Kristen Nicole

This post was written by Matthew Kraft (@MKraft) spends entirely too much time online. One of these days that will pay off, as will all those years he spent reading obscure literature in grad school.

Last week I was researching Swine Flu/H1N1 for a client, using Twitter. The WHO had just upgraded the pandemic to Phase 6, so lots of people were talking about it. This looked like it would make my job easy--use Trending Topics to take the temperature of the Twitterverse, as it were. It turned out to be more like getting a room full of kindergartners to tell you about their pets while an ambulance screams by - you may get some information, but it's mostly useless blathering and screaming.

Trending Topics has the possibility to be a really useful tool, from both a research point of view and a marketing perspective. Want to find out not only what the Twitterverse is talking about, but *how* they're talking about it? This is your place. It's zeitgeist central for the hottest communication tool on the planet. However, since Trending Topics came to the front of everyone's twitter homepage, the increase in spam is immense.  Today, it's a pretty safe can bet that any trending topic is half-full of bandwagon-jumpers and coattail-riders, spammers who throw up topic keywords just to get on the front page of results.

This phenomenon wouldn't be so bad were it not for three things:

Click here to read this post in its entirety

With all the Apple announcements this week coming from the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, there are bound to be a lot of expectations swirling around the new iPhone 3G S.  The most anticipated feature of the new generation of the iPhone is the support of video sending options and the ability for developers to access the iPhone video capabilities for various applications.

One such application that is taking advantage of the added video support is TwitterFon, which will be integrating with the video-specific Twitter app TwitVid for enabling TwitterFon users to capture videos with their iPhones and subsequently post them via their Twitter stream [via Venturebeat].
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It's an important step for Twitter apps, as much of Twitter's activity is attributed to mobile users such as those that own iPhones.  Having a more direct way to marry Twitter with iPhone videos means a slew of related applications are expected to arise in the coming year, as well as many iPhone-specific video update applications that operate outside of Twitter all together.

The iPhone device as well as its platform has long been setting standards for the mobile marketplace, spurring development across the board for different manufactures and mobile providers alike.  But will the added support also spur Twitter itself to finally delve deeper into media sharing?

Granted, Twitter has done a pretty good job of sticking to its core competency, and that solely revolves around microblogging within the realm of easy mobile access and integration.  But should Twitter go ahead and support various media formats, such as images and videos?  Other microblogging platforms such as Pownce and Tumblr support all media formats, and the added support hasn't necessarily given these other services a leg up in the race for dominating the microblogging space.  And Flickr stuck to its core competency of photo-sharing for years, only recently adding video support, and the upgrade hasn't made a huge dent in Flickr's overall service or standing as far as video-sharing goes.

For Twitter, however, adding more media support wouldn't hurt the web service, though Twitter may wait until more mobile support is available for incorporating multimedia support via its microblogging platform.  In the meantime Twitter remains to rely on third party applications for added value in certain aspects of its microblogging potential.

Note: originally posted on MultisocialMedia.com

Xbox Live announced its upcoming support of Twitter sign-in and Facebook Connect this week, which just reminds us all of the power of social networking and its impact on so many aspects of media--traditional or otherwise.

I'm a believer in the ability of social networks to make an impact.  So I'm quite interested to see how Microsoft will be leveraging Facebook, one of its investments, for promoting its services and adding value to its end users.  From marketing to better competing with casual gaming, Microsoft is taking steps towards effectively leveraging existing social networks.

Nick has a great post about Xbox's Facebook Connect integration on AllFacebook, and I expounded on my above points on a Bublicious post.  Let me know your thoughts on Xbox's announcement!

Read more of my blog here, at KristenNicole.com

What Are Celebrities Doing on Twitter?

So what exactly are all these celebrities doing on Twitter?  Even though celebrities are often later to adopt certain technologies once considered especially geeky, their adoption doesn't seem to fend off the faddish as our parents' adoption does.  In fact, the celebrity use of Twitter is only helping drive more to the popular microblogging platform, as it seemingly justifies the service's popularity and value as a communication tool.  But seriously.  Why are the celebrities here?

For the same reason as everybody else.  Twitter is an easy way to keep in touch with others, share mundane facts about your life that most people probably would never care about, and also build one's brand.  What better way to portray yourself as a down-to-earth and accessible celebrity than to post frequently on your Twitter stream?

Those Trendy Celeb Twitterers...

The latest trend we're seeing on Twitter is actual celebrities taking control of their own Twitter streams, as opposed to letting their marketing or PR managers handle the task, as many celebrities have done with most social networking profiles and overall online engagement. And the celebrities are even talking to each other.
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The New York Times has commented on this current phenomenon, noting the constant back and forth the celebrities are having with each other via Twitter.  It's easy enough to send a message to another Twitter user, whether the message is public or private.  The New York Times has even gone so far as to post a "social graph" of sorts that displays the communication patterns amongst the stars.

The graphing of social interaction is nothing new: several third party applications, developers and Twitter itself has taken the time to map a given user's social reality across the Twitter network.  Services like Mr. Tweet and Twitter Grader take this social interaction into consideration when determining the influence and importance of said Twitter user, calibrating who their messages are being sent to, and from whom they're receiving messages.  Of course, this doesn't take into account any private messages that may be taking place between two Twitter users, celebrity or not.

The Twitter Elite

But it does bring us to another point regarding the public use of Twitter, and I'll reference an article previously written on this blog.  When certain Twitter users allow unlimited followers but have a restricted number of those that they follow, it makes their intentions clearer, and also streamlines the amount of incoming messages from others.  Nevertheless, such restrictions could make a Twitter user appear a bit snobbish, and in many ways it also makes them less accessible, as direct messages are not possible without mutual following settings.  Perhaps that is the very reason why celebrities are so comfortable "being themselves" and interacting with each other on Twitter.

It also begs the question: what's next for Twitter and its rapidly growing flock of celebrity users?  It's important to keep in mind the marketing power of Twitter.  We here at MultiSocialMedia use Twitter for marketing purposes in spreading the word about our Twitter Survival Guide.  Guy Kawasaki has deemed it one of the best online marketing tools around.  And when building a brand of any sort, it doesn't hurt to be on Twitter.  That goes for celebrities, too.  Take into account a public Twitter message sent from Martha Stuart to Snoop Dogg, requesting the rapper to check out her dogs' new pet-themed blog.

Twitter is the New Celebrity Publicity Stunt

Doesn't this just scream publicity stunt?  Whether the message was genuine or planted, the effect remains the same.  Celebrities communicating with each other in such a manner boils down to recommendations that can be applied to us all.  If we see Martha Stuart talking about her "doggie" blog, we're likely to check it out anyway.  If we see her asking Snoop Dogg to check it out, we're even more likely to take a look.  We're also going to be on the lookout for more celebrity-to-celebrity tweets.  It's another form of people-watching, except tweets between two celebrities can amount to some decent gossip every so often.

And there are a number of initiatives from other blogging platforms, online magazine outlets and entertainment portals that have been trying to incorporate more genuine content from A- and B-level celebrities for years now.  Tapping into celebrities' Twitter streams may be the perfect way in which to finally achieve these long-sought goals for building out their own content offerings.  Any interest in this particular use of Twitter will also drive the type of features offered in the third-party applications using Twitter's API.

As a result, we may see more traditional media sectors looking to take over various aspects of Twitter, which also doesn't have the same negative connotation that it once did a few years back (remember MySpace?).  Nevertheless, the future of celebrity branding and social networking has vastly changed thanks to tools like Twitter.

If it weren't for the SXSW conference in 2007, Twitter may not be the household name it is today.  But two years later, how did Twitter hold up to all the hype?  Is Twitter still the reigning champion of SXSW or is there room for another conference poster child?

I was at the SXSW conference both last year and this year.  While I missed the initial swelling of fans that Twitter gained at the conference in 2007, I was already a member of Twitter and watched in wonder as the service grew in popularity and began to realize its potential.  I witnessed the rapid uptake of Twitter's APIs from the developer community, and the subsequent output of relevant applications that gave Twitter its value on a fruitfully adorned silver platter.
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In 2008 the SXSW attendees seemed to know the drill: Twitter everything that's going on at the conference and you'll eventually find yourself in the tangible presence of others like you.  From passively stalking partygoers to merely meeting up with old friends, Twitter was an established necessity for navigating the thousands of fellow nerds that had flocked to Austin for SXSW.

So what about this year?  As a reporter of social media-related news, I found myself looking for the next SXSW success story.  Every fledgling startup that finds itself at SXSW is well aware of the possibilities that such a large group of early adopters can offer.  And before the conference even began there was buzz of many location-based services that could be the next big thing to emerge from SXSW.  In that category we saw services like Foursquare and Whrrl 2.0 emerge as location-based mobile applications essentially looking to take the Twitter concept to the next level.

I'd agree that location-based features will eventually be usefully integrated into Twitter itself, so it was great to see the excitement of new mobile services that could in fact be the next big thing.  But location-based mobile tools aren't new.  This leaves the problem of execution to the new services.  I particularly like Whrrl 2.0 for its social capabilities and the URLs provided for multiple users to contribute to a single event or story.  What remains to be seen, however, is if the location-based mobile tools will be most useful for large events such as SXSW, or if their value can carry over into broader use cases.

In the end I would say that Twitter still managed to hold its own.  I personally found myself using Twitter to connect with old friends whose numbers I'd misplaced in the past few months, or meeting people in person that I'd been following for some time.  Twitter's biggest success, however, may be the way in which it has allowed those unable to attend SXSW to still take part in the conversations going on at the conference.

Another way in which Twitter has helped expand SXSW is through its platform, which has catapulted third party developers into success stories on their own.  We saw a number of Twitter applications being promoted and utilized at SXSW, so in a way we're seeing the Twitter legacy live on.  May the symbiotic relationship between Twitter and SXSW live on for many years to come.

Kristen Nicole is the co-author of the “Twitter Survival Guide.” With Bob Walsh, this ebook covers the history and social importance of Twitter as a web and mobile tool, and is the perfect resource for getting your Twitter account set up and ready for personal or professional use.

If you've gained traction with one Twitter account, you should think about leveraging that traction to promote another Twitter profile.  It's along the same lines of driving traffic across the web, just slightly more internal given both sites are within the Twitter microblogging platform.  One reason for doing this would be to build out your brand or the brand of a company you work for, offering a broader scope on the services you provide.

Most of you out there have more than one project you're working on.  Perhaps you blog for multiple sites, or perhaps you've got a professional blog and a personal blog.  Both are important to you, and both can use all the traffic they can get.  Now if you've spent the time to build up one Twitter profile, it's time to use your influence to drive traffic to the other.

You may be thinking--aren't we already supposed to be using Twitter to drive traffic to respective websites we find important across the web?  Absolutely.  But the specific act of using an influential Twitter profile towards building up another is a more direct utilization of your power.  Since you've got a good following, a slew of regulars that frequently read your tweets and respond with @replies or direct messages, you know that people will pay attention to what you're tweeting.  And if you gain additional followers because of the traction you've built up with one Twitter profile, you can take advantage of this initial Twitter introduction in order to point others in the direction of your newest Twitter account.

Use the credibility you've created with one Twitter account to encourage others to follow your other Twitter profiles.  Instead of merely following others via your secondary Twitter account in hopes of gaining new followers, let others know that this is yet another channel where they can follow YOU.  Send a direct message to new and existing followers of your primary Twitter account so they know about the latest Twitter channel you've set up.  Now, your secondary Twitter profile is no longer random to outsiders, but an extension of your established web presence.

Aside from direct messaging new and existing followers, there are a couple other ways in which to direct traffic to your secondary Twitter profile.

1. Put it in your bio.  There's only room for one hyperlink here but if your secondary Twitter profile is important enough, put it here anyway.
2. Create a Twitter background that includes your secondary Twitter profile URL.  Even though you can't add an active hyperlink to your Twitter background, it is one of the first things visitors see when they land on your profile and it's great for branding purposes.
3. Tweet yourself.  Link back and forth between your Twitter profiles with shared information, hyperlinks ore @replies.  This works best if at least one of your Twitter profiles isn't for personal purposes--you don't want people thinking you're talking to yourself.
4. Only follow your secondary Twitter profile.  This is a bit extreme and works best for highly influential Twitter profiles, but it's a very blatant way in which to show visitors that you only think a chosen few are worthy to follow, as these few are the only profiles that will appear on your primary Twitter profile.  We discuss this at length in our analysis entitled "When Twitter Users Are Too Special To Follow Anyone Else."

If you're wondering if leveraging one Twitter profile to build up another actually works, we're here to tell you that it does.  We practice what we preach here at MultiSocialMedia, and both Bob and I have taken advantage of our personal Twitter profiles and followers to help build up the Twitter account we designed specifically for The Twitter Survival Guide and MultiSocialMedia.com.

What we'd love to see in the future is a way to administer multiple Twitter profiles from a single Twitter account, similar to the way in which Wordpress allows you to create, access and administer multiple blogs from a single Wordpress account.  Seeing as Twitter is a blogging platform at it's core, this feature doesn't seem too far-fetched, especially when you consider how many Twitter users out there have more than one account.

Kristen Nicole is the co-author of the “Twitter Survival Guide.” With Bob Walsh, this ebook covers the history and social importance of Twitter as a web and mobile tool, and is the perfect resource for getting your Twitter account set up and ready for personal or professional use.

Bio: Guy Kawasaki is a managing director of Garage Technology Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm and a columnist for Entrepreneur Magazine. Previously, he was an Apple Fellow at Apple Computer, Inc. Guy is the author of nine books including Reality Check, The Art of the Start, Rules for Revolutionaries, How to Drive Your Competition Crazy, Selling the Dream, and The Macintosh Way. His latest venture is the popular AllTop site. He has a BA from Stanford University and an MBA from UCLA as well as an honorary doctorate from Babson College...
Twitter: https://twitter.com/guykawasaki
URL: www.guykawasaki.com
Question. When do you tweet and why?
Answer. Whenever I'm online, I tweet. I usually have one window open on Tweetdeck as a "dashboard." I tweet so much because I enjoy sharing good links, and it's also very, very useful for Alltop. I also like the challenge of attracting followers.
Question. How do you see Twitter changing your online presence?
Answer. I'm more visible online than I've ever been--the last time I was even close to this visible was with CompuServe forums back in the 80s. I seldom use Facebook, before you ask. I love the 140 character limit--it's email haiku. I wish I could require everyone to contact me only by Twitter.
Question. In your experience, is Twitter a useful web marketing tool?
Answer. Does the sun rise? Twitter is the best web marketing tool I've ever used. Alltop wouldn't be close to what it is without it in terms of the breadth of topics, feeds within the topics, and awareness of the topics. The Twitter community suggests topics, helps us build them, and then evangelizes them.
Over 400 people have allowed us to insert Alltop news updates into their Twitter stream via Twitterfeed. Admittedly, some received a copy of Reality Check for doing this, but about 180 signed up before the offer.
We've calculated how many followers they have, and the number is 100,000. This means that when we announce a new Alltop topic, 100,000 people may be exposed to it immediately. And this doesn't count their retweets.
We liked this so much that we added a "Post to Twitter" button on each Alltop site, so that people who didn't sign up to Twitterfeed can still help us.
Question. Do you maintain multiple Twitter accounts? Why or why not?
Answer. I have two. One is Guykawasaki. The other is never used except for experiments. I never use it as a pseudonym or fake foil--it's strictly for research and testing.
Question. What parts of your life - marketer, businessman, husband - does Twitter help? Any stories you can share?
Answer. It helps me as a marketer and businessman. It hurts me as a husband and father because I now have to pay attention to email and Twitter.
Question. Should any and all web personalities tweet?
Answer. "Any and all" are strong words. If someone is an uptight, dullard person controlled by a lawyer, then he or she probably shouldn't. I can think of some politicians who would do nothing but get in trouble on Twitter.
Question. What do you get most out of Twitter?
Answer. It's so many things for me: marketing platform, research resource, and technical support. I've already discussed the first two. As for the third, if I can't find an answer on Google, I pose the question to my 25,000 close friends. Someone always has the answer.
Two examples: First, I needed to borrow a Macbook power supply at 10 pm one night. I tweeted this, and in one hour someone brought one to me. This is not strictly "technical support," but you get the idea. Second, I wanted to know how to convert dumb apostrophes and quotes to smart ones in an HTML document without blowing out the dumb quotes in links. Within ten minutes, someone helped me figure out how to do this.

Kristen Nicole is the co-author of the “Twitter Survival Guide.” With Bob Walsh, this ebook covers the history and social importance of Twitter as a web and mobile tool, and is the perfect resource for getting your Twitter account set up and ready for personal or professional use.

While running errands this weekend, I started receiving several incoming text message alerts on my cell phone. They were all direct messages from Twitter. And they were all spam. The DMs went something like this: “check out this funny blog I found about you.” A URL was also included in the message that redirected you to a fake Twitter login page. And less than 48 hours later the phishing messages are becoming more blatant, with lures of friends winning iPhones.

It reminded me of the spam messages you’d get in your email inbox with enticing links taking you to a YouTube video that your friend found of you–only they weren’t actual links to YouTube. Just another phishing ploy. Many feared that Twitter could be used for such spamming initiatives, but given the fact that it’s difficult to spam people if they don’t follow you has made it a smaller concern than we’ve seen on other social networking sites.

Fake Twitter Login

But since Twitter has opened up its platform to allow third party developers to build applications that automate much of your Twitter activity, it’s becoming easier to sneak spam and misleading links into the Twitter service. While this isn’t the first time someone has managed to get spam onto Twitter, the widespread adoption of Twitter along with more automated services that make phishing links appear to come directly from friends has made the latest wave of spam a major concern. Which is why Twitter has taken a proactive stance this time around.

Aside from a post on the company blog, Twitter has also posted a warning directly on your Twitter profile page, front and center. It’s a good tactic, given the nature of the phishing bot and the level of trust that Twitter users have for something like a private, direct message. For those users that stick to mobile and third party applications, however, how could Twitter most effectively alert them to the latest phishing scam?

Phishing, spam and scammers are not going away. Twitter needs to protect it’s most valuable corporate asset - the trust of it’s users. That’s going to take more than a warning and a post. It takes changes to Twitter’s DNA and to the API every developer out there with a Twitter app uses. And now that phishing has come big time to Twitter, there’s blood in the water and the online sharks are going to moving closer at Internet speed. Time to stop this problem before it does real damage.

Kristen Nicole is the co-author of the “Twitter Survival Guide.” With Bob Walsh, this ebook covers the history and social importance of Twitter as a web and mobile tool, and is the perfect resource for getting your Twitter account set up and ready for personal or professional use.

Create your own fashion statement here

One of my sets from Stylizr.com.  Click here to see more.

Create your own fashion statement here

One of my sets from Stylizr.com.  Click here to see more.