The Social Path

Twitter makes it harder to claim your name.

Wanted to make sure you folks saw my AdFreak post today about Twitter's decision to stop releasing inactive user names.

About two months back, I asked Twitter to release the LittleDebbie user name for our client, and they did so quickly. The only requirement was that the account had been inactive for at least nine months, which it had been.

I tried again for another client this week, only to get an automated response from Twitter saying there would be no more released names. So if someone's squatting on the name you want, you're now out of luck.

I hope this is a short-term issue. Twitter's booming popularity has obviously made it hard for the social site's overloaded support staff to respond whenever someone wants a name.

The Twitter team's long-term solution is to start closing all accounts after six or nine months of inactivity. (Personally, I think a year would be more fair.) Unfortunately, they haven't figured out a way to start closing the accounts, so tons of names have been squatted on since 2007. For example, Sony, Target and Ikea are all just sitting there. Maybe company reps claimed the names, but I doubt it.

Bad news for the squatters: Unlike with Web site addresses, it's hard to contact the owner of a Twitter name and offer some money to take it over. A company's only real hope is to start an account with a mediocre name and hope for the best. Or try claiming copyright infringement, which might be tough if there are no posts on the account.

You could claim that companies get what they deserve for showing up late to popular sites like Twitter, but I think that's unfair. At one point, Twitter was just one of many (over 100) "microblogging" sites, and there was a time when it seemed Twitter might not come out on top in its fight against more feature-rich competitors like Pownce and Jaiku. But time proved Twitter the winner, and now more and more companies are turning to the service as a communications tool.

Which is great, as long as they don't mind using pseudonyms.

Today's photo credit: exfordy on Flickr.

A daily diary of Depression-era life, told on Twitter.

Late last year, my family found a line-a-day diary maintained by my great-aunt from 1937 to 1941. She was in her early teens, living on a small farm in rural Illinois with her two brothers, one of which was my grandfather.

It's a fascinating account of life in a bygone era, a time when my family's only connections to the world were schoolhouse chatter and a neighbor's radio.

Looking at the terse journal, my sister quipped, "This is the Twitter of the 1930s." We glanced at each other and almost immediately began planning the Twitter account that would become Twitter.com/Genny_Spencer.

 I've gotten great responses since launching the daily diary feed on Jan. 1, 2009. People seem to enjoy the mixture of monotony and mystery woven through the posts.

Admittedly, most of the entries are pretty dry. That's farm life for you. But there are some real slice-of-life gems, like when my great-uncle Norman shot his first rabbit — at age 8.

There's another entry (which hasn't been posted yet) where my great-uncle won a contest at school, and his prize was a knife. Those were different times.

Oh, and to answer a few common questions I've gotten:

• My great-aunt is still alive, although she has severe dementia. She lives with a wonderful caretaker in Missouri, and my family tries to see her as often as possible. UPDATE: Genny passed away on Feb. 26, 2009.

• No, there's nothing deeply personal in the journal. It's very factual, more like a ship's log than a young girl's diary. Still, I asked my grandfather's permission before starting the Twitter feed.

• Unfortunately, the diary ends before the bombing of Pearl Harbor. I'm not sure why. The last entries are from early 1941. Once war broke out, my grandfather, Kerby, enlisted as a fighter pilot and served proudly in the Pacific.

• No, I'm not the first person to think of this. There's a Twitter version of a 99-year-old's diary from 1974, though I hadn't seen it until after I started the Genny_Spencer account. There's also a blog that's posting George Orwell's diary.

•  I'm using a service called TweetLater to prepare the posts in advance. I've been quite happy with it.

Thoughts? Impressions? Questions? This is obviously an open-ended experiment, so I'm definitely curious for feedback.

Is there really a right or wrong in social media?

When I write with a pen, I do it wrong. I draw letters backward, and my knuckle sticks out awkwardly.

"You hold your pen all funny," drawled iconic Senator Howell Heflin while I was trying to interview him for a newspaper article in 1996. "That's how I hold my pen! I've never met anyone else who holds one like that."

Just as I began to feel that this might become a bonding experience...

"Of course, I was shot in the finger during the war. What's your excuse?"

I was reminded of that moment today while reading Chris Brogan's provocative blog post, "You're doing it wrong."

With no introductory comments, Brogan posted a list of social media missteps, including:

• You follow too many people on Twitter.
• You have ads on your blog.
• You use partial RSS feeds.
• Your blog posts are too short (too long).
• You shoot really long videos and don’t edit.
• You swear.

It doesn't take long to realize that Chris is joking, or at least intentionally challenging our notions of "right and wrong" in social media.

"Guess what? We’re all doing it wrong," Chris writes. "Because we’re all doing it our own way, and it’s not always going to match the way you think it works best."

This is a fantastic point. The more we use tools like Facebook, Twitter or even just blogs, the more we all create notions of what we think is proper and what is out of bounds.

I've said before that there are no rules in social media. This is one of the best things and one of the most frustrating things about the arena I work in.

On the one hand, it can leave you paralyzed with uncertainty about what you should or shouldn't do. On the other, it can empower you to ignore the pros and pundits, so you can just be yourself. Or at least hold your pen however you damn well please.

How new jobs will make (and keep) customers happy.

I'm about to wrap up my series on the emerging careers of 2009, but I'd be remiss if I didn't spend a little time talking to Mack Collier. A fellow Alabamian, Mack is one of the country's most respected voices when it comes to corporate outreach via blogging and other social media tools.

Here are his two picks:

I'm not sure if these are so much the jobs that I think WILL emerge this year as much as they are the jobs that I'd LIKE to see employers start to fill.

Community Catalyst: In this position, the person would actively seek out a company's existing customer evangelists (their most devoted fans) and create ways to bring them together so that they can connect with each other.

These are people that have a vested interest in seeing the company that they evangelize succeed, so it only makes sense for companies to embrace and empower these customers.

This isn't about reaching out to customers, it's about reaching out to a specific, and very passionate, subset of customers, and giving them the motivation and tools to do what they are already doing, and to connect with each other.

Digital Customer Service Specialist: This would someone who would utilize emerging social and digital tools such as Twitter and texting to provide customer service.

This would especially benefit companies that have younger, tech-savvy customers that are already fluent in using these tools. 

To read a lot more from Mack, check out his blog, The Viral Garden. He recently tackled modern career issues with his post "Is the Community Evangelist making a comeback?"

Today's photo credit: Matt Dickman via Flickr.

Also in this series:
• Will '09 be the year of the strategist?
• How coding and culture will shape the jobs of '09.
• Want to be a Conversation Auditor when you grow up?
• The emerging careers of '09: Advergirl's predictions.

Video: Tuning out marketing and turning to friends.

Here's an enjoyable and stylized look at how we got from the golden age of 1940s advertising to today's social media marketing:

Thanks to German agency Scholz & Friends for creating this, and Reg Saddler on Twitter for sharing.

Will '09 be the year of the strategist?

Today's predictions on the emerging careers of 2009 come from Kristina Halvorson, founder and president of Brain Traffic, a content strategy, information architecture, and Web writing agency based in Minneapolis:

Content strategist: Everyone likes to think that Web content is the "easy part" of building a site. But who among us is asking the scary, important questions about content, such as “What’s the point?”, “Who cares?” or "Who’s overseeing the care and feeding of content once it’s out there, clogging up the tubes and dragging down our search engines?"

Content strategy is a massive field that can encompass almost every kind of media, not just words. Dealing with content is messy. It’s complicated, it’s painful, and it’s expensive. And yet, the web is content. Content is the web. It deserves our time and attention.

Editorial strategist: Part gatekeeper, part shepherd, the editorial strategist defines the guidelines by which all online content is governed: values, voice, tone, legal and regulatory concerns, user-generated content, and so on. This practice also defines an organization’s online editorial calendar, including content life cycles.

Metadata strategist: Yes, the name is daunting. But these days, countless Web sites depend on "metadata," which is the often-invisible coding that helps identify information about a post, video, etc. A quick example: You upload a photo to Flickr. That photo can include a wide range of metadata, from the location where it was shot to the type of camera you were using.

Smart, well-structured metadata helps publishers identify, organize, use, and re-use content in ways that are meaningful to their audiences. Thanks to the bottomless pool of information on the Internet, one metadata strategist can literally do the work of 1,000 traditional content producers.

This post was largely adapted from Kristina's more comprehensive post, "The Discipline of Content Strategy," so be sure to check it out if you want to know more. You can also follow her daily adventures on Twitter.

Also in this series:
• How coding and culture will shape the jobs of '09.
• Want to be a Conversation Auditor when you grow up?
• The emerging careers of '09: Advergirl's predictions.

How coding and culture will shape the jobs of '09.

In today's installment of my series on the emerging careers of '09, we get a little more nerdy tech-oriented with Andrea Hill, a veteran Web developer who is now Director of Social Media and Interactive Technology at Worldways Social Marketing.

I turned to Andrea because she is always looking at social media through the lenses of both technology and human nature. So here's her perspective on where today's hot jobs are headed:

My background is in development, so although I have stepped away from coding, I still tend to think about "how to make it happen."

OpenID, Google Friend Connect, Facebook Connect: all these technologies hinge on the idea of a unique identifier that we carry across our online experiences. We can't continue to limit our development efforts to our own Web sites. We need to figure out how to share (and limit) data across experiences.

I see there being a need for Social Architects. These individuals would have insights into how different online services and experiences could best be integrated. So rather than Facebook, MySpace or LinkedIn allowing third-party developers to duct-tape their applications onto their platform, there would be true (useful) integration. This role would require an understanding of the underlying systems and how they relate.

To support the Social Architects,  we would also likely need to see a rise in Semantic Coders. There has been some discussion on the Semantic Web, and this can still be a bit too "techy" for the layman. Yet if we start to consider the semantics of WHAT we're describing, we can more easily tie together systems. Companies like AdaptiveBlue "understand" when you refer to books or music, and offer relevant supplementary information. The catch is that we need to have a set of standards to code to.

I believe we WILL see a dramatic rise in mobile in 2009. Yes, I know it's been predicted for the past several years, but I do think the time is coming. The challenge is that mobile is, well, hard to visualize. The technology exists; we're just awaiting the tipping point.

We need more Mobile Marketers. I've already seen that mobile analytics are starting to be discussed. Whereas social media is big and they're just now trying to determine how to measure effectiveness, mobile analytics is already being considered. I think this is great integration: people will be implementing mobile campaigns that are trackable from the beginning.

I can also see a need in Personal Branding Consultants. Sure, many of us love social media and naturally establish a name/reputation for ourselves. But there are many people who do not have the passion or time to do so. Just as companies have to learn to monitor their online brand, I believe there will be a need for individuals to start to do this in the future. Just as many folks may turn to resume writing services, we need to look at this advanced means of self-promotion, as well.

You can read more from Andrea at her industry blog, Digital Likeness, or her running blog, Go The Distance. Most importantly, you can see photographic evidence of the day we met on Flickr.

Also in this series:
• Want to be a Conversation Auditor when you grow up?
• The emerging careers of '09: Advergirl's predictions.

Want to be a Conversation Auditor when you grow up? More predictions on the emerging careers of '09.

Today brings the second installment in my series of guest posts about the emerging careers of 2009. My goal is to help students, job seekers, employers and everyone else make sense of how new jobs are taking shape (or should be) in a rapidly evolving business world.

I met Auburn University Professor Robert French a few months back, and it's safe to say I was blown away by his enthusiasm and foresight with new technologies. (Scroll to the bottom for links to his work.) While officially a professor of public relations, I think Professor French has a lot to teach us all. Here's his take:

These jobs actually do already exist, but they are so new that I believe many people either don't know about them (beyond the online early adopters) or haven't considered them — yet.

• Conversation Auditor - Media tracking has been going on for a long time, but many firms are now devoting staff to solely online conversation mining.  These types of activities range from new clients and exploring their consumer base to investor relations (IR) and following those trends. The emphasis here is that people are being hired to do it solely online. One of my students is finishing up an internship at the White House for the Office of Strategic Initiatives. Her job was to track online conversations about issues of interest to the White House.

• Online Customer Service Rep: Imagine a company that now runs a call center doing customer service for many different corporations.  Now, consider adding to that staff that track conversations about products and services for the sole purpose of contacting the individuals and/or engaging in conversations (comments) in blogs, on Twitter and elsewhere.  Some companies are doing this — Zappos, Dell, for example.  But, I don't know that they have a job title that specifically identifies the employees as such.

Beyond customer service issues like complaints or seeking refunds, consider news and information sites that are becoming respected references.  What options are available to readers?

• Online Ombudsman: Again, ombudsmen have been around for a long time. Think of the sites that are now gaining greater readership than traditional news outlets. ESPN now has Le Anne Schreiber, and the NYTimes has spread their ombudsman activities to the Web, too. Now, consider sites like HuffPost, Digg, TechMeme, Mashable and others that have huge followings but no formalized process for dealing with reader issues. I can see those sites adopting the ombudsman philosophy.

In higher education, we already see faculty and staff (administration) positions focusing on social media, or what I prefer to call emerging digital media.

Recently, a community college issued a job opening for a PR representative to work closely with the president and university relations.  The job description is written with an emphasis on many online activities.  Similarly, emerging digital media faculty positions (tenured and non-tenured) are being posted in The Chronicle of Higher Education more and more.

Auburn Professor Robert French is a 25-year veteran of public relations. He writes about social media on the infOpinions blog and has developed powerful PR resources such as PROpenMic.org, PRProspects.com and PRblogs.org. You can follow him on Twitter at @rdfrench.

Also in this series:

• The emerging careers of '09: Advergirl's predictions.
• How coding and culture will shape the jobs of '09.
• WIll '09 be the year of the strategist?

Colossal compassion: A stunning case study in community.

As I assembled the recent list of "10 ways social media improved lives in 2008," I was truly struck by the potential to accomplish great things in a short time.

But last night, even my greatest expectations were surpassed by one incredible event.

Early in the evening, social media guru David Armano posted a humble plea for help. He asked his readers and friends to help raise $5,000 for an abused woman and her family who have been living temporarily with the Armanos:

"Here's what we are asking. Right now, Belinda and I are opening our home, but it's tight as we have no basement. We've committed to giving as much as we can spare, diverting funds from other places.  I'm asking if you could think about doing the same. Or at the very least, helping get the word out about this. We are looking to raise 5k for Daniela and her family. Enough so that she doesn't have to worry about a deposit or rent for a while."

My wife and I were happy to make a modest contribution to his effort, which used a simple method of collecting donations through PayPal. At the time, the total was listed at $0, though I assumed there was just a delay in posting the first donations.

An hour or two later, I checked in again. Armano's fund-raiser was at 139% of its goal! As I write this post, the total is $11,522 — 230% of his target $5,000. Here's the most recent total (might not be visible if you're reading this in RSS or e-mail):

This staggering and heart-warming event has quickly become the buzz of Twitter and social media bloggers, for obvious reasons.

So how did such a miraculous burst of philanthropy happen? A few thoughts:

1. Rarity: Armano is not in the habit of asking for donations from his 8,000-plus followers on Twitter, not to mention his many blog readers. In fact, he's often considered one of the most selfless and humble superstars of social media. So when he asked, people listened.

2. Specificity: This was not a call to help a faceless organization. It was an effort to improve the lives and hopes of one specific family. Looking at their faces and hearing their story, you couldn't help but be moved to help.

3. Urgency: As we saw with the fantastically fast response when a blogger needed a kidney donor to save her daughter, a true sense of urgency can move mountains in moments.

4. Flexibility: While most of Armano's contacts used the simple ChipIn tool to donate cash, he offered a wide range of ways for people to help.

"I know this is the worst possible time to ask for anything. But would you consider the following:

1. Giving whatever you can ("Chip in" uses Pay Pal and it's very easy to donate and it's secure)
2. Spread the word. Please, please blog this, tweet this, re-tweet this.
3. Help find a donor (maybe a generous company or individual)"

 

5. Appreciation: As soon as the donations began to pour in, Armano was effusive in his thanks to those who took part. He posted an awestruck video, shared the touching picture I've included above of Daniela watching the results roll in, and did his best to respond on Twitter to the many, many people helping out.

Today, Armano wrote his own thoughts on the unbelievable achievement he had just witnessed. I don't think I could summarize it any better:

"What we are really talking about here is neighborhoods. These neighborhoods are digital—yes, but very real. We've seen them come through again and again. And yet, I am still stunned by the generosity, and ferocity at which the neighborhood rallied around a cause to help a single family that could not find help."

The emerging careers of '09: Advergirl's predictions.

 A year ago, my job title of "social media strategist" didn't exist. Two years ago, the term "social media" hadn't even emerged yet. Now it's one of the fastest-growing fields in marketing.

So what new jobs and responsibilities will emerge in 2009? I've asked five of my favorite forward thinkers to weigh in. Today we start with my good friend Leigh Householder, a brand strategist for Ologie in Columbus and much-acclaimed author of the Advergirl blog. Here's her take:


We've reached the acceleration point for social media. The year ahead will take the opportunities and impact of these new expectations (and associated technologies) deeper into more lives and enterprises. The demand for knowledge and experience will grow exponentially, creating the need for a number of new roles:

• Immersion officers in agencies and marketing organizations. No longer can digital and social be the province of a few. The separate departments and sub-brands will increasingly be banished. "Getting" how to create for all mediums will become tablestakes for creative partners. If it doesn't all work together, it doesn't work. Immersion officers will help print and ad vets quickly ramp up on the changing consumer landscape and become part of an integrated — versus complementary — team.

• Channel chatters in B2B organizations. 2009 will be the year social hits the channel. Not in the form of buzzy applications or silly promotions, but in the form of 1:1 interactions. No longer will communication be pushed blindly into the field. Instead, using white-labeled versions of applications like Facebook and Twitter, it will be posted for a community that can give immediate feedback, elevate its own best ideas and have live conversations with HQ.

• Artifact designers in the creative department: What can you give someone that they will want to share? That they'll want to keep in a file, tack on a board, display proudly? These brand artifacts are fundamentally social. The pieces, words and ideas that people emotionally attach to and take into their own authentic conversations without being asked to are the anecdote to every aggravating contest and gimmick that currently crowds the social scene. Increasingly, creative departments will be looking for these clever conversationalists who can translate campaigns into collectibles.

• Idea miners in product development: There are a finite number of resources in any company. No matter how brilliant the minds, there will always be limits to what they can do, what they solve. Increasingly, we'll see a change in the values built around development. One that moves the MVP from problem solver to solution finder. This shift will create roles for deft connectors who can find and activate unexpected groups of people (across vast geographic and expertise divides) to crash a problem. These idea miners will focus on communicating challenges and sifting through ideas to find the right solutions.
  
  
• Human network coordinators in sales and marketing: LinkedIn will change the nature of the "warm lead." The workforce will quickly become the frontline of connecting enterprises to their next big clients. Coordinators in marketing will be charged with mining employee "friend" and "connection" lists to find opportunities for introductions.

• Social specialists in internal communications: While marketing is making plans for its next big social "campaign," employees throughout the company are having incidental interactions with customers, partners, and potential employees in their own social networks everyday. In many cases, their share of voice dwarfs the company's megaphone. Increasingly, companies will recognize the power that individual employees have in socializing their brands and empower them in big and small ways. Operationally, the front line will get permission to deal 1:1 with customers across mediums. Throughout the enterprise, social specialists will focus internal communications on delivering compelling, relevant content that both aligns the workforce and powers conversation.

To read more from Leigh, be sure to head over to Advergirl and subscribe.

Also in this series:
• How coding and culture will shape the jobs of '09.
• Want to be a Conversation Auditor when you grow up?
• Will '09 be the year of the strategist?