Restaurant owners are quickly discovering how to use social media tools like Twitter, Facebook and Yelp to their advantage and drive customers to their tables, but there’s a guy in Wisconsin doing it better than almost anyone else.
Joe Sorge, who runs a burger joint in Milwaukee called AJ Bombers, shot me a tweet yesterday to tell me about a Foursquare party they had this week that brought a flash mob of 161 Foursquare users to his restaurant. My eyebrows shot up when I read that number. 161 check ins in one day?! How could that be? There are only about three or four hundred Foursquare users total in Milwaukee?! Over 150 of them were in the same place, on the same afternoon?
When I called him up, Joe explained. They came to earn the highly coveted and elusive Foursquare “Swarm Badge” – something you can only get when 50 or more Foursquare users check in at the same place at the same time. I hadn’t heard of it, but apparently the promise of this coveted Foursquare badge can really draw a crowd. Read More
This weekend I made the decision to switch things up and reboot my Twitter following list. On Sunday night, with a little help from Jesse over at SocialToo, I ran a script that unfollowed almost 12,000 people. This week, for the first time since the summer of 2007, I’m back to following just over 200.
In this post I’ll discuss why I decided to reboot my list and how I’m planning on changing my approach to using Twitter moving forward. I’ll also show you some data, bust a few social media myths and tell you a few things that those “social media gurus” with large Twitter followings don’t want you to know. Ready to rock and roll? Buckle up… Read More
Vincenzo Cosenza has mapped the most popular social networks by country, according to traffic data gathered on Alexa & Google Trends (June 2009). While Facebook’s growing dominance over MySpace in the US and other countries comes as no surprise, it is interesting to see the few smaller networks that most of us have probably never heard of that are country specific. It’s also important to note that that while Facebook is all the rage in the west, QQ (China) is still by far the largest social network in the world (300 million active accounts). As people continue to focus their time and energy on dominant networks, and the successful networks grow and take over, you’ll likely see many of these smaller social networks die out. It’ll be most interesting to see what happens if and when China becomes more open over time. We tend to forget about large networks like QQ and companies like BIDU that dominate the waking giant.
The Current Snapshot:
- Facebook is continues to dominate globe, especially in the west and other english-speaking regions, with more than 200 millions users.
- QQ, leader in China, is the largest social network of the world (300 millions active accounts)
- MySpace Still leads in Guam
- V Kontakte Still dominates Russian-speaking territories
- Orkut is strong in India and Brazil
- Hi5 is still leading in Peru, Colombia, Ecuador and other scattered countries such as Portugal, Mongolia, Romania
- Odnoklassniki is strong in some former territories of the Soviet Union
- Maktoob is the most important Arab community/portal
- Friendster is still rocking in the Philippines (remember Friendster?)
#1 Tim Berners-Lee On The Next Web of Open, Linked Data
20 years ago, Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. For his next project, he’s building a web for open, linked data that could do for numbers what the Web did for words, pictures, video: Unlock our data and reframe the way we use it together. (Recorded at TED2009, February 2009)
#2 Jeff Bezos On The Next Web Innovation
As founder and CEO of Amazon.com, Jeff Bezos defined online shopping and rewrote the rules of commerce, ushering in a new era in business. Time magazine named him Man of the Year in 1999. The dot-com boom and bust Bezos led is often compared to the Gold Rush. But Jeff says it’s more like the early days of the electric industry.
#3 Kevin Kelly on the next 5,000 days of the web
Kevin Kelly, exec editor at WIRED and founder of visionary nonprofits, shares a fun stat: The World Wide Web, as we know it, is only 5,000 days old. Now, Kelly asks, how can we predict what’s coming in the next 5,000 days?
#4 Yochai Benkler On Open-source economics
Law professor Yochai Benkler explains how collaborative projects like Wikipedia and Linux represent the next stage of human organization. By disrupting traditional economic production, copyright law and established competition, they’re paving the way for a new set of economic laws, where empowered individuals are put on a level playing field with industry giants.
#5 Ray Kurzweil On How Technology Will Transform Us
Inventor, entrepreneur and visionary Ray Kurzweil explains in abundant, grounded detail why, by the 2020s, we will have reverse-engineered the human brain and nanobots will be operating your consciousness.
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Whether or not you chose to acknowledge it, your ability to sink or swim on the social web depends on how you participate, engage others and embrace the customs of the virtual gift economy – this is as true for individuals as it is for big brands who have a web presence.
The concepts of “FREE as a business model” and sustainable gift culture generally makes sense to people in the context of products, services, brands and community building, but the understanding sometimes breaks down when it’s mentioned in the context of individual relationships and social media. Seasoned vets know that there are a host of unwritten rules and customs for reciprocating that we should follow when we benefit from free content and receive help and advice from others on the web. I’ll discuss some of those rules, explain why they’re important and offer some ways to act on them below. Read More
Give more than you take. It’s as simple as that. If we embrace this one powerful principal in our lives, individually we will enjoy meaningful, vibrant relationships and collectively create a culture of abundance. If we can’t, we end up with an empty jar.
We can all point to a friend or colleague who breaks the rule repeatedly. They call only when they need something and they only show up or participate when it benefits them. They forget that the act of taking from the jar implies that they will one day put back more than what they took. In many ways selfishness is failing to recognize that when you chose to benefit from the effort or contributions of another, you become part of a self-sustaining cycle of give and take, and that your actions alter the system’s balance. In the fog of self-absorption we can loose sight of the truth and reality of the circumstances of both others and ourselves. When we take more than we give, everyone that depends on the contents of the jar loses.
Remember that every one of your relationships has its own jar. We fill them with our time, energy and love. Sharing, participating, and giving before we take signal our good faith – they are small promises that when it is our turn to take, we have not forgotten our responsibility to keep filling the jar. What we do take, we should always strive to return with interest. This simple principal is as true for individual relationships as it is for groups, families and communities of any size. When we agree to be a part of the group, whether the group is 2 or 2 million, we accept an equal and shared responsibility for the jar.
At the beginning of September last year Clive Thompson published an influential article on NYTimes called “A Brave New World Of Digital Intimacy“. In the article, Clive discusses an interview he had with Facebook’s Founder Mark Zuckerberg on how Facebook’s newsfeed (dominated by short status updates) has been central to the sites success. He asks…
“In essence, Facebook users didn’t think they wanted constant, up-to-the-minute updates on what other people are doing. Yet when they experienced this sort of omnipresent knowledge, they found it intriguing and addictive. Why?”
Clive cleverly pokes fun at the Facebook status culture with the line “I’m so totally, digitally close to you!” and points out that…
Social scientists have a name for this sort of incessant online contact. They call it “ambient awareness.” It is, they say, very much like being physically near someone and picking up on his mood [etc] through the little things he does…
Understanding the dynamics of ambient awareness in the digital world is crucial to using social media effectively. In fact, increasing others’ awareness of YOU is what signaling and brand building on Twitter is all about.
I think we’ll all agree that, at least in its infancy, status updates were Twitter’s main MO. I think that’s changed as the UI and culture has developed and I’d argue that many people have evolved away from using Twitter to tell everyone what they’re doing all the time. Beyond socializing and sharing information, Twitter for many of us has become an essential tool for signaling, creating community and self branding. By engaging the social web correctly with Twitter, we can find and target individuals and groups and signal to them that we share interests and goals, that we belong to common communities and tribes. This type of signaling is the most effective way to build relationships and community over the web. Why? Because you can sincerely engage people based on mutuality and reciprocity.
How To Use Twitter For Effective Signaling On The Social Web
Signaling and branding are two of the most important uses for Twitter that work hand-in-hand, and while most people “get” how to use the tool effectively to broadcast and communicate, they miss hundreds of opportunities to create value and social capital for themselves and to network effectively. Here are some ways you can create the most value for yourself as you post to Twitter…
When You Share Content, Don’t Forget To Also Credit The Author Publicly
If you’re like me, you read constantly and you’ve got a list of favorite blogs and communities that you go to as much as daily for your information. I share noteworthy articles and posts I read on Twitter daily. Sharing ideas and content is the primary way I use Twitter and almost all of my my favorite writers and blogs have Twitter accounts. In fact, now that Twitter is mainstream almost anyone who is actively creating content on the web is on Twitter. Knowing this, we can create value for ourselves as well as the those whose content we enjoy. All we have to do is include the author’s Twitter account in the tweet when we link and share content (or even say “read X on @techcrunch or @rww” if you would rather credit the blog – most big blogs have Twitter accounts too). Not only does the author or person running the online community’s twitter account instantly see that YOU have shared the content with your community, they can also see that you’ve promoted them and given them credit. Win-Win, right? As Tara Hunt would say, you’ve just created a little bit of Whuffie. Kudos to you.
This can have huge benefits if you do it consistently. Over time, going the extra mile to give credit for content that you share by simply adding “by @[username]” or “on @[blog'stwittername]” when you link to content tells the author that you’re interested in their work, that you share interests and that you’re a regular reader. It’s validating for them, it helps them with their writing/blogging goals (they want to spread their content) and you’ve identified yourself as a member of their tribe and given them a reason to be interested in creating a relationship with YOU. This is serendipity at work. As a blogger, I love when people who read my stuff let me know who they are – there’s no need for anonymity anymore – real time public sharing and credit giving creates friendships quickly and effectively. I always reach out to regular readers and I find that when I consistently credit other writers, they also reach out to me. I have many good now-offline friendships that started this way online. Now contrast this with a Twitter post that has the same link with no credit – You’re not directly creating a trigger point to start a relationship so the chances of the author being aware of you is much lower so the ball never starts rolling. While it required the same effort to post the Tweet, the mutual benefit of the author and reader are much much lower.
Ok, so now that the meat of the point has been established, here are some other ways that you can use credit to create social capital -
Make Public Introductions with the people’s @usernames: For all the reasons stated above, introducing people, along with a short description of why you think they should know each other on Twitter benefits everyone. Not only are you creating goodwill by endorsing BOTH parties, by introducing them in a public way, you are also endorsing them to your followers. Introducing people on the web is a high value action for all.
Recommending Someone On #FollowFriday: We all know what #followfriday is for – it’s for finding the cream of the crop in the Twitterverse using the crowd as our guide. And of course, it’s not completely altruistic in practice, is it? Follow Friday is about you recommending others for mutual gain. You receommend someone, they get followers AND it signals to them that you’re aware of them, that you endorse them etc etc. I find that people create the most mutual value on Follow Friday when they focus on a single person and give explanations why they are making the recommendation. Tweeting a message like
“@globalpatriot inspired me this week. He writes a great blog on Global issues that I frequent #followfriday”
is much better than a post like this…
“@whyshouldIcare @whoisthis @whatsthepoint @dontcare #followfriday
Now that I’ve outlined a few ways to use Twitter for effective signaling, I hope your creative juices are flowing and you’re starting to think of other ways that you can use Twitter for signaling and creating relationships in the future. Remember, including people’s names in posts helps them find you and can often be an indicator of mutual interest and be used for mutual benefit. Giving credit and making recommendations in positive ways consistently can only benefit you in the long run…So go forth and crank up that antenna.
