Twitter less relevant?
Justin Kownacki pointed me to this post by Jeff Pulver noting that the increasing use of geo-location social tools like Foursquare and Gowalla have made Twitter instantly a little less relevant. While I see the point tht the “I’m here now” Twitter messages by the heavy-user social media crowd have largely moved to Foursquare, at least in my experience Twitter (and Facebook for that matter) are linked to those services and carry those messages as well. Much- actually, all– the discussion of my Foursquare check-ins take place on Twitter (and, again, Facebook).
Twitter is still the hub of my online universe- largely because it is ridiculously simple (“too stupid to die”), and it links to everything. How about you?
Social Media Productive for Work? Of Course- Say Social Media Users
A hat tip to Ted Weisman at Lois Paul & Partners’ blog for pointing me to this information from Forrester Research about how social media users seeing social media usage as great for innovation, revenues, profitability, customer service and productivity, among other things. All things I can get on board with– and who would know better than those who use social media. So…where is the study saying what corporate management thinks? If they get similar results, now that would be something.
When reading survey results, it is important to note whom is being surveyed, lest as a reader you misinterpret the results and assign them more importance than they deserve (I’m not saying Ted did this here).
I noticed a similar principle at work…
…in a recent post by my friend Scott Monty showing that email and social media have a great near-future in integrated programs. Again, this time, the survey sample was purely email marketers. I would love to see what other marketers- a more general sample- thinks about using email with social media. That would help everybody.
Using Google Buzz– Yes, Using Buzz
There has been a lot of hand-wringing about Google Buzz since its introduction. While heavy social media users like me don;t welcome yet another noisy channel, I do recognize an important potential value- if it somehow becomes evident that it ties together all th other Google products we use as a single information channel– mail, search, reader, maps, etc etc– I could see it holding value. Time will tell.
A small step I am taking in that direction is changing how I bookmark. I have been using Delicious to bookmark interesting web pages, but am now trying to use Buzz to see if I like that better- and if I get some social interaction in the process as I mark these atories up, all the better. I’ll report back after using it a bit more.
Are you using Buzz? How? Any verdicts?
Media Bullseye Radio Roundtable
Last, just a note that I have recorded my second co-hosted (with Jennifer Zingsheim) episode of Media Bullseye Radio Roundtable since last month’s reboot. Our guest was Arik Hanson, one of the people behind Help a PR Pro Out (HAPPO). WE covered netwrking, skills being learned by tomorrow’s communications leaders, and corporate monitoring of employees’ social media activities. Please have a listen and let us all know what you think.
Personally, I find the armada of Foursquare updates in my tweet stream to be distracting and minimally useful to me personally. That’s one reason I disabled any connection between my Foursquare and Twitter or Facebook accounts.
Of course, doing that somewhat defeats the purpose of Foursquare. It almost seems like Foursquare is asking people to make a choice: in order to maximize the service, they have to willingly annoy their acquaintances.
There must be a better way.
I can see that. I probably use it too much just to see what reaction I get (see my recent post about checking in from PT and the gym). But part of my job is trying to figure out what works.
On the other hand, if we are afraid of getting distracting and minimally useful Tweets in our stream, then we are back to Stage 1 (Fear of the Twitter)
Thanks, Doug.
Good point about corporate management. For what it’s worth, nearly 30% of respondents to the Forrester survey were VP/senior managers and C-level execs. And 70% of the C-level found out about the survey via Twitter