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But Where’s the Conversation?

October 21, 2009 •

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…]

Using Twitter to Find Yoga Teachers

July 16, 2009 •

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.

anusara-tweetNor­mally 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.

More Fun Spoofing Twitter

May 14, 2009 •

Video: Twit­ter Gets Main­stream Atten­tion « Web Strat­egy by Jere­miah Owyang | Social Media, Web Mar­ket­ing.

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.

PR 2.0 Book by Solis & Breakenridge

May 5, 2009 •

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. Photo of book jacket by Solis & Breakenridge

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…]

User Retention Problems at Twitter?

April 29, 2009 •

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

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 Twit​ter​.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 Twit​ter​.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…

Social Media Goes Mainstream

April 20, 2009 •

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.

Thou Shalt Blog or Twitter

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…]

A Pioneering Social Media Service

April 10, 2009 •

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.

FriendFactory-Logo-designed-by-MetaDesign

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.

FriendFactory-home-page-early-social-media 

[Read more…]

About This Blog

Reflec­tions on life, travel, books, and yoga. Think­ing out loud about the pur­suit of mind­ful­ness and well-being.

Learn­ing how to recover from the loss of a beloved spouse, and then to find a trans­for­ma­tive path for­ward.

About Me

Semi-retired marketing exec, transitioning from a career in high tech. Now "managed" by two Tonkinese cats. Missing travel and friends on the West Coast. Avid reader and foodie. Staying active with long walks, biking, kayaking and yoga.

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