In the Social Web, We Are All Brand Managers

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Effectively organizing, curating, showcasing, and managing a strategically curated online personal, professional, and corporate brand is critical to how our peers, those we already know and the others we have yet to meet, perceive us in the real world.

Everything we share online, the comments we leave, the posts we publish, the pictures and videos we upload, the updates we tweet, the statuses we broadcast in social networks and lifestreams, contribute to disparate digital recreations of how people perceive us - as an individual, representative of a company, or the corporate brand we manage. While we can't control the filters of how people ultimately assemble these pieces and assess our personality, reputation, value proposition, and expertise, we can shape and steer perception by sharing tactical and complimentary content that contributes to the brand we wish to portray and represent.

We are all, at some level, becoming brand managers.

The Social Web is a vast universe.

But don't let its expansiveness deter your goals for creating and cultivating a strategic presence. Whether you're new to Social Media or an experienced veteran, we are collectively tied to the evolution of the social Web simply by who we know or want to know. To stay connected with friends, family, customers, and professional peers, we join the digital communities that facilitate meaningful and relevant conversations. Evolution is natural and our existing and future relationships will dictate in which communities we remain and those we will eventually embrace.

But how do you know where to establish your online presence and secure your associated brand before it's either spoken for or hijacked?

A good place to start is by analyzing the Conversation Prism. It provides a visual map that will guide you through the process of identifying communities and conversations related to the brand you represent.



In the era of the socialized Web, brand and reputation management is now integrated as systematic process in our daily routine. We ARE responsible for our personal brand as well as the corporate brand we represent. Securing that online brand and investing in and cultivating an impeccable and influential reputation is critical to establishing and maintaining a consistent, strategic, and complementary presence from network to network.

There is a helpful dashboard now available for brand managers to streamline the process of obtaining and creating online identities.



CheckUserNames cross references every major social network for the availability of your desired username. The results are displayed in one master dashboard, providing you with the ability to determine which networks require your attention and also a direct link to secure the username.



Whether you're a corporate brand manager or focusing on your personal brand, securing your identity and increasing your visibility in the online communities that are important to your world is constant. Care for these brands and manage their respective reputations well and they will pay dividends in the form of more fruitful, valuable, rewarding , and in some cases, monetizable, relationships online and in the real world.

For a deeper look at the Social Web and its impact on your online persona, please read:

The Socialization of Your Personal Brand- Part I
The Socialization of Your Personal Brand- Part II
The Socialization of Your Personal Brand- Part III

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Where the Streets Have Names: Learning from Bono's Facebook Dilemma

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What happens in the real world can usually end up on the Web for all to discover, share, and assess with or without your knowledge.

According to The Mail, even Sir Bono, lead singer of U2, couldn't escape the global distribution and network effect of Facebook.

The rock star, humanitarian, and family man inadvertently shared a portion of his St. Tropez holiday, courtesy of a 19-year old and her Facebook profile.

Andrea Feick, an America fashion student who's currently studying in Paris, vacationed in St. Tropez with her friend Hannah Emerson.

Harmless.

But, when she shared updates and pictures on Facebook, the world noticed.

The first update set the stage, "So Bono and Simon called me yesterday and they arrived in Cannes today, so looks like we’ll have a plan! :)"

Feick also uploaded a few pictures to Facebook, which depending on how you interpret them, either lay to rest any inappropriate thoughts and unsubstantiated speculation or they sent your imagination running rampant.


Bono, Andrea Feick, Hanna Emerson, Simon Carmody


Hanna Emerson, Bono, Andrea Feick


Aboard the yacht owned by bandmate The Edge, Andrea wears Bono's trademark cap

In all fairness, Feick contacted The Mail to clarify the circumstances of their brief adventure. According to her statement, she has known Bono for a few years (going back to when she was 15 or 16?) but stressed that their friendship is purely innocent.

But that's the point of all of this. Everything is open to interpretation. And when you publicly share information, you unwittingly invite everyone to dissect your actions, content, thoughts, and words.

What you share online lends to the perception of you, your intentions, and your persona. Nowadays, your reputation indeed precedes you.

Bono, who is usually meticulous in how he manages his personal brand, strategically shrouding it with selflessness, passion, vision, mystery, and a bigger-than-life conviction for positive global change, potentially underestimated or simply didn't understand how Social Media has re-architected the rapid distribution of information and content.

Perhaps in Andrea's case, this public story and the residual online beacons that fueled it, will only boost her social capital - however, they will remain on the Web for years to come.

In Bono's case, I have to believe that this doesn't lend well to his philanthropic efforts. In the Rock and Roll world, however, this may have a very different effect.

But, Bono shouldn't be surprised at the swift distribution, reach and resonating volume of the Social Web. While at one of his homes, he was playing (or blasting) four tracks from U2's forthcoming album, "No Line on the Horizon." Supposedly the tunes were played a bit too loudly, as a passerby was able to record the four songs, albeit in low quality, and release what was believed to be "Sexy Boots," "Moment Of Surrender," and "For Your Love" on YouTube.

While the tracks were removed, it demonstrates the need to rethink our actions in the real world as they can have unpredictable, or highly calculated, online implications.

Social Media will only continue to fuse and interlace our online and real world presences. The effect is profound.

According to Kevin Donline of The Star Tribune Minneapolis, “Seventy-seven percent of recruiters report using search engines to find background data on candidates. Of that number, 35 percent eliminated a candidate because of what they found online.”

To further demonstrate how your online presence contributes to how people perceive you, education company Kaplan, a unit of Washington Post Co.,surveyed 500 top colleges. The study found that 10% of admissions officers acknowledged researching social network profiles to evaluate applicants. 38% of the colleges that factor information gathered from the social web revealed that their findings "negatively affected" their views of the applicant, with several admissions officers rejecting students because of the publicly shared content.

Your personal brand is yours to define, cultivate, nurture, and craft. Ignorance is not bliss. Everything you post and share on the web collectively contributes to an online persona that is readily discoverable through search engines and in turn, open to interpretation.

It's the curation of all of our disparate pieces (social objects) online that collectively paint a picture of who we are, what we represent, as well as our strengths and weaknesses.

Perception is reality.

For a deeper look at the Social Web and its impact on your online persona, please read:

The Socialization of Your Personal Brand- Part I
The Socialization of Your Personal Brand- Part II
The Socialization of Your Personal Brand- Part III
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Crisis Communications 2.0 Series:
- Nike, Just Do It: When a Local Story Runs Away on the Web
- Apple and the iPhone Price Bomb
- The Skype is Falling
- Microsoft PR Sparks a Blogstorm
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Connect with me on:
Twitter, FriendFeed, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Pownce, Plaxo, Plurk, Identi.ca, BackType, Jaiku or Facebook


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Nike, Just Do It: When a Local Story Runs Away on the Web and Leads to Change

Nike, this may be one of those times when you follow your own slogan.

Every year, I attend the Nike Women's Marathon in San Francisco to support my wife and my mother who run this incredible event with conviction, passion, and diligence. It's a privilege, they believe, to participate in a special and dedicated event such as this that celebrates each other as well as the athletic achievement and capabilities of women, past and present.

It's quite the spectacle and accomplishment to say the very least. Roughly 40,000 people storm Union Square at the crack of dawn to run for everything that inspires them.



This is their time to, "Run Like a Girl," and in the process, accomplish something that only 1% of the world's population have ever attempted, the completion of a marathon.

In addition to sharing their personal achievement with friends and family, many participants, and now the greater public, are also sharing and fueling the dispersion of a potentially disruptive story that pits a humble woman against a global brand.

After posting my pictures from the Nike Women's SF Marathon on flickr, I was pointed to a story that would rouse and move me to respond.



Arien O'Connel, a fifth grade school teacher from New York, ran the fastest time at this year's Nike Women's Marathon, 11 minutes faster than any other runner - including the elite - yet, Nike has publicly opted not to recognize her achievement.

Why?

Because she was too humble to think about registering as a Nike elite runner - if that was even an option for her.

Instead of embracing this gift of a PR opportunity, Nike's public response from Media Relations Manager, Tanya Lopez, sparked a negative public uproar against the race and the corporate brand, forcing the company into a reactionary position of crisis response.

According to Tanya Lopez, "At this point, we've declared our winner."

The public outcry has been incredible and representative of a team simply looking out for one of its own.

Popular running blog Half-Fast ran a very detailed response to Nike's decision, "Oh, I see. You’ve DECLARED your winner. Well that settles it then. And here I was naïve enough to think that winners were decided based on who had the fastest time, I didn’t realize that the winner could just be declared, as though they were a piece of fruit crossing the border."

The San Francisco Chronicle also wrote an extensive piece of the would-be Cinderella story and the missed PR opportunity by Nike, "While O'Connell had the greatest run of her life and covered the course faster than any woman, she was told she couldn't be declared the winner because she didn't run with the 'elite' group who were given a 20-minute head start."

There's also a petition circulating the Web to get Nike's attention.

Before we go any further, let's get a couple of things out of the way.

I'm not a judge nor an expert on the rules of this marathon.

The debate as to whether she should have declared herself as an elite runner in order to allow other elites to effectively compete against her is moot and inconsequential.

Her time of 2:55:11 is official and is irrefutable - it's 11 minutes faster than the "official" winner.

This isn't about the semantics of the classification, re-classification, and division of runners and the methods used for tracking winners.

This is about PR and the public response to a woman who flew across the country to run and support a race that stands for women and their achievements in everything, everywhere. This is about PR, brand cultivation, and community relations.

It's about perception, because perception, especially in this case, is quickly becoming reality.

It's about hope.

It's about recognition.

It's about doing what many believe is the right thing.

As communicators, there's much for us to learn here. PR is not simply relegated to press or media relations - especially when the event promotes the inclusion of the greater public. PR is "public" relations, and in that regard, Nike failed to not only promote one of its own, it is potentially crushing the spirit of amateur runners everywhere. Nike is a brand, like all brands, that's supported, defined, and nurtured by not only strategic marketing, but the customers who choose to embrace it as a participant, ambassador and representative.

It's opened the door for the public to steer the message and the response. And, with the volume, frequency, and reach of Social Media tools and channels, Nike will be forced into a deep response mode. Unfortunately, this is also an opportunity for competitors such as Adidas, Puma, Reebok, or Converse, to participate, contribute, fuel, and navigate this story into less favorable territories for Nike - assuming that this hasn't happened already.

I had no choice but to take the conversation to Twitter.



The response was astounding.

Rules are rules, she should have been with the elite group

That's just WRONG and damned straight Nike should do something about it! I'll not buy a NIKE PRODUCT unless/until they do!

Woah. After (hopefully) seeing that, the elite winners should give her the gold, and swap their medals accordingly. WTF Nike?

Wow - that wasn't right what Nike did at all. That's very disappointing to read.

WTF? It seems pretty clear to me that the woman deserves to be recognized for her accomplishment. I hate loop holes!

Nike should stick with their marathon results but make huge deal out of Arien having the fastest time, put her in a commercial

The responses continue page after page, with only one speaking out in support of Nike (the first example above).


Shot shortly before Arien O'Connell crossed the finish line

To help Nike, I've outlined a few simple steps to shift public perception and recognize Arien, without taking away from the accomplishments and recognition of the elites, in the process:

At this point, Nike must use the very channels that are working against it. The Social Web can help turn the tide for the company to embrace and engender support and empathy for Arien O'Connell and the Nike brand.

How?

Start by publicly acknowledging her achievement and create something that officially awards her as a "non-elite" or simply as a regular person who set out to embody the Nike slogan, "Just Do It."

Encompassing change can be good.

Announce this recognition and "award" using traditional tools such as email, a press release, a statement on the Nike Women's Marathon site, and also through prepared customer service responses (I'm sure the inbound responses have become increasingly louder, probably deafening.)

Fly her to Nike HQ or send a crew to New York. Shoot a video ceremony. Release it on the Web. Send it to everyone who has publicly called on Nike to do the right thing. Transform the media organization into a public outreach team to ensure that the groundswell shifts to support Ariel and Nike together. Invite her to become an elite runner and feature her on stage before next year's event.

Create a commercial around her and the thousands of others who participate in Nike Marathons that highlight the reality that we can, as regular people, become elites. It is a true Cinderella story, one that only inspires a community to participate instead of dividing it.

Make her the champion for the rest of us! Just Do It, just like Arien did!

By all accounts, this story demonstrates why PR must always be on guard and ready for an opportunity to shine - to shape perception and channel emotions in a positive and productive way. This is about celebration and rallying support within a community - the difference between PR and true public relations and the difference between proactive community engagement and empowerment and crises response, damage control and communications.

We all have the ability to become "Arien's" in our own right. All we need is support, inspiration, and the ability to shine!

UPDATE: Nike is announcing that it recognizes Arien O'Connell as the winner with the fastest chip time.

In an email response to someone who was unhappy with Nike, one of many I imagine, the company responded officially with:

Hello,

Nike is announcing today that it recognizes Arien O'Connell as a winner in last weekend's Nike Women's Marathon with the fastest chip time, completing the full race in 2:55:11. She shattered her previous time and achieved an amazing accomplishment.

Arien will receive the same recognition and prize, including a Tiffany bowl, the full marathon elite group winner received. Arien was unfortunately not immediately recognized as a race winner because she did not start the race with the elite running group, which is required by USATF standards.

Because of their earlier start time, the runners in the elite group had no knowledge of the outstanding race Arien was running and could not adjust their strategies accordingly.

Learning from the unique experience in this year's race, Nike has decided today to eliminate the elite running group from future Nike Women's Marathons. Next year, all runners will run in the same group and all will be eligible to win.

Nike has a proven track record of supporting athletes and we're proud to be able to honor Arien and other athletes who surpass their goals and achieve great accomplishments.

Crisis Communications 2.0 Series:
Apple and the iPhone Price Bomb
The Skype is Falling
Microsoft PR Sparks a Blogstorm with Acer Ferrari's and Vista

Connect with me on:
Twitter, FriendFeed, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Pownce, Plaxo, Plurk, Identi.ca, BackType, Jaiku, Social Median, or Facebook

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Twitter Tools for Community and Communications Professionals

Note: This post is frequently updated to stay current with the most recent applications and services. Please bookmark it.


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Twitter is nothing short of a phenomenon. At the very least, it connects people to each other through a rich and active exchange of ideas, thoughts, observations, and vision in one, highly conducive ecosystem (known as the Twitterverse). The social fibers that weave together this unique micromedia network is strengthened by the expertise, respect, trust, admiration, and commonalities. These fabrics bind the people who breathe life and personality into the global community as well as fueling the disparate micro communities that ultimately extend across the Long Tail.

Of all of the social tools and services that are pervasive throughout our digital society, only a select few communities can boast the pseudo fanatical conviction that Twitter's users unanimously possess.

Twitter is quickly gaining momentum, support and market inertia and is on direct path to mainstream awareness. Compete.com numbers show that roughly 2.5 million people visit Twitter.com each month, growing at about 250,000 - 500,000 users per month and up over 440% since this time last year. Just as a comparison Facebook receives about 41 million unique visitors per month.



Twitter is not only embraced and cherished by the people who rely on it for expression, insight, news, and communication, it is also the darling of the developer community. Almost every single day, a passionate developer, b2b or b2c application company, or tech enthusiast will develop a new tool, service, or solution to make Twitter a more personalized, professional, streamlined, effective, and/or fun experience.

If you live in the world of socialized marketing, communications, relationships, communities, research, service, digital anthropology, fundraising, publicity, product development, publishing, events, online reputation management (ORM) or simply seeking to increase your proficiency and efficiency on Twitter, there is surely no shortage of tools and applications that can help you.

I created this snapshot guide to help you extend the reach and the efficacy of Twitter for your personal brand as well as the brand you represent. This is the first part of a multi-part series. If you'd like me to review and include additional tools and services, please share them in the comments and I'll integrate into the next rev.

As of March 2009, here are the top 10 apps for Twitter (Source, TweetStats):



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TWITTER TRENDS AND ANALYSIS



SocialToo is offers a suite of productivity solutions for Twitter, identi.ca, and Facebook. It's most notable and unique feature is SocialSurverys, providing the ability to create elegant polls that can be shared across multiple networks (provides for automatic distribution through Twitter) and tracked in one central location for analysis. The service also offers a host of other social management tools such as Auto-Follow, Auto-UnFollow, Blacklisting, Daily Stats via email.



Twitt(url)y is a service for tracking popular URLs people are sharing on Twitter as a way to identify trends, topics, and new and interesting tools and services. It's basically Techmeme or Google News for Twitter, but for all popular links shared in a given day.



Retweetist is a community that showcases the most "retweeted" people, URLs, and also those who actively "RT" others - otherwise known as the retweetists. The service is extremely helpful as it leverages the wisdom of the community to curate content for your consumption. As a marketing professional it also spotlights the most retweeted users and those who RT them when you need to identify a micro network bound by topic or keyword.



Brought to you by the team who created BackType, BackTweets provides the ability to search all of the tweets that shared a particular URL, regardless of the URL shortener used to condense it. Simply enter any derivitave of the URL you wish to search, and BackTweets will provide you with a full list of "recent" (appears to be somewhere around 8-10 weeks) of people who shared the link on Twitter. An advanced search option is also available on BackTweets, which offers a date range as well as searches that include URLs shared either "from" or "to" someone in particular.



TweetStats is a hub for Twitter trends and analysis. For instance, you can analyze your tweets and those of any username by hour, month, and timeline to determine a pattern of activity. Reply statistics and topic clouds also paint a picture of influence and key themes that portray interests. TweetStats is also a dashboard for observing current, emerging, and all time Twitter trends in real time.



MicroPlaza is a personalized meme tracker that tracks and aggregates the common links shared on Twitter by your friends en masse or by creating specific groups (tribes).



Favrd (pronounced Favored) is a service that channels the most "favorited" tweets on Twitter. You can search by keyword and also see who else has favorited a particular tweet in order to identify like-minded contacts.



TwitLinks aggregates the latest links from the worlds top tech twitter users.



Tweetmeme tracks the top memes aka threads aka discussion on Twitter based on the links people share.



Twist analyzes and presents trend comparisons and volume between keywords and tags.



TweetPad provides a visual representation of Twitter feeds and statistics with dynamic typography. You need to read the "about" section in order to get a real feel for its capabilities.



Plodt plots your professional or personal life, interests, activities, and moods on Twitter. Basically you can categorize your Tweets so that you can analyze them as an individual as well as compared to the community at large.



Twitscoop is a trendcasting service that aggregates the top topics on Twitter and presents them in a visually rich tag cloud. You can hover over each cloud to see a pop-up overview of the discussions around the topic or click through to dive deeper into the analytics of the conversation volume and duration and also participate directly. TwitScoop provides the ability to search keywords and usernames to analyze the dialogue and frequency behind them.



TwitterCounter provides an interactive chart that chronicles the quantity of Twitter followers for any given username. The results are viewable by week, month, and quarter and the service will also predict the future volume of followers based on the average growth/loss over time. The chart is embeddable as a widget on any profile, blog, or Web site.



TwitterFriends is one of the most compelling analytical tools for identifying relevant conversationalists, revealing conversation patterns, and visualizing material conversation networks, by Twitter ID. The services aims to map the "relevant net" for any given user, which is incredibly valuable to any communications or service professional identifying influential voices and associated social graphs. For example, stats list to whom you (or any username) reply most often and those who reply back. The system determines a Conversation Quotient (CQ) that attaches a metric to the volume of tweets that include @ replies. For reference, the average CQ is 25.4%. The reports also provide the size of the relevant net (those you reply to or receive replies more than once in the last 30 days) outgoing and incoming, number of fans, loyalty, Twitter Rank, ratio of outgoing/incoming contacts, the follow cost, the conversational rank (number of public conversations with users), number of replies, a Retweet Quotient, Link Quotient, among many others. Perhaps most intersting, is the visualization of the TwitGraph which displays the rank of any user across multiple axes, Twitter Rank, CQ, LQ, RQ, Follow Cost, Fans, @replies.



Social Collider reveals cross-connections between conversations on Twitter. By searching users, phrases, or trends, Social Collider visualizes connecitons much in the same way a particle collider draws pictures of subatomic matter. Posts that didn't resonate with anyone just connect to the next item in the stream. The ones that did, however, spin off and horizontally link to users or topics who relate to them, either directly or in terms of their content. The Social Collider acts as a metaphorical instrument which can be used to make visible how memes get created and how they propagate.



Top Twitter Friends/Mailana provides an incredibly interactive and immersive map for visualizing relationships on Twitter. It reveals whom we speak to and who @s us most often and to whom we're closest. The visual map is responsive, enabling viewers to click and drag avatars to see who else connects to each other within your contextual network. Clicking each avatar also reveals their immediate social graph as well as their personal profile. Next to each map is a top 20 list of who we tweet and who tweets us back based on associated volume. Top Twitter Friends also recommends new friends based on keywords as well as those friends who reside near our designated home town.



SocialWhoIs is to Twitter and FriendFeed what "Who Is" is to Web sites and IP addresses. It reveals who you should follow and why - based on relevance and not popularity. SocialWhoIs gives you a snapshot of any given user name with links to their assumed social network profiles, related keyworks/topics, as well as a "home base" link. You can also search tags to identify individuals worth following and potentially engaging.



Unlike search.twitter.com, Twazzup displays top keywords related to your original search criteria as well as the individuals behind the associated tweets - this is in addition to the current, unrelated trending topics displayed at all times. Twazzup also displays the most popular tweets tied to your search terms, including the top trendmakers and outbound links affiliated with each keyword. Overall, Twazzup is far more useful than basic Twitter or TweetDeck search for market analysts, brand and customer relationship managers, sales, IR, and communications and community professionals responsible for listening, observing, responding, and learning. However, in order to be a complete replacement, it needs to include deeper functionality found currently in Advanced Twitter Search.


COMMUNICATION SOLUTIONS



TweetDeck is a must for any community manager, marketer or researcher tracking important and relevant conversations on Twitter. It's an Adobe Air desktop application that enables users to split their main feed (All Tweets) into topic or group specific columns allowing the tracking of a broader overview of tweets based on keywords or groups of people.



PeopleBrowsr, an attention-centered dashboard for managing your online relationships and communication in Twitter and across multiple social networks. At its foundation, PeopleBrowsr is a first of a kind meta-network for social networks that works with Mozilla FireFox 3, Safari 3.1 or Google Chrome – no download or plug-in required. It essentially turns your Web browser into a simple, visual social media dashboard. While there are many third-party tools for Twitter, PeopleBrowsr brings the best features from all of the popular add-on services into one solution - without requiring a download or a browser plug-in. More on PR 2.0.



Seesmic acquired Twhirl to create a highly integrated social desktop dashboard that centrally manages activity, messaging, and updating for Twitter, FriendFeed, Facebook Identi.ca, and Seesmic. It is an Adobe Air application, which is a very thin desktop client. It is among the most popular commmunications dashboards available for Twitter.



CoTweet is a platform that helps companies listen to and communicate with customers and influencers on Twitter. Like Splitweet, businesses can manage multiple accounts in one dashboard. In addition to PeopleBrowsr, CoTweet is perhaps among the first dedicated Social CRM solutions designed specifically for businesses. It allows for multiple simultaneous users to monitor conversations related to the brand, assign action to other teammates on the community management team, schedule messages, and reply from different accounts - all from one window.



TwitterMass is a hyper networking tool for Twitter. It offers a suite of tools to fully automate your Twitter outreach and help grow your niche Twitter network. It features the ability to auto follow, local follow, include favorite twitterers for #followfriday, track keywords, track followers, and clone followers to other accounts. TwitterMass also provides analytics capabilities to study followers and followers tied to keywords. A message center and the ability to upload keywords is coming soon.




Splitweet is a multi-account management dashboard for corporate users and brand managers. Designed for power users, it provides seamless management, monitoring and communicating across several twitter accounts simultaneously - all from one place.

Power Twitter is a powerful plug-in for FireFox that moves many disparate services and capabilities into one central location - right in your browser. This is almost a complete Twitter experience for the general and even power use, one that Twitter itself should provide. First, Power Twitter provides an at-a-glance Twitter history view for every person in your timeline. Second, search functionality is built in, so that keywords and hashtags are immediately viewable without opening a seperate window. And, @replies functions as it should. It reveals not only those tweets that begin with @yourusername, but now also include every tweet with @yourusername, regardless of where it's positioning in the message. Similar to TweetTree, content linked to in sites such as Flickr, YouTube, and TwitPic appear in the timeline - again saving you time from having to jump outside of Twitter. Overall, Power Twitter is a seamless experience. Install it, hit Twitter.com as you normally would, and you'll notice the new and improved capabilities.

Gridjit is a social portal that lets you view your web universe in a more visually rich way. It becomes your hub for tracking conversations, interesting people and those they @ frequently, and also provides a central location to post and share.



Monitter is a dashboard for searching up to three keywords on Twitter and reviewing the results in three distinct columns. The search can be further honed by proximity to any particular location. The results are not only ideal for listening, but also displaying them for the community to read and enjoy. Brand managers can download a widget to automatically view the community discussion or present it on a corporate blog or Website. Individual searches are also available as RSS feeds for monitoring through the feed reader of your choice.



TweetGrid is also a listening dashboard for Twitter. It offers community managers and communications professionals the ability to simultaneously monitor keywords, brands, competitors, executives, etc. all within one window.



GroupTweet is similar to Yammer, except it's within Twitter. Workgroups, extended networks, communities, and anyone who wants to broadcast and share private tweets to a specific group can do so for free using this unique and helpful service.



Tweet Later allows you to schedule tweets for a particular time and day. It also allows you to auto-follow those who follow your account and provides an auto-welcome feature to send a custom message to new followers via DM or in the public timeline.



Tweetbeep is the Google Alerts for Twitter and is a "listener's" dream service. It allows you to monitor conversations that mention you, your brand, related or competitive products, as well as links to your website or blog, even if they use a shortened URL, such as tinyurl.com. You're alerted as your keywords appear, reducing the need to manualy search for them.



Twilert is also an "alert" for Twitter that monitors Twitter for your keywords and sends them to you via email on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. Having these emails trip as keywords appear would be ideal for any brand manager.



TwitterFeed connects your blog to Twitter and automatically feeds posts into the timeline with each new update.



Twiffid shows the headlines of the Websites your Twitter friends have listed in their profiles to see what they're linking to or blogging about.



TwitThis is really a potentially powerful and game-changing service, if it gets traction. If you've ever visited a site or blog and have seen or used the "share this" or "email this" feature, TwitThis is similar in concept. Essentially, it grabs the url of the page you're on, compacts it into a TinyURL, and then allows you to add some thoughts to directly post to Twitter from the page you're visiting.



Diigo.com offers one of the most feature-rich and robust social bookmarking / web annotation services on the web today. Via Diigo's "Twitter-this" feature, you can easily share interesting websites or content on Twitter with a shortened URL - from the page you're visiting. It also allows you to easily add highlights and sticky notes to any webpage, and then share the annotated page with your Twitter followers. They will just see an ordinary link in the twitter message; but when click the link, they can also see your highlights and sticky notes right on the page.



Tweetree is a new service that attempts to thread related conversations in Twitter. Considered an alternative for those who read and post updates through Twitter.com, Tweetree also allows people to share content directly in the timeline. By simply including a link from YouTube, Flickr, TwitPic, FriendFeed, Seesmic, Qik, Lala, or Blip.fm, Tweetree embeds the content inline for others to enjoy without leaving the service.



OutTwit might just be the tool that bridges Twitter to the enterprise. More people use Outlook in business than any other email client. Now you can update Twitter and tap into the stream directly from Outlook. If you're a brand manager, community manager, or communications professional, you can establish search criteria for keywords and channel the results into dedicated folders in Outlook. You can also categorize and archive tweets through a seamless folder creation and storing option.



TwitterMail allows you to update Twitter via email. Once you log in, the system provide you with a dedicated email account, such as yourusername@twittermail.com. When you send an email to that address, it will automatically post a tweet for you. The service also sends email directly to you as you receive @ replies, which is ideal for brand and community managers. TwitterMail provides the ability to read your timeline in email by addressing a message with "friends" in the subject line. The service will send the last 20 updates immediately. If 140 characters won't work for your individual tweets, type the full context of what you'd like to share and TwitterMail will link the tweet back to the full posting for all to enjoy. And, through TwitterMail you can schedule tweets for publishing at a later date/time.



TWPLY is new service that tracks personal @replies and sends them to your designated email inbox. Seems simple enough and may be ideal for those high volume personal and corporate brands that need to actively monitor inbound tweets without having to stay connected directly to Twitter, Twitter Search, or a third-party service.



TWPLY is highly regarded as a spam app and raises questions as to the value of the service overall. On the heels of its rise and fall, we learn about Replies by Twitapps, a more elegant solution for receiving @replies on Twitter in your inbox. It delivers your updates on an hourly basis or when your replies reach a threshold of 25 tweets (whichever is first). Again, this is ideal for any brand manager, community manager, or communications professional, tracking important usernames on Twitter.



EasyTweets is a solution for pre-scheduling tweets. Brand managers and customer service and communications professionals can also manage multiple Twitter accounts, check replies, and track new followers from one central hub.

RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT



Whoshouldifollow.com makes it easy to find relevant, like-minded friends as well as friends of friends based on keyword and validated networks.



Twubble can help expand your Twitter network. It searches your friend graph and introduces and recommends new people who you may want to follow.



Twellow, a service of WebProNews, is an exceptional service for finding people who matter to your business or industry, by category. You can search keywords or browser through common categories to find the voices you deem as worthy following and/or connecting with on Twitter or other social networks. You can also claim your Twitter ID to further customize your individual profile with a short bio, extended bio, links to other profiles popular social networks such Facebook, LinkedIn, Delicious, Flickr, FriendFeed, etc.



Twitter Karma is an interesting and also very useful tool for visually identifying those whom you follow, who do or do not follow you, and the relationships that are mutual. In one dashboard, you can determine whom you should also follow as a token of reciprocity or a simple matter of missing an important new follower/s and also whom you can contact to also return the favor. It also makes it simple to individually check those to follow or unfollow and also provides the ability to bulk follow, unfollow and block.



FriendFilter improves the signal to noise ratio on Twitter by providing you with the intelligence necessary to effectively curate the content and the people that appear in your Twitter timeline. FriendFilter complements your notification message from twitter via email with detailed information about each person following you so that you can make an informed decision on the spot as to whether or not to follow back. The stats and data provided by FriendFilter include: Number of friends, Number followers, Average posts per day, Friends we both follow, Messages to tweets I know, Average number of hours between posts, Followers to Friends ratio, Ranking (in Thousands), Average Follower growth, and Friends who follow both of you. If someone seems interesting, you can simply click on their user name to see their last 20 updates, a TweetCloud, as well as a direct link to friend that person.

You control the volume of emails you receive from FriendFilter by adjusting the threshold of inbound alerts. As a bonus, FriendFilter also provides you with an email update each time your username is mentioned on Twitter.



Like Twitter Karma, FriendOrFollow provides a simple and quick solution to find out who you're following that's not following you and who's following you that you're not following back.



Like FriendFilter, Topify replaces the Twitter "new follow" notification email, with a email that provides a much richer and deeper view of each person. This helps Twitter users make a more informed decision as to whether or not to follow someone back in real time.



Even though Twitter features a directory search engine by name and email address, TwitDir always seem to find everyone, even when Twitter misses a contact. I use TwitDir when I'm looking to discover whether a particular contact or someone I'm trying to connect with is using twitter. Alternatively, you can use Google or Yahoo search and type "PERSON NAME" (in quotes) and the word twitter (outside of the quotes) in the search box to find the username. See example.



Tweet Pro is a paid service that allows you to create a solid network based on keywords and interests. The software allows you to locate specific Twitter users to enable mass, but focused following to generate a highly targeted account for your business/brand.



DoesFollow is as simple as that. If you want to know if USERNAME follows USERNAME quickly and easily, this is your service.

Tweet 2 Tweet

Tweet2Tweet provides you with the ability to view a history @replies between to Twitter users, which can be helpful for learning and understanding perspective and context.



Follow Cost estimates the potential attention (or annoyance) cost of following a particular individual or account. Here's the result for @briansolis.



Qwitter will send an email to you when someone unfollows you and will link the action to the most recent tweet that you posted. Through a series of experimental tweets, Qwitter is a humbling and instantaneous solution for honing your updates to better match what your friends and followers hope to see or not see.

Twitter Twerp Scan

Twerp Scan checks the number of followers of everyone on your contact list, the number of people they are following, and the ratio between those. If the person is following more than (n) people (can be customized), and has a Following-to-Followers ratio higher than 1:(m) (can be customized), you'll be notified by a link. Even if you have no use for that, you might find Twerp Scan a helpfultool for keeping an eye on your growing list of friends and followers.



TweepSearch is the first search engine that allows anyone to search and discover relevant Twitter bios and location information using keywords. It's ideal for learning more about those following any given username as well. For example, type @username and you can puruse through individual followers of @username and their corresponding Twitter bios.



Headup is a semantic desktop app that boosts and connects the social Web experience. When applied to Twitter, it places a Headup underline/icon next to user names, which when clicked, allows you to dive deeper into their online profile. Headup scours the Web and prepares an instant directory of social profiles and links to their persona and other online activity. Download Headup here.



Mr. Tweet is your personal networking assistant on Twitter. It helps you easily build meaningful relationships by looking through your network and tweets. Mr. Tweet will then suggest new and relevant tweeps and existing followers you should also follow. "He" also provides usage statistics that help you improve your engagement level on Twitter.



TwitterSnooze is a very welcome solution. There are many people that I follow whose tweets I usually enjoy reading. However, sometimes, those tweets can be obscure, irrelevant, loud, or unnecessarily narcissistic. Or, every now and then, a good friend will attend a conference, session, event or workshop that I don't care to endure virtually. TwitterSnooze provides the ability to "snooze" certain friends for a pre-determined period of time. If you're daring, you can also publicly tweet that you're snoozing someone.

Twalala

Twalala adds a mute button to Twitter allowing you to focus your stream as necessary without completely unfollowing someone.



Developed by Brooks Bennet, TweetChat is a service that introduces the ability to focus on specific conversations or topics. Using a "room" metaphor, users simply type in a hashtag (#name or #id) or a keyword related to brand, news, topic, etc., to specifically identify and channel all tweets related to that conversation. You can read and respond directly from TweetChat.com, but requires login using your Twitter ID and password.



My Tweeple is a Twitter follower/following manager that provides a one-stop dashboard for who you're following and who, in turn, is following you. The service allows you, with a single click, to follow, unfollow, or blog people (or tweeple).

Also see TwitterLocal below...

TWITTER SEARCH




Before Summize, now the official Twitter Search engine, Twemes and #hashtags provided the ability to index conversations based on keywords, groups, topics or tags also known as #hashtags. These Twitter memes can now be followed outside of the public timeline through a focused and dedicated stream.



Tweet Scan, like Summize (Twitter Search), is a search engine for Twitter. Both services provide the ability to search keywords, company/product/competitors names, users, etc. The services also feature the hottest search trends at that particular moment. I have noticed that in some cases, one or the other, consistently provides results that the other missed. Note, by clicking "Replies" in Twitter, you're only seeing tweets that start with @yourname. These search engines also track users as well as important and relevant keywords - as they appear.



OneRiot is a search engine for the real-time Web, which includes Twitter, Digg, and other searchable and relevant social networks. It's ideal for searching keywords related to news and events as it will find and surface all recent discussions and references to it - complete with a list of references and links those who have also shared it in the respective social network. One of the most valuable aspects of OneRiot's Twitter-specific search engine is that it will reveal the source of the thread or conversation in its results. Depending on the topic, most of the time we can unearth the tastemakers on any given subject.

PUBLIC RELATIONS



@MicroPR is the brainchild of Stowe Boyd and Brian Solis (with the help of Chris Peri.) It connects journalists, bloggers, analysts, and other influencers to PR. If you're in PR, communications, blogger relations, community management, analyst relations, make sure to follow @microPR on Twitter. If you are a journalist, reporter, blogger, analyst, or anyone looking for the help of someone in PR, tweet @microPR with your request, and PR people will see the rebroadcast through the micropr account with your Twitter name.

TWITTER INFLUENCE AND RESONANCE



twInfluence allows you to measure Twitter influencers, not just by followers, but also by reach, velocity, social capital and centralization. It also publicly ranks the top 50 influencers in each category. This is an important tool for identifying the tastemakers that you don't already know in the Twitterverse.



Twitority is a new service that that facilitates the search and sorting of keywords in Twitter by authority, or in less controversial terms, popularity. At the moment, authority is measured by followers, but perhaps, Twitority will eventually create an algorithm similar to Twinfluence in order to more accurately measure influence. Twitority is a simple, yet helpful service that will help brand managers, community managers, and communications and customer service professionals tier research and response strategies and programs. It’s also helpful to identify and measure potential opportunities and new trends based on the weighted discussions surrounding relevant topics. Searches can be sorted by any, little, or more authority.



Klout tracks influence across the Social Web, allowing you to track the impact of opinions, links and recommendations across the social graph. Klout collect data about content, how people interact with that content and the size and composition of respective network. Klout then analyzing the data to find indicators of influence and then provide you with innovative tools to interact with and interpret the data.



xefer reviews your Twitter account and presents a rich visual analysis of your tweet volume, concentration as well as their resonance (measured by replies) by day, time, week and hour. Here are the results for @briansolis.



TwitterGrader measures the relative power and authority of a Twitter user by calculating the number of followers, the power of the network of followers, the pace of updates and the completeness of a user's profile. Here's the result for @briansolis



Retweetrank documents topical influence and audience interest. It measures the RT reach and frequency of anyone on Twitter by calculating the number of RT's associated with a username. It then ranks the results based on the quantity of retweets and also provides an approximate perctentile representation of the rank as it compares to the general Twittersphere.


TWITTER MARKETING/ADVERTISING



Twittertise allows you to advertise on Twitter and track the success of branded communications with your customers. As a social marketer, you may also enjoy the ability to schedule and measure your communications on Twitter. The platform provides URL tracking technology to measure the effectiveness of your traffic driving ability on the platform.



TwitterHawk is a targeted marketing application that helps you connect with consumers nearby related to the keywords that are important to your business. It's a simple, but elegant solution for tracking conversions that may provide an entree for participation. As part of your marketing efforts, you could setup TwitterHawk to search for, let's say, "coffee near:Queens within:8mi."

TwitterHawk then periodically (at a frequency determined by you) discovers twitter posts that mentioned coffee by users that are actually located within 8mi of Queens. The system provides the ability automatically send a response as soon as it finds a match (from a list you create), list matches to confirm a response and then send them over pre-determined intervals, or reply immediately for a faster first contact and be online ready for their response.

For queued matches, you can edit and personalize individual responses to make a more human first impression.



Twittad is a micro ad network that connects advertisers to Twitter users to create opportunities for paid product placement and website promotion directly on a Twitter user profile (usually as a background image.



Magpie is an ad network for Twitter. It connects advertisers to related tastemakers/beacons on Twitter by keywords. The cost per ad is derived from the ratio of followers to the hotness of a particular topic. Then the ads are intermittently injected into an individuals stream, according to the site, at one ad per five tweets.



Whatsyourtweetworth.com analyzes your account and network to recommend what your tweets might be worth through Twittad.

TWITTER STREAM MANAGEMENT



Twitterrific is an elegant and "lite" software application that lets you read and publish tweets from the desktop, iPhone and iPod Touch.



DestoryTwitter is a compact Twitter application built to run on Mac, Windows, and Linux using Adobe AIR. It features a series of canvases that constantly update to keep tweets up-to-date using notifications that appear when a new tweet arrives.



TwitterFox is a Firefox extension for Twitter. This extension adds a tiny icon on the status bar which notifies you when your friends update their tweets. Also it has a small text input field to update your tweets.



iTweet is similar to twhirl except that it's an online dashboard that focuses specifically on Twitter. In many cases it's what Twitter.com should be, as it is a centralized hub for managing your twitter communication, relationships and also learning more about the people you find intriguing. For example, you can click on a profile picture to instantly learn more about someone without leaving the stream. You can also RT, DM, favorite, reply, or delve deeper into their profile direclty from the timeline.



Ping.fm is a central distribution service for sending updates to multiple social networks, including Twitter, with one click. Supported services include Plurk, Identi.ca, Facebook, Pownce, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Brightkite, Jaiku, hi5, Kwippy, among other. Note of caution, broadcasting updates doesn't replace the need to participate in each community that you wish to build and maintain valuable individual relationships.



Have multiple accounts on Twitter? Matt (Multiple Account Twitter Tweeting) provides a platform for broadcasting one update to multiple accounts. This is ideal for companies with a series of representative brands and employees that need to send orchestrated, general updates across all accounts simultaneously.



Feedalizr is an Adobe Air app that serves as a dashboard and an update center for Twitter, FriendFeed, Flickr, Pownce, and Facebook. If you're managing multiple social accounts, Feedalizr provides a desktop-based hub for listening, sharing, filtering, researching trends specific to conversations within each network, and posting content to specific communities.



Hellotxt provides the ability to instantly update status as well as view the status of your contacts across multiple networks (Facebook, LinkedIn, hi5, Plaxo, Pownce, Plurk, FriendFeed, Identi.ca, BrightKites, etc.) - all from one dashboard.



FeedTweeter connects social services that offer RSS feeds to you Twitter account. For example, you can have your updates at Plurk, Flickr, Identi.ca, YouTube, Delicious, etc., feed Twitter with updates as they happen.

TwitterKeys

TwitterKeys enhances Twitter conversations by replacing words with UTF8 compatible images - thus saving precious character space.

GEOLOCATION + IMAGING



BrightKite is a location-based social network that connects directly to Twitter. You can share your location and also locate friends geographically from the Web or your mobile phone. The service also offers an easy and direct channel for uploading pictures and notes to BrightKite and also Twitter - perfect for those with camera phones!



Loopt is "perfecting the art of connecting people and places." In essence, it's an elegant location-based social network + compass designed for connecting you to other people and destinations via mobile phones. Loopt recently introduced the ability to share updates and location via Twitter to also extend the reach and allure of connecting with and discovering people, and also places, not yet participating in the Loopt network.



TwitterLocal is the ideal service for quickly finding active voices within a specific city, state, postal code as well as the vicinity, ranging from 1 mile to 20. Not only can you search those voices, you can instantly produce an RSS feed for each search criteria to monitor localized conversations through your feed reader. Here's an example of the results for a search within 1 mile of San Francisco.




Twitpic provides a bridge from your camera phone to Twitter. Pictures can either post to the Twitter public timeline from phone via email or through the site.



SnapTweet links your flickr account to share updates seamlessly to Twitter.

EVENT MANAGEMENT



Twitzu is an event invitation management service for Twitter. You can create an event, broadcast it to followings and manage RSVPs.

TWITTER MOBILE APPLICATIONS



Twittelator is a Twitter client for the iPhone. You can manage multiple user accounts, update your accounts, share pictures, a map of your current location, connect with other Tweeps, read tweets from your contacts, and direct message (DM), and reply all from one app.



Hahlo is a sophisticated Safari-based, fully-functional Twitter solution for the iPhone. Not only can you tweet and follow tweets in your timeline, but you can also search, find out who's near you, send/view DMs, see who you're following, who's following you, your archive, etc. It actually is integrated and more useful than the capabilities available at Twitter.com.

Twitterfon is a fast, simple Twitter client for the iPhone and iPod Touch. It is focused on 80% of your tasks in Twitter such as viewing friends/replies/messages in the timeline and also sending/replying tweets.



Twinkle is a location-aware network for the iPhone and iPod Touch that helps you discover, connect, and send messages to the public timeline and also to people nearby. You can share photos and update your Twitter account from the phone.

Twitterberry

Twitterberry is a full-featured Twitter client to read and post updates from BlackBerry phones.

More to come...

Connect with me on:
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