If you’ve ever found yourself standing up in front of an audience while some sort of technical glitch prevents your presentation slides from magically appearing on the big screen behind you – then you understand how important the visual element is when trying to communicate in business.  We all find it harder to communicate with words alone, and images keep your audience focused on your words.

When you communicate online through your social media channels – it is no different.  The images, layout, and design that your online audience sees when they visit your company’s LinkedIn or Facebook Pages is critical to relaying your organization’s missions, vision and Brand across the internet.

The Silicon Valley chapter of the International Association of Business Communicators, (SV-IABC), understands how important it is to include the right graphics when talking to clients and prospects and all of us at Schipul – The Web Marketing Company were honored and excited when SV-IABC invited us to host the webinar for their members “Good Design Matters in Social Media Communication” this past Thursday.

Erica Bogdan, Schipul’s Creative Services Designer, shared ways to improve your business communication using graphic design tailored for social media platforms.  Erica shared how to unify your organization’s online brand across Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube and other social channels to engage your audience and increase traffic to your website.

Erica also shared design tips for ensuring your images looked great including sizing your images for each of the different online social websites and how to find free graphic design resources online even for the novice designers…  (or those folks like me who have trouble drawing a straight line with a ruler, let alone a professional vector logo.)

In case you missed it, we’ve posted the slides and a transcript from the presentation on Erica Bogdan’s Slideshare.

Erica lists some terrific and free online resources for graphic design, images and stock photos, and tools to edit graphics to use on social media websites.  I want to share some of my favorite tools online that I use when I want to incorporate a better design or add more color to a social media page for the design-newbies like me.

If you’d like to watch the webinar in it’s entirety, you can watch it or download it here.

5 Free and Easy Ways to Incorporate Graphics on Social Media Websites: 

• Try CutMyPic and in 3 easy steps you can upload a picture, crop it and add a drop shadow.

• ColorLovours’ Themelon has free themes, backgrounds, and custom layouts to give your Twitter Page a truly personal appearance without any design experience whatsoever.

• Befunky is the easiest way to add special effects to photos and puts the FUN in photo editing.

• Recommended by AllFacebook, Pagemodo offers tools to generate professionally Branded Facebook Fan Pages without any design skills. Pagemodo gives you one free Facebook page then offers additional tabs and pages for a low monthly price.

• Aviary offers a suite of design tools for web and mobile graphics including a vector editor, image markup, and even music and audio editing software.

Try out these online tools and then come show off your creative new social media designs with us on Schipul’s Facebook Page!

You can learn more about the Silicon Valley IABC Chapter on their website and if you are in the northern California area – be sure to check out their upcoming events and stop by to learn how to improve your business communications both online and off.  Thank you again to everyone from SV-IABC who joined us Thursday and we hope you’ll come Hang Out With Us Again soon!

Facebook makes changes to the way the network works on the daily. I do my best to stay up to speed, and I’m normally pretty polar in how I feel about an algorithm update here or an interface change there, but Facebook’s latest major announcement has me teetering.  Here’s what’s going on. . .

Facebook is introducing a “Subscribe” button. I think this is major. Here’s how it will work:

1. You can subscribe to Public status updates from people you are not Facebook friends with.
2. You can choose what kind of updates you see from your current Facebook friends. You can choose to subscribe to All Updates, Most Updates or Only Important Updates.
3. You can allow people who aren’t your friends to subscribe to your Public Facebook status updates. Don’t worry, you have to opt in for this to be available to those who stumble across your Facebook profile.

Why this is great

Follow your Faves

You can subscribe to a celebrity or famous blogger’s Public status updates. They’ll likely never make Facebook friends with you, and now you don’t have to troll their profiles to see what they are publishing publicly.

Filtered Content

You can trim your newsfeed down to the status updates that really interest you. For example, if the girl who sat behind you in Sophomore Chemistry updates her Facebook every time her cat sneezes, you can choose to see “Only Important” updates from her without feeling badly about hiding or unfriending her (but if she really updates every time her cat sneezes, you really shouldn’t feel badly about unfriending her. Just sayin).  You can also subscribe to specific types of content your friends are posting. Choices are Life Events, Status Updates, Photos and Videos, and Games.

Market Yourself

For personal marketing purposes, you can extend the number of people who read your content by allowing non-friends to subscribe to your feeds. This way, if you would like anyone in the world to easily access to knowledge you share regarding specific topics, but don’t want to be friends with the whole world, you can allow other Facebook users to subscribe to your public content.

Why this really isn’t that great

Dilutes the Power of the Fan Page

I totally get that there is a difference between a celebrity’s personal profile page and their Facebook fan page, and that there will be different content, but:

1. Being able to subscribe to their personal pages seems to dilute the purpose of the fan page.
2. Seeing as most celebrities share what they want the world to know via their public fan pages, what new content would I really be subscribing to here?

I know that this feature doesn’t just apply to major celebrities, but you get the point.  Lines are getting greyer here. Could be a good thing, but my gut reaction is to feel a tad uneasy.

I’m Just Jaded

I really appreciate getting to trim down what I see from which friends. This is cool, and by far the best part of this new feature. But honestly, Facebook, I’m not inclined to use it, because you’re just going to change it up in two weeks anyway.

Hello, Twitter, is that you?

This whole subscribing-to-people-without-having-to-be-their-friend thing reeks of Twitter. I like using Twitter and the way it works. . .  when I’m on Twitter. Basically, I feel like this update begs the question: “ISN’T THAT WHAT TWITTER IS FOR?”

Let’s look at the numbers: Facebook has 750 million active users. Twitter just announced that it reached the 100 million active users milestone. If I were to make the assumption that everyone on Twitter is also on Facebook, I could reasonably assume that 650 million of the active users on Facebook are NOT interested in Twitter. So, why are we trying to make Facebook more like Twitter?!

This Automates Trolling

Well, that about sums up my point there.

Those are my two cents on this update. I’d love to hear yours. If you’re interested, you can follow my public content on Twitter, which is where I will continue to focus on posting it until I see Facebook embrace the subscription thing for personal marketing.

THE END

This Friday July 8th marks a historic moment in both U.S. History and the story of Humanity when the Space Shuttle Atlantis launches to carry supplies to the ISS-Station in orbit around Earth. NASA’s space shuttle program will conclude with mission STS-135.

I am super excited to have the opportunity to view the launch from Kennedy Space Center Friday morning. For those of you who cannot make the trip – there are a number of awesome online outlets including twitter, NASA TV, Facebook and more to hear updates, watch the countdown and launch, and hear directly from the astronauts as they prepare to launch into space.

Follow the launch on Twitter!

First, if you are relatively new to twitter or want a quick refresher course, check out Schipul’s Twitter Speak Help File.

Next, here are just a few of the official NASA twitter accounts to follow:
@NASA – official NASA twitter account
@NASAtweetup – official “tweetup” account for NASA
@NASA_Astronauts – NASA twitter account that retweets all of the astronauts tweets

The four Astronauts that will be flying Atlantis for STS-135 each have twitter accounts as well and have been tweeting actively about their mission preparations and thoughts. You can follow them in the “Twitter-verse” here:
Christopher Ferguson: @Astro_Ferg
Douglas Hurley: @Astro_Doug
Sandy Magnus: @Astro_Sandy
Rex J Walheim: @Astro_Rex

Hashtags to follow on twitter: #NASATweetup and #STS135

Other NASA-friendly social networks to follow

If you want more than just 140 character updates, you can head to NASA Connect to find dozens of other official NASA social networking sites including the official NASA Facebook Page, and NASA Headquarters Flickr account including a collection devoted to the Space Shuttle program as well as many other social sites.

Then, on Friday morning watch the shuttle launch live online on NASA TV. The launch is currently scheduled for 11:28 AM EST. That’s 10:28 AM CST for those of you in Houston and 8:28 AM PST for all of you in California.

Finally, I want to include a couple of great non-NASA organizations that will be tweeting and uploading photos and video from the launch site in Florida too. Both of these organizations are focused on sharing the excitement of space exploration and all things space with others and are extremely active on the web.

The Space Tweep Society is an organization whose mission is to connect those inside the space industry with those on the outside looking in and generate enthusiasm for all things space. You can find the Space Tweep’s on twitter, Facebook, and Flickr.

SpaceUp is a new organization that hosts “un-conferences” focused on space-related topics all over the country including Houston, Los Angeles, San Diego, Washington DC and Minneapolis. You will find a number of organizers and volunteers from the different SpaceUp cities in Florida this week for STS-135.

Want a play-by-play?  You can follow me on twitter: @SarahMWorthy as I tweet throughout the events leading up to the launch with all the other Space Geeks.

Before the launch, I urge you to go check out TEDxNASA in Silicon Valley and register for FREE if you can attend. This official TEDx event will be August 17th, 2011 in San Francisco, California. I was honored to attend the recent TEDx Houston event last month and definitely want to see all of you at TEDxNASA if you can make the trip to San Francisco next month!

Great launch photo up top thanks to Flickr user Stuck in Customs

But it’s easy, isn’t it? It really easy. You don’t have to leave your computer. You have an infinite number of shots. You can throw as many notecards at the wall—when you have an unlimited number of notecards, you just know eventually something will stick.

Right?

To use a military metaphor, there is no substitute for on the ground intelligence. To not use a metaphor at all: There is no substitute for face-to-face meetings. For phone calls over e-mails. There is no substitute for getting out of your chair and attending a conference, or speaking at a luncheon, or for taking a client out for lunch.

This is what I call Analog Marketing. It’s you being you—all your awkward mannerisms, all your beautiful eyes, all your suits that fit slightly off your shoulder, all your quirks and the cadence of the way you speak. It’s getting on the ground and doing the tangible work that will support your digital marketing. And for that, there is no substitute.

Like and Share everything you can. Go viral. Ask for retweets. Do the best you can.² But in reality, companies don’t have an infinite number of notecards to throw. Companies have to be selective in what they do. They have to make profitable decisions. And the most profitable, sustainable decision a company can make is to put their people on the ground.

Part I: DrupalCon and the birth of the #drupalmonster

I recently had the pleasure of giving a guest lecture at a Public Relations class with co-worker Albert Hughes at his alma mater Prairie View A&M. It was the impetus for writing this piece.

Our company Schipul solves problems. Painting with a broad brush, we solve client problems related to the Internet. For example, a potential client will come to us with one concept: They need a website and they have no idea how to do it. They trust us to not only:

• Be honest with them and give them an honest quote³,
• but also provide them with the best technology to solve their problem.

One of the solutions our company employs is the content management system Drupal⁴. We believe in its infinite flexibility, its community, and it is often times the perfect solution to a potential client’s website that needs to be extremely custom.

We realized three things about Drupal as a company:

1. The community is fiercely loyal;
2. a lot of people talk about Drupal as a solution, but there aren’t a lot of people “doing it”;
3. the Drupal community is definitely doing it.

Albert effectively “brought” Drupal to our company as a solution. He had been messing around with it in his personal time, and when a client approached us about a website, he immediately knew Drupal could solve the client’s problem. It did.

At that point, Schipul went full force with Drupal. We learned it and memorized it and taught it and began to take part in the community. We even loved it so much, that at one point, Albert (a rapper by night) produced a quick music video based on a flow of his. Watch this:

Drupal Rap Video – Schipulcon09 from Schipul – The Web Marketing Co. on Vimeo.

Rapping about Drupal is a pretty absurd concept, but it worked. Founder and creator of Drupal, Dries Buytaert, saw it and put it on his blog. The plays on the video sky-rocketed. Albert and I went to DrupalCon that year, and because of the video, people recognized him. He began to cultivate relationships based off his non-Web-based talent. It established him as part of the Drupal community, albeit in a weird way. It showed a love for the product, and the people responded.

Fast forward to a year later, and Albert and myself were attending DrupalCon again. We knew the power of last year’s rap video, and we wanted to do it again. We had just hired a video specialist on our staff, and with his help, Al and I created a remix to Kanye West’s Monster, effectively creating the #drupalmonster. Watch:

“Monster (Drupal Remix feat. A.Hughes and D.Stagg)” from Schipul – The Web Marketing Co. on Vimeo.

Since we had met Dries, we e-mailed him again and asked him to watch the video figuring he would enjoy it. To our intense thanks, he loved it so much he posted it on his blog again. This was two days before DrupalCon.

Here’s where Analog Marketing comes in. We didn’t want the initial push and hype of a mere blog post to stop people from watching the video. We wanted to be a part of the Drupal Community, and we wanted to give back—as I said earlier—albeit in a weird way.

Our idea was this: Print a bunch of moocards (half-sized business cards, halved hot dog not hamburger) with a bit.ly link that pointed to the video. That was it. The only thing on it was this: bit.ly/drupalmonster. When we got to DrupalCon, we had 1,500 printed out at a local Kinko’s, and old-school guerilla-style, handed them out to everything and everyone. We put them on tables. We gave them to Drupal fanatics, we gave them to concierges at our hotel, we gave them to people we’d meet eating lunch at a local pub.

Drupal Monster Moocards

But as we gave them out, we talked to them about Drupal. What they loved, what they didn’t. Some had more to say than others, but we tried to connect with them on some level. Given a captive Drupal audience, this was somewhat easy. (“Hey, we wrote and produced a Drupal rap music video” said to someone who uses Drupal raises an eyebrow—it doesn’t make a lot of sense.) It was a little harder when trying to convince a hostess at the hotel it was worth her time.

But I saw that same hostess the next day and she called me over and said that not only did she watch it, but she pulled her co-workers aside and they watched it. Eventually, her boss saw it too. And as she was telling me this, her boss came over and complimented us on the video, and I got to compliment the hostess for being a good sport and actually taking the moocard back and watching the video.

Warning: Nerdy Business ROI Stuff Coming: A lot of people ask me how to quantify ROI on social media… blah blah blah. This is exactly how: That boss then said to me: “I’m not in control of who does our website, but if I were, I would go with you.” It’s the best compliment you could give not only myself and Albert, but our company. Asking our company to do your website is an honor to us; it’s like asking us to babysit or be invited to your wedding. And because of the work we did on the ground, in the trenches, talking to the people and going to where they were, we would get their business. We would get that honor.⁵

Part II: SXSW

If there was ever any epic display of Analog Marketing, it exists on the corner of Trinity and 4th St. during the Interactive portion of SXSW. I had the pleasure of attending for the third year in a row, and each year, it seems this spot between the Austin Convention Center and Champions Bar gets busier and busier.

If you’ve never had the pleasure of attending, at this spot and immediately entering the convention center, there are literally hundreds of people handing out any number of things: party invites, QR codes, half-clad women giving you a card with a free trial code on it. It’s Analog Marketing, for sure, but it’s the “Facebook” equivalent of the concept. You have an infinite targeted audience and, most likely, and infinite number of notecards to throw at a wall. So you start throwing.

Companies know SXSWi is an important cornerstone in networking. The sessions are always hit-and-miss, but there’s always one thing you can rely on: People. People are the cornerstone of any business. If you have no buyers, there is no company. The only thing this version of Analog Marketing lacks is the connection. Most of the time, the people are in a hurry. They’re trying to get from Point A to Point B in as quick a time as possible—the marketer barely has time to hand them a card (one of many they’ve gotten in the past 30 seconds), let alone have a conversation with them about their needs and how the marketer’s product could possibly solve their problems.

We tried the Analog Marketing moocard approach to our video at SXSWi as well, and it was significantly less successful, for two reasons:

1. We did not have the captive audience. (When you’re at DrupalCon and you’re handing out a video about Drupal, it’s like going to a comic book convention and asking someone to watch an interview with Stan Lee.)
2. We did not have time to cultivate a relationship with the person receiving the card. (See next.)

Part III: Cultivating the relationship

Our Business Development Director Aaron Long once told our company in a full company meeting:

It’s a lot harder to get mad and permanently leave your best friend.

His intent is this: When we talk to clients, we try to be their friends. They literally pay our paychecks. Being honest, ethical, and doing good are cornerstones of our company’s foundation, so when a new client comes in, we get the blessing of helping their business not only survive, but thrive. That’s our job; it’s why people hire us. In return, they pay our paycheck which allows us to do all the things we love to do when we’re not working. It’s a win/win⁶.

When you have a good rapport with a client, they’re less likely to leave you. You can be absolutely honest with them, speak with candor—and with those two combined—have real conversations about what they need their website to do and how we need to accomplish it.

Along the way, you become their friend. You begin to respect each other. You begin to bring in the client’s business as your own; when they succeed, we succeeded. And as they grow and trust you more, they’re less likely to leave. You’ve established a level of trust that has absolutely nothing to do with Digital Marketing. Something you could never buy and something you could never “Like” or “Share” on Facebook. Those things are all part of it, but at the end of the day, you need Analog Marketers to cultivate your relationship with your consumers.

Part IV: What you should be doing now

Laozi (known by any number of variations of his name, such as Lao Tzu) was a record-keeper for the Zhou Dynasty court. He is credited with the following, translated into any number of languages, written 3,000 years ago in one of the most famous texts of all-time, Tao Te Ching⁷:

Go to the people. Live with them. Learn from them. Love them. Start with what they know. Build with what they have. But with the best leaders, when the work is done, the task accomplished, the people will say, “We have done this ourselves.”

This is the definition of Analog Marketing.

I spoke in Houston once about The Next Generation Website at the Social Media Breakfast Houston. A man was there whom I had never met, nor had the chance to meet after my talk, but called our office later that same day. Our top sales-person, Courtney Pemberton, fielded the call and fell in love with them; it wasn’t even about “selling” to them in the conventional sense. They were Girouard’s General Store, who have the claim of the oldest general store in Texas. Due to my public speaking and Courtney’s expertise, they signed on as a client in an incredibly short amount of time. At the time of writing, their site is still in development, but Courtney has gone out of her way, having fun with the client, because she likes them. Both the project manager and Courtney went to their store and took pictures of everything they could find because it’s such a cool place. She brought the pictures back and in design meetings, the designers fell in love with the place as well, experiencing it through the pictures they took, but also the excitement in the employees’ voices.

And when their designs are approved, and their content is added, and their site goes live, our tasks accomplished, I know they’ll look back and say, “We did this together.” And at that point, Digital Marketing can take over and run its course. I’ll be sure to Like it and Share it on Facebook, but I have confidence knowing it all started with Analog Marketing.

Footnotes

¹ Although I am still amazed at how many “public relations” companies just try to convince their clients to get on Facebook or Twitter because it’s like some sort of mandate. News flash: You don’t have to be on Twitter. A better question to ask: Is that where your people are?

² Recognize that these are still good things and that this statement is not tongue-in-cheek. Just don’t start here. Don’t put your cart in front of your horse.

³ If someone’s quoted you over $100,000 for a website, please—call us. You’re most likely being lied to.

⁴ For the curious, we use three content management systems at our company: WordPress, Tendenci, and Drupal. The first and last are open-source CMSs that have created and cultivated wildly successful communities. We rely heavily on said communities and are infinitely grateful for the hard work these people do. The second in that list is a currently proprietary CMS our CEO wrote in the early 2000s to keep the company afloat after September 11. It’s currently in its fifth iteration and is still bread and butter to our business model.

⁵ Even more “ROI”-y stuff: The video had an initial push of around 1,500 plays. As we handed out the cards throughout the conference, the plays continually went up each day: 123, 141, 148, 154, culminating the last day of the conference, topping 200 plays at 202.

To this day, we continually get double-digit plays from the video as it takes on a life of its own. We also continually get sales calls solely because they saw the video, liked it, and thought to themselves, “If they love Drupal this much to make a video, they must have a passion for it.” And passion breeds greatness.

At the time of this writing, the video has over 4,600 plays and 33,400 loads.

⁶ Also a cornerstone of the business. A card is handed out to every new employee (and to a number of clients/potential clients) that not only lists the cornerstones of the business, but also our Mission and Vision and Schipul Honor Code.

⁷ I don’t intend to cheapen any form of Taoism or religion by comparing the concepts of Analog Marketing to a sacred text. I take the quote literally at its face-value: Go to where the people are first. It will literally support everything you do after that.

Yiying Lu is the artist behind the Twitter Fail Whale

** UPDATED 2/21/11 ***

UberTwitter changed its name to UberSocial and is up and running! Download the new app.

Don’t be alarmed. But prepare to be disappointed:

Twitter has suspended the popular third-party mobile applications UberTwitter (Blackberry smartphones) and twidroyd (Android phones).

So far  Twitter has said the apps were “suspended due to policy violations,” and that they suspend hundreds of applications on a daily basis for the same reasons. As for today’s explanation, Twitter said,”We are taking the unusual step of sharing this with you because today’s suspension may affect a larger number of users.”

The Huffington Post reports that roughly, twenty percent of all daily updates to Twitter are sent using apps from  UberMedia , the company that owns both UberTwitter, Twidroyd and TweetDeck (another popular third-party Twitter app). While the suspension doesn’t seem to have a due date, waiting it out may be tough for those already experiencing twithdrawls.

Fear not, check out these other twitter apps for Blackberry and Android smartphones.

Other Twitter Apps for Blackberry & Android

Blackberry

• Twitter for Blackberry – $FREE.99
• Seesmic – $FREE.99
• Twit Pro – $3.99
• TweetGenius – $7.99 (deceptively marked FREE  in Blackberry App World; it’s just a free trial)

Android

• Twitter for Android – $FREE.99
• Seesmic – $FREE.99
• Plume – $FREE.99
• Plume (Ad-free version) –  $3.29

Be a friend, RT this to someone in need…or send them the short link on Facebook.

In an effort to lure users back to their site and away from 3^rd party clients, Twitter is rolling out a slew of new features. The most important feature of the #NewTwitter will allow users to embed videos, photos and other multimedia directly into their streams.  Followers will now be able to view these media-rich tweets without having to click on any external links. Instead they will access video, photos and live streaming content from the Twitter interface.

The new UI (user interface) uses a two panel design that allows users to view their feed on the left and media content on the right. If the design looks familiar don’t be surprised. It is essentially the same design as the Twitter Ipad app.

This new design will allow users to integrate multimedia far more easily in their tweeting experience. The #NewTwitter has essentially taken the best features of 3^rd party clients like Hootsuite, Tweetdeck, and Seesmic and combined them.  Here is a list of some of the new features:

• Streamlined user interface w/ tabs
• Ability to view photos, videos and other media content without clicking a link
• Access to mini profiles
• Access to meta data: location, number of mentions, @ replies, etc
• Access to keyboard shortcuts similar to Gmail

UPDATE: Twitter will launch a free real-time analytics dashboard later this year.

If all these features sound great to you, you will probably have to wait to use them. Twitter is rolling out these changes over the next several weeks. In the meantime, check out this video showcasing the new Twitter design and features.

I don’t know about you but I am perfectly happy with my 3^rd party app. I have been using Hootsuite for over a year now and I love it. I can manage several accounts, assign users, view multiple streams, review account analytics, schedule tweets, attached files, images and watch video directly in the stream. Most importantly, I can access Hootsuite from any web browser.  I wonder what took Twitter so long to adopt these basic functions to their site.

Don’t get me wrong, once I’ve been upgraded to the new version, I’ll give it a go but something tells me that I will return to my beloved twitter app.  How about you? Which twitter apps do you use and will you abandon them for the new twitter? Let us know in the comments.

-adjective
1. exemplifies a unique quality; awesome; incredible
2.  An expression from the mid 1950s, which fell from favor by the early 1960s….until now…

What does August mean to you? If you said football season, well I’d say you just earned yourself a gold star. Simply put, the world is  a better place when you spend 10 consecutive  hours, every Sunday, watching the gridiron madness.

This year more than ever, we have the ability to be a part of the game via Twitter- witnessing a player’s thoughts pre-huddle, during the 60 and after the stadium has cleared. We are not just following bloggers who love the sport; we are following the guys down on the grass, feeling the pressure in the red zone. You will find that some players will inspire, others will talk trash and the majority will misspell common words…but collectively, their micro blogs Twitter streams are most definitely boss.

C Pemby’s Top NFL Players on Twitter

Craig Terrill – @TerrillMusic Team: Seattle Seahawks Position: Defensive Tackle Terrill is the Defensive Tackle for the Seattle Seahawks…and let’s not kid ourselves, he’s a whole lotta’ man. While he is not on the football field, he plays in a band surprisingly called, The Craig Terrill Band. Seahawk bowling day. I am on track for a perfect 300 right now. Pounds…that is. If Sanchez doesn’t pull this game out he always has ‘Entourage’ to fall back on.

Ryan Grant - @RyanGrant25 Team: Greenbay Packers Position: Running Back While he consistently over uses the acronym, “lol”, you can always count on Ryan Grant to provide entertaining banter with his teammates. Everyone needs to know that @AaronRodgers12 accuracy in practice with a football is phenomenal, but with a water balloon, questionable And honestly, anyone that can laugh out loud this much are what we call, good people. Ive been asked twice this week by fans if I’m playing again this year lol……come on now..lol NOTHING’s CHANGED…Im coming to work lol

Jared Allen –@JaredAllen69 Team: Minnesota Vikings Position: Defensive End Jared Allen’s twitpics speak for themselves… Again, it was only a trim. It was starting to get a little out of control.

Chad Ochocinco – @OGOchoCinco Team: Cincinnati Bengals Position: Wide Receiver If you loved him on Dancing with the Stars then you will most certainly love following Ochocinco – a lover, fighter and designer shoe connoisseur. While I commend his efforts, there will never come a day where I will take a man seriously with a reality show called, “The Ultimate Catch.” Get it? He’s a wide receiver and he catches the ball…you’re so clever Chad. New Christian Louboutin Rollerboy Spike Flats yes or no http://twitpic.com/2jtu00

Brian Cushing- @briancushing56Team: Houston Texans Position: Linebacker If you are living in Houston and want to literally follow a local player – Brian Cushing is your man. He will keep you up-to-date on exactly where he is at all times which leads me to believe he is unaware of his 10,777 followers . Come on Cushing, we all know there is only one bowling alley in Bellaire (Palace Lanes). Bowling w/ the team over in Bellaire.

Ok, your turn – tell me about an NFL player that keeps you entertained via Twitter!

As with many organizations during this time, the answers have not been easy to come by. The main conflict is the ages of the respective audiences. The group actively using social media on the internet and their phones is considerably younger than the audiences taking in performances  at Jones Hall and the Wortham. The great fear for some patrons is the degradation of the theater experience like we have seen in our movie theaters. Others find the behavior of these tech happy people abhorrent, and too unsophisticated for the filigreed temples of the arts. Honestly? They’re right. Going to a performance is an experience between you and the artists. It is an intimate relationship that sometimes requires the full attention of the patron.

Imagine yourself locked in a passionate embrace of your significant other. They are holding you in their arms tightly, stroking your hair, nibbling at your ear.  When, all of a sudden, he or she pulls out their phone to send a tweet. That moment is, as they say, spent. Now, with that same scenario, imagine if a stranger interrupted this moment to post your picture on Facebook? We’ll call this phenomenon Theaterus Interruptus.

This is not behavior anyone here at Schipul would be likely to encourage, however, we also see the strong need for a conversation about the use of social media and mobile phones within the construct of a night at the theater. In the coming weeks, I want to open up a dialog with arts patrons and enthusiasts about the use of social media in our performance spaces. I will introduce you to different sites and apps that I feel have great potential, and hopefully develop a set of rules we all can follow to help expand our enjoyment of the theater-going experience.

• The program will be introduced in phases. As Dwight Silverman of the Houston Chronicle’s TechBlog points out, phase one will leverage Twitter’s most valuable asset – the data of its more than 20 million users, “Twitter’s real value lies in the aggregated information of its estimated 22.3 million users, surfaced by search, so it makes sense that the company would turn to this strength to make money.”
• In phase one “Promoted Tweets” will show up only for searches on Twitter itself. No Promoted Tweets on Twitter apps yet.
• If you perform a search on a particular term that is relevant to one of the companies paying for the Promoted Tweet service, like those Google Sponsored Links at the top of a Google search, a tweet from the paying company will be displayed at the top of the search page. The New York Times article “Twitter Unveils Plans to Draw Money From Ads” has a pretty fleshed out example of this using Starbucks,

Starbucks, for instance, often publishes Twitter posts about its promotions, like free pastries. But the messages quickly get lost in the thousands of posts from users who happen to mention meeting at Starbucks.

“When people are searching on Starbucks, what we really want to show them is that something is happening at Starbucks right now, and Promoted Tweets will give us a chance to do that,” said Chris Bruzzo, vice president of brand, content and online at Starbucks.

• In order for a Promoted Tweet to hold its ground at the top of the search page, it’s gotta resonate baby… people don’t click it, retweet it, engage with it… it’s outta there. And Twitter will be following the results in order to tweak the program… again like Google with its ever evolving, mysterious, and infamous algorithm.
• Twitter says these are not ads – “Since all Promoted Tweets are organic Tweets, there is not a single ‘ad’ in our Promoted Tweets platform that isn’t already an organic part of Twitter. This is distinct from both traditional search advertising and more recent social advertising. Promoted Tweets will also be timely. Like any other Tweet, the connection between you and a Promoted Tweet in real-time provides a powerful means of delivering information relevant to you at the moment.”
• First takers, or “partners”  include: Best Buy, Bravo, Red Bull, Sony Pictures, Starbucks, and Virgin America
• Next up?  According to the Times, “[Twitter] will show promoted posts in a user’s Twitter stream, even if a user did not perform a search and does not follow the advertiser.” This leaves me wondering if a post to Twitter about the overwhelming Houston pollen count induced allergies this season will elicit a Claritin tweet inserted into my stream. Twitter is the most vague about phase 2 stating, “Before we roll out more phases, we want to get a better understanding of the resonance of Promoted Tweets, user experience and advertiser value.”

So there it is folks… I reserve final judgment until I actually see it IRL… (Update: I couldn’t post to the blog fast enough and Mashable reports Promoted Tweets are already showing up for limited searches) I think phase 1 will go by with lots of initial fan fare, may even trend for a bit, and then will fall into the obscurity of the already accepted and ignored ads that float in the periphery of the likes of sites such as Google, Facebook, The New York Times and even National Geographic. I am curious to see how much traction Promoted Tweets will actually gain. I myself don’t spend much time on a search.twitter.com – though over coffee in the break room this morning I learned of few co-workers who do use twitter search as their almost exclusive local search tool.

Phase 2 however, has me itching already to get my feathers all ruffled up. I am trying to maintain my calm composure, with a “wait and see” attitude… but I gotta letcha know I feel pretty dang partial to my twitter stream being my own. I don’t really have much love for the bullying bull-horn approach of most advertising campaigns and I feel like in the world of social media – where personal brands are more important than big brand loyalty and famous personalities have more followers than global news organizations – there is not going to be a great big love fest should Twitter choose to place paid tweets from mega-brands into the streams of its users.

For more on Twitter Promoted Tweets take your eye-balls on over to:

• The New York Times: Twitter Unveils Plans to Draw Money From Ads
• The New York Times: Tensions Rise for Twitter and App Developers
• Houston Chronicle TechBlog: Twitter finds a business model in Promoted Tweets
• Search.Twitter.com, Results for Promoted Tweets
• Mashable: Twitter Promoted Tweets Are Live
• The Huffington Post: Promoted Tweets: Twitter Ad Program To Draw Money From Corporate Advertising
• TechCrunch: “Promoted Tweets” Not Resonating Well On Twitter

(Thanx! for the pic: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jessandthecity/3822639162/)

Posting a message in Buzz

Unless you are a huge, die-hard fan of our favorite search engine, you probably had no idea Google was creating a new software product. And that it would take over our inboxes and (inadvertently) share our lives with everyone. Welcome to Google Buzz.

WTF is this Buzz thing?

Google Buzz is a new product from Google that lets you share things. If you use Google Reader, then you will likely recognize the interface. The two both include a list of posts with information like who it’s from, when it was shared, and a list of comments below each item. It is strikingly familiar in design to FriendFeed, your Facebook Newsfeed, and in some ways, Twitter. All include shared updates from friends with the option for additional feeds and pictures/video.

Buzz is almost identical to Friendfeed in the way it allows you to merge outside services like Blog Feeds, Twitter updates, and Google Reader shared items into one constant stream of sharing. To add these settings in Buzz, you must first have configured a Google Profile (you have that setup, right?). Then, after your feeds are added there, Google Buzz will allow you to add them to Buzz by selecting them from the Connected Sites link in Buzz. While allowing you to share things and see your friends’ shared things, you can also add comments on anything. You can follow along with the conversation and even have new comments show up in your Gmail inbox.

Google Buzz Main Entry Box. Look familiar?

The big difference in the Google service is that you already start out following everyone in your Google Contacts, which often includes people you may have emailed once or twice in the past few years. For most of us, this is a huge concern because we are now sharing things with people we never intended to share with.

If you have a phone like the iPhone or an Android phone, then Google Buzz will also share your location. This has been done by other services, but it is a major privacy concern for this opt-out service.

The Opt-Out and Privacy Concerns

Opt-out services, where you are automatically signed up, are usually not great for you (with the exception of 401ks). You get hooked into something that you never chose to use. Instead of giving Buzz it’s own URL and special place on the web, Google just stuck it in your Gmail inbox. Everyone was signed up without a great explanation of Buzz. You have to manually go in a either remove people from your contacts or block them.

Lets use an analogy. Imagine if, when you first signed up for Facebook and entered in your high school and class year, you automatically became friends with everyone else from your class. Except Facebook didn’t tell you or give you an option to opt-out of this. Facebook wants to get you started building friends so it adds some for you. They think they are helping. And now, you have to un-friend hundreds of people that you don’t care to share your life with anymore.

Google thinks they are doing us a favor, but I don’t feel helped very much. The privacy settings on Google Buzz are granular, meaning everything can be set to private, but you have to hunt and search to find out where. Harriet at Fungitivus ran into this problem. All of her Google Reader shared items were instantly exposed to anyone in her “recent contacts”, which contained many old email addresses from random past emails. Google Reader is public by default, but no one may have been viewing it if you were using it on a private email account. Buzz now exposes this to all of your recent contacts.

The privacy settings are all available to be turned off or configured specifically, but the notion of being set to public by default is not cool. Facebook has run into trouble like this before and has had to scramble to fix things. I have faith that Google is already working on a better all-out admin interface for settings, but nothing like that has been released yet.

Getting rid of the Buzz

Google Reader Sharing Settings

You can set all of your Connected sites to be private by setting them as such when adding them. To update your Google Reader settings, you have to open the sidebar, click the + on the People you follow list, and click sharing settings. Chances are your shared items are set to Public (the default). You can view a list of people following you and Block them by default if you wish. But, you must do this individually. Business Insider has a nice walk-through to make some things private.

You can also set anything you do to private, and select a group of people to share with. These groups come from Google Contacts, which many people may not use unless they sync them with a mobile device. They are editable within Gmail. By not connecting any sites, blocking all of your “followers”, and unfollowing everyone, you can effectively get off of Google Buzz. But it will still exist right next to your inbox in Gmail, at least for the time being. UPDATE: Mark from the comments tell us that you can simply turn off Buzz in the Gmail footer. Thanks for the tip!

Implications of Buzz

With Buzz, I see Google trying to be the central hub for online human interaction. It’s the place you email, chat, use documents, share pictures and links, and now bring in some of your outside services. Google is very late to the party, as many of these kinds of services have been done by other companies. The idea of having everything in one place is wonderful, but even that has been done before to limited success.

Google is a bit different, though. They already have many of us hooked into their services. If you were on Twitter two years ago, or joined facebook three years ago, then I’d bet money you are using Gmail. If you know how to subscribe to RSS feeds, then you are likely using Google Reader.  Google already has us using their services, and they are betting with Buzz that we will choose to use Google for even more.

However, not everything can be done with Buzz, which is the beginning of the problem. I recently moved to Tumblr for sharing things online, and I can’t find a way to bring that feed into Buzz. You also can’t bring in Facebook updates, but that is due to Facebook’s sharing policies and not Buzz. People that are already using other sites like Friendfeed will not come over willingly, since Buzz only replicates that service and doesn’t add much visible value. The hidden change is in using the data power of Google to decide what is Signal and what is Noise, and how that distinction is different for everyone. That will take some time to come through, which is why I’m not yet buying into Buzz.

Final Thoughts on Buzz

One of the reasons that Facebook is successful is that it connects you with Real People, not just with online personas. Almost all other services allow people to create personas and hide behind them. Facebook strips most of that away, so that who you are on Facebook is closely related to who you are offline. By tying users to their email address, Google has the opportunity to do the same with Buzz. I can “follow” celebrities and such in Buzz, but seeing the enormous string of comments will be overwhelming and unhelpful. Instead, I will follow people that I know in the real world.

This online persona/offline Real Person is a big distinction. You may be a fan of a teeny-bopper pop singer, but you probably don’t want to send them pictures of you grandkids. The privacy settings in Buzz can be used to share different things with different people, which is a great feature once you setup your groups. And after some time of seeing what your Buzz friends share, you can parse your list into a readable stream of interesting information.

I am generally a big fan of Google, but Buzz may take some time to get used to.