Earlier this month, I had the privilege of meeting and spending time with Josh Catone. If you don’t recognize his name, chances are you’d recognize his work. Josh is currently the Features Editor for Mashable, the world’s most widely-read social media blog (source: compete.com). Digging a little deeper into Josh’s past, one could easily mistake his résumé for the subscriptions list of a techie’s RSS reader.

Josh started his illustrious career writing for the wildly popular computing magazine, Maximum PC… while he was still in high school. But he was just getting warmed up. Before he landed his next high profile writing gig, Josh launched Rails Forum, a community for Ruby on Rails users. Today, that site receives 25K-35K unique visitors per month. He then spent over a year as the Lead Writer/Editor for ReadWriteWeb before accepting the Lead Blogger position at SitePoint. Earlier this year, Josh took on the role of Community Manager for DandyID, a data portability platform for online identity management. But that gig would be short-lived, as Mashable came knocking this spring.

Although Mr. Catone has firmly established himself as a social media rock star, you’d never know it by talking to him. He’s one of the most down-to-earth, humble people that I’ve ever met in this industry. The night that I met Josh, he also introduced me to a friend of his who didn’t use Twitter, Facebook, or any of the other IP’s that we’re all so addicted to. In the social media world, that’s a lot like being Amish. But I also believe it’s one of the many ways that Josh keeps himself grounded, a trait that likely fueled his success over the years.

As that evening gave way to the wee hours of morning, we stood overlooking the Chicago River, trying to figure out how many levels there were to the city and how to get to all of them. Our conversations frequently drifted away from social media. When I asked him about doing this piece, I told him that I thought he had a “cool, interesting story that I’d like to tell.” Josh responded, “I dunno if ‘interesting’ is a word you should use in the same sentence as me.” But Josh’s modesty only reinforced my desire to share his tale.

Let’s start at the beginning. How did you get your foot in the door at Maximum PC? Did they ever find out that you were still in high school at the time?

I think I was sixteen at the time, and Maximum PC was running a back page humor column called “The Daily Glitch.”  It was a parody newspaper front page that was supposed to poke fun at the top technology stories each month.  Unfortunately, in my opinion, it wasn’t very funny.

So I wrote up some ideas and sent them off to Jon Philips, who at the time was Editor-in-Chief at Maximum PC and is now Editorial Director for Future US (the publisher of the magazine).  I wasn’t really expecting them to publish anything I sent in; I was actually just offering up some ideas.  Jon wrote back a few days later to let me know that it was their policy not to accept article suggestions that were so developed, but they’d be happy to have me as a contributor and did I have any other ideas.  I was totally floored, plus they paid me (I think $200/page, which was a lot of money to a 16-year-old).

The gig only lasted a couple of months before they redesigned the magazine and replaced the humor column with a feature called “Rig of the Month” about souped up gaming computers, but it was my first taste of professional writing and I haven’t looked back.

I’m sure your inbox is flooded with hundreds (if not thousands) of emails from PR types every day, touting their Web 2.0 apps as the next big thing. How do you decide what gets published on Mashable and what gets discarded?

So I don’t actually deal day-to-day with news and product reviews — that’s a separate team of people altogether. My job is to write features and edit guest posts. What we look for in a guest poster is strong writing ability, a background that lends credibility to the topic, and a unique angle that we haven’t covered before.

With over 288K subscribers and almost 1.3M Twitter followers, how does a company like Mashable manage such an active and passionate community?

It’s really a combination of a great team and great content. The former begets the latter and that’s why people stick around and stay passionate about what we’re doing.

What aspects of social media interest you the most? In your personal opinion, what trends or developments could be game-changers?

With the rise of the “real-time web,” I think information overload is only going to become a more and more serious problem. So I am very interested in tools that attempt to filter out all the noise and make social media easier to consume.  I’m also a fan of any tool that encourages people to get out and do things other than just type away at their keyboards all day. Apps like foursquare fit that bill.

I’ve also become interested (partially due to one of my side projects) in how social media can be used by educators.

Tell me about Rails Forum. Was it a case of necessity being the mother of invention or was it started just for fun?

It was actually more a case of opportunism than anything else. In May 2005, I started hearing a lot of buzz about this new framework called Ruby on Rails, and I thought maybe there was a way to capitalize on it. So I bought the domain railsforum.com, and a few others. A year later, with Rails still gaining steam, I launched the site along with a couple of friends who actually are programmers and actually use Rails.

Now it has been three years and though I’m still not a programmer, I do feel pretty well connected to the Rails community (both at Rails Forum and more broadly), and I utilize Rails for my side projects.

What do you think Rails 3.0 needs to do to boost the technology from an application framework option to the platform of choice for developers? Are scalability and speed the biggest issues that need to be addressed?

I’m not sure that is has to become “the platform of choice.” I’m a firm believer that developers should use the best tools for the job, whether that’s Rails or not. Rails won’t be right for every project or for every developer, and that’s okay.

In terms of Rails development, Twitter, Hulu, and 37signals are essentially household names. What other teams are doing cool projects with Rails that people might not be aware of?

There are really a ton of awesome and huge sites built on Rails now. Scribd, Get Satisfaction, iLike, YellowPages.com, Justin.tv, Chow.com, Penny Arcade, Funny or Die, GitHub, Soundcloud, Cork’d, Shopify, Lighthouse, Pitchfork, Red Bubble — I could go on and on. But it’s important to remember that Rails is just one piece of the puzzle for all these sites.

You have a pretty eclectic background in tech and social media journalism. What lessons have you learned through the years? What advice would you give to an independent blogger with career aspirations?

I’ve learned that being a blogger is a lot harder than it sounds. Sitting at home all day in your pajamas can be part of it, sure, but you do a lot of real work while in your PJs. I’ve learned that South by Southwest is a lot of fun. I’ve learned that you should never give your phone number to PR people, especially before a big conference. Though I’ve also learned that a lot of people in public relations are really smart and very good at their jobs. I’ve learned that even if you’re writing about Twitter, sometimes you have to turn it off so you can get some work done.

My advice to aspiring bloggers is to keep writing. Keep doing what you do and don’t be shy about approaching the “A-list” bloggers about collaborating or doing guest posts. You’ll get farther, faster if you get your name out there.

Last question. This one’s for bonus points, so it’s a two-parter. a) Why was downtown Chicago built on multiple levels? b) If you’re standing on the south side of Wacker, then cross the street and turn around, on what level of Chicago are you standing?

a) So while in Chicago, someone told me it had to do with the fires of 1871. The city burned down and it was rebuilt on a higher level to protect against future fires, though I’m not sure how building everything on stilts would stop the flames — doesn’t heat rise? Wikipedia says it has to do with creeping sewage and rising river water, which is certainly more believable, but not something I’d put on the tourist brochure. b) I honestly am still not sure how I made it out of that place, but I have heard that if you get to level 6, you win an extra guy, which is helpful against the boss on level 9.

Special thanks to Scott Radcliff, Damian Rintelmann, and Mike Driehorst for their contributions.

Recently, my good friend and fellow social media evangelist, Gene Powell, asked me to write a guest post for Spoke. He wanted to compare the popular web-based, multi-user Twitter apps CoTweet and the upcoming HootSuite 2.0 (Beta) for business use. Since gainful employment and I are going through a bit of a rough patch, I had plenty of time on my hands and happily obliged. That post, Tweeting in Flocks: Multi-User Twitter Apps Compared, went up at 11:00 this morning. Take a look and leave a comment over there to let him know what you think.

In May of this year, a resourceful hacker was able to pierce the veil of Twitter’s secrecy, obtaining some 310 confidential documents along the way. The hacker was able to gain access to a Twitter employee’s Google Apps account where the sensitive material resided. According to Twitter founder Biz Stone, the intrusion “speaks to the importance of following good personal security guidelines such as choosing strong passwords.” Although the documents were procured two months ago, they were finally sent to TechCrunch on Wednesday. Never one to be accused of having a strong moral compass, TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington made this statement initially:

There is clearly an ethical line here that we don’t want to cross, and the vast majority of these documents aren’t going to be published, at least by us. But a few of the documents have so much news value that we think it’s appropriate to publish them.

The general consensus from TechCrunch’s readership in the comments was that they should not publish the stolen documents. In a follow-up post, Arrington even acknowledges the wishes of his readers. But he was not to be swayed from his decision. He had this to say in said post:

It’s not our fault that Google has a ridiculously easy way to get access to accounts via their password recovery question. It’s not our fault that Twitter stored all of these documents and sensitive information in the cloud and had easy-to-guess passwords and recovery questions. We’ve been sitting in the office for eight hours now debating what the right thing to do is in this situation. We’ve spoken with our lawyers. We’ve spoken with Twitter. And we’ve heard what our readers have to say. All of that factors in to our decision on what to post or not to post.

And post they did. Earlier tonight, TechCrunch unleashed a wealth of confidential information from the stolen Twitter documents. But the cherry on top was the fact that Arrington fancied himself a martyr for doing so, as seen in the screenshot below.

So what are we to gather from this? That he sacrificed in some way for the future of journalism? That’s a little arrogant, even for somebody like Michael Arrington.  This had nothing to do with ethics, morals, or any other buzzwords that scream, “I wouldn’t have done that.” Sensationalist journalism is usually good for traffic in short runs. And TechCrunch needed traffic in short runs. Why? To prevent slipping even further into second place behind rival Mashable.

As social media becomes a more mainstream channel for marketing, it’s become obvious that in order to survive, organizations must adapt. Every day, news stories are published about how one company or another is adjusting to this new climate. Standing still is not an option.

Major media outlets like CNN have been criticized for falling behind citizen journalists on Twitter. Coca-Cola’s presence on Facebook was launched not by the company itself, but by a pair of fans. Ready or not, they were inheriting nearly a million Facebook fans and needed to develop a strategy quickly. My own analysis of the social media practices of companies like Ford and Chrysler struck a chord with a larger audience than even I imagined.

While corporate social media strategies grab headlines daily, a subject that is often overlooked is how educators of marketing students are adapting to their ever-changing field. Last week, I was fortunate enough to connect with Yuping Liu, an Associate Professor of Marketing at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. I asked her to conduct a brief interview via email. My original intent was to use her responses as part of a larger piece on the subject. But I was so taken by the depth of her answers that I’ve decided to publish the interview in its entirety instead. More information on this young thought leader can be found after the interview.

Social media has blurred the lines between marketing, PR, and customer service. Will this convergence have a long-term impact on the organizational structure of companies?

Similar to the effect open-source community has had on corporate R&D, social media has definitely opened up the boundaries of organizations.  The marketing, PR, and customer service functions of a company are no longer limited to its marketing or PR departments.  Rather, members of the public, such as bloggers, brand advocates, and other consumers are all playing an increasingly important role.  Although these word-of-mouth sources have always been a part of marketing, their impact is amplified many times because of the accessibility and reach of social media.  Take Get Satisfaction for example.  By organizing consumers and companies all in one community, it allows the customer service function to be fulfilled jointly by companies and their customers.

What are some ways that a company looking to expand into new media can seamlessly integrate their existing traditional marketing strategies? What companies are already doing this well?

I am not sure there is a way to “seamlessly” integrate social media into traditional marketing.  There is quite a bit of mentality shift here.  Some companies who are used to traditional marketing & PR actually find it hard to accept the disruptive force and freedom/lack of control created by social media, and as a result, fail to adapt quickly.  Lots of companies that are using the new media well are actually companies who have limited resources to be able to do traditional marketing (e.g., non-profit organizations).  So in a way, their resource constraint became a blessing as it pushed them to grab new opportunities.  Brooklyn Museum is one of my favorite examples of using a combination of various social media to engage audience and market itself.  Its Twitter account (@brooklynmuseum) has over 23,000 followers and is constantly engaging in a dialogue with its “customers”.

Rather than suggesting ways to integrate new media, I would like to point to a major barrier to integration: a fear of losing control.  I have witnessed companies creating fan pages on Facebook, but not allowing anyone to post any comments, or creating a YouTube channel but afraid of publicizing it anywhere official.  A lot of times, it is because top management is afraid of potential legal issues or negative publicity.  This type of mentality will not survive the social media era.  If you don’t do it, someone else will, and it could be so much worse.

We’ve all heard how Dell added $3M in additional sales from traffic generated by Twitter. What are some the pitfalls of adopting a social media strategy based solely on the premise of increasing revenue?

A big issue in social media marketing is the difficulty in pinning down its ROI.  While $3 million extra cash like Dell has realized is a dream for most businesses, most of the time, immediate revenue gain is not possible.  For example, when I complained about a confusing SkyMiles statement through Twitter, Delta Air Lines immediately followed me and emailed me to solve the problem.  Will I necessarily fly more?  Not really.  But will I be more loyal and harder to be lured away by other airlines?  You bet!  So basing social media strategy purely on immediate revenue gain loses sight of two things: (1) revenue gain that may not be realized immediately but rather in the long run; (2) saving the opportunity cost of customers that could have been lost if it weren’t for well-executed social media strategy.

With a low barrier to entry in terms of cost and resources, has social media leveled the playing field for smaller organizations with a limited marketing/advertising budget? What advantages do big corporations still have?

Definitely.  As I mentioned earlier, lack of resources has pushed many smaller organizations toward social media.  Google’s AdWords was attractive to small businesses because it offered them a cost-efficient way to reach their customers.  With social media, it got even better, as many social channels such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Flickr are freely available to organizations small and large.  An example is the story of the Pizza joint in New Orleans who saw increase in business from distributing coupons through Twitter (according to AdAge).

One advantage that big corporations still have is their ability to engage in more sophisticated analytics.  Monitoring and mining the social media world is no easy task, and can be very daunting to smaller organizations, either due to resource constraint or lack of expertise.  This advantage can help big corporations gain more in-depth insight from social media that can lead to long-term competitive advantage rather than mere sales gains.  Credibility is another advantage that big corporations potentially have.  Information from social media is not completely reliable.  Especially with the rise of hoaxes and rumors in social media, users are more likely to trust larger organizations that they know.  For example, when Michael Jackson died, a lot of people were still hesitant to believe the news until they saw major media reporting it.

How has the onset of social media as a viable marketing tool impacted your classroom instruction?

My classroom instruction had already been impacted by social media concepts even before the social media movement really took place.  I have been using Blackboard in my class for many years, which offers capabilities for the students and I to engage in discussion and collaboration inside and outside of the classroom.  But the onset of social media has definitely brought me even closer to my students and broadened up the scope of classroom instructions.  Via connections through Facebook and Twitter, the distance between teachers and their students has become shorter.  Social media has also become an important part of classroom discussions.  For my Internet marketing class last fall, for example, one of the classes took place virtually in the 3D social world of Second Life, where my students had an opportunity to experience different aspects of the virtual world.  When we got to PA Consulting’s land in Second Life, we ran into the person who helped develop the space and were able to have a very productive conversation about the company’s involvement in Second Life.  This type of interaction would not have been possible without social media shortening the distance between people.

Although I have not used this myself yet, I have heard of other professors using Twitter creatively to enhance classroom interaction, such as this recent Washington Post article describes.  The article also touches upon a real concern among college faculty, which is the validity and credibility of information from social media.  Many professors still do not like to see the Internet (and especially social media) as the students’ only source of information when completing an assignment and insist on the triangulation of information with other more traditional sources such as books and established news media.  In a way, this reaction is understandable, given the numerous celebrity death news on Twitter that has turned out to be wrong.  So overall, I would say that educators are gradually incorporating social media in their instruction while remaining somewhat cautious about it.

In an era when incoming college freshmen have spent the majority of their teen years with social networking accounts, what have you learned from your students? Are we only at the tip of the iceberg in terms of possibilities and creative uses?

For one thing, I got onto Facebook because of my students.  I remember a few years ago, I heard my students talk about how often they check Facebook everyday.  Being a geek myself, that really piqued my interest.  So I decided to check it out myself.  It has become one of the main social networking tools that I have used since then.  Ironically, what my new generation of college students has taught me is that there is no rule in social media and things rarely stay popular forever.  For example, when Facebook became mainstream, my students were already turned off by the fact that their parents and grandparents were now using the website.  Some of my graduate students who were first adopters of Facebook are now using it only to keep in touch with people they used to know (and connect in Facebook with) in college.  Their enthusiasm has not been nearly as high as what I witnessed a few years ago.

I think the challenge of social media is to keep it interesting.  The quick coming and going of information through social media has shortened the attention span of the younger generation.  So to impress them, one has to be ultra creative.  But even that, do not expect one thing to be hot for very long.  Unlike milking a successful advertising campaign for an extended period of time in the traditional marketing world, a company has to constantly re-innovate itself to keep the attention of the new generation in the social media world.  Another lesson is that if your target market is the younger generation, you should try to keep the mainstream at bay.  Sometimes the lure of the mass market can be too lucrative to ignore, but the sacrifice is the loss of the younger audience.

What fundamental principles of marketing remain unchanged, regardless of the medium?

I would say three basic principles of marketing have not changed: (1) A superior product that provides unique value to customers is still the key to sustained marketing success.  A clever marketing ploy may be able to make a product or service temporarily popular.  But if the product/service itself is not superior to others, people will eventually leave when the hype is over.  (2) Building relationships with customers is important to long-term success.  Relationship marketing has long been the norm in B2B marketing.  In the B2C area, the marketing discipline has also been advocating relationship marketing for the last decade.  This is the result of today’s hyper-competitive marketplace.  Social media have made relationship marketing more feasible as they have shortened the distance between companies and their customers.  But the basic principles of good customer relationships apply both inside and outside of social media. (3) Be where your customers are.  The appropriate place to be, whether it is social media or not, will depend on a company’s target audience.  This not only means that a company should act fast to be with its customers but also means that it should not try to jump onto the wagon simply because something is hot at the moment.  For example, I can never understand why some companies would establish a Facebook page.  The nature of their business and their brand image do not go with that social network at all.  Not only do such poorly targeted efforts dilute the company’s resources and brand image, but they make the company look bad when their “fan” page does not have any fans.

Yuping Liu, Ph.D. is Associate Professor of Marketing and E. V. Williams Faculty Fellow in the College of Business and Public Administration at Old Dominion University.  She received her MBA and Ph.D. in Management (Marketing Concentration) from Rutgers University in 2002.  Dr. Liu’s research focuses on the intersection among marketing, technology, and consumer psychology.  Her main research areas include Internet marketing, loyalty programs, and customer relationship management.  Dr. Liu’s publications have appeared in Journal of Marketing, Journal of Advertising, Journal of Advertising Research, and Business Horizons, among others. Her blog can be found at http://www.yupingliu.com/wordpress/.

As a relative newcomer to social media, sometimes I think my inexperience works to my advantage. I don’t carry with me the baggage of traditional strategies that don’t translate well to emerging technologies. One of the things that stands out like a sore thumb to me is the tendency of organizations to continue to approach social media with the same ideology that they applied to traditional marketing campaigns.

In the “good old days,” if you could afford to reach millions of viewers with a 30 second spot on network television, you’d done your job. Hire yourself a creative marketing firm to squeeze the maximum amount of “I’ve gotta have that” into half a minute and Bob’s your uncle. Big companies with a substantial advertising budget had a sizable advantage over the little guy. That same logic applied to print and radio campaigns. The rich kept getting richer. But the game changed when social media gained acceptance as a viable marketing tool.

The race is not given to the swift, nor to the strong, but unto him that is able to endure unto the end.

Sorry to get all biblical on you, but that quote says it all. Rounding up a few million potential customers and screaming your message at them is not enough anymore. In fact, it might not even be necessary at all. But when it is, it also needs to be augmented by a strong sense of community. Take Ford, for example. I don’t think that there will ever come a day that we stop seeing Ford commercials and print ads. But they were forward-thinking enough to entrust their social media presence to someone like Scott Monty.

If you took a quick look at Scott’s blog, you wouldn’t even know that he worked for Ford unless you read his bio. Scott’s voice meshes well with the tone of a much larger, active community. He’s part of a conversation. He doesn’t attempt to lead that conversation, nor does he speak to his Twitter followers like a customer service agent for big corporate America. Scott just… fits in.

Scott Monty’s job is more than just schmoozing with Ford owners on social networking sites. But his Twitter usage is the best and most obvious example of what Ford is doing right. By way of comparison, Chrysler doesn’t seem to get it at all. Let’s start by comparing the two companies’ Twitter profiles:

What stands out like a sore thumb here? No, I’m not referring to the number of followers each company has. I’m referring to the disparity between the number of followers Chrysler has and the number that they follow. The difference in Ford’s case could easily be attributed to obvious spammers. But Chrysler is just phoning it in. How can you expect consumers to embrace your presence in social media if you don’t even care enough to embrace them?

One of the benefits of having a presence on Twitter is immediate access to customer feedback. But it’s not all sunshine and giggles. At times, community members are going to utilize the most readily-available outlet at their disposal to complain about their experiences. That brings us to another fundamental difference in the practices of these two companies. Below is a tweet from a dissatisfied Chrysler customer just looking for someone to talk to about his experience.

Ahh! A wonderful opportunity. This is Chrysler’s chance to step up to the plate, show some empathy for the customer, and turn their bad experience into a good one, right? So how did they respond?

And where does that link take you? The Chrysler Group’s contact page. Thanks, Chrysler. If @mcgoverntheory didn’t know how to use Google, you just saved him a heap of time! But seriously, they let a wonderful opportunity slip away from them. If the gentleman was belligerent or spewing profanities, I could see where they would want to move the conversation off of the public timeline. But he wasn’t. He was just reaching out for someone to listen to his complaints. This was an underhanded pitch, a perfect chance to show the Twitter community that they care enough to address the issue head-on. But they didn’t.

Let’s look at a similar situation for Ford. In this instance, the gentleman’s tone was a little bit more harsh. He’s clearly agitated and he wants answers. According to Kelley Blue Book, the base model of the vehicle in question retails for $48,175.

Under the Chrysler model, this gentleman should just be directed to customer service, right? They clearly already have the guy’s money. So how does Scott Monty (as indicated by the ^SM in the tweet) respond?

He takes ownership of the problem. He doesn’t push the gentleman off on someone else. Scott offers to look into the problem for @GamingBids. He even makes reference to the fact that he’s already responded to the complaint on Facebook. Here’s that exchange:

The gentleman has already exhausted all of the resources that he can find. He’s been stuck in a loop between Ford Customer Service and the dealers. It’s the same loop that poor Mr. McGovern is about to start with Chrysler. The difference is that Scott Monty is trying to break that loop. Ed Garsten and Mike Ellis either have an unhealthy amount of faith in Chrysler Customer Service or they just don’t want to deal with the problem.

This brings us back to the scripture quoted above. In all fairness, it’s not a legitimate quote from the Bible. It’s a combination of the completely unrelated Ecclesiastes 9:11 and Mark 13:13. But we social media types love mashups, don’t we? Anyhow, in the example above, Chrysler clearly view themselves as the “swift” and “strong.” Their social media strategy screams, “We’re big corporate America. If we make a Twitter page and speak, people will listen. We’re the marketing department, not customer service.” Back-to-back-to-back tweets about how much J.D. Power and Associates love them this year only contribute to their “Yay me!” image. Their blog is even more of the same.

Conversely, Ford seems to understand that building a community and gaining that community’s trust takes time. They’re willing to “endure until the end.” Initiatives like the Fiesta Movement and Warriors in Pink build on a strong sense of “belonging” to something bigger than a car company’s mailing list. Scott Monty and his team take an active interest in their customer’s lives, not their wallets. And it starts with sincerity.

The Concept

I recently had the opportunity to test drive another new app that gathers Twitter data. But this one is a little different. Foller.me, launched in beta on June 1st, is a service designed to provide detailed information about a specific Twitter user. According to the developer’s blog, Foller.me aims to take the guesswork out of deciding whether to follow back those who follow you. To do this, the IP simply asks you to enter any Twitter name into the text box. The service then utilizes data from that user’s last 200 tweets to generate a page displaying three tag clouds: Recent topics, #hashtags, and @mentions. The usual Twitter information is also displayed, including number of followers, number following, and total status updates. But in addition to the standard fare of bio and web address, Foller.me developer Konstantin Kovshenin also includes the user’s “tweeting since” date, a nice touch.

The Experience

The narcissist in me chose to use myself for the first test run. Although the service is intended to look up information on others, it also makes for a great tool to get some insight into your own tweeting habits. On my results page, it was no surprise that “toledo” was my biggest recent topic. Anyone who knows me knows that I’m passionate about my hometown. What did come as a surprise was how much conversations with @ozsultan and @8thLopez have dominated my recent tweeting, as displayed in the Recent @mentions section. Click on the screenshot below for a larger view.

It was also a little surprising to see that Kovshenin didn’t exclude #8217 from all users’ possible Recent #hashtags. The application is apparently seeing &#8217, the PHP character code for an apostrophe, and just omitting the “&” to create a bogus hashtag. But this is a beta and that one’s a pretty quick fix. However, the disparity between the #8217 cloud size and all of the rest of my Recent #hashtags brings another issue to light. With only five possible cloud sizes, it’s hard to get an accurate snapshot of an extremely active Twitter user. Consulting the Ideas section of  Foller.me’s blog, I was happy to see that this is an issue that they’re aware of and willing to address.

My Take

Overall, Foller.me sets the tone for what a beta should be: a time to put the finishing touches on an already finished product. Too often, what the “beta” title really means is ”50% of the way through the development cycle.” While some may view it as a novelty Twitter app, Foller.me has more uses than simply giving potential follows the thumbs up/down.

An available OpenSearch plugin streamlines the process of gathering information on a user without the need to browse to Foller.me. Alternately, a bookmarklet is also available to visit any Twitter user’s Foller.me profile directly from their Twitter profile. These tools just need to be publicized a little better as the information is currently buried in the IP’s blog.

This morning, Konstantin let me take a peek under the hood at the development version of Foller.me. There, I found the upcoming feature that he is most excited about: Followers Geography. The map, powered by Google, displays custom Twitter flags to mark the geographical locations of a Twitter user’s followers. Of course, the flags are clickable to reveal exact locations and names. According to Kovshenin, the map is based on no more than 500 followers because, “more would be time- and API calls-consuming and more than 500 points on a map may blow up your browser.”

Followers Geography

But what’s a Twitter app without some sort of trend tracking? Foller.me addresses the inner narcissist in all of us with their Foller.me Rundown. All queries are stored and once every twelve hours, @follerme tweets out the five most queried users. Additional future add-ons are said to include a WordPress widget to display the Recent topics cloud and a Greasemonkey script for Firefox. Kovshenin stated that the “beta” label won’t be lifted until these features have all been implemented. When they are, it will add even more functionality to an already solid, polished product.

The Concept

PubliciTweet is an analytics tool designed to help businesses monitor the effectiveness of their Twitter campaigns. The service, developed by Yahoo! Software Engineer Jaisen Mathai, allows users to tweet their campaign immediately or schedule a specific date and time for the message to reach followers via the public timeline, direct messages, or both. The tracking tools provided include a graph of total clicks generated by the campaign and a mashed up Google map with markers indicating where the clicks are coming from and which follower referred them. PubliciTweet also provides a list of all of your followers. Their names are links to pages which display the same analytics tools mentioned above, specific to that follower. As the service is still in beta, the pricing structure has not been finalized. For now, the app is free to use and explore. So I did!

The Experience

My first experiment with PubliciTweet only reached about fifty of my followers. At first, we thought that Twitter had capped their DM limit, despite the fact that PubliciTweet was whitelisted. But as it turns out, it was my account that had reached the rate limit. Nonetheless, it was enough to get a quick snapshot of the features, but it left me wanting more. Once Mathai informed me that the issues were resolved, I created a second campaign two days later. This time, I scheduled my tweet to be delivered at 11:00 am via direct message only.  The results were much better as my DM was delivered to many more of my 328 followers. Within minutes, my PubliciTweet dashboard was displaying statistics. By the way, all of the pictures on this page are linked to a larger image. I can’t stand when you have to squint to make out the details of a screenshot.

As of this writing, my campaign has achieved a 27% conversion rate, indicating that my 328 followers generated 90 clicks. This doesn’t necessarily mean that 72 of my followers clicked the link in the DM. Rather, those clicks were generated by them. This could mean that they clicked the link themselves, but it could also mean that they retweeted the message and some of their followers clicked it. Thankfully, the map tool sorts that out for us. The markers on the map display the total clicks per geographical area, the followers responsible for those clicks, and how many referrals they generated. As you can see from the screenshot below, my follower @hartinc generated six clicks for my campaign in the Seattle area.

To drill down even further, I selected @hartinc from the list and viewed a page of stats specific to that follower. Greeted by the same interface as before, the page displayed a tracker of all of @hartinc’s click referrals and a map to indicate where those clicks occurred. The timing between the click tracker and the map are apparently a little out of whack as the statistics differ between the two. But it should be mentioned that I assessed these statistics within a matter of hours, not days. Over time, the statistics may level off.

First Impressions

Overall, PubliciTweet has the potential to be a useful tool for businesses to measure the success of their marketing campaigns on Twitter. As I explored the product, I couldn’t help but think that independent touring musicians could also benefit from the type of data that the app provides. For my test campaign, I linked to Chris Merritt’s page on thesixtyone. Merritt is a talented musician who could utilize a tool like PubliciTweet to locate pockets of fans throughout the country and focus his booking efforts accordingly. The service makes good use of the Twitter API and setup is  a cinch. PubliciTweet could be an ideal solution for small companies doing business across the country and throughout the world.

As the service is still in beta, I wasn’t expecting a completely polished, finished product. But there are a few features that are curiously missing that would add to the overall value and usability of the product. First, the “Track Clicks” feature allows you to adjust a slider to narrow the date range of the resulting statistics, but it doesn’t display hashmarks for hours. It would be helpful to have statistics on the specific times that the campaign was most effective in driving traffic. Twitter’s overall traffic patterns don’t necessarily reflect the traffic patterns of the user’s target demographic.

Next, it was helpful to view geographical data on where clicks are coming from and who referred them. However, the map is not an ideal interface for analyzing this kind of information. Hovering over multiple markers on the map to determine which users are driving the most traffic to your site would get tedious quickly. For a service built around determining the “precise effectiveness of the campaign,” PubliciTweet needs to make this information available at your fingertips. The current listing of followers is sorted by when they started following, newest to oldest. But ordering followers by total referrals would make the interface a much more efficient and usable experience. Time is money. Requiring the user to dig for information that could easily be compiled in an intuitive manner is a pretty big oversight.

And finally, the Recent Campaigns section provides literally no information on the campaign itself. There is no way to view the tweet that initiated the campaign or the URL it referenced. With only a pair of campaigns under my belt, it was easy for me to remember which was which. But once ten or twenty had been launched, it would be nearly impossible to determine the details of each one without tracking that information myself. It’s also perplexing that once a campaign has been scheduled, there’s no way to edit it prior to its launch. For instance, if I were to notice a typo as I was in the process of saving a new campaign, there’s no apparent way to go back and correct it or even delete it entirely.

Final Thoughts

While there are some pretty glaring oversights in the design, please remember that the service is still in beta. My three biggest gripes are all pretty easy fixes. Before users are charged to use the service, I expect that more functionality and usability will be incorporated into the design. While I was writing the PubliciTweet review,  Andrew Warner from Mixergy sent a DM asking how it was so far. My response to him was that it seemed like the team had a lot more experience in coding the back end than designing UI. It wasn’t until I made that statement that I realized that was probably the case. But I also believe that Mathai is sitting on a solid product with a lot of potential. This will be one to follow. I know that I, for one, will be writing about this IP again soon. I look forward to seeing what Jaisen and his team can produce in a short period of time. After all, one of Mathai’s previous projects, Textbook Revolt, was completed in only four weeks.

(cc) Jonathan Dingman - @dingman - http://jonathandingman.com

When I first started this blog, it had no real direction. In fact, I’m not even sure why I started it. Posts were few and far between and pretty random in subject matter. Over time, I started to write with a purpose. I highlighted the triumphs of my life. I drudged through some of my darkest moments in recent history. And I captured it all in a format that has the potential to be available for the rest of my life. And then social media stuck its claws in me and refused to let go.

When I say social media stuck its claws in me, I mean it really stuck it’s claws in me. I’ve been in retail management for fifteen years now. I’ve been wanting to make a career change for about ten years. Throughout that time, I’ve considered multiple options, but never really had the courage to take the first step. I briefly went back to college to pursue a degree in marketing and advertising, but my work schedule and short attention span brought an end to that rather quickly. I did pretty extensive research on different design schools a couple years ago. I was pretty sure I could enjoy the life of a graphic designer. But something held me back. It just wasn’t the right move… for me.

Then along comes Twitter. At one point, I described Twitter as “text messages to nobody with 20 less characters.” At first, that’s all it was. This was one of my first tweets.

Standing in line at Subway, waiting for a $5 footlong steak and cheese sammich.

At the time, I knew very little about Twitter and even less about social media as a whole. The more people I started following, the more I started seeing terms that were completely foreign to me. I started following links to a whole new world that had been transparent to me up to that point. I soaked in as much as I could. If I didn’t know what something meant, I Googled it. Invariably, I’d find an article that described the term in question which linked to another article on a related subject. It became routine for me to have a dozen tabs open as I tried to wrap my head around it all.

The turning point for me was when I started watching videos that Jolie O’Dell had posted to her blog. Now that I consider Jolie to be a good friend, I know that it would be easy to apply a halo effect to the experience and just give her credit for the transformation. But I assure you that this is not revisionist history. I remember being fascinated by the topics she addressed, the subjects she interviewed, and the world in which it all existed. It was then that I knew that social media had evolved from an interest to a passion.

I didn’t start writing about social media right away. I knew that I needed to use the monitor more than the keyboard if I was going to get anywhere. Along with the fact that I had a lot more to learn, I also knew myself. As my wife puts it, I have “little obsessions.” If I convince myself that I want something, it becomes all-consuming. I know that about myself. So I decided to sit tight and be a student for a while longer before I put my opinions out there. But when I did, it was such an amazing release. As an added bonus, I got a good response from people that I respect immensely. Then the RoadTwip gang came through town and I got to see the magic firsthand. That was it for me. I knew that this was what I wanted to do for a living. But I didn’t know where to start.

A little over a week ago, Marshall Kirkpatrick put out the word that ReadWriteWeb was looking for new reporters. I thought about it all afternoon, then finally decided to throw my hat into the ring. For those of you reading who aren’t social media geeks, let me explain something to you. Going from occasionally updating a personal blog with ambiguous direction to writing for ReadWriteWeb is like going from a beer league softball team to Major League Baseball. I believed in my developing writing skills, but the realist in me knew that I was probably the least experienced applicant. A week later, I received an email from Richard MacManus requesting two recent samples of my work, much to my surprise. For the first time, I was nervous and believed that it might… actually… happen.

After a little while, I started getting nervous about an entirely different possibility: was I really ready to write for RWW? A handful of friends made for a wonderful support group. They taught me that it’s possible to be confident and believe in yourself without being arrogant. Last evening, I got word from Richard that they went with a more experienced applicant. I was honestly more relieved than disappointed. I just don’t think the time was right.

Along the way, I discovered that Richard MacManus is a class act. Although brief, he put a very personal touch on that email. I felt inclined to respond to it. I wanted Richard to know that I appreciated his time, was honored to be considered for the position, and that the next time an opportunity presented itself at RWW, I’d be better prepared. Thirteen minutes later, Richard responded again. The founder and editor of a blog with 275,000 subscribers took the time out of his day to give me feedback on a possible future in blogging. But what sealed the deal for me was the fact that he did all of this before he announced the name of the writer who was hired. I don’t know why, but that really stood out as a classy move to me.

After receiving word that I was not selected, I was motivated to do my best to be ready the next time opportunity came knocking. One of Richard’s suggestions was to dive into product reviews and the like. I’d already been thinking about breaking my personal posts away from this blog for a little while anyhow. So, from this point forward, this blog will have a clear focus. Topics that you can expect to find here will be in line with those covered on ReadWriteWeb, Mashable, and other social media and tech-related blogs. All of my prior posts that were personal in nature have been removed and migrated over to my new personal blog, which can be found here. The exception to that statement is the post “Date Night And Beyond” because I don’t want to break a couple of links to it. This blog will also be moving to 7son75.com soon. I said soon, not now. Pay attention

I’m currently working on my review of PubliciTweet, as mentioned in my last post. With any luck, Twitter will have worked out the issues with their rate limit and I’ll be able to reach all of my followers this time. I’d like to post the review later today or tomorrow. When I do, I guess it will be like smashing a bottle of champagne against the hull. On with my voyage. I know this post was ridiculously long, but I don’t care. This is a milestone. And I felt that it should be documented as such. If I’ve managed to secure a position in social media a year or two from now, I’d like to look back on this moment and remember exactly what I was thinking. And for those of you who have stuck with me this far, thanks for reading. The only thing that I ask is that you leave a comment to let me know what you think. And in the future, if you like my articles and reviews, throw me a little retweet love. And with that, I’ll wrap this thing up.

And away we go…

I’m in the process of testing a new tool to help businesses track Twitter campaign analytics called PubliciTweet. The service, currently in beta, was launched earlier today at 140 | The Twitter Conference. Headed by Yahoo! Software Engineer Jaisen Mathai, this new IP aims to “leverage your followers with unique campaigns and tools to track your success.” These tools include graphs and maps to help you determine the precise effectiveness of the campaign. I’ll be using the traffic to this post referred by the PubliciTweet link to explore the depth of these tools.

Jaisen’s prior projects include Textbook Revolt, a free college textbook exchange. The service utilizes Amazon’s Search API to search by ISBN, title, or author. The site was completed in a mere four weeks. Jason was also a principle on the photo-sharing IP Photagious, a two time winner of Adobe’s Site of the Day award. While Twitter analytics services are popping up like Ashton Kutcher followers, PubliciTweet has the potential to offer a deeper, more accurate look at a campaign’s success.

I’ll be tracking the data that PubliciTweet feeds me from the clicks to this post alone. While it’s certainly not as effective of a measurement as a legitimate business campaign, it will provide me with a deeper understanding of the IP’s mechanics. I’ve spoken to Jaisen about arranging a time to talk a little bit more about PubliciTweet, so my full review will also feature his comments. If you have any specific questions about the service that you’d like me to ask, please feel free to email them to me.

I’d like to thank Jolie O’Dell for capturing this moment. I almost forgot it happened. I don’t think I’d ever told that story before that night. It might not seem like much, but the story means a lot to me. By the way, that’s Josh Kulpa and Dingman who occasionally poke their heads into the video. Had a great time with those two that night. Jazz clubs that close by midnight, liquor stores that accept WIC, and a beautiful woman with the power to seduce you to Central America. Good times.