Brand Interactivism

The Top Ten Ways Twitter Has Benefited Me (So Far...)

Micro-blog service Twitter is the social networking flavor-of-the-month, and with good reason. According to Nielsen Online (through the BBC) Twitter grew 1,689% from February 2008 through February 2009. While still a fraction of Facebook's size, Twitter is getting a lot of buzz.

However, when I discuss Twitter with people I find that more often than not I'm told, "I don't really get Twitter". This is true even for people who are full-on participants in Facebook and so are open to social networking in general. A lot of folks seem to think it's just a lot of noise. "Why do I care what some random person had for lunch?"

So, I thought it might be helpful to explain how Twitter has benefited me. I've had a Twitter account since July 2007 but only started using it frequently in the last few months.

1. Got immediate help when the iPhone 1.11 software upgrade temporarily bricked my iPhone

When Apple released its updated iPhone software in September 2007, I had all sorts of problems. I wrote about my experiences on Twitter and immediately got feedback that a) I wasn't the only one having the problem and b) there were ways to fix it. While I ultimately figured out how to get the issue resolved on my own, it was fantastic being about to troubleshoot in real time with other people going through the same thing.

2. Received feedback about Abstract Edge's website

My company, Abstract Edge, is in the long overdue process of redesigning its website. I've already had a couple of Twitter conversations about what works and does not work on AE's current website. This is fantastic! It's like a free focus group. Of course we can choose to do with the information whatever we want, but how else could we get semi-random feedback for free outside of something like Twitter?

3. Re-built my professional network

Last summer I moved to the Baltimore area. As I had come to realize over time, one of the great things about my company was that it affords me the ability to live nearly anywhere, as long as I have easy access to the Internet. The pros and cons of that decision may make it into another blog post (or several), but one consequence of the move was that I was no longer super-close to my professional network, which was (and largely remains) based in New York. I've been absolutely determined to build up my network in Baltimore, and Twitter has helped enormously. I have literally communicated with dozens of locals within my industry, have become aware of local industry-related events, and have even met many of these people face-to-face. As one example, just this past week I attended Outlet Baltimore, which is an event specifically designed to allow people who meet on Twitter an opportunity to meet in person. Fantastic!

4. Attended a conference virtually

I was interested in attending the BRITE conference in NYC a couple months back but couldn't get away. Nonetheless, I was able to follow several of the talks in real time because a reasonably large number of people were 'tweeting'. I could participate in a back-channel conversation with people who were actually there, could ask questions and received plenty of answers from different points of view. I had a similar experience while attending an online webinar a few months ago. I LOVE this use of Twitter.

5. Helped my sore back

One of the people I'm connected with on Twitter complained of a sore neck, and then later tweeted that Tiger Balm had really helped him. I asked him about it since my upper back has been killing me the last few days. He gave me a recommendation and I'm planning to try it. One thought I had on this though. Wouldn't it make sense for the Tiger Balm company to monitor Twitter for anybody who complains of a sore back, sore neck, sore whatever and actively suggest Tiger Balm to them?

6. Support help from DirecTV

Speaking of companies that seem to be doing at least SOMETHING right on Twitter, I present DirecTV. I had a pretty big support problem recently and several technicians came out to investigate over the course of a couple of weeks. Turns out that the dish itself was not properly attached to our roof and was close to actually crashing down. Two of the technicians had previously claimed to have gone up to the roof to make sure the dish was secure, which as it turned out was a lie. Given how dangerous a situation this had been, I publicly complained about it on Twitter. Within an hour, a DirecTV representative contacted me, asked several questions and launched an investigation. Ultimately, I received a refund. Frankly, just the fact that they seemed so proactive and interested in my problem was comforting and made me feel a little bit better. They handled a crisis situation well, simply because they were monitoring for it.

7. Learned about the Austin Website debacle

Recently there was an outcry in the city of Austin about a local government contract that was about to be awarded to a Californian company to produce a Plone-based website. The contract was for more than $700,000 and many in Austin felt that it was ridiculous to give such a large contract to an outside vendor when there are so many good local tech companies. It turns out there was a lot more behind all of this and some of the facts are still coming out, but I found this entire story fascinating. I got to "speak" directly with Austin locals and defenders on both sides. There was a lot of misinformation going around, in particular about Plone, and I had an opportunity to help educate people on Plone's strengths and weaknesses.

8. Provided Plone education globally

Along the lines of #7, Twitter has given me an opportunity to educate people throughout the world about Plone, a particularly useful open source content management system that Abstract Edge has long used. I have also learned more about Plone (and other CMS platforms) from others - both those inside and outside the Plone community.

9. Found out about new the U2 album

I'm a big U2 fan, and I'm sure I would have learned about it eventually anyway, but the place I first learned that they had a new album coming out was on Twitter. I even learned a bit about how the album compared to previous U2 albums. I was told it was more like Pop than the last two albums - I'm not sure I agree now that I've heard it.

10. Was introduced to the Harmony Universal Remote Control

This one just happened today and I haven't acted on it yet, but I asked on Twitter a simple question about how to get DirecTV's remote working for my audio receiver. I got several responses that pretty much all suggested I replace my remotes with a Harmony remote from Logitech. More than one person gave me specific advice on which model to get, what to look for, etc. Without Twitter, I likely would never have known about this in the first place, let alone been armed with such specific real-life information about the product. Still, again, I wonder where Logitech is in this conversation?

So there you have it - ten reasons why Twitter has been wonderful for me.

Please let me know how Twitter has benefited you.

Time to Reconsider the Open Source CMS

Henry Donahue, Discover Magazine's esteemed CEO (disclosure: Discover is a client of Abstract Edge), has written on Folio some of his impressions of using the open source CMS Plone over the last couple of years.

From the full article:

Based on my conversations at trade events, however, many publishers still struggle with the basic issue of getting content online in a way that is timely, efficient and interactive.  On top of that, the twin financial and publishing crises make it unlikely that anyone can round up the capital to do a 1999-style $5 million custom CMS development.

Enter the open source content management system.

At Discover, we went with Plone, which was recommended by our outside developers and seemed to combine a simple, intuitive platform with a robust open source development community.  You can read a case study about our March 2007 launch here at the Plone site.

Almost three years later, here are my takeaways on our open source experience...

It makes my week when a client publicly proclaims satisfaction. He also brings up a key point. During this time when everyone is trying to figure out a way to save every dollar, open source solutions sure bring a lot of value to the table.

More Evidence that Search is Hard

Following up on a recent post, doing a very basic search engine isn't very hard, but once you dive into the details and want to do anything beyond the simplest implementation, it gets quite complex.

Here is more evidence from the New York Times that describes the difficulties that Netflix is having getting even a 10% improvement in their search results.

Search is Easy, But Good Search is Hard

I'm knee-deep in a search-related project. No, I don't mean search engine optimization (SEO) like trying to improve organic rankings on Google or Yahoo. I don't mean search engine marketing (SEM) or pay-per-click advertising such as Google Adwords.

I mean developing a search engine that will help users of a website find relevant content. It's not a trivial problem, but it's interesting. As we develop this out, I intend to post some of our thinking here.

In the meantime, I saw an article about search issues on Facebook today and thought it relevant, especially considering it's election day.

Go vote. Right now!

If you are a US citizen and have not already done so, stop reading this and go vote. Right now. No excuses. Seriously.

E-Commerce Best Practices

On one of the mailing lists I frequent, Zack Halbrecht posted a list of best practices for e-commerce websites. It's a simple list, and much of it is common sense, but sometimes it's good to state what should be obvious. Clearly it's NOT so obvious as so many e-commerce sites don't do this...

Zach wrote:

• Don't charge the card until you ship
• Don't store credit card information - leave that up to the payment processor unless you really want to become PCI compliant, which is costly and a pain. Most payment processors have some sort of recurring billing api too.
• User account information should be protected with a salted hashed password. Do not store passwords in plaintext.
• Offer real time shipping quotes w/ Tracking # in confirmation if possible.
• Keep it simple. Collect as little information as possible. NO OPT OUT (checkbox already checked) marketing! OPT IN ONLY.
• Get your privacy policy visible and sensible.

World Science Festival A Big Success

Some of the greatest scientific minds of this generation have converged on New York City this weekend to participate in the World Science Festival. Apparently, nearly every ticket has been sold, making this inaugural event a huge success.

I had the privilege of attending the festival's kickoff event at the American Museum of Natural History on Wednesday night, a result of Abstract Edge having built the festival's website (hat tip to our friends at Six Feet Up who collaborated on the development.) The site was built using the open source Plone content management system. For those who believe that all Plone sites look alike, here is yet another example to disprove that theory! Even the Flash elements on the homepage can be managed by content editors inside of Plone.

The CMS allows WSF staff to keep all of the information about events, speakers, locations, etc. up to date. Site visitors can easily browse and search for events that may pique their interest. Plone automatically keeps track of the relationships between the events, participants, locations, and ticket purchasing. This was critical in helping WSF manage the constantly changing festival information.

So, if you happen to be in New York this weekend, take a look at the site and see if anything is still available. The early reviews are quite positive!

Here are some links:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/30/arts/30fest.html?ref=science
http://blogs.forbes.com/digitaldownload/2008/05/world-science-f.html
http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlny/media_events/science_festival_kickoff_party_a_whale_of_a_time_85880.asp

(this last one is about the cool party I got to attend...)

Spending on Web Ads Now More Than Cable, Radio, Magazines or Outdoor!

I guess it was just a matter of time, but the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has determined that spending on web ads was more this year than for magazines, cable television, radio, or outdoor.

That said, the rich get richer... 89% of the total spend was on the top 50 web sites. Gotta get me a top 50 web site!

Plone CMS: A Non-Technical Introduction

The Frugalist does a very nice job of introducing the open source Plone content management system to non-technical folks.

Some of the reasons why [open source] is very important to you are:

• the developers created this software for their own daily use, in the real world
• these technologies are NOT developed and  licensed as commercial products
• by necessity this software is tested brutally and errors tend to get fixed quickly
• you are never tied exclusively to any one vendor or company
• the system is completely customizable and scalable to meet your future needs
• complete standards compliance means your site will stay current and viable

Building Online Community Builds Your Brand

As an example of Brand Interactivism at its best, Daily Candy CEO Peter Sheinbaum told an audience at the Direct Marketing Assocation (DMA) Email Evolution conference that building community is the path to brand loyalty. Online Media Daily reports:

Companies that want to build brand loyalty should focus not only on communicating with their customers, but helping their customers communicate with each other, a wildly successful email newsletter targeting young women with fashion and lifestyle content.   

In fact, Sheinbaum, speaking at the Direct Marketing Association's Email Evolution conference, said he thinks of Daily Candy as a community, although it might look like a broadcast medium....

Predicting that online populations will increasingly group themselves into "communities of interest," Sheinbaum advised the audience of marketers and publishers to mine their databases of subscribers and customers to discover commonalities, whatever they may be. Once these segments and subsegments are identified, he went on, the company should equip members of these groups to communicate with each other and form communities--all, of course, under the aegis of the company or brand.

Sheinbaum's advice seems to jibe with two studies from the United States and Britain which found that, respectively, 64% and 70% of online shoppers in those countries want consumer ratings and reviews on commercial Web sites. Respondents said these reviews would help inform both online and offline purchase decisions. The UK study was conducted by Jupiter Research and Bazaarvoice; the U.S. study by Forrester.

Note: You must have an account on MediaPost.com in order to read the full article.

 

Online Magazines... We're Not Quite Dead Yet!

Media Daily News reports that magazine web sites, against conventional wisdom, are truly thriving online. While article after article has been coming out suggesting that the magazine industry is dying, it appears not to be true - at least not today...

These figures mean that magazine Web sites reached almost 42% of the total U.S. online population of about 160 million in the fourth quarter, an increase of 7.1% over last year's reach.

These users generated 434.4 million visits in the fourth quarter--up 12.3%, while time spent increased 5.5% to an average 1.78 billion minutes per month, implying an average visit duration of just over four minutes.

Ad Agencies Are Not Interactive Agencies

We've been saying this for a long time, but traditional agencies are not really structured correctly for the online world. It's not that they CAN'T deliver strong digital solutions per se. It's just a lot more difficult for them. I'll follow up later with why I think that's true, and what I see as the opportunities for smaller, more nimble and creative interactive shops.

Silicon Alley Insider today posted an article entitled 'Ad Agencies Facing "A World Of Hurt"'.

The old way: marketers hire agencies to create mass-media campaigns. The new way: marketers want many messages targeted at individuals and communities. And they're getting antsy about traditional shops' inability to deliver. Forrester analyst Peter Kim quotes one marketing exec who calls the agencies "a necessary evil" to the process, rather than a partner. Which leaves the door wide open for new startups who can deliver...

Best Time to Send Email

I love seeing studies like this one from MarketingSherpa which gives quantifiable and significant evidence that the best time to send an email blast is right around 9am.

"An eretailer wondered how much of a difference they could make by testing the time of day to send their blasts. Turns out a lot -- clickthroughs increased 15.63% and revenue jumped, too."

According to the study, clickthrough rates for emails sent at 9am performed more than 15% better than those sent at 4pm. Of course you need to also consider the timezones of the people in your list, but it's still interesting to note the habits of people at work and when they are most receptive to receiving emails.

Movers, Shakers, Open Source, and Sun/MySQL

CMSWire is being overly generous in attributing to me labels such as "all-around Plone superstar" and "mover and shaker" but it is quite nice to see my thoughts published alongside a number of people I do consider technology superstars.

The article describes initial impressions of some technology leaders about Sun Microsystem's major acquisition of MySQL AB (the company behind the open source MySQL database which is the most popular database used on the web today).

Ebbs and Flows

I have been pretty bad about blogging the last month or so. My wife and I had a baby on December 4 and I just haven't had the time or energy to blog since then.

However, I have been collecting a ton of articles in my RSS reader (I use Google Reader, which is really convenient and useful) and to get back into the flow I'm going to start linking to some of the more interesting and relevant ones. Hopefully by the time we get into 2008, I'm back in the swing of things.

How to Digitize Your Old VHS Tapes for YouTube, Facebook, and Other Video Sites

Back in college I was in an a cappella band and my parents used to come to one or two concerts each year. My father loved to justify the money he spent on his camcorder by taping every performance I was ever in (I did quite a bit of performing growing up - shows, musicals, piano competitions, choruses, etc.)  Needless to say, over the years, he has built up quite a collection of VHS tapes.

Now, many years later, those tapes are starting to seriously degrade. In fact, VHS tapes degrade every single time they are watched. Another 5 - 10 years and they will be unwatchable and these precious memories will be gone.  I decided to do what any computer savvy person should do - get these videos onto my computer in a digital format. And then, with video sharing sites such as YouTube, Facebook, and many, many others, I will be able to share these videos with others who might be interested (my family, other people in the performances, etc.) Just a few years ago an endeavor like this would be prohibitively expensive. Today, the cost of doing this is mostly just in my time.

I mentioned on Facebook a few days ago that I was going to spend part of my weekend digitizing these tapes and several people emailed me asking me how I was doing it. So, rather than respond to everyone individually, I thought others could learn from my experience as well and I'd post on my blog.

Step 1: Get the needed equipment

The first thing to know is that most standard VCRs are only equipped for analog output. Ultimately you need to get the video signal input to your computer, which will only accept a digital input. So we have a mismatch. In order to convert an analog signal to digital, you need an analog/digital converter. Luckily, many modern camcorders have these built-in.

I have a Canon ZR40 camcorder my wife bought for me nearly 5 years ago. You can probably get something comparable for just a few hundred bucks. Of course, if ALL you want to do is analog/digital conversion, you can do that cheaper than this, but of course owning a video camera has other benefits.

Step 2: Set up the connections

Connect the VHS output to the camcorder with regular RCA cables. You will need one of those 3-way cables that have video and left and right audio cables. In the case of my camcorder it came with a cable that on one side has the 3 plugs for the VHS, and on the other side has a tiny phono jack that plugs into the camera's "AV" port. See your camcorder's manual for your specific details.

Next, connect your camcorder to your computer. In my case, I used a standard firewire cable to connect the camcorder to my iMac.

The camcorder itself should be plugged into the wall (rather than running on batteries)

Step 3: Make sure your camcorder settings are correct

There is a specific setting on my camcorder that tells the signal to go directly from an outside source through the analog/digital converter and then to an outside destination (in this case, the computer.) Again, check your camcorder manual to see if you need to do this. In my case, I also had to make sure there was no actual DV tape in the camcorder.

The camcorder should be in "playback" mode (not in "record" mode).

Step 4: Start up the movie software and VHS tape and record

Once I was this far, all I had to do was start up the iMovie software (free with all Macs, though any standard video editing software should work fine for this), select "Import from Camera" from the file menu, and then start the VHS tape (just click 'play'), and the digitizing begins. From this point on, the specifics really depend on your video editing software. In my case, all of the frames of the video were brought into iMovie where I could edit them to my heart's content.

iMovie also has a great feature that allows me to easily upload videos to YouTube, which I used to upload my a cappella videos.

Basically, I had everything up and running in about 10 minutes. The time-consuming part was the actual import (the VHS tape has to actual play through in full - the recording is in "real time").

Plone: Application or Framework? Should We Care?

For a bunch of years now I have heard a debate within the Plone community, most notably from Paul Everitt, about whether Plone is an application or a framework. While I can't honestly say I've given the issue a ton of my time, nor am I sure I fully understand why this is a particularly important distinction, I did have one thought on the matter I wanted to share.

To me, Plone is an application.

Plone is also a framework.

Yes, that's right - it's both!

I wonder if this question is akin to asking if light is a particle or a wave. So, which is it? Well, it depends on what kind of experiment you run. This Wikipedia article explains this issue better than I could, but in the end it's all about context. Or maybe it's about the inadequacy of trying to use simplistic mental models for complex things. In either case, Plone is a framework when you need to use a framework, and it's an application when you need to use a CMS application.

I suspect this is really more of a marketing issue in Paul's view (Paul - am I right about this?) which I suppose does make it less academic. Marketing 101 tells us that you want to pick something where you (or your product or your service) are the best in the marketplace, point to that, and sell, sell, sell. You shouldn't try to be everything to everybody.

As far as this particular issue goes, it is clearly in some people's best interests to position Plone as a framework, and in other people's best interests to position Plone as an application.

So, let the public debate begin!

1. Why is this important?
2. Why should Plone be positioned as an application? What does that even mean?
3. Why should Plone be positioned as a framework? What does that even mean?
4. Is there any reason not to speak of Plone as one or the other?
5. Is this discussion worth having?

Founding Meeting of the Plone NYC Users Group

Thank you to Robert Burgoyne for organizing a brand new New York City Plone Users Group. There have been one or two similar efforts in previous years that didn't really go very far, but I think that with Plone's current momentum in the open source CMS world, we may have reached a tipping point for success.

Anybody interested can sign up at http://plone.meetup.com/4/. The first meeting will be tomorrow evening, Thursday, November 8th at 7pm and will take place at:

Office of Silver Leaf Partners, LLC

420 Lexington Ave, Suite 2225

New York, NY 10170

212-542-3144 x3

I hope to see you there!

Ongoing Coverage of the Plone Conference

I'm going to leaving for the airport shortly, but wanted to post links to a few more of the reports I wrote for CMSWire about the Plone Conference:

• Plone Application Development Patterns

Sally Kleinfeldt from the Nature Conservancy gave a talk about the ways their organization approached Plone development for their custom application development.

• Plone Wisely: Our Time is Valuable

Our time is valuable. Why waste it by trying hammer a square peg in a round hole? Pick the right tools for the right job and let Plone do the things it is good at.

• Project Management of Smaller Plone Projects

Veda Williams, a project manager at One/Northwest who manages many a Plone implementation, gave us all here at the conference some advice on best practices for managing smaller Plone Web content management projects.

I found a lot of her presentation extremely familiar, as it meshed very well with my own experiences, and frankly, it all applies to any tech project, not just Plone.

Help to Raise Awareness of Plone With Digg

The Plone Conference presents an especially good opportunity to raise awareness of the product, platform, and community, that is Plone. I'm trying to do my part by blogging about the conference both here and at CMSWire.

If you would like to help with this effort, one way you can help would be to "Digg" the CMSWire coverage. By clicking on the little "thumbs up" icon you will move this page up in the Digg lists. I know from first-hand experience that Digg can generate tremendous traffic. In fact, roughly 40% of Discover Magazine's total traffic comes from social networking sites like Digg and Reddit.

Christian Scholz makes a great point though:

But please everybody: Be careful with commenting a la "Plone is great/fantastic/best thing since sliced bread" all the time. This is mostly seen as spam. You might add comments with more content maybe. Or you might answer other people's comments or questions. As said with commenting in the earlier mail, just try to engage in some conversation.