From Marketing Voices:

The legendary Guy Kawasaki, entrepreneur, venture capitalist, author and Twitter aficionado talks about the strategies he uses for gaining incredible numbers of people following him on twitter. More than 180,000 people are reading his tweets as of October 2009. He talks about how there is no correct or incorrect way to use Twitter despite the challenging criticisms he gets from his followers on his strategy. He uses Twitter mostly promotionally just to build Alltop, a company he co-founded and loves dearly. Guy talks about how he is a broadcast network—more like PBS– as he educates his readers with his content-rich tweets. He uses ghost writers and discusses his transparency and tricks-of-the-trade.

If you are part of the social media world, and especially the Twitterverse, you know that Twitter recently added a list feature so Twitter users can now organize the people they follow into smaller, more manageable groups and view their timelines together. While this makes Twitter more usable for users who are following a lot of people, it also provides a bit of insight into what people think of you, or in this case me.

As of this moment, I am on 58 lists. That seems like a large number, but not really when it is compared to the 2128 people who follow me. Does that mean that 2070 who follow me and didn’t put me on a list don’t care about my tweets? I wouldn’t go that far, but I am sure some of them don’t. I am more interested in what the people who took the time to put me on a list think of me. I’ve divided the lists into categories below and have examples of the list names.

Professional Lists (34%)
These people are interested in viewing my Twitter stream along with others tweeting about B2B, marketing or social media.
b2b-marketers
b2b-thinkers
social-media
social-media-b2b
marketing-tweeps
marcomm-advertising
industry-professionals

Local Area (34%)
The next category is of people who have grouped me with others in the Triangle region of central North Carolina
nc-neighbors
triangle-nc
raleigh
raleigh-durham
triangle-tweeple

Event Speakers (12%)
I have spoken at several recent events and a few people have categorized me related to those events.
speakers
socialfresh
smbf

A Lonely Category
Only one person has categorized me as a photographer. This is not surprising as I don’t tweet about photography or share my real photos that much. Mobile phones have made everyone an online photographer.
photographers

Huh?
These three people created lists that I don’t understand. I do know all of them, but am a bit boggled by the names. Teneighty? Information? What else are you getting on Twitter? And blinkers? All of this person’s lists rhyme, but I don’t know what it means.
teneighty
information
blinkers

It Could Go to My Head
I am both humbled and jazzed to be on the following lists. They show that I have made a real impact on people and they value my thoughts, opinions, and even friendship. Thanks. You guys are very cool.
smart-people
rockstars
thoughtleaders
smartncooltweeps
top-b2b-influentials
a-list
friends
worlddomination

What is the best list that you are on?

About 3 months ago I shaved off my goatee that I had for about two years. It was getting pretty grey and Grace, who never liked it, encouraged me to shave it. Before that I had full beards on and off for many years. Primarily I have either been clean-shaven, as I am now, or bearded. I will count a goatee as a beard. One of the few times in my life that I just had a moustache, besides the early peach fuzz that I first shaved for my Bar Mitzvah at 13, was at the request of the McDonald’s Corporation. I worked at McDonald’s for 6 weeks after graduating from high school and beards were not allowed. And yes, I had a full beard my senior year of high school. I shaved my beard, leaving my moustache that summer. I arrived at college as a freshman with a cheesy moustache as evidenced by the college ID photo at the left. While it is not what I remember, but apparently I spent most of college with a moustache, as the picture on the right is my grad school ID photo. Still moustachioed, but not as cheesy. It was a much more serious time, so I had more serious picture.

So why all this talk about moustaches and what is Movember anyway. This is a global movement that is bringing much needed attention to cancers that affect men. I’m growing a Moustache this month to support this cause. My commitment is to grow a moustache all November and I am hoping that you will support my efforts by making a donation. The funds raised go to the Prostate Cancer Foundation and the Lance Armstrong Foundation (LIVESTRONG).

What many people don’t know is that 1 in 6 men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in their lifetime and testicular cancer is the most common cancer in men aged 18-35. Facts like these have convinced me I should get involved.

Click this link to go to my personal donation page and donate online using your credit card.

All donations are tax deductible to the extent permitted by law.

The Prostate Cancer Foundation will use the money raised by Movember to fund research to find better treatments and a cure for prostate cancer.

The Lance Armstrong Foundation will use the money raised by Movember to fund:

• The LIVESTRONG Young Adult Alliance program which has the goal of improving survival rates and quality of life for young adults with cancer between the ages of 15 and 40.
• Research initiatives to further understand the biology of adolescent and young adult cancers.

Four filmmakers, three of them former top level college soccer players, set off on a journey to connect with the world through pickup soccer. I had the chance to interview Gwendolyn Oxenham, one of the filmmakers and a former Duke soccer star, after a Duke showing of the film, Pelada. It is still a work in progress. Go to TheSoccerProject.com for more information about the film. Below is the trailer for the film.

Depending on how traditional your organization is and their reluctance to adopt social media practices, it can’t be worse than this video. Here’s an extreme example from the pharmaceutical industry where the legal adviser cannot even authorize listening in the social media space. Show it to your boss next time they tell you that you can’t do something.

Terry Border recently published a book called Bent Objects: The Secret Life of Everyday Things. It is three years of work and nearly 400 blog posts of attaching wires to food to personify them and illustrate a phrase or bad pun. Even Rhett and Link thought he was cool, as they interviewed him below.

On Friday night I drove to Greensboro to attend a Tweetup sponsored by Buick. It was at a cool restaurant called Liberty Oak. We were upstairs on a loft overlooking the dining room. Some of their social media team and designers were in the area for the High Point Furniture Market. They are thinking about the design of the interior of their cars in new ways that relate to home design, and were looking for feedback and input from other designers. Since they were in the area, they also wanted to connect with Twitter users and other social media types.

I was the lone Triangle representative in attendance. I saw my friend Adam, who i met last year at Startup Weekend, and have seen many times as he joins us for social media events in the Triangle. I met several people that I knew from Twitter, but have never met in person, including Danielle and Tammy, who is a fan of North Carolina Wine TV. I also met Brandon, Jon and Sarah, among others.

The gathering was hosted by Lish (from Buick’s agency) and Robert (Buick’s social media manager). Robert was the one who showed me the 2010 Buick Lacrosse pictured above. That picture was taken with my dSLR, and the dashboard picture and these others were taken with my iphone. They say the camera you have with you is the best camera, but if I am carrying both cameras, my dSLR is better. I talked to both of them about social media and showed Robert some of the things that I can do with my iphone. He captured some video with his Flip of me explaining my posterous blog as seen on my iphone.

I also had the chance to speak with Alexandra, the woman responsible for the interior design of the car I sat in. She was interested in my perceptions of American cars and what can change those perceptions. We talked about one of the main differences between buying living room furniture and buying a car. A car is one thing and you are probably not going to go too far out in left field with your car choice. If you pick something trendy because you are trying to be cool, like the Nissan Cube, you will probably regret it in a couple of years. If you buy a standard living room furniture set, you can add a funky chair to the mix to accent your style. And in a couple of years, if it feels dated, you can just replace that one piece. It’s also like painting one wall of a room a funky color, rather than the whole room. A car doesn’t have that ability to upgrade, or change the style, if you tire of it. That’s why people make conservative choices. So car designers can only push the envelope so far.

One of the cool interior touches was recessed lighting throughout the interior. The technology included satellite radio, a backup camera with directional indicators based on how you turn the steering wheel, and an auxiliary jack to plug in your mp3 player along with a usb port to charge it, both located in the center console. There was also a light in the console so you could find these plugs.

It was a fun time and I made some new connections, new friends, and learned a little bit about a new car from Detroit and some of the thought behind it.

Lish and Robert at the Buick Tweetup at Liberty Oak in Greensboro NC

Even though this video has a provocative title, it is a great example of animating still photos into a video. It’s also really sweet.

Here are some notes about how they made the video from www.otherthings.com. Follow the link for more information:

We made this video using a technique called “pixilation”, which is a fancy term for stop-motion animation done with real people instead of puppets. We shot it, frame by frame, with Raquel’s Canon DSLR over a period of nine months. Those of you who stopped by our house might have noticed some mysterious tape marks on the floor in the living room. Those were for the camera tripod and our feet.

Animating over such a long period of time, using an increasingly pregnant woman as one of your puppets, means basically throwing out everything you might normally do in an animated film. For example, early on, we had this idea that we should wear the same clothes every time, for continuity’s sake. But as Raquel’s pregnancy developed, we soon discovered that the extra effort required to change in and out of our uniforms was going to interfere with the goal of shooting as many frames as possible, and might even prevent us from finishing the project at all. We dialed down the perfectionism, and in the process ended up having a lot more fun with it.

Hat tip to Bit Rebels

Yesterday I was contacted by Tyler Dukes from News 14 Carolina, our local cable news channel, requesting an interview about the launch a Foursquare, a location-based social network. The program has rolled out in a number of larger cities, and just added Raleigh to its roster of nearly 40 cities. Here’s the text of the complete article below, and here’s the link to read it in context. And, yes, they did call me Jeffrey, but I told them to, and that’s a different story.

RALEIGH – Jeffrey Cohen was surprised to learn that the social media application Foursquare was launching in the Raleigh-Durham area Thursday.

Just two days earlier, Cohen had been selected as one of five beta testers for the application, which combines elements of social networking and friendly competition to help users explore their cities.

After downloading Foursquare on their smartphones, users can search for anything from restaurants to entertainment venues, then “check-in” when they visit using their built-in GPS. That information is passed along to the user’s friends, along with any reviews or recommendations they might have.

“It is essentially a location-based social network,” Cohen, a marketing and social media strategist based in Durham, said.

But in a phone interview Thursday, Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley said the lead time for the beta testers shouldn’t have been too shocking, given the size of his team.

“It’s four guys sitting around a table,” Crowley said with a laugh. “It’s less formal than you’d think.”

After starting with an initial list of places, Foursquare depends on users like Cohen to add to its local directory, essentially creating a crowdsourced database of — ideally — every business in the area.

“Once we have enough content, the users fill in the blanks,” Crowley said.

Users have already begun this process in 23 cities around the world, from Atlanta to Amsterdam. But Thursday, the start-up firm announced it was expanding the service to 15 additional places, with Raleigh-Durham among them. The service adds cities based on user feedback on its Web site.

Location-based social networks aren’t necessarily anything new. Services like BrightKite and Loopt allow users to share things like photos or places they’ve visited. The microblogging service Twitter recently announced it would add location services as well.

But for Cohen, the defining feature of Foursquare is the competitive element. Every time users check in with the service, whether at a bar or a city park, they receive points. Those points are compared to other users who visit the same place, creating a virtual hierarchy.

“It actually has a leaderboard,” Cohen said. “The more times you check in, the more time it accumulates.”

The user with the most points — or “mayor” in Foursquare parlance — is selected for each location every week. Users can even cash in their titles at participating businesses for freebies or discounts.

“Today I became mayor of Open-Eye Cafe of Carrboro,” Cohen said. “The leaderboard is one of the key things. It adds a competitive element to it.”

Crowley said points can also earn users specialized badges created by Foursquare programmers and often recommended by users.

For example, he said, “if you’ve been to too many karaoke bars, you get the Don’t Stop Believin’ badge.”

The element of competition and the chance for reward has so far kept users coming back.

“It’s really sticky,” Crowley said. “Once you start using it, you get addicted to it.”

And Cohen can attest to that.

“I feel like I need to drive around and go to places to check in to be on the leaderboard,” he said.

But Cohen points out that the service is mostly limited to smartphone users. Although users can access Foursquare on the Web, it has limited functionality compared to the mobile version. Crowley said that’s intentional.

“What we do is build things for phones to make cities easier to use,” Crowley said.

As with all location-aware programs, Cohen said a lot of people are hesitant to broadcast their whereabouts to a large audience. Often, he said, some of the same concerns come up.

“Do you really want people to know where you are every minute?” Cohen said. “If you check in at a coffee shop, people will know you’re not home.”

But he points out that users control what information they put out and who will see it.

Crowley said that control is important to users, and his small team has focused on this element since they first began Foursquare in 12 cities back in March.

“You don’t want everyone to know where you are all the time. You want some of your friends to know where you are some of the time,” Crowley said. “That’s what we’re trying to help you do.”

Photo by Ginny Skalski

My friend Ginny recently started a new job as the Social Media Strategist for Cree, the RTP-based LED lighting company. In her second week on the job, she was involved in the planning of a major company press conference when they announced the addition of 575 jobs. The governor of NC was in attendance for the announcement.

Ginny wanted an interesting backdrop for the announcement, so she asked me if she could use my photo of the Raleigh Shimmer Wall. Cree was a major sponsor of this downtown public art installation, as it is lit at night with Cree LEDs (scroll down for a night view). I was happy to oblige. Ginny posted several pictures online listing me as the photographer, like the one above of Cree CEO, Chuck Swoboda. Below is my photo, which clearly shows the Cree sponsorship banner.

From the News & Observer Editors’ Blog: Here are 5 things you may or may not have known about the company:

1. Cree chips lit up the Beijing Olympics, with 750,000 red, blue and green LEDs made by Cree helping to light up the Bird’s Nest and Water Cube buildings.

2. The company donated the $1 million LED system backlighting the shimmer wall at the Raleigh Convention Center.

3. Cree was founded in 1987 by brothers Neal and Eric Hunter, N.C. State engineering grads.

4. The company went public in February 1993. We covered it with a paragraph in our Feb. 10, 1993, edition. Market value of the company was less than $100 million.

5. Friday afternoon, Cree’s market value, as measured by the value of its stock, was nearly $4 billion.