Trumblog

Twitter has joined the ranks of other social networks and social media sites like Facebook, Flickr, Foursquare and LinkedIn and now Twitter has an official BlackBerry application.  I’m pleased to say that despite the significant issues that I had with the beta version of this app that I had a couple weeks ago and Twitter’s denial of its official status, this app is no red headed stepchild.  It’s a quality app that is worth a try.

Like most of the applications that I mentioned above the Twitter app is fully integrated with the BlackBerry OS so alerts appear in the alert header of the home screen and Messenger app and the browser and media libraries are linked with the Twitter app for easy link and photo sharing.  The app is also structured like the others, with a row of icons at the top of the home screen that give you access to most features and then you can dig deeper with the menu.  For the Twitter application these features are

• Home – your tweetstream and tweet entry field
• Mentions – all @replies directed to you
• Lists – your lists and link to create new lists
• My Profile – for reviewing and editing your profile
• Direct Messages – all direct messages to you and a handy direct messaging tool
• Find People – search for twitter accounts
• Search – search tweets including saved searches and an incredibly detailed advanced search feature
• Popular Topics – current and recent trending topics

The Twitter BlackBerry app is particularly good for exploration. For example, double clicking a tweet not only opens it for actions like replying, favoriting and retweeting. It opens the twitterer’s profile giving you access to information like their name, bio, a link to their website, location, number of followers and a link to who they are, number of people who follow them and a link to those followers too, lists subscribed to, favorited tweets and finally options to friend them (handy with Twitter’s retweet style) or block them (handy with stalkers).

The search functionality is similarly feature rich. Not only can I access saved searches from Twitter.com, but the Advanced Search allows me get really granular in searching the tweet stream.  I can search by a set of words, an exact phrase, a hashtag and even eliminate keywords from my search.  I can set the language of the search results, limit the search by who said it or who was referenced in the tweet, where the tweet was sent from, when it was sent, the attitude of the tweet (positive, negative or asking a question) and finally whether the tweet contains a link or not.  Yes, it is THAT granular.  The Popular Topics screen also has two different ways of taking the pulse of the tweet stream. I don’t know what the difference in timeframe is for “current” versus “recent,” but the current tab has a list of popular topics and the recent tab shows a tag cloud of different popular topics.

The Twitter BlackBerry application compares well with Seesmic and ÜberTwitter that I have reviewed in the past.  It looks good, usability is excellent and there are no performance issues that I noticed in my few days testing the app.  It shares most of the same features as the other two applications, but it falls short in a three critical spots. First, it does not support multiple accounts.  This is probably not significant for most users, but for we power users it is.  Second, it does not support @ completion.  Again for power users it’s handy to be able to type “@” and then access a list of friends, which makes finding a Twitter handle easy and ensures that you spell it correctly. And third, retweeting is limited to the new Twitter style, not old school addition of comments to a retweet that we power users prefer.

For more details on how these three applications compare to each other, here’s my chart of features:

Twitter, Seesmic and ÜberTwitter Comparison

The “semi-official” BlackBerry application is a worthy addition to the options for twitterers with BlackBerries. It’s good looking, easy to use and feature rich.  With a few additions it would easily rank up there with Seesmic and ÜberTwitter as a favorite of mine and a recommendation for power users.  It is certainly an application that Twitter should be endorsing and proud of.

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Sometimes online social media campaigns are just too complicated for their own good.  Case in point, Wrigley’s 5 React gum experience.  Let me quickly run through the 12 steps of this campaign for you.

1. Go to 5React.com
   
2. Select “Are You Ready?” to begin their “personalized sensory experience”
3. Connect with Facebook
4. Watch a Flash-based movie with pictures of you from Facebook and a determination of whether you are “chosen” or not.
   
5. If chosen (I assume everyone is chosen, because I was, but who knows maybe I have the demographics of a gum chewer and others don’t) enter your home address to receive something for the next step of the campaign.At this point a status update is added to your Facebook profile that you were chosen
   
6. Receive a package in the mail, fancy black box, 3D glasses, code, and gum.
   
7. Go back to 5React.com
   
8. Select “Continue Your Sensory Experience”
9. Enter your code
10. Connect with Facebook AGAIN
11. Put on your 3D glasses for a trippy 3D fractal animation of your photos
    
12. You can also share your experience of chewing 5 Reach gum with other people or watch their experiences, though honestly they all look pretty much the same.
    

So if we assume that we loose 10% of the audience for every step (a pretty low estimate i think)

• only 65% of the audience who started will end up letting their friends know about the experience via a Facebook status update and then receive their gum sample,
• only 53% will return to the website after they get their glasses and code,
• less than 35% see the fractal animation, and
• only about 30% will share their experience with anyone else.

Now, I haven’t even factored in whether people like the gum or not (though it’s safe to assume that if you don’t like the gum you are not likely to go play with those 3D glasses), nor have I mentioned that the fractal animation is pretty boring and not that customizable (which is likely to suppress sharing as well), but we can reassure ourselves that the 30% who share are probably the most dedicated fans of the gum (that and the ones who have nothing better to do or need a topic for a blog post).

I just have to wonder if it is all worth it?  Wasn’t there a way to whittle this from 12 steps to a less formidable 6?  Isn’t this just too clever for it’s own good? Did anyone ask themselves what consumer is actually going to do it, and for those that do have we ensured that the payoff is worth it?  Too many steps and too little value tick off the consumer and at that point your ROI is negative.  Keep that in mind for your next complex campaign.

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Tagxedo is an amazingly easy and flexible tag cloud creator that was just launched.  It allows you to upload text, point it to a url  or even use data (though I’m not sure how that is achieved, in order to generate a tag cloud that you can then customize the color, font, text direction, shape or select one of their existing themes.  The pro version will even allow you to shape the words into an image rather than a simple shape.  There are plenty of examples of this on their gallery, but below is a tag cloud of TTrumble.com.  Clearly I blog about Twitter a bit too much.

(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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In the last month I heard Evan Williams of Twitter speak at South by Southwest and Dennis Crowley of Foursquare speak at the Boston Ad Club.  I couldn’t help but notice that a topic that came up for each of them was that rather than focusing on the features or the interface of their applications they highlighted the importance of the network.

Evan Williams of Twitter discussed the ecosystem that has grown up around Twitter and felt that it was a positive thing and a sign of the network’s health, not a missed business opportunity because he is focused on the network not the application.  The Twitter network he stressed is not as a social network, but an information network with as many uses are there are needs and as much value as there is information within it.  It doesn’t matter whether you retweet one way or another, if you are a lurking follower of 3 accounts or have several thousand followers and constantly @ replying.  The network of people and information and the opportunities and possibilities are what matter.

Dennis Crowley talked about the value of the network in how the user experienced the second screen.  He was answering a question about competition from Gowalla, Loopt, etc, not to mention Facebook and Twitter that are adding a location component to their social networks.  He said that checking-in, or geolocation in and of itself was not so important.  What is important is what takes place on the next screen. It’s the value of the network in connecting us with nearby friends, providing us with useful tips about what to do at that venue or giving us a special price.  The check-in is valueless.  The interface is valueless.  It’s what gets delivered as a result of that check-in that is the value and the differentiator for those services.  In other words.  Bring on your check-ins.  Show me what YOU are going to do with them.

Too often I think we focus on getting status updates and check-ins and less on the value that we provide as a result of those actions. I think that we need less focus on the features and functionality for those actions and more on how, as marketers, we add value to those actions and thereby reap the rewards of the network.

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I was in a presentation about breakthrough ideas the other day.  We went through ads and campaigns from 2009 that used had energy and excitement behind them, but ultimately I couldn’t see how any of these ideas were truly breakthrough. Letting your fans know about special offers via Facebook and Twitter, not breakthrough.  Those mediums are specifically for communicating with an audience and giving your friends a benefit that you don’t give to others is expected.  Using a music playlist to express the attitude of a car that you are selling is no more breakthrough than using “Pink Moon” to sell VWs, even if you have your audience involved in making that playlist.  An integrated campaign across multiple social networks is not breakthrough; it’s the right thing to do, like maintaining a consistent message and brand across TV, radio and print ads is.  Is a stunt that begins online and is then covered by the mainstream media a breakthrough when compared to Edward Bernays’ legendary marching women smokers that were used to create news and ultimately sell Lucky Strikes to a new audience?

I’m not saying that these non-breakthrough ideas aren’t valuable, that they didn’t achieve results or were not the right thing to do.  You should use communicate with fans via Twitter and Facebook, music and marketing should be linked, involving your audience in defining the brand is a good thing, you better be running an integrated campaign and congratulations for breaking through the clutter and getting your message  spread via mainstream media.  These ideas are good, strong, mainstream marketing ideas, but they are not breakthrough.

Breakthrough ideas are rare.  A breakthrough marketing idea is not as simple as using a channel in it’s intended way and to it’s highest degree (if that can be considered simple).   Breakthrough ideas use a channel or service in a novel or unique way. They turn expectations on their head and make us think abut things differently.  The best are so simple that we feel they were sitting out there all along and so obvious, but also so new.  Using Facebook to build your fan base is an expected use of the channel, but the Burger King Whopper Sacrifice turned that idea on its head by playing with the value of a friend.  The Axion concert banner ads that made you look at the space of a banner ad in a different way is breakthrough.

There are a lot of great videos on YouTube with great stories or told in creative ways or produced in unique and original ways, but ultimately they are videos just like the ones that have been produced for a century.  But the interaction that is allowed through annotation does give you a different type of interaction with video like this piano.

All that is to say that not all great marketing comes from breakthrough ideas and not all breakthrough ads result in great marketing.  Breakthrough by definition is uncommon.  It’s surprising.  Is it always the right thing to do for your client?  So think about your ideas that are considered breakthrough.  Are they really unique and challenging or merely (again this is certainly much more difficult than the word “merely” implies) great marketing.  Should you even deliver breakthrough ideas for every campaign?  Let me know what you think.

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Following is a liveblog of a conversation between Dennis Crowley, Co-founder of Foursquare, and Wade Roush, Xconomy’s  Chief Correspondent, that took place at the Boston Ad Club on April 5, 2010.  During the discussion they talked about the founding of Foursquare, issues that Foursquare is facing in growth and specifically how they are working with brands and marketing companies.  Crowley talked at length about the background for why Dodgeball was created, the sale to Google and then the dissolving of the Dodgeball team, what were the differences in the market that made Foursquare a bigger success, their philosophy for involving marketers, the difficulty of finding time to collaborate with marketers and how they decide to add features.  Overall it was a very interesting glimpse into a rising social network riding the wave of one of today’s greatest trends.

20:53:13 PM: Dodgeball was broken becuase of SMS, lack of GPS, not enough people.

20:54:43 PM: Game mechanics were added to Foursquare in order to entertain people until community mass was achieved.

20:57:35 PM: Dodgeball was supposed to be a better NYC City Search, locations could be updated in real time. Make cities easier to use

20:59:14 PM: Dots on a map should be opportunities to meet.

21:01:20 PM: Social consequences of geolocation was @dens thesis. Dodgeball was hacked up proof.

21:04:15 PM: Twitter, Facebook and GPS phones made the difference between Dodgeball and Foursquare

21:05:28 PM: Dodgeball was based on the first 10 pages of @dens thesis. Foursquare adds the other 90 pages

21:11:17 PM: Facebook and Twitter taught us to use social media, iPhone taught us to use phones to answer Questions. Primed the pump for Foursquare

21:12:51 PM: The screen you use to check in isn’t important, it’s the information on the next screen @dens

21:14:10 PM: It’s not interesting to say where someone is, but to help someone find something cool based on your location @dens

21:15:49 PM: How do you let someone live better through your brand (via @foursquare) and how do you make it fun?

21:17:19 PM: Making opt in a requirement earns user respect. You have to friend Bravo to earn the Bravo branded badge.

21:19:18 PM: Checkins are mini ads from friends that support local merchants. Foursquare gives merchants Google analytics style stats

21:19:55 PM: Foursquare is not charging for analytics yet. Yet.

21:21:48 PM: Foursquare tipping point out of nerd/ tech ghetto was NYT writing about brand opportunity, media company involvement

21:22:59 PM: If you can get people through 10 days of using Foursquare they will love it. via @dens

21:25:32 PM: Foursquare has 1 biz dev guy who is also a full time MBA student at Stanford.

21:26:21 PM: Foursquare’s next challenge and hire is biz dev.

21:28:15 PM: Foursquare is partnering with Pepsi. Pepsi donates to charity for each person who checks in at events around the country.

21:29:17 PM: Foursquare builds equally for user and vendor 50/50 for time.

21:30:41 PM: Perfect mix of privacy is when you say where you are. @dens

21:31:25 PM: The check in is the poor man’s Tweet. via @dens

21:32:43 PM: Foursquare does not want to get too slutty with badges, but badges are what users want. Via @dens

21:34:31 PM: Fake venues (events, TV shows, hell) are the equivalent to Twitter users creating hash tags and retweets

21:36:56 PM: Tristen is the Foursquare biz dev guy.

21:41:24 PM: Big shift is connecting all the info we put in our phones about where we are, when we do things, who we hang out with

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I know you. I’m friends with you (in real life none the less). I own your product. I use your service. I’m a fan (and not just in the Facebook sense of the word). I refer people to you and may have even given you some marketing advice (after you asked not unsolicited). You have website, a Facebook page, but you draw the line at Twitter. It’s just one more thing for you to worry about, you have nothing to say, you just don’t have time, it’s too much trouble. Ok, I hear you, but I’m telling you again that you need a Twitter account and here are 4 reasons why.

1. Get The Twitter Name You Want - Remember back in the 90′s when you could have just about any URL you wanted? You missed that opportunity didn’t you. Twitter has been around for almost 4 years and a lot of great Twitter handles are taken, but you have a better chance of getting the one you want now than you will in a month or a year when you are ready to give Twitter a try. By the way, this is also true for your Facebook page, Foursquare, Gowalla, Flicker accounts, YouTube channel, etc.

2. Help me talk about you - Just because you don’t have a Twitter account doesn’t mean that you/ your company/ your brand isn’t on Twitter. If I use your product I may describe it. If I go to your opening I may rave about it. If you help me with something I might give you kudos for it. If I just like you I’ll want to spread the word about it. That’s all easier if you have a Twitter account too. Because of your Twitter account rather than just mentioning your name I can tweet your account as @your-account which links to your account where you have your URL and gains you links and followers. You wouldn’t want to miss out on that opportunity right?

3. Listen to what people are saying about you - So your fans are twittering about you, but how do you know? Your Twitter account also gives you the ability to monitor Twitter for these mentions and discussion. You don’t even need to go to Twitter.com you can just have these alerts sent to you via email. What you do next is up to you. You can soak up the glory in private, respond to fans and thank them, solve problems your customers have or just ignore it. Tip – please respond.

4. You’re probably already Twittering - Do you blog or post Facebook page updates? If so you could already be twittering. I know that you are busy and don’t feel you have time to generate even more content or have anything else to say so make it easy for yourself and repurpose what you are already writing. Connecting your blog and Facebook page to Twitter is incredibly easy. When you publish a new blog post you can automatically generate a tweet about it too (which is also great for driving traffic to your blog). Those Facebook page updates can automatically become tweets as well. Eventually you may using these two channels independently, but for now linking them is perfectly alright.

So, now that I’ve shown you some basic reasons for having a Twitter account and set bar for engagement low, what’s stopping you? Go get yourself a Twitter account and make the most of that free publicity that me and rest of your fan base is spreading.

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Earlier this week, three months after their promised delivery date and a week after a third party developer launched their own BlackBerry application, LinkedIn, the dominant professional online social network, finally launched their first application for the BlackBerry, the dominant smartphone for businesses. In other words it was about damn time and LinkedIn seemed forced to launch it.  But I’m putting all that behind me because the LinkedIn BlackBerry app is here and it’s pretty damn useful.

At its simplest, LinkedIn is the most robust Rolodex ever and the BlackBerry app gives you access to that amazing tool.  With it you can  access the work history and how you are connected to anyone who is on LinkedIn, which means just about anyone you’ll ever do business with.  The application makes this exceedingly easy by being completely integrated with all the BlackBerry applications so that you can view the LinkedIn profiles of anyone invited to a meeting directly from the calendar appointment or from a list of people cc’ed on an email.  You can also see access current profiles directly from your address book.  In other words you now have no excuse for not knowing the title and previous experience of the person sitting across the conference table from you, not to mention how you are connected to that person.  Consider yourself warned.

From all of these BlackBerry applications you can also invite people to connect through LinkedIn.  For example from a meeting in your calendar you can select any attendee and send her an invitation to LinkedIn, which is very handy.   Unfortunately the link backwards from your LinkedIn connections to your address book is less complete.  From most LinkedIn application screens you can send an email to your connections using their LinkedIn email address.  You can also link a LinkedIn profile to a BlackBerry Contact, which transfers the profile picture, business and title from the LinkedIn profile to your BlackBerry Contact if the field is empty, but will not overwrite existing information.  Presumably that data also remains up-to-date as well.  That is a nice work around the contact synchronization issues that the Facebook BlackBerry application has with BlackBerrys using BES and I hope that the Facebook and upcoming Twitter applications will include this functionality.

Otherwise the application itself is pretty basic with six screens

1. Network Updates – LinkedIn’s answer to Facebook’s news feed with updated from all of your connections and where you can update your own status
2. Search – for finding people in your immediate and extended network
3. Connections – your LinkedIn address book
4. Invitations – people who want to connect with you
5. Messages – your LinkedIn mail inbox, where you can also send messages via LinkedIn
6. Reconnect – LinkedIn’s recommendations for people you may know or want to connect with

Together that all serves your needs to connect with or find out about anyone you are interested in, but it leaves out the community building features of LinkedIn.  You can’t see how you are connected to 2nd degree contacts.  You cannot add recommendations.  You cannot read or respond to discussions.  You can’t update your profile, though you can update your status. Accessing or adding to your address book is supported, building your reputation is not.

LinkedIn still couldn’t get this exactly right and left out one group of BlackBerry users.  The application does not work on the BlackBerry Storm s0 while the majority of BlackBerry users now have a LinkedIn application there is still a group of BlackBerry enthusiasts who will be giving them grief.  In Chad Whitney’s blog post announcing the application he states

The BlackBerry platform is a top priority for the LinkedIn mobile team, so expect regular enhancements and additions to the application through 2010.

Hopefully those enhancements and additions include support for the Storm and some of the reputation management tools.  Unfortunately his words echo a similar statement from Adam Nash last November when he said that the LinkedIn BlackBerry app was  “one of our most important mobile efforts for 2009.”  Let’s hope that Mr Whitney’s timeline for “regular enhancements and additions” is shorter than 5 months.

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Monday night during our Passover Seder meal, discussion turned to social networks and what several of us at the table were doing online. There was some excitement (from a friend who just started twittering), some guilt (from a friend who thought it would help her business, but felt it was too much work), some denial (from a friend who had no interest and couldn’t understand why someone would waste their time) and I did some supporting, explaining, and defending. Last night at the second Passover Seder I attended, the story of the 4 children leapt out at me as a metaphor also for how different people see the use online social networks and social media and how we need to customize our approach of discussing them to each, keeping in mind of course that learning about social networks is not nearly as important as learning about the exodus from Egypt.

Here goes:

The wise child asks, “How do I best use online social networks for my business? Which tools should I use to make this simple for me to listen to the community and how do I measure the engagement?” This child is ready to be a part of the online social networks both listening and adding to the conversation. With this child you should discuss full social media engagement for they are ready to take this on for their business.

The wicked child asks, “What good is online social networks to you?” and not “to herself”. This child does not understand the basic principle of social networks and sees themselves as outside of the community rather than part of it. To this child you must explain the benefits of being engaged with social media “for her” so that through these personal examples they may understand the benefits.

The simple child asks, “What is social media?” This child learns best from direct experience, not from books.  Set them up with a Twitter account, launch their Facebook fan page and they will learn from doing rather than reading or being told.  They will make mistakes, could overshare and probably offend someone, but through this active, hands-on approach they will truly understand online social networks and integrate it into their business.

And the child who does not know to ask we must move him from apathy to awareness and therefore avoid irrelevance.

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The following is my post last week on the Jack360 blog:

Last week I was at South by Southwest interactive with a few colleagues from Jack Morton to listen and learn about what’s new in interactive, what people are thinking about and generally absorb the experience of having tens of thousands of developers, designers, writers, strategists and marketers in a very concentrated space.

In two and a half days I filled my brain with as much information as I could and my stomach with as much barbecue. I’ll be sharing what I saw and learned at SXSW here over the next few weeks, but I’m starting with 5 overall trends that I saw across all of the sessions that I attended. They are:

1. No Matter Where You Go There You Are – The social network Foursquare was the was the breakthrough application at SXSW last year and as a result this year there were over 10 different location based social networks in play and the “SXSW stance” was head down over your smart phone checking in at your location. During South by SOuthwest Foursquare gained over 100,000 new subscribers and logged over 300,000 check-ins each day. In panels the value of geolocation was discussed as a means for monitizing social media, it’s value to social search and the expectation that by the end of the year every social network will have location integrated into their network. Where you are has, well, arrived.

2. We’re All Gamers Now – From your Wii to Farmville to earning badges on Foursquare, games seem to be everywhere. Whether the game is something as involved as Mafia Wars or just a point based leader board based on network behavior, games are being used to engage the audience, encourage behavior and keep them coming back to your social network. Are you using gaming to persuade your audience?

3.With Geolocation There Is No Privacy – Most people the same travel paths every day; home to work then back home with a stop at the grocery store or restaurant 5 days a week. With this travel information and a few other data points it’s pretty easy to figure out many more details of a person’s life. As a result, at some point in the not to distant future there will be a privacy debacle caused by social media and geolocation. It’s only a matter of time and hopefully the impact will be minor. It’s going to be up to the social networks to both maintain personal data securely and to help members make smart decisions about what data they share and who they provide access to it, because when something goes wrong they will be blamed.

4. The Rise Of Transmedia Experiences – If you are not in the know a transmedia experience is an activity, often a game, puzzle or tour, that involves multiple media types , for example a website, video, telephone and email. While transmedia experiences have been around for years they received a lot of mention at SXSW this year. There were several sessions on Transmedia and the concept came up on a couple unrelated panels as well. I suspect that this is another byproduct of smart phone adoption that make access to websites, video and email available just about anywhere not to mention the added bonus of geolocation that provide new ways of finding and delivering clues.

5. Media Environment Convergence – We have 3 screens (TV, computer and cell phone) and may be adding a 4th with the tablet and we simultaneously interact with multiple sources for information on the same topic. Think of watching the Academy Awards while IMing friends on your cell phone, watching a baseball game with a laptop open to view detailed statistics, reading the latest news that is imported through a social network. The convergence that we’ve already seen as our phones became small computers is only the beginning. Now imagine what the iPad may usher in for the experiences of watching television, socializing, surfing and creating content simultaneously.That is the converged future.

Did you attend SXSW? What trends did you see? How do you foresee the impact of these trends? Let me know in the comments

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