Social Media, SEO, and Website Optimization
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This is for my aunt Mercedes and great aunt’s Peggy, Sara, and Tera who lost their battle. And my Dad, my hero, who beat cancer. #beatcancer
Today I took a look at my replies and saw some people have commented on a recent status update regarding #uncharted2. I hadn’t said anything about it so I knew that the game was posting to my twitter account on it’s own. Recently I reported that the game developers, Naughty Dog, had pulled the functionality after concerns that the game tweets too damn much. They had said that they would patch the game to allow it to tweet and apparently they have done just that.
I think that updating just a few times a day is completely acceptable and shows off the the new functionality without being overly annoying. But most importantly they have found a way to promote their game through yet another channel. I expect to see many more games implement this feature in the future.
Ok, so I went out and bought the new PS3 Game, Uncharted 2 today. I was excited to try out the built in Twitter functionality that I wrote about a few weeks ago. Well, I popped it in and set up everything including my Twitter credentials and proceeded to tear into it. The game is excellent but I guess that’s not really what I’m supposed to be talking about, the thing is that the Twitter functionality is broken. I double checked everything several times but no matter what it wasn’t updating. So I did some searching and found that Naughty Dog, the games developer, pulled the functionality from the game after hearing that the frequency of tweets was way too high. That point right there was my main concern when I first heard that they would be integrating auto updates. Adding social media functionality to new mediums is essential for the platforms to continue to grow and I fully support it, but at the same time you have to be responsible to your users and their experiences at the same time. There are a ton of services already that succeed in being particularly annoying, auto DM’s come to mind, we don’t need more.
Now, Naughty Dog says that they’re going to patch the feature back into the game and they’re tweaking the update frequency to be less intrusive. I appreciate their innovation and look forward to testing and telling you about the the functionality when it goes live. I have a feeling you’ll all let me know if my status updates from the game get to be too annoying.
Jesse and I decided to interview a few testers via Google Wave about their thoughts on the service.
The interviewees:
Sam Davyson, neighbor across the pond with interests in computing and technology.
Aaron Kasten, an IT problem solver out of the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
Mack Collier, social media consultant and Alabama Crimson Tide fan.
Bear Goodell, social media and sports marketer – for hire.
Q1: What was your initial reaction to Google Wave when you first opened it?
Sam: When I first looked at the developer preview I couldn’t believe how sluggish everything about it was. It didn’t seem anything like as responsive as the demo video or as I would have expected for such a serious product. Since then bit by bit I think it has improved. It is very usable now – especially in Chrome. I was excited I guess – but when I first got here I didn’t know about the public waves and I sort of realised I had no one to wave at.
Aaron: Agreed the Developer Sand Box was slow, and nearly unusable, not just due to the sluggishness, but the fact that there was nobody else to test the product with. Now that the “Preview” is out it runs much better, and I have met a few others to actually start playing with the technology. You really get to see the power of a wave when communicating in real time. Editing eachothers posts..(is that the right word for a wave?) Highlighting, it is fun and useful. You can also add all the widgets. Lots of neat stuff, and I am sure it will grow. I too am using chrome, but have tried IE and FF, chrome is just the fastest kid on the block.
Bear: My initial reaction was, “don’t get overwhelmed.” After tinkering with it a bit, I still have a lot to learn, but I’m excited.
Mack: It looked like a souped up IM service.
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Great American Beer Festival
Two weeks ago I was lucky enough to attend the Great American Beer Festival (GABF) in Denver, Colorado for my third year in a row. The GABF is a collection of American breweries and their best beer at the Colorado Convention Center for the enjoyment of 49,000 imbibers over a three day period. I have enjoyed beer and more specifically craft beer since I’ve been of legal age (perhaps a bit before to be completely honest), I’ve been a home brewer for 4 years and generally appreciate all things beer. This year’s GABF was particularly exciting for me as it marks the first time that a real time social media network (namely twitter) has been widely used by the public. I have been on twitter before it was mentioned on every morning show and NPR broadcast but I can’t say I had used it to it’s full potential, kind of how a pool party isn’t as much fun without someone to splash around with. This year’s GABF had me excited to see how social media would enrich the experience.
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Wave Tips and Tricks was started by Sam Davyson
Find the wave here
The first 7 tips posted are below:
1. Mark read waves as read.
This keeps your inbox clearer and makes updated waves stand out. If you tab through a whole wave stopping at each blip – it will mark it as read automatically but more often than not you just use the scroll bar and glance down. When you’ve read the wave, click “Mark as Read” in the toolbar above.
2. SHIFT + ENTER is a great keyboard shortcut.
This will either start a reply if you are reading a wave or submit your reply (like pressing done) if you are typing your reply.
3. CTRL + E for editing.
This is CTRL + E on OS X too (not CMD).
4. Making a wave public.
Add “public@a.gwave.com” to the wave to make a wave public. Current bugs means this contact constantly deletes itself.
5. Linking to another wave.
The easiest way to link to another wave is to drag it from the main waves pane. Eg. Here’s a wave about Embedding a Wave.
6. CTRL – CLICK to open a wave while keeping the current one open
On OS X you need to use CMD for this to avoid the dropdown menu appearing.
7. Windows can be minimised, and maximised and restored
Another method of having multiple waves open is to minimise one, open another and restore the original. If you minimise the wave list you can have two waves side by side.
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To add Twitter (via ShoutMeLoud.com)
1. Add tweety-wave@appspot.com to contacts.
2. Click on Tweety the Twitbot
3. Click New Wave
4. Make sure pop ups are allowed and add your Twitter credentials.
Well, we’ve had our invites to Google Wave for a little over 12 hours now and although I may have slept for part of that time I have had some vision for ways that LangfordSevier can integrate this service into our virtual office.
Collaboration: This is the obvious one here, being able to work together on a document at the same time has a crazy, almost whiteboard feel to it. Although, like Jacinta, I feel strange everytime I see someone erase what they’ve written. So far document collaboration has been the only thing I’ve looked at so I can’t really comment on how to shuffle other media like video and web widgets. I catch myself thinking that for Wave to be fully utilized all members of the party need to be in the wave (note capital W while referring to the application and a lowercase w when referring to the individual wave) at the same time, but actually it works great when others are absent. If you missed something just hit the playback button and watch your teams creativity blossom.
CRM: Using wave as a way to keep a live snapshot of where we are with all of our clients is really exciting. Each client could have their own wave that we can keep track of where we are with them but all of those waves can be compiled into a master wave that gives us a quick overview of all of our clients as well as their current status. I know that there are amazing free CRM applications out there but this is a solution that lives within Google and I can see myself logging into this way more often that say Zoho CRM.
Conference Calling: Although this isn’t fully integrated yet it’s not hard to see the potential here. Being able to click a button and have all of the user’s phones ring to start the meeting is simply awesome. We also know that Google Voice will be linked to this in the near future. I know that there are other services out there that do this but again this is all in one place, that’s the kind of efficiency gains that a virtual office can revel in.
Time Tracking: Having the ability to not only track your own time for projects but share that data with a collaborator is pretty great. On top of that you can let the client in on the feed so they can watch their bill rack up while you work, keeping them in the loop not only shows that you are working on their project but they won’t be surprised when they get the final bill. I know that you can do this through spreadsheets, email or time tracking software but again having all of this in one place… are you seeing a trend here.
This is only a sample of what this new medium can be used for and it certainly will constantly change. With the additions of extensions and widgets it will constantly gain functionality. I feel that this tool we be used as a traditional social media platform where friends can quickly share information and interact, but I also feel that this tool will be effectively used by business to supplement the virtual office. Needless to say, Jacinta and I will be using it and we will fill you in with our thoughts and impressions.
I was fortunate enough to be 1 of the 100,000. Here’s what I took away from an hour of testing Google Wave.
Right now “settings” is under construction, so I wasn’t allowed to add extensions. But to see demos of a few, check out http://wave.google.com/help/wave/extensions.html One of the featured extensions on that link is conference calling within the wave.
Basically, the wave keeps track of when something was added or removed. Playback allows you to see when this was done.
It was kind of weird being able to see Jesse type something and then hit backspace to change whatever he was typing, but I guess that’s real time for ya. Brainstorming using Google Wave is going to be awesome. I’m sure there will be extensions that will enhance this.
That’s about all I have for now, started to get tired. Let me know if you run into anything while testing that’s cool!
Not actually part of the game
I just downloaded the Uncharted 2 Demo on my PS3 to take a look at what is touted as the best graphics the system has seen to date. When I got inside to check out the options I was greeted with something I certainly didn’t expect; Twitter. This is the first instance that I’ve seen of a console game integrating the social media service into it’s product. I haven’t messed around with it yet but it appears that you input your twitter credentials and then it will tweet your milestones and achievements while you play. I’ll mess around with it and let you know what I think. If you see some weird tweets about Nathan Drake in my account that’s where it’s coming from. I think this is a great way to use the service and I will guarantee that we will see more developers using this feature in the future: I’m looking at you Modern Warfare 2, take notes.
Google uploaded this video on Sunday, pretty awesome. Developers Stephanie (@Twephanie) and Greg take us through Google Wave.
Jacinta and Jesse are web marketers with expertise in social media and building brand equity. 
