Retweets and Twitter Bots

There is recently a lot of discussion going on concerning the authority of Twitter users : Michael Arrington, Robert Scoble, Loic Le Meur. Some bloggers propose that the number of followers is a good measure of the authority of a Twitter user. Others argue that other elements should be taken into account, e.g. the number of retweets. A retweet is when a Twitter user copies a twitter message from another Twitter user in their network and shares it with their network, hereby mentioning the author of the original Twitter message.

As Loic Le Meur stated that there were over 7,000 tweets for the Le Web 3 conference that was held in the beginning of December 2008, I checked the number of search results produced by Twitter Search (previously Summize). I came accross a remarkable sequence of tweets. Have a look yourself, e.g. by trying this search.



One tweet (by dotdean) is retweeted by several Twitter bots, resulting in 10 additional tweets. You can find the sequence of all these tweets in the graphic below.



Furthermore 10 additional URL shortcuts were created : http://tr.im/2ool, http://tinyurl.com/98cx3x, http://is.gd/dOdC, http://is.gd/dOdF, http://bit.ly/14i9j, http://tinyurl.com/76dvzl, http://bit.ly/h4p9, http://bit.ly/JebP, http://tinyurl.com/9jjwvz, http://is.gd/dOtd and http://is.gd/dOte.

With this example in mind, I think there are some problems by taking the number of retweets into account for the authority of a Twitter user.

Twitter Authority Firestorm

As often happens during the weekends, another big debate is brewing on Twitter. Loic LeMeur wrote a post yesterday stating that Twitter needs authority based search, where the number of followers influences the search results, sort of like Google’s page rank. LeMeur says on his blog,

“We're not equal on Twitter, as we're not equal on blogs and on the web. I am not saying someone who has more followers than yourself matters more, but what he says has a tendency to spread much faster.”

And Michael Arrington strongly agrees.  Thus, tweets from high profile users like LeMeur (15,000 followers) and Arrington (36,000) will jump to the top and ours will fall to the bottom.  The whole issue started because LeMeur did not want to read all of the 7,000 tweets that were generated by his recent LeWeb conference.  He only wanted to read those of the “important” people.  I’m sure he had no problem taking the money of the unimportant that attended LeWeb.

Several notables have railed against authority based search.

And on the blogs:

1. Bob Warfield first responded with “Let Them Eat Cake”
2. Sarah Lacy wrote “Thank God Loic doesn’t run Twitter”
3. And today Robert Scoble (with his 45000 followers) jumped in with “Mike and Loic are wrong with Twitter search”

I find it interesting that everyman Scoble strongly opposes others in the big follower club and references Warfield’s blog, one of those smaller voices that Arrington/ LeMeur don’t want to read.

Following the discussion, Jon Wheatley and an enterprising team of developers quickly created Twitority, an authority based Twitter search engine.  You can try it out to see what you think.

What are your thoughts about authority based search?  Do you think there is a place for it? Or is it just another bad idea?

Boxing Day Trivia Contest

Did you play in Peter Shankman’s Boxing Day trivia contest on Twitter today? You may know Peter or Skydiver from the Help a Reporter Out program that he created to help provide credible sources for reporters.  As a result of HARO and his professional activities, Peter has over 18,000 followers on Twitter.  He also acquired lots of SWAG throughout the year which he chose to give away on the day of Christmas Eve. His contests were so popular that many sponsors contacted him to give away their prizes and lots of good stuff, like Oggio Travel gear, a custom Snow board, a Peek email device, and the grand prize, a Reno/Tahoe winter escape for two. All in all, over 50 prizes worth over $12,000. Peter asked all kinds of trivia questions and received over 6000 replies, the top @’ed person all day, according to Tweetstats. Brian Shaler joined Peter and hooked up a camera so that the contest was streamed from Peter’s living room.

 

As you can see, a pretty popular contest and a fabulous way to engage an audience on Twitter.  Brands, large and small that are joining Twitter should pay attention to this as it is a fantastic way to get visibility to your brand, engage with your audience/ prospects in a fun way and ultimately sell more products.  An excellent corporate use of Twitter and social media.

And the final trivia question:

 

The lucky winner:

Congrats to ThirdHyphen, Peter, Brian and everyone who played.  It was great fun and a real example of how brands can use social media in a fun way. 

So what do you think? Would a contest like this work for all brands on Twitter? What brands would you like to see participating?

I’ve got great friends

Earlier I wrote about the great support that I have received from my Twitter community since I was laid off last week. Now I like to share an update. The past few days have been a blur as I have been chasing job leads and talking to a lot of people.  Hopefully, I am moving closer to my goal of a new job that uses my online marketing and social media skills to make a strong contribution to a growth oriented, innovative company. I’ve had a lot of help from great friends in keeping busy and for that I am very grateful. They have been supportive, given great leads and connections, and provided wonderful advice. Here are some of the public ones that you may not have seen.

Peter Kim wrote an exciting post on his blog, Is Your Community Prepared to Help, in which he gives great networking advice on how to prepare in case of emergencies. I don’t know if I am the poster child for preparation, but I am certainly glad to have invested so much time in my network.  Rick Murray picked up Peter’s theme and wrote, Happy to Help, in which he not only talks about helping me, but also offers to accept Peter's challenge and go to work for you. 

The amazing Jackie Huba and Ben McConnell wrote How to Prepare for being laid off, the Warren Sukernek way by building up your social capital and cultivating an account of goodwill.  Smartest Man in the World, Saul Colt, wrote A few things to try if you happen to get fired/laid off this holiday season.  For those that know Saul, you know that he wrote a thoughtful, but humorous piece full of great advice. And finally, a new friend that I met through this ordeal, Jeff Shuey, who is going through the process himself, wrote Twitter for the Gainfully Available and Actively Under-Employed.

Each blogger offers great advice, using me as a poster child for the importance of having a strong network. I don’t think I want to be the “Rock Star of the unemployed” for very long, but I certainly appreciate the attention as it will bring more visibility.

How can you help?

Many people have asked how they can help.  Of course, any job leads or connections are very much appreciated. Please send me a message on Twitter or a DM if appropriate. But if you’d like to help, here are a few other things that you can do:

• Tell some friends and contacts that may be in position to help.
• Send my resume to your contacts and have them read Warren Sukernek’s social media resume.
• Create your own post.
• Write a LinkedIn recommendation regarding my skills, our relationships, whatever authentic work of mine that you are familiar with and can share. You can find me here.
• Leave a comment here with your best job-seeking advice so that we can share it with others in need.

Is Twitter becoming Facebook

As Twitter grows and becomes more mainstream, it must appeal to those outside of the Social Media fishbowl. Four recent entrants appear to be doing just that.

Last week, we saw the debut of the Shorty Awards. According to the website, The Shorty Awards honor the world’s top Twitterers in categories as diverse as startups, design, business, sports and just plain weird. Clearly, the next “competition for the self-obsessed” Twittergraders. In terms of competition, there is the Tweetwasters, an admittedly useless site that will calculate how much time you waste on Twitter based on the number of tweets that you have posted. There is even a hall of fame!

And today, TwitorFit debuts. No, it’s not a site that helps you shed those 5 pounds you gained at the holiday parties, this is Hot or Not on Twitter as described by TechCrunch. The Twits (low scores) and Fits (high scores) are sure to take over in popularity. Once you join, Twitorfit will send a tweet to your followers asking them to vote for you. As David Petherick says in his blog,The Next Web, Twitorfit “is puerile, silly, and quite useless. But I love it”. There is even a blog badge for you to proudly show your score.

And last but not least, there is the OldSayingGame which also debuted this morning. OldSayingGame will tweet half of an obscure old saying every day. Then you send a DM of a witty statement to complete it. Then invite your friends to vote. Win votes to prove that you are the cleverest Tweeter!

Are these new games an indication that Twitter has jumped the shark? Or is it just another way to let off some steam as part of a busy day? And will we soon see Facebook’s Ninjas, Packrat, and Snowball throwing on Twitter? What do you think will be the next big Twitter game?

First State of the Twitosphere in Malaysia

Malaysia is a country in Southeast Asia. In the series of states of the Twitosphere on this blog, I did not yet publish a state of the Twitosphere for a Southeast Asian country. The first question in such an analysis is the number of Twitter users in Malaysia. Twitter user search is already disabled for a while, so I cannot inform you on the number of Twitter users in Malaysia according to Twitter itself.

Based on the location info in the Twitter profiles, I was able to find 3429 Twitter users in Malaysia, all active users. These users make an explicit reference to Malaysia, the country itself or a geographical location within this country. Persons who have closed their Twitter accounts are not included in this number. Because the number of Twitter users not mentioning a true location in their Twitter profile is estimated at around 50%, the actual number of Twitter users in Malaysia will probably exceed 3429. With a population of 27,730,000 people (source Wikipedia), the Twitter user density for Malaysia is one Twitter account for every 8087 inhabitants.

History of the Twitter accounts in Malaysia
The graph below shows the history of the Twitter accounts from Malaysia. The graph is based on the date of the first message posted on each of the public Twitter accounts. Twitter users who haven't published any messages and Twitter users with a private profile (their messages are only visible for their approved followers) are not included in this graph. Twitter started late in Malaysia. The oldest Twitter users date back from March 2006. Only 6 months later first users from Malaysia started using Twitter.



Oldest Twitter accounts from Malaysia
http://twitter.com/Adriana - Adriana - first message on August 27, 2006
http://twitter.com/adamgiles_com - Adam Giles - first message on September 4, 2006
http://twitter.com/praveenrajan - Praveen Rajan - first message on September 5, 2006
http://twitter.com/Clowve - Clowve - first message on October 4, 2006
http://twitter.com/JerryOng - Jerry Ong - first message on October 6, 2006
http://twitter.com/syedsyahrul - syed syahrul zarizi - first message on October 31, 2006
http://twitter.com/tropicaljantie - tropicaljantie - first message on November 3, 2006
http://twitter.com/reneetan - Renee - first message on November 3, 2006
http://twitter.com/SmartGuy - SmartGuy - first message on November 9, 2006
http://twitter.com/bee - bee - first message on November 21, 2006

Private or public
309 Twitter acounts from Malaysia or 9% have chosen to keep their updates only available to their friends.

Number of following
A Twitter user can choose to follow one or more other Twitter accounts, called "following". 682 Twitter accounts from Malaysia or 20% do not follow other Twitter users. An average Twitter account from Malaysia follows 34 Twitter accounts.



Top 10 following
http://twitter.com/May_ - Mayen - 2,858 following
http://twitter.com/thangwai - thangwai - 2,051 following
http://twitter.com/home_remedies - home_remedies - 2,000 following
http://twitter.com/LearnOnlineBiz - LearnOnlineBiz - 2,000 following
http://twitter.com/joker400 - Ibrahim - 2,000 following
http://twitter.com/ashique - Ashique M. Abdullah - 2,000 following
http://twitter.com/vacom - vacom - 1,999 following
http://twitter.com/esthercsk - Esther Cheang SK - 1,998 following
http://twitter.com/Gloson - Gloson Teh - 1,991 following
http://twitter.com/razali87 - Mohd. Razali - 1,979 following

Number of followers
A follower is someone who has indicated another Twitter account as following and receives all updates of that other Twitter account. 77 Twitter users from Malaysia or 2% have no Twitter followers at all, meaning that no one else on Twitter has indicated this account as following. The messages published by these Twitter users are only read by themselves (and by search engines). An average Twitter user from Malaysia has 31 followers.



Top 10 followers
http://twitter.com/Gloson - Gloson Teh - 1,790 followers
http://twitter.com/Artmaker - I-Ming - 1,711 followers
http://twitter.com/home_remedies - home_remedies - 1,339 followers
http://twitter.com/LearnOnlineBiz - LearnOnlineBiz - 1,095 followers
http://twitter.com/chetzyusof - Chetz Yusof - 1,032 followers
http://twitter.com/bobkor - bobkor - 839 followers
http://twitter.com/WayneLiew - Wayne Liew - 820 followers
http://twitter.com/joker400 - Ibrahim - 816 followers
http://twitter.com/euginn - euginn - 766 followers
http://twitter.com/JerryOng - Jerry Ong - 751 followers

Updates
An update is the term refering to Twitter messages published by a Twitter users. These are also called tweets. The average number of updates for a Twitter users from Malaysia is 123. 205 Twitter users (or 6%) are still waiting for their first message to be published. Below you can find the top 10.



Top 10 updates
http://twitter.com/kiongchiu - Sparkish - 15,905 updates
http://twitter.com/NewStraitsTimes - New Straits Times - 11,703 updates
http://twitter.com/rasso - Lan Rasso - 9,458 updates
http://twitter.com/ppmy - I follow Penangites! - 7,074 updates
http://twitter.com/Sanjaghak - FateMeh - 5,712 updates
http://twitter.com/neonplanet - NeonPlanet - 4,763 updates
http://twitter.com/liewcf - Liew Cheon Fong - 4,522 updates
http://twitter.com/Artmaker - I-Ming - 3,800 updates
http://twitter.com/reese - reese spykerman - 3,638 updates
http://twitter.com/jfkjohan - Johan F. Khairuddin - 3,505 updates

Degree of activity
29% of all Twitter users from Malaysia have publised at least one message in the last 7 days.
41% of all Twitter users from Malaysia have not published a message for more than a month.
9% of all Twitter users from Malaysia is private, so no information on their degree activity is available.
On 6% of the Twitter accounts from Malaysia not a single message has been published.

Conclusion
The results of the analysis of the state of the twitosphere in Malaysia are comparable to the results for other previously analyzed countries.

From August 2006 there were a few Malaysian users from Twitter. A first increase in popularity occured around March 2007. A next increase in popularity of Twitter started from April/May 2008, followed by a next increase in adoption speed from November 2008. Compared to the Western European countries the Twitter user density is still lower, so there are probably further a lot of people in Malaysia to be convinced of the use of Twitter.

Twitter: love having the brands, but I don’t have to know the person behind the brand

A very provocative post on Mashable today in which Mark Drapeau shares his thoughts about brands on Twitter. Mark thinks that brands should not be on Twitter, but that people ‘hide’ behind organizational brands, obscuring their persona and therefore reducing authenticity and transparency. Yes, it’s a subject that has been discussed many times. I’ve written about brands on Twitter and best practices many times. And of course, there was the survey that Peter Sorgenfrei and I ran in which 240 Twitter users were asked to give their perceptions on brands. Once again, three key points:

Not surprisingly, most users (89%) agree that brands should engage their customers on Twitter.The majority also have a better impression of brands that use Twitter for customer service (81%).

Proper usage of Twitter however, is paramount as almost 90% of users would frown upon poor or inappropriate brand use of Twitter.

The power of a relationship is extremely strong on Twitter. 60% of respondents would recommend a company based on their presence on Twitter and 80% of Twitter users will reward those brands they have key relationships by being more willing to purchase from them.

And you can find over 50 brands using Twitter on a Social Media Marketing wiki that Peter Kim is curating.

Over 70 people have commented on Mashable today and the predominant opinion is that we like our brands on Twitter. Since Twitter is an opt-in community, I can choose to follow whoever or whatever brand I want. I was particularly impressed with Pete Blackshaw’s (author of Angry Customers tell 3000) comment, paraphrased here, Part of what’s drawn brands to Twitter has been the very enthusiastic reception of Twitterites (tens of thousands of them) who have been preaching company and brand “engagement” and “responsiveness” and “participation.” If anything, the Twitter crowd has flirted with righteousness in encouraging brands to participate.

Christine Perkett of Perkett PR says in her Mashable comment,

I think this is an interesting debate and - like anything - comes down to personal preference. That’s why I actually love Twitter - I can choose to follow, unfollow or even just save a certain brand’s “Tweet” that I want to remember.

Obviously as a marketer - and one of the brands on Twitter (in addition to the numerous clients that we’ve helped kick start on Twitter) - I am a fan of such. However, I think more specifically, I am a fan of brands doing it right. And by that I mean - engaging and being personable as you suggest. Not just using Twitter as an RSS feed. Not just blasting your own news/agenda. Combining industry insights with opinions and news and, when warranted, even humor. And, identifying who is behind the corporate handle.

Felix Leander of Burson-Marsteller, also gives a similar perspective on his excellent PR/ Social media blog.

Does anyone disagree that brands should be on Twitter, but there is certainly a right way on how to do it? How would you help a brand to understand Twitter and do it right?

Around the World in 140 Characters – Notes from Ev’s speech to Churchill Club

Image by Adam Tinworth via Flickr

We all know that Twitter excels at events, enabling us to connect with others, take notes, and report on what’s happening. But what happens to the notes after the event? But are they really helpful? Coherent? We never really look back at the notes and reassemble them into a full report. Hopefully, after you read this, you will believe that Tweeting at events is invaluable.

Last night at San Francisco’s Churchill Club, Evan Williams was interviewed by Kevin Maney, Contributing Editor, Condé Nast Portfolio in a talk entitled, “Around the World in 140 Characters: Sound Bites on Twitter, the Web, and Surviving the Economic Meltdown”. Tweeters Shel Israel, Matt Perez, Marissa Coughlin, Cindy Waters, and the Churchill Club took notes and I’ve attempted to reconstruct the notes into an article based only on what was tweeted. You can find Shel’s insights as well as reports from Kevin Maney and the NY Times.

Monetization

The old biz model question. @ev of course won't say how, but vows they will. Advertising possible but not likely.

We don't make money...yet! There's a lot of potential for revenue in the future."it seems clear to me that we can make money." We raised more money than we originally planned & they are hiring less. Is more cautious than he was before.

But the company does not want to have to look for more financing in 2009. It's a bad year for that We're trying to get Twitter into a position where we don't have to raise $ in mid-2009. Revenue more of a priority now. If need be we can bootstrap. Confident but cautious. Since the financial crisis, Twitter has changed course. We will focus on revenue sooner. He had planned to wait until 2010. May be looking for revenue in Q1 2009.

@ev doesn't see a big future inside enterprise. It's just not designed for internal use. Focus on global network. More likely they will offer corporate services. Also retail transactions. Marcom services such as Starbucks is using. @ev is excited about little things--the coffee shop down the street who post about a special, once daily.

In Japan partnering with @joi ito & they use ads. They split rev. "It's OK but not a slam dunk. Japan model is not replicable in the US. Necessarily. Not focused on internationalizing yet. Undecided on partnering elsewhere. Consumer Internet companies need to be international by day 1, and will have clones by day 7.

Our threat is people seeing the concept and thinking they can kick our butt. We're still tiny compared to the big guys.

Community

Twitter started out with the geeks but it's never been just a geek-centric interface. It has a broader appeal.No generational split on Twitter, essentially said there is no age skew. But the userbase skews older than people think. College age goes for Facebook.

Election night was the peak usage for Twitter. But it was a plateau. Now that number is daily. twitter peaks for events. When CNN called Obama the winner was their biggest moment prior to that might have been the iPhone announce "we've evolved." @ev says @barackobama has the most followers, but he hasn't tweeted since elected. There are at least 200 newspapers on Twitter, pushing out feeds or providing original content. @LATimes lets you get specific topics.

Disasters have been good for Twitter. People turn to us in crises like fire and earthquakes--but we are vulnerable to misinformation. @ev says Indian government asked them to shut down Twitter during the crisis last week when people were tweeting about it.

Stability

The company had a lot of tech problems. Had scaling problems since Mar 07 until Jul 08. Last 4 mos its running OK. @ev says we have completed firefighting mode and now we can start improving and growing. Amazing we are doing so well considering these problems.

User Experience

@ev says no one understands Twitter, old and young. Big problem is people signup & don't know where to start. Focus on fixing. Helping people find FB friends on Twitter. @ev says that twitter will make it easier to let people "silo activities" so that they can have different conversations for family & business. we've removed more features from Twitter than we've added, We want to give people better tools but Summize integration IS coming. Search tool helped in #mumbai.

Twitters new tag line: Twitter let's you find people, events, organizations you care about in real time wherever you are.

Future

@ev says that he learned from Google that focus is the most important thing. @ev has ideas for future. He's not good at seeing the future. @biz & @jack are more visionary. But we feel it through osmosis. @ev worked on Blogger for 6 yrs and Twitter will dwarf it.

Ev said the company has found its groove & he sees no end in sight to growth. It comes down to execution. We sense it when we go to dinner with friends and Twitter is what their friends are talking about it. We are not driving the train. Trying to see where the tracks are going.

History

Twitted first launched as twtte.com. @ev says he hardly ever blogs now that he's on Twitter because he usually tweets. Blogs and Twitter are complementary, Twitter just part of new ecosystem. BTW sold Blogger to Google very early on.If he had held... who knows.

Great interview by Kevin Maney, excellent reporting by Shel Israel, Matt Perez, Marissa Coughlin, Cindy Waters, and now I feel like I was there.

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The Invisible Twitter Man

An interesting controversy on Twitter today. Matt Bacak, anyone ever hear of him? – Exactly - self released a press release calling himself, The Powerful Promoter, “First Facebook, now Twitter. The Powerful Promoter, Matt Bacak, has taken himself to the top of the social media networks yet again, this time beating out 99.9% of the fastest growing site's members”. As you would expect, the Twitterverse has not been kind. Scott Baird, describes the reaction in his blog, Matt’s press release states “Anyone can call their promotional abilities ‘powerful’ but I actually prove that mine are,”. “The problem is that this type of ego really contradicts the the overall social media mentality which is basically “It’s not about you, it’s about the overall community”.

You can see the backlash through Twittersearch. Bacak has been called the Biggest Douche in Social Media and 232 people have dugg the article with 69 comments at this time. Jamie Scheu described the situation well on his blog, Promote Your Way to Irrevocable Personal Humiliation.

As humiliating as this situation may be, it points out the problem with our obsession with keeping score. Matt Bacak wrote a press release because he got a high Twittergrader score.

How does a guy who follows just 32 people with 1500 updates and most importantly, no one knows, get such a high score? As you can see, Bacak is so memorable that real Top Twitterer, Aaron Brazell, calls him Joe. Maybe the wizards at Twittergrader need to go back to Hogwarts. How can you give a person that no one on Twitter knows a 99.9! Aside from the grade inflation or algorithm problems, I think what the Invisible Twitter Man points out is the problem with ego and score obsession in social media. Hopefully, we can get back to Scott Baird’s point and let social media be about the overall community.

Shaq is keepin it Real on Twitter

Image via Wikipedia

As Twitter has grown in popularity, celebrities have also jumped in. We’ve all gone crazy over Al Gore, Lance Armstrong, Dave Matthews, and Brea Grant and Greg Grunberg from Heroes. Earlier this month, everyone was excited that a Twitter account was opened to share the thoughts and blog updates from Britney Spears. However, as pointed out by Paul Glazowski in his Mashable column, Britney’s Twitter account was written by Lauren Krusk, Britney’s Social Media Director. Our celebrity obsession is so great that Eric Burke has even created a site to verify the authenticity of the celebrity.

However, not one of these celebrities has embraced Twitter in the manner that we all use it everyday. Not one of the people mentioned above follows more than 77 people (Brea Grant) except for Britney, but that is just a publicist oriented account. As you can see below, some update very sporadically. Now, one would assume that a reason why these people have joined Twitter is to engage with their fans, yet there isn’t a lot of engagement going on, is there?

Celebrity	Following	Followers	Updates
Al Gore	1	19,736	5
Lance Armstrong	2	6,159	188
Dave Matthews	3	9.032	1,128
Brea Grant	77	3,486	671
Greg Grunberg	10	3,076	413
Britney Spears	1,555	8.970	42

However, another big personality has joined Twitter and this one as befits his style is leading the way. You may have seen that Shaquille O’Neal has actively joined Twitter. In just 4 days, starting with his first tweet announcing his presence, O’Neal has followed 267 people, almost 10,000 followers and updated an average of 30 times/day which is equivalent to his scoring average in his prime.

Much has already been written about Shaq on Twitter, from the NY Times article to Adam Ostrow’s Mashable article about how a skeptic was proven wrong with an actual phone call from Shaq. Can you believe that, he actually called a fan! And as we have come to expect from The Diesel, he is showing us his inimitable style, his personality, his candor, and his realness. He is responding to his fans, consistently as shown below.

Shaq may say, “there can only be one me”, but as he said earlier today, “"most leaders r made. .wanna b sucessful, act like a leader”. Shaq is showing others how it’s done and he seems to be having a good time. Shaq is raising the bar for other celebrities to be real, be active, and actually engage with their fans. And it really shows the power of a passionate community like Twitter. Last week I wrote about how a league like the NFL can benefit by bringing its fans together with its players and now Shaq is leading the way!

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When’s the G7 Tweetup?

Inspired by Barack Obama’s success on Twitter and to a lesser degree, Gordon Brown, world leader’s are jumping on Twitter. Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd joined Twitter last week. In fact, the PM claimed that so many followers joined, that his Twitter page crashed. Obviously, that seems pretty dubious in light of the fact that Al Gore joined Twitter and amassed over 5000 followers in an hour.

The most recent entrant is former Israeli Prime Minister and Likud Party leader, Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu tweets in hebrew, but a new cool Twitter feature in search will translate all of his tweets with a click. Netanyahu has even copied Obama’s website style, it’s colors, fonts, videos, and icons.

Having witnessed the power of the web in the US presidential election campaign, world leaders are engaged in a high-tech arms race to win the hearts and minds of switched-on citizens. So friends to the north, where is Stephen Harper?

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Oy, I’ve got such a Motrin headache

Jessica Gottlieb is a smart and very busy woman. She writes 4 blogs, one on sustainability at Celsias as well as Green Options, pop culture at National Lampoon and her own blog about parenting. Yesterday, this busy woman saw an ad for Motrin pitched to new mothers that rubbed her the wrong way and a viral movement started. As Jessica states, a few hours and several tweets later, MotrinMoms is the #1 search on Twitter, eclipsing SNL for the first time since Obama was elected.

The campaign has certainly gone viral, but not in the way Motrin had expected. Katja Presnal, created a video on all the tweets that is getting lots of visibility on YouTube. She is also collecting links on her blog. There are currently over 50 blogs that have written about the #MotrinMoms controversy.

As Lucretia Pruitt states, pissing off your target audience is not a smart strategy. Jessica explains why the ad campaign had such a pronounced impact, “Don’t pick on the weak.

New mothers are fragile. Motrin has proven, irrevocably that they don’t understand that Mothers are the ones in the grocery stores. Mothers clip coupons and build brands with discussion. Mothers get together and uplift one another.

So when you pick on a few new mommies, you get all of us.

The #MotrinMoms of Twitter will never buy Motrin again. Babywearing is best for baby and companies that support our babies get our dollars.”

Laura Fitton blogs about the missed opportunity and how Motrin should have listened to its audience on Twitter, both before the campaign to understand their target audience and during the campaign to get a feel for customer’s reaction. They still have not responded on Twitter, any blogs or on any of the other social networks. Reputation Management guru, Andy Beal explains in his blog, Taking a look at the negative Twitter conversations surrounding #motrinmom demonstrates that Motrin is, in just a few short hours, facing a huge reputation disaster–initiated by the very audience Motrin hoped to target, “Mama Bloggers.”

This episode further supports the research that we recently completed that Twitter members want to engage in dialog with their brands. Just think how quickly this issue could have been addressed and resolved, if Motrin had first listened to its target audience and then engaged with them during the campaign. Instead, they’ve got a headache that will require something much stronger than Motrin to fix.

November 17th Update:

The Groundswell continues….It seems like everyone on Twitter has written a blog post. The VP of Marketing for McNeil Consumer Healthcare issued an apology on Katja’s blog. David Armano has an insightful post looking at the impact on Google search results and offers great advice to brands that may be faced with a similar situation. Jeremiah Owyang’s post demonstrates the impact that the Motrin controversy has had using Twitter analytics and shares lessons learned. It will be interesting to see if there is more response from Motrin today or the issue just blows over as some are predicting….Stay tuned.

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Be Safe. LA

Image via Wikipedia

As often happens during crises, Twitter is first to respond and provide updates about what’s happening. Here are some great resources to stay abreast of the wildfires in Southern California. Nate Ritter, public service twitter extraordinaire has launched Crisiswire, a site that gathers real time crisis information to help the communities. They are currently tracking Sylmar Fires and Santa Barbara Fires separately. Of course, there is the fabulous LAFD providing Twitter updates and also a blog.

Unfortunately, the Red Cross has just one update on their Twitter account that is 24 hours old.

The most common Twitter hashtags to use are:

• #LAFIRE
• #Sylmar
• #Teafire
• #SantaBarbara
• And the newest unfortunately, Yorba Linda

You can also find photos on Flickr and YouTube using the same tags.

Thanks to Tracy Lee, here are two great maps of the fires, one from CA Governor's Office of Emergency Services and one from grizzlehizzle that is updated in realtime. 

Be safe, Southern Cal and let us know of any other good resources to stay updated.

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Where was the NFL?

Last night we saw one of the most exciting regular season football games in quite some time as the Jets beat the Patriots, 34-31 in overtime. Twitter was rocking, as it often does during events. Between people tweeting about their team and the #patsjets hashtag, there must have been over 1000 tweets from football fanatics. Personally, it was even better winning a bet with Jim Storer and seeing him change his avatar to the lovely NY Jets logo. I am anxious to see all of the nice Jets related comments that Jim will be making (also part of the bet).
I’ve written before about how much Twitter enhances watching a sporting event at home. it’s like watching the game in your living room with a few hundred friends. And that was certainly true last night. However, based on the Twitter brand survey that Peter Sorgenfrei and I just completed, I think there could be so much more for fans.
How great would it have been if representatives of the Jets and Patriots were tweeting along with us? Especially if it was former players. Who wouldn’t follow @CurtisMartin or @SteveGrogan? What if the tweet stream was picked up by the NFL Network and displayed on the bottom of the screen like CNN and Current did during the election. The NYTimes live blogs on the Fifth Down during games. Wouldn't you like to see their tweets during the game? Or wouldn’t it have been great to have a dedicated NFL.twitter.com page like the Twitter election page where all of the posts could be flying in, so we don’t have to keep a search window open? And I’m sure some of the NFL sponsors could get their message up on the chrome. I don’t want to focus on monetization ideas now, but this seems like a natural fit. Would the experience that I described, enhance your game watching/ Twittering? Which brands would you like to see engaging with you while you were watching the game and in what way?

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The Ultimate Guide to Twitter for Communicators

I found this fascinating article about Twitter today from Aaron Uhrmacher on his blog  today where he has put together a comprehensive guide to Twitter for PR professionals, but it will benefit anyone.  It includes:

• Videos


• Getting Started


• Desktop Tools for Updating Twitter


• Create Your Own Twitter Background


• Applications


• 90+ URL Shortening Services (via Mashable)


• Listening/Finding Conversations


• Twitter Directories


• Tutorials


• Twitter on other social networking sites


• Other Microblogging Platforms


• Case Studies


• Journalists on Twitter


• Following Conversation Threads


• Statistics


• Recent Articles/Posts Worth Reading

The Ultimate Guide to Twitter for Communicators, Nov 2008

You should read the whole article.

Have you seen these cool Twitter videos?

Some great Twitter videos this week:

• Ev Williams, Twitter CEO interviewed by Bloomberg. He says that Twitter will implement its revenue plan early next year, using some sort of advertising.
• Twitter vote report: Rocketboom interview with the developers of the Twitter vote report.
  
• And my favorite, from Julia Roy, a new series that she calls Tweet week, where she talks aobut news on Twitter for the past week. Julia describes some new Twitter programs like Magpie, recommends Twitter related blog articles all done in her energetic, humorous and captivating style.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

Have you seen them all? Which one did you like the best? Do you recommend any others?

Twitter's a force in the election

As the election approaches, I think we all can agree, regardless of whether our hearts bleed red or blue, that Twitter has had a significant impact on politics in campaign 2008. Of course, Barack Obama is the most popular person on Twitter. But beyond that, Twitter has had a dramatic impact on giving people a voice this year. Twitter implemented Election.twitter.com and it's been captivating. Tuesday night, the tweets will be moving so quickly that it will be hard to read, sort of like the stock ticker in October. Hopefully, with a better result for you.

The Twitter Vote Report seeks to monitor activity and protect from irregularities at all polling places. According to the vote report, "Millions of Americans will be voting this Election Day. Many of these voters will have terrific experiences and we’d love to hear about those. But many voters will experience voting problems that we have been hearing about for years: long lines, broken machines, and registered voters who can’t vote because their names aren’t showing up on the registration rolls.

Using Twitter Vote Report, voters will be able to share their experiences and resources with one another (e.g. “#wait:120″ meaning that the wait time is 120 minutes). These messages will then be aggregated and mapped so that we can “see” voting problems around the country in real-time."

This election season has seen the integration of Mainstream media with Twitter. Current TV will be displaying selected content from Twitter users who use the hashtag, #current, on air. In addition, their website will not only show the #current tweets, but allow users to vote for content, digg-style. We've seen how CNN has incorporated the Twitter feed into its coverage during the debates and hurricanes with Rick Sanchez. I am sure we will see similar coverage on Tuesday night.

Last week, Mark McKinnon of Internet Evolution wrote in Twitter's Role in Digital Democracy, how Twitter was filling an important gap in digital democracy by acting as the Town Hall and being an expressive medium for citizens to engage in our government. The article demonstrates how people have been given a real voice in the electoral process. All of these posts and sites can be found in my delicious political twitter tags, politicaltweets.

We get our news first on Twitter and Tuesday night, I am sure we will get election news first as well. Will you be watching Twitter and these sites to stay in the know?

Happy Voting!

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Happy HalloTween

The Twitterverse has always been a spirited bunch, participating in holidays and contests. Halloween is no difference as you can see from the avatars below.

We do more than change our avatars, though. Courtesy of Sonny Gill (and others), I found some cool Halloween icons. Rob Key and his Converseon team have creatively crowdsourced a company Halloween costume contest by asking the Twitterverse to vote for the best costume. I voted for Catwoman, by the way.










Bryan Eisenberg and Mass High Tech All-Star Chris Brogan are organizing a meme, Trick or Tweet.

There are 2 goals for Trick or Tweet:

1. Connect lots of interesting people with other interesting people they didn’t know before.

2. Do some good with our Tricks (there is enough tricky things going on in our worlds).

A great way to connect people within the community, particularly new users and donate to some very worthy charities. So let's get scary and #trickortweet!

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First State of the Twitosphere in Costa Rica

A while ago a commenter on this blog asked if I could also analyze the twitosphere in his country, Costa Rica. Costa Rica is a country in Central America, bordered by Nicaragua to the north, Panama to the east and south, the Pacific Ocean to the west and south and the Caribbean Sea to the east (source : Wikipedia). I have never been to Costa Rica, so I do not have personal memories or opinions on this country. Nevertheless, I found it a good idea to have a closer look at the usage of Twitter in Costa Rica.

The first question in such an analysis is the number of Twitter users in Costa Rica. Twitter user search is temporary disabled, so I cannot inform you on the number of Twitter users in Costa Rica according to Twitter itself. Twitdir reports 338 Twitter users for location Costa Rica.

Based on the location info in the Twitter profiles, I was able to find 507 Twitter users in Costa Rica, still active users. Persons who have closed their Twitter accounts are not included in this number. Because the number of Twitter users not mentioning a true location in their Twitter profile is estimated at around 50%, the actual number of Twitter users in Costa Rica will probably exceed 507. With a population of 4.133 million people (source Wikipedia), the Twitter user density for Costa Rica is one Twitter account for every 8,152 inhabitants.

History of the Twitter accounts in Costa Rica
The graph below shows the history of the Twitter accounts from Costa Rica. The graph is based on the date of the first message posted on each of the public Twitter accounts. Twitter users who haven't published any messages and Twitter users with a private profile (their messages are only visible for their approved followers) are not included in this graph. Twitter started late in Costa Rica. The oldest Twitter users date back from March 2006. Only 8 months later first Costa Ricans started using Twitter.



Oldest Twitter accounts from Costa Rica
http://twitter.com/gringuitica - Erin - first message on January 11, 2007
http://twitter.com/darcia - David Arcia - first message on February 14, 2007
http://twitter.com/lizrincon - Liz Rincon - first message on March 16, 2007
http://twitter.com/Gorileo - Rogelio Umaña - first message on March 18, 2007
http://twitter.com/soloesteban - Esteban Solorzano - first message on March 20, 2007
http://twitter.com/405 - Cuatro Cero Cinco - first message on March 22, 2007
http://twitter.com/MariHo - Mario HB - first message on March 28, 2007
http://twitter.com/nityananda - Nityananda das - first message on March 29, 2007
http://twitter.com/conejita236 - Angel Ackermann - first message on April 6, 2007
http://twitter.com/BarryStev - Barry Stevens - first message on April 22, 2007
http://twitter.com/Toxicomaniac - toxic - first message on April 26, 2007

Private or public
59 Twitter acounts from Costa Rica or 12% have chosen to keep their updates only available to their friends.

Number of following
A Twitter user can choose to follow one or more other Twitter accounts, called "following". 84 Twitter accounts from Costa Rica or 17% do not follow other Twitter users. An average Twitter account from Costa Rica follows 31 Twitter accounts.



Top 10 following
http://twitter.com/iecr - Spanishinstitute - 2,000 following
http://twitter.com/muchacostarica - MuchaCostaRica.Com - 1,727 following
http://twitter.com/NicoPisani - NicoPisani - 655 following
http://twitter.com/Gorileo - Rogelio Umaña - 493 following
http://twitter.com/iCostaRicaTV - iCostaRicaTV - 425 following
http://twitter.com/jenfos - jenfos - 418 following
http://twitter.com/ReverendDoctor - TheReverendDoctor - 418 following
http://twitter.com/remediosgraphic - remediosgraphic - 310 following
http://twitter.com/AlexOtarola - Otárola - 213 following
http://twitter.com/stevekatz - stevekatz - 212 following

Number of followers
A follower is someone who has indicated another Twitter account as following and receives all updates of that other Twitter account. 40 Twitter users from Costa Rica or 8% have no Twitter followers at all, meaning that no one else on Twitter has indicated this account as following. The messages published by these Twitter users are only read by themselves (and by search engines). An average Twitter user from Costa Rica has 24 followers.



Top 10 followers
http://twitter.com/muchacostarica - MuchaCostaRica.Com - 606 followers
http://twitter.com/Gorileo - Rogelio Umaña - 518 followers
http://twitter.com/NicoPisani - NicoPisani - 443 followers
http://twitter.com/jenfos - jenfos - 283 followers
http://twitter.com/iecr - Spanishinstitute - 283 followers
http://twitter.com/stevekatz - stevekatz - 261 followers
http://twitter.com/SEOCharlie - SEOCharlie - 236 followers
http://twitter.com/fusildechispas - cristian cambronero - 196 followers
http://twitter.com/remediosgraphic - remediosgraphic - 158 followers
http://twitter.com/gringuitica - Erin - 153 followers

Updates
An update is the term refering to Twitter messages published by a Twitter users. These are also called tweets. The average number of updates for a Twitter users from Costa Rica is 118. 44 Twitter users (or 9%) are still waiting for their first message to be published. Below you can find the top 10.



Top 10 updates
http://twitter.com/Gorileo - Rogelio Umaña - 3.715 updates
http://twitter.com/berylcorea - berylcorea - 2.883 updates
http://twitter.com/reiterstahl - RQR - 2.248 updates
http://twitter.com/SEOCharlie - SEOCharlie - 1.957 updates
http://twitter.com/OzaCR - OzaCR - 1.804 updates
http://twitter.com/willvv - Will Vásquez Vásquez - 1.621 updates
http://twitter.com/zoncho - Carlos Murillo - 1.461 updates
http://twitter.com/yeco - Yeco - 1.337 updates
http://twitter.com/olesha - olesha - 1.209 updates
http://twitter.com/Rafa - Rafael Gonzalez - 1.207 updates

Degree of activity
37% of all Twitter users from Costa Rica have publised at least one message in the last 7 days.
30% of all Twitter users from Costa Rica have not published a message for more than a month.
12% of all Twitter users from Costa Rica have published at least message on in the period between 7 and 31 days (older than a week, but in the last month).

12% of all Twitter users from Costa Rica is private, so no information on their degree activity is available.
On 9% of the Twitter accounts from Costa Rica not a single message has been published.

Conclusion
Costa Rica is a relatively small country in Central America. It is not known for a significant contribution to what's happening on the internet or in the blogosphere of twitosphere. Neverthelessm there is an active Twitter community in Costa Rica. This community started rather late, but it is growing at a relatively high speed.