Twitter Ponzi

I started using the site Twunfollow a few months back and since then I've seen evidence of what I call Ponzi schemes on Twitter.

Twunfollow sends you notices via e-mail any time anyone unfollows you on Twitter. I thought this would be a good listening tool to make sure I wasn't boring or driving off people I want to communicate with.

What I found instead showed that many, a majority actually, of my new followers unfollowed me in a day or two, especially if I didn't follow them back! Not that I mind that much, but these people didn't really care what I had to say at all.  Their choice. What I do mind is that there seems to be some type of unspoken pact of "you follow me, I'll follow you" going on.

And to be honest, I felt that way when I started with Twitter as well, especially with people in my own field. But the people following and unfollowing have nothing to do with my field and, in many instances, already have upwards of 20,000 followers.

I've realized that the name of this game is building huge Twitter followings. And that wouldn't bother me except for the fact that in this early stage of social media, following size is one of the key measures of influence. Just try any of free measurement tools; most say the same thing.

If we use followers to identify key influencers, the whole system breaks down. What's worse, I see many brands following the same Ponzi scheme, trying to grow their Facebook fans to 1,000 or 10,000 by screaming out "Join Us and Raise Our Numbers." What they find is that many people are not really their fans at all and don't really care about the brand.

If you're using social media to talk to people who don't care about you, you should either stop or buy television advertising.

I'm not sure what to do about the Twitter Ponzis. But they make the metric of followers and fans into a complete joke.

Why Twitter, or Something Like It, Matters

You can tell how successful Twitter's become just by seeing all the articles announcing that the fun is over, it's not that important and that sure decline is on the way. The articles might be right about the business of Twitter but they're dead wrong about the changes Twitter has wrought.

An experience I had with AT&T over the last two weeks illuminates the power of this medium and shows why it's too important to disappear.

1. Vox Clamantis in Deserto - That was my college's "Tag Line." It's the New Testament quote "A voice calling in the wilderness." Used to be that online was just like that; you shouted into an empty echo chamber with little chance of someone actually hearing you. Twitter changed all that. Now, people call out into this wildness all the time, and people hear them. Yes, people hear them! That's what happened with AT&T. I shouted out that my Internet coverage was crappy on my iPhone and, low and behold, someone from AT&T answered.
2. Twitter has Big Ears - That's why AT&T heard me. It, like other brands, has grown big ears to listen to all sorts of chatter and comments about its brand and its category. Don't disregard the significance of this point. The biggest challenge in online marketing, in my opinion, has been to convince companies to actually open its ears and listen to what people say, positive and negative. While some companies still shy away from this, so many, like Zappos, have embraced it and made it part of its customer service. The fact that Twitter, unlike Facebook, enables all sorts of third-party listening tools makes it a game changer.
3. It Happens in Real Time - I love that people respond to me on Twitter pretty quickly. It doesn't have to be within the minute, but it sure is a lot quicker than e-mail or phone communications happen. On Twitter, brands respond within an hour or two, usually. Compare that with how long it takes them to respond to an email! Remember the phrase "at Internet speed?" Now, it's finally happening.
4. Real People, Real Contact - While you can't always solve problems in 140 characters, you can get the gist of the problem and follow up via phone. That's what happened with AT&T. After a few tweets back and forth, I was talking to @ATTJohnathon and he patiently walked me through solutions, even though I was frustrated to have to go through them. Within a few hours, on my time and my pace, he solved my, somewhat complicated, somewhat random, problem.

How did Twitter improve my communication? I didn't have to get into an automated voice mail system that never let me talk to a human being. I didn't have to wait days for an e-mail response. I had my problem solved in probably the quickest way available.

That's why it's significant. Now, some other cool company may build this functionality into a faster, more intuitive product with better features down the road. But whether that company has the name of Twitter or Blabster or Zoom, Twitter's functionality has changed the way we communicate.

Twitter: More Like a Frat House and Less Like the Neighborhood Bar?

I have to admit, that while I still love Twitter, it's not as exciting as it was earlier in the year. Maybe it's not as new or shiny as it was; or maybe I'm just using it in a more mature way. Those seem plausible, but they're both wrong.

What's missing these days from Twitter is the vast sense of discovery and unexpected connections between new people. It's there, but in a much reduced form. And I think that Twitter itself is to blame.

Here's what I mean: a year ago through the spring, I could discover great people like @inakiescudero, @iboy and @armandoalves by listening in on conversations they were having with others. I might have discovered them anyway, later, but who knows. The fact is that they were tweeting with someone I knew, I checked them out, and became richer for it.

Then, in the spring, Twitter changed its rules. We couldn't listen into other people's discussions unless we followed EVERYONE in the discussion. I didn't really think much of this until yesterday, when I got a tweet from @awolk responding to a comment I made. Here's what it looked like:

On the left is my @ reply column. @awolk has tweeted an @nrose and me. In my normal stream, that tweet doesn't show up. At all. It turns out that @nrose is a creative director at a digital shop, someone I'd never heard of, but who might be interesting to follow. Without that tweet, chances are I'd never hear about @nrose. So the Twitter changes have started to affect who I'll meet.

It's more like the Frat House. I can hang with the Bros, people I know. Everyone once in a while we'll let a group of newbies, and once in a while we'll have parties and ship in some Tweeties. Somehow the Tweeties (a phrase coined by my former colleague Todd Gallentine) find me and everyone else, even if we don't want them to.  But for the most part the Frat feels like a limited social environment.

The Neighborhood Bar, on the other hand, is a place you go to with friends but is a place you can meet new people. You listen in on conversations, an acquaintance walks in with someone you've never seen before, and your social scene expands. Of course, you can just sit at the bar ignoring everyone. But the point is that the Neighborhood Bar, unlike the Frat House, is where you can choose how social you'll be.

It's too bad Twitter isn't as social as it once was. Making that change didn't keep the spammers and Tweeties away, it just limited everyone else.

I hate it when the Good Old Days were only a couple of months ago. I wish Twitter would change back.

The End of the Beginning for Twitter?

Robert Scoble had an interesting comment on yesterday's blog. Once you get through his bluster, he seems like a guy dealing with an out of control monster, i.e. his Twitter followers. In trying to do the right thing for everyone, the whole Twitter experience became unworkable.

Maybe it's time to put in some limits to Twitter. On the upper scale, these would only apply to a few, but in doing so, Twitter might be able to make its tool more manageable

• Set the Free Twitter limit of followers and people you can follow to 5,000 (or 10,000 or 1,000) - Limiting who you're following is easy. Limiting and changing who's following you would be harder. But they're clever guys at Twitter. One of the interesting things that might happen here is that have to refresh followers and follows regularly. This might be a good thing, forcing Twitterers to make new contacts, and listen to new people, continually.
• Make people pay, for various levels of followers (25K, 50K, 100K) - This might be an acceptable business model for Twitter and would work for those who need big followers (brands or social media superstars). It would hurt spammers and some big swinging Tweets who have big followings but no biz model. Twitter would have to build some type of spam filters if they're going to make people pay, so that they don't run into Scoble-type issues.

Look at the top 100 on Twitterholic.com. They are all (pretty much) celebs or businesses. All of them can afford to pay for their following. There's almost no one on that top list you'd have any type of personal relationship with.

Of course, as soon as you limit who can follow you, it starts feeling more like Facebook, i.e. not a good thing.

It seems like we're starting to see the end of the beginning for Twitter. When it's top social media evangelists can't use it, there's trouble. Of course, I think it's worthwhile to think of this is a small or medium connection place rather than a big one. And I think when you take the auto-follow out of the equation, there's still a question of how many people you can manage (See Armano's 50-50 Rule post).

But something's got to give, when top social media evangelists start complaining about having too many people to deal with. It's kind of sad, actually. This has been a fun year on Twitter, the wild west of online.

It's Time to Purge the Purgers

The big news last week was that social media superstar Robert Scoble had purged the people he followed from his Twitter account. He went from following 90,000 to none in no time. Scoble had instituted an Auto-Follow for his Twitter crowd, meaning that if you followed him, he would automatically follow you back. Lots of big swinging Tweets, like Guy Kawasaki, do this. The problem for Scoble is that he says he received too much spam. Now that he wasn't following anyone, the spam problem disappeared.

Well good for him. But the problem is that a number of other people followed suit (it wouldn't be social media if they didn't now, would it) and it raises an interesting question about Twitter. 

Why should you really follow someone if they don't follow you back?

The great excitement and promise for Twitter is that it is the best two-way thing out there. We've been talking interactive and one-to-one for almost 15 years now, and Twitter is probably the closest we've come. But it's playing out in two ways:

• Individuals who you can actually listen to and connect with in real time; and
• Broadcasters who are using Twitter to blast out their message, seeing it as another outreach medium

The problems start when broadcasters start posing as individuals. Pete Cashmore isn't really on Twitter, Mashable is. And now Robert Scoble is removing himself from Twitter as well, it's a Scobleizer broadcast instead. They're more like CNN and USAToday then they are like Chris Brogan.

The biggest problem I have with this is that it's not authentic. Seth Godin, as usual, is a good model here. He's realized that he can't have relationships with so many people at once, so rather than using the relationship tool Twitter and faking it, he eschews it completely. He's being very honest. However, over the years, every time I've sent Seth an email, no matter how trivial, he's answered it within 24 hours. Talk about authentic! He obviously doesn't need Twitter and will not compromise what he stands for.

I mentioned Chris Brogan before. He has as many followers as Scoble. Right now, he's still following them back. And Chris is great at answering DMs and email. He's been a huge help in the few things I've asked him.

I think we need to #PURGE the broadcasters posing as individuals. The reality is that it hurts them more than it hurts us. If someone unfollows me, big deal, I'm not basing my marketability on the number of Twitter followers I have. But broadcasters do. It's the only measure they have, since they're in a one-way conversation. It's like Nielsen TV ratings for them.

And if they broadcast something really interesting, some of their remaining followers will probably ReTweet it, so we're not really missing anything.

Except a two-way relationship.

So long, @scobleizer, I hardly new you. #PURGE

Using Twitter for Advertising

With marketers sold on Twitter's impact and business's interest in testing the Twitter waters, it's only been a matter of time before we'd start seeing online advertising campaigns using Twitter. Since Twitter is still working on its own advertising model, marketers have been creating their own variations.

Volvo and Intuit have used Twitter in their banner ads. VW had a good campaign analyzing your Tweets to recommend a car. Some are trying to show those Tweets in the banners themselves, allowing people to create the content themselves (after someone screens it, of course).

Yesterday I stumbled across another variation from the Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince U.K. site. The entire site focuses on getting you to perform some magic on one of your followers' Twitter page, while it sends out a Tweet that you're doing so.

Here's what I found interesting:

• The site takes some proven technology (page takeovers) and performs them on your personal page.
• While it taps into Twitter to broadcast the message that you're using the campaign, only one person at a time can actually SEE what you've done.

It's kind of a mishmash between social media and microsite advertising, between broadcast and one-to-one advertising. While I think this is cool, it didn't really spread that quickly online, from what I could see. And that, after all, has to be the goal of a campaign like this.

We're still in the infancy of Twitter advertising. Although, really, the best Twitter advertising happens in the Tweets themselves: reviews, recommendations, rants and shout outs.

The Revolution Will Be Tweeted

[This post is from a VPR commentary I gave 6-18-09]

A few days ago I found myself in the middle of the Iranian protest against the re-election of President Ahmadinejad. At least virtually. And the experience has left me with great hope for democracy around the globe.

As almost everyone knows by now, the Iranian people had a presidential election. The incumbent Ahmedinejad, bane of the West, had a big lead until his challenger, Mousavi, caught fire and began to look like a sure winner.

On election, night, however, the government declared Ahmedinejad the winner by a big margin. The opposition cried foul and rose up in protest.

Now keep in mind that this is Iran. Protest is risky, if not life threatening.

But the Iranians did protest and when the government tried to cut off all conventional means of communications, Iranians found alternative ways to tell their story, this time through Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr and other social media sites.

The first thing I noticed was a topic trending up on Twitter, the phrase IranElection, which I began to follow. Suddenly, I was transported via social media to the University in Teheran, where defiant yet frightened students were sending live Tweets describing how they were under attack. Iranians posted pictures and shaky cell phone videos showing government agents opening fire on public dbemonstrators and it was hard for me not to duck behind my desk.

I listened in as they warned other Iranians as to danger spots, worried about injured friends, and plotted about getting out of one part of the city and into the other. And as I watched, listened and read, I forwarded their stories to people I knew, to show how brave and determined they were.

Soon, all of this began to have an impact here. People started Tweeting that CNN wasn’t reporting this so CNN pumped up its coverage. Twitter itself canceled a planned maintenance last Monday after getting pressure from Iranian and US Tweeters to not shut off the protesters’ main outlet. When the Iranian government shut off Internet access, people around the world set up new servers for the protesters to communicate through.

It has been inspiring to see the democratically deprived people of Iran challenge the ayatollahs’ stranglehold on information and censorship. And thanks to social media, everyone in the world is watching.

Even though a change in government won’t magically turn Iran into a US friendly nation or cause them to give up their regional aspirations, I still I hope the Iranians succeed - if only for the sake of democracy. 

Because I like to think that social media may be doing for today’s democracy what Tom Paine’s printing presses did for Americans in the 1700s: giving people everywhere the power and freedom to challenge those who abuse power. Because this time, the revolution will be tweeted.

Social Media Makes One-Way Media Two-Way

That’s a quote of mine from a show on Vermont Public Radio this week. Jane Lindholm’s Vermont Edition talked about Twitter for about half an hour on Tuesday with a variety of people.  I haven’t done live radio in a while but the best part about it was that we were able to use what we talked about, Twitter, to make our broadcast interactive.

One of the points I made about why Twitter and social media are so exciting is that they have the potential to turn one-way, broadcast media two way. Whether its SMS, augmented reality or Twitter connected to outdoor, TV or radio, we have a number of tools to engage people with, well, everything.

So when we talked, we followed the #vpr hash tag and people piped in on what they thought was important. We talked about why we used Twitter and how we thought it helped us. And while we talked:

@jacksonlatka tweeted: a great example of Twitter to stop smoking http://qwitter.tobaccofreeflorida.com/english/instructions/

@sonnycloward tweeted: I’ve actually gotten jobs from his Twitter activities.

@wsenville tweeted: I’ve used Twitter to "attend" two recent conferences; great to get highlights of sessions & can order CDs of best sessions later,

@tombedell Tweeted: For journalists, it's sure a quick way to get research started--do a search, throw out a question, and it's off to the races.

@onthejump wanted to know the optimum number of followers.

While @taylordobbs wanted to know where we thought Twitter’s business was going.

And @vt2000 thanked us for getting her into Twitter (she thinks).

We talked and checked in on TweetDeck and talked some more. While there were only three of us in the studio, and some others who called in, it felt like a much larger discussion, thanks to the social media tool itself, Twitter.

That’s the real power of all this social stuff we’re talking about and it was amazing to be in the middle of it. People on the other side, listening and tweeting, got a kick out of hearing us mention their names from the tweets.

Start thinking about all the ways you can turn your one-way marketing into discussions with these tools. People remember it long after the event or ad itself. Thanks VPR, for a great conversation!

Two Twitter Visualization Tools

There’s a great scene in the Peter Sellers movie “Being There” where Shirley McLaine’s character tries to seduce Mr. Chance. His response is “I like to watch, Eve.” She thinks he wants to watch her go solo. He means, “watch TV.”

I felt a little bit like Chance when reviewing two very good Twitter visualization tools. Both let you see what’s going on in Twitter in very interesting ways, albeit from a safe distance.

Twistori is a Web site that displays Twitter Tweets based on emotional category. A take off of the site “We Feel Fine” Twistori shows a rolling cast of Tweets using certain keywords like Love, Hate, Feel and Wish. What’s even better, Twistori has screensaver to download if you have a Mac.

I have to admit, it’s a little seductive to just sit back and watch, read and enjoy. One thing Twistori does not do is associate any Tweet with a specific or time spent. The tweets feel almost too anonymous.

 

Twittervision also lets you watch. The site shows Tweets on a world map as it moves around the globe. You get both picture thumbnails, Tweet, time sent and location. It’s very amusing and almost exciting trying to guess where the next Tweet will land. Unlike Twistori, the Tweets have no contextual relevance I could find, they seem to come up randomly in different places.

This does feel like watching TV. Both of these visualization tools want to make you go on Twitter and see if you can get your Tweet to show up here. My advice: Don’t hold your breath, you could sit there all day.

Twistori and Twittervision may be good tools for those who have heard about Twitter and want to see what the fuss is all about. But it would be much better to dive in to Twitter and participate. Start creating conversations and sharing thoughts and information. These two sites reminded me of my first time in Twitter, when a stream of random entries flowed past me from people I didn’t know.

Don’t make Mr. Chance’s mistake. It’s MUCH more fun doing than watching.

Skittles' Agency Strategy

The Skittles social media bomb went off this week, when the candy maker swapped its home page for its social media presence on various platforms. I’m not going to debate whether it was original or a rip-off, whether it was gimmicky or brave, smarter minds than I have already expounded on those topics.

No, I simply want to tip my hat at Skittles' new business strategy targeting creative and marketing people who work in big and small agencies. Yes, amid all the hoopla, I believe Skittles smartly developed and brilliantly executed a plan to grow its business through candy and junk food dependent marketers, designers, programmers and their ilk.

Face it; every agency has some snack strategy to keep its worker bees working harder and more productively. Most have bowls of candy throughout the workspace, they reward overtime with pizza and more than a few have beers or kegs on tap. When these aren’t enough, agencies sprinkle vending machines throughout the office.

Skittles made a play to be the snack of choice for those of us in the creative and marketing world, and they did a great job. Whether the rest of the country noticed or not, we marketers did notice, and we Tweeted, Blogged, Facebooked and chatted like never before. General Motors approached bankruptcy and the stock market dived to scary depths but all we had on our minds was Skittles social media play.

Watching the power and the fury on Twitter this week reminded me of my own Skittles story at my former agency. We always had some snack on hand: gumballs that were hard as rock and may have been up to five years old, Hershey’s kisses, and Jolly Ranchers, among others. We all snacked on them, occasionally. Then our admin had a stroke of brilliance and started buying bags and bags of Skittles at Costco.

The first batch disappeared in 3 days. The second batch disappeared in 2 days. We ate more Skittles over the first two weeks than all the other candy combined over two months! I admit I was one of the worst culprits. Chomping down Skittles (and chewing up the in-sides of my mouth) I developed more Web strategies, online marketing plans and RFP responses than ever before.

And then it stopped. The big boss was willing to spring for candy, just as long as we didn’t eat too much of it. Things went back to normal, and the gumballs came back.

This is what I think Skittles is up to this week. As we follow trendsetter David Armano on Twitter describing his own Sour Skittles consumption, can the rest of the industry be far behind? Watch for sales results around Madison Ave, Chicago, S.F, Boston, Portland, Austin and other creative mega-centers for March.

As for the rest of the population, Skittles still has more work to do. Like actually engaging with people and providing a direction for the noise they create, rather than just watching the noise happen.

In the mean time, we should expect to see some amazing marketing ideas and creative campaigns over the next several months as our Skittle highs kick in.