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Stream Twitter on TVs in real-time at events, concerts, presentations and more.

tdomf_2ae17 — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 12:55:55 +0000

Have you ever been at a concert and wondered what the rest of the audience is thinking? Or been at a presentation and had a good point to add? Or at a nightclub and wanted to request a song but not deal with the security surrounding the DJ? Well, there’s a great way to do all this and more.

Connecting Twitter to TVs or projecting it on a screen at your events will add a whole new level of audience participation. Plus, you can grow your list of followers at every event. Creating a live Twitter feed to aggregate tweets sent to users, from users, or including keywords or hashtags can be quite a task.

You can run a real-time search using TweetDeck but it isn’t really optimized for screen and your audience will be squinting.

You can try to build your own Twitter feed widget but it’s a pretty daunting task involving JQuery, JavaScripting, CSS and HTML knowledge.

There’s an easier way. StreamTwitter is a little script designed for streaming tweets in real-time to any video source. Just open the script, change your search term, switch the graphics to be your own (optional) and connect your laptop to your video source. It’s optimized for TV screen resolution and looks amazing. It updates automatically with beautiful jQuery sliding effects. It can filter out bad words if desired. It is the easiest and best way to have a live Twitter feed streaming tweets including your desired search term at your events. It also comes with easy-to-follow instructions and 3 months of support if you have any questions.

If you’ve got experience with StreamTwitter, or any questions, please feel free to share in the comments!

Twitter Unicode Hashtags

tdomf_2ae17 — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 13:05:22 +0000

Twitter #hashtag in Hebrew

It as occurred to me that Twitter has no support for non-Latin hashtags. However some people use them anyway, so I wrote this Greasemonkey script that adds that support. It should work with any language, highlighting them and adding a search link.

I hope in the upcoming days also to add support for the ‘more’ button, making it an integral part of twitter usage. Download it here.

Jump-Starting Your Company’s Twitter Account

tdomf_2ae17 — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 12:56:58 +0000

I started a new business Twitter account and acquired 350 relevant followers in one month being relatively unknown and without spamming.

Most companies have joined Twitter by now but there are a few that have lagged behind. If you’re a part of this group (as my company was), it can be really intimidating to jump into the social media scene when your competitors already have established accounts with hundreds (or thousands) of followers. I used these techniques to jump my new account from 0 to 350 followers in one month, bypassing the awkward infancy period of a new Twitter account almost entirely.

Why should you care? Getting an established account is the best way to attract new followers, and even more importantly, more interaction with your followers and a quick intro into your local Twitter community, driving communication and clicks through to your company’s website.

Set up the account

As soon as possible, grab your business’s name on Twitter if it’s still available. Mine wasn’t, but luckily the account was inactive and we were able to file a copyright request, releasing the account over to our name. If this isn’t possible, grab an available username as close to your business’s name as possible. Avoid underscores and dashes as much as possible.

Design your twitter account to look human, like the @zappos account does above. One of the best ways to do this is to add a custom background with someone’s real picture — preferably the person tweeting from the account but you can use the founders/CEOs of the company as well. Stock photos are worse than having nothing at all. Customize the colors and the rest of the background to reflect your company’s branding.

Before any promotion of the new account, write twenty tweets to fill out the first page, spacing them at least 15 minutes apart from each other. Thereafter, continue to tweet every day, 4-5 times at max for the first few weeks, and taper (if you wish) after. We want the account to look active and get that tweet count up as fast as possible without spamming. A great tool to use is CoTweet, so you can spend 10 minutes in the morning setting up your tweets for the day, spacing them 2-3 hours between each other.

Very important: Make sure your tweets are high quality and useful to your audience. At the end of the day, your account is to promote your business, but will be more follow-worthy if you interact with the community and post about other items of interest in your field. I usually try to have three or so posts per day promoting our website, one retweet (varying between native retweets as well as non-native which can add commentary), and one link out to something interesting elsewhere. You want to emphasize that you’re a real person, not a robot.

Acquire followers

Now that you have a follow-worthy account, it’s time to get followers. It would be easy to just let this happen naturally, but I’ve found that accounts with high follower counts are more desirable, and therefore attract more people. So while the goal is to get a high number of interactive followers, we’ll start out with finding twitter accounts (ideally in the same field) that auto-follow back.

The best way to do this is to use an online application called Tweepsect, built by my friend @shazow, that analyzes a twitter account’s “stalkers” (those that follow but the account doesn’t follow), “stalking” (those that the account follows without following back), and “mutual” (mutually following).

Find other businesses in your field on Twitter and inspect them using Tweepsect. What we’re looking for here is the “mutual” list, and then we can scroll through those mutually following accounts and find those that have nearly identical following/follower counts — sure sign of an auto-follower. Follow every one of these accounts you find for a very quick boost to your following count; if it’s over a hundred accounts, follow only about 50-100 per day to allow for your own following count to rise.

You can start promoting the account once you’ve reached about 100 followers: for example, write a post on your company’s blog, add links from your website and Facebook pages, tell your employees to promote it via their twitter accounts, etc. Why didn’t we do this first? People are more likely to follow an established account.

Bonus: Lists are another great metric, and still a fairly new feature. Use this to your advantage — inspect the lists that your competitors appear on and follow those that create those lists. Usually these creators will add your account to their lists as well. You can also go to Twibes.com and add your business’s account to lists in as many terms in your field as possible.

Find the community

Once you’ve completed these steps, it’s now time to find people in your field to follow and interact with. As large as Twitter is, I often have trouble finding where the good communities of people are. Tweepsect again comes in handy here — we used it before to find auto-follows but now we can use it more generally. Take a look at the “stalking” list in addition to the mutual list to find who other businesses in your field are following. Watch out for inactive accounts, designated on Tweepsect with a face next to account — these accounts haven’t been updated in 90 days.

Another great way to find those in your field is to use Twitter Search. Search for relevant hashtags of topics: #education, #gardening, #marketing, as well as related topics: #onlineeducation, #organicgardening, #ppcmarking, etc. Search for these topics once daily to get a snapshot of others in your field that are promoting that conversation on Twitter. While general topics are hashtagged fairly rarely, conferences almost always have a hashtag for the attendees. Specifically in the education space, #educon occurred about two weeks after we created our Twitter account and it provided a great resource of people to follow in our space.

If you find some really great accounts to follow, I would recommend creating a private list to stick these people on. As your account grows larger, it’ll become impossible to watch the feeds of 300+ people per day. Stick the highest quality accounts into one list and read that instead every morning.

Continue growing and interacting

Hopefully at this point, your account will have the valuable combination of a high amount of followers that also interact, placing yourself directly within the Twitter community and on the same level as your competitors. It’ll be a lot easier to coast your Twitter account since people finding your account will be more likely to subscribe – give months later, the account has more than 800 followers.

Any other tips? I’d love to hear them in the comments!

How to Use Twitter for a Product Launch

Nathan Hangen — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 14:41:11 +0000

We’re in a new age now. As social media networks, particularly Twitter, become adopted by the mainstream media and corporate marketing firms, we’re seeing an evolution in the way that products are launched. Some might say that this is nothing new, that marketing has always been about capturing the current buzz machines and playing them to your needs, but I disagree.

The difference between marketing methods of old and social media marketing is that customers have a say. The success of a social media campaign is dependent not upon how much money is spent, but upon the people being marketed to. If the message works and they like the product, the masses will Tweet it to the rest of the masses. If it doesn’t, the campaign might not even get past the initial push, and will likely spiral into oblivion.

It’s All about the People

There’s one factor that you can’t control, and that’s people. Knowing that, you have to make the most of what you can control, which are the tools at your disposal. In this case, we’ll be talking Twitter, but it also works for Twitter, Facebook, Email Marketing, and video.

So how can you use Twitter for a product launch? Well, there are the obvious methods, such as using the TweetMeme plugin on your blog and product pages. People love to click these because it’s so simple, and I’m really amazed when I find a blog that doesn’t use it.

Forcing Your Hand

Another option is to create your own banner, with a built in link pointing to your launch page. Again, this works well because people can simply click and go…there’s no work involved. My friend Mike and I implemented this recently for our launch and within just a few days have noticed a huge difference in the buzz around our product.

But just creating the banner might not be enough. If you want to create a contest or track the amount of ReTweets, you’ll need a hashtag or custom URL. We created both, so that we could track each message that we create. This is an example of setting a control, so that you can not only track the results, but split-test what works best. If one hash tag isn’t working well, you can try another. If one of your URL’s isn’t seeing the amount of on-page action that you’d like, you can adjust your copy to fix it.

Real Time Tracking

Once you have your campaign in place, and you’ve set the parameters, you need to find a way to track the activity. This is where Twitter Search comes in quite handy.

However, since I’m not a huge fan of Twitter’s interface, I prefer to use clients like Tweet Deck or Seesmic to create custom searches. Of course, I’ll create a panel for my hashtag and possibly my URL, but I don’t stop there.

The next step is to set up a Google Alert, using those same queries, so that you can catch any instances that Twitter Search might miss. This also allows you to capture the activity of sites like Topsy, which republish popular Tweets. Although Twitter Search will capture most of your action, Google Alerts will pick up the stragglers for you.

Real Time Display

Lastly, if you really want to take advantage of Twitter to capture the buzz and hype around your product launch, then it’s time to show the world what everyone is saying. You can do this easily by creating a custom search (they call them groups) in Tweetizen and then embedding the results on sales and contest pages.

This does a number of things for you:

It provides social proof
It creates scarcity, which is a great way to capture a buyer’s attention
It creates a sense of belonging when people see their name in the results

I’ve seen a number of products use this recently, and even as someone that’s used to seeing this sort of thing, I was impressed by the sense of belief I had when viewing the results.

The Total Package

If you implement these techniques in your launch, you’ll have a set of controls that you can test and manipulate, which will help you know very quickly if your launch is going to be a hit. If you don’t see the activity you were hoping for, then you can either adjust your campaign or scrap it for another.

If you pull it off, and the launch builds momentum, then you might get lucky enough to make the Twitter Trends list or get featured on a social media blog, like Mashable.

The great thing about strategies like this, is that you don’t need any cash to get started, yet you can compete with anyone on the Web. Now that’s power.

Why You Should Consider Using Hashtags

tdomf_2ae17 — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 14:01:14 +0000

When I first started using Twitter earlier in the year, I didn’t really understand #hashtags. As a result, I didn’t utilize them. However, I’ve now started using at least one hashtag in all my tweets and my Twitter experience has improved drastically as a result.

Hashtags as Keywords

One simple way of thinking of hashtags is as keyword tags that help label your tweets. If you use a blogging platform like WordPress or social media sites like Flickr, you’re probably already familiar with the idea of using keywords to help tag your blog posts or photos. Keyword tags allow people to more easily find related content of interest. This is EXACTLY why you want to use hashtags — more people are likely to find your Twitter account as a result.

How Hashtags Help People Find You on Twitter

There at least a couple ways that hashtags help people find you on Twitter. The most basic is that in the Twitter interface, hashtags are hyperlinks. When people click a hashtag that interests them, say #twitter, they receive real-time search results of other tweets that have utilized that hashtag. Hashtags are also accessible via various Twitter APIs — there are a plethora of web apps that utilize the Twitter API like foller.me and the Twitter data visualization tool Mentionmap.

Hashtags Will Improve Your Twitter Experience

Utilizing hashtags not only allows other people to find you on Twitter, but also allows you to find other Twitter users who you many benefit from following. Given that many developers love playing around with the Twitter API, by using hashtags you’re also providing them with raw material to help build the next super-cool Twitter API-based app. These apps also provide yet another avenue for people to find you on Twitter.

Twitip has many other neat articles on hashtags that are worth reading. For new Twitter users who may still be a little puzzled by hashtags, my hope is that re-conceptualizing them as keyword tags will help you benefit more from the one of the most interesting and useful social media tools available on the Web today.

3 Ways to Monitor Your Brand with Twitter

Nathan Hangen — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 15:12:23 +0000

By Nathan Hangen of Making It Social. Follow him @nhangen.

If you don’t know what you are doing, measuring your brand online is like sticking a finger in the air and trying to gauge the direction of the wind. It just isn’t as easy as it looks. However, once you understand the tools required to make it happen, brand monitoring becomes 2nd nature. The trick then, is knowing what to monitor and how to do it.

In the past, people relied on Google alerts to send notifications of brand mentions, which usually came in the form of links. Although this is a great way to measure trackbacks and general sentiment, I don’t feel that it offers a complete picture. Not only that, but the results are delayed, meaning that if you get trashed on a forum or in a blog post, then you won’t be able to react until it’s too late. This is why Twitter is changing the way the game is played.

With Twitter, you can track your brand mentions in real time, using a variety of excellent tools. You can track via keyword or hashtag along with the standard mention/RT tracking on the homepage. If you have Twitter integrated onto your blog, then you can add even more firepower to your arsenal by using Tweetbacks and RT’s as comments, which might flesh out an otherwise empty post footer.

The beauty of Twitter tracking tools is that they tell a much greater story than Google does.

Most of the people that read your blog don’t have one of their own, so commenting on Twitter is the only way they can voice their approval/displeasure.
It is much quicker to post a comment on Twitter than it is to create a blog post. Also, since RT’s and mentions are part of the game, people want to talk with you…not just at you.
The results are real time, which means that you can respond to a fire before it becomes a wildfire.

Twitter is where most of the conversation takes place, and if you aren’t there watching, then you are missing out on valuable information about your business. Rather than holding your finger in the air, you are armed with instruments that can provide you with detailed analysis of what you are doing well, and what you need to improve upon.

The Tools

There are 3 particular tools that I’m fond of, but you don’t have to stick with these. Just take what we do here and find a way to make it work within the scope of your favorite Twitter application.

TweetDeck panes: From my experience gazing at laptop screens during the Blogworld Expo, it seems that TweetDeck is by far the most popular Twitter desktop client. It makes sense, because TweetDeck is robust and easy to use. The simple way to set up monitoring in Tweetdeck is to add a few search panes for the keywords and hashtags that represent your brand. For instance, I have a search going for #twitterrockstar and Twitter Rockstar to see what people are saying about my Twitter course.
Hootsuite tabs: Hootsuite is slowly growing into a fabulous web client that has all of the features of TweetDeck without having to download an application, which is perfect places where you can’t download (like at work). You can handle multiple accounts here as well, but the best feature of Hootsuite in my opinion is being able to set up a tab for each brand. I set up tabs for Twitter Rockstar, Beyond Blogging, Nathan Hangen, and any other product or name that I want to track. Since everything is saved to my account, it’s always ready and waiting for me when I log in.
Tweetizen: Tweetizen was developed by Adarsh Pallian and is a great way to not only track your brand, but to show it off to others. Tweetizen allows you to create a “group,” which you can use to track keywords or hashtags, but the difference here is that you can embed the results in any web page. This is great for product pages or launch pages so that you can build hype for your brand without having to force it on your own. Get the conversation going and watch it take off. You can also filter Tweets via user, which means if you want to plant Tweets (which I don’t recommend doing), you can easily do that.

I use all 3 of these tools on a regular basis for my own brand, and that of my clients. As a business owner or consultant, you simply cannot afford not to ignore what others are saying about you and your brand. Create a daily practice of listening with both ears open and then respond where necessary. Nurture those devoted fans, and earn the trust of the negative ones. Do this for yourself and you’ll be ahead of the game. Do it for another business…and you will look like a rockstar.

[image credit]

Sunday Link Roundup: Blood Donors and New Tools

Lara Kulpa — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 13:29:59 +0000

As usual, it’s Sunday here in The States and with the notion of taking things easy, I’ve drawn up a list of some of the things that have found their way into my inbox.

Let me know what you think if you’ve tried any of these tools, and if you have any you’d like to share (or any posts you’ve written on your own blog related to Twitter) please don’t hesitate to let me know about them!

Twitoria – Many people seem to have re-discovered this one recently, as it’s been mentioned here on TwiTip before. You simply enter in your Twitter username, and select a time frame from the dropdown. You then see the number of people you’re following who haven’t updated their Twitter stream in that time. Fortunately most of the people I follow are regular updaters, but this tool is helpful in trimming down your list if you’re so inclined.
Tweet4Blood – An interesting concept, for sure. “Using tweet 4 blood you can tweet your blood requests to followers @tweet4blood who are donors. Tweets are also hashtagged city wise for easy finding. You don’t have to login to tweet it from here. But make sure not to spam the community.” Currently seems like it’s mostly used in India, but I can see how it would be easily spread around the world.
Print Your Twitter – Since Twitter’s archive only goes back so far, using Print Your Twitter allows you to save the history of your Twitter account, favorite hashtags (#topic), and so on, right down to your computer. What were you doing a year ago on Twitter? Find out by checking your own personal archive.
Followformation – Helps users quickly follow dozens of categorized Twitter users. This tool is meant for Twitter users that would like to make sense out of following. For new Twitter users, this can be especially intimidating. Followformation helps the social media newcomer simplify the first few steps by dividing the top people on Twitter by categories, and automating the entire following process.

Tweeting With Your Twitter Community: How To Participate In A Twitter Chat

Guest Poster — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 13:06:41 +0000

By Jeff Hurt of Midcourse Corrections: Views From The Trenches. Follow him @JeffHurt.

Finding your community in Twitter can sometimes be a challenge, especially for Twitter beginners. Social media sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn and NING have flourishing and established communities that are easy to find. Twitter has some growing and thriving communities too but it’s often a best-kept Twitter secret.

Enter #hashtags and Twitter chats.

Twitter chats offer an effective way to meet people with similar interests and share insights into specific topic. Currently there are more than 35 weekly scheduled Twitter chats on certain days and times with like-minded professionals discussing a variety of questions. Here’s how you can find your Twitter community and participate in a Twitter Chat.

Step 1: Find And Use The Hashtag

Using a hashtag, a symbol – # – followed by a name or abbreviation, people broadcast their tweets to a specific group and follow others tweeting with the same hashtag. The hashtag is one of the keys needed to engage successfully in a Twitter chat. Use the list below to find the Twitter chat and subsequent hashtag that interests you.

Step 2: Use A Twitter Chat Tool To Monitor The Conversation

Twitter veterans know that the second key to successful twitter chat participation is to fine-tune their Twitterstation to remove all the Twitter noise. Like dialing into your favorite radio station and removing all the unnecessary static and chatter, these tools help you follow the conversation without being bombarded by other unrelated tweets. A list of ten Twitter chat tools is listed below. Following a conversation with Twitter’s main Web page is difficult and by the time you hit refresh and find tweets with the hashtag, you’ve missed most of the conversation.

Step 3: Tweet Using These Twitter Chat Basics

Once you’ve identified the hashtag for your community and the Twitter chat tool that works best for you, it’s time to get involved. Login to Twitter and your Twitter chat tool at the appropriate date and time, and watch for the moderator to announce the start of the chat. Now that you know the hashtag, remember to include it in your tweets so others can see your comments and questions.

Most Twitter chats, like #journchat, have some type of established ground rules and culture as people discuss specific topics or questions. Many chats have a moderator to help guide and facilitate the discussion. For example, #eventprofs has a moderator for each chat and established moderator instructions and guidelines. Some Twitter chats allow participants to post random questions and some suggest that the group stay on topic. I’ve seen some Twitter chats with guest experts leading a discussion and answering questions. Some groups archive their weekly chats on a wiki, in their Linkedin group, on a website or on wtHashtag.

Step 4: Now Go, Tweet And Participate

With some practice, hashtags and one of these third party Twitter applications listed below, even beginners can tune-in and participate in a robust Twitter discussion. Here’s to finding your Twitter community and I hope to tweet with you in a Twitter chat in the future!

Twitter Chat Tools

Tweetchat

Tweetchat, a web-based interface, recently made some upgrades and you can use the upgraded version or old one. Login to tweetchat with your Twitter username and password. Once your login has been authenticated with Twitter, enter the hashtag. This will take you to the tweetchat room with your custom Twitter background where you’ll be able to follow the conversation. Tweetchat settings allow you to pause the chat, set the refresh rate, and feature or block specific users. Each tweet you enter into the box will automatically be tagged with the official hashtag. Note: If your username is not showing up in Tweetchat, contact the developers and let them know. (Tweetchat is my personal favorite.)

Tweetgrid

Tweetgrid, a web-based dashboard that allows you to search and view up to nine different hashtags at once. Unlike other Twitter chat tools, you do not need a Twitter account to follow a conversation but you will not be able to tweet without a Twitter account. Open Tweetgrid, choose a grid layout, enter your username, password, hashtag, and enter your tweet in tweet box. Tweetgrid offers settings, photos and DM. If you’re following more than one conversation, you’ll have to enter the hashtag in the appropriate box each time each time you tweet.

Tweetdeck

You’ll have to download this free application to your desktop in order to use. Once downloaded, you’ll need to set one column to search the hashtag by clicking on the magnifying glass and entering the hashtag. You can move that column to the right or left in your Tweetdeck dashboard. You can also change the settings such as background color, font color, refresh rates, etc. Each time you tweet for the specific conversation, you’ll need to add the hashtag. (I use Tweetdeck as my normal Twitter interface and keep columns for following specific hashtags open always. That way I can connect with people in those communities outside of the scheduled Tweet chats.)

Twubs

A newer web-based interface that integrates a variety of media including photos and videos. Unlike tweetchat, tweetgrid and monitter, it also incorporates a URL shortening tool. Sign in to Twubs with your username and password, and enter the hashtag. Twubs automatically adds the hashtags to your tweets, allows you to filter users and has real time refreshing. Twubs also has a widget that you can embed on your website or blog.

Monitter

A web-based interface that allows you to follow up to three hashtags at once. You can only tweet to @replies or send retweets, and you’ll have to enter your username, password and hashtag each time you send a tweet. (This is my least favorite of all the Twitter chat tools.)

WhatTheHashtag (wtHashtag)

A web-based user-editable encyclopedia for hashtags; wiki of registered hashtags. This interface includes a variety of information about specific Twitter chats including a description, schedule and moderator, planned topic queue, stats and top contributors, the ability to view and save a transcript of tweets within a certain date and view the Twitter chat via Monitter. You cannot tweet from wtHashtag. Tip: If you want to know what a specific hashtag stands for, follow wtHashtag. Once they are following you, DM them the hashtag and they’ll reply with the definition on file.

RSS Feeds

If you like reading feeds, you can grab a feed for your hashtag group in Twitter search. Enter the hashtag and then copy the link in “Feed for this query” into your feed reader. Using RSS feeds, you can’t participate in the discussion and send tweets, but you can follow the chat.

TweeTree

Web-based interface that monitors hashtags. Login with username, password and enter hashtag in search function. TweeTree pulls in some additional content like photos, videos, blog posts of some approved vendors so that you can see the link’s content in your stream without clicking the link. You’ll have to remember to add the hashtag to your tweets when participating in the discussion in TweeTree.

Roomatic

Web-based dashboard. Login with user name, password and enter hashtag. You’ll see the tweets in a horizontal grid format with a very small font. Roomatic does not have any settings that you can change to make the font size bigger or change the refresh rate. It does automatically include the hashtag of tweets. You cannot send a reply or DM through Roomatic.

Twemes

Web-based interface that lets you follow hashtag and conversation. You cannot tweet from Twemes.

List of Twitter Chats

Editable Google Doc list of Twitter chats created by Robert Swanwick @spkrinteractive.

Name	Description	Moderated by	More Info	When
#agchat	For people in agriculture, farming, ranching, including those in the business of producing food, feed, fuel and fiber.	@mpaynknoper	http://wthashtag.com/agchat	Tuesdays, 8-10 pm ET
#AgeOp	For those interested in getting more out of life, marketing to the 50+ demographic, interested in the politics of aging, the tragedy of ageism, the explosion of masters athletics, the value of experience, the key to health and vitality, how the 50+ market uses the internet	@kwidrick @ageopportunity	http://wthashtag.com/AgeOp	Thursdays 9-10 pm ET
#aptchat	Chat to discuss the apartment and multifamily industry	@LisaTrosien @30Lines	http://wthashtag.com/aptchat	Fridays 4-5 pm ET
#assnchat	Open to any all members of the association community, including staff, consultants, volunteer leaders and members. Explore the present and future of associations. Bring your issues and questions!	@pinnovation	http://wthashtag.com/assnchat	Tuesdays, 2-3 pm ET
#b2bmktgchat	Focuses on business-to-business marketing	@b2bmktgchat	http://wthashtag.com/b2bmktgchat	Wednesdays, 8-10 pm ET
#blogchat	Bettering your blog	@MackCollier	http://wthashtag.com/blogchat	Sundays 9-10 ET
#booktweet	Chat about specific books.	@LaShaeDorsey	http://www.twibes.com/group/Booktweet	Saturdays, 12 pm ET
#brandchat	A discussion between experts, strategists, and those interested in learning more about personal branding and managing their personal brand.	@brandchat @mariaduron @davidsandusky	http://yourbrandchat.wordpress.com/	Wednesdays, 11 am 12 pm ET
#carchat	Discussion about cars and the automotive industry.	@michaelbanovsky	http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=79495666551	Wednesdays, 8-10 pm ET
#caterchat	catering pros (#caterchat) on trends + business strategies	@caterchat		Wednesdays 9-10 pm ET
#cmtychat	Conversation about the business of online communities – building, managing, moderating and measuring.	@sonnygill @bryanperson	http://wthashtag.com/Cmtychat	Fridays 1-2 pm ET
#DCTH	Design Community Twitter Hours	@chadengle @DCTHteam	http://dcth.info	Thursdays 6-8:30 pm ET
#EDCTH	Euro Design Community Twitter Hours	@chadengle @svgrob	http://dcth.info	Thursdays 2-5:30 pm ET
#editorchat	a place for professional writers and editors who use the micro-blogging service Twitter to discuss how best to help one another.	@LydiaBreakfast	http://editorchat.wordpress.com/	Wednesdays, 8:30-11 pm ET
#eventprofs	Meeting and event professionals	@ready2spark	http://eventprofs.pbworks.com	Tuesdays 9-10 pm ET & Thursdays 12-1 pm ET
#foodchat	Monthly conversation designed to bring consumers together with agriculture on the third Tuesday of each month to bridge the farm gate to the consumer plate.	@foodchat @mpaynknoper	http://wthashtag.com/foodchat	3rd Tuesday Monthly, 8-10 pm ET
#hcmktg	Chat related to healthcare marketing.	@hcmktg @IntervalChris @TalstoneDJ @reedsmith	http://hcmktg.com/	Fridays 1-2 pm ET
#hcsm	Healthcare Communication & Social Media community chat about communication and marketing practices	@HealthSocMed @danamlewis	http://www.healthsocmed.com/	Sundays 9-10 pm ET
#innochat	On innovation	@stonepayton	Contact @stonepayton for Yammer login	Thursdays 3-4 pm ET
#JapanTravel	Travel Planning Tips & Advice for Japan	@shanesakata @tokyotopia	http://www.japandiscovered.com	Fridays 12-1 pm Japan Time
#journ2journ	Reporters help other reporters in some manner and discuss journalism challenges	@journ2journ	http://groups.poynter.org/members/blog_view.asp?id=160554&tag=journ2journ	Thursdays 8-9:30 pm ET
#journchat	Conversation between journalists, bloggers and public relations folks	@PRSarahEvans	http://wthashtag.com/journchat	Mondays 8-11 pm ET
#litchat	Mission is to connect readers with books and authors.	@litchat	http://litchat.net/	Mondays & Wednesdays 4-5 pm ET
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Interview with Micah Baldwin, Father of FollowFriday

Neal Wiser — Fri, 01 May 2009 13:22:29 +0000

by Neal Wiser. Follow him @nealwiser

While researching my post FollowFriday; Too Much of a Good Thing? I had the pleasure to interview Micah Baldwin (@micah), VP and Lead Evangelist for Lijit Networks, a Boulder, CO startup and the “father” of FollowFridays (check out Micah’s blog, Learn to Duck).

I was originally hoping just to get some insights and maybe a few quick “sound bites” about FollowFridays for the post, but Micah was so open and accommodating that I decided to include the entire content of the interview which offers some nice insight into FollowFriday.

Thank You, Micah.

The Interview

Neal Wiser: How do you feel about the response to FollowFriday?

Micah Baldwin: I think the response is great. More than I, personally ever expected. After all, no hash tag on twitter has ever lasted as long (It started January 16, and we are now into the fourth month!). Plus, I am not a big influencer on Twitter, nor do I have tons and tons of followers. All of that adds up to something that would have been funny for a couple of hours.

Neal Wiser: When you saw how popular FollowFriday was becoming, did you get any ideas on how you could “improve” or “change” it? Can you share any of those ideas?

Micah Baldwin: I always felt, and have always said publicly, that all I did was send the first tweet. It was from there that things took on a life of their own. For example, I didn’t even add a hash tag to my first tweet. Luckily @myklroventine suggested #followfridays (which I shortened to #followfriday because I misread his tweet), and my friends @chrisbrogan, @queenofspain, @jimkukral and @technosailor were kind enough to retweet my original tweet.

I sort of have the same issue with some of the #followfriday tweets as I do with twitter in general. 1) Followers have become currency of influence, and so it’s this mad race to gain followers; 2) Because of #1 everything that can be gamed is, including #followfriday. While the majority of #followfriday tweets are still in the spirit of the original concept, there are more and more than are just sad attempts to gain followers.

The beginning concept, mention two or three folks and why people would find them interesting, is still the best and most interactive style for #followfriday. I think its simplicity (unbeknownst to me) is what made it so accessible.

Neal Wiser: Have you seen the Twitter user-base discover new ways to do/use FollowFriday?

Micah Baldwin: What I have seen are tools being built around #followfriday. Tools for constructing your #followfriday tweets. Posts on how to participate in #followfriday. It’s amazing! I even have a site called followfridays.com built with my friends @strebel and @briantroy, so we could list the top recommended and top recommenders and a couple of featured folks as well.

Neal Wiser: Have you seen/heard of any abuses of FollowFriday? If so, what kind of abuse have you seen/heard of?

Micah Baldwin: I guess it depends on what you consider abuse to be. Some folks (in fact a lot of folks) don’t like seeing a list of twitter names followed by #followfriday. I guess I agree since it doesn’t provide much context or information. I have also seen “rings” where a group of people all suggest each other in an attempt to drive more followers to themselves.

My friend @humancell runs the site topfollowfriday.com and for some, the ratios of endorsements to recommended is amazing! For example, there is one guy who has sent 1200 #followfriday tweets with 4000 endorsements (so about 4 per tweet) to gain 1200 recommendations in return. Most people have sent like 20 #followfriday tweets total in 4 months.

Neal Wiser: Are you planning anything next for FollowFriday?

Micah Baldwin: It’s not mine to plan. It’s the “Twitter universe’s” (I guess spending time in Boulder, CO has made me kinda hippish). Seriously, there is little I can do to shape or drive #followfriday. I would love to see other memes grow and flourish on twitter, and I think there is a simple strategy to making it work:

It has to be simple
It has to be positive
It has to allow everyone to participate (meaning no inside jokes, no vertical references, etc.).

Neal Wiser: What do you think about FollowFriday spinoffs/variants (I know you like #woofwednesday), but what about MassFollowMonday, or others?

Micah Baldwin: What’s the saying; Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery?

Twitter is this weird “thing” that for some reason people apply value and worth to. To say that I am somehow more influential or worthy because I had a part of #followfriday is just silly. I think to some degree people want to catch lightening in a bottle again and are trying different ways to do it. I hope that if they are successful, it is in a way that adds value and positivity to Twitter and the people that use the tool. But most of the outshoots are really just the same concept with a different wrapper. It’s not the concept that made #followfriday successful, it was the three points I listed in question five (above). If people already are doing something on #followfriday, why would they do any of these other identical activities? How do they add value?

I have been impressed with efforts that highlight amazing women on twitter (like
@savvyauntie, @geekmommy and @humanfolly or people focused on government like @cheeky_geeky and @scottprimeau or doing really interesting things with technology like @harper, @tomchikoore and @sfoskett.

While this doesn’t really comply with the three points I made for what I think makes a successful twitter meme, it certainly allows me to find people to follow that I may not have found any other way.

After all, that’s the whole point of #followfriday. It simply allows people you trust to answer this question: “Who would be interesting for me to follow?”

Personally, I would love to see memes about ideas (#ideatoday) where people present an idea in 140 characters and people provide feedback. Or social changes (#changetheworld) where people present a change that they would like to see and get volunteers to help make that change (small changes like “I need to clean up a park.” Not the big causes), or other things that get people involved, that everyone can feel good about and that are really simple.

Follow Friday; Too Much of a Good Thing?

Neal Wiser — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 13:55:23 +0000

by Neal Wiser. Follow him @nealwiser

FollowFriday is a wonderful way to get introduced to new people. Unfortunately, its benefits are being undermined. If you’ve experienced problems on FollowFridays, read on…

Follow Friday (#followfriday) was started by Micah Baldwin (@micah) in January 2009 as a way for Twitter users to recommend people who they enjoy following to their own followers. As is typical of good Social Media memes, FollowFriday immediately went “viral” and became a global phenomenon.

I personally love the idea of FollowFriday. It is a testament to the true spirit of Social Media; people using its various tools to connect with (or in this case, to recommend) other people. Unfortunately, through naiveté, simple ignorance and/or intentional abuse, FollowFriday may be on the verge of becoming more of a nuisance then a benefit.

“The best-laid Tweets of mice and men often go awry”*

From humble beginnings in a single tweet by Micah, FollowFriday has become a surprising phenomenon. “All I did was send the first tweet,” said Micah in an interview with this author, “It was from there that things took on a life of their own.”

Today, FollowFriday is the longest lived hash tag on Twitter to date; and it shows no signs of abating. On Friday, April 17 (the last Friday before I wrote this post), approximately 140,000 tweets carried the FollowFriday hash tag.

But, as the FollowFriday meme continues to spread, there have been some unintended side effects. This should come as no surprise. Both the Internet and Twitter are young and in a constant state of change as people find new things to do and new ways to do them. Unfortunately, not all of these changes are positive and FollowFriday is no exception.

“Aye! It was that accursed white whale that razed me”*

To be sure, the luster of FollowFriday is showing some tarnish along the edges, and in some ways it’s being outright abused. Complaints and frustration with the meme have risen significantly in recent weeks. While many of the complaints are due to people being placed in an awkward position for not recommending followers, others consider it a growing nuisance (a TwitterSearch for the phrase “hate followfriday” is informative). Meanwhile, others such as Grant McDonald (@chichiri) and Kay Ballard (@KayBallard) have been more reflective and have published The Follow Friday Manifesto.

Regardless of cause, the unifying theme for a growing number of people is that FollowFriday no longer works as intended. While the causes are varied, I have identified the following characteristics of FollowFriday that are symptomatic of the growing problem.

Blind Recommendations
Tweets with recommendations, but with no other information provided to help users decide whether or not to follow. Blind Recommendations are actually a disservice to both those being recommended and those to whom the recommendation are intended because no effort is made to explain why this person is worth following. The merit of the recommendation is based solely on the reputation of the tweeter.
Packed Recommendations
Tweets filled with strings of usernames and little or no accompanying information. Packed recommendations are a disservice because they are usually “Blind” and are often randomly grouped with other followers with whom there is no mutual affiliation.
Clustered Recommendations
Large groups of recommendation tweets sent in very close proximity to each other. They are a disservice for two reasons:

The recommendations are usually both “Blind” and “Packed” and are randomly thrown together with little or no thought or pattern, thus a recommended user can get lost among the flood of other names.

These tweets can fill and overwhelm a user’s tweet-stream to the point that other, often more important tweets, are quickly bumped from the user’s screen, thus essentially eliminating them.

Pretender Recommendations
A combination of the preceding tweet forms, but one where a user tries to gain new followers by making as many “recommendations” as possible. How it works:

The Pretender builds or obtains a list of often random users whom they are not following (hence “pretending” to follow) or who is not following them back.

The Pretender then tweet the names of those users in the hope that those people will see their names, assume that the Pretender is following them, then reciprocate and follow back.

It works because the Pretender takes advantage of the fact that there is no easy mechanism for users to check to see if those who recommend them are actually following. It’s a disservice not only for all of the above reasons, but because the Pretenders are dishonest, interested only in inflating their own follower numbers by “gaming” the system and not about making legitimate recommendations or building relationships.

Automated Recommendations
I have heard rumors (unconfirmed) that that there are scripts available that will automate the Pretender process. These scripts determine who you are following but who is not following you back and automatically sends tweets packed with those user names. Within a few days, the scripts may also unfollow to keep their user’s following numbers down (if you know of this practice, please @ me. I’d be interested in getting confirmation).
Recommendation Rings
Micah has reported seeing “Rings,” groups of people who all recommend each other to their respective follower-base in an attempt to share the combined base among the entire group, thus building up the group member’s follower numbers.
Tweet Spam & Tweet Phishing
As we all (should) know, Spammers have entered the Twitterverse and are testing the waters trying to figure out ways to attract users. Their goal is obvious; to get money by either selling you their products, driving you to websites to drive ad revenue, steal your identity or to infect your computer with malware. While Twitter is doing a better job these days of combating these parasites, it’s an uphill battle. If you suspect a spammer or want to report suspicious behavior, send a DM to @spam.

“I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of peeps suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced”*

At this point, the genie’s out of the bottle and FollowFriday may be so engrained into the fabric of Twitter that it has effectively become Twitter’s first true tradition. In fact, the only thing that could probably put a stop to it would most likely destroy Twitter itself.

That’s not to say that as permanent a feature as FollowFriday may seem to be, that it still cannot self destruct. At the current rate, abuses such as the recent Wily worm outbreak suggest that something might just be ready to break anyway. But until then, we at least have a chance to get some solutions in place that will help users gain a little more control over how FollowFriday affects their tweeting.

While there are several sites that analyze various FollowFriday statistics, such as Micah’s own followfridays.com, topfollowfriday.com and boxuk.com’s FollowFriday tool, I’ve only found one site dedicated solution that that can actually help users manage their FollowFriday tweets. That site, The Twitter Tag Project, offers a tool that will scan your last 200 tweets and list your most active friends for you to recommend. Unfortunately, this tool publishes tweets using the “Packed” format which, as previously mentioned, is the source of at least some of FollowFriday’s problems.

“We could channel lightning into the flux capacitor and send you Back To The Future!”*

So where does this leave us? Twitter could, and should, add a few new tools to their arsenal to help us manage these and other problems. However, it will most likely fall to one of the third party developers, maybe even The Twitter Task Project. Whoever does take on this task can start with the following features:

A mechanism not unlike Favorites to select candidates for recommendation.
A tool to rank, organize and select candidates for recommendation and to build useful tweets.
Tracking and other metrics to evaluate both the success of a recommendation you make and for recommendations made by others.
An easy to use interface that allows you to manage all of the above.

However, until such tools become available, there are still a few things you can do to make your Fridays more pleasurable for everyone. Remember, this is a community-wide effort (if you have an idea on how to manage FollowFriday, please let me know in Comments):

Ignore FollowFriday altogether (yeah, didn’t think so).
Unfollow those who abuse FollowFridays.
Limit your recommendations to only the absolute best people.
Explain why you recommend someone.
Spread your tweets throughout the day using a scheduling service like Tweetlater, Futuretweet or Hootsuite.
If making multiple recommendations, groups them into logical categories.
If making multiple tweets, only send them in small groups.

“Let’s play Global Thermonuclear War”*

If you absolutely cannot deal with the sheer numbers of FollowFriday recommendations, then short of not tweeting on Friday, I can only suggest the Nuclear Option. This will remove all FollowFriday recommendations from your tweet-stream while allowing you to still see people recommending you. Just follow these easy steps:

Install Tweetdeck (I have not tried this on other clients, but it will work on Tweetdeck).
Every Friday, set a filter in your primary tweet column to exclude the “#followfriday” hash tag (be sure to use the full hash tag phrase as shown or all mentions of FollowFriday, such as this post, which do not use hash tag will also be filtered from your stream).
Set up another Search column to search for your twitter name. This way if someone does recommend you, you will see it.

Conclusions

As Micah told me, “I think it’s important to note that a vast majority of people still use it correctly,” and this is a good thing.

Clearly Micah, and most people who participate in FollowFriday, have good intensions. I myself enjoy making recommendations and have met many amazing people through the process. While I may not be the most active recommender, I do feel more than a little guilty when a Friday passes and I have not recommended anyone. But regardless of my own participation, I believe that we are all better off for Micah’s contribution and owe him our gratitude. Hopefully, the tools to make the most of all our FollowFridays will soon become available.

Resources

*Source of Quotes (in order)

Apologies to Robert Burns
Herman Melville, Moby Dick
Apologies to Obi-wan Kenobi
Dr. Brown, Back to the Future, Universal Pictures (1985)