• Twitter is Too Big for Ashton

    10Nov
    Posted by: Laura Thomas, ABC Categories: Social Media Comments: 0
    “Up until today, I have posted virtually every one of my tweets on my own, but clearly the platform has become too big to be managed by a single individual.” – aplusk.posterous.com

    Whoa, whoa, whoa. Did I read that right? One person can’t keep up with their own Twitter account?

    Apparently that’s Ashton Kutcher’s new opinion based on the fact that he got panned for what E! described as an “ill-considered pro-Joe Paterno tweet.” So, just because he gets bad reactions to one tweet he’s going to turn over his twitter account to his PR team? Seems a bit over-reactive to me.

    Surely he can’t think he’s the only one who’s tweeted something they regretted. I’ve done it myself, albeit to a much smaller audience. The fact is, many have gone before him (James Andrews). Some have had a hard recovery, but most been able to overcome, a few even capitalize (Red Cross), on mistakes.

    “A collection of over 8 million followers is not to be taken for granted. I feel responsible to deliver informed opinions and not spread gossip or rumors through my twitter feed.” – aplusk.posterous.com

    Now that I can agree with, although I have to suspect due to the continued existence of celebrity rags at the grocery checkout, a great many people who follow someone like Ashton are actually hoping for a bit of that gossip.

    To me, the strength of twitter has always been the ability to eliminate barriers and connect with people directly. Granted, someone with eight million followers is going to have a hard time going 1×1 with them all, but at least he was trying.

    Not a big follower of celebrities on Twitter, I did still love the way he, Demi and other members of their family and close friends embraced the platform and seemed to understand that same strength I see. But, now that appears to be lost.

    “While I feel that running this feed myself gives me a closer relationship to my friends and fans I’ve come to realize that it has grown into more than a fun tool to communicate with people. While I will continue to express myself through @Aplusk, I’m going to turn the management of the feed over to my team at Katalyst as a secondary editorial measure, to ensure the quality of its content. My sincere apologies to anyone who I offended. It was a mistake that will not happen again.” – aplusk.posterous.com

    Whether or not a fan or a follower, I still feel this is a loss. Don’t run away Ashton. I mean, it’s not like you can’t say or do something stupid somewhere else (Rolling Stone, Oprah’s couch). Keep twitter real.

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  • Lessons Learned from a Muppet Hangout

    08Nov
    Posted by: Laura Thomas, ABC Categories: General Comments: 0

    In case you missed it yesterday, Google+ launched their first official pages. Pages are extremely similar to profiles, but are for businesses and have some key differences from personal profiles:

    • Pages cant add people to circles until the page is added first or mentioned. Learn more.
    • Pages can be made for a variety of different entities whereas profiles can only be made for people.
    • The default privacy setting for elements on your page profile is public.
    • Pages have the +1 button.
    • Pages cant +1 other pages, nor can they +1 stuff on the Web.Pages cant play games.
    • Pages dont have the option to share to Extended circles.
    • Pages dont receive notifications via email, text, or in the Google bar.
    • Pages cant hangout on a mobile device.
    • Local pages have special fields that help people find the business physical location.

    I was fortunate to be part of a great team that had been working for many months behind the scenes to prepare the +Dell page for launch day. One of the things weve been planning related to the page launch is more hangouts.

    Several Dell employees, and our iconic leader Michael Dell, have already been holding Google+ hangouts for a while now, but we thought a few timed to the new page launch would be a good way to showcase what makes G+ different from our pages and accounts on other social networks. We werent the only ones thinking that.

    Its time to put on makeup. Its time to dress up right

    Another thing that would probably be hard for you to miss lately is the fact that those timeless Muppets have a new movie coming out. They were also quick to leverage G+ pages to help promote that movie and soon after launch announced that they would be doing a hangout.

    So, with three nine-year-old girls excitedly watching over my shoulder (this is soooo exciting! oh, I need to fix my hair! I LOVE the Muppets!), I eagerly logged into Google+ at the appointed hour. I knew there were limits to how many people can get into a hangout, so I warned them we might not get in, but got rather excited myself when it looked like we might.

    I soon realized that what we were viewing, however, was not an actual hangout, but rather a video stream of a hangout just between the Muppets and their real-life co-stars not a hangout with the general public as I and the more than 16,000 other people who at that time had circled the Muppets page expected.

    It didnt take long for others to begin to realize this, too, and a flurry of negative comments began:Comments on the Muppets G+ Page

    Some visitors, obviously new to G+, thought the video feed was cool because it was supposedly live, but those familiar with G+ knew it wasnt a real hangout there was no join the hangout button on the Muppet page.

    So, we walked away and enjoyed our dinner. If it was just video, we could watch at our convenience.

    But, about 30 minutes later I returned out of curiosity and found that they had switched to a real hangout. Of course, it immediately filled with the maximum of 10 people. I still kept hitting the try again button just in case I got lucky, but apparently only one person ever left the hangout, so only a total of 11 people actually got to hang with the Muppets. At least two, possibly three, of them apparently work at Google — a fact that was quickly noticed and drew comments.

    Tips for a more celebrational, Muppetational hangout

    So, what are the lessons learned here for other brands and businesses that want leverage hangouts?

    Dont promise more than you can to deliver. If it had been clearly stated to be a viewing of the cast hanging out with each other, the confusion of visitors wondering how to join, and their subsequent disappointment when they realized they couldnt, would have been avoided.

    Dont expect everyone to know how a hangout works. Google+ is still relatively new, and even those who created accounts before now have probably not leveraged all the functionality. When the real hangout did start, many commented on the frustration of having to download a plugin. Let everyone know theyll need to prep download plugin, check microphone, etc.

    Explain how streaming can help others join the fun. Until the limits are raised on how many people can join a hangout, video streaming is a beneficial way to allow more people to see whats happening. Position this as an alternative, though, rather than using it as the primary means of communicating. Engaging with others is the primary goal not pushing out content.

    Dont fill all your available spaces with your own people. Maybe the Googlers in the Muppet hangout had the same opportunity the general public had to join. Or, maybe they were providing assistance because the Muppet team wasnt well-versed on how to conduct the hangout. Either way, it left a bad impression and is a warning that with such a small limit on how many can join a hangout, you dont want to fill it up with your own employees and create an image that youre only talking to yourself.

    The main thing is lots of up-front communication to your audience. The more they know about what will be happening and how best to participate, the smoother everything will go. And, be sure you’re interacting directly with people to avoid the impression one fan expressed by describing the Muppet hangout as “a media/pr blitz with little consideration for the fans.“

    Im sure there are others out there with more experience than I have with hangouts, though, so any and all other tips you have for a celebrational hangout are welcome! | Lessons Learned from a Muppet Hangout

  • Would You Encourage Your Child Break the Law?

    06Nov
    Posted by: Laura Thomas, ABC Categories: Family, General, Issues, Social Media Comments: 4

    On first look, the headline of this post may seem like a black & white answer, but it’s really a loaded question according to some of the latest research released by social media scholar, youth researcher & advocate danah boyd.
    Unintended consequences of the ‘Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act

    The recent release of  “Unintended consequences of the ‘Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act‘” by boyd, Eszter Hargittai, Jason Schultz and John Palfrey generated a lot of interest.

    The blog All Facebook said that doing so was maybe “not as bad as parents buying beer for their kids under age 21 or cigarettes for those under 18,” but all three do require parents displaying a lack of respect for rules to the children they expect to follow their rules.

    One commenter on that blog asked “how else are they going to stay in touch with their friends in this digital age?” Several others felt it was OK if they were actively monitoring their child’s site and had the account password (as if that couldn’t be changed when the kid decided to lock mom out).

    But another raised a great point: “While I know that it seems safe to have a child on facebook and parents say they are monitoring their childs FB …I don’t know how many are ACTUALLY doing it. Or how many know how to effectively protect their child on facebook.”

    This one, however, is the comment I think gets back to how grey the answer is to the seemingly black & white question I posed: “I have never thought about if i would break similar age rules in other areas. In almost every other area i would never even think about breaking the rules. Interesting why it’s ok with me with facebook… “

    So what rule is being broken? Well, there are really a couple of them. First is the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) mentioned in the research. This Act became effective back in April 2000 and is enforced by the Federal Trade Commission.
    It basically says that if a website has visitors under 13 and collects any information from them it must use “reasonable procedures” to ensure they are getting permission from the child’s parent. These procedures may include:

    • obtaining a signed form from the parent via postal mail or facsimile;
    • accepting and verifying a credit card number;
    • taking calls from parents on a toll-free telephone number staffed by trained personnel;
    • email accompanied by digital signature;
    • email accompanied by a PIN or password obtained through one of the verification methods above.

    All of those, however, require a certain amount of administration and personnel to manage that many social media outlets do not have or want to hire to make sure all the kids under 13 have parental permission. That’s why sites like Facebook simply say they don’t allow anyone under 13 on them.

    And that is the second rule being deliberately broken by 68 percent of those surveyed in the research that reported their child joined Facebook before the age of 13.

    It’s worth noting that this research was supported by Microsoft Research. This gives Digital Democracy the feeling that “this study is an industry-funded attack against the current FTC proceedings that will ensure that children cannot be targeted via mobile and location data services or be the victims of companies engaged in behavioral targeting.”

    But, whether you are for or against COPPA, the fact that half (55%) of parents of 12-year-olds reported their child has a Facebook account, most (82%) knew when their child signed up, and most (76%) also assisted their 12-year old in creating the account should make you stop and ponder.

    My own nine-year-old girl has friends who already have Facebook pages, so I’ve faced the request join those numbers. My stance is that the rule is 13, so not until she’s 13. Not to cast any stones at others, but simply because I want to set an example for her to follow rules.

    Even though that’s my current position, we’ve still already had frequent talks about what she should or shouldn’t share online. Those who remember when the two of us were touring kids virtual worlds will know why. Although many protections are in place and as much as I try to monitor (like many parents of young Facebookers), I know I can’t always be there, so talking early and often is my plan.

    What’s your plan for preparing your kids for online interactions? All suggestions welcome!

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  • Klout and the Ease of Forgetting Social Media’s Promise

    03Oct
    Posted by: Laura Thomas, ABC Categories: Social Media Comments: 0
    “Yes, ‘winning’ matters, but it’s winning at hard things - intrinsic motivation - that really matters. People aren’t stupid. Pasting scoring on trivial activities doesn’t make them less trivial. As Rilke said in his poem The Man Watching, ‘What we fight with is so small, and when we win, it makes us small.’” - Tim O’Reilly as posted on Google+.

    It’s a great point of view from Tim about what he calls the shallow end of gamification.
    As I start this week in a somber mood, trying to get a grip on some hard things in my personal life (no, I don’t tell you everything online), it brings me back around to thoughts that have been floating around in my head for a while now.
    Klout list of most influential women

    There’s a little blue sticky note on my desk with two sentences written down to remind me to put it to paper post. It says, “Klout has added foursquare, flickr and others. What’s next? My Fandango account?”

    My initial thoughts were around privacy and how little it really takes for us to give up more and more of it. A free Spotify account earlier than everyone else and $30 worth of free moo cards? Sure, I’ll connect you to my Goggle+ account!

    I throw no stones. I stand guilty of accepting both of those “Klout perks” referenced and of connecting every new service they bring on board to which I currently subscribe.

    The human ego is so easily stroked that we forget how small a thing increasing our Klout score is and how it can make us small. It can make us forget what all this social media was supposed to be about.

    What brought this home for me was an interview with Klout’s founder Joe Fernandez that I read in “The Social Media Monthly” magazine during my recent travels (the fact that there is a print publication out there focused solely on social media is a whole other post to be written). In it he says:

    “A year from now I think we continue our march as being the standard around measuring influence. And we’re really focused on how do we make consumers, end users, care that they have Klout Scores? I get mad when I see CNN scrolling tweets and they don’t have Klout Scores next to them. I want you to see that Klout Score everywhere you go.”

    So, does he mean CNN should only show tweets from people with high Klout scores? Or, we as readers of the tweets should only pay attention to those with high Klout scores?

    Either way, I thought the beauty of social media was that it gave everyone a voice and you didn’t have to be “someone” to be heard. Too idealistic?

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  • Comical Remembrances

    11Sep
    Posted by: Laura Thomas, ABC Categories: General Comments: 0

    It’s Sunday morning, and as I always like to do, I’m reading the newspaper. I generally scan the headlines of the main sections. As expected, there are several stories about 9/11. I read a few, but not too in-depth. I’m not sure I want to dwell.

    So, I head to my favorite part of the Sunday paper - the comics. I see the impact of 9/11 there, too, and the same struggle I face to figure out how to commemorate its 10th anniversary.

    Some of the strips make no mention of it. Life must go on, right? Many talk of remembrance and respect for fallen heroes. A very few risk political statements. Some stick with quiet symbolism.

    I feel for the writers and artists of these comics because I experience the same internal conflict. I don’t want to be consumed by looking back. I don’t want to be unfeeling or disrespectful either.

    Many bloggers today will be writing about where they were when the towers fell. What impact it has had on their lives. Who they knew, loved and lost in the events of the day or the wars that followed.

    I could talk about hearing of it at work from someone dialed in to a meeting and then rolling a television into that meeting in time to see the second tower go. I could remember the anguish of watching hours upon end of coverage at home on my couch. I could share the grief of my miscarriage that took place the next week.

    Instead, I think I’ll enjoy a quiet morning with my wonderful girl who just turned nine years old two days ago. I’ll recall, like Freshly Squeezed did, that we always have and always will live in a dangerous world.

    Then, I’ll go to church, where I’ll pray for those who lost much more than me, thank God for how he’s blessed us, and ask for his continued guidance, support and love as we face what’s still before us.

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  • Good to Know I’m Still Less than 1 Percent

    29Aug
    Posted by: Laura Thomas, ABC Categories: Work Comments: 0

    I’ve been feeling lately like maybe I wasn’t being beta enough.

    Having made a job change, I’ve been focusing on remembering old technologies (like the wires) and having very little time for new ones (like Google+).

    Was I slipping? About to lose my early adopter cred, I wondered?

    Then, a project we launched at work (my employer, Dell) this week showed me I’ve still got it.

    You see, we’re partnering with Microsoft and Mastercard on a contest to find “America’s Favorite Small Business.” The contest involves submitting a video through YouTube to enter. Nothing really new there. User-generated content (UGC) contests have been around for several years now.

    But, the day the contest launched I went to our YouTube channel to check it out and didn’t see it. There were some of our videos related to the contest, but none of the interface that explained it and allowed contestants to upload their entries.

    At first I thought I was just looking too early. Usually when you launch something, there are a few bugs to be worked out. But, it was the same the next day and everyone else was saying it looked good.

    What was I missing?

    Then, I remembered … it was a panda.

    You see, a while back I opted in to YouTube’s Cosmic Panda - a beta test of a new design - and evidently, custom iFrame implementation is not supported in Cosmic Panda.

    This caused some concern when I raised the issue with the project team and there was a bit of alarm for a day or so when we thought that 10 percent of YouTube visitors were on Cosmic Panda.

    But YouTube came back to assure us (bringing visions of my illustration here) that:

    Remain Calm - Kevin Bacon in the movie Animal House

    “The new YouTube brand channel designs are being tested less than 1 percent of users who can revert to the classic channels whenever they choose.”

    Whew! Most people really will see all that hard work that went into building out the contest.

    And, whew! I’m part of a group that is less than 1 percent of users. I’ve still go it! <wink>

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  • Visual.ly Almost Here. Shows Me What I Tweet in the Meantime.

    25Jul
    Posted by: Laura Thomas, ABC Categories: Fun, General, Social Media, Twitter Comments: 1

    Back in April, I got excited when I heard that a new service was coming named Visual.ly that would give me the ability to create those oh-so-hot-and-trendy infographics.

    My creative skills aren’t all that shabby, but I’m certainly not a trained graphic designer, so “a platform for people to plug in data and have infographics pumped out automatically” was definitely something I wanted to check out.

    Unfortunately, at that time, it was an invitation-only site. I put in a request for an invite, but did not play their game of spamming my friends in order to hope it got me higher placement in the beta. So … about two and a half months later, I got an email with the subject “Visual.ly is live!” and two weeks later finally found the time to go check it out.

    Well, it is mostly live, I’d say. The ability to share infographics and explore those from others is there today. It looks like they’re concentrating first on the things that they hope will lead to revenue (and who can blame them for that?). As noted in FastCompany back in April, “Visual.ly wants to offer its services up in a subscription model, providing its team to clients as needed for a monthly retainer fee.“

    So, I’m still waiting for what I hope will be an easy way to create graphics for my own use. In the meantime, Visual.ly is offering us a fun visualization of what we tweet via an auto-generating infographic (a similar functionality ionz in Brazil did not so long ago). You can compare yourself to another twitterer, or just get a snapshot of your own tweets.

    That’s what I did here - enjoy!

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  • How is a parent ever to get it right?

    18Jul
    Posted by: Laura Thomas, ABC Categories: Family Comments: 0

    Report Card with FI’ll skip to the end of this one and tell you what I think - we won’t.

    Parents will never get child-rearing “right.”

    This coming from the woman who when explaining through my teens and twenties that I had no intention of having children would use the axe murderer example as one reason. Whenever some serial killer is caught and examined, who’s always to blame? The parents. Most often the mother.

    So, rather than risk creating a monster, my thought was that I just wouldn’t even try. (I had other reasons for not planning to have kids, too, that I won’t dive into today; but as anyone knows me knows, I learned to never say never.)

    Are people’s murderous acts really caused by the parents, though? Not entirely. I’ll admit there are probably some people out there who royally screw up in the act of parenting, but even they can’t take full blame. There’s only so much nurture involved. Nature has to play a part. Look at the stories like the one behind “The Blind Side” where good people come out of bad childhoods. And, look at all the twins raised in the same household who are polar opposites of each other.

    So, what has me off on this tangent today?  Well, I finally got around to reading an article from the Atlantic titled “How to Land Your Kid in Therapy” that I’ve had open in my browser for weeks it seems.
    I like the way the author put it in her opening paragraph when she said:

    “But in that space between Joan Crawford and June Cleaver, where most of us fall, it seemed like a lot could go wrong in the kid-raising department.”

    So, I plunged into her article looking for what I might be doing wrong that I could fix. And, there were some insights to be gleaned: don’t shelter them too much from pain and disappointment, don’t confuse your own happiness with theirs, try to teach them perseverance and resiliency, and generally don’t protect them from reality.

    Sounds easy enough. But oh how fuzzy that line looks to me between building self-esteem and building a narcissist. Should I not let her get in bed with us when she has a nightmare? Do I tell her too often how great she is? Oh my goodness! I think I’ve told her before that she can do anything she sets her mind to do! Arrrgh. Enter stress and worry.

    And then, resignation. Yes, I will screw up.

    It’s entirely possible that my child could end up in therapy one day in spite of and because of all my best efforts. And, it’s entirely possible that she’ll be a happy (well, mostly, because that reality I shouldn’t shield her from is we’re not always happy) well-adjusted contributing member of society.

    Those of you in my “village” can only hope. :-)

    Image via Creative Commons courtesy of amboo who?

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  • Options Make the Difference Between Google+ and Twitter

    10Jul
    Posted by: Laura Thomas, ABC Categories: Social Media Comments: 4

    It’s good to have options. Where to go to school. Who to date. Where to work. Soup or salad. Republican or Democrat. Paper or plastic.

    The recent launch of Google+ just gave us another option in social networks, and as the case usually goes, much has been said about the impact it might have on previous platforms.

    It’s the Facebook killer. No, it’s a Twitter killer. Or the tweet I liked that said “Well, I can say with complete confidence that g+ is better than plurk. So it’s got that going for it.”

    As I recently revisited a good old friend, TweetStats.com, I noticed something in my stats that stood out to me and made me realize why it is that Twitter has become so ingrained in my life over the past four years — the options you have for *how* to tweet.
    Chart of Twitter Interfaces Used by @LPT to Tweet
    I tweet through their web site. I tweet with Tweetdeck. I tweet with Twhirl/Seesmic. I tweet photos through Posterous. I can also tweet by emailing them to twitpic. I tweet with the TwitThat! bookmarklet. I tweet to work accounts with the Sprinklr app and their bookmarklet. I occasionally tweet from foursquare. I can tweet from my work-issued Blackberry. I can tweet through my iPhone (purchased before my employer sold phones). Actually, I tweet four different ways through my phone - the Twitter mobile app, Tweetdeck’s app, Posterous’ app, and good old reliable text. I even tweet quotes from my Kindle.

    It didn’t start out that way. Twitter didn’t build all these interfaces, but they gave others the tools they needed to do it for them and that’s been a key part of their growth, in my opinion.

    Google+ may get there. People have already created ways to bring Twitter and Facebook into G+.   But, those just pull things in to G+ from other places, not let you send stuff to G+ from other places.

    As in the past with new platforms, people are still using the old ones to talk about them. You see people tweeting asking to get invites to Google+, and then they’re tweeting about what Google+ is like. I myself used Twitter to ask questions and get answers about G+.

    If Google will give people the tools they need to make it as easy to send updates to them as it is to do so with Twitter today, then maybe I’ll make the switch. Or, I guess if all the people I enjoy hearing from and talking to in Twitter migrate over and don’t return, I’ll be forced to do so.

    I saw my friend Connie Reece comment on Google+ that she’s “using Twitter less. Finding so many of my friends from Twitter here and can post more than 140 characters. But still need FB for family and non-Twitter friends.”

    But, for now, Twitter remains my primary social network and I’ll just dip a toe into Google+ every now and then to see how it’s progressing.

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  • Group Couponing: Maybe Good for Some, But Probably Not for All

    02Jul
    Posted by: Laura Thomas, ABC Categories: General, marketing Comments: 0

    “Like the world needs another one of those.”

    CHICAGO, IL - JUNE 10: The Groupon logo is en...

    That was the snarky comment I heard myself saying in a meeting this week where someone said of a mobile application that was being discussed that it could eventually be a way of delivering a group coupon buying service.

    I guess the guild is just off the lily for me with such services as Groupon and LivingSocial. That’s not to say I haven’t had good experiences with them.

    My first Groupon purchase worked perfectly for both me and the restaurant that was participating. It was a fondue place that we’d been to before, but didn’t frequent often because it’s a little more expensive than we want to spend most nights out. The Groupon worked for us because we were able to save $20, which made it a bit more bearable on the pocket book. It worked for the restaurant because it brought us back in sooner than we might have come, and of course, we spent a little more than just the coupon amount.

    With that experience under my belt, I dove into the group coupon buying crowd with much confidence. It soon waned, however.

    First there was the housecleaning service that assured me when I called them prior to making the coupon purchase that they could get someone out to my house prior to a Christmas party, but then said they were booked when calling after the purchase. Then, it was the spa package bought in January that said they were booked and to call back in March to try again, only to tell me in March that they couldn’t fit me in until October.  And the last one I tried for a photo package at a mall chain store ended when I walked by the store to see it dark and a sign taped on the door explaining they’d not been able to pay their rent.

    The coupon services themselves did everything right. LivingSocial refunding my purchase of the spa package without fuss and on the same day I requested it. They also sent out notice of refunds on the photography package before I even got around to asking about that one.

    Based just on my experience, I’d say that these sort of promotions aprobably work best with companies that are more product based than service based. Meaning, it’s a lot easier to simply give a discount on a meal - they’ve been doing those sort of coupons in newspapers and direct mail for ages - than it is to meet a surge in demand for cheap housecleaning and massages.

    No, it’s not the couponing service, but the businesses that use it that have had trouble delivering what is promised.

    But that doesn’t mean the coupon providers aren’t in trouble. As VC Bill Gurley of Benchmark Capital put it, “Everybody and their brother has entered this space. There’s really not that much they do.“

    Yes, when Travel Zoo suddenly started adding “local deals” at restaurants here in Austin similar to the one I’d first purchased from Groupon to the weekly emails I get from them on hotel specials and flight deals, that’s when I agreed with Simon Dumenco that they’d jumped the shark.

    I mean, group coupons for real estate? Really?

    Image by Getty Images via @daylife

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