I watched the movie “Kick Ass” the other night, and oddly, it got me thinking about social media (It’s a curse we in the business of sm live with. Be kind.) I came up with a list of how social media gives companies and individuals superpowers:

1. Invisibility: When you monitor and listen to the cloud to find out who is talking about you and your competitors and what they are saying, you are enjoying the benefits of a cloaking ability. They can’t see you, but you’re sizing up who your audience is or could be, as well as finding out exactly what they need from your type of product or service. Invisibility helps you prepare and fill gaps.
2. Empathy: The ability I hope you get from using the first ability. The reason you do all that looking and listening is to understand the audience and to empathize

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Once used in the Presidential inauguration and the f8 developer conference, Facebook Live is now available to all Pages. Facebook Live can stream video and chat onto a tab within Facebook. The video technology is partnered with Livestream.com; which allows easy sharing to Twitter and other social networks.

The chat (which ironically works better than the normal Facebook chat) is powered by Livestream, too. It requires the user to enter in a nickname or to login through Livestream. The default view on Facebook live shows status updates about the event, not the actual chat. To view the actual chat, the user has to click on the chat tab at the top. I have a feeling Facebook will switch the default view in the future, as it would allow people to interact while watching the video, not just advertise they’re watching it to their friends who might… [Read More]

Twitter just announced the release of a “suggestions” feature; giving recommendations of who to follow based on who a user follows, and who those followed users follow.  Similar to Facebook’s “You have 5 friends that like this” recommendations, this feature will likely not be as “annoying” to some users because it will won’t be found on the home page or the main feed.  When it goes live it can be found at the “Find Friends” link – something most users don’t even get around to, or in other user’s profiles.

The API will be released so developers may add this to applications, which might serve more purpose than its current state.  If this picks up, I speculate Twitter will have ad-based suggestions and encourage users to use this paid method to increase followers; rather than use the promoted trends.  I think this is a great way to reduce spam and… [Read More]

I wonder often how anyone could have coined the phrase

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me

when we’ve all been at the hurtful end of prejudicial words that cut deep, and sometimes leave wounds that last longer than a bruise. Especially when I have also seen words inspire and start movements. And, for me, there has been nothing more powerful than the first time I said my son’s name allowed to him moments after his birth. That kind of power is staggering…humbling.

I believe in words and the roots of words. I was the kid who looked forward to that section of the SATs where I had to match a word to its meaning by dissecting its Latin root and hoping I got it right. Maybe if I’d actually ever truly prepared for those tests, I would have even done well at… [Read More]

Twitter made an announcement late yesterday about their new account called @earlybird. Basically, @earlybird is a way for Twitter to partner with select advertisers and retweet their offers specifically for the Twitter community. You don’t have to follow the account to see the deals. At first glance, it looks like it’s a creative way for Twitter to capitalize on the advertising offers already happening on Twitter.

I’m excited to see where this goes. Much in the way that Foursquare, Groupon and others have partnered with advertising partners to deliver value-ads, so will @earlybird. The major difference I’m seeing is that it will be much harder for Twitter to target any of the offers.

I have yet to see Foursquare or Groupon mass-blast their consumers with nationwide or global offers. I’ll be curious to see how Twitter’s @earlybird account… [Read More]