Twitter - Breaking News - Chinese/Language No Barrier

May 12, 2008 at 9:20 am · Filed under Google, News, Tweetscan, Twitter

Using Google - here are Chinese Tweets being translated into English

So with Tweetscan and Google, any newsroom can get breaking news - the network is here right now!

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China Quake - Twitter Comes of Age as THE Breaking News Tool

May 12, 2008 at 8:21 am · Filed under Dave Winer, News, Reuters, Robert Scoble, Twitter, User Revolution

Here is the timeline of the quake and Twitter as it happens

From “From the Frontline“:

The BBCs Rory Cellan-Jones wonders whether Twitter has come of age with the earthquake that struck Sichuan province in China this morning,

Let’s see, as this story unfolds, whether this is the moment when Twitter comes of age as a platform which can bring faster coverage of a major news event than traditional media, while allowing participants and onlookers to share their experiences. link

I didn’t know anything about the earthquake until I picked up on a (private) tweet from Rebecca Mackinnon in Hong Kong. A quick blast through Twitter using Tweetscan and it soon became clear the Tweetsphere was abuzz with chatter and information sharing about the earthquake. It also became clear news was coming out quicker on Twitter than by more established means. Some pictures appeared on Flickr within an hour of the quake. Meanwhile Robin Hamman points me to a tool that automatically translates what Chinese Twitterers are saying about the earthquake.

There is more - Here is Reuters telling the story of how Dave Winer broke the Virginia earthquake story on twitter.

At about 1:37 pm, software developer Dave Winer asked the Twitterverse: “Explosion in Falls Church, VA?” (Perhaps not coincidentally, Winer is a well-known blogger and podcasting evangelist). A flurry of posts, or “tweets,” followed, as users reported rumbles as far away as Alexandria.

The mainstream media entered the fray at 2:33 pm, with radio station WTOP reporting ground rumblings throughout Northern Virginia, citing a possible earthquake. Officials also told the radio station that the rumblings were part of construction blasts at nearby Ft. Belvoir, which had been scheduled for later in the afternoon as part of a new building for the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency.

Twitter users continued to pile on, pointing out data from the Maryland Geological Survey and adding their own commentary. Twitterer DataG wrote: “After the ‘Falls Church explosion’ event that was covered on Twitter, I saw the value in having a Twitter account at-the-ready.”

By 2:56 pm — nearly 90 minutes after Winer’s initial alert — WTOP had the official word from the U.S. Geological Survey: A not-exactly-massive 1.8 magnitude earthquake with an epicenter near Annandale, VA.

The “Falls Church Incident” was earthshaking only in the most literal sense, but it is an interesting proof of concept that news can be broken on Twitter. Reuters is looking at ways to use Twitter in the newsroom, although our feed is currently under renovation.

Twitter - the new AP - no cost - high impact (Thanks to Scoble for the links)

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Why do people like Twitter - Using Twitter to find out - Instant Research too

April 28, 2008 at 1:05 pm · Filed under Social Media, Twitter

Thanks to John Proffitt

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Social Connection Payouts!

April 11, 2008 at 10:57 pm · Filed under Innovation, Marketing, Social Networking, Twitter, Web 2.0

Talk about a unique use of social connections. I’ve reported elsewhere how Twitter is being leveraged by various entities (e.g. mining conversations) to tap the power of social connections. But a spur of the moment event occurred today where the power of connections surged in another direction. Like the strong weather that decended suddenly the past few days in Texas and elsewhere, I hardly had time to recognize what was happening.

The Zappos CEO has a Twitter account — @zappos. Somehow I was following his account (not something all that random for me — I check out the value-add of each ‘voice’ before I connect with them). Earlier today he tweets:

I will be randomly selecting someone to get a free pair of shoes from all @zappos followers later tonight. Thanks @pokai for the suggestion!

I remember reading the note earlier wondering if I had to fill out a form or something. I briefly checked out the Zappos site…and then just went on about my business.

Tonight I was tweeting a number of ‘rants’ as I was reading the fabulous book Power Healing, by Leo Galland (e.g. “74 percent of patients seen…for various common symptoms…no…diagnosis to explain the cause of their problems.” 74% failure rate!!!), when suddenly the following series of messages pass by.

And the free shoes winner is… @rotkapchen - congrats! @rotkapchen has 61 followers but only 3 were also following @zappos (cont..)

@marobella @paulisakson @karllong were @rokapchen ’s 3 friends! Congrats to all, thanks for playing! I will direct msg each of the winners!

I’m thinking @rotkapchen — that’s me! I’m shooting an email to my kids and a few friends when private tweets hit my phone as text messages, with instructions to provide my email address to claim my prize. I jump into the Twitter interface to send a private message back directly to the Zappos account, and minutes later I get an email with a code to go online and shop at Zappos.

I was still reeling trying to figure out exactly what I’d done when I read the tweet:

Winner was randomly selected from all @zappos followers, and up to 10 of winner’s friends also win if they also followed @zappos

This was shortly followed by:

Thanks all for playing, it was fun! Let’s do this again soon! @zappos any suggestions for making it more fun/exciting in the future!

This is not a small thing. Free pair of shoes? It’s not too often that I spend $150 on a pair of shoes! But I’ll sure have fun trying.

What was interesting was the email that I received from Zappos. In the interest of time, an existing process was obviously engaged. The fact that this process is already in place is what intrigues me the most. Check out the wording of the message, its implications and how many ways I’m given direct access to continue the conversation if I was to desire to do so (after having a horrific week trying to engage in conversations with other vendors causing me real grief):

We apologize for any inconvenience we may have caused. Let us assure
you this is not indicative of the high quality of service and products we
strive to provide our customers.

As a token of goodwill, Zappos is issuing a coupon in the amount of $xxx
for your next purchase at Zappos.

Below is the coupon code you will need to place the order.

csxxxxxxxxxx

You can use this coupon with your next order at Zappos.com anytime
within the next 90 days. To use this coupon, place the code in the space
provided at the bottom of the shopping cart page.

Please accept this as an apology for any inconvenience, and do not hesitate
to contact us if there is anything we can do to be of further assistance.
Please note, this coupon code is associated with your account and is only
valid when used with the email address attached to your account. This coupon
is not redeemable for cash and cannot be duplicated, altered or auctioned on
any web site. This coupon is non-transferable.

Sincerely,

Customer Loyalty Team

Zappos.com
Powered by Service
1-800-ZAPPOS-1 (1-800-927-7671) or
702-943-7677
e-mail: cs@zappos.com
http://www.zappos.com

Pretty much says to me, their byline “Powered by Service” is not just marketease.

Can you imagine what would happen to the GDP if this same commitment to customers and unique, direct involvement in new forms of interaction were to be embraced for ALL relationships (internal and external) by all companies? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if, like with Zappos, we didn’t have to imagine it at all but could live it? Why, there probably would no longer BE a justification for a revolution at all.

And what about the others who also get to experience all of this because, simply by association, they too are winners? That’s pretty good payout for social networking. There’s already a lot of goodwill being spread around.

Now if you will excuse me, I have some shopping to do.

Postscript:
Industry colleague David Armano also wrote about this Zappos scenario and pointed out how it’s not about the tools, but about the unique ways in which they get used. Capitalizing (as is Forrester) on the crossover to Marketing audiences, he points out, it’s all about the ‘buzz’!

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Number 10 Downing Street is Now Twittering

March 31, 2008 at 1:55 pm · Filed under Politics, Twitter

Who would ever have thought?

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It’s the metonymy, stupid!

March 5, 2008 at 12:18 pm · Filed under Commercials, David Weinberger, FASTforward08, Marketing, Search, Social Computing, Social Media, Story, TV, Trust, Twitter, User Revolution, Web 2.0, Web Advertising, advanced search

The other day I was driving with my 16-year-old at a certain speed down the highway. We needed to get her to her new job at the pizza parlor on time, and were making the usual desultory conversation along the way. She had opened her Macbook and started editing photos taken earlier that day. She was also surfing six or seven radio stations looking for songs she liked, and texting three or four friends.

Suddenly her dispersed attention sort of gathered itself into a rising column of interest. Her neck craned, her body turned, her eyes peered intently as we passed what seemed to me to be a perfectly nondescript van.

“Did you see that?” she said excitedly, adding that the vanity plate said something about Elvis — I’d not noticed. She was peering intently into the van. I tried for a quick look, but entirely missed seeing the driver — a woman, according to my daughter, encumbered by one of those giant hairdos of yore, brilliantly blond, genus fanatica, species elvisia, ca. 1958.

All I saw was the van. All my kid saw was the Elvis attributes — Elvis happens to be one of her longest running crushes — on the license plate and inside. The thing is, given the way her attention had been deployed moments before, I have no idea how it pulled that particular bit of data from the parallel lines of traffic we were passing at 84 mph.

This jogged my memory of a theme surfacing at FASTForward08: How JP Rangaswami, Don Tapscott and others had talked about how multi-tasked kids are, how their synapses seem to have been rewired to do things we can’t do.

We — ok, I – am of the generation of the single node receptor, the seemingly receptive eye/I, waiting idly to be served up something whole to look at, to take in. I turned off my TV off in 2000 and have not looked at it for more than 210 minutes in toto since; nevertheless, I remain a sort of virtual reclined potato, lying in wait for something to actively consume my vacancy.

My daughter and her peers are not like this. They seem constantly pre-occupied, moving between ongoing processes — mySpace, texting, photoshopping, searching — and yet, somehow, they catch more. Not “more” as in all that is going on, and perhaps more worryingly, not more as in the big picture. More within that ambiance that is vital and relevant to their current and ongoing passions and curiosity.

One other thing that seems worth noting: we Boomers are voice-oriented — we listen to voices, discourses, “messages,” till we grow utterly sick of them. Kids excel in tuning voices — and not just those of their parents — out, and in. They instead have selected conversations, not via the paths of the larynx, tongue and ear — exchanges proceeding against a silent, or music-filled, background. The “openness” of the couch potato is not their openness, but they aren’t closed, either. Just differently available.

To address this sort of optative “user,” a mode of address that attempts to fill up all the space with its active, grandstanding, vocal presence is probably not going to get far.

Something moving sidelong and not so showy — less big, less direct, less controlling — might be more suitable. Something decentered, linked to or associated indirectly to what is already moving them.

The battle-cry of this mode of address could be, “It’s the metonymy, stupid!”

Where are these links to be found? In the messiness of what David Weinberger calls the “unowned order” — the unpredictable realm of data and metadata, or, in his metaphor, amid the wild hedgerows before the topiarists arrive — the realm of advanced search.

I should mention that my five-year-old, who has not yet begun to surf, twit, or google, demonstrates thinking and attentional processes that are linear, Aristotelian, and complete. We have great old-fashioned conversations, as humans once did, in the wayback days. It’s pretty cool.

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Conference 2.0

February 22, 2008 at 2:33 am · Filed under 2.0 Design Thinking, Emergent, FASTForward '08, Microblogging, Twitter

As I commented to my colleagues as we were wrapping up on Wednesday, we truly experienced Conference 2.0. What we accomplished and how we participated in FASTforward ’08 embodied key elements of 2.0. Moreso, what we experienced/achieved via the conference could/should be a repeatable model for other conferences (not just FASTforward ones).

Some of the elements:

• The blog itself. With Sandy being quite prolific, she had posts up faster than most of us could take notes, let alone synthesize and edit them into pieces (and as Rob mentioned in his interview, there are others of us who need time to digest it all).
• The myff08.com. While we struggled with some of the interaction elements, one high-value deliverable was having the pdfs of the keynote presentations available the same day. Someone’s checking on more ‘public’ availability of these.
• Video interviews that were available the same day. While they are a bit large I immediately noticed a huge difference in both the audio and video quality over last year. Not to mention Jerry’s impeccable skill as an MC (not to diminish David’s efforts last year). Jerry effortlessly made us all look/sound better. [Not to forget, although I did, the tireless effort of behind-the-scenes work for videography/lighting/sound, scheduling and editing.]
• Microblogging (Twitter) and photojournaling. The latter could have used a little collaborative instigation by requesting photos from the at-large crowd and suggesting a tag to post on Flickr (and I obviously need a larger memory chip in my camera). We’re also looking to get an account (or syndication) to flow related tweets through the FASTforward blog space.
• [On a negative note, the tracking devices were nearly useless – I would not recommend the effort to do that again…the bloggers had some pretty strong offline commentary about them.]

Having wireless available makes a huge difference, as does not having it when trying to facilitate near-instantaneous sharing. I had to laugh at myself as I was trying to tweet on my phone, drop it to take a photo, start typing some notes in Word when I couldn’t type fast enough on my phone and/or grabbed a pen and threw a note on paper (my thanks to facilities planning for putting power strips on the front tables of every room). If I’d continued as I had in the first session and also had my audio stick running I would have been trying to operate on 5 channels simultaneously. I can tell you – it doesn’t work. But they were all just my experiment – not something I’d been specifically asked to do. They were my way of being engaged and contributing.

The critical point here is, while we had shared a couple of ‘blogger’ calls among ourselves before the event, they were mostly about the logistics of the event. Not much more. We did not have specific assignments or even any charters – it just evolved.

Even slightly more ‘formal’ actions evolved. For a panel luncheon on Wednesday, the panelist list was firmed up that morning. The ‘intended’ blogger participants ended up with schedule conflicts and new resources were put in place.

As I had stepped up to ‘facilitate’ (a format I simply recommended and was adopted), I felt some onus to check on the room early (not asked, not planed, just seemed reasonable). The room was found to not be staged for a panel at all. Kudos to FAST, the travel group they engaged for event logistics and to the hotel staff for quickly pulling together a SWAT team to reconfigure the room in 20 minutes. For some, all of these elements stacked together, let alone any one of them, could have turned into a nervous mess or frantic disaster. Everyone simply stepped up and gave it their ‘get it done’ best and no one else noticed. [Although in the frantic mess, I did leave my cell phone in the podium afterward, and yet 3 hours later it was safely found at the Registration Desk – exactly where an event logistics person suggested I might look first.]

I had earlier shared my observations (to someone who suggested they hadn’t noticed) as to FAST’s careful staging of the ‘welcome’ experience with the:

• Wash of orange color through the grand hallway
• Greeting attendees with refreshments, served graciously and enthusiastically before reaching the registration desk
• Lively visual impressions of the drinks in the neon orange tumblers with the FAST logo on the side
• Careful positioning of the vendor booths within the normal traffic flow (although for all of that careful staging, I still didn’t find time to get to more than 1 booth the whole time).

And where did I miss the whole contest for a car? Having that on the floor with the winner’s name on the roof, was a very STRONG association to the benefits of registering early. What were those rules, terms & conditions?

I’m sure there are other conferences we could take some leads from, but this one did just nicely, thank you.

Any other 2.0 experiences/observations to report?

Postscript: See related microblogging reference.

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Paula Thornton: experience design strategist

February 20, 2008 at 9:49 am · Filed under FASTForward '08, FASTforward08, Twitter

Jerry interviews Paula, a longtime contributor to this blog, about how twittering is impacting conferences and the conversations around them.

 

 Paula Thornton Jerry Michalski: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (495)

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Twitter & Immediacy - Getting Fired from Yahoo

February 13, 2008 at 6:34 am · Filed under Layoffs, Twitter, Yahoo

When I was young the only people who got fired had done something really bad. Today most of us have been fired or layed off.

But if you haven’t been layed off yet - this is what ii can be like as Twittered by a person at Yahoo (Thanks to Mike Butcher who Twittered the lnk) I find there is a special immediacy about following a person who is experiencing a life moment - don’t you? I quote the post from Silicon Valley Insider in full so that you can follow Ryan if you want to:

Yahoo’s Ryan Kuder was canned today. A drag for him, but a gift for the rest of us–because he Twittered it. A new form of literature is in the making…

Y! layoffs today, I’m “impacted”. I’m heading into work to pack my desk, get my severance paperwork and hand in my badge…more to come. about 10 hours ago

On the plus side, my commute just got a lot shorter. about 10 hours ago.

Ironic that I just got my PC repaired yesterday. Won’t be needing that anymore. about 9 hours ago.

Walking around saying good bye to some great people and good friends. about 9 hours ago

Waiting for the call from HR so I can go pick up my paperwork….C’mon, c’mon! I’m busy here! Let’s get this over with. about 8 hours ago

This is a serious downer. Trying to drown it in free lattes. Which I will miss. about 8 hours ago

Thanks to everyone sending the positive tweets. I’ve got plenty of free time now so just let me know if you want to meet up for lunch. about 8 hours ago

Ugh. I have a 1GB flash drive and 2GB files to back up. That is teh suck. about 7 hours ago

Heading into my HR meeting. The room is called Lucy. Cute, eh? about 7 hours ago

Finishing meeting with HR. Need to go clear out desk now. about 6 hours ago

Dammit. I was hoping to hook up the free Flickr Pro account before I got canned. Major fail. about 6 hours ago

Taking my last walk through URLs. Remember that time we sat in that booth to review ad yields? That was great… about 6 hours ago

Lots of whispered conversations. Like people are afraid to ask who’s gone. about 4 hours ago

Dear Blackberry, What great times we had. I’ll miss you. At least until tonight when I stop on my way home and buy an iPhone. Love, Me about 4 hours ago

Oh…and my badge. He’s going to take that too. Will I be able to get a latte for the road still? about 4 hours ago

I’m going dark in a few minutes. The HR guy is on his way over to confiscate my laptop. about 4 hours ago

Last free triple non-fat latte from Beantrees. Sniff. about 3 hours ago

Signing off from Yahoo!. Fade to black… about 3 hours ago

Celebrating unemployment with a giant margarita at Chevy’s. 5 minutes ago

Follow Ryan’s future here..

Thanks to Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Watch and Dan Farber and Larry Dignan at ZDnet for alerting us to Ryan’s log–and thanks to Ryan for writing it.

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Sited … CounterIntuitive

February 8, 2008 at 10:16 pm · Filed under Adoption, Blogging, Culture, Dead Paradigms, Emergent, Enterprise 2.0, Enterprise Social Computing, New Realities, Social Computing, Trust, Twitter, User Revolution, Web 2.0

Via Jeremiah Owyang on Twitter, I learned that George Colony, Forrester’s CEO, has recently started a blog (… as Rob Paterson has been pointing out, Twitter is a great place to pick what’s of interest to you out of a flow of murmurs, pointers and other snippets from a bunch of smart people)

I think Forrester has been pretty steady and early in their understanding that blogging is here to stay and will have large impacts upon marketing, PR and the evolution of knowledge work inside the enterprise.  Forrester’s Charlene Li was early to the party and produced some good research about the blogging and social software phenomena in a business context …

• Blogging:  Big Deal or Bubble?  (November 2004)
• Corporate Blogging Policies (Public Wiki)
• The ROI of Blogging - The "Why" and "How" of External Blogging Accountability (January 2007)

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… and more recently Forrester had the good sense to hire Jeremiah (Owyang), a smart and well-informed fellow.

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It will be interesting to watch and read Colony’s blogging, and over time see if he, like many other people, comes to believe that it is useful to think, question and listen in public and "out loud".

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Tags: Forrester, CEO blogging, Charlene Li, Jeremiah Owyang

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Twitter Bowl - A Landmark Media Experiment

February 4, 2008 at 11:42 am · Filed under Commercials, Jeremiah Owyang, Super Bowl, Twitter

While millions watched the game. While millions watched the ads. Thousands were also at “TwitterBowl” - their “job” provide real time reaction to the ads - and also to have fun with each other by extending their SB parties to the world.

This is how Jeremiah framed it:

I’ve created MicroMedia events before, this time, I want to frame it as an overlay to the multi million dollar advertising event, the Superbowl.

[TwitterBowl is a real-time social experiment where the audience rates million dollar advertisements in real time using Twitter]

Are you a superbowl ad critic? Of course you are, everyone is. Even if you don’t watch the superbowl, those pervasive ads will end up in YouTube, Digg, and your cousins blog and your best friends Facebook profile. Tired of others choosing which one was the funniest/stupidist/biggest waste of time? Well this year, you can rate your own superbowl ads using Twitter, and see what everyone else in Twitter thinks too.

How did it go?

Check out the results here. Please also look at the comments - they tell us even more.

A recap and you can view all responses
The social media experiment went very well, there are over 2500 responses to the superbowlads account. I spent over an hour hand copying all the replies on that account to this spreadsheet of all the responses. This is a read only spreadsheet where you can do a search (let it load, it takes time) and see how people are talking about the different brands and the ads.

The twitter application held up ok, although many of the replies did not show up on the replies page in real time, you could use the search tools to quickly see what folks were saying.

Massive Volume
It was pretty amazing, every time I refreshed the search tools (terraminds or twittersearch), new responses would appear in rapid order. There were so many responses coming in, (about 625 per hour, or 10 every minute) it was really hard to keep track. I tried to summarize key findings (such as many folks liking X commercial or hating Y commercial), but it became difficult to track.

Track your brand, or commercial
If you work for a company (or you have a client) that advertised on the superbowl, you should be doing searches using the twitter search tools, and add “superbowlads + brandname” to find out what people thought in real time. For example, I know the Dell blogger team is keen to knowing what we all thought, you can check this query of superbowlads + dell to see what folks rated it, it probally wasn’t as positive as they would have hoped.

A land mark piece of work by Jeremiah Owyang. Thanks to Tim Eby for the link

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Twitter & Public Radio and Public Life

January 28, 2008 at 6:20 am · Filed under Andy Carvin, Election 2008, Les Siegel, Politics, Social Media, Twitter

The Bryant Park Project (Twitter feed here)now has an inner core of over 200 “Diners” - this in a week. As Twitter gains a hold, BPP are also looking at how Twitter affects the political process. Here is the Twitter reality of the Primaries as compiled by Laura C <!– –>

I’m scrounging around for legitimate Twitter feeds from the presidential candidates. So far, my list looks like this:

Ron Paul, @RonPaul2008, with 822 followers
John Edwards, @johnedwards, with 4,282 followers
Barack Obama, @BarackObama, with 6,654 followers
Hillary Clinton, @hillaryclinton, with 197 followers

What do make of the Obama/Clinton result here?

What could Twitter do to bring younger voters back?

How might Twitter affect politics?

Update - Here is Lee Siegel talking about how BPP is using social media - Lee talks about how the “Cup Cake” is a refuge. Don’t understand - check the link

Update - Here is Andy Carvin with more on the Diner

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Twitter and a New Kind of News

January 27, 2008 at 7:32 am · Filed under Andy Carvin, Business Model, Community, Grooming, NPR, Public Insight Journalism, Public Media, Social Computing, Social Media, Twitter, User Revolution, Wisdom of Crowds, iTouch

This is a slice of time last night on my Twitter. I am watching TV but I have my iTouch in my lap. When the ads come on, I mute the set and go back to my Twitter feed. here I have a real friend - not a Fake Friend - Andy Carv