Social Media Butterfly

Biz Stone, Twitter Co-Founder, Interviewed on Fox Business

Posted by Nathania Johnson

In part of her 3 Days in the Valley series, Liz Claman interviewed Biz Stone, Twitter co-founder, on the campus of Stanford University.

The first video is the broadcast interview and the second one is the web-based video.

Twitter Went Down During WWDC After All

Posted by Nathania Johnson

UPDATE: Twitter claims they stayed up. That’s what he said.

I have mixed feelings about Twitter’s announcement about how they planned to handle all the traffic and tweets coming from Steve Job’s keynote address (an iPhone 3G news) at the WWDC today.

On the one hand, Twitter seemed pro-actively trying to address problems before they happened.

On the other hand, well, there’s a bunch of other hands.

1. The reduction in features in order to support the traffic.
2. The limitations placed on APIs. Twitter recommended reducing applications such as Twhirl to 6 minutes, but who wants to wait 6 minutes for updates from Jobs’ speech (which we, of course, at the time didn’t realize how underwhelming it was going to be).
3. Twitter still went down.

I had planned for Twitter to go down, but I was hoping that their fixes would work. When Twhirl stopped updating for me, I tried to use IM updates via Google Talk. But IM updates were down.

So eventually I remembered this fun little site called FriendFeed. FriendFeed is still mixed for me. It has a great platform for conversations in place, but I still feel a bit disconnected on it.

However, I think FriendFeed (which has ex-Googlers on its team btw) is slowly building a fantastic application. I love slow yet solid growth. Twitter is the opposite.

My faith in Twitter is dwindling and I can’t believe it came to this. I mean, I’ve been a Twitter evangelist and some really cool things have happened as a result of Twitter.

But FriendFeed looks poised to take the cake. Did I mention FriendFeed AUTO-refreshes?

BY THE WAY: Yet another reminder to stop following those pesky A-listers: So many headlines and blog posts teased that Twitter had fixed itself. But when you go to the actual Twitter blog, they warned that certain features could/would go down.

I say down with the A-listers!

Hilarious Zappos Twitter PSA

Posted by Nathania Johnson

Zappos continues to show us that they’re one of the great companies. Check out this public service announcement they’ve recorded:

Twennis: Putting Twitter to Great Marketing Use

Posted by Nathania Johnson

Twitter mania continues! Now TennisChannel.com is getting in on the action, but not by the usual means of setting up a Twitter account and posting regularly.

Instead, TennisChannel.com has launched Twennis.com. The simple, one-page site advertises live streaming of the French open on TennisChannel.com. But it also features tweets about tennis. They just scroll along, powered by Twistori.

I love this concept, and I hope to see more companies making use of it - and even taking it to the next level.

But what is the next level? Leave a comment and let us all know!

via @juliaroy

The Power of Twitter in the Case of Emergency

Posted by Nathania Johnson

Last year, when the tragic shooting on the campus of Virginia Tech occurred, I thought that campuses should really embrace a tool like Twitter in order to keep students and staff abreast of crisis situations.

12 months later, Twitter is more than just fun - it’s on the verge of life-saving for some. In her post, How Twitter Saves Lives, Anne Jackson blogged about how people communicated the whereabouts of a tornado using Twitter.

This is tremendous stuff, people. When you’re in a basement, you’re probably not watching TV, which will only give you a radar’s assumption of where a tornado is.

Twitter offers real time, real information. If you read Anne’s post you’ll notice that the siren system didn’t completely work because power was lost. But Twitter was still able to be utilized.

I’m guessing some people couldn’t use their phones. If power was lost - it probably depended on how you were connecting to the internet via your phone, which depends on device, carrier, etc.

If anyone can offer up further insight into the tech vs. nature side of things, that would be greatly appreciated.

In the meantime, Twitter on - for fun and in crisis.

How Twitter Helped Me Get 3 Solid Job Offers

Posted by Nathania Johnson

In early February, I found out my contract at an online marketing firm was ending at the end of the month. I immediately Tweeted my availability for a new gig. Within 24 hours, I had 3 solid job leads, all of which eventually turned into fantastic offers.

I’m not used to this. I’ve been unemployed something like 4 times in my life. I was having fun living in the DC area when unemployment struck one year. I applied to 100 jobs, went to several interviews and a good number of second interviews. I made it into the top 2-3 candidates for many jobs, but never got the offer.

I ended up moving home to NC and living with my parents at the humbling age of 27. I took a job at a nonprofit, only to be caught up in layoffs yet again six months later.

Thankfully unemployment only lasted 1 month that time, as I found work at an SEO firm as a copywriter. I took a $5,000 a year salary cut, but I had wanted to be a web content writer for so long (I didn’t know anything about SEO until this job, so I wasn’t searching properly).

Something about writing for the staff blog caught hold of me. I had this undeniable knack for blogging and social media. I was doing social media efforts via volunteering my marketing skills for nonprofits - before I even knew it was called social media.

Blogging at the seo firm and subsequently at the online marketing firm started to help raise my profile. Things weren’t clicking for me at the online marketing place, and I often wondered if I was desirable to other companies.

When my contract was terminated, I had my chance to find out. Like I said, with just one tweet on a given Tuesday, I ended up with three job offers. What if I had tweeted more often? I’m glad I didn’t. Choosing among good job offers is hard enough and Twitter wasn’t my only source of job leads.

But let’s be clear - the only reason I ended up having such success with Twitter was because I used the tool to network and to try and offer something of value. If I only Tweeted what I was doing (i.e. “having coffee” or “petting my cat”), then I don’t think I would have had any interest.

I used Twitter in a way that showed that I understand SEO, social media, and online marketing. And because of that, others had confidence in me in a way where I became hire-worthy.

I hope this post didn’t come across as arrogant. I hope some of you are able to use this to help empower your networking and your Twittering. Get out of a crappy job or get more freelancing gigs! Whatever your goal is, I know that social media can help you do it. And Twitter is a great place to start.

Twitter Is Having the Best Week Ever

Posted by Nathania Johnson

Twitter is one of my top 2 favorite social media tools (the other being StumbleUpon).

The past week has been very HOT for Twitter. I personally have received a bunch of new followers. And the blogosphere is all a flutter with all things Twitter. Check it out:

• Ann Smarty sphinned about TwitterVolume, which shows how many times a keyword has been mentioned on Twitter. (Tip: Use TweetScan to find the exact Tweets containing a keyword.)
• Jennifer Slegg wrote Ten ways to market your blog on Twitter without being a spammer.
• Sebastian Provencher declared that Twitter is the new Facebook. Oh, I hope so.
• Last but certainly not least is Common Craft’s video “Twitter in Plain English.” I actually don’t think this video gave people an idea of the real power behind Twitter. But I’ll save that for another post.
• Jason Calcanis wrote that Twitter is his #2 referrer of traffic to his blog.
• Lee Odden asked his readers how they use Twitter. At the time of this post, the number one reason is “Sharing links to items of interest to your network” with “Networking for new contacts” and “Reinforcing current network contacts” coming in 2nd and 3rd respectively.
• Paul Chaney wrote Twitter’s Manifold Appeal
• Mike Sansone wrote about using Twitter with Yahoo! Pipes.
• Kim Krause Berg says Twitter reminds her of the TV show, Cheers.

So there you have it. If you’re not on Twitter, you are so old school!

Micro Measuring Twitter with Twittermeter

Posted by Nathania Johnson

One of the obstacles in Social Media right now is measuring marketing campaigns. Twittermeter is attempting to break down the barrier, albeit in a very broad manner. The tool graphs the number of mentions a word gets on Twitter during a given timeframe. Let’s take a look:

I used the tool to compare mentions of Microsoft and Yahoo in Twitter. (The tool is experiencing database overload, so the developer is currently limiting the available dates.) As you can see, the two companies are essentially seeing the same number of mentions, which is not surprising considering MDSN’s bid for YHOO.

This tool should primarily be used to measure trends and buzz as opposed to looking at hard data. Twittermeter is a fantastic step in the direction of social media measurement, and I hope we see many more useful tools like this in the coming year.