PR 2.0: April 2009

Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Twitter: Acquisition vs. Retention


Credit

Seems that even the shiniest applications on the Web also face the same growing pains as any product, no matter where it resides on the adoption bell curve.

While many widely speculated the total number of new users who were introduced to Twitter as a result of the now infamous race to 1,000,000 followers, we do know that the number seems to hover between 500,000 and 1.2 million. When compared to the estimated existing user base of ~5 million heading into the race, the final number represents a significant spike in visibility, trials, and subsequent adoption. Irrespective of the exact number, believe that the culture of Twitter is forever influenced as it will with every big event.



Oprah Winfrey's followers have skyrocketed to 691,000 as a result of her televised tweet. She follows 11 people.



Ashton's follower count no longer needs media attention as it seems to be on auto-pilot now. He follows 137.

Robert Scoble made an interesting point recently, "She (Oprah) got at least 300,000 by being on the recommended follower list, not organically."

His point alludes to something we must consider. While the "Oprah Effect" is profound, is Twitter and its experiential value easily discernible by mainstream consumers?



While its traffic spikes appear significant, the true question is, what happens after new users create accounts and explore the service without direction or guidance?

Nielsen is reporting that Twitter's growth may indeed face hurdles based on current numbers that document follow vs. follow through.

According to the report, over 60 percent of new Twitter users fail to return the following month, creating a retention rate of only 40 percent. This isn't an isolated event. Over the last year, Twitter has struggled with user retention, averaging roughly 30 percent carry over from month to month.

Neilsen also explored other popular social networks on their rise to mass adoption.



Facebook and MySpace retention rates were twice as high during their phases of dramatic growth and only continued to escalate to the nearly 70 percent both enjoy today. Keep in mind that Facebook has surpassed 200 million active users.

Whether or not you agree with the results, there are associated realities with its current state, age, appeal, and barriers to adoption.

It's in the way that you use it.

Your experience is defined by those whom you follow.

Indeed, the potential market for "egocasting" is finite. The audience for self-promotion is limited in its patience. An ongoing popularity contest wears even the most persistent. And surely, Twitter is much more than a customer service channel for people to vent about product and service issues only to have companies save the day. The culture needs a supportive ecosystem of people and applications that define and propagate productive interaction. Perhaps Twitter's simplicity was its greatest catalyst and now potentially its most formidable barrier to reach the critical next stage of evolution. Twitter, along with the community, must demonstrate the value of micro updates and dialogue in order to provide long term value and and ensure resilience for all parties. Adding clever, centralized insight, instruction, and information in addition to recommended people to follow will serve as a companion to those new users who will not take the time to read the instructions and use cases that are globally
dispersed across the Web.

Helpful Posts on PR 2.0:

- Twitter Flutters into Mainstream Culture: The New Competition for Attention Starts with You
- Online Reputation and Brand Management Starts with Identity
- The Social OS, The Battle Between Facebook and Twitter is the New Mac vs. PC
- The Domino's Effect
- The Conversation Index
- A New Search Engine for Twitter
- Social Media Influences Buying Decisions
- Is Social Media Recession Proof?
- Twitter Traffic Surges to 10 Million
- The End of the Innocence
- The Social Effect and Disruption Theory
- Putting the Public Back in Public Relations is Now Available
- Twitter and Social Networks Usher in a New Era of Social CRM
- The Human Network = The Social Economy
- In the Statusphere, ADD Creates Opportunities for Collaboration and Education
- Humanizing Social Networks, Revealing the People Powering Social Media
- Social Networks Now More Popular than Email; Facebook Surpasses MySpace
- I Like You The Emerging Culture of Micro Acts of Appreciation
- The Ties that Bind Us - Visualizing Relationships on Twitter and Social Networks
- Make Tweet Love - Top Tips for Building Twitter Relationships
- The Battle for Your Social Status
- Twitter Tools for Communication and Community Professionals
- Is Twitter a Viable Conversation Platform

Connect with me on:
Twitter, FriendFeed, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Plaxo, Plurk, Identi.ca, BackType, Social Median, or Facebook
---
Subscribe to the PR 2.0 RSS feed.

---
Now available:


---

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

140 Characters Conference; Exploring the Disruptive Nature of Twitter


Twitter represents a technology platform, sustaining ecosystem, and evangelical community that facilitate not only a behavioral transformation in how we communicate and define online relationships, but also represents a fundamental shift in how we listen, share, participate, and learn. For many, Twitter is the catalyst that is inspiring individuals and organizations to discover and observe the real-time conversations and activity that affect perception and influence action. While Social Media has existed well before Twitter, its innovative, instantly gratifying, and seductive spirit is forcing the evolution of networks and applications across the Conversation Prism and the Social Web.

The lessons and experiences that transpire on Twitter humanizes our voice, transforms how we discover and share information, and connects us to an extensive and empowering contextual network that serves as the foundation for education and inspiration.

At the very least, we’re learning that cultivating and sustaining relationships on Twitter is defined less by our ability to merely participate in conversations through unstrung updates and public @’s and instead, prized by the personality, wisdom, and value we invest into each tweet as well as spotlighting notable insights of those we follow.

Our education spans a lifetime as long as we believe we have something to learn.

On June 16 & 17, I’m joining Jeff Pulver to organize and host the 140 Characters Conference (#140Conf) in New York. The conference will explore the effects of Twitter on communications, relationships, celebrity, media, advertising, politics, and social good.

The #140Conf will indeed feature a cast of 140 characters who will individually share their unique experiences, theories, discoveries, and creations in a motivating and rousing forum. We will leave informed, encouraged, and united as we focus on a greater mission of helping and guiding our respective communities to a higher state of social literacy through enriching and meaningful engagement.

This is an exciting time in which we live and we’re truly looking forward to seeing your avatar in real life IRL at the #140Conf.

Register here.

Exhibitors

Please fill out this online form if you are interested in showcasing your product or service at the conference.

Sponsors

There is a limited array of sponsorship opportunities to prominently showcase your brand at the event. Please contact me via email.

Media

We are offering press access to working members of the media. Please visit the press page for further details.



Helpful Posts on PR 2.0:


- Twitter Flutters into Mainstream Culture: The New Competition for Attention Starts with You
- Online Reputation and Brand Management Starts with Identity
- The Social OS, The Battle Between Facebook and Twitter is the New Mac vs. PC
- The Domino's Effect
- The Conversation Index
- A New Search Engine for Twitter
- Social Media Influences Buying Decisions
- Is Social Media Recession Proof?
- Facebook Now 200 Million Strong
- Twitter Traffic Surges to 10 Million
- The End of the Innocence
- The Social Effect and Disruption Theory
- Putting the Public Back in Public Relations is Now Available
- Twitter and Social Networks Usher in a New Era of Social CRM
- The Human Network = The Social Economy
- In the Statusphere, ADD Creates Opportunities for Collaboration and Education
- Humanizing Social Networks, Revealing the People Powering Social Media
- Social Networks Now More Popular than Email; Facebook Surpasses MySpace
- I Like You The Emerging Culture of Micro Acts of Appreciation
- The Ties that Bind Us - Visualizing Relationships on Twitter and Social Networks
- Make Tweet Love - Top Tips for Building Twitter Relationships
- The Battle for Your Social Status
- Twitter Tools for Communication and Community Professionals
- Is Twitter a Viable Conversation Platform


Connect with me on:
Twitter, FriendFeed, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Plaxo, Plurk, Identi.ca, BackType, Social Median, or Facebook
---
Subscribe to the PR 2.0 RSS feed.

---
Now available:


---

Saturday, April 25, 2009

The NewComm Forum Spotlights the Unification of Traditional and New Media Communications



On Monday, I'm joining some of the industry's most visionary and prolific leaders in the hybrid new world of traditional and new media and marketing.

Please visit the NewComm Forum Website for details on the activities, discussions, and people participating over the course of the two day event. If you'd like to attend, enter the code SNCRFRIEND to receive a discount of $100.

Here's my agenda...

Monday, April 27th from 11:15 - 12:30 p.m.

Social Media & Investor Relations – Disclosure & Other Issues

Social media is reshaping disclosure and the practice of investor relations. As the social web begets a human voice and genuine transparency, it also raises the risks of meeting and maintaining legal compliance. The SEC has recently modified its stance on blogs, but as new social tools continue to innovate and gain traction, can companies as well as the SEC, keep pace with a rapidly evolving landscape of social networks in order to meet investor demand as well as the emerging opportunities for engagement and communication?

I've organized an expert panel that includes those active in covering and defining the world of disclosure in the era of the social web:

Richard Brewer-Hay, Ebay
Tom Foremski, Silicon Valley Watcher
David Gelles, Financial Times
Bryan Rhoads, Intel

Monday, April 27th from 2:00 - 3:15 p.m.

The New Organization Landscape for Marketing Communications

Who owns social media? Honestly, it’s the wrong question to ask. The truth is that we all are responsible for socializing our role within the organization to cultivate a voice and personality for the brand we represent. In order to compete for prominence in the future, we must first compete for attention where and when it’s captivated. As we transform our individual divisions to collectively humanize our company as well as establish the policies, programs, and new responsibilities for listening and engaging in “twitter time,” we’re actively contributing to a new organizational landscape that redraws the boundaries between sales, service, and marketing communications. We’ll discuss responsibilities, models, reporting, analytics, and opportunities to explore alternative topographies for collaboration and innovation.

Connect with me on:
Twitter, FriendFeed, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Plaxo, Plurk, Identi.ca, BackType, Social Median, or Facebook
---
Subscribe to the PR 2.0 RSS feed.

---

Thursday, April 23, 2009

Twitter Flutters into Mainstream Culture: The New Competition for Attention Starts with You


Source

Following the solo media vs. traditional media race that led Twitter into both relevance and irrelevance, the result is that the carefully guarded community and its unique culture are now permanently altered – for better or for worse.

According to estimates sourced by Engadget Editor-in-Chief Ryan Block, Twitter grew by 1.2 million users simply as a result of the “Oprah-effect.”

TechCrunch's MG Siegler also explored the process for estimating Twitter’s path into the mainstream.

What does 1.2 million new users mean for Twitter?

So, how many new users really joined Twitter as a result of the celebrity-fueled popularity contest?

I’m not sure the answer truly matters. If we explore it from a sociological perspective, I believe that the culture of Twitter has been introduced to a significant event that may indeed shift interaction and behavior overall.

Going into the race, estimates pegged the active userbase anywhere between 5 - 8 million. Now post race and the Oprah-effect, over 1 million people were introduced to the service guided by a “follow me” mentality. This “overnight” expansion represents a potential 10-12% saturation ratio. These new users will participate and build communities around them based on their interpretation of the network as framed by those whom they follow. Remember, we are measured by our last 20 tweets or updates within each social network. Take a look for yourself, www.twitter.com/insertusername

It is what it is. The real question is, what do you want to get out of these connections?

In the end, we are still responsible for creating our own experience within the community and that is one of the true advantages and rewards of Twitter. We foster and cultivate individual ecosystems that bind us contextually.

Competing for Attention

Perhaps what is most interesting and prevalent is the behavior transformation in content consumption that is taking place in “Twitter time” and it's establishing a new world authority. For many of us, we’re migrating away from destinations and potentially RSS readers as well as our primary source of news, relevant information, pleasant distractions, and trending topics. We’re quickly focusing on Twitter, Facebook News Feeds, FriendFeed and the statusphere as our highly curated and personalized attention dashboards.

As content publishers, producers, and creators, we need to acknowledge, understand, and embrace this critical disruption.

Let’s take a look at Twitter as an example. Before the April’s madness of follower contests, Comscore reported that Twitter had experienced a new record of 9.3 million visitors in March, which represented a 131% jump.



As you can see, the growth curve is practically vertical. And, we’re sure to see yet another surge in growth when April numbers are released.

However, Comscore is also observing what I believe to represent the hope and potential future for traditional media.

When they examined the percentage of visitors to Twitter who also visited the top online news brands and compared it to that of the total U.S. Internet audience, they discovered a strong level of overlap. The result is that the average Twitter user was often 2 and 3 times as likely to visit the top online news brands as the average person. For example, while 17 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience visited CNN.com in March, more than double that percentage (38 percent) of Twitter users did so.



Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed and active online social interaction breathe new, and measurable, life into great content where it’s hosted, simply by connecting it to the potentially attentive people where and how they are currently engaged.

This is the Statusphere, a new ecosystem for sharing, discovering, and publishing updates and micro-sized content that reverberates throughout social networks and syndicated profiles, resulting in a formidable network effect of viral activity. It is the digital curation of relevant content that binds us contextually and through the statusphere we can connect directly to existing contacts, reach new people, and also forge new friendships through the friends of friends effect (FoFs) in the process.

In order to compete for prominence in the future, we must first compete for attention where and when it’s captivated. While we contribute to the evolution of new media and the supporting cultures within each network, we are responsible for what we contribute and what we gain from the interaction. We earn the relationships we deserve.

Update: comScore released global numbers that show a worldwide surge of 19.1 million visitors in March 2009.



Helpful Posts on PR 2.0:
- Online Reputation and Brand Management Starts with Identity
- The Social OS, The Battle Between Facebook and Twitter is the New Mac vs. PC
- The Domino's Effect
- The Conversation Index
- A New Search Engine for Twitter
- Social Media Influences Buying Decisions
- Is Social Media Recession Proof?
- Facebook Now 200 Million Strong
- Twitter Traffic Surges to 10 Million
- The End of the Innocence
- The Social Effect and Disruption Theory
- Putting the Public Back in Public Relations is Now Available
- Twitter and Social Networks Usher in a New Era of Social CRM
- The Human Network = The Social Economy
- In the Statusphere, ADD Creates Opportunities for Collaboration and Education
- Humanizing Social Networks, Revealing the People Powering Social Media
- Social Networks Now More Popular than Email; Facebook Surpasses MySpace
- I Like You The Emerging Culture of Micro Acts of Appreciation
- The Ties that Bind Us - Visualizing Relationships on Twitter and Social Networks
- Make Tweet Love - Top Tips for Building Twitter Relationships
- The Battle for Your Social Status
- Twitter Tools for Communication and Community Professionals
- Is Twitter a Viable Conversation Platform

Connect with me on:
Twitter, FriendFeed, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Plaxo, Plurk, Identi.ca, BackType, Social Median, or Facebook
---
Subscribe to the PR 2.0 RSS feed.

---
Now available:


---

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Online Reputation and Brand Management Starts with Identity



As I've written over the years, in the era of the Social Web, we are all brand managers. While I spend a significant portion of my time sharing the importance of listening and observing to noteworthy conversations and the enveloping cultures that define relevant online communities. When it comes to participation and engagement however, identity is often an afterthought by most companies.

Knowem is a new service that help businesses take a proactive step to securing their brand and product identities across the Conversation Prism a.k.a. the social Web to expedite their foray into Social Media or to retain the domains as assets for future Social Media programs. Think GoDaddy for Social Networks IDs.



Knowem serves two functions. First, it provides you with the ability to quickly search o
ver 120 popular social networks for the availability of any username. The results and status are immediately displayed next to each network. Second, Knowem helps brand managers secure the available identities through a time-saving service that acquires all available domains for a one time fee of $64.95. For an additional $9.95 per month, they will also continue to monitor new websites and register your username on them as soon as they launch.

I a big believer in creating and participating in the communities where discussions are relevant to your brand and marketplace. Conversations occuring today in one ore more networks will eventually augment or shift altogether as new networks are introduced or existing sites gain favor. Having a service that automatically acquires important usernames as they emerge seems trivial at $9.95 when compared to the investment required to promote a new identity because it wasn't available.

According to the founders, some of the biggest brands in the world have yet to obtain their identities in multiple networks. For example, Google (NASDAQ:GOOG), Pepsi (NYSE:PEP), Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), Exxon (NYSE:XOM) and Citigroup (NYSE:C) still show that dozens, and in some cases over 80%, of popular social media websites still list their brand names as available.

Knowem also ran searches for popular celebrities and learned that many have not yet secured their online identity either. Ashton Kutcher and Oprah Winfrey's recent exposure in the media for their use of Twitter has spotlighted and sparked celebrity enthusiasm for using social media as a channel for publicity, communication, and TMI. But as of today, their Twitter screen names, @aplusk and @oprah, are still both available on almost 90% of other sites that may prove important in future social media programs.

Brand and reputation management is now a systematic process in our daily routine of listening, learning, and participating. 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. It's not just about what's popular today, but ultimately engaging where your communities are congregating. Maintaining a portfolio of consistent usernames provides a seamless ability to effectively navigate the Social Web as one cohesive brand, where and when opportunities emerge.

Helpful Posts on PR 2.0:

- The Social OS, The Battle Between Facebook and Twitter is the New Mac vs. PC
- The Domino's Effect
- The Conversation Index
- A New Search Engine for Twitter
- Social Media Influences Buying Decisions
- Can The Statusphere Save Journalism?
- Is Social Media Recession Proof?
- Facebook Now 200 Million Strong
- Twitter Traffic Surges to 10 Million
- The End of the Innocence
- The Social Effect
- Putting the Public Back in Public Relations is Now Available
- Twitter and Social Networks Usher in a New Era of Social CRM
- The Human Network = The Social Economy
- In the Statusphere, ADD Creates Opportunities for Collaboration and Education
- Humanizing Social Networks, Revealing the People Powering Social Media
- Social Networks Now More Popular than Email; Facebook Surpasses MySpace
- Are Blogs Losing Authority to the Statusphere?
- I Like You The Emerging Culture of Micro Acts of Appreciation
- The Ties that Bind Us - Visualizing Relationships on Twitter and Social Networks
- Make Tweet Love - Top Tips for Building Twitter Relationships
- The Battle for Your Social Status
- Twitter Tools for Communication and Community Professionals
- Is Twitter a Viable Conversation Platform

Connect with me on:
Twitter, FriendFeed, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Plaxo, Plurk, Identi.ca, BackType, Social Median, or Facebook
---
Subscribe to the PR 2.0 RSS feed.

---
Now available:


---

Monday, April 20, 2009

The Social OS, The Battle Between Facebook and Twitter is the New Mac vs. PC



As Twitter and Facebook compete for your attention and social status, there's another story that serves as the undercurrent for something much more important, a fully pervasive and functional social operating system (OS) that serves as a open platform to connect you, your content, updates, and activity to your friends, peers, and followers across your social graph, regardless of network, browser, or device.

Facebook and Twitter have effectively created immersible destinations and ecosystems that facilitate the development and deployment of applications that not only replicate capabilities currently available in traditional software and cloud computing, but also create a new dynamic for social collaboration, interactivity and engagement hosted in each respective network, desktops, and across the social web. Each network boasts a library of thousands of applications that only continues to burgeon.

Unlike the file interoperability between applications that run on Mac and Windows, Twitter and Facebook platforms are proprietary, although Facebook provides a bridge to automatically port tweets into your Facebook personal News Feed for example.


Twitter and the statusphere have become our attention dashboards that serve as our source of news and information as well as hub for communication - more so than email. We're just now beginning to recognize and acknowledge this shift in content consumption and production behavior. The new ecosystem for sharing, discovering, and publishing updates and micro-sized content reverberates throughout social networks and syndicated profiles, resulting in a formidable network effect of activity and interaction. It is the digital curation of relevant content that binds us contextually and through the statusphere we can connect directly to existing contacts, reach new people, and also forge new friendships through the friends of friends effect (FoFs) in the process.


Source


Last year, Facebook rolled out its Connect program to extend the platform and also aggregate your disparate social activity by enabling you to login to participating sites and services using your Facebook credentials.



Facebook Connect is a technical bridge that links your Facebook profile with other online networks to feed your associated activity back to your personal Facebook News Feed. For example, if you’re commenting on a blog hosted on the Moveable Type platform, you can now login with your Facebook details and not only will your comment and link to your Facebook profile appear on the blog, the activity of commenting is also linked back into your activity feed for your friends and colleagues to see. Digg allows Diggers to log on using their centralized Facebook ID and for each story they digg, the activity is documented back on their profile. The idea is to collect and present distributed activity in one focused stream to create a centralized hub for presentation and interactivity between you and those within your social graph. Examples and Facebook Connect partners already number in the hundreds if not thousands.

Twitter, at one point, was and maybe still is a Facebook Connect partner. However, the social platform is also going to connect your identity and distributed activity through its new "Sign in with Twitter" program.



Many networks currently facilitate connectivity between activities. You can send updates from participating communities directly back to Twitter, similar to the Facebook program. While many services related to Twitter require your username and password, your credentials were still guarded at the services level as well as in Twitter's network. Now, your identity is verified at Twitter's gates and will no longer need to reside in multiple locations.

Instead of creating and maintaining multiple identities, eventually you'll only have to manage two - Facebook and Twitter - until, perhaps someday, you only need one.

So, back to the Mac vs. Windows discussion. With its new login system, Twitter is attempting to extend its social OS by also aggregating identity and officially channeling outside activity back into the Twitter timeline, which could ultimately feed into Facebook.

After the failed attempt at acquiring the popular micro community and with mass public attention now on Twitter, Facebook now has an official and formidable competitor in the social OS category. It's userbase is 200 million strong compared to maybe 8 million. But current numbers aren't reflective of the outcome. This is a long and winding road that will traverse numerous grades and hurdles.

Many are focusing on the technical aspects and openness of Twitter's authentication system. I believe that the bigger story resides with the platform and the ability to lure developers, foster innovation, and seamlessly connect users and activity to friends, peers and followers to stimulate new registrations, adoption, consumption and interaction. Facebook and Twitter, and other emerging and existing networks on the periphery in the evolving social landscape, will eventually play host to much more that the proverbial "conversation." They will enable not only a new genre of communication, but also centralized professional and personal collaboration and management.

Helpful Posts on PR 2.0:
- The Race to 1,000,000 Followers Sends Twitter and Social Media into Relevance and Irrelevance
- The Domino's Effect
- The Conversation Index
- A New Search Engine for Twitter
- Social Media Influences Buying Decisions
- Can The Statusphere Save Journalism?
- Is Social Media Recession Proof?
- Facebook Now 200 Million Strong
- Twitter Traffic Surges to 10 Million
- The End of the Innocence

- The Social Effect
- Putting the Public Back in Public Relations is Now Available

-
Twitter and Social Networks Usher in a New Era of Social CRM
- The Human Network = The Social Economy
- Humanizing Social Networks, Revealing the People Powering Social Media

- Are Blogs Losing Authority to the Statusphere?
- I Like You The Emerging Culture of Micro Acts of Appreciation
- Make Tweet Love - Top Tips for Building Twitter Relationships

- Is Twitter a Viable Conversation Platform


Connect with me on:
Twitter, FriendFeed, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Plaxo, Plurk, Identi.ca, BackType, Social Median, or Facebook
---
Subscribe to the PR 2.0 RSS feed.

---
Now available:


---

Sunday, April 19, 2009

Gary Vaynerchuk on Putting the Public Back in Public Relations



If there's one person who has rocked the Web to create their own destiny, Gary Vaynerchuk would rank among the top of the list. Best known as the host of WineLibraryTV, he is also a world renown motivational speaker as well as the director of operations at Wine Library. He helped the family business grow from $4 million to over $50 million in revenue per year.

Gary is the epitome of the old adage, “If I can do it, anyone can do it." He dedicates most of his time helping every day individuals find their inner Gary Vee.

Vaynerchuck’s fervor, dedication, and perseverance has given way to success that has yet to reveal it’s full potential. WineLibraryTV boasts 80,000 viewers daily, he recently signed a seven-figure 10-book deal, he speaks to audiences all over the world, and he frequently makes appearances on national TV to discuss wine and his vision for humanizing the wine industry.

Gary shared his thoughts on my
new book with Deirdre Breakenridge, "Putting the Public Back in Public Relations."
PR has changed forever and Brian Solis and Deirdre Breakenridge are at the forefront of this change. If you think PR is fine and dandy, please buy this book because without it you will be out of business!"

- Gary Vaynerchuk
Putting the Public Back in Public Relations is written for the those facing the new intersection of all that is rooted in Public Relations including PR, media and analyst relations, customer service, product development, social media, brand and community managers, executive management, HR, journalists, bloggers, marketing, advertising, students, teachers, content publishers, and everyone in between.

The book is now in stock at Amazon, the Amazon Kindle store, Barnes & Noble, Safari, and bookstores everywhere.

You can read more about the book here.
---
Thoughts from other leading voices:

"Putting the Public Back in Public Relations" is a passionate and persuasive case for rewriting the rules of public relations. Authors Solis and Breakenridge expertly combine third-party perspective with case studies and examples to paint a picture of a profession on the brink of reinvention." -- Paul Gillin

"Movers of the message, now hear this: the public on the other end of the transaction isn't waiting around for you to reach it with your pitch. Let Brian Solis explain these things to you, and you will be far, far better off." -- Jay Rosen

Hugh MacLeod (@gapingvoid) also created an original and brilliantly poignant drawing to commemorate the book's debut.


---



Kindle Edition

Connect with me on:
Twitter, FriendFeed, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Plaxo, Plurk, Identi.ca, or Facebook
---
Subscribe to the PR 2.0 RSS feed.

---

Thursday, April 16, 2009

The Race to 1,000,000 Followers Sends Twitter and Social Media into Relevance and Irrelevance


Source

Updated...

It started as a simple and seemingly harmless contest. Who would be the first person on Twitter to reach 1,000,000 followers?

This wasn’t yet another follower push open to just anyone on Twitter however, not even the Weblebrities who helped propel the popular micro community to an emerging, iconic pop culture status; it was (and at the moment, still is) a race between the world’s most visible celebrities and prominent media brands.

Ashton Kutcher, a television and movie star who’s also keenly astute and observant to the promise of new media, challenged CNN and its founder, Ted Turner to the race.

It was the match heard round the blogosphere, twitterverse and statusphere.

Shortly thereafter, Britney Spears, Will Smith and a bevy of opportunistic celebrities (and their publicists) and media properties (driven by their PR teams) followed suit. Britney’s team offered chances to win free tickets in exchange for followers. Other celebrities (who shall remain anonymous, DM’d followers to ask for help in spreading the word.)

The competition quickly became a media phenomenon.

Ashton and Twitter Co-Founder Evan Williams appeared on the Oprah show, which celebrated a new genre of media and online celebrity with almost every leading competitor surpassing 1,000,000 followers on the same day. The publicity was enough to inspire Oprah to start tweeting.


Sarah Ross, Ashton Kutcher, TechCrunch50

Initially I questioned the exchange. I couldn’t help but feel as though “we the people” on Twitter were merely viewed as pawns in a personal chess match between the elite.

Think about it. If Twitter had 6-7 million users, we’re talking about 1 in every 6 or so users following one of the contenders.

I threw the question out to Twitter, “How do you feel about the race to 1,000,000?”

The response was almost overwhelming in its volume and vigor, spanning across Twitter and Facebook over the course of several hours.

While the publicity for Twitter and the overall medium that is Social Media is incredible and sprawling, I believe that the purpose and deeper meaning of having 1,000,000 followers on Twitter or any social network, will be lost to the fervor that fuels this “contest” – unless we’re comfortable holding the title of “follower” a.k.a. social pauper. I highly doubt that any brand will view this special achievement of having cultivated 1 million followers as an opportunity to “engage” in “conversations” with their communities. Intention is easily assessable by simply viewing the latest tweets via www.twitter.com/username.

But in Ashton’s case, it’s so much deeper. I believe his intentions are genuine.

Ashton echoes the sentiment of why many of us have invested in Social Media literacy over the years, "Twitter is removing filters between celebrities and fans, big media companies and their customers."

Now that he's won, he’s promised to donate 10,000 mosquito nets to help fight malaria and hopefully there's much more social good to follow. Using social media to build a platform for self-promotion or a top-down distribution channel for propaganda and messages is, in the spirit of the social web, anti-social. To demonstrate that any individual can earn influence for which to wield freely and graciously in the name of social good is symbolic of the true spirit of Social Media.

In his own words, Kutcher so passionately defines what has inspired many of us over the last several years in our work to help cultivate the foundation for social media and the very people powering its evolution, “So why is this significant? This is a huge statement for Social Media. For one person to actually have the ability to broadcast to as many people as a major media network, sort of signifies the turning of the tide from tradition news outlets to social news outlets. With our video cameras on cell phones, picture cams, blogging, twittering, posting, and Facebooking, we actually become the source of the news, the broadcasters of the news, and the consumers of the news…we have the potential on this day to turn the tide…where social media and social news outlets can become as powerful as the major news outlets. We’re doing that with the help of you. It’s sort of power to the people and I like that, a lot.”



We participate on social networks to express ourselves and share a piece of who we are in the real world, online, to forge relationships with people we respect, trust, and admire and it inspires us to share, learn, and grow together. With every tweet and update, we reveal a bit of what we stand for and what moves us, forming a unique social graph that contextually connects us to others in an irreproducible network. It’s unique to each one of us, and it’s both empowering and powerful.

We become media.

We become influencers.

We are the source of the social seismographs that spark reverberating tremors that represent the potential to create a webwide social effect.

We’re shifting into a rapid-fire culture that moves at Twitter time. Attention is a precious commodity and requires a personalized engagement strategy in order to consistently vie for it. The laws of attraction and relationships management are driven by the ability to create compelling content and transparently connect it to the people whom you believe benefit.

Twitter and the statusphere have become our attention dashboards, the new ecosystem for sharing, discovering, and publishing updates and micro-sized content that reverberates throughout social networks and syndicated profiles, resulting in a formidable network effect of activity. It is the digital curation of relevant content that binds us contextually and through the statusphere we can connect directly to existing contacts, reach new people, and also forge new friendships through the friends of friends effect (FoFs) in the process.

Is having one million followers sustainable? Better yet, is it engaging or welcoming? Can you genuinely listen to and converse with a community that rivals the population of small countries?

Perhaps it doesn’t matter...not anymore. If you are a curator of highly relevant information, thoughts, beliefs, opinions, and motivating substance, then you can potentially flourish into a fountain of inspiration that channels content to the beacons and ambassadors who also represent interconnected human networks. It’s how we communicate now.

Dr. Dunbar, theorized that the size of the human brain allows a stable network of about 148 contacts, which has become known as “the Dunbar number.” In Social Networks however, real world relationships have evolved into something altogether different and perhaps more authoritative. Now, individuals can follow and are followed by thousands or (eventually) millions of "friends" across the Conversation Prism. This is a new breed of personal branding and expert and themed curation tethered to a peer network that exemplifies fandom and creates a platform for peer-to-peer influence. And, we may or may not ever know the people who choose to follow our updates or friend us on these popular and emerging networks. Our human network is defined by reach, not just in one community, but through the syndication of multiple social networks.

For Ashton, reaching one million followers represents the potential of socialized media, the future of information discovery and distribution, and the connectedness of contextual human networks. For the others, collecting followers represents the ability to push information to a faceless list of avatars using a new medium. As followers, we’re simply relegated to subscribers and fans, nothing less, nothing more. This is an exchange, however, a lesson that may elude those who focus on numbers, and not people. As "followers," many of us continue to invest in online relationships because we realize rewards and mutual benefits for doing so. If we're merely a number, and if we don't, in the very least, receive a simple but meaningful gesture of a follow-back, then we rely on the shared content to keep us satisfied. Choose your tweets and updates carefully.

The future of Social Media lies with those who can create, cultivate, and empower individuals to produce and share meaningful content and inspire action, foster education, instigate change and build a more media literate society.

UPDATE 1
: Ashton links to this post on Twitter.

UPDATE 2: Ashton hits 1 million followers (TechCrunch)

UPDATE 3: Spencer Pratt challenges Ashton to a Twitter race and contributes to a potential shift in Twitter culture.

Attention celebrities, it's not about followers, it's about community. Viewing Twitter as a popularity contest demeans the culture that helped propel it. Many of us learned over three years how to embrace the art of communicating, sharing and empowering others while finding our own cadence on twitter. Now that adoption is flying across the bell curve, we will witness celebrities publicly use and promote it in ways that also condition new users to follow suit. The questions is, will they learn or will their mass and momentum shift the culture of Twitter altogether.

Helpful Posts on PR 2.0:
- The Domino's Effect
- The Conversation Index
- A New Search Engine for Twitter
- Social Media Influences Buying Decisions
- Can The Statusphere Save Journalism?
- Is Social Media Recession Proof?
- Facebook Now 200 Million Strong
- Twitter Traffic Surges to 10 Million
- The End of the Innocence

- The Social Effect
- Putting the Public Back in Public Relations is Now Available

-
Twitter and Social Networks Usher in a New Era of Social CRM
- The Human Network = The Social Economy
- In the Statusphere, ADD Creates Opportunities for Collaboration and Education
- Humanizing Social Networks, Revealing the People Powering Social Media
- Social Networks Now More Popular than Email; Facebook Surpasses MySpace
- Are Blogs Losing Authority to the Statusphere?
- I Like You The Emerging Culture of Micro Acts of Appreciation
- The Ties that Bind Us - Visualizing Relationships on Twitter and Social Networks
- Make Tweet Love - Top Tips for Building Twitter Relationships
- The Battle for Your Social Status

- Twitter Tools for Communication and Community Professionals
- Is Twitter a Viable Conversation Platform



Connect with me on:
Twitter, FriendFeed, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Plaxo, Plurk, Identi.ca, BackType, Social Median, or Facebook
---
Subscribe to the PR 2.0 RSS feed.

---
Now available:


---