Reflections on life lived by a coast
The hype around social media as conversation has become deafening.
Much of the hyperbole comes from agencies and consultants who have seized upon social media as the next wave; their motivation is self-serving, of course. Promoting their credentials as social media experts enables them [Read more…]
I just had my first quintessential Twitter experience, after several lackluster months of experimentation. Within 2 hours of posing a question on Twitter, I had a great answer from the single most reputable source in the world.
My question was, “Who are the Anusara yoga teachers on Cape Cod?” The person who responded to my query, John Friend, is the founder of the Anusara tradition, and currently the worldwide leader of this style of yoga practice.
Normally I take yoga classes with some wonderful teachers in Seattle; however, this summer I’ll be on Cape Cod several times for 10 days or more each stay. I’d like to find some local instructors there to keep my asanas going, and retain the alignment principles.
Cape Cod is 3000 miles from here, so I don’t know who is certified as a qualified Anusara yoga instructor within reach of my base there. (And yoga practitioners tend to pay attention to the tradition or philosophy that is embraced by yoga teachers, so this matters.) I did a directory search, but there was no information about the teachers other than their most basic contact information and location.
So getting such a quick and highly informed response from John Friend was WAY more than I’d hoped when I posed my question on Twitter this morning.
Blessings to John Friend, and thanks to Twitter.
I had a chuckle this morning, courtesy of a friend who works at Microsoft. She passed on a link to the “Twitter spoof video” that Jeremiah Owyang showed in a blog post this week. Although tongue in cheek, the animation raises some good points about what happens when a new way to communicate turns into a celebrity fad fest.
The publicity team for Putting the Public Back in Public Relations asked me for a review in this blog. This is the latest book by Brian Solis and Deirdre Breakenridge, two eminent thought leaders in the world of public relations and social media. 
Their book is an in-depth discussion of their manifesto for “a New PR” — to reinvent the practice of PR given the onslaught of social media, new forms of peer-to-peer engagement, and the emergence of conversational marketing. There’s a lot to like in what they’re advocating, even though it threatens to turn the traditional practice of marketing inside out.
But — I’ve struggled for a week now to get my thoughts in order before writing the review, as requested by their publisher. (For my creative procrastination, see this post.) [Read more…]
Nielsen Online announced today that their research shows that 60% of Twitter users stop using it the following month. That is, Twitter’s “audience retention rate” is 40%, considerably less than Facebook or MySpace’s rates were at similar stages in their life cycle.
Source: Nielsen Online
Based on historical patterns for other social networking sites, this implies, says Nielsen, that Twitter’s reach will ultimately be limited to only 10% of consumers online:
To be clear, a high retention rate doesn’t guarantee a massive audience, but it is a prerequisite. There simply aren’t enough new users to make up for defecting ones after a certain point.
Needless to say, the debate rages on at Nielsen’s blog, at AdAge and other places frequented by marketers and media professionals. Some of the comments are quite emotional, particularly those submitted by Twitter enthusiasts.
Some people question Nielsen’s stats, saying they under-represent people who use Twitter via Tweetdeck, Tweetie or other third-party tweeting tools. Nielsen counter-argues that as long as those people visit Twitter.com at least once a month, they’re included in Twitter’s user base stats. (Speaking for myself, I happily use Tweetie — but do in fact visit Twitter.com at least once a week.)
Pretty much everyone agrees: the issue is not the platform, but how compelling the content is to people who exchange tweets or follow “broadcast tweets” by celebrities or those with huge numbers of followers.
The other key success factor is whether or not the conversation is stimulating or relevant for you personally, the people you follow and those who follow you. (This is why I argue you need a critical mass of like-minded people to make Twitter’s service compelling.)
For me the jury is still out…
You know that fads have become mainstream when everybody is doing it. Or when it starts to be required as a part of people’s jobs. Or when everybody is talking about it.
This weekend I encountered two instances of the “mainstreaming” of social media for B2B business purposes.
One of my friends told me over dinner that she has to start blogging and/or tweeting. Her company has begun to mandate that people in marketing functions (like hers) demonstrate their proficiency in digital media and social media. We didn’t get into the details of the specific requirements but it became clear that hands-on experience will be expected of her. [Read more…]
Ten years ago I was on the core team helping Sony envision and develop an innovative online service for Europeans. Sony Interactive Services launched “FriendFactory” in the UK and Germany as a pilot in 1998; they hoped to get enough traction to work the bugs out of the business model and then expand into other countries. It was an amazing innovation for its day — most likely the world’s first social media marketing platform — but way too early.
With the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, I can see that it was an early precursor to Twitter, but also offered personal blogging, community building tools, and other aspects of social media.
