Tweetups & suggestion for Twtvite

I'm attending my first Tweetup on January 28th. Thanks to Chris Farias, Jen Hudder and Meg Coppolino for putting this together.

If you live in the Hamilton, Ontario, Canada area come and join us!

They are using Twtvite to get the word out and manage registration. It's a slick tool but I would like to be able to quickly scan and learn who is attending as illustrated in the screenshot below.

Social media helps people make connections, create relationships and physically network. You can use it to have fun, meet interesting people and generate business. For those of you attending the January 28th Tweetup...see you there!

A way to make twitter better

In an earlier post entitled: "To Follow or not to follow, that is the question", I describe how I decide when to follow someone on Twitter who has followed me. Follower updates are sent to me via email. I review each followers Twitter profile to decide if I want to follow back or not.

Over the past two days I've had quite a few people follow me. So, I headed over to learn a bit about who had followed me and I was very surprised at the number followers whose accounts had been suspended due to "suspicious activity".

I'm grateful that Twitter and the Twitter community police jerks and spammer accounts and that these accounts get shut down. Twitter must make sure that these types of people don't ruin the Twitter experience.

I do have a suggestion as to how Twitter can improve. It would be better if Twitter sent me a follower notification once the account as been deemed authentic. Instead of sending a notice immediately they should wait until the account is verified as real.

Twitter for Businesses?

Time to bash the Twitter skeptics who claim that Twitter is a fad and not professional enough for businesses. Twitter is a tool, it's not a fad nor is it a "solution". How people leverage this tool to achieve something is what matters.

One of the biggest problems today is not lack of information it is lack of good answers. Google search is great and it plays an important role in helping you find answers. But, there can be many "false positives" or dead ends. Good search results still require you to dig deeper. Plus what happens if only part of your query (question) is answered?

Twitter can be used as a realtime question/answer tool. Here are two real world examples of how small business is using twitter to network, share, learn and get answers.

Example 1: iPhone Battery life
Yesterday I noticed that my iPhone battery was draining too fast. I sent out a tweet asking for advice and within 5 minutes I had a quality, authentic response from Ryan Barnett who said:

@b2bspecialist: Turn off screen as fast as possible, turn off 3G, turn off networking, buy a Power Slider from Incase: http://bit.ly/1NCoVr

Example 2: Tweetchats

SBBUZZ is an interesting case study on how small businesses strapped for cash and time, can cost effectively ask questions about technology for small businesses.

Founded by small business entrepreneurs, this is an example of how small businesses can tap into talent, skills and broaden their social network reach and get answers.

How SBBBUZ works: It's pretty simple (go to their site for instructions). Every Tuesday night from 8-10 pm ET, you can join in with others who are looking for answers regarding small business and technology. This is a real-time Q&A session. It takes place in the evening, which is a good time for small business owners since their days are busy and hectic.

But, it gets better! While the realtime nature of this is great, the session is permanently archived on their site. And, since the session took place on Twitter it is permanently indexed.

This is a great example of innovative thinking. Twitter is being used to help people and organizations succeed. That's not a fad. It is a solution. You can follow them on Twitter.

So is twitter a fad and not professional enough for business? Maybe that's what they said about email when it first came out.

The silver lining for business?

Below is a presentation by Umair Haque, Director of the Havas Media Lab, entitled Constructive Capitalism. He blogs for Harvard Business Publishing. Umair was a guest speaker at the Daytona sessions. Daytona is a marketing agency in Sweden. The fact that Daytona has a “Ted” like conference is simply amazing.

The video below is about 70 minutes long. It is well worth the time to listen and learn about Umair’s beliefs about where companies need to go in order to grow. He uses examples to set context. This helps you see how his theories are “in play” today.

Below the video is a timeshift timeline and links to the reference examples he uses in his presentation. I’ve invited Umair to add any comments or thoughts to this post. But, more importantly, is getting you to provide your thoughts and comments to create a conversation around this really interesting take Umair has on “Constructive Capitalism” and the next revolution which he calls “Institutional Revolution”.

Umair Haque @ Daytona Sessions vol. 2 - Constructive Capitalism from Daytona Sessions on Vimeo.

UPDATE: For some reason an embedded Vimeo video doesn't show the slider. Just open a second browser if you want to use the timeshift timeline below.

1:47 What’s wrong with the economy? “Qualitative Difference”. “A shock”
3:15 We are at a crises crossroads with respect to strategy, how institutions interact and exist (the places we work that organize people, processes and deliver value)
10:00 New rules for Institutions and Capitalism are driven by Ideals
11:15 Ideal #1: Exploitation to Renewal

• Crisis of Depletion
• Case Studies on Sustainability: Wal-Mart, Nike, Interface and Pepsico
• Take-away: “Tomorrow is Today”

15:15 Ideal #2: Command to Democracy

• Crisis of Rigidity
• Case Studies: Threadless T-Shirts, Walkers Crisps, Lego Factory, Super Future, Whitehouse.gov and Etsy
• Take-away: “People, not Product

21:25 Ideal #3 War to Peace

• Crisis of Conflict
• Case studies on Guiding Principles: Google and Barack Obama’s 3 guiding principles for the Election
• Take-away: “Connections, not Transactions”

29:20 Ideal #4: Domination to Equity

• Crisis of Stagnation
• Case Studies: Wii, Tata’s Nano Car, Better Place, Compartamos, Unilever’s Shakti programme and Grameen Health
• Take-away: Creativity, not Productivity

38:40 Ideal #5: Value to Meaning

• Crisis of Nihilism (perceived value has no meaning)
• Case Studies: Nike, Wii Fit and Guiding Stars Nutritional program, Vanish (products) and Vanish (ruining shoes)
• Take-away: Outcomes, not Incomes

44:30 Where to start and where to head?

• Case Study: Fairtrade

50:42 Question and Answer

• What cultures/countries equipped to handle this change?
• Won’t Tata become like GM, Ford and Chrysler eventually?
• Does GDP matter when new models and markets like this emerge?
• Is sustainable growth a realistic outcome? How is it different then today’s growth aspirations? What does growth mean?
• Is it possible for large corporations to revolutionize themselves?
• Will these new institutions produce products and services that are are tools and utilities to deliver on these ideals?
• Can this “institutional revolution” take hold realistically? Will old ways and thinking be too big a barrier for this to take root?
• How will protectionism and de-globalization affect your theories and beliefs on Constructive Capitalism

A simple but useful improvement for friendfeed

I use friendfeed more then any other social media service and I give it an 8 out of 10 so far. This service has great potential. However, I have a pet peeve and a simple solution to it...I think.

Background: Friendfeed allows people to be grouped in two primary ways. You can create Lists or Rooms.

Situation: My Blook Report on Groundswell features a friendfeed room with over 80 members. A few people join each week, and I in turn subscribe to their feeds. I then add them to a Groundswell inbox list so I have one place to aggregate their feeds. This list serves as a listening post and I read it daily.

Problem:
Up to five new members join the Groundswell room each week. But, there is no easy way for me to know who they are and whether I've subscribed to their feed or not. To your left is a partial list of the room members. See what I mean? The simple solution would be to have a small "+" or "-" under each persons name, or when I mouse over their picture. Alas, this isn't the case. So what do I have to do instead?


I'm glad you asked! To your left is how it works today. I have to mouse over each member of the room and wait for their profile to display. You can see that I've subscribed to Josh's feed and added him to my Friend list called Groundswell InBox. This is the only way I can check to see if I have or haven't subscribed to his feed and added him to the list.

While this takes a few seconds per member, imagine if you have 200 people in your room and 40 people join it in one day. Imagine this happening every day, every month, every year. This cannot scale. If you're thinking about using friendfeed for community building and research this would become problematic especially as your community grows.

So here is why I think it is simple for friendfeed to fix this issue. On your left is Josh Bernoff's profile picture and you'll notice a "-" sign on the top right hand corner. Because Josh is on my Groundswell Inbox list, I can mouse over his picture and unsubscribe by pressing the "-" sign. But, I can't do this when I mouse over his profile picture while in the friendfeed room. This is odd. Imagine that you are using Microsoft Excel and the drop down menu is different from Microsoft Word. Hey where did the file > save as go?

Solution: Does it not seem simple to offer the same feature for rooms? I would mouse over the persons picture and there would be "+" or "-" sign on the top right hand corner. Man that would be cool. Simple things can produce amazing results.