Introducing, The Twebinar

Innovative CMO, David Alston of Social Media Monitoring company, Radian 6, has created a partnership with Twitterati Chris Brogan to present a series of social media webinars this summer that integrate the webinar format with Twitter. What is a Twebinar? According to Alston on the twebinar site,

A twebinar is a webinar and Twitter mash-up where conversations take place in real-time before, during and after the webinar, on Twitter.

How Does a Twebinar Work?

It’s easy. Just follow the steps below:

1. Sign-up for a webinar on a topic that interests you.
2. On the day of the webinar, watch the presentation from your computer and receive information visually and verbally from the presenter(s).
3. During the webinar, a parallel conversation takes place as participants comment, ask questions, and/or discuss the webinar series on Twitter. Follow the webinar participants on Twitter and join the conversation.
4. Gather ideas and/or resources from a community of people with interests that are similar to yours.
5. The result? A twebinar.

During the series, over 30 top social media experts and authors, Twitterati like Personality Not Included Author Rohit Bhargava, Forrester Community Manager and author of Strategies and Tools for Corporate Blogging, John Cass, PR Guru and creator of the Social Media Press Release, Todd Defren and The New Influencers author Paul Gillin will be interviewed by Chris Brogan to get their best thoughts on how tools like blogs, social networks, wikis, and podcasts are changing the way companies do business.

To me, it looks like the first effort to integrate the Twitter backchannel where we use hashtags and Twemes.com, directly with a live webinar format. FANTASTIC IDEA! The first twebinar is June 26^th. I hope to see you there!

Reading is fundamental

I remember growing up those public service announcements called Reading is Fundamental that encouraged parents to get their children to read. I'm not sure if the program had an impact on my parents, but I certainly am an avid reader. Hey, this is a blog about twitter. Are we going OT already? Of course not! One of the joys of twitter for me is the fact that so many authors are active in the community. And it's not just technology or even business. This morning I learned that one of my favorite cookbook authors, David Lebovitz, has been on twitter. Of course, I started following him and sent him a note. And as a true member of the community, he answered. You can learn more about David on his blog or check out his latest book, The Perfect Scoop.

A few of my other favorite authors on twitter that I have conversations with:

• Cluetrain writer David Weinberger. Have you read his latest, Everything is Miscellaneous?
• Word of Mouth Marketing Guru Andy Sernovitz.
• Startup maven Guy Kawasaki.
  
• Citizen Marketers authors, Jackie Huba and Ben McConnell.
• The New Influencers author, Paul Gillin.
• Personality Not Included, by Rohit Bhargava.
• Join the Conversation with Joseph Jaffe.
• Now is Gone co-authors, Geoff Livingston and Brian Solis.
  
• Groundswell authors, Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff which I think is the best business book of 2008.
  
• And so you don't think that I am too single-threaded, World-renowned author, Paulo Coelho.
  

Of course, there are many other popular and prolific authors on Twitter, but these are my favorites. Who's yours?

Scobleizer interview with Ev and Biz

Yesterday, Scobleizer wrote about a recent visit to Twitter where he sat down with Ev, Biz and Jesse Stay to talk about recent problems, and clear the air as their was a rumor that that power users like Scobleizer were the cause of the recent problems as reported by Om Malik.

A video of the full interview is here. It's long (about a half hour), but I highly recommend it.