November 23rd, 2009

Quick'n'Dirty episode 23: TripIt and Twitter lists top talk

Posted by Jennifer Leggio @ 9:43 am

Categories: Podcast, Quick'n'Dirty Podcast, Social Business, Social Media, Twitter

Tags: Network, Twitter Inc., Crowdsourcing, TripIt, CrowdCampaign, Twitterer, Podcasts, Social Networking, Networking, Internet

Can you believe we just finished episode 23 of the Quick’n'Dirty podcast? Time flies when you’re having fun. Or, well, skipping episodes. As my co-host Aaron Strout wrote last week it had been a good few weeks since we’d last podcasted together due to travel schedules and a minor health emergency on my part. But we were back in full force this week with a fun social network of the week, a great guest and a fun point/counterpoint.

We started by talking about CrowdCampaign, a neat crowd-sourcing tool that allows you to ask your network — or a broader unknown network — to chime in on queries, or even do contests or other types of voting. CrowdCampaign was recently used during the Web 2.0 Expo in New York for potential Q&A’s for Beth Noveck. The possibilities are endless and Aaron and I discuss some of these on the show. CrowdCampaign is brought to us by the brilliant minds at The Social Collective, which boasts the my.SXSW portal among its many impressive projects.

Next up was our special guest, Will Aldrich of TripIt. Will is the company’s vice president of product, and he joined us to talk about how the concept of TripIt was developed, how the company has been able to oust Dopplr as a the more popular travel social network incumbent, as well as how travelers can really benefit from the tool. If you aren’t familiar with TripIt, it has a bunch of cool travel features, from connecting trips with your friends to see who is going to be in what city when you are, to helping you organize all of those pesky, disparate travel confirmation documents. I would use it all the time if only they had a BlackBerry application. Aaron did a TripIt Q&A on his blog prior to our talking to Will on the pocast, so either give his interesting interview a read or listen to the replay, or both!

As always, we introduced a “featured Twitterer” of the week. The featured Twitterer is someone that we find to be informative, funny and engaging, and someone that we believe more people should know about and follow. This week’s was none other than Del Jones, aka @jonesdel, USA Today leadership reporter and all-around entertaining and smart guy.

And finally, we had our usuall point/counterpoint, and on this one we sort of disagreed for a change. The last one where there was absolute disagreement was when we did our iPhone vs. BlackBerry war, which seems to still be continuing in the background of every show. This week’s topic was around Twitter lists: are they good for businesses or are they just a big ego stroke? Aaron, as he’s usually the more positive one between the two of us, discussed some good uses and examples of Twitter lists. Me, being the pesky cynic, talked about how I don’t care much about public Twitter lists and the annoying redundancy they bring. It was a good one, so you’re going to have to listen to find out where we ended.

The Quick’n'Dirty podcast will be off the air this week so Aaron and I can eat some turkey with our families, but we will return on Thursday, Dec. 3, with Peter Shankman, the man behind Help A Reporter Out (HARO) and so many other social media successes. Get your questions ready!

Reminder that you can always listen to archived shows on BlogTalkRadio or find us on iTunes by searching for “QuicknDirty.”

November 6th, 2009

Twitter Lists will change the social dynamic

Posted by Jennifer Leggio @ 10:30 am

Categories: Social Business, Social Media, Social Networks, Twitter

Tags: Twitter Inc., List, Twitter Lists, Productivity, Public Relations, Strategy, Marketing, Corporate Communications, Management, Jennifer Leggio

* Jennifer Leggio is on vacation

Guest editorial by Mitch Lieberman

Twitter lists are absolutely going to change the way people use Twitter – exactly how is not really clear yet, it may take a little while before the dust settles on this one. Lists have added a new social element to Twitter, which did not exist up until now.  Lists will either be the great equalizer, or create a pseudo ‘class’ system within Twitter.

A ‘Class’ System, how so?
Those included on the cool Lists and those that are not, the influencers and the influenced. There are some lists that are purely factual, for example, people who work at XYZ company. Twitter, by its nature, does have a self policing mechanism, but I am not sure if it will work here. Needing differing perspectives, I decided to ask some friends and collaborators; Josh Weinberger (@kitson), of DestinationCRM has this to say:

“Sure, but that’s no different than the situation with a personal Twitter account. But if there’s status or “class” to be derived from whether others value your curatorial efforts, that’s something new, something Twitter itself doesn’t really provide. I may not want to follow @scobleizer in my main Twitter feed, but I might value his knowledge of the startup scene and want to follow his #List of entrepreneurs — and leave it to him to maintain it going forward.”

I framed my question a bit differently, when I asked Nicole Ravlin (@pmgnicole) a partner with PMG, a PR firm in Burlington, Vermont. I was seeking input in regards to how she might guide her clients, as they create lists.

“I think before you can address any of this you have to consider your [Company] overall strategy for using Twitter. Building Lists thoughtfully so that they are useful to you and your followers is key here.”

With respect our conversation in general, Nicole had this to add “From a stand point of organization of data and people, it [a List] is great, but what is more intriguing is what it will/might do on Google Ranking. I also think that it would be helpful for new users [to Twitter].”

Not yet convinced I was seeing a common theme, I spoke with Martin Schneider (@CRMoutsiders, also of SugarCRM) we tried to think of Lists in the context of a company [or vendor]. “Here Lists represent something a little different.” Beyond creating a List of people who are ‘on’ Twitter from your company, or who represent your brand, companies risk alienating people by way of exclusion. This brings out the emotional side of Lists. Companies will need to remain objective regarding Lists. Companies will likely have lots of private lists, just sayin’.

Read the rest of this entry »

October 13th, 2009

Twitter starts to get serious about spammers

Posted by Jennifer Leggio @ 3:11 pm

Categories: Security, Social Media, Social Media and Security, Social Networks, Spam, Twitter

Tags: Twitter Inc., Spammer, Spam, Cyberthreats, Security, Spam And Phishing, Jennifer Leggio

Today Twitter announced a new way for its users to alert the service of spammers with a quick link to a “report [user name] for spam” link next to the “message” and “block” links in the right column. This appears to be Twitter’s latest attempt at controlling the rampant abuse brought to the site from spammers, and a replacement to it’s already existing reporting feature, the @spam account.

In a blog post, the folks at Twitter write:

Click the “Report as spam” button under the Actions section of a profile’s sidebar and our Trust and Safety team will check it out to see what needs to be done. No automated action will be taken as a result of reporting a user as spam (in other words, it can’t be used to incite an angry mob against an account you don’t like.) And once you report a profile it will automatically be blocked from following or replying to you.

This is a decent attempt from Twitter to help give the users more control in reporting spammers, as it’s previous @spam reporting methods were often a one-way conversation. The instructions on the spam account currently read to DM the account for reporting, yet the report is only following roughly 30K of the 100K+ users following it. And while many users would report @spam through public messages, there was no way to know if Twitter was listening.

However, regardless of how good the spam reporting is, Twitter still need to get more serious about what it’s doing to stop spammers and bots in the first place. The battle seems to be currently led by the spammers.

This will definitely help those with protected accounts since we didn’t have any way to report spam before. Since @spam didn’t follow us, it couldn’t ‘hear’ us,” said Kevin Riggins, senior information security analyst, Principal Financial Group. “Whether it is any more effective at actually having an impact on spam is an entirely different topic and I think it is going to take more mature automated processes to help with that.”

October 12th, 2009

Quick'n'Dirty Podcast: Lucky number 18 and hashtag chats

Posted by Jennifer Leggio @ 9:49 am

Categories: Podcast, Quick'n'Dirty Podcast, Social Business, Social Media, Twitter, Twitter Applications

Tags: Podcast, Twitter Inc., Chat, Jennifer Leggio

The latest edition of the Quick’n'Dirty Podcast was an abbreviated one, but a very fun one to host. My jet-setting partner in crime Aaron Strout was literally leaving on a jet plane at the time our show was recorded, so I went solo. Well, not entirely solo. I was joined by the fabulous Deb Robison as she came up with the idea for — and helped us research — our topic of the week, which was Twitter hashtag chats. And, I must confess that we ended the show about 15 minutes early due to my having tickets to the home opener of my beloved San Jose Sharks. Priorities, right? Hockey aside, here’s the recap of last week’s show:

• Social Network: Digsby. So, it’s not really a social network, it’s a client. But it’s our podcast and Aaron wasn’t around to protest so I went with it. I use Digsby religiously. Not only does it have a super cute logo, but it’s highly functional. I use it to integrate multiple chat accounts, multiple Web mail accounts, notifications, a couple of Twitter accounts and once upon a time I used it for Facebook. I like it because it’s reliable and it’s current unmatched in terms of instant message integration. I did confess that I don’t use it as my primary Twitter client because TweetDeck has it beat in terms of usability, but I do use it to monitor some secondary accounts that are only seasonally used.
• Featured Twitterer: At least I know Aaron wouldn’t protest this one. I chose @marshallk aka Marshall Kirkpatrick of ReadWriteWeb as my favorite Twitter this week due to his great sense of humor, informative tweets, and ability to say what’s on his mind, whether or not the sentiment is a popular one. Deb also said she likes following Marshall due to his “calls ‘em like he sees ‘em” attitude. Definitely worth a follow and his blog posts are always worth a read.
• Point / Counterpoint: We didn’t really do a point / counterpoint this week but rather had an extended discussion about hashtag chats — you know, those chats on Twitter in which everyone includes the hashtag and tracks the discussion. We issued a survey a few weeks ago asking people to give us their feedback on their hashtag chat experience. Deb and I had discussed that while there are hashtag chats aplenty, it’s really hard to keep up with them and also not lose followers who aren’t interested in the chats. However, most users of the chats find them incredibly valuable, with a only a small percentage wishing that they were more streamlined. We talked about some of the most popular chats, the top of which was #socialmedia, discovered a chat for designers called #dcth, and Deb talked about the research she did around #solopr.

To listen and get all of the gritty details, check out the replay or search for us on iTunes under QuicknDirty. Next week Aaron and I will broadcast live from BlogWorld & New Media Expo, where we are both speaking. So tune in next week for a surprise edition of Quick’n'Dirty, when we hope to pull some folks live from the show floor.

October 9th, 2009

BreakingPoint's letter to Twitter: 'Let us help you'

Posted by Jennifer Leggio @ 12:42 pm

Categories: Networking, Social Business, Social Media, Social Networks, Twitter

Tags: Twitter Inc., BreakingPoint, Networking, Jennifer Leggio

Amid all of the whining about Twitter downtime, one company is finally putting its money where its mouth is. BreakingPoint Systems, a network testing company, today published an open letter to Twitter in which it offers the social network free user of its server load testing and other products to help reduce the downtime and improve network performance. Blog author Kyle Flaherty, the company’s communications director, writes:

Yesterday, when Twitter was down due to a “bug triggered by an edge case in one of the core services“, I thought about how important Twitter had become to our business and me. I watched the predictable posts complaining about the fail whale and it hit me; rather than throwing criticism, I would be best served getting my hands dirty and helping with the problem. An idea surfaced, which I talked through with our CTO and co-founder Dennis Cox (@denniscox), and the green flag was waved.

BreakingPoint is a leader in network testing tools with customers spanning from giants to even companies of Twitter’s size. The cry to help Twitter was fueled after yesterday’s Twitter downtime / stream freezing issues after the social network reported a “bug.” Rather than join the myriad of people complaining about the service disruption, Flaherty and BreakingPoint decided to offer up some help. The Twitter loyalty is fueled by the company’s rampant adoption of Twitter used by both employees and members of its community of load testing professionals and network and security engineers. Recognizing the value of Twitter early on, the company even developed afeature to test the ability of network devices and application servers to handle Twitter traffic.

With Twitter’s continued of downtime it’s clear that they are having some scalability issues and BreakingPoint is a trusted company for dealing with such issues. Will Twitter take the company up on the offer? This user hopes so.

September 26th, 2009

I don't care if your company is on Twitter

Posted by Jennifer Leggio @ 4:41 pm

Categories: Social Business, Social Media, Social Media Best Practices, Social Networks, Twitter

Tags: Twitter Inc., Jennifer Leggio

I remember early 2008 just like it was yesterday. Twitter had become the social media standard among most early technology adopters yet the mainstream world was still slightly out of reach for the social network. We got excited whenever something new would happen on Twitter. Blog posts would pop up celebrating companies for “tweeting” or for using Twitter to deal with customer service issues. It was so new and shiny. I was definitely among the bloggers who got excited about every little move on Twitter.

These days I’m looking for a little bit more. I’m looking for depth. I’m looking for substance. I realize that a lot of companies are just now starting to get onto Twitter and that’s a big deal… for them. But several have already laid the groundwork so much that analytics tools are abundant, integration is on the horizon, and if social media has taught us anything it’s that Twitter is not the end all, be all of social strategies. It’s not even a strategy.

I find my eyes starting to glaze over whenever a company or public relations agency emails and says “Hey, X is on Twitter, do you want to talk to our C-level executive about how this impacts our business?” My response is usually silence, but I’m sometimes tempted to say, “Really? Your CEO wants to talk to me about Twitter? Can I talk to him about his overall marketing strategy instead?”

I want to be sensitive to the latecomers. But even the earlier companies who were first to join the Twitter ranks aren’t doing much other than that. These companies are not all innovators. Some of them are still merely using Twitter and aren’t doing much to manage it or grow the brand or presence. Some haven’t figured out that if Twitter were to magically go away (or become less reliable due to spam, which is more likely) then the bottom falls out of their so-called social media strategy. The social Web is much larger than Twitter and while it’s well and good if you’re using it, don’t expect anyone who knows better to jump up and down about it anymore.

Look at the companies that you might admire in terms of their social presence. Then strip Twitter away. What’s left? That’s when you really see who is social and who just jumped on a trend.

September 25th, 2009

Quick'n'Dirty podcast's chaotic no. 16: pay phones, paper clips and oneforty

Posted by Jennifer Leggio @ 10:30 am

Categories: Flickr, Quick'n'Dirty Podcast, Social Business, Social Media, Social Media Best Practices, Social Media and Security, Social Networks, Twitter

Tags: Podcast, Phone, Twitter Inc., Social Media, Flickr, Tom, Security, Jennifer Leggio

The sixteenth episode of the Quick’n'Dirty podcast was one of the most exciting ones that we had, thanks to a series of technology failures. Being the pros that we are, of course, Aaron Strout and I rolled with the punches (or, tech failures) and brought together a very fun show, if we do say so ourselves. That was, after I was able to get Aaron on the line with only a minute left to spare at the start of the show. I blamed the switchboard. Aaron mocked me. I still vote it was a tech error, not a user error, but on with the show.

Laura Fitton, founder of freshly launched oneforty, author of “Twitter For Dummies” and owner of Pistachio Consulting was scheduled to be our guest. We knew our time with Laura would be short as she was at LAX waiting for a flight to DFW, but we did not expect iPhone failure when her device decided that it no longer had a SIM card and wouldn’t let her call in.  A series of frantic email exchanges ensued as we went along with the show. She raced around the airport trying to find a pay phone. Did Laura make it on? I’m going to keep you in suspense as I highlight what we talked about:

Read the rest of this entry »

September 23rd, 2009

oneforty launches online storefront for booming Twitter app market

Posted by Jennifer Leggio @ 4:30 pm

Categories: 140 | The Twitter Conference, Social Business, Social Media, Social Networks, Twitter, Twitter Applications

Tags: Twitter Inc., Development Tools, Leadership, Strategy, Software Development, Software/Web Development, Management, Jennifer Leggio

it’s been billed as “Twitter’s missing app store” and that’s the most accurate description I’ve heard. Launching today at 140 | Twitter Conference is the long-awaited oneforty. Founded by Laura Fitton, owner of Pistachio Consulting and author of “Twitter for Dummies,” the oneforty portal aims to provide what’s been missing from the social network landscape for too long — a sensible, organized approach to finding the best Twitter applications.

“The market for Twitter apps is exploding even though it lacks a marketplace. But that makes it very hard for developers to get their work found and build a true business,” Fitton said. “Serious business tools - and there are many - are a no-brainer. They save companies money. But kind of offbeat, goofy stuff that’s thrived in the appstore, there’s been no place to support those in Twitter. I think we’re going to see even more innovation once it becomes easy to sell novelties for a buck or two.”

Users can easily check out the most popular applications and sort through applications. The site makes recommendations of essential applications. Application developers can even secure featured spots, as shown below on the screenshot provided by oneforty:

The applications — of which oneforty claims to host more than 1,300 — are listed and tagged by type (i.e. analytics, business, financial, games) and include descriptions, links, live commentary and screen shots. Applications each also have a star rating based on user feedback and reviews. Connecting to oneforty is easy as it is directly authorized through Twitter. Application developers can go into oneforty and “claim” their apps, and monitor reviews, take donation payments, and so on, and also see how many people are using their applications.

Users can go in and pick which applications they are using and write reviews on those applications. They can either use the tag or the search option to determine which applications fit their interests. I was fortunate enough to be among the earlier users of oneforty and had a chance to review and rate all of the applications I either use or try — roughly 15. I was actually surprised to realize how many applications I currently use to manage my Twitter experience, thus further proving the need for such a service. A screen shot to my personal profile:

If you’re a Twitter application developer you should immediately go in and claim your application. If you’re a user, share this site with your friends so they can find new Twitter apps and provide a service to other users by contributing feedback.

“The Twitter community needs an open, thriving marketplace to support innovation because developers need a thriving marketplace to support innovation,” Fitton added.

Questions about oneforty? Fitton will join me and co-host Aaron Strout on tomorrow’s Quick’n'Dirty Podcast to talk about the new venture and answer questions. Join us!

September 23rd, 2009

Newest Twitter phishing attack is not 'rofl'-worthy

Posted by Jennifer Leggio @ 11:40 am

Categories: Security, Social Media and Security, Social Networks, Twitter

Tags: Twitter Inc., Phishing, Cyberthreats, Corporate Communications, Spam, Viruses And Worms, Security, Spam And Phishing, Marketing, Jennifer Leggio

Looks like the bad guys are up to it again. Or still. Or again. Twitter is being inundated with warnings about a new phishing attempt that tries to take advantage of, you guessed it - user vanity and sense of humor.

The new attempt, after taking hold of a specific user accounts, blasts a series of direct messages (DMs) to trusted, connected users and says something like: “rofl this you on here?” and provides a link to a supposed video site. Sound like our friend Koobface? Sure it does.

Users who receive these DMs should immediately delete them and notify the user who unwittingly sent the DM (don’t alert through DM, but through a public message or email). Users who are notified of a compromise on their accounts should immediately change their passwords and also do a scan of their systems, to ward off any other potential malicious coding found on the site they clicked on to get phished in the first place.

September 23rd, 2009

Brizzly takes the guesswork out of using Twitter

Posted by Jennifer Leggio @ 9:41 am

Categories: Social Media, Social Networks, Twitter, Twitter Applications

Tags: Twitter Inc., Brizzly, Instant Messaging, Channel Management, Web Browsers, Desktops, Internet, Online Communications, Marketing, Hardware

Last night I fell in love. With Brizzly, a newer application for managing a Twitter experience (bluebird + grizzly = get it?), from ThingLabs. Considering that I’ve been a loyal user of TweetDeck for some time now, the fact that Brizzly could potentially steal away my heart is a big deal. I absolutely love this application.

First, it takes away the guesswork that no other Twitter client has been able to do: It automatically extends all minimized URLs (without the use of a Mozilla Firefox plug-in) so you know what you will click. You don’t need to enter in any of your credentials into a third-party application, either (unlike TweetDeck) as it authenticates right from Twitter. And two very small — yet very usable — features I like: it auto-refreshes your feed so you don’t have to manually reload multiple times as you do with Twitter web. In another aesthetic win, Brizzly also expands pictures and videos right in your Twitter stream so there is no need to launch a browser, visit a different service or deal with another box on your screen:

Did I mention that Brizzly also lets you manage multiple accounts and view them with a quick click to the profile? You can also create groups within each profile, quite easily:

Other features include a muting option for noisy tweeters and a dedicated DM stream that is almost like an instant message client. The only negative of Brizzly is its very nature: it’s Web-based. Those of us used to tweeting through desktop applications might find it a hard switch to make. However, the increased security through direct authorization and the automatic expansion of shortened URLs might make it worth it.

Brizzly has a tutorial that explains all of this in quick detail. Check it out. Interested in trying Brizzly? I have five 10 invitation codes to spare. Leave your email address in the comments and I will send you one.