Micro Persuasion

The Rules of the Road for Journalists on Twitter

"But some employers are either so afraid of the platform or so disdainful about its journalistic potential that they've tried to bar their reporters from even accessing Twitter in the workplace. The Sydney Star Observer's (SSO) Harley Dennett says he's denied access to both his Facebook and Twitter accounts at work via web filters on office computers."

via pbs.org

Fascinating look at how journalists, particularly in APAC, are engaging on Twitter. This nugget jumps out as do the 20 tips for journalists.

Posted via web from The Steve Rubel Lifestream

Posterous is Changing How I Think About Blogging

I have been giving a lot of thought to what the future looks like for blogging and where it fits in my life. I have no plans to stop, but as more action moves to the statusphere and my world gets more mobile, I have been looking for a new publishing approach.

Louis Gray, Steve Gilmor and I had a rather deep discussion about this at the Friendfeed meet-up a few weeks ago. I have also had some good conversations about this with my contemporary, Jeremiah Owyang, as well as the folks who work for Six Apart, Blogger and Disqus.

Now that I have been at it for over five years, writing a weblog is starting to feel very slow and antiquated. It's like a singles tennis player who focuses solely on the baseline game, logging long balls back and forth. The statusphere, on other hand, is like playing doubles - and at the net all the time.

That's just one side of the story though. Another part of me feels strongly that in a world of "RTs" and "@s" a thoughtful blog post that adds value is downright refreshing. The right mix is a hybrid.

I have long been an admire of Jon Gruber, who writes the outstanding Daring Fireball weblog. He has the right model. All day long he's posting on his blog pithy comments with links to "finds." Occasionally, he writes a longer analysis as he did today about PR and journalism (a must-read by the way). He is also active on Twitter but for conversation. That's a great model to follow. But how do I do so when I am often on the go?

Enter Posterous. If you haven't seen it, Posterous is outstanding because it can serve as a front end for all of your out-bound publishing. It works entirely by email.

When I email Posterous the content immediately gets posted to my lifestream site, but it also goes to certain other venues depending on how I address the message. Posterous also has a ton  of other features that I love like easy tagging and also traffic statistics that you can see for every one of my posts. (For more browse this archive.)

Lately I have been shifting more of my reading/sharing to my iPhone. Some days I probably spend as much time or more time browsing the web from my mobile device than I do my laptop. Now that I have a new iPhone 3GS, I also want to do more with photos and video. Posterous seems like the great hybrid solution since I can share things in different places based on context and easily do so through via email.

So what does this mean for you as a reader? Nothing. You will get what you have come to expect from me right here on my blog. And if you subscribe my lifestream, you will get even more. My friends on Twitter, Friendfeed and Facebook will get a mix. It appears to be the ideal front end for the active publisher.

How do you decide what to publish where and when? One medium doesn't replace the other but we need more hybrids like Posterous.

Posted via email from The Steve Rubel Lifestream

Search Engine Visibility and PR - An Edelman Digital White Paper

Regular readers here know that in addition to focusing on emerging technologies, I also have long taken an interest in how search engines are evolving. Fundamentally, I believe that Google is media and also every brand's home page. Therefore, search engine visibility (and all of the reputational concerns that go with it) are front and center an opportunity for the public relations industry to shine.

With this in mind, my colleagues and I have co-authored a 13-page position paper on Search Engine Visibility. We released it to our clients last month but now we are making it available to the public today at the Edelman New Media Academic Summit in Washington. You can download it here (PDF). It's also embedded below. This is the second in a series - the first is here.

In the paper we posit that today there are two primary search visibility tactics: Paid Search (more widely known as search engine marketing - SEM) and Optimized Search (e.g. SEO). Both of these are generally not managed by public relations professionals.

Now, however, there are two new disciplines emerging. And both sit squarely in the public relations professional's domain...

• Reputational Search - The premise and promise of Reputational Search is that any company, NGO or brand can apply a search mindset to tried-and-true PR tactics and, in the process, influence the search results around certain keywords.

• Social Search - With Google and competitors increasingly prioritizing social content from Flickr, blogs, Twitter and others in result pages, it is imperative that brands build out "embassies" in all relevant networks – places where employees work to serve the interests of the community, as well as their company.

If you read the paper you will see that we are convinced that search engines for the foreseeable future will have a critical impact on how brands are perceived - far more so than any single social network site, which tend to come and go. As always, we're interested in your views. Please share them below or on Twitter or Friendfeed.

Open publication - Free publishing - More steve rubel

What is the Future of Twitter? Only You Know

A larger, much more readable version of the above is here.

Yesterday during my keynote on the future of Twitter at the TWTRCON conference in San Francisco I decided to do something different. For one day, at least, I put away PowerPoint and fired up a mind mapping program (in my case I use Mind Node for the Mac).

I really enjoyed the experience and, anecdotally from what others told me, so did the audience. For one, It made the session more interactive. Second, because it was different, it seemed to capture people's attention more than a deck would have. (Hmm, is PowerPoint making us blind and deaf?) Still, since this was my first time out mind mapping with the audience I know much can be improved.

To build the mind map I started (conceptually) with a framework that built off of Brian Solis' great Twiiterverse diagram.

Then, I divided the map in half - Twitter as an OS (think "Twitter Inside") and Twitter and the Ecosystem (think Twitter and others). Then, for the next 25 minutes, I took the audience through my initial thinking but opened it up to more feedback and input so that we grow it. Now it's your turn.

I have published the mind map on Flickr. In addition, you can download it here in PDF and OPML format. The OPML file should open up in any mind mapping application like MindManager for Mac or Windows or Mindmeister (a web app).

Let's see if we can take this concept to the next level and perhaps use it to bring Twitter new ideas, which they seem quite open to - at least that's what they said during the session that preceded mine. Leave comments here or on Twitter with the hash #futureoftwitter and let's see where we can take this.

Technorati Tags:
Twitter, TWTRCON

Visits to Twitter Search Soar, Indicating Social Search Has Arrived

Twitter's growth over the last several months has been well chronicled. But there's another story line here that's even more interesting - visits to Twitter Search are also soaring.

According to data from Compete.com visits to the Twitter search page grew more than 400% in the last six months. This sub-domain alone recorded 2.7M unique visitors in April, up from just shy of 536,000 in October. Even more remarkable, traffic to the site, which is tucked away, grew 24% in April.

The data closely mirrors the overall growth of Twitter, which saw unique visitors increase from 3.4M in October to 19.4M in April. However, the search subdomain seems to be following its own trend line.

There's more. Now that Twitter has added search functionality into the main interface, the compete.com data doesn't account for the full spectrum of users that might be executing queries off the main page. In addition, the data doesn't accurately account for the power users who are searching Twitter from inside clients like Seesmic Desktop, Tweetdeck or Tweetie.

However, I think there's something fundamentally new that's going on here: more technically savvy users (and one would assume this includes journalists) are searching Twitter for information. Presumably this is in a tiny way eroding searches from Google. Mark Cuban, for example, is one who is getting more traffic to his blog from Twitter and Facebook than Google.

For over a year now I have been saying that social search could be disruptive to Google. It seems now that, for some, habits are beginning to shift. I know that on Easter Sunday when I wanted to find out if my local Walmart store was open (Walmart is an Edelman client), Twitter Search was the fastest way to find out.

As long as it can maintain its community, search will remain pivotal to Twitter's future and probably one of the first places it will monetize. But the bigger story here is that some users are clearly getting value out of searching social content. This space will only get more interesting once Facebook gets serious about search and Google races to transform itself into more of a live search engine, rather than a static one.

Also, let's not forget that right Friendfeed is the king of social search. It lets you do something no one else can - search just your friends' content. That's a big deal.

Technorati Tags:
Twitter, Social Search, Facebook, Friendfeed

Iconography Dominates in the Age of the Attention Crash

Blackberry Storm icons via the Gadgeteer

This idea didn't occur to me when I started and this blog five years ago and named it Micro Persuasion, but in all honesty it could have. It's been percolating in my subconscious for a long time. In the digital age - where every second there is something new tugging at our attention - we are influenced more than ever by tiny little icons. And there's no sign of the trend abating.

It used to be that in the old days only brands could afford nice logos. However, today almost everyone and everything has an icon. These little logos say a lot about a brand's persona and what they stand for. However, icons are not just for products and services anymore, it's for individuals too.

I don't know about you but I make decisions about the digital tools/services I use and the digital personas I choose to follow on Twitter or Friendfeed not just based on their attributes alone, but their icons. I bet that I am not alone. Icons also influence the mobile applications we choose to put on our handhelds, the sites we bookmark (because of their favicons) and the apps we run on our desktops.

For all of the conversation around personal branding and social media, there's not nearly enough attention paid to the art of iconography. With that here are some of my favorite icons and how they influence me...

Scoble - I have been following Robert Scoble for years. However, ever since he became the Incredible Hulk on Friendfeed (thanks to Thomas Hawk) he cried out to be read even more closely. Unfortunately Scoble just changed his icon back to the old one but I wish he hadn't. In fact, he should take the Hulk icon leverage it everywhere!

Evernote - Evernote is one of those products I want to love. However, I am constantly picking it up and putting it down. However, every time I see the elephant icon in my dock or on my phone or look at the t-shirt that they sent me long ago (pictured below), I realize that Evernote has so much promise because, like an elephant, it never forgets. That keeps me coming back. (In fact, am composing this post with Evernote.)

Seesmic - Every time I look at this icon on my desktop it cries out to be clicked. There's no doubt that the icon is a draw, even though I find the desktop application to be slow. Still the cute icon encourages me to be patient that the service will be just as speedy as the cartoon.

Seesmic Logo by Leah Jones on Flickr

What icons influence you? And how?

Could Twitter One Day Replace Email PR Pitches? Maybe

Over the last few months as I travel the country I have noticed that lots of people in PR that I meet are giving out their Twitter IDs in lieu of their email addresses. Many feature it front and center in their email signature. There's even a site that will generate a graphical version for you, which I have embedded above.

On a related note, more of my inbound and outbound communication these days is in the form of Twitter direct messages or, sometimes, public replies. The direct messages arrive through email, but I find myself often reviewing or responding to these in one of my preferred Twitter clients - either Tweetie or TwitterGadget.

At first I despised the bacn. Now, however, I embrace it. What's more, I have come to see the benefits of direct messages and its potential for PR. It has me wondering: can direct message pitches become an accepted practice that journalists can live with? There is upside for them.

For starters, just like with RSS, journalists are in complete control of the relationship. A PR pro can't direct message a reporter unless he/she is following. This means we have to earn our way on to a reporter's screen by providing valuable content, which many of us but not all of us do. Robert Scoble alluded to this in his recent note to PR pros. 

The key benefit here is that a journalist can always un-follow any PR professional who abuses the relationship. Still, with spam weaving its way into Twitter though replies, it threatens to put the whole kibosh on the plaform's potential for media relations (I am drawing a distinction here from direct to audience engagement via Twitter, which is very different).

Second, for the journalists and bloggers that do encourage PR pros to pitch them via Twitter they can streamline the process by keeping missives down to 140 characters. That's less than the three sentence format some are embracing. It ensures people make their point quickly. This makes it more mobile friendly too.

Now some pitches could be public tweets, others will have to be private direct messages depending on their nature. And of course Twitter will never replace email pitching entirely. 

Despite all the growth and hype, Twitter is still small. Pre-Oprah, Harris Interactive found that in the US, even among the ever-wired 18-34-year-olds, only 8% of those surveyed said they use Twitter. Other demographics break out down as follows: 35-44 (7%), 45-54 (4%) and 55+ (1%). Net, email is ubiquitous, Twitter aint. 

Nevertheless, more journalists are using Twitter. So this makes it increasingly attractive to PR professionals. It also makes it essential that we behave ourselves. A few bad eggs will kill this fast.

What's your view? PR pros, have you built relationships with reporters and/or enhanced them using Twitter? Journalists, I am sure you're worried about any such trend, particularly since many of you use Twitter for both personal and professional communications purposes. Weigh in with a comment below or reply to me on Twitter @steverubel. If there are interesting responses, I will round them up in a subsequent post.

Twitter's Monetization Strategy: Developers, Developers, Developers

There's endless speculation about how Twitter will make money - and when. Twitter is really hot right now, making it attractive to advertisers for both outbound marketing and deep insights. However, I don't think Twitter will be able to build a long term, sustainable business through advertising revenues. 

The brief history of online communities (all 15 years worth) informs us that it's virtually impossible to make money around them. No one has been able to build a sustainable business doing so that has lasted more than five years. The reason is, people online are fickle. We come and go. This is why I wrote that Twitter is peaking - at least as far as in its ability to grow users.

What Twitter has done, however, that very few companies have achieved, is build an amazing platform that developers love. That ecosystem, if they invest in it, changes the game. 

Suddenly, Twitter is no longer a web site. Rather, it is becoming the web's first major social operating system. Twitter is to rapid fire online communication what Microsoft is to PCs, Apple and Blackberry are to mobile phones, Google is to search and advertising and Facebook hopes to become to the social graph. The numbers from comScore don't tell the real story. This BusinessWeek photo essay, which shows the innovation in the platform, does.

If Twitter invests in growing its platform and empowers developers to do more with its API (i.e. build profitable companies), it can create a remarkable business much as these other giants have before them. The beauty of it is they will never have to worry about the ever cyclical online advertising market or the fickle consumer who is in search of the next hot site. What's more it can spur all kinds of innovation, as the platform has already done.

This is the surest path for Twitter: mold the robust platform into a social OS and add premium services for developers and Twitter could become a giant business that weathers the ever-changing fickle nature of online communities. Choose instead to focus on growing site traffic and advertisers and it will fall prey to the same fate as The Well, GeoCities, Tripod, ICQ, Friendster and every community that walked before it.

So Twitter, be Microsoft, not AOL. Focus on the developers. Enable them to monetize and to grow with you. Become the Internet's first social OS and the rest will take care of itself. Do not chase Madison Avenue. Build the platform, monetize it with value-added services and inspire innovation and Madison Avenue and the rest of the world will plug into you.

How to Become a Super Tweeter in Just 15 Minutes a Day with iGoogle

Do you want to become a Super Tweeter that everyone is dying to follow? Who doesn't? The good news is that it's really easy. Here's the formula: find stuff that people don't have time to on their own, link to it, talk about it and engage in interesting relevant conversations around it. That's all there is to it and this is a snap using iGoogle.

First, if you don't have an iGoogle page. Go sign up here. Then add a tab for Twitter and bolt on these four Google Gadgets to your page: Google Mini Search, Google News, Google Reader (assuming you're a Reader user) and TwitterGadget. If you click on the "edit this tab" link in the sidebar you can reformat the page so it's two columns. 

If you look at the above screenshot you will see what my page looks like. The left-hand side is where I graze for content. The right side is where I share. I have customized my gadgets so that they cover topics that both my followers and I are interested in.

Now here's where this gets fun. 

All you need to do is use the left to find stuff and the right to share and comment on it. The mini search widget lets you search the web for related links. The Google News and Google Reader let you track topics. And the a-mazin' TwitterGadget is for searching for Twitter topics (type a word and it ctrl-q to search for it on Twitter), tracking the people you follow and for re-tweeting. You can even drag links from the left into the right, as I did in the screenshot above.

That's all there is to it. Do this for 15 minutes a day around a topic that people are passionate about and you will be on your way.

Bring Twitter Right Into Gmail with the Amazing TwitterGadget

I have tried TweetDeck a number of times but I keep uninstalling it because it puts a drain on my system and I find it distracting. Still, I want fast access to my Twitter account and to be able to track my replies, direct messages and to also quickly glance at what my favorite users are posting. Enter the amazing TwitterGadget for Gmail.

I always keep Gmail running in a tab in my browser. As I have written, I use Gmail for far more than just communications. The TwitterGadget embeds a powerful Twitter client right into your Gmail account. The instructions for adding it are here.

When you first add TwitterGadget, you get a miniature Twitter app that sits in your sidebar. But that's only the half of it. Click on the double arrows in the gadget's title bar you get a full blown Twitter client that looks like the photo at the top of this post. In many ways TwitterGadget is the best client out there. The app also can be added to iGoogle or run stand-alone in a browser tab.

Here are some things worth exploring. If you tweak the settings, the gadget will auto refresh every three minutes (hopefully the developer will make it real-time soon). You can also easily click on a tweet to reply or even re-tweet it. All short URLs will turn into the full links if you hover over them. In addition, you can change the colors and more in the settings.

Where TwitterGadget gets really interesting, though, is with its kller keyboard shortcuts. They add a ton of functionality. For example, if you type a phrase, select it and then hit "control Q," it will pull a Twitter search right in the app (see photo below). Also, you can easily pull up tweets for an individual user and/or see statistics about them.

Finally, if you have the "go to label" and "quick links" features enabled in Gmail Labs you can bookmark the TwitterGadget and then pull it up with a keyboard command.

There's another Twitter app for Gmail that's out there that looks promising, but it's a bit buggy and not as feature rich. For now, however, TwitterGadget is a game changer and I highly recommend it to anyone who uses Gmail and or iGoogle.

Customer Service is the New PR

Four years ago I wrote this...

"One day CRM systems will bolt in blog monitoring functionality so these posts automatically get funneled to the right place. For now, they need to be handled onesie twosie - but handled nonetheless."

Now today Salesforce.com has added Twitter customer service tools to its already formidable suite. Forrester Analyst Jeremiah Owyang sees Twitter's future as social CRM.

However, I don't think Twitter will be the only game in town. There will be lot of venues to vent, all of which can have an impact on brand reputation as journalists discover all of this conversation through Google, Twitter Search and other search engines. GetSatisfaction.com is growing. I wrote about this in our most recent white paper (see trend one).

In addition, I cover this in my first vlog on the Edelman Facebook page (forgive the acting!). My takeaway is that this isn't just a CRM concern, but rather it requires close coordination between customer service and PR. There's a great study on this from SNCR. What's your view?

Twitter is Peaking

Twitter traffic data from comScore (via TechCrunch)

I have been active Twitter user since January 2007. And it's been remarkable just how much it has changed since.

In the last six months, Twitter has gone nuclear. There are three reasons why and I explore them in this post. However, they also point to why Twitter is about to jump the shark and we should begin asking ourselves what's "the next big thing."

As long as Twitter maintains a following I feel every business should join it and converse with their customers - just as I said a year ago. Still, it's always important for everyone to see the big picture. That's why predicting a market top is something I thoroughly enjoy doing. In part, it's what I am paid to do - think about what's next. This disicipline keeps me and others like Robert Scoble like from getting stale.

In December 2006 when Evan Williams first showed me Twitter in the back of a cab in Seattle, I thought it was going nowhere. But after I played with it, I got hooked. My early fascination with Twitter began because, like now, I was scanning the horizon for what's next. I sensed that in late 2006 that blogging was cresting. Twitter replaced it for me and, later, millions. Now the same can be said about RSS, which many of the early adopters who first embraced it have also now ceremoniously dumped. (More on RSS in a subsequent post.)

As I have written before, no community has ever had staying power. Twitter right now is poised to fall victim to the same trend. Let's take a look at three reasons why Twitter has witnessed incredible growth, all of which point to why the service is peaking right now. (Note: Many of you will disagree. Daniel Terdiman today wrote that at SXSW, Twitter was the new Twitter.)

1) Celebs Flocked to Twitter - Just six months ago, the list of the top 100 users on Twitter read like a who's who of geeks. That's what made it a draw, for many, initially. Now, however, the list looks like People or US Magazine. Twitter is losing it's geek creds as celebs flock to the service.

Historically, as the geeks go, so goes social media. I believe that the Founding Fathers and Mothers of Twitter - people who gave the service it's wings, will soon tire of it and seek the next shiny object. Already, Dave Winer is playing with Jaiku. Scoble is deep into Friendfeed. I am finding a lot more value these days in both Friendfeed and Facebook, which leads me to my next point.

2) Twitter is Disorganized - Twitter attracted a following because it's disorganized. Since replies are not threaded, celebs and corporations do not feel they have to respond to every Tweet. It's a tree in the forrest thing. There are no comments to moderate. And this makes it more attractive than blogging.

However, what was once "a feature" could begin to be seen as "a bug" and lead us to seek more organization. As Jeff Jarvis explains in his book What Would Google Do, other services like Facebook and Google provide elegant organization. This is something Friendfeed does well too. It's also a big reason why Tweetdeck is succeeding. Twitter would be wise to acquire Tweetdeck now before someone else does, especially as it adds more social tentacles.

3) Twitter is a Mile Wide but an Inch Deep - Brevity rules on Twitter. And this has encouraged time-starved celebrities and corporate types to jump into Twitter much more so than blogging. It also supports anonymity. You can be "a corporation" on Twitter, which you really can't do with a blog. Here people want to see the faces.

However, as Twitter grows and people begin to crave reading Tweets from personalities and others they trust, I wonder if they will want a deeper relationship - one with less anonymity. This is something other services, notably Friendfeed and Facebook, do well. You can use either to create a community around all your stuff, not just 140-character tweets. Also, I suspect they will want to weed signal from noise. Right now that's tough to do.

So you heard it here first, folks. Twitter is peaking. Now I believe Twitter can get through "the dip" that stares them in the face, but it will need to adapt by: keeping its core users intact, remaining attractive to corporations and celebs and by becoming more organized. Search will help with the latter, but expect a battle as Facebook and Friendfeed both make a concerted push to become the place for all your social stuff.

Twitter Search Traffic Poised to Eclipse Google Blog Search

The search engine landscape is quietly under going a major revolution. There are two major forces at work here: our growing hunger for real-time information and the coming convergence of search and social networking. The latter adds a much needed layer of trust to traditional search that helps us qualify sources.

While some feel such shifts in search patterns potentially pose a short-term threat to Google, I don't quite see it that way. Google latest "Vince" update shows they clearly get the trust issue. However, Google does not have nearly the same depth in social networking as others and that's an issue longer term.

Instead, more immediately, these two trends will likely spur the growth of a new class of "live web" search tools that are tightly embedded inside social networks. This will almost certainly seal the demise of dedicated blog search sites. In addition, it's conceivable, though far less likely, that both these trends could erode news search sites as consumers seek out filtered information from people they trust.

Consider this nugget. According to compete.com (an account is required to view this subdomain data), traffic to search.twitter.com tripled in the last six months. Meanwhile, Google Blog Search traffic is flat and, only until just recently, the same can be said for Technorati. More importantly, Twitter Search has just about eclipsed Google Blog Search. As of February, Twitter Search attracted 1.35 million users while Google Blog Search, which has been plagued by relevance issues, sits at 1.38 million users.

Twitter's growth in search has been aided by its girth in the press. According to news volulme data from Daylife, Twitter's weekly media mentions rocketed from 2000 per week last year to nearly 8000 today. However, I see this all as just the beginning.

Right now Facebook and Twitter only let you search for content from across the entire network. You can't limit your search to only what your trusted circle have shared. On Friendfeed, however, you can. Still, as bullish as I remain about Friendfeed, I feel the utility of its social search feature will pale in comparison to what Facebook and Twitter could do if they were to enable the same functionality. The reason is reach.

Keep an eye on the social search space. It's not a short-term threat to Google, but it certainly represents a major shift in where and how we will search for relevant news and information by layering in trusted sources.

Secure Your Twitter Sessions with https

Want to catch up on your Twitter fix but don't care to have your employer listening in on what your reading? Or maybe you're using an open wifi connection at an airport and and don't care to risk people sniffing your session. 

Well, I am not sure when they started this (it might be old), but Twitter, like Friendfeed and others, supports https. This means you can post/read tweets as well as replies, direct messages and even search the user directory all securely via an encrypted session.

All you need to do is visit https://twitter.com instead of http://twitter.com and you're good to go. This is particularly valuable for people who don't share their updates with the world, just their followers. Lifehacker explains the benefits of using https here.

Five Digital Trends to Watch for 2009

This has also been cross-posted on the Edelman Digital blog.

In my role as Director of Insights for Edelman Digital I am writing monthly white papers for clients on key trends. Sometimes we will release these broadly. For the first one, I drew on members of the Edelman team, as well as third party research, to highlight five digital trends to watch for 2009. Each includes specific recommended actions.

Even though the economy is slowing, all signs show that audiences are still spending a lot more time on the web. Marketers need to invest to meet them there. However, what's changed today they are smarter about where they focus their time, dollars and energy. Experimentation is giving way to tactics that deliver ROI. These include public engagement, search and social networking — three themes that connect the major macro trends.

There are five trends covered in this white paper...

Satisfaction Guaranteed - Customer care and PR are blending as consumers use social media to demand service

Media Reforestation -  The media is in a constant state of reinvention as it transitions from atoms to bits

Less is the New More - Overload takes its toll. Gorging on media is out. Selective ignorance and friends as filters are in

Corporate All-Stars - Workers flock to social media to build their personal brands, yet offer employers an effective and credible way to market in the downturn

The Power of Pull -  Where push once ruled, it’s now equally important to create digital content that people discover through search

You can download the full paper here(PDF) or simply browse or read it below. I look forward to hearing your feedback.

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Research Business & Legal marketing media

Pew: 11% of Americans Read or Post Status Updates

The Pew Internet for the American Life Project is out today with a new study (PDF) that reveals that 11% of Americans share or read status updates via a micro-blogging social network service such as Twitter, Facebook or Yammer.

However, the brief is somewhat misleading since it seems to hook the story primarily to Twitter, when in fact it can cover lots of sites. I suspect Facebook looms larger here in the survey than Pew lets on. In addition, I would advise reading it closely since the data can be misinterpreted.

In December 2008 Pew asked more than 2700 consumers if they used "Twitter or another 'microblogging' service to share updates about themselves or to see updates about others." According to Pew, 11% responded yes, which is up from 9% in November 2008 and 6% in May of last year. However, read the question closely. Not all of these people are necessarily posting and if they are it can be anywhere, not just Twitter.

Other nuggets from the study...

• Users are young -  Twitter and "similar services" have been most avidly embraced by young adults. Nearly one in five (19%) online adults ages 18 and 24 have "ever used Twitter and its ilk," as have 20% of online adults 25 to 34
• They're not necessarily affluent - Online Americans who live in lower-income households are more likely to use Twitter than more affluent Americans. Some 17% of internet users in households earning less than $30,000 update their status, compared with 10% of those earning more than $75,000 annually, Pew notes
• They are mobile - More than three-quarters (76%) of, again what they are characterizing as "Twitter users" use the internet wirelessly – either on a laptop with a wireless connection, or via PDA, handheld or cell phone

Regardless of the specific watering hole (eg Facebook, Twitter, etc.) I am less impressed with the 11% figure. What I do find more notable is the growth rate. An increase of two percent from a base of nine percent in just a month is quite impressive. But keep in mind, not everyone maybe posting and the base is wide.

PR Pros to Get a Database of Twitter Users by Mid-Year

PR Newser reports that Cision, a very respectable company that runs a media database used by thousands of public relations professionals, will expand its reporter and blogger data to include Twitter user handles by mid year. It's unclear if they will only link existing profiles to their Twitter handles or if Cision will also replicate the broader set of tools that Twitter already offers.

Regardless, while this is hardly unexpected given Twitter's growth (and it's the right move for CIsion and the industry), it may mean changes for the more influential users of the micro-blogging service. For starters, Twitter users may soon see an influx of in-bound pitches from PR pros. Most likely these could come in the form of 150-character direct messages (DMs) since most Twitterati don't usually post their email address.

My advice to those of you in PR is to participate first, pitch later (this is counsel my colleague Phil Gomes regularly teaches). Ideally I would love to see everyone in PR be on Twitter but only if we add value. This means that we must transparently and openly participate in conversations, always respect the community and build relationships. Do this (and do this well) and most everyone will be happy to hear our pitches. 

Hopefully when Twitter data arrives on PR professionals' desktops by mid-year it won't encourage us to pollute Twitter with DM pitches. Rather, we'll use the info to be smarter. Then again, alot of this data is already out there so maybe this is all moot.

IceRocket Live Web Search Rolls Up Twitter, Blogs, News and More

IceRocket is a jewel of a site that has slowly been improving. I highlighted it recently in my post on the state of blog search. Today they unveiled a cool new feature that blends tweets, blog posts, news stories, videos and images. The feature is called Ice Rocket Big Buzz. Founder Blake Rhodes pinged me about it earlier today. (A larger view of the above image is here)

IceRocket Big Buzz fills a void that we desperately need - a real-time view of news events and memes. This feature gets us closer to such a utopia by pulling together live web sources into a single page. Take, for example a newsy search for plane crash. As I write this post it's filling up with lots of very current information all about today's top news story. This includes videos from YouTube and images from Flickr. Plus you can track all of it via RSS with a link at the top right. Sounds like a dream for journalists.

This is a great first start. I would love to see the page automatically refresh and have a mobile version. In addition, an open API would be helpful too. That way, should I wish, I can add a feed from Friendfeed for items that users are only sharing there. 

Still, I am glad to see that someone is out there trying to solve the live web search problem because, as Scoble shows today with the plane crash story, it's where the action is. Google is sleeping at the wheel here.

Who Joined Twitter When? Twitterholic Knows

Twitterholic added a couple of neat features.

First, they now sort Twitter users by when they joined.

They also now sort Twitter users by location. So, for example, you can now see who has the most followers among San Franciscans or New Yorkers.

In addition, you can also sort Twitter users by the number of updates or by how many they follow.

Finally, you can combine these. So now it's easy to find out who in New York has been on Twitter the longest. In addition, you can also now track the overall top 100 list via RSS. Here's the feed.

Twitter on Crack and for Speedy Customer Service

A couple of Twitter-related gems from my feed reader tonight...

First, Mike Elgan has set up a site called Twitter on Crack that auto-refreshes your personal Twitter page every 15 seconds. If I recall Twitter used to do this on its own, but now it doesn't.

I avoid running any more desktop apps than I need to, so I skip TweetDeck and the like. Now, however, when I want to swim in Tweets, I find this site is the ideal solution.

Meanwhile, down south, Rex Hammock has a Christmas Eve tale about how two companies - EyeFi and Griffin Technologies - were using Twitter to respond to customer inquires over the holiday. The use of Twitter as a customer service venue is definitely a key trend to watch.