Teaching 5 years olds about Twitter

I tripped over this excellent TEDx presentation this morning... 2 enterprising infant school teachers embracing new technology to equip their charges not just with an understanding of how to use a particular platform, but rather more importantly about how to use the internet responsibly, whilst building their basic literacy and creative skills.  I'm sure there are many parents that would do well to watch and follow their example rather than remaining either ignorant of what their kids are watching / accessing /participating in on the web or are just fearful, often through their own ignorance, of what's going on and feeling swamped and helpless about what to do about it.

The video also talks of some of the parents' and the schools reactions to the initiative and the challenges these two smart teachers have faced.  Well worth the 19 minutes time investment, whether you have kids or not.

We can't change the digitally connected world, we can only embrace and adapt to what is happening, and more importantly society has a responsibility to equip the younger generations with skills to navigate it, which we should be pushing proactively.  Hats off to these two inspiring teachers at Meltham Primary School, great work!



Kids are growing up in a multi-device, multi-platform connected world. Fact. Tablets are growing in penetration fast... it's no longer a world with one device that can only be used in a supervised location. The recent OFCOM report on multi-screen / tv alternative choices refers to many parents being surprised that their kids could access the web on their iPod Touch devices.

iPad's are intuitive devices and incredibly valuable as an on the go entertainment/keep quiet solution - I was in a pub last Sunday sitting next to a table of 3 families, with 5 junior school-ish aged kids all sitting there on a device each (plus one with a book). My parents would never have allowed it, kids do need to learn how to behave in social situations too, but I can see and understand the trade off.

What surprised me more than that scenario though was a conversation earlier in the day with friends who were staying for the weekend with their train-obsessed 4 year old, who whilst we were chatting was happily watching one train video after another on YouTube on the iPad WHICH HAS NO EASY PARENTAL CONTROLS and you can't uninstall the app - sure there's some convoluted workarounds but....  Come on Apple - I was appalled.  The parents had tried hiding the app in folders, but to no avail.. and so they were stumped.. a child happily pressing "related video" train pictures to watch video after video, but no means to ensure that he didn't randomly stumble over something inappropriate.

I [heart] Twitter

I’ve had a Twitter account in various guises for nearly 4 years now. To begin with I signed up to explore and understand better the new shiny digital toy. The people to follow were few +/or mostly known to me personally at the outset.  

Several years later, Twitter has become an indispensable tool in my professional armoury, but I’m a geek and I live and breathe in the digital world. I’m not sure  it’s necessarily for everyone although I do believe that apps like Flipboard (for iPad) might make it more user-friendly in broader contexts.  

 So taking a step back, why am I still loving Twitter?

• There are handy interfaces like Tweetdeck or Hootsuite that turn the Twitter.com user experience into something useful and manageable. Without these I would probably have given up pretty quickly.
• I am in control of who I follow – chosen by me, for me, to help me achieve what I want to (primarily in my case keeping up to date with what’s happening in the digital world). This is key – choosing my trusted sources of information carefully saves me time and means I have a manageable and largely relevant newstream to digest.
  
  
• It’s a useful tool to share interesting things I find with those kind enough to follow me – presumably because they think I provide a useful filtering service. Twitter relationships tend to be assymmetrical  - I might follow someone interesting to me, but unlike Facebook or LinkedIn there’s no expectation or requirement for the symmetrical loop to be closed, so following and followers numbers don’t match. I’m not in it for the ego-boost, or celebrity like some, I’m not motivated by pure follower numbers nor any specific need to drive traffic to my blog, but that’s me. If you were running a corporate blog or other marketing activity it can be a valuable tool in the mix.
  
  
•   I listen much more than I Tweet, and when I do it’s because I’ve found something worth sharing or I want to promote a blog article I’ve written, or very occasionally to vent frustrations at bad consumer experiences – inverse advocacy if you like, but it’s a powerful public voice if used sparingly. Resorting to Twitter has on more than one occasion meant I got problems resolved more quickly than being an invisible item in an emails awaiting response queue.  Businesses are slowly realising that the people’s public voice has large reach and clout and sticking heads in the sand isn’t going to help.
  
  
•   I’m reasonably attentive to who is following me, because it helps me discern what to tweet, and keeps those who are clearly spam tweeters or on some bizarre quest for a large number of followers in their place.
  
  
•    Twitter has become another comms  / messaging space for me too – I know which of my digerati mates are as Twitter addicted as I am, just like you know which of your friends use which IM account and so Twitter DMs (direct messages) are in my repertoire when I think about who I am wanting to say what to.
  
  
• I’m more selective of which industry events I attend in person because in a time constrained world following the headlines via the tweeted soundbites from those in attendance is often a “good enough” experience.   Last week I made the most of the IAB UK’s video conference following the #iabvideo tag, this morning I am keeping an eye on Comscore EMEA’s video ad session - #VAS11. I enjoy participating in conferences I actually attend even more now that I have Twitter to hand – the banter amongst participants of different people’s takes on a presentation, the chance to find new people to follow, the “companion screen” if you like, to the presenters in front of you. You could argue it’s a distraction but I personally believe it adds value to the experience. That said it’s much more helpful if a conference organiser pre-defines the hashtag from the outset / in advance otherwise a large chunk of the audience are busy trying to suggest and find consensus on what to use not listening to the opening comments!! 

 Personal request though... would conference organisers please note that it’s  bordering on rudeness now to host something in a basement room with lousy 3g and not provide free wifi / the access code.

I get asked about Twitter and brands or Twitter and corporations a lot. I don’t believe there’s a one size fits all answer.   How a brand or an individual finds Twitter useful is very much a contextual / personal thing. 

“Thou shalt join Twitter” is a pretty useless corporate mandate unless you are prepared to spend some time training people on how it can add value to their professional +/or personal lives and give them some tips on where to start and what to do  / not to do.Make sure the decision makers understand it properly would be my advice. That way they will be prepared to deal with any issues that come up and need elevating. The last thing you’d want is Twitter being used naively by the un-informed and finding your business advantages shared with the world inadvertently or in contrast find productivity drops because everyone’s glued to Twitter all day.  It’s easy to get distracted. 

Know what your corporate policy is rule one!

Make sure everyone is clear on what’s appropriate or not, especially if you are asking people to sign up wearing a corporate rather than personal hat. Most people have a personal email account these days, and unless you are expecting people to tweet on behalf of the organisation it’s probably better to advise them to approach Twitter from a personal perspective (in my humble opinion). Everyone’s notion of what’s valuable to them will differ and if you are asking people to embrace something new, then it’ll be made a whole lot easier if they are given freedom to customise to their own interests, professional and personal – that way it’s more likely to become embraced and habitual rather than just another thing to check / another password to remember. We all have enough of those as it is.

Used well it can be a powerful marketing, business and insight tool, it’s a means to drive $ value to the business (think Dell Outlet stores), drive loyalty, distribute content to an audience who’ve said they’re interested in your news,  deliver customer service  and enhance (real time) learning . 

Fundamentally whether you manage a brand, a team or your own time, you need to be  clear about the purpose you are using Twitter for so you can leverage it effectively and  attribute time and resources appropriately.   Dive in. Have a go.

From the horse's mouth...

I am really really hoping that a) this is genuine and b) it's continued for a while, because this is consumer insight gold.  And even if a+b turn out not to be true my morning has been improved no end by finding this Tweetfeed  highlighting the things this guy's Dad is using Google for:  I recommend clicking over and scrolling a while. I love the honesty.

2010 in search, tweets, apps & trends

Google just released their search trend year in review video (note the not very subtle plugs for many of their services along the way) It is worth watching but be warned it's not going to leave you bouncing with joy about 2010.  It seems like it's been a lousy year for many people. Bring on 2011.  They also published the top searches per category. I'm sure Robert Pattinson will be delighted to have scraped in at #10 of the most searched for people, with Justin Bieber taking the #1 slot. 



Meanwhile, Twitter reported that the world sent 25 billion tweets this year (so far),and on average 95 million tweets are sent everyday.  Twitter also published charts of top topics tweeted about in 2010:  Unsurprisingly there's a strong correlation between the Google search rankings and the Tweet charts: iPad dominates in technology and yet again Justin Bieber tops the people charts. (Click here to read how they compiled the charts).

Apple also recently published their top apps of the year. You can check who is downloading what (music, films, podcasts apps) & where (by market) on iTunes charts. Well worth a play, if only for curiosity.

For 2010, Facebook dominates the free download charts and Angry Birds (game) the paid chart.

Crazy but true, this bonkers addictive game tops the paid app charts in UK, US, France, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal & Sweden and is in the top 5 in a further 7 countries: Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Netherlands, Luxemburg, Ireland and Germany. In Greece it's number 6, and the only place it doesn't make the Top10 from the published charts is Japan.

 
You can bet that the Angry Birds soft toys that Rovio are releasing in January will give a welcome boost to the usually quiet January toy market too.

And whilst I'm having a round-up morning, here's the ever brilliant Contagious round up of top trends of 2010.

Misconception: No-one tweets outside the heart of big cities?

Wrong!

Sure there'll always be a concentration of people at the front end of technology in places where geeks like me tend to work : every big city tends to have areas with lots of creative / strategy shops, but lots of people commute a long way to work and if they are enthusiastic about what they are doing will advocate / influence those around them when they are not in the office.

Just found this fab, fab infographic that maps Tweets like contours on a map.

Have a play (they've added some amusing tweaks of place names), or go and see a selection of other images from the creator over on Flickr... Clever stuff. 

Promoted Tweets debut with Toy Story 3 / Disney Pixar

 The first "promoted tweets" went live today for Disney/Pixars forthcoming release of Toy Story 3. 

However they are only visible to people using Twitter via Twitter.com where they are showing up as a trending topic:

 For the vast majority of us who use another more user-friendly Twitter client e.g Tweetdeck, Seismic or HootSuite, no can see (yet, at any rate!).

Digital Treasure Ahoy! Utterly mad but fabulous Twitter visualisation mash up

Thanks to my friend Mark, I've just found this wonderful, hilarious, Twitter visualisation experience from some crazily creative dude in Japan. LOVING it.

A musically accompanied parade of people you follow or who follow you and their Tweets! It takes a while to load, and after a while the backing track gets a tad annoying but have a play with either your Twitter handle or a keyword. Digital treasure. Delight!

And there was me only earlier today having a debate with someone over original innovation v creative mashing! Scraping Twitter isn't new, but as Hollywood script writer and storytelling guru Robert McKee once told me, there are only 7 stories in the movies, just a million different ways to tell them. ;-)

Still not get Twitter & why it's useful in so many ways?

Then I encourage you to go and visit this handy "great examples" round up site for inspiration.

Twitter Advertising in Malaysia

Whilst I was hanging out with my ASEAN buddies last week someone told me that you could advertise on Twitter in Malaysia.  Curiosity aroused, I dug a bit deeper to find that Churp Churp  have basically taken an existing blog seeding model and applied it to Twitter.

Interesting stuff and well worth clicking on that link above if only for the nice graphics of how WOM works.  I wonder how long it will be before we see this rolling out in the UK / elsewhere.

Be useful, bask in the halo of positive sentiment

I just read about a FAB example of a brand using Twitter & social media to provide a really useful service,  not being overly heavy handed with the branding upfront  but  therefore being able to bask in the glow of "thank you useful brand for providing the service" .  So whilst you could mosey on over and follow that link I thought it merited a post from me too.  Good ideas deserve mentions :-)

So smiley faces and gold stars awarded to Lufthansa this morning for providing a very cool flight status automated Tweet service called MySkyStatus, which irrespective of the airline you are travelling with (apparently) will send out a Tweet on your behalf updating those following you of your progress in your journey.

(image via Mashable)

Clicking on the link takes you straight through to Lufthansa MySkyStatus page with a Google Map of the flight’s position. No more waiting around un-necessarily at Heathrow.

Flight trackers aren't new but personal ones are a great idea. Why wouldn't you? This one is super easy to set up and is useful.  Stop your Mum worrying about whether you got there safely.

Beware shortened links from dubious sources

Those of us using Twitter more and more will no doubt have used a URL link shortening tool in an effort to eek out those 140 characters as far as possible.  Since it released it's latest version, Tweetdeck even now has an automatic link-shortening option so you don't even have to choose whether you want any links you paste in to be squashed into bit.ly format

It's a dilemma, to shorten or not to shorten?

In search (whether natural or pay per click (PPC)) smart link strategy (i.e what the URL string says) can make a big difference to your click through rate (CTR). In Twitter, link shorteners are great for saving characters but when presented with a tiny url, a bit.ly or an owl.ly url you don't get much clue as to where you are being taken, which requires a degree of trust in the person's tweet you are about to click on, unless they are good enough to squeeze into their message some indication of the type of content it leads to so you can form your own judgement. I am increasingly seeing [video] or [blog] styles evolving into good twettiquette. But that frequently defies the object of character squeezing your URL in the first place. Hmmmm.

The decision is muddled further with re-tweets. (RT). Should you click on a shortened link from someone you possibly don't know because it must have been considered sufficiently interesting for the person you do "know" to have been retweeted it in the first place? (Relationships being a relative concept in the twittersphere). It's a tricky one.

Via TechCrunch I found this Symantec video warning of the perils of dodgy links & I think it's worth sharing. Shame they couldn't run as far as a voice over because it left me jabbing at volume buttons on two laptops to check I wasn't going deaf.



Thanks to a great service from Topify I am able to manage the Twitter spammers much more effectively, and make much smarter decisions about who I agree to let follow me or decide to follow, because the service gives me more detail at a glance in the XXXX wants to follow you email notifications I get, so for now at least in so far as the ways I am using Twitter, I am erring on the side of trusting links within most of the tweets I am likely to click on.

Mutual value exchange & smart word of mouth campaigns

Flying around the web and the Twittersphere today has been a great example of the power of the people / word of mouth marketing.

Musician Jack Johnson has a new album out on the 27th October. He's started off a seemingly pretty effective word of mouth campaign via Twitter.

Smart thinking has gone into this too.  Word of mouth relies on people voluntarily passing on something that's interesting, fun or relevant. However, you can encourage word of mouth with incentive.  Like all good relationships it's about mutual value exchange:  Do this for me and I'll do this for you.

Which is exactly how, and quite probably why there have been so many people obligingly tweeting out to their own networks about the forthcoming album release. Why? Because by visiting his site & sending a pre-set tweet (but allowing for 20 characters of personalisation on the front, nice touch) in return you can get a free mp3 download of a track from said album. Everyone likes free stuff. Or sort-of free stuff 'cos you have to make a little bit of an effort to get it, but the value exchange stacks up enough to bother.

It would have been churlish of me not to oblige, so of course I did. Judging by the number of tweets I've seen personally on the subject today, so did many others and the whole campaign would appear to be working rather well, an opinion ratified by a quick Twitter search:

There's also a fair few people tweeting about articles they've blogged on the topic (like this one), so double whammy and well done to Mr. Johnson. He's successfully harnessed the power of the people (people being the best new media vehicle out), by creating OTT (opportunities to talk), and thereby propelling his sample & message (at very low cost, i.e bandwidth & releasing the track free, no media costs in a traditional sense) to audiences that might never otherwise have been reached by traditional advertising whether on or offline.

Good stuff.

Making a song and a dance this week...

Hurrah! Apple approved the Spotify iPhone app. To be available soon (date tbc) for Spotify Premium users but you'll be able to cache music / playlists to listen to when you are not online/connected. Scratch the new iPod from the Amazon wish list then.

Spotify have also started to create a PAYG retail model for Spotify Premium in Sweden so it's bound to be in a newsagent near you before too long.

On the subject of PAYG, T-Mobile announced the launch of the 1st PAYG Android phone, (to be called the Pulse) with release date set for October. A princely £180 of the Queen's finest pounds to you. Dear Father Christmas.....

YouTube and the PRS kissed and made up (although there was purportedly a cash lump sum involved too) so all your favourite music videos will be back online again soon.

YouTube also LovesFilm (or thinks it might): YouTube are trialling a full length film rental subscription service amongst 10, 000 Google employees after securing deals with a number of major studios.

Whilst we're on the subject of movies, here's a nice film showing the evolution of visual effects in film over time. Once you've worked in animation you can't but help like these things!



Web based catch-up tv services will no longer be confined to viewing on your laptop after Sony announced that you'll be able to connect your Sony Bravia TV, Blu-ray player or Home Cinema to your broadband, and did a deal with Channel 5 for their Bravia Internet Video Service, so you won't have to ever miss Neighbours or have to watch it hunched over a laptop.

But conversely the need to be connected but not weighed down by a huge laptop has seen Netbooks take 22% of worldwide portable computer sales in Q2 this year.

And finally.... There are now 104 Twitter-ers who have more than a million followers. Amazon celebrated recruiting their millionth follower by giving away a free mp3. E-Crm - it's all about value exchange.

Dealing with Pesky Twitter Spam

I do like Twitter. It's a useful tool fulfilling several communications needs for me. However, I have found that the number of pesky spammers wanting to follow me and then requiring me to actively go and block them has grown in recent weeks. Grrr.

So applause and cheers for the people behind Tweet Blocker that are aiming to do something about it. Fair play to them for having blocked 73k spammers so far.

Smiles to Twitter themselves too for having a sense of humour. I clicked on an email alert link from someone I believed to be Tweetspam this morning in order to check whether it was or not, and found that the Twitter spam blockers had got there first (hurrah, one less click for me to have to make) and instead were displaying this nicely worded message:


I do like smart use of error messages. 404's should be banned. I recall Digg being down at one point and instead of a boring 404 error they'd smartly stuck up a page saying oops, problem, we're trying to fix it ASAP, but whilst we do, here's a handful of sites we'd recommend you look at instead. What a great example of turning around what could have been a moment of negativity and frustration into something more positive. I was looking for an image to share with you on that one but along the way found this link to an assortment of other interesting examples , so I'll share that instead. Enjoy.

Move over bumper stickers here's Twibbon

Thanks to my squirrelling around the web (see last post), I just found Twibbon.

Twibbon effectively allows you to add a badge to your Twitter Photo icon, allowing all the people following you to see that you are happy to be associated with whatever your Twibbon says/shows. There are loads to choose from already, ranging from that pesky photo-crashing squirrel to all manner of charities and causes whether it's I love Firefox to Breast Cancer's pink ribbon.

It's easy to add to your profile, easy to remove, and not hard to create one either (you just need a gif / png file), as I learned playing around. I'm too short of time right now to go and create a new one just for me but to evidence the point here's one I just adopted.

I can think of so many ways this could be used by brands, even if you only choose to sport a particular twibbon for a short while. What a fantastic way of amplifying your message via your brand advocates. Better go and mention it to some clients!

Twitter - are you sure it's not for you??

I meet lots of people who've heard of Twitter because of all the media exposure it's had, but still haven't figured out what they could use it for. Or they signed up, got confused and gave up. As I mentioned in a recent post it's uses are growing and changing all the time, as more and people explore and use it in more and more creative ways.

I have a very good friend who's a serious, serious tri/quadrathlete and he tweets (@xterramac) about his training schedule as it's easier for him to update via his phone when he's on the move than it is for him to blog (well worth a read if you think getting off your sofa to grab a beer from the fridge is hard work, or that a work out is legging it 10 metres down the platform to jump on the tube as the doors are closing).

I use Twitter as an information filter, frequently swapping links and things of interest with my fellow digerati buddies. There are people tweeting about all manner of things both general and niche, so with a little exploring you are guaranteed to find something that's of interest to your work or your hobbies.

If you need some inspiration check out the many many Top 10 Twitterers to follow lists that are posted here after Twittip.com laid down a challenge. You'll find everything from writers tojazz artists, wine lovers to Mummy bloggers, cigar lovers to designers, foodies to photographers. Proof of the power of the micro-community! You'll risk RSI from scrolling, because there are lots of contributions but it's fascinating stuff. I also discovered Twitter Grader today which gives a Twitter-rating pertaining to your sphere of influence.

Go explore.

Help! Twitter fell over today

Oh no, Twitter was down for a bit a few hours ago. I've seen many tweets / posts / status updates about it, which for me just ratifies the point that Twitter is increasingly becoming an important communications tool that some of us rely on in one way or another.

Here's a few from my contacts:

"arghh Twitter is down? I work on my own, it's my 'watercooler'! Make it work!!"

" twitter is down - hello facebook"

"is everyone surviving with twitter down???"

"#tweetdeck firing on all cylinders again... welcome back fellow tweeters"

Using Twitter...

Twitter have realised that there's a lot of people and businesses out there that still haven't really grasped what they can do with it & so have published this handy guide to help.

I still love the fact that there are businesses everywhere using it in creative ways - can't remember where I got this from but I know it was taken somewhere in America. Tweet in your order for a quattro stagione pizza :-)

Just one of many examples out there, some that reach many people, some that reach just a few in a local area, but all valuable as we all increasingly use a broad range of tools to communicate. I also like Evan William's TED speech to help explain simply what Twitter is all about (or at least was in February 2009 when it was published, as it's evolving all the time).

Enjoy.

If you are going to dive in and join the Twitterati though, I'd recommend that you download Tweetdeck or a similar app (there are many) to make using it more user friendly than tweeting / reading tweets via the Twitter.com website. I also discovered this potentially interesting tool for seeing who is following who in the inter-connected twittersphere.

Tweetfeel also does an interesting if less sophisticated mash-up of Twistori, to show you positive or negative sentiment tweets about your chosen brand or topic.

Time Savers...

I had an extraordinarily busy week last week with limited time to keep up with the new developments in the wired world (ironic really given that I was delivering an intensive 3 day course on digital marketing), but one thing I did trip over was:

BingTweets - an interesting mash-up of Bing (the search / decision-making engine) and Twitter. Run a search. Try it with something topical. Why a time saver and why do I like this? Because it gives me search results plus a notion of real time and what's being said about that topic right now, without me having to use multiple tools. As I said to a friend last week, it would be an interesting exercise to do live with clients to make them realise the real context in which people naturally talk about their brands, rather than the version they prefer to believe.

Not so new, but a service I love and find incredibly useful when I've been away from my inbox for a few days is an email "snooze" button provided by a site called Hit me later. Basically you can forward an email to a given email address and specify when you want it back (i.e 4 hours, 24 hours etc and it'll send it back to you at the designated time, meaning it appears at the top of the email pile, which I find incredibly handy as a means of prioritising / not forgetting important emails when you have a full inbox and lots of FYI's / junk to clear out before you can actually deal with the important stuff.