti.ushahidi.com/. It shows a crisis map – where people are trapped, where food’s needed, and where they need help from police immediately. In addition, they list out what you can do online to help volunteer.

2. Google created an application that can be embedded in your web site to help missing people reconnect with their family called the Google Person Finder.

3. Google also developed a Crisis Response hotline that is providing free Google Voice Calls to Haiti.

Making it Easy to Donate
1. According to Mobile Marketing Watch the Red Cross has raised $24 million and counting from texting. If you have a cell phone you can donate $10 to the American Red cross by sending a text message with the word “Haiti” to 90999. Also, the Red Cross is providing a map of the % of Overall Text Donations By State.

2. Salesforce.com allows you to donate through their site and will match your donations.

3. Amazon.com has added a box on its home page that customers can click to donate to the Haiti Relief Efforts of Mercy Corps.

4. And even missionaries in Michigan, like Great Commission Air raised $15,000 from an email and Facebook campaign. They are now in Haiti helping transport food and fuel.

So please spread the word about these efforts; helping is contagious!