Just wanted to share a couple of videos with you. Below the IBM Seer app used at this years Australian Open and the other is EyePly’s preview of an augmented reality app that will be released in 2010. Enjoy!
I really like what is discussed around the 1:50 mark of the above video. The idea of having “scouts” at the event Tweet on certain topics like food at the open, what bands are playing, and transportation is great. Then taking the feeds of those Twitter accounts and displaying them as one feed so an attendee can stay up to date on information via the IBM Seer app is a wonderful idea. The augmented reality stuff isn’t bad either
We’ve all been in the situation where we are trying to follow something on Twitter, be it a conference, athletic event or news story. Usually you can stumble upon several hashtags that are relevant to the event or the organization but have you ever wondered where they came from? In my experience it seems that users are the ones that are forced to come up with descriptive hashtags for what they’re following. The problem is that every user is different and they tend to come up with several hashtags for each event. You end up having to add all variations of the tags to get your tweet read by the whole audience, this takes up some of that precious 140 characters.
One thing that an organization should do to help lead their conversations is to make their preferred hashtags known. They can promote these through their website, blog and of course in their tweets. Companies are getting used to posting the “Follow us on Twitter” buttons on their sites but perhaps they should be also be including a short list of hashtags that they encourage their users to use when discussing them. Also, they can use the opportunity to engage with their users on Twitter by reminding them or giving them incentives to use their preferred tags. Having one or two main hashtags for a group makes following and interacting with that group much easier and enjoyable.
It’s great to see new businesses and organizations join Twitter! I’ve had the pleasure of sitting down with a few of them and share tips on how to use Twitter.
Here’s a few I think are helpful:
Keep in mind you only have 140 characters. Why is this important? There’s a good chance that every now and then you’re going to want one of your tweets to be retweeted. When retweeted, the tweet also consists of RT @username. Try to save 15 or so characters when tweeting.
Hashtags. Hashtags are used to organize and spread information on Twitter. Use them. For example, let’s say you’re a restaurant in Lawrence, KS that’s running a Kansas basketball gameday special. When tweeting this promotion it would be good to use a popular Kansas basketball hashtag like #kubball and #lawrence.
Let them know there is a real person in there somewhere. Too many businesses only use the service as a feed for their discounts, coupons, promotions, etc. When a user sees a constant stream of links to follow for more information they feel that they’re interacting with a robot. Interact, comment, reply, let people know that you’re a human being and they’ll be more likely to want to interact with you rather than just read your tweets.
Stay connected. Set up texting under your Twitter settings or add a Twitter application to your phone. Try to respond to @replies in a timely manner. Also, there are other things to use to monitor and Tweet besides having to go to Twitter.com. Look into using something Seesmic or Tweetdeck.
Those traveling this holiday season are in for a treat! Starting today through January 15th, Google is offering free WiFi in 47 airports.
Marisa Mayer, a VP at Google stated, “This is one of our holiday gifts to our users, and, when you connect, we also hope that you’ll take the opportunity to try some of the latest Google products. Our hope is that being connected for a few extra minutes (or hours, if you’re delayed!) will help make things a bit easier.”
David Armano of HarvardBusiness.org published on Monday what he believes to be the social media trends in 2010. I think he hit the nail on the head.
1. Social media begins to look less social Armano mentions the hyperactive updaters on Facebook and the ability to “hide” them. For me, the problem on Facebook hasn’t been the frequency of updates it’s been the amount of personal information being put out there. I cringe whenever I see a status update that’s a novel long about baby’s daddy drama or whatever. Maybe Facebook should start limiting the amount of characters in status updates.
2. Corporations look to scale Here Armano talks about Best Buy’s Twelpforce and how they use employees as customer support on Twitter. This just makes sense. Essentially it is like a call center and bigger corporations should look into it.
3. Social business becomes serious play “Relatively new networks such as Foursquare are touted for the focus on making networked activity local and mobile. However, it also has a game-like quality to it which brings out the competitor in the user.” I’m a big fan of Foursquare. I like how small businesses in bigger cities are using it as an incentive to buy their products. A coffee shop may have a Foursquare promotion that gives a free latte to the “mayor” of said coffee shop.
4. Your company will have a social media policy (and it might actually be enforced) This will become a must. I don’t like the idea of banning social networks though. I think companies can learn to integrate them and help their brand.
5. Mobile becomes a social media lifeline A “social media break” replaces the “smoke break.”The companies that do ban social networks will see employees stepping out and jumping on their smart phone for a social media break.
6. Sharing no longer means e-mail “The New York Times iPhone application recently added sharing functionality which allows a user to easily broadcast an article across networks such as Facebook and Twitter.” This is an issue of user behavior. I think that sharing via email has decreased a lot over the last year. Or at least I’ve noticed that I’m not getting emailed funny videos as much as I used to, now I’m seeing those via friends on Facebook or Twitter.
The list is piling up with athletes who are behaving inappropriately on Twitter. Larry Johnson is the latest and received a $600,000 fine. We’ve created a PDF document for coaches, administrators, and management to help them monitor and guide players on Twitter. Education is the key!
If you’re a business on Facebook, most likely your Facebook page ranks second after your website on search results. Good for you for having a Facebook page in the first place! It’s content that you can control and Facebook is a trusted name.
It’s time for businesses to embrace social media and social networks!
Last week Google announced a Google Labs experiment called Social Search. Google’s Marisa Mayer explained how Social Search works last week at the Web 2.0 summit in San Francisco, “What we’ve done here is inserted, on the bottom of the page, content written by people in your social network.” A search for the place to get the best burger, for example, could bring up your friends’ Yelp reviews for local restaurants.
Whatever industry you’re in, it’s time to invest in social media and research what networks and mobile applications are relevant to your industry.
Looks like you’ll no longer need to visit search.twitter.com to search for twitter updates. Marissa Mayer from Google put it best, “the next time you search for something that can be aided by a real-time observation, say, snow conditions at your favorite ski resort, you’ll find tweets from other users who are there and sharing the latest and greatest information.”
If you can’t wait for this integration to happen, you can install a Greasemonkey script into Firefox in order to get twitter results on Google’s search page. I’ve been using it for awhile and it’s very handy!
Not just what you tweet, but your Amazon book review, your Facebook status, and your blog comments. According to Wired.com, the CIA is investing in Visible Technologies, a software firm that specializes in social media monitoring. “It’s part of a larger movement within the spy services to get better at using ”open source intelligence” — information that’s publicly available, but often hidden in the flood of TV shows, newspaper articles, blog posts, online videos and radio reports generated every day.”
I already assumed the CIA was monitoring all of this, sounds like they are trying to stay ahead of the game.
It’s great to see new businesses and organizations join Twitter! I’ve had the pleasure of sitting down with a few of them and share tips on how to use Twitter.
Jacinta and Jesse are web marketers with expertise in social media and building brand equity. 
