Tag Archives: twitter

Why the unread flag is becoming really important

28 Apr William Hague responds to my request for information on our Libyan strategy...

William Hague responds to my request for information on our Libyan strategy...

Yes, it’s end-of-the-week bug-bear time. Today I’m going to express a slight irritation over the handling of unread flags for social media inboxes by my various smart devices.

Let’s take the example of a simple twitter @ response. In this case one I received from William Hague (good in itself) to a simple question I posed to him about Libya on twitter (‘Why are we there?’) during a demonstration of the power of social media. I saw his response appear on my Blackberry and I retweeted it proudly. That all went well.

However, what is less satisfactory, is that I was also notified about this tweet mention on my android phone (ok so maybe I’m on odd in having two phones) despite already having ‘read’ it on my blackberry. I also was notified when I opened my Ipad by the twitter app that sits on there.

I don’t want to have to read things twice or even three times to flag that I read it. It’s a complete waste of time.

The problem is that the unread / read flag (as so often used by email inboxes) is not shared by the API or is not handled correctly by the various client software.

This isn’t a problem limited to Twitter – I get frustrated having to ‘mark as read’ LinkedIn emails online that I’ve responded to via my phone, via email or on the Ipad, it’s also a problem with Facebook messages and notifications – the Facebook for blackberry app currently shows 23 unread messages yet when I look online I’m all up to date.

It’s a problem that unless addressed is only set to get worse as we get more platforms and more devices – I like the convenience of accessing social messages from various devices but this is an issue I just wish would go away.

So, if you’re implementing a social media platform then please make sure the unread/read flag is part of your messaging API. If you’re implementing a social media client application then make sure you take account of the unread/read flag (thank you Flipboard who are quite good at this!) and you’ll make the information stream a better, less frustrating place to be.

End of bug-bear. Have a great Royal Wedding weekend!

Goodbye wild west – hurrah for the Second Internet

11 Apr

The days of the Internet being like the Wild West? So over... Photo credit: anyjazz65

It’s the buzz phrase of the moment – Second Internet and it stands for a lot of things – including open platforms, personalised experiences and social web features.

It is also about making the web safer, in particular our data, and for that the movement should be applauded.

The leading lights of the second internet have all added credit card type security to their sites. In particular, Facebook in January, Twitter last month and Foursquare last week.

While it doesn’t stop security problems in-channel (predators adding themselves as so called ‘friends’) it certainly starts to put up a much needed wall around our data as it hops its way across the internet.

When creating content on social – think canapes not main meal

8 Apr

Social media content should be like a canape - quick to gobble and easy to digest. Photo: sushi♥ina

Too many brands and companies are trying to create immersive and complex experience for their customers on social media.

The reality is that social media content should be quick to read and easy to digest. That’s because social media is the equivalent of a drinks party – we’re standing up, talking to lots of people, we haven’t sat down to a full meal.

When I sign up to your website, that’s when I’m ready for a full meal – that’s the time to give me white papers, full game experiences, complex competitions.

When I’m on social, I’m a butterfly, fluttering past, think yourself blessed if I stop by to nibble on one of your content canapes. That means 140 character twitter posts that say everything you want to say, Facebook wall posts that include a single meaningful photo and youtube videos that are under two minutes long.

Should social media be reclassified as a weapon?

28 Feb

Software can be a weapon too, as the PGP encryption code once was

 

It’s a strange statement but social media is being used in revolutions across the Middle East and not just to report on what is happening. It’s also part of the cause.

Let’s look at the facts!

  • Mass media, in this case radio, was used effectively in Nazi germany as a propaganda tool. It is a weapon.
  • Software can be a weapon: PGP (an encryption standard) that gave citizens miltary class secure person to person communication ability – was outlawed for export from the USA (see t-shirt above)
  • The Internet itself is military by original design.
  • Social media gives citizens the power of mass media – to be able to publish content with unlimited distribution.
  • Governments across the Middle East are closing down access to social media.
  • So clearly governments see social media as a weapon.

Q.E.D…. Social Media is a Weapon

Why Flipboard matters

4 Jan

Flipboard brings you a new way to browse Facebook stories

In an old post I highlighted social media’s ability to stop information overload by throttling the news feed: tools like Facebook automatically choose the stories that are most likely to introduce me.

However for many social media users it is the ability to see all the news as published by friends that is attractive.  Twitter users are past masters at processing hundreds of tweets per hour to pick out the ones that matter.

If you are in the latter camp and full scale information “waterboarding” is your preference, then Flipboard is the tool for you  - not only does it display everything and let you flick through it fast; it automatically converts the stories your friends share on Facebook and displays  the source material – a youtube  link becomes the youtube video itself, a Sky News wall post link  shows the article from the website.

The smooth “flip action” is great: you use your finger to turn the pages and this makes for a fantastic news browsing experience – for me its world news with my Facebook friends updates thrown in.

In a recent edition of Little Nudge I recommended dusting off your Google Reader account and getting it set up with the right news feeds to your taste whether celebrity, tech or financial.  Flipboard is one of the reasons – look at how it transforms your Google Reader news into a very readable newspaper below:

Flipboard makes a great looking newspaper, on the fly

The message for social media marketers in 2011 is clear – don’t expect your Facebook fans or blog readers just to be looking at your stories via the web – they may be using their Ipad and flipping through at an even faster rate than you realise.

Comparing Terms of Service and Privacy for Facebook, YouTube and Twitter

12 Nov

Running a campaign on a social media platform requires considerable attention to the legal details. Whether you’re storing email addresses, capturing user data, incentivising an activity or running a promotion you’ll need to check out the small print before you launch.

Not to do so runs the risk of being shut down with only 24 hours warning.

Here’s a list for the big three to get you started:

Facebook
http://developers.facebook.com/policy/
http://www.facebook.com/terms.php
http://www.facebook.com/policy.php
Youtube
http://code.google.com/apis/youtube/terms.html
http://www.youtube.com/t/terms
http://www.youtube.com/t/privacy?gl=GB&hl=en-GB
http://www.youtube.com/t/community_guidelines?gl=GB&hl=en-GB
Twitter
http://twitter.com/tos
http://twitter.com/privacy
http://dev.twitter.com/pages/api_terms
http://dev.twitter.com/pages/display_guidelines
http://dev.twitter.com/pages/geo_dev_guidelines
Well, on just numbers of documents alone, Facebook wins by condensing into three while Twitter’s five seems over the top.
As for the content.. well, ask your questions here!

What comes after Facebook?

23 Dec

It’s the age old question isn’t it. This Facebook thing, it’s just a phase hey? There was Friends Reunited and then here was Myspace and now Facebook, next it ‘ll be Twitter…

Er, not! Facebook is not just a trend, a glossy new brand that has somehow attracted 325m users. No, it’s a step change in technology.

Millions of tiny data items, akin to mini, structured emails, are now flying around Facebook at speed and scale (2bn photos uploaded per month, 2bn links shared per week to be precise).

Each has with it (“meta data” to use the technical term) interesting privacy information – we know who wrote what, which friends they want to share it with, when they created it, how they created it. It helps us know more about the relationship between two people, how close they are, what they talk about, what they like doing. That gives Facebook a massive technological advantage when it comes to filtering and providing a valuable start page for exploring the web.

If Facebook knows what and who I really like then why go elsewhere, why search for something else for that matter.

So, the answer to what comes after Facebook is probably more Facebook. Of course it may not be called Facebook, or even run by them, but under the tin it will be Facebook – tiny chunks of data accompanied by social meta data – filtered and processed to bring you the chunks of data you actually care about.

If Facebook is really represents a technical sea change, as I believe it is, then companies ignore integrating Facebook into their long term digital strategy at risk of going dinosaur, a little earlier than they might have expected.

Why tweets aren’t welcome on Facebook

19 Dec

How a retweet looks good on twitter and the user name is linked

But the @ link doesn't quite work on Facebook

Hey I know how you think – it’s a fragmented media landscape – I’ll save myself a shed load of rework if I tweet once and then republish many times on my Bebo, Myspace, Facebook page and anywhere else I can syndicate this.

How foolish you are. This means either you go down to the lowest common set of tools or you baffle social network friends with jargon that belongs to another social network paradigm.

If the latter then you fill up our Facebook news feeds with the unintelligible RT, hashtag and @username, if the former then you use neither twitter or Facebook to its full potential.

Don’t keep your tweets anodyne and your statuses samey! No change the tune and repurpose your content and publish twice, the increase in fans will reward your rework.

Much better to keep the tweets on twitter and the status updates on Facebook. That way you can really join the twitterverse, at the same time you can do your Facebook friends a favour by including @{their name} and autoposting to their wall.

Profile photo style, best twitter client and skittles fun

9 Mar

Skittles

This week twitter took over the Skittles home page and anytime you wrote a tweet it went straight to the home page – suddenly messages like “Skittles shown to cause cancer” appeared on the home page – it takes a gutsy brand but once the fuss has died down it points to the end of the web and the rise and rise of the social web. The customer is once again king.

 

Skittles changed their web site to go 100% social

Skittles changed their web site to go 100% social

 

 

Twitter Clients

I have been experimenting with various twitter clients such as Twhirl, Twitter mobile and Twitter on Facebook – but it looks like the emerging winner is TweetDeck which sits very nicely on my second monitor. I love the quick URL crunching tool – which makes tweeting that bit easier.

screenhunter_01-mar-09-1052

Tweetdeck is the most usable twitter client

 

Profile waste of time

In the old days we used spend our downtime changing the screen colours on our Windows settings – this has been replaced by the ultimate vanity of changing the profile photos.  Read this enjoyable post from All Facebook to see all the different types of Photo styles people have come up with.

 

Number one of the profile photo styles

Number one of the profile photo styles

Twitter goes mainstream at the BBC

11 Jun

Great to see twitter in use at the BBC’s new “Today Programme” website

Micro-blogging is the generic name for the twitRecent twitter post by the Radio 4 Today teamter phenomenon.

Your twitter account is a micro-blog with small updates from your daily life – things you spot, what you’re up to. You send “tweets” via web or text message to update it. Friends “follow” your twitter blog to see what you’re up to.

It’s biggest usage is in Facebook statuses where users micro-blog what they’re up to “Toby is cleaning the house, Toby is watching the football” and so on. Often these are more twit than wit but they are a popular way of staying in touch with friends without actually talking to them.

It’s very early days for micro-blogging but it’s likely to be as influential as blogs but in the friend space – I tried a quick test with “Toby wants to know what digital camera to buy” Within minutes two friends (not techies) had responded with suggested product choices. Micro-blogging might be the right tool to bring my friends and their experience with me when I visit the shops.

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