social media Archive

It seems like you can’t load Twitter these days without seeing someone talking about Klout. Apparently the company rolled out some updates to their “algorithm” which made a lot of scores drop and my sources tell me that appointments to psychiatrists have risen 23% since the update. Klout claims to pull together a number of factors from how you use social networks like Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare and Google+ to come up with a score. This score is apparently your “influence.”

God only knows how they compute the score and how they figure out what profiles go with which users. I assume if I make an account (I haven’t and don’t plan to) then I can associate that on twitter I am centernetworks, on Facebook and Google+ I am Allen Stern. I also don’t use Foursquare so I guess I can kiss those points goodbye. But since I have no account, I assume my score (I have no idea what it is) is impacted negatively because they can’t pull in all of my accounts and see how truly influential I am. I also wonder how they deal with the suggested user default lists which have given millions of free followers to accounts for celebrities and some select bloggers.

If you are interested in the earliest days for Klout, check out the video I recorded when they presented at the NY Tech Meetup in January 2009.

Should I care more about my customers who have a higher Klout score? Should I perk them more than the others? That will absolutely never happen, every customer of mine will be treated the same. Alexia from Techcrunch posted yesterday with the title, “Nobody Gives A Damn About Your Klout Score.”

But for a while now, I’ve started to wonder if Klout is really just another advertising play/network wrapped up in a score which is wrapped up in a game? A year ago the Twitter game was to tell people via Foursquare where you are. Now the new Twitter game is apparently to “+k” someone for something. Or to shill for a product you were given for free. And who knows what, if anything, happens with those tweets. In any case, it’s a brilliant marketing play by Klout because it infects a stream on a regular basis. I see more of these than I do of the,  “Top Stories of the Day” posts that no one clicks on. I assume people click on these Klout freebie tweets because they too will want a free subway sammich or umbrella or Windows phone.

Continue reading “Is Klout Really an Ad Network?” »

Developer Daniel Treadwell has created a public blog using the Google+ API. What’s neat about Daniel’s test is that the content is available on the blog as real, raw cotent and HTML – it’s not just a Javascript include.

You can view Daniel’s blog here. The blog correctly links to a Google+ profile when Daniel has tagged a person.

This will eventually mark the fork in the road between Google+ and Facebook.

You can change the ID on Daniel’s blog if you want to see what your stream would look like as a blog. Here’s mine as an example – you can find your ID in the URL on your Google Plus profile page. Of course should this test go live, we probably want to make sure that someone can’t just hack the URL and make a person’s blog look very different – you can imagine the potentially evil possibilities there.

I could see blogger Robert Scoble replacing his WordPress blog with his public Google+ stream once this application is completed. (confirmed: Scoble notes, “I would love to use this on my own blog, which is based on WordPress.”) He goes on to say that he would pay $50-100 for a WordPress extension that has the same functionality.

Perhaps the right solution is similar to how Disqus handles comments – when you use the Disqus comment plugin on a WordPress blog, Disqus saves the comment to Disqus but also back to the source blog so you can remove Disqus and keep all of the comments left on your blog. The Google+ plugin could work the same way allowing you to remove the plugin but keep the content created on Google+.

In addition, considering the amount of resharing that takes place on Google+, I wonder if this type of API usage could become a competitor to Tumblr?

The big Google+ news today wasn’t that the message board service increased their traffic by 1,269%, nope, the big super huge mega news is that you can now share your circles with your circles (see what I did there?). Circles are the apparatus that Google+ uses (most services call them lists) to help you organize your people, friends, friends of friends, required marketing parties, people who are acting as brands, bloggers who you need to circle to help you get press later on, etc.

The truth is that many people will be emotionally joyous or very hurt by their status, or non-status, in a specific circle. For example, let’s say you think you are a person who is a great, news breaking, tech blogger. And one of your popular friends shares her circle called, “Great, News Breaking Tech Bloggers”, you are listed in there and are very excited. Naturally you +1 the thing straight away and re-share the previously shared circle which helps you show off how great and how news breaking you are.

I do wonder how many of the reshares of shared circles come from people who are listed in the circle – somehow I’d bet it will be a very high percentage.

But what about when you are left out of a circle that you think you should be a part of? What do you do? One person I follow on the Google Plus message board noted upon sharing one of her circles, ” If I missed you, leave me a comment so I can consider adding you!!” Oh gee, thanks, let me send you my resume and my linkedin so you can consider adding me to your circle, thank you so much for this consideration!!! I sure hope my Klout score is high enough so she will add me to the circle!

Continue reading “New CN Offering: Google+ Circle Exclusion Representation Service” »

As most of the world knows by now, Facebook began rolling out new “features” on their social networking service this week. Besides the ability to go back to 1950 and note the first time you drove an Edsel, the other big change is that now you will be able to share what you are doing without clicking anything – it’s “frictionless”. You should take a moment and read Dave Winer’s post which looks at why you should logout of Facebook and Dan Lyons hilarious post about how all of our lives have been changed forever.

When I watched the livestream of the Facebook announcements, I immediately commented wondering how long before a wife divorces a husband because she sees that he is browsing Victoria’s Secret for panties that are a different size than she wears. I still give it about a week before the first stories of inappropriate business are posted. Back in 2007, a man was fired because his employer-provided GPS showed him leaving work early.

It looks like an example of what is to come on Facebook hit eBay this weekend. Found via Darren Stuart, a man in Swindon in the United Kingdom is selling a Tom Tom Go model 700 GPS receiver on eBay. This might be the most hilarious auction I’ve seen – of course the story is a bit emotional as the man found out that his wife is/was cheating on him. The auction is currently at a price of £10,000,000 which is just over 15 million USD.

From the auction (read the full description on eBay):

This was my wife’s, may her knicker draw be infested with the fleas of a thousand Camels…The Go 700 was once the top of the range Sat Nav from TomTom, with an internal Hard Disk Drive instead of the traditional SD Card, and had full Bluetooth and Wireless capabilities.  I bought this for the back-stabbing harlot, some four or five years ago, before she met Nigel with the Little Penis, and it cost me over £400…

Her infidelity was discovered when I took her car for an MOT, and while waiting, I was tinkering with the Sat Nav and noticed that all her recent journeys had all been to Nigel’s…So, like any normal human, I reprogrammed Nigel’s address to one in a town far far away…

There are over 100 questions posted on the auction and the seller has responded to all of them. The auction ends on September 28th so you have a few days to decide if you want to up the bid from $15 million.

Last night I was out clubbing in Austin…trying to get my mack on (I do a mean cabbage patch) and finally find the future Mrs. Stern. While I was standing at the bar, (no I didn’t find an iPhone 5) I noticed a piece of paper on the bar that looked interesting so I grabbed it. Turns out it appears the paper seems to be a job posting for a position with a “newly-launched” social network message board. It feels like a job posting for Google+ Suggested Users but I have been unable to confirm. Unfortunately the bartender told me he spilled Milwaukee’s Best on the paper so some parts are unreadable and my scanner is dead so I can’t post an image. Here’s what I was able to put together from the paper…

Job Title: Elite Users Wanted for (word missing) — a Newly-Launched Social Network

Job Description: Are you looking to grow your fan base on a (word missing) network?

This position is perfect for you if you have more than 100,000 followers on Twitter. (partially missing word)ogle is looking for people (or cats, dogs and other non-perishables as long as you meet the 100k+ requirement) to join our (something)+ social network. You don’t need a (something)+ account to apply and even if you don’t have a real name, we will still take you as long as you have more than 100,000 Twitter followers.

Please note that we do not actually care how you obtained your 100,000 Twitter followers – if you were given them as freebies because you are on the Twitter suggested user list, if you bought them on Canal Street, or if you worked really hard and earned them.

Continue reading “Is This a Google+ Job Posting?” »

Today I was reading through an invite for an event featuring social media experts being held next week and at the end of the invite, the company hosting the event “explained” what it is that they offer. At least now we know what services social media agencies offer!

Since 2009, (redacted) has had the first business intelligence solution for Social Media and Performance Marketing for brands and agencies.  (redacted) uses cutting-edge software for data gathering, reporting and evaluating trends and patterns to effectively create and execute campaigns geared towards a specific audience and help business’s receive a great response rate on their pages.  An example of what (redacted) can do for a business is the increase in response rate takes what recent Social Media experts and press deem as impressive with results of a click through from other firms with 35 out of 1000 to (redacted)’s typical result of 40 out of 100 engagement, conversion and click through rate through its methodologies which emphasize quality over quantity.

(redacted) helps you get the most natural and profitable results for your online marketing.

Note: I removed the company name for the purpose of clarity

A couple of days ago, I created a fun, fake joke post about how you could attend my seminar on how to become a Google+ expert. Most thought it was real (no idea why) and some were very upset and/or angry that I would offer a course for a social network that has been live for less than a month, has already been notified changes are coming and is only used by social media experts to talk about social media experts and Google+. Of course once they realized that it was a  joke, everyone had a good laugh.

But apparently one person saw a gold rush and decided to actually offer a one-hour course so soon post launch — that person? Chris Brogan. Before I continue, let me say that while I have never met Chris, he does come across as genuine. I’d place him second in terms of being able to round up the sheeps – and unlike the person I’d put first, Chris appears to have built his following organically which is awesome. He’s also been one of the few people to be able to post paid affiliate links into his streams without huge backlash. My issue isn’t that he is offering this course, but rather that he should have waited at least six months for the network to balance itself.

Chris is offering a one-hour session for $50 on, “How To Learn Google+ for Business and Networking”. He plans to teach attendees the following:

• Profile tips and tricks.
• Organizing people in circles.
• Finding the good stuff.
• How to post engaging material.
• Keeping up with comments.
• Making the most of your time.

Funny enough some of his agenda items match mine – and the others on his list are very general. He is also going to offer a Q&A session for an hour after the learning takes place.

Continue reading “Srsly? My Google+ Seminar Was a Joke, Apparently This One’s For Reals” »