Fresh ID » Twitter

The Future of Twitter is Here Now!

Kristi — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 14:01:30 +0000

I had a bittersweet moment tonight, though ultimately it’s a victory and I’m excited to see someone do it. Two years ago, I penned a long diatribe calling for automation on Twitter of an informational (not marketing) nature, and gave several examples of what I’d like to see happen in the future. That article is here if you have an hour (joking, sort of): https://freshid.com/2010/01/information-vs-engagement-are-you-giving-people-what-they-need

Well, I’m pleased to report that airline KLM has launched @KLMFares and done exactly what I described and envisioned, with great results. If you tweet that specific handle + locations, they will return a link with ticket info for the airfare you seek, and the whole experience will take you seconds-t0-under a minute. Aaron Lee has written a great post about it, head over to his blog and read it for details: http://askaaronlee.com/automate-twitter-account

If you want to work with Fresh ID on your own Tweet-to-respond technology, contact us or tweet us now! I’m dying to experiment as I STILL think this is the wave of the future. Well done KLM!

7 Habits of Highly Effective Twitterers

Kristi — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 15:08:15 +0000

Originally posted February 2009 on the Mr. Tweet blog, this post has been modified slightly to reflect current information.

I lived in Texas all my life until moving to Kansas 4 years ago to get married. As a designer and business owner who depends on rich relationships for personal and business prospects, I originally felt like a fish out of water in this strange new land. Twitter has been a critical component that changed everything for me, both in terms of finding and being found by relevant folks.

As opposed to gaming the system to gain followers, I believe in constant engagement and adding value to build up a meaningful network. It works!

Here are just some examples of meaningful relationships and opportunities I have gained by using Twitter.

Fresh Partnerships: I’ve met people online that we do business with at Fresh ID that we’ve never met in person.
New Clients, Friends & Mentors: I have clients that I would never have known if not for Twitter, friends I cherish, and mentors like Kelly Olexa, Gary Vaynerchuk and Olivier Blanchard that I draw motivation and inspiration from regularly.
Own Application: I have designed several applications for Twitter because of the incredible availability of the Twitter software feeds and creativity such freedom inspires.

Based on the principle of Stephen Covey’s 7 habits, I have loosely adapted them to explain the 7 habits I have practiced consistently in order to achieve the results above. Enjoy, and I would love to hear your feedback! A lot of people say “Twitter is what you make of it.” I find that to be very true. If you send out links to your site, or try to push your products or services, you’re not liable to get as much out of it as someone who gets to know people before they talk about business. If you ask for advice or competitive information, but never share valuable tidbits when you come across them, you’re not likely to reap the same rewards as someone who is known as a generous sharer. Jump into Conversations. I get to know people by just jumping into the conversation when I see something that I can respond to. It can be awkward to make random statements to the world at large. Especially when starting out, replying to someone else can be the safe way to get some conversation going. Don’t be shy – when you see someone ask a question and you have the answer, or know where they can find it, don’t hesitate to speak up. I cannot remember all the times when I shared some information that seemed obvious to me, but really helped someone else out because they didn’t know something that I did. Proactively seek out people to follow. I used Mr. Tweet a lot before that product went offline, because of the way my report gave me advice on who to follow and the related connections so I understood the big picture better. I have used Twollo to find people to follow based on keywords, and found some awesome user experience people I had never known were out there. I love to visit the Just Tweet It directory because people are organized by their interests, and I’ve even gone to favorite friends follow lists and found really cool people that way. It is not uncommon for me to go on a “find new folks” mission once a week or so and add lots of people that seem interesting to me. Why are you on Twitter? I admit, I had no idea, really, what was available for me until I read a great article by Darren Rowse on his Problogger site about other bloggers being on Twitter. I had a Twitter account with one update on it – I didn’t understand what to do with it. I was new to blogging, but a lot of the folks he listed seemed cool, so I made it a point to follow 100 of them to get started. Very quickly, I saw that this was a wonderful place to connect with like-minded people. Since I miss the social aspects of working around other people in an office, Twitter soon became my personal “breakroom” – a place I could stop in and visit for a moment with people who get what I’m talking about. What is the reason you’re on Twitter? I have a friend with an autistic son, and she is an autism advocate who provides autistic children with a creative outlet in Texas. She uses Twitter to connect with parents of autistic kids and has found a marvelous support system. A coffee shop in Houston uses Twitter to provide service to its customers and bring together people in person who live in Houston, frequent the coffee shop, and use Twitter. Whole Foods Market answers customer questions and passes information along to headquarters, so that customers have a direct communication channel that’s easy and convenient for them. Despite a lot of people who feel there is a right and wrong way to use Twitter, the truth is there are many valid reasons to participate, and everyone’s is unique. I try not to criticize people (except for spammers) for using Twitter how they want to. You don’t need a formal mission statement or personal brand, but some internal guidelines will be helpful if you intend to use Twitter in any sort of business capacity. I often self-censor because I use Twitter for general networking and playtime, but am a business owner with clients following me, and this is always in the back of my mind. How important are your Twitter friends and this social platform to you? For some of us, it’s the first thing we check every morning and our Twitter friends are the last people we communicate with before bed. Others check in every few days, or maybe only once a day. If Twitter is important to you and not something you can use at work, get an iPhone, Droid or Blackberry and check in at lunch. There’s nothing wrong with enjoying Twitter so much that it becomes an important part of your day. Part of Business Process: Having been on Twitter for a number of months, I now have clients that follow me and sometimes they Direct Message me instead of sending an email. For those of us doing business with other Twitter users, it’s as important as having email or internet access. Set Aside When Need To: However, if Twitter is sucking away your time and distracting you from important tasks, try to put it aside totally for a while and get yourself started on a single task. I have had to do that before, because my friends would not stop sending out fascinating articles and saying interesting things! Give Love to Followers: It’s been fun to follow celebrities like Lance Armstrong, Demi Moore and Brent Spiner on Twitter. But for the average person, those relationships are fairly one-sided: we send love to the stars we like so much, and they soak it up, but don’t follow many people back or even acknowledge many people with @ replies. How do you treat your followers? What do you give, and what do you take from them? Get Personal, Not Bottish: I have been very vocal about my dislike of automated Direct Messages from people you follow. They bother me because someone is talking “at me”, not “to me.” If you’ve been on Twitter very long you’ve probably witnessed some disastrous DM’s that make you roll your eyes. For example, and this one happens quite often: someone follows me. I see them, and decide to follow them. Then I get a ridiculous message that thanks me for following them, and says they will check out my bio and possibly follow me within a few days. Now this person I thought was cool, just took a turn for the worse in my eyes. Consequently, I think I end up filtering them out mentally because I prefer other people I don’t see as lame, more. If this same person did not send a thank you when I followed them, but rather waited for an opening and sent me a reply that was helpful, supportive or funny, I would be more likely to forge a friendship with them based on mutual interest. If Twitter is a place you want to be for a long time, treat followers as you want to be treated… show them respect if you disagree, be courteous, offer sympathy and demonstrate empathy. It takes a big person to put themselves in another persons shoes, though it might seem easy. We can only relate to what we already understand, so when someone is rubbing you the wrong way, try to imagine their position. If you don’t agree the majority of the time, you don’t have to follow each other. There’s no shame in removing yourself from bad situations. I have done it, and have had people unfollow me that didn’t feel we were a good fit for each other. But be gracious. When people see you are capable of comprehending their point of view, they may become more open-minded about hearing yours.

Synergistic brainstorming is the secret sauce that brings new users to Twitter by leaps and bounds month after month. It is the reason people talk their co-workers, industry colleagues, friends and family members into joining. If people following each other is the fabric, brainstorming is the thread that binds them together and makes individual networks strong. Community Sharing: I am a designer and now CEO of Fresh ID, though a bit more focused on software design, usability, social media and product marketing than some of my creative pals. The design community on Twitter is amazing… they promote each others work, share ideas, links and articles, support each other if one of them suffers an issue and unconditionally have each others backs. A lot of these creatives, like myself, work alone, but this community effect ensures they are never far from suggestions, feedback or a willing ear to listen when times are tough.

I always feel my followers have made me smarter. There is an evolution of a thought… if left alone, your thought may only go so far, limited by your past, experiences and imagination. Take the same thought, and launch it into the sea of Twitter friends. Now it morphs with another idea added it to it, changes into something new with yet more input, and growswhen someone smart makes a comment from a new angle you didn’t realize existed. This is how using Twitter on a regular basis can sharpen your mind and improve your thinking. Of course, it helps if you follow smart people!I have found Twitter to be such a valuable tool, I struggle for words to describe its place in my life. It is woven into my day as much as brushing my teeth, petting my four-footed children, eating, drinking and sleeping.I believe it makes me a more effective person… and I know it’s made me a more satisfied person. How has using Twitter changed your life?

Fresh ID out and about…ONLINE

freshid — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 22:04:48 +0000

The Fresh ID team believes in practicing what we preach. And you all know (or should know) that we try to share our world with you, online. We believe in exploring, updating, engaging and embracing all different kinds of social networks and sharing our thoughts and opinions. So we wanted to share with you all WHERE exactly we are hanging out, and invite you to “Follow” us. Also, if you’d like help setting anything up (Like Tumblr, Blogging etc.) you know we’d be happy to help! So here we are, you can find us 24/7… Introducing, Fresh ID ONLINE Lisa Qualls, CEO: @LQualls4444 Facebook.com/lqualls4444 Linkedin Google Plus Tumblr About.Me Slideshare Visible. Me Kristi Colvin, CCO: @KrisColvin @EatWellWorkWell Facebook.com/kriscolvin LinkedIn KrisColvin (FourSquare) Blogging Tumblr Tom Jenkins, CTO: @TechGuyTom Facebook.com/Techguytom LinkedIn Google Plus Blogging Slideshare Sherry Liu, Art Director: @SherryLiu Facebook.com/AznLiu Sherry Liu (FourSquare) Google Plus LinkedIn Tumblr Ryan McElhaney: Sales and Marketing Director: @RyanLeighMac Facebook.com/RyanMcElhaney LinkedIn Google Plus Tumblr Blogging Flavors.Me Fresh ID: @Freshid Facebook.com/FreshID Blogging Slideshare YouTube

Why Having a Facebook & Twitter Page is Not Enough.

freshid — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 21:47:07 +0000

So you decided to jump into social networking and set up a Facebook and Twitter page for your business. So what? More and more companies are getting into social media so their customers can “find them”, but if you are not using it correctly you may be doing more harm than good. Having “35 fans” on Facebook, or only having tweeted a couple of times, does your business no favor. I mean, who really cares if you’re on social networking sites? Why should they? You must engage with others – customers, prospects, former clients, partners, vendors, and employees for example – outside your profile to find out what they want from your presence online. Which reminds me… Why are you on Facebook and Twitter? Do you want to be seen as an “expert” in your field? Do you want to offer good insights about your business? Are you giving your customers a place to talk about you and ask questions? Determining why you have put yourself on Facebook or Twitter or any social networking outlet is the first step and should be done BEFORE you even sign up for an account. You don’t jump into a pool of sharks without having a life jacket, and you don’t invest in social media without a plan. Social media should not be an either/or business plan, it needs to be incorporated into what you already have, and you need to have an established web presence of your own design first. That’s the foundation of your brand presence online. Adding Facebook and Twitter allows more reach and rendezvous with your customers and gives your company a face to the public that’s sociable. Social networking allows you to network… socially (Duh). Utilizing these sites enhances how you talk, who you talk to and what is being said by you and your customers. It’s all social, it’s all about communication and it’s all about engaging. So, now you know why you want be on a social networking site, how are you going to maximize your potential and reach? A good rule to follow is the 60-30-10 rule. 60% of the time you are listening, 30% you are engaging and 10% you are promoting yourself. In order to be seen as an expert, you must experience. And to gain experience online, you must listen, ask questions, answer questions, and start conversations. Taking time to communicate with influencers is an important step to expanding who is listening to you, and should be listening to you. Are you a non-profit? Are you communicating with other non-profits or organizations that support your goals and have good insights to the cause you are promoting? If you are not starting conversations with them, you are missing out on an important piece of the social networking puzzle. You can’t just set up a profile and leave it, expecting people to come! You have to go out there, show them what you can do and prove to the public why “following” you, “friending” you or becoming your “fan’ is worth their time. Are you a local business? Are you talking with other local businesses that can help you grow your customer base? Are you a restaurant that is offering your customers specials, talking to them about your menu and starting conversations? Don’t let others do it for you, take the bull by the horns and create the talk. You can’t just create a profile, give minimal information and expect people to care. You have to take steps and put yourself out there and show that as a business, organization or person, you are willing to listen, talk and be social. Becoming social on sites like Facebook and Twitter is becoming a “must” if you plan on being successful. But if you are not engaging and making it worth people’s time they aren’t going to care, and you are not going to win. Taking time to establish your presence, determine why you are there and making the effort to listen, communicate and promote will ultimately lead to accomplishing the social networking scene, and let’s face it, you can’t afford not to.

The Etsy-Twitter-Tumblr Triumvirate

Kristi — Sun, 09 Jan 2011 17:18:19 +0000

This post is primarily meant for Etsy sellers. (We are one now too!) There are currently 273,270 active Etsy sellers, people signing up as members at a rate of over 300,000 per month, and in November 2010 Etsy broke a sales record of over 2 million items sold in one month. So how can sellers expand their reach, have more fun selling and increase their sales potential? By adding some other social networks to their mix of daily activities! We are going to be making and selling themes and templates in support of Etsy sellers and have just begun stocking our store. The set Lulu & Fifi has only had 77 views since I put it up, so I just tweeted about it to let people know it’s there, using the handy “Share” button on my page. If I used Twitter simply to promote my Etsy wares, it wouldn’t work as well. It is because I am actually friends with people and do a lot of reciprocal sharing and communicating, that anyone will care to click on my link. In a few minutes time, my views have gone from 77 to 111, just while writing this paragraph. That’s the power of using Twitter in conjunction with Etsy (and why it’s important to build social networks with like-minded folks who you enjoy interacting with.) Another important use of Twitter is for customer service – it’s easy to chat back and forth via DM or using your public stream, with an interested prospect or buyer. Showing people you’re around and active during buying times, plus seeing your interactions with others is another way to demonstrate they can trust you to provide quality service and merchandise. Here’s the tweet I sent – note how the latest version of Twitter shows the full graphic if you look at the tweet by itself… awesome! If you don’t have a Twitter account you can get one here. Be sure to match your background and colors to your store for the greatest brand effectiveness.

I also have a Tumblr for my personal blog, which I dearly love because I follow a lot of cool, fun people who post interesting things, that I can “reblog” in a matter of seconds. Things I love, I reblog, so I can reference them later. So think about what’s on Etsy for a moment… TONS of adorably quirky, fun, neat things. Things that people on Tumblr who like to share and play, might find interesting enough to pass along to their friends. The moral of this point? Set up a Tumblr and make friends there! I would use it, if you have no other website, as the companion site or blog for my Etsy store. Seeing handmade stuff on Etsy is very cool, but sometimes hearing the backstory of how something creative came to be, is even cooler and draws people who are intrigued by it toward purchasing. Plus, blogging your thoughts and letting people know who you are as a person (the same goes for tweeting) breeds familiarity, and familiarity breeds trust, and trust is a cornerstone of selling. So there is benefit in being accessible and approachable as a businessperson, and not just the Wizard behind the curtain (the curtain being the graphic avatar of your store.) Another benefit of Tumblr is that with some custom coding, you can add the Etsy mini widgets to your sidebar or the top or bottom of your site. You can also put one on Facebook, like we did on our Fresh ID business page. I have not put the Etsy widgets on my Tumblr yet, because I’m trying to decide whether we’re going to create a new one for the Themes & Templates we are going to sell or not, but the graphic here shows how it might look. Selling on Etsy is obviously not our core business – we are a creative services and social media agency -but if it’s yours you shouldn’t hesitate to put that on your Tumblr so that everytime people visit it, they will see the latest stuff you’re offering in your store. You can also set it up so that when you Tumble something, it goes into your Twitter feed, and if you post something you’re offering on Etsy as a story on Tumblr, that will automatically get sent to Twitter. You can get a free Tumblr account here. You will need to find a Tumblr theme, buy one or have a custom theme made for your site, so try to get one that coordinates with your store branding. We do custom-designed themes with lots of social network-integrated coding that run around $1000. We are going to eventually offer a Tumblr theme just for Etsy sellers that will be much less (under $100), and will be built to quickly brand it like your store and insert your Etsy Mini listings. If you want to know more about that theme just contact us… it’s not out of production yet. We also intend to do some Tumblr themes that will match the shop templates in our Etsy store. Tumblr, just like Twitter, involves reciprocal friendship for maximum effectiveness. I use my Tumblr for a highly personal site (as opposed to this blog, for our business) so I can reblog, write down, and share anything that amuses, delights or annoys me. So it is a total mix of goofy pictures, designer-inspired home decor and illustrations, funny, raunchy things, thoughtful musings, tirades against injustice and self-promotional blather. In other words, it’s the sum of my parts. If you want to keep your Tumblr more business-like though, you will be in plenty of good company. Everyone from major publications like Newsweek to hugely popular web applications like Twitter and Foursquare are making use of Tumblr for their business. When I began writing this post I had 77 views of my Lulu & Fifi Shop Theme, and I now have 160 views, a retweet of the link and a question from someone about our shop sets. Not bad for taking the time to send a single tweet to let my friends know what I’m doing! Do you have any questions or success stories to share about using other social networks to promote your Etsy wares? Would love to hear them. Ebay is doing something kind of unique – they have a new “social media sellers” program they’re initiating. If there is enough interest from Etsy sellers on social media we can help set up a regular Twitter chat about this topic so we can all help each other. Happy selling! Kristi

#projectpink inspiration

Kristi — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 11:17:06 +0000

One of our clients, Aaron over at Red House Media, sent me the most darling, precious video this morning that his team helped produce for a local alliance of towns concerned about breast health awareness. It’s not only moving and FUN, it has some educational information sprinkled throughout about how women can help themselves when it comes to breast health. A woman somewhere in the world dies of breast cancer every 68 seconds… that is why there is such focus on trying to help prevent, cure or put into remission this terrible cancer. Here’s the video… In other #projectpink news, Michiel said that when he got up this morning he saw over 6300 #projectpink tweets. I don’t know what the deal is. $1 for 1 tweet generously donated by Puma should make it pretty easy to get to 25,000. Now we are not sure if Michiel has tracked every tweet, and I’m not even sure how he is doing it though his profession is web stats so I know he has some tricks up his sleeve. But I don’t think he is off by much. PLEASE spread the word to your friends and PLEASE add #projectpink to any random tweet you have room to add it to. The reality looks like the picture below… are we going to give the winning charity the full donation? Yes!!!

Breaking: New Features from Twitter Just Appeared: TLists & Also Followed By

Kristi — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 21:15:44 +0000

I’m a bit befuddled but wanted to share some mysterious features that just showed up on my Twitter.com screen. The first is TLists – a similar feature to Listorious, TList appeared on my page to show others the lists I am on. I had nothing to do with getting on these, and not sure what the criteria is exactly for being on these lists. One of them said that I was one of the most listed tweeters about social media. The main site is http://www.tlists.com. The feature looks like this: The second feature is a straight-up knockoff of one of Mr. Tweet’s most helpful features. If you see the picture below, it shows me who of my friends is ALSO following this user, so that I might make the decision more easily about following him myself. I see now why Mr. Tweet shut down and will be releasing another product soon. What do you think of these new features? I’m wondering what else they’ve got cooked up that we don’t know about! UPDATE: My friend @yoni just found another feature that I don’t have:

Never More Excited About Twitter!

Kristi — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 21:33:34 +0000

Ev Williams, CEO of Twitter said to Chirp attendees (most of whom are application creators or developers), “3 billion requests a day is what you guys make to our server, that’s just api traffic… Twitter is hard to compare to other services because there’s not been anything like Twitter. There’s no other major service that is as distributed, and is really a network, with so many in-and-out points.” Ev’s entire talk is below, but I want to explain a bit about why I, Kristi, and all of us really at Fresh ID, are more excited about Twitter than ever before. First of all, there’ve been some grumblings and murmerings because Twitter is starting to do things it feels it must, like buy or partner with mobile phone developers to make official Twitter clients for various, oft-used smartphones (such as iPhone, Droid and Blackberry.) If you watch Ev’s talk you’ll see why they’re doing this – there’s an awesome clip of a real user experience of a woman trying to find a Twitter app in the iPhone App Store. It thrills us, as user experience people, that Twitter’s doing this kind of real-world research. But the reason why we feel excited, despite learning we are going to have to make product architecture changes as every app must use oauth and not store Twitter account data as of June 2010, is because of the number of announcements and steps they have taken that show REAL caring for the Twitter ecosystem and all of the millions of people that make up our Twitter community of users, developers, stakeholders and their own company employees. Twitter aims to grow to hundreds of millions of users, creating significant opportunities for us all. Ev made it clear throughout the week, that Twitter is not looking to take out third-party apps, but they need to do what they must for new and existing users and and rather than rehash their features or worry about what they’re doing, we as developers and marketers and entreprenuers need to step up and use their tools to innovate, not imitate. And they are in the process of giving us MORE tools than ever. http://dev.twitter.com was launched during the conference and they are just beginning to give us api’s for virtually everything they do, and in some cases with less limits and better results (something called user streams.) They’re doing this for themselves and the third-party apps, to enable greater creativity and more exploration of what we can do with the base architecture. We set up a Twitterface page at the last minute, and you can still see tons of tweets from people who attended the conference and people with questions. I encourage you to check it out and watch Ev’s talk there, or below. There are some more great links below about the content and news that’s come out of Chirp, so you might want to check those out too.

Watch all the recorded videos from the Chirp conference at Justin.tv
Watch our developer Joe Taylor talk about changes we’re making with our product from the conference (about 5 min. in)
Crib sheet for what happened at Chirp
Ryan Sarver (director of Twitter’s api platform) Talks Developer Happiness
Music from the conference (seriously awesome mix)

If I missed any great coverage, please leave it in the comments. We’re excited our dev Joe got to take part in the event… it’s obvious he’s really energized by being with the other smart, creative people at the conference because he’s full of ideas and energy, which is yet another reason we’re more excited about the work we are doing around Twitter than ever! Bonus Guest/Coverage/Coolness Will.i.am, of Black Eyed Peas fame, showed up as an unexpected guest at Chirp. Several things were neat about his appearance: first of all, he did a darling interview in which he used the word “dope” a lot and said he had to get into music so he didn’t end up like “these cats” – as he pointed to the overwhelmingly geeky developer audience. (It was funny!) Then he stayed the rest of the day, sitting and learning with everyone else, and apparently spun tunes and tweeted at an after-party as well. Here’s an interview he did with Scobleizer at the conference:

Checkin' Out Chirp… The Twitterface Way

freshid — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 20:23:54 +0000

Given the widespread debate and discussion surrounding the apparent conflict between Twitter and third-party developers following the acquisition of Tweetie, today is a very important day for both parties. Twitter is holding the first official Twitter developer conference, called Chirp, in San Francisco, CA where, hopefully, some questions will be answered. As third-party developers of a twitter-based product, all of us at Fresh ID would have loved to attend the conference, but it just wasn’t a viable option. However, our developer Joe happens to live in California, so we decided to foot the bill to send him to the conference and do a little recon. To make it even more exciting, we decided this would be a great way to use Twitterface for ourselves and others who aren’t able to physically attend. Fortunately, Twitter decided to live stream the entire conference via justin.tv, allowing Kristi to setup an Intefy (new name for Twitterface) page for Chirp at www.twitterface.com/chirp. Thus, we have been able to sit in the office and watch the entire conference (and, of course, get nothing else done). Having Joe on the ground at the conference has also provided a “non-Twitter official” view of the conference. When the official live stream goes off-air, we are able to switch the feed over to our developer and watch what is going on in between presentations. We also got to watch some interviews with other attendees. During the lunch break, Joe was able to interview Tyson Lundbech (@tysonlundbech) and learn more about ecoVouch, a project he is working on. It’s as if we are actually at the conference. Though being able to attend the conference virtually is extremely cool and convenient, more important is what we are learning from the conference. What valuable information have we gleaned from listening to Twitter Execs and fellow developers talk about the history and future of the platform? Good question. Yes, we are learning a lot about the history of Twitter, including the terrible design of the first home page, and the future of the service, such as improvements that are being made to the system. However, there is more important information to gain from this conference than how Twitter was created and how it’s being improved. It’s a little too early in the conference to make conclusions about the future of third-party Twitter development, but a few things have become quite clear. Based on the first wave of speeches and presentations, it is clear that Twitter wants to be upfront about the challenges that face a company valued at over a $1 Billion. Though many will be sad to see Twitter start acting like the large-scale company it has become, the fact of the matter is that there is business to be done and money to be made. There is no doubt that Tweetie will not be the last acquisition, as Twitter has to find some way to justify the massive investments that have been made to the company. This is simply something that developers are going to have to swallow. In the midst of all the uncertainty, Ryan Sarver (@rsarver), Director of Platform for Twitter, offered a ray of hope for those of us who want to continue customizing Twitter through third-party development. Sarver, in presenting the future of Twitter and updates to the service, stated multiple times how important third-party development is to Twitter. Sarver said, “We want to learn how to work together as opposed to working against.” Twitter thrives off third-party development that only extends the reach and capability of the service, and it is clear that Twitter Execs don’t want to see that disappear. Hopefully, as the conference continues and the after parties kick off, the conversation will revolve around the opportunity in the future for third party developers to continue to work with Twitter and extend the value of the service with innovations and features, rather than continue to focus on the debate over Twitter’s corporate policy. If you are sitting at work or home and want to catch the rest of the conference, you can do so at the Chirp Twitterface page. It will be live for the rest of the conference today and tomorrow. -Matt

Live Nude Events… Behind the Scenes of Like Minds 2010's Online Event

Kristi — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 16:24:29 +0000

We had an interesting Thursday/Friday last week. For those who don’t know, our product Twitterface has come out of beta and is now a paid product. Pricing is still being finalized. We have a new feature that allows video on the page, as you can see by clicking the image, and the Like Minds conference held Friday in Exeter, UK was kind enough to partner with us on our first ever debut of this offering, to show their event live online while it happened in Exeter. What we learned, was more than we bargained for. Things blew up. We had to make adjustments, there were issues and confusion. And of course, all of it happened in front of everyone watching… talk about exposing yourself! It’s a bit nerve-wracking to do these experiments in the social space where things could go horribly wrong and people may jump all over you about it. But it gave us so much real experience, and mostly worked well, so I am thankful we are offering this now. I wanted to recap what was going on behind the scenes of this fantastic conference and tell you what we’re doing to make these events better in the future. The Twitterface page for Like Minds had the aim of using an assortment of services, and whenever you combine technologies, mayhem often ensues before you get it totally right. Our goals were:

Live Streaming of the Conference
Watching Real-Time Conference Conversations
Tweeting from the Page
Links to Conference Information
Delivering Live Blog Feeds
Providing an Online Experience that Extended the Live Experience

Live Streaming Our partner and developer Joe Taylor did an amazing job of coding the video feature for Twitterface pages so that it’s easy for someone to embed a video on the page. It is super-easy to use the embed code from Ustream, YouTube or anywhere you have embed code offered and put it on the video page. It’s not as flexible as it hopefully will be in the future though – the pane that shows up beneath the video, does not automatically adjust to fit the video width, so we need to work on that. However, we can adjust that pane width after the chosen video (or service you will use) is added, to make the page look more polished. So that’s a minor inconvenience for now. Overall, I was thrilled with how adding a video and changing video codes work. Watching Real-Time Conversations A lot of people like to read and watch conversations without joining in, or they like to hop in and participate. We wanted this to be easy and so we added an auto-refreshing of the panes feature to Twitterface a few weeks ago. In reality, something we did not anticipate was our product producing api overage errors. We are going to have to work with Twitter to see what we can do about that. When an unknown number of people are hitting the page, and panes are refreshing every 20 seconds (or longer) it caused our limits to be hit quickly. I didn’t really know we had limits, as Twitterface is a whitelisted product, so to see this happen as the conference opened, at 4 am our time (Joe and I were up to make sure all went smoothly) nearly caused us a heart attack. What was frustrating is that we had tested this on Twitter the night before and this never happened – of course, there weren’t as many people hitting the page. Doh! We figured out that having a profile name up, instead of searches, would give tweets and not api errors so everytime we saw the api errors happening, we switched to a profile name. We’d like to thank @thebrandbuilder and @adders for being such great live tweeters as they saved our necks because we put their profiles on and still had some coverage. Tweeting from the Page Our product has its own login (it does not use oauth) and is meant for one person to use, like your Twitter account on the web works. But we wanted people to be able to send tweets from this page without having to leave it, and we wanted it to be secure as possible and use Twitter’s oauth mechanism. So hooking that up, in conjunction with our tool being architected like it is, was a hurdle we had to get over. With the help of our developer Tom Jenkins, who now has a dayjob but graciously did work for us in his spare time on this, we managed to get a working oauth widget on the page, and though it had a few display bugs (the page had to be refreshed if the widget box didn’t work right) it worked and you could tweet from the page. Links to Conference Information One of the initial features of Twitterface was links to real sites in the footer, to make navigating to other places easy. The conference organizers added their schedule, a link to ways to participate, a link to add photos to a Flickr pool and links to their sites at the bottom of the page, and we used that Schedule link constantly to adjust the page settings… we put the speaker’s name beneath the video as they were about to speak and changed that pane when they went to lunch to keep people in the loop about what was going on in Exeter. Delivering Live Blog Feeds Like Minds had two official live bloggers using a service called CoveritLive to do real-time coverage of the day. Our dream was to drive these feeds, since they had an RSS feed, into the page but we needed a way to do it. The awesome @dlvrit service saw my pleas for help on Twitter and gave us the PERFECT solution. I was so happy. Unfortunately, you can’t test CoveritLive without them going live, so what we did not know was that our solution was not going to work. Until we were Live and in front of thousands of people, of course. The RSS feed produced only some sort of timestamp, not actual coverage, so later in the day we discovered @adders was blogging live, and tweeting also about his live posts, and so we switched to his tweets and it helped so much. We love http://dlvr.it and will work with them in the future on live event feeds though – they supported us above and beyond what we anticipated and their tool is excellent. Providing an Online Experience Despite all the technical problems and glitches, one thing we seemed to actually deliver on was providing a great online experience for virtual attendees. This is important, because Like Minds and we at Fresh ID want to come up with ways to do paid attendance to certain events in the future. So a good experience is very key to this working at all. Throughout the day, attendees watching the Twitterface page seemed to have good things to say about it – like they felt like they were in Exeter, that they loved watching it online, that it was so good to be able to watch it live they felt they could cry. In reality, you can go to Ustream and watch a live event. And of course you can set up hashtags and things in your own Twitter client and keep an eye on things that way. But what we wanted to create was an extension of the Live Event, and that means branding. That means attention to detail, and focused conversations, and cutting out the noise. So I think what worked for people, and the reason we’ve created the product, is that they were attending a branded experience online, because they couldn’t be at the real event in person, and they felt the connection because it was planned, branded and constantly monitored to ensure a smooth experience and really, the best one we could give them despite technical issues that gave the Fresh ID team headaches all day long. So, the net result of the day was pretty positive, both at the event, and on Twitter from what we could tell. Here are some things we’ve learned, that will affect our product offering and future events:

Events must be monitored every single minute, by someone. I got up at 4 am because in the UK they were going to start around 10 am. Joe had stayed up – it was 2 am his time in California, and thank goodness we did get up/stay up because the api limit issue would have made this page unusable had we not started making changes to refresh times and adjusting pane settings to not display the error when it happened. The opening of Like Minds was smooth and fun there it seemed, but it was a nightmare for us and drove home the continual monitoring issue, which we had not planned for. I’d had two hours sleep because of getting the page finished Thursday night, so though I didn’t plan to stay up, it wasn’t optional. My team was also not around – Joe eventually went to bed and Lisa and Matt were en route to meetings and the office. So during their lunch, I got ready very quickly and drove to my office to continue monitoring until Matt got there, and then he took over the rest of the day. We will be offering this as a service to companies who need it, but people who do not hire us to do this DEFINITELY need to plan to have a person attending the page and making constant adjustments to keep things flowing.
One of the things Like Minds did to us was use video from two different ustream channels, which I sort of figured out on my own. LOL! We did not have a member of their web team on a phone speed dial or even Twitter. I mostly worked with Scott Gould to set this up, one of the founders and event organizers, and I didn’t want to bother him because I knew he was busy at the event. Fortunately, I happened to notice he had streamed from both a LikeMinds and a ScottGould ustream channel, so if one went off-air we checked the other to make sure we weren’t missing something. But we needed communication with a member of the tech team there – it would have helped us know what was going on and when they were going to stream or not stream.
We have to talk to Twitter directly about these api issues, and we’ve never worked with them directly. Fortunately for me, I am making that Lisa’s job. Haha! I hope we can get that improved, but if not, we know how to get around it during an event.
The official hashtag for Like Minds is @wearelikeminds, but no one tweeted from it all day and we needed it when we had to switch from a search to profile views only because of api issues. I really recommend that you assign someone to tweet from the official account – even if you have to ask a participant to do it and hand over the login temporarily. For people wondering what is going on, that would make a big difference and it would have solved some of our problems doing this live offering also.
The presentations could not be viewed behind the presenter, but with some adjustments they could have been. We are going to design a combo video/slideshare page I think, but it would have been very nice if the presentation had been dropped down behind the presenter (almost even with his feet) so online viewers could see the slides and hear the person talk at the same time – in fact, that would totally rock!
Organizing the remote event team, with the team on the ground, for fast communication via skype or twitter makes sense. We will make sure to do this in the future. I actually think it helps for the remote monitoring team NOT to be at the event, to minimize distractions. It is too easy to have to put out fires at the event and lose track of monitoring this page – for us, our sole job was to watch the page, fix issues and keep things flowing online, and we were not hit up with other issues that took focus off of that task by being in the building where it was happening.
When Like Minds broke for lunch, there was no Ustream feed for at least an hour and a half. I think we lost some online viewers then. I know that in the future Scott wants to enable video at the lunchtime talk sessions – that would have helped, or even having an event take place on stage (maybe one of the lunches is done there) would have helped not break the momentum of online viewing. I loved the lunch idea though – they had numerous mini-sessions over lunch at different restaurants around the city! Such a cool idea. Attendees got to choose the type of food, speaker and type of conversation they wanted to have.
One of the things I noticed, was that this conference WAS very pleasant to attend online. When I got up at 4 am I was still in bed. So here I was in my jammies, comfortably propped up on pillows in the dark, while everyone in England was looking dapper and had makeup on and their hair done. Yet I was learning the same cool information they were – it was REALLY pleasant! And watching the tweets from people actually there, plus being able to tweet without leaving the page was very nice. This is an experience I would want to repeat at tons of other events… not just conferences, but musical events or education of some type – it really did work like I envisioned it, aside from our little issues (which we will find a way to make better!)

We were very pleased with the analytics behind spreading the word about the event Twitterface page. One thing we did at the 11th hour was a press release, informing folks that this would be a live event online. We definitely want to do that earlier than midnight before the event, next time. LOL! Because that press release was picked up by numerous sources – Lisa has the exact count. We’ve had over half a million potential tweet impressions of the twitterface.com/likeminds2010 link, and 75o of the aggregated bit.ly link for that url, and it was mentioned online in blogs, on Twitter and on Facebook in more conversations that I don’t have a number count for. We had over 660 people watching the page it seems, from Google Analytics. That number is important, because only 300 people or so could attend the actual event in Exeter before it was sold out (and it was sold out.) So they increased attendance twice over in online attendees – pretty cool!! I want to thank all of the people on Twitter who helped us test this page with a live ustream video of race cars in the wee hours Thursday night. I wish I could give you all a present – you helped us so much and we’re very grateful you took the time to test the tweeting and video watching for us. We have had many inquiries about doing this for other events, including SXSW which is coming up soon. Contact us and let’s talk about hooking this up for your event! We’d love to keep experimenting with what we’re doing and perfect the kinks in the process. In the coming days we’ll be hearing from someone who attended the event virtually (@brandguardian is writing a blog post) and I am eager to hear what others thought, so if you watched our Twitterface page during the event Friday and want to share your experience, please let us know in the comments!