Social Ed.

Ok. Let’s try a little mind game…Imagine it’s 1990 and you’re the manager of the US National Weather Service trying to keep 250 million people informed about the weather – with a staff of 50. Then your boss walks in and says the unthinkable, “Look, I know you’ve got it rough trying to predict the weather in 52 states with 50 people. So I’ve hired 30 million people to walk around with cell phones and call you to tell you what the weather is where they are. What do you say?”
Back then, forecasters could only dream of such a thing but today they can simply do it – because of social networks like Twitter.

Take the US National Weather Service (NWS) for example. They’re using Twitter to get people to tell them about significant weather near them like big snowfalls, tornadoes, hail or flooding (i.e. the stuff that can kill people or at least REALLY mess up their day). The NWS calls the info it gets “ground truth” and it’s crowdsourcing at its best: getting information from the public to provide better information – to the public. It’s also easy and free. The NWS simply asked people to start tweeting about extreme weather near them – using certain hashtags like @wxstorm – then they search those hashtags to pull up all the tweets.

But how will they sort out bogus tweets you ask? Well, when you’ve got the resources of the NWS, you can do things like develop software to do that for you. (You can also probably sell it for a nice chunk of change to the many folks who, no doubt, would pay big bucks for such tweet vetting software.)

The NWS project is experimental right now but, if it succeeds, I can see other government agencies looking at ways to tap – and verify – the wisdom of crowds.

Tags: Government, Microblogging, Twitter
Posted in Government, Microblogging, Twitter | 3 Comments »

Want to increase the effectiveness of your online communications simply and powerfully? Then get out there and leave comments!

I was about to blog about the content of Mashable’s post What Social Media Users Want when I decided to leave a comment – and that changed what I wanted to blog about. The story was tweeted over 2800 times, shared over 600 times, Dugg 250 times – and had 44 comments.

This confirms what I’ve been seeing elsewhere: people are blogging and commenting way less as they Tweet more.

That means there’s a huge opportunity for people willing the take the time to add thoughtful value to conversations via comments.

And services like Disqus (that I’ve just begun using) can help. Disqus tracks and displays all your comments, and replies to your comments, across the Web. And remember, your comments are indexed by Google so every one increases your Google findability – which is Web gold.

Stick to commenting in your area of expertise and build your rep as a thought leader in that area far faster than people who are just hitting “retweet”.

Do you see people blogging and commenting less due to the Twitter explosion? If so, please swim against the tide and – leave a comment!

Tags: Comments, Microblogging, Twitter
Posted in Comments, Microblogging, Twitter | 2 Comments »

I just read a short, compelling piece about Palestinians being evicted from their homes in Jerusalem and Jewish settlers moving in. I found out about it in a Tweet from rabble.ca publisher, Kim Elliott, who is tweeting the tour she is currently on with some Canadian MPs and members of the women’s peace organization, Code Pink. The piece was a blog, hosted by rabble.ca and written by Vancouver East MP, Libby Davies, who is on the tour.

Twitter. Blog. Web site. One driving traffic to the next. An excellent example of effective social media integration.

Posted in Integration, Microblogging, Twitter | No Comments »

At work I listen to AOL Radio Online and recently they’ve been encouraging listeners to join them on FaceBook and Twitter. This week, a big Twitter logo appeared on the AOL homepage saying they were on Twitter.

Last week, the Social Times reported that Twitter grew 33% to 8 million U.S. users in the previous month. Even the mighty Google couldn’t help me easily find Canadian Twitter growth stats but I suspect it’s similar.

Twitter is a big reason to get serious about considering a mobile component in your marketing mix. I didn’t “get” Twitter until I started using it on my iPhone. Now I get it.

Posted in Microblogging | No Comments »

Haven’t tried Twitter yet?

Well, some guys in LA are selling Korean tacos from a truck and using Twitter as one of their marketing tools. They pull up somewhere and then send out  a Tweet telling folks where they are. (First heard about this in a Ted talk by one of Twitter’s founders Evan Williams.)

Check out  a video about the truck in this post on Chris Brogan’s blog.

Does your product and audience lend itself to this use of Twitter? Is your audience on Twitter?  Do you know? Is your product the kind that people buy on impulse?

Just askin’….

Posted in Microblogging, Twitter | 1 Comment »

Not sold on the power of Twitter as a business tool?  Well, check out the new Twitter Power Guide e-book from Chris Penn of the Financial Aid Podcast. Chris is brilliant and a brilliant communicator and has used both these talents to produce a short, concise book that delivers concrete things you can use right away to take advantage of the power of Twitter.

Chris asked people to link to the book if we liked  it. Done.

Posted in Microblogging | 1 Comment »

Now this is what I call appropriate use of technology…

http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/December2008/10/c8472.html

Posted in Activism, Blogs, Microblogging | No Comments »

Like many people around the world I watched the US presidential debate last night. However, like few people around the world – but like many in the social media fish bowl – I checked out the debate commentary on Twitter….and it got me wondering. It got me wondering whether Twitter was encouraging more debate among people or less.

Now, on the one hand it did encourage communication on a level never seen before by letting thousands of people around the world publicly exchange messages in real time. It was incredible to see the ticker tape of messages going by almost one every second. But what were the messages? Real debate doesn’t lend itself well to two sentence limits. Sure, lots of people invited others to check out links to places where the debate could continue – but how many did?

The medium must fit the content and debates require folks sitting down and talking in depth or exchanging well thought, longer written pieces.

Twitter may be a good place to plant a seed but you need a space that allows deeper, longer interaction to help it grow.

Posted in Microblogging, Politics | No Comments »

Took in my first twebinar, or Twitter/webinar mashup, yesterday and I have to say it demonstrated the power of webinars in a world of digital nomads and digital slaves. Digital nomads, as Mitch Joel said in his May 2008 blog post, are people who use the power of mobile technology, mostly laptops, to free them up to work anywhere. Digital slaves (my term) are the majority of office-based workers stuck to their desktops computers, doing mostly email. 

Both groups are equally busy and can find it hard to make the time to physically attend training sessions in their own city, let alone in others. But webinars let people learn, participate and connect with others right from their computers. And Twebinars – where participants participate via Twitter instead of using the standard webinar chat interface – provides a space for those multiple connections to easily live on and grow after the twebinar is over.

Yesterday’s twebinar was the last in a three part series put on by the social media monitoring company, Radian6 and social media rock star, Chris Brogan from CrossTech Media. Titled “The Importance of Listening”, the twebinar focused on why and how to listen to the online conversations that are important to your company or brand.

It wasn’t without its hiccups though. Technology occasionally got in the way of great content with the video stopping and the sound cutting out and me having problems following the comments on Twitter because of Twitter’s non-intuitive interface (at least to me). But overall it just made want to take another webinar and find out if there’s any company hosting them for free. No luck so far on the free thing but I do have two recommendations on paid ones based on webinars I’ve taken and a recommendation from a great marketing podcast.

The first is Webex that Mark Blevis of the Canadian Podcast Buffet and Podcasters Across Borders used for a webinar he gave on audio editing. The second is GoToMeeting that sponsors the great podast, The Engaging Brand by Anna Farmery.

I have never taken a webinar given by a social economy organization and would love to hear from anyone that has….

Posted in Microblogging, Training | 3 Comments »

Wow! This one blew me away. West Virginia-based, fair trade coffee company, True Blue Coffee Roasters, is using the micro-blogging program, Twitter, to “keep its customer up to date”. And where did they make this announcement? On their blog, of course (at least that’s where I found it). On their blog True Blue simply says, “We are aware that our customers want more interaction with True Blue and Twitter is a very easy way to stay in contact with our customers.”

Now here are some folks who understand the real power of social media.

Posted in Fair Trade, Microblogging | 1 Comment »