140: The Twitter Conference – Who’s in?

Every day we hear about Twitter’s popularity - Record number of users, new celebrity members, Ashton Kutcher and his 1,000,000 followers. Another indicator of Twitter’s growth and popularity is the number of conferences popping up. Jeff Pulver is putting on his 140 characters conference in New York on June 16 and 17th. There is a one day conference, Twtrcon, in San Francisco on May 31st. And on May 26th and 27th, the Parnassus group is presenting the 140: The Twitter Conference at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View.

So where will I be? I am excited to join the 140: The Twitter conference as a speaker. I will be co-presenting a session titled: "Mining Twitter: Extracting Value From Conversations and Connections", where the latest tools and techniques for monitoring your brand will be discussed. I think this conference is fantastic because I will join fantastic speakers like 3 members of the Twitter team including API lead, Alex Payne as well as Jeremy Pepper, Jeremiah Owyang, Robert Scoble, fellow Seattleite Kathy Gill, Warren Whitlock and Jennifer Leggio. Great company, don’t you agree?

I agree with Jennifer when she says on her blog, “I might be slightly biased, but the topics at this particular Twitter conference seem to be centered and focused on real-world use scenarios, not just grandiose marketing ideas. If you’re serious about implementing Twitter as part of your strategic marketing practices, or want to use it to build a brand, this is the con to be at”. This is also the only conference that has a very strong developer track as well!

To register visit the official site. The conference is an extremely affordable $249, but you can save 10% off the standard two-day pricing by entering the code 140tcr6 when you check out. And if you tweet about it, make sure you use the #140tc hash tag.

Please let me know if you are coming as I am sure there will be some great tweet-ups and I'd love to chat face to face. It’s an event not to be missed.

In the clouds

We all have seen the benefit of searching on Twitter. Twitter’s real-time conversational search is rumored to be the key to its business plan and a potential competitor to Google. However, Twitter’s keyword search is only chronological without showing the popularity of relevant keywords and trends. Tweetcloud distills the blizzard of tweets occurring across Twitter into a simple cloud of key words—a TweetCloud. Clicking (or drilling down) on any of the key words in the cloud reveals the stream of tweets that created this “trending topic.

A quick hit on TweetCloud, will show a user what’s being said right now on Twitter: key trends and their associated tweets. TweetCloud also allows users to create TweetClouds around any topic or user by using the search box at the top of the page. If you’re a baseball fan (see the Redsox tweetcloud above), and want to see what people are saying about baseball right now, enter the term and see the resulting cloud and tweets.

A TweetCloud is also a cool link to pass on to others…even those new to Twitter. TweetCloud makes it easy to do this by providing a share box, which provides links, widgets, and tweet boxes to get your TweetCloud in the hands of your followers. A TweetCloud widget is an especially effective way for bloggers to display their personal cloud, or a cloud on a relevant topic.

Finally, TweetCloud is optimized for the iPhone, providing the same real-time trend checking and drill-down capabilities for iPhone users that desktop visitors enjoy.

To learn more about Tweetcloud, I interviewed Tweetcloud CEO, Roger Katz.

What have you been doing? My company Friend2Friend connects people and products on social media. We have a range of applications on Facebook, where users perform social actions around products: gifting, recommending and commenting, creating lists, etc. We work with brands and advertisers to integrate them in such a way, that the brand a part of the conversation. Most of the product interactions are short...a brief comment about a product, gift, etc. We found that although each individual comment may or may not be meaningful, taken as a group they're quite revealing.

Why did you create tweetcloud? How long did it take you/ your team to develop? We realized we could evolve our work dealing with product comments even more quickly in an environment that has an incredible volume of short user comments about everything. Given we had the system running across our applications on Facebook, we only had to focus on integrating with the Twitter API (straight forward) and laying out the site so it was easy to use. It took us 3 or 4 weeks total, but again we were leveraging our existing core technology.

Where do you see tweetcloud headed? I think the fascinating thing about Twitter is that it's a blizzard of comments about what's going on right now...but at the same time it's unruly and hard to separate the signal from the noise. Tools like TweetCloud have the ability to help people understand what's being said and to follow the conversations that interest them. These types of tools also make Twitter far more accessible to new Twitter users. Think of someone that lands on the twitter.com page for the first time, or even someone that has 100 people they follow. Without tools to help navigate the sea of content, you're simply not getting the benefit of the medium. On the marketing front, brands are absolutely interested to know what consumers are saying about them and to participate in those conversations to them. We developed TweetCloud to help both users and businesses tap the potential of Twitter. In the future we see the ability for users to track many clouds and watch how they change over time and understand the sentiment of comments / discussion threads. This area is really wide open and we see lots of opportunity.

Tell me about Friend2Friend and how the 2 sites are related? Friend2Friend is all about connecting people and products on social media. Friends naturally like to talk about things like music, gadgets, gear, food and drink, places, etc. Friend2Friend's applications facilitate those conversations within the largest community of friends online--places like Facebook. Given Twitter is emerging as a place where people and ideas interact online, we think our model works there too. The concept for a TweetCloud was born out of our work on Facebook, but it may ultimately have even more appeal on Twitter. Now that we're experimenting with Twitter I'm sure we'll learn things that apply to Facebook and other areas of our business too.

Where do you see Twitter in 2 years? 5 years? Wow, this is a tough question. A little over a year ago I would have said, "Twitter who?" I think there are 3 incredibly exciting trends playing out in the social media space right now: Facebook, Twitter and the iPhone. In each case there's a leader (the 3 companies mentioned) and everyone else in those respective segments trying to catch-up. Does it mean that these 3 companies will rule their market? Maybe, but more than likely it means that the best areas of innovation (social networks/social graph, micro blogging, mobile web and applications) will be embraced across the Internet and dramatically changing the experience forever. Specifically, Twitter has riffed off of the interest in blogging, but has significantly lowered the bar to allow far more people to participate. Writing a blog takes a lot of work, but laying out a cogent thought, astute observation, linking an interesting article or picture or just speaking your mind/feelings couldn't be easier. As a result, people are responding in HUGE numbers. Twitter is no longer a trend it's a movement and that's exciting! For these reasons we feel it's critical to be involved in the Twittersphere and with Facebook and the iPhone too.

Tell me something fun about yourself. I'm an aspiring Rock Star! After hours I riff away on a Stratocaster with my 6 and a half year old son. Actually this is why I need social media to take off, because I'm not so sure about my musical prospects.

Twitter helps Alaska Airlines to go North of Expected

Living in Seattle, Alaska Airlines is the home town airline. So recently I took special interest in the company’s presence on Twitter. I reached out to Elliott Pesut who maintains the AlaskaAir twitter account to get his perspective on Twitter and how the company uses it. Full disclosure, I have always had a favorable opinion of Alaska and am an MVP frequent flyer. Sometimes I even look forward to purchasing one of their foil-wrapped sandwiches. Recently I even tweeted about Alaska’s CEO, Bill Ayer, flying in coach on my flight back from the Gravity Summit in LA. But more about Elliott and AlaskaAir.

What is your role at AS?
I’ve been working for the company for a little over a year in Flight Operations Training where I was a Courseware Developer. It wasn’t until five weeks ago that I was offered a spot in Alaska Airlines CRM (Customer Relationship Management) department. My official title is Campaign Management Specialist and I’m part of a team that is responsible for Alaska Airlines’ social media policy.

Does anyone else manage the account with you?
As of right now, I’m the main person tweeting on the account. I do have back up from our folks in corporate communications as well. As far as knowing what to tweet, that really is a team effort. We do our best to respond as if the Twitter account encompasses all departments/customer touch points. Some responses require multiple phone calls/emails to build the context for a response. It’s been a great way to meet different individuals in the company.
We’re a small company (for an airline) and with our sister airline, Horizon Air, it’s like a family – everyone helps out.

What are the company’s goals with Twitter?
This is always a hard question. :) Our first goal is to listen and help customer’s with their questions or issues. Over the past year we’ve done some soul searching when it comes to our brand. It’s important to have consistent trade-offs and guidelines that help employees make every day decisions about “what Alaska Airlines would do” in a given situation. Our greatest strength is our genuine and caring service. There are many great airline employees out there, but you ask travelers about their experiences with Alaska Airlines, and I’ll bet they will reflect upon their experience positively. I’m not saying that we make everyone happy, but we definitely get high marks – our employees regularly go above and beyond what is
expected.
Our second goal, to be accessible. Accessibility has helped us establish a very open and honest relationship with our Frequent Fliers. Twitter lends itself to accessibility. It’s a terrific listening post – we can field questions, ask for suggestions and reach out to distressed customers. Bottom line, we’re making ourselves available to help and make travel easier. I love that I’m only a tweet away from customers while they travel. You don’t get more accessible than
that. :)

Which department is the corporate sponsor of the Twitter service?
Marketing – specifically, under the CRM & Interactive Marketing umbrella. Corporate Communications and Customer Care also have a long-term role in @AlaskaAir's success.

How long has the company been using Twitter?
We’ve had the Twitter account since Dec. of ‘08. We only started actively tweeting five weeks ago.

How do you measure success on Twitter?
Right now, we measure the success of our account by follower growth and interactions with Customers – both of which have skyrocketed since the volcanic eruption of Mt. Redoubt. We also measure clicks via Bit.ly.

Tell me about how you got the placement of the Twitter message on the top of the homepage?
Over the past three months, we had been prepping for a Mt. Redoubt eruption. We knew it would be disruptive to our operation. Press releases take time to write and are typically static; we needed a real-time method for communicating with passengers and media. Twitter has filled that role better than we ever imagined. When customers are delayed, the best thing we can do is provide timely and accurate information. While our press releases remain the official source of information, Twitter has helped us keep our customers informed in near real-time.

Is it temporary due to the volcano or will it be there for a while?
Yes it is temporary. And actually, at this time it has been taken down and moved to our Irregular Operations page. Efforts are underway to tell our customers that we’re on Twitter via email and other means. You may also see it back up on the home page from time to time as we research the best placement
for our customers.

What else does AS do in Social Media?
We’re very new to the social media scene and trying to find what fits. Our efforts are largely driven by internal employees. Right now we have the most interest/support for Twitter, FlyerTalk and Facebook. We would like to do our best to engage those channels well before we start anything else.

How do you let your travelers/ members know about the AS Twitter account?
Right now, the only way to know we have an account would be if someone told you or I followed you because you made a comment on “Alaska Airlines”. :) We originally had plans to grow it organically via WOM. However, the volcano eruption has sped the process up, quite a bit.

Can you see using Twitter for transactional activities like flight updates/gate changes?
Absolutely. I read somewhere that Twitter is the new phone book and I think that’s a great analogy. We’re only a text message away for our customers. We are currently experimenting with ideas around TaaS (Twitter as a Service). Our Director of IT Enterprise Architecture, Mike Lorengo, has developed a flight status bot: @TravelerBot,
that when DM’ed, will send you your flights status. While this is highly experimental, I think it’s safe to say this channel has great potential for transactional-based correspondence.

Which brands on Twitter do you try to emulate?I monitor lots of brand Twitter accounts - several airlines,
@WholeFoods and @Starbucks. They all do a terrific job! I think right now, we're trying to find the right mix for our brand. I am a big fan of @JetBlue's approach in using DM liberally to talk with customers. It's much easier to be myself, rather than "Alaska Airlines". We also need to balance the DMs with @’s
– that way people know we’re responding. Our comfort level grows a little bit each day.

Do you search for different keywords/ conversations on Twitter that you think are relevant to AS?
Yes. We search for terms like MVP, MVPG, Mileage Plan, Alaska Airlines, Alaskan Airlines.

What do you think about Janis Krums using Twitter to report on US Flight 1549 emergency landing?
I think it’s awesome. I even tweeted the other day on my personal account that I’ve fallen in love with Twitter’s real-time nature. I can tell, it's altering my online search expectations. And what a great tool for airlines, we can easily monitor situations and respond quickly if things get out of hand.

Nice work, Elliott. Love to see you guys on Twitter. And of course, an MVP Gold upgrade is always appreciated – just kidding. I hope to earn it this year.

Upcoming Events

Ah, spring is in the air. The birds are singing, the crocuses are blooming and Seattle is warming up to 43 degrees. And the big birds of Alaska Airlines are getting ready to take me out of town. With the arrival of spring, I am taking it on the road.

Next week I will be attending the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco. The conference will be great and I am especially looking forward to the session that Peter Kim, Charlene Li, and Jeremiah Owyang are having, Why Social Media Marketing Fails - and How to Fix It. It will be great to see the 3 Superstar analysts together - a must see! If you are attending the conference, please leave a comment and let's meet up.

The following week, I will be presenting a follow-up webinar to last month's Become a Twitter Ninja for the Society for Word of Mouth. On April 8th, we will go talk about what some companies are doing in Become a Twitter Grandmaster. Please feel free to leave your advanced twitter tips in the comments. Last month's session was a lot of fun and I am sure this one will be as well. Sign up on the SWOM site.

At the end of April, I will be back in San Francisco for Chris Brogan's Inbound Marketing Summit and the Society for New Communications Research New Comm Forum from the 27th - 29th. It will be great to catch up with many good friends like Zena Weist and Aaron Strout and make new ones as well.

In May, a long trip to Florida for WOMMA's WOMM-U on May 13 - 14th in South Beach. I don’t think you can travel much further than Seattle – Miami!  There I will be speaking about Twitter. Last year, I spoke on social media and I found this event to be one of the better events of the year as there was so much hands-on, face to face interaction with the roundtable breakouts. I am sure that this year's conference will be even better.

Finally May concludes with the first conference dedicated to Twitter, 140, The Twitter Conference, back to the bay area in Mountain View on May 26th and 27th. You don’t think I would miss that!

I hope to see you at one of these events. Please let me know where you will be so that we can connect.

Who’s your BFF?

I learned about an amazing Twitter visualization tool on Read Write Web called Mailana developed by Pete Warden. There are many tools that will provide a visualization of your Twitter graph, but where Mailana soars is that it determines your top relationships based on reciprocal tweets. Mailana bases its analysis on the entire available Twitter stream and explores the conversations. In addition to providing your top 20 friends, Mailana will display the number of reciprocal conversations and it also provides a tag cloud of what you’ve spoken about with that person. Pretty cool and insightful. But the application goes even further, offering:

• Suggested new follower recommendations
• Your town’s social network
• People who talk about a specific subject

Pretty cool and pretty surprising in the top BFF’s both in terms of the actual rankings as well as the omissions. As an example, in my case, Adam Cohen is my #1 BFF in that I have sent Adam 90 tweets and he has sent me 104 back. And here is what we talked about:

Pretty cool. Of course, we all realize that our Twitter conversations are public and accessible to anyone. However, with a tool like Mailana, they become even more visible. Good thing or maybe not?

Run your own Mailana search. Who’s your BFF and are you surprised?

Socialmedia Soiree

One of the great things about Twitter is the ability to find so many people that have similar interests. As a result, I have been able to indulge in all of my hobbies and interests and expand all of my networks. In fact, when I realized this, Twitter just took off for me. I followed Social Media people, local Seattle people, Boston (and Red Sox) people, and Food & Wine people. And a tool like Tweetdeck enables me to keep everything straight. One of my first foodie Twitter friends was Deb Puchalla or as she was known then, EverydayFoodDeb. Deb was the Executive Editor of Martha Stewart's Everyday Food Magazine. We had a lot of fun tweeting about cooking, restaurants, chefs and even social media. Deb even gave me some inside tips on making a successful Thanksgiving dinner. Deb has recently left Martha Stewart Living to join Scripps in a leadership role in digital media.

In honor of Deb's big move, Kay Ballard and Rebecca Regnier have organized a Virtual Tweet-up and Webcast Sunday night, March 22nd at 9pm EDT. It promises to put the ”social” into social media as new media mavens attend what’s being billed as the first Social Media Soiree in honor of former Martha Stewart editor Deb Puchalla. The bash will use both Twitter and Webinar. It’s called The Social Media Soiree and it is poised to be a virtual event to remember because the entire Twitterverse is invited. Twitter has always inspired innovative programs like the Twebinar and I am sure the Social Media Soiree will join it as another memorable event.

“Nothing’s better than getting together with the coolest people on the net from the privacy of your own laptop,—and you don’t even need a designated driver,” adds party co-creator Rebecca Regnier.

“We wanted to host a cocktail party so that Deb’s Twitter friends could celebrate her achievements, but we live all over the country—and all over the world. Since we met on Twitter, it soon became obvious that we could use Twitter, the social network that brought us together in the first place to connect for a party,” said Ballard.

But the Social Media Soiree is not just about Twitter—It is about Deb who moved from a terrific job in print publishing as Executive Editor at Martha Stewart Living to an even more amazing job in digital media.

“We think her insights are valuable since so many of her friends and Twitter followers are also working to move forward in their own careers. This lets them listen in to a party conversation between Deb and other rising stars in new media. Just put up your feet, flip open your laptop and have some fun with us,” added Regnier.

I hope you'll join me and several other fabulous guests: Celebrity Garden Blogger, Margaret Roach, Social Media Strategist, Laura Fitton, and Wendy Piersall the Founder & CEO of Sparkplugging will all be on hand for the live Webinar. Some additional Twitter Stars will be popping in with toasts for Deb Puchalla as she begins her new endeavor.

Social media and the NBA

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

There was some great Twitter discussion in response to yesterday's post about Charlie Villanueva tweeting from the locker room during a game. Many fans thought it was cool and the traditionalists among us were somewhat annoyed by another spoiled player tweeting in the middle of a game. However, I had a very interesting conversation with Glenn White, a former co-worker. who had a different perspective.

Much of the conversation was regarding the difference between the NBA's controlled messages and sponsored dialogue such as mandated halftime player network interviews contrasted to a player's freeform opinion. In other words, a traditional command and control marketing organization (the Milwaukee Bucks and the NBA) trying to control/ mandate the brand content over consumer generated (player) media. The player was not allowed to share his content and tweet from the locker room, but instead players must make themselves available to the TV network for quick interviews during that same time. Now I am certain that Bucks coach Scott Skiles was not reprimanding his player, Charlie Villanueva, over brand control guidelines. But does the player have the right to share his content/interpretation of the brand on his own terms or does the benefit/ value to the company supercede that? An interesting parallel to social media, don't you think?

Isn't the NBA being close-minded about technology?