The Importance of Being Earnest in Social Media; or What Facebook and Twitter Should Do to Save Themselves from Becoming Irrelevant

So who hates their personal e-mail inbox? I do! Yahoo has just become complete spam. I have maxed out the number of filters on the paid account, tagged every possible item that even remotely looks like spam as spam and yet it keeps coming.

According to KGB.com 183 Billion e-mail messages are sent per day. I would give them a shout out, but it looks like this number is from 2007. Also they didn't give me an answer to the second half of my question for my 99 cent text message investment which was - how much of this is spam? Maybe the KGB just doesn't know. Afterall, they lost some of their best spooks to capitalism after the iron curtain fell.

Well wikipedia does and it is free! Wikipedia led me to this reference from the New York Times. Spamalot? Why yes we do. 94% of the time as it turns out. So approximately 2,000,000 e-mail messages are sent every second of every day and 1,880,000 are pure crap that we don't want.

My financee's brother actually works at the post office. He told me that the only thing that is really keeping them alive is junk mail. In fact, like e-mail it is the bulk of what they move these days. I got on the USPS' marketers spam list and they send me all sorts of paper materials telling me how green they are. They actually sent me a large express mail envelope to tell me they weren't going to be sending me the T-shirt they offered me. That they sent later in another large package, in the wrong size of course. Forget about solar power and hydrogen cars. It seems the greenist thing the US Government could do is close the Post Office. (Sorry future brother-in-law. I'll help you bounce pack with a new startup that sells spam filters on late night infomercials using Swedish models that austensibly made the stuff...oops that one has been done Remind me to stop staying up to watch Craig Ferguson.)

So where am I going with this? Well the Post Office is dying a slow death at a rate of one cent price hikes a year and service cutbacks until we all give up. E-mail is almost dead on arrival. Myspace and Friendster lost their mojo before they even tried to stretch to reach my demographic. What do they all have in common? They are filled with crap!

Recently I've been experimenting with feeding content to Twitter. (see The Need for Feed). I am trying to use the technique for good - serving up interesting data sources that people can actually use. I have become painfully aware of the potential to use these techniques for evil though. Last week two guys I went to high school with both crapped in the walled garden that is supposed to be my Facebook account on the same day. They both posted some BS about this new energy drink called efusjon. It's a multi-level marketing company selling some acai berry sugar water. Supposed to save your life not just dangerously elevate your sugar levels and rot your teeth. Apparently part of their "viral" marketing was to get some dudes from my high school to spam me with their fake musings about this garbage.

There you have it. The beginning of the end. One day you'll nod knowingly when your using Farcebluch.com instead.

Attention all entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley - this is your shining opportunity. Build us a social communication platform that keeps this crap out! Of course we need to buy things to keep whatever it is we are talking about afloat, but can't you at least try to address our interests? If Facebook did this they would know that the only acai berry I consume is made into Pinkberry style frozen yogurt. That's unrealistically specific for the time being, but you get my point.

So what does it mean to be earnest in Social media? It means making a college try to be relevant. Sure we can't all possibly keep up with the information demands of the hungry new communication mediums alone, but we have to try to keep content flowing that is at least interesting to our audience.

I am going to offer up The Cocktail Party Rule for Social Media.

If it is not a reasonable leap from the context or the topic in a group chat at a cocktail party, don't go there.

I send a link to this blog to our corporate Twitter account. I work at Oracle Corporation and market our CRM solutions. I think it is a reasonable leap that someone interested in CRM may be wrestling with the same new marketing concepts I blog about.

On the other hand, if a group of guys is gathered around the punch bowl, Mojito vat, beer tub, or Franzia box (depending on what kind of cocktail party you are having) talking about whether the Palm Pre has a snowball's chance in hell of tarnishing Apple's shine, you don't bring up the fact that your wife, the tennis coach just started selling some acai berry fizzy water out of her trunk.

It's a nonsequitor and it is annoying. It's worse than annoying in fact. It's that feeling of trepidation every time you open up your Yahoo inbox or your mailbox for that matter.

So what does this all mean? The power is in your hands. It's in all of our hands. Just use the The Cocktail Party Rule for Social Media and we'll all be fine, and we won't stop having to change communication mediums every 6-12 months. ....or will we?

See you on Farcebluch.

The Need for Feed: RSS & Twitter, Why They May be Like Peanut Butter and Jelly

The challenge with all things social media is keeping them up-to-date. Blogs can be a serious drain as they beg for content like Audrey in 'Little Shop of Horrors.' If you are using Twitter to communicate with your network and push relevant content, you may be experiencing the same thing. Even keeping up with 140 character posts can be a grind.

Recently, I've started experimenting with pushing some of the content that I feel is most relevant to the people I interact with as well as the public at large. It's been fun to watch the reactions and the results.

http://www.twitter.com/topcrmbloggers is a feed I set up that aggregates what I consider to be the best CRM Bloggers out there. You'll note that I have 33 followers in just a week without even trying. The feed of this twitter handle in turn feeds one of our Netvibes pages. Entropy yes, but we are serving up content at different potential access points for different users.

I also set up a fun feed of Odd News which I love to read while on the bus. It started on @pulverman on Twitter and is now featured on @OddNewsNetwork. @pulverman will now be an aggregation of the top Marketing 2.0 blogs starting tomorrow as well as my shorter musings on the world of Marketing 2.0. From the same feed as OddNewsNetwork I select one post at random once a day and feed my personal Twitter feed, @bolobao. This in turn updates Facebook providing a bit of fun for friends to see and comment on.

On slow news days, I know that at least the feeds I've set up are keeping various sites up-to-date with interesting content.

These are early days in my feed experiments, but I imagine marketers everywhere are struggling with these same issues.

Like a good blog post, I think in the final analysis, what you chose to feed to your social marketing efforts like what you post on your blog will be judged on relevance. If it is relevant - aggregated feeds crafted with the love and personality you apply to a post - it will be appreciated.

I'll no doubt keep tuning my feeds to make them ever more relevant and interesting. I just sent my Yelp reviews to my personal Twitter (@bolobao) and our Delicious posts (www.delicious.com/OracleCRM) to our work Twitter account (@OracleCRM). Perhaps RSS and Twitter aren't quite as cozy at PB&J yet, but I would like to submit that we all have the need for feed, even newspapers, making this combo perhaps your own personal Associated Press.

The Unicorn Factor @ The Twitter Conference

140, The Twitter Conference just ended - a conference focused on the tools and trends of the real time web . We were there to see what we could leverage immediately in our marketing efforts. One of the presenters revealed the perfect quote originally served up as a tweet to sum up much of the content at events like this - 'All Unicorn, No Cupcake.' We got some Cupcake nonetheless, taking away a few gems.

Here's a fun fact from the conference. Did you know that there are now 10 thousand apps leveraging the Twitter API? Lots of these utilities and their founders made an appearance at the show. Very inspirational. Literally one guy not in a garage, but living above the garage in many cases. The guy next to me today had a very cool venture going that he was driving in his free time when he is not working at an mid-west farm equipment manufacturer. Seeing the entrepreneurial energy and the great utilities in progress is clearly not the source of my comment above, as I think many of these folks are delivering real Cupcake.

The Unicorn part of the reference relates more to some of the panelist consultants, conference groupies, and technology observers. No point calling him out here, but a well known social media observer told the audience that people are just going to need to get better at creating filters . Pure Unicorn. This from a guy who has 5 computers to geek out with wallstreet style while tracking the social web. Can you imagine joe six pack trying to promote his lawn fertilizer business with the same rig? Absolutely not.

There was also a ton navel gazing musings on the future from the panel jockies who aren't sure if they put the clothes in the dryer before boarding the flight to Mountain View. The exception to this was was Jason Calacanis who gave an excellent view of the likely future of Twitter and the real time web complete with possible screen mockups. He offered real justifications and potential business models for what he proposed. The rule, was unfortunately the folks from Twitter by providing just vague notions of where they are headed and really demonstrating for all that the business that they created has clearly gotten away from them.

In the battle of Cupcake vs. Unicorns though, Cupcake did win out in the passion and brilliant ideas of the developers that showed their wares. Search, analytics, collaboration, etc. The Unicorns occasionally offered value too when they pointed to the best of these utilities like Twitrratr.com, an elegant and simple way check the sentiment of posts for your brand.

Bottom line. The real time web is here. Time for all marketers to figure it out. Time spent waiting to figure out if Twitter is going to make it or come up with a business model is time wasted. The notion of needing to make sense of real time data from customers, employees, friends and enemies not to mention your car, house, and maybe even a pet or two is happening whether we like the notion or not. Learning to converse in this new world takes time, so it is best to start now.

I guarantee there will be a real time web solution without the need for a frequent Fail Whale in our near future. True, the utilities out there are numerous, sometimes shaky betas, and arguably all features vs. complete applications. Having said that, there are a lot of brilliant ideas to get your head around like location centric twittering, real time integrations with enterprise apps, and tweets that are automatically triggered and trigger other social interactions automatically. whew.

My advice for businesses......chances are your Twitter "phone" is already ringing. Answer it and begin unravelling how to leverage the Real Time web for your company.

First assignment - figure out what a # tag is and peruse the details from this Twitter conference using the tag #140tc. I'll let you apply your own Cupcake filter.

Talking Chalk at Web 2.0 Expo 2008

So what have I been up to recently on the blog front...experimenting with what I hope is more engaging content. Here's my first attempt using slideshare.net to record my chalk talk at Web 2.0 Expo 2008.

| View | Upload your own

Bye Baidu, Google?

Did you really think there was going to be just one newspaper replacement for the web?

Nope, but they seemed to have a smokin' first mover advantage. They absolutely did. Viral, clean, elegant and great results. Like any great software institution, feature clutter, the continuous ebb and flow of fickle user interest, and people getting fat and happy off of their options gets the better of most of Silicon Valley's break aways over time. And Wall Street oh Wall Street, "do I no longer please you?" It happens to everyone, GOOG. What would financial markets be without new starlets all the time. Irrational exuberance and rational pragmatism - two cousins that hate each other, but absolutely can't live without one another.

Will Google be a big part of the web experience for some time? Sure they will. Will they be the gravitational center? Unlikely.

Take a look at this quick comparison of page views.

While there are hundreds of ways to poke at this, I am going to just keep it simple. Look at what has happened to Baidu and look at the other three. Clearly the concept of where and how you find content is changing. Search is adding context - friends, dating, maps, encyclopedia topics, video and a whole Yelp more. Google can certainly try to keep on top of all these trends, but it is a losing battle. No one company is going to own all or even most of the web search behavior of human beings because search as it turns out is actually just an attribute of other behaviors.

Google is a learning organization, however. They saw this coming years ago. Their strategy of offering advertisers a bundle of possible advertising methods is a winner and the next real battle front in web advertising. Microsoft clearly sees this. Anybody else? Baidu?

A Little Fun with Truth in Advertising

Just for fun....here's a few great examples of just how far Photoshop can stretch the truth....

http://www.bspcn.com/2008/02/12/top-40-photoshopped-images/

Espousing Pithiness

So you ask, what have you been doing? You haven’t written a blog entry in a long time? Well while living the dream of thinking big Marketing 2.0 thoughts and driving the corresponding actions, I started to question the value of a blog. Oh yes, it’s there, but I think the format of mine and others needs to change. We are all super time starved, and I think lengthy musings just don’t do it for folks. However, at the same time I was questioning the nature of business blogging, my small readership was coming out of the woodwork to question why I hadn’t written in a while. My most current opinion is that I need to keep it short for my sanity and yours. With that said, I am going to completely violate that today as I am going to show you right here a couple of the things I’ve been up to since the last post.

First of all, I’ve been working on a website that will be a companion piece to this blog (indeed the blog is embedded in it) to capture resource links and threads to the points we discuss here. In the next week or so, I’ll be transferring a lot of the Marketing 2.0 resources I assembled for an internal corporate audience to this public space.

Here’s what it looks like (built with the new beta release of Netvibes).

This next item is impossible to read and Blogger's upload converted me to a member of the Blue Man Group. So dear reader(s), if you are up on the latest file posting techniques for blogs, let me know. Google Docs wanted this in HTML and it looked pretty bad though not as bad as what you see below. It’s a paper a wrote that will appear in a publication called Perform that is published by the same folks that run the magazine, Revenue Today. Anyway – some thoughts on why I believe web 2.0 is actually supporting very old behaviors for how we buy and sell not new ones. If you are interested, e-mail me, and I’ll send you a copy.



All for this addition. Shorter and pithier next time. Promise.