Zappos: A lesson to be learned for all of us

Image via CrunchBasWe often talk about transparency and authenticity in social media as they are not just ideals but really the cornerstones of community and conversations. Too often in the corporate world, they are just buzzwords as their is often a conflict with company goals. Today, on Twitter, we saw that it is indeed possible for companies to be transparent and authentic.

Zappos has often been discussed as a company that gets Twitter, connecting with customers and building word of mouth. CEO Tony Hsieh, an avid Tweeter has embraced Twitter like no other corporate leader. Today, Tony showed that accessibility, transparency, and authenticity are even more revered during bad times than good. Unfortunately, in an event that is becoming all too common, Zappos had to layoff 8% of its workforce today. Tony addresses the situation up front on his CEO blog, and on Twitter as well. The URL that he refers to is the posted link to his blog.







The Twitter community has responded to Tony and Zappos with empathy, encouragement, and lots of support. A few samples of that are listed below.





















To paraphrase Brian Morrissey and Zena Weist together, Zappos has demonstrated corporate transparency at its finest by treating this unfortunate reality of business with humility. As my grandmother would have said, Tony Hsieh, you are a real mensch. We can all learn from you, on both good days and bad.

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The Ultimate Guide to Twitter for Communicators

I found this fascinating article about Twitter today from Aaron Uhrmacher on his blog  today where he has put together a comprehensive guide to Twitter for PR professionals, but it will benefit anyone.  It includes:

• Videos


• Getting Started


• Desktop Tools for Updating Twitter


• Create Your Own Twitter Background


• Applications


• 90+ URL Shortening Services (via Mashable)


• Listening/Finding Conversations


• Twitter Directories


• Tutorials


• Twitter on other social networking sites


• Other Microblogging Platforms


• Case Studies


• Journalists on Twitter


• Following Conversation Threads


• Statistics


• Recent Articles/Posts Worth Reading

The Ultimate Guide to Twitter for Communicators, Nov 2008

You should read the whole article.

Have you seen these cool Twitter videos?

Some great Twitter videos this week:

• Ev Williams, Twitter CEO interviewed by Bloomberg. He says that Twitter will implement its revenue plan early next year, using some sort of advertising.
• Twitter vote report: Rocketboom interview with the developers of the Twitter vote report.
  
• And my favorite, from Julia Roy, a new series that she calls Tweet week, where she talks aobut news on Twitter for the past week. Julia describes some new Twitter programs like Magpie, recommends Twitter related blog articles all done in her energetic, humorous and captivating style.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

Have you seen them all? Which one did you like the best? Do you recommend any others?

Twitter's a force in the election

As the election approaches, I think we all can agree, regardless of whether our hearts bleed red or blue, that Twitter has had a significant impact on politics in campaign 2008. Of course, Barack Obama is the most popular person on Twitter. But beyond that, Twitter has had a dramatic impact on giving people a voice this year. Twitter implemented Election.twitter.com and it's been captivating. Tuesday night, the tweets will be moving so quickly that it will be hard to read, sort of like the stock ticker in October. Hopefully, with a better result for you.

The Twitter Vote Report seeks to monitor activity and protect from irregularities at all polling places. According to the vote report, "Millions of Americans will be voting this Election Day. Many of these voters will have terrific experiences and we’d love to hear about those. But many voters will experience voting problems that we have been hearing about for years: long lines, broken machines, and registered voters who can’t vote because their names aren’t showing up on the registration rolls.

Using Twitter Vote Report, voters will be able to share their experiences and resources with one another (e.g. “#wait:120″ meaning that the wait time is 120 minutes). These messages will then be aggregated and mapped so that we can “see” voting problems around the country in real-time."

This election season has seen the integration of Mainstream media with Twitter. Current TV will be displaying selected content from Twitter users who use the hashtag, #current, on air. In addition, their website will not only show the #current tweets, but allow users to vote for content, digg-style. We've seen how CNN has incorporated the Twitter feed into its coverage during the debates and hurricanes with Rick Sanchez. I am sure we will see similar coverage on Tuesday night.

Last week, Mark McKinnon of Internet Evolution wrote in Twitter's Role in Digital Democracy, how Twitter was filling an important gap in digital democracy by acting as the Town Hall and being an expressive medium for citizens to engage in our government. The article demonstrates how people have been given a real voice in the electoral process. All of these posts and sites can be found in my delicious political twitter tags, politicaltweets.

We get our news first on Twitter and Tuesday night, I am sure we will get election news first as well. Will you be watching Twitter and these sites to stay in the know?

Happy Voting!

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Happy HalloTween

The Twitterverse has always been a spirited bunch, participating in holidays and contests. Halloween is no difference as you can see from the avatars below.

We do more than change our avatars, though. Courtesy of Sonny Gill (and others), I found some cool Halloween icons. Rob Key and his Converseon team have creatively crowdsourced a company Halloween costume contest by asking the Twitterverse to vote for the best costume. I voted for Catwoman, by the way.










Bryan Eisenberg and Mass High Tech All-Star Chris Brogan are organizing a meme, Trick or Tweet.

There are 2 goals for Trick or Tweet:

1. Connect lots of interesting people with other interesting people they didn’t know before.

2. Do some good with our Tricks (there is enough tricky things going on in our worlds).

A great way to connect people within the community, particularly new users and donate to some very worthy charities. So let's get scary and #trickortweet!

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Do you remember your first?

Have you seen MyFirsttweet, a site developed by Noah Brier, that searches the database for a user's first tweet? It's a little buggy, but the concept is sound. What was your first tweet when you started and were in the Ham sandwich phase. From the archives, the first few tweets in history:



The first Tweet in history? From Jack, "just setting up my twttr" and a not very imaginative nor visionary one either. In fact, none of the founders showed much excitement for the revolutionary microblog! About the only thing that one can glean from this is the product's first name was twttr. How very Web 2.0! Now let's look at some other prominent Tweeters?














Anyone can find their first tweet without Myfirsttweet.com. Well, almost anyone, you'll see. Thanks to Jason Grigsby, there is a simple formula:

• Go to the Twitter page of the person whose first post you want to see. Take note of their Twitter username.
• Look for the number of updates in the Stats section in the right column.
• Take the number of updates and divide it by 20. (There are 20 updates per page).
• If you have a remainder after the division, add 1 to your result. This is the page number you need.
• Construct a url using the following syntax:

  http://twitter.com/[username]?page=[pagenumber]

• Load that url in your browser.
• As an example, for me, since I have updated 4039 times, my first tweet should be located at: http://twitter.com/warrenss?page=202

However, it doesn't work! According to Biz,

After playing around with it for awhile, i think the threshold is about 150 pages, so if you have tweeted fewer than 3000 times, you are in luck!


For the rest of us, sorry, keep waiting.

Join the Race to $20K - One Home Many Hopes

Gradon Tripp, one of the leaders of Boston's social media community, is drivenl to use social media for social change--using the tools of social media to help people and non-profit organizations. You may have heard of the Social Media 4 Social Change event earlier this month which raised over $20,000 for Jane Doe Inc., an organization that is committed to ending domestic violence.

Not one to rest on his laurels, Gradon has brought to our attention, One Home Many Hopes, an organization that is working to improve the lives of orphaned girls in Mtwapa, Kenya. “Mudzini Kwetu” uses education and family support as ways to lift our children out of cyclical poverty. Today, there are 35 parentless girls living as one family. These girls who had spent their earliest years surviving on Mtwapa’s streets and trash piles now live as one family, attend school, and care for one another. Although their lives are so much better, there could be so much more. The vision of One Home Many Hopes is to build:

• A new three-story building with each floor serving as a distinct family unit headed by a “house mother.”
• A university education for the girls so they will be able to support themselves and be agents for ending poverty in their town, region, country and continent.
• An on-site kindergarten and school, free of the prohibitive private education fees that are common in Kenya.

In order to do this, One Home Many Hopes has started a campaign, Race to $20K which will get the building started. Vanessa Leong, an MBA student at George Washington University is spearheading the social media elements of the campaign. Vanessa is seeking to finish the race in 30 days! We are asking the Twitter community to donate towards their ambitious goal. If 1000 people (say each of my followers) gave just $20, they would get there. Please donate here. Be proud to tweet Vanessa that you support her using #ohmh. And please join me in getting the word out:

• Tweet it
• Blog it
• Digg it
• Stumble it
  
• Show it in your status.

A BIG THANK YOU!

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