How popular is your new YouTube video going to be? Will your link make it to the front page of Digg? You may be able to estimate it after only 7 days and about 1 hour, respectively. Read More
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.
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.
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.
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
Clear Calls to Action
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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“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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“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??
Last night, Twitter announced their much-anticipated advertising model: Promoted Tweets.
Most of our readers are already familiar with Twitter, the social networking and microblogging service that people and businesses use to broadcast updates (“tweets”) in 140 characters or less. Twitter launched in 2006, hit its stride in 2007, and became the darling of the start-up world in 2009 when Oprah featured the site on her show, which some analysts suggest resulted in over a million new account sign ups.
Along the way, experts have been speculating about whether Twitter can translate its massive user-base to profit. Up until now, Twitter’s revenue has come primarily from search deals with Google and Microsoft, to allow real-time search integration with their own search engines.
Twitter’s own real-time search engine is a huge part of its draw. Millions of people around the world, including journalists themselves, searched Twitter for live updates about top news events like the Iran Election Protests and Haiti earthquake. Trendwatchers follow Twitter’s “trending topics” closely to determine the “next big thing” (and even try to use it to make NCAA Final Four predictions). The Twitter trend feature, topic feeds, and more are all built on top of its search engine.
Now, with Promoted Tweets, they’re leveraging that search function even more and adding a new revenue model to the mix. This service will allow businesses to pay for their tweets to be promoted to the top of the Twitter searches they choose. Sound familiar?
The model is remarkably similar to the paid-search advertising model used by Google, Yahoo, Bing, and many other engines. Advertisers choose the keywords they’re interested in, and bid for placement at the top of the results.
Also similar to traditional paid search, a top bid does not necessarily guarantee top placement (not forever anyway). Like Google’s “Quality Score” factor, which rewards ads that seem to resonate with users, Twitter will only promote those Tweets that meet a threshold “Resonance Score,” based on users interactions with the Tweets. Users can interact with Promoted Tweets just like regular Tweets – by retweeting, favoriting, and replying to the tweet.
Twitter says that for now, advertisers will pay-per-thousand-views (a.k.a. pay-per-impression) of the promoted Tweet, but they’ll introduce other bidding options in the future. A Resonance Score based on user interactions almost certainly spells out a new pay model for the industry- pay-per-interaction. Tweets don’t have to link to anything, so the model can’t exclusively be pay-per-click. Pay-per-impression is not particularly innovative, and would leave room for gaming the Resonance Score model (what’s to stop big companies from getting all their employees to favorite their Promoted Tweet to maintain a high resonance score?). I expect (hope!) it will be some sort of hybrid between pay-per-click and pay-per-interaction.
Right now Promoted Tweets are only being shown on Twitter search itself, but there are plans to allow Promoted Tweets to be shown by Twitter clients and other ecosystem partners soon. On their blog, Twitter indicates this would include displaying relevant Promoted Tweets in a user’s account timeline, which suggests they will show promoted Tweets in the user’s own feed even if they are not following the advertiser directly.
So long as Twitter exercises restraint, and I imagine they will, I don’t think there will be a huge backlash by users seeing these Promoted Tweets in their own feed. That said, I am curious to see how partners like Google and Microsoft will react to promoted Tweets in the API. Will they accept showing Twitter promoted Tweets in their real-time search results for a cut of the revenue? Or will they block these promoted Tweets altogether? Will Twitter provide a revenue share akin to AdSense with those users who embed a Twitter feed on their own site? (I doubt it.) Will they allow sites with embedded Twitter feeds to block Promoted Tweets? (I think site owners will demand the ability to block specific advertisers at least, particularly if Twitter allows political advertising.)
For the time being, the program is only open to specific partners “that include Best Buy, Bravo, Red Bull, Sony Pictures, Starbucks, and Virgin America — with more to come” and there will only be one promoted Tweet per search results page. As Twitter begins to scale its program, I imagine they’ll run into no small number of challenges. Among the things they’ll have to build for a full launch to the public (in no particular order):
All that work plus scaling what is no doubt an incredibly complex real-time bidding process (especially considering their resonance score calculation), and it looks like there is a long road ahead. Advertisers spending big bucks will not be as patient with the famous Fail Whale as your typical Twitter user.
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….
| Feature | Yammer | Google Wave | Campfire | GChat/IM status in Google Apps for Domains |
| Private? | Yes | Yes | When we tested this in 2007, it included all project participants, including clients, which made it a non-starter for us. | Yes |
| Integration with | Email Summary | Email Summary | A tab within our Basecamp projects | Available on a screen I already monitor (my email inbox) |
| Cost | Free to $5/month | Free, invitation only beta currently | $12-$99/month | Free/included with Apps for Domains |
| Stores History? | Yes, global | Yes, threaded | Yes, threaded by each project | No history on status message. |
| Asynchronous? | Yes | Yes | Yes | No. Asynchronous chats get sent as email, status messages don’t. |
| Includes Files? Images? Links? | Yes | Yes | Yes | Links. No files or images here. |
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.
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.
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.
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