If You Can’t Buy’em, Join’em

It wasn’t too long ago actually that Eric Schmidt was referring to Twitter in terms that were less than flattering by saying the micro-blogging service was a ‘poor man’s e-mail.” As with anything in the Internet industry space just give it 6 months or so and there will be some sort of about face or make up or whatever.

So where are Google and Twitter nowadays? Well, let’s see. There was the “Google is Going to Buy Twitter” phase. Then there was the Google deal for Twitter’s feed reality. Now, all is well between the two ‘frienemies’ as Eric Schmidt appears to have opened his very own Twitter account at ‘eschmidt0’. Oh happy day.

TechCrunch shared this info from the weekend.

Current Googlers such as Hunter Walk (YouTube) and former Googlers such as Chris Sacca welcomed Schmidt to the service tonight, pointing to his account, eschmidt0. Yes, you’d think he could have gotten a better name (for example, ericschmidt is currently suspended, and presumably available). But maybe he’s continuing Google’s love affair with 1s and 0s.

So what was Schmidt’s first tweet? Like any good Twitter user, he took some time for self-promotion:

CNN GPS with Fareed Zakaria on Nov 29th, starts around minute 17; Fareed is a very good interviewer http://bit.ly/6GwGjn

His second tweet? Another self-promotional one:

WSJ op-ed on newpapers and online news; thanks to the WSJ for publishing! http://bit.ly/895j8L

As MG Siegler of TechCrunch points out Schmidt has caught on early and strong that self promotion is where it’s at on Twitter. As of this writing he had around 3,000 followers and his follow list looked like a who’s who of people whom had also mastered the medium including Barack Obama (aka., his handlers) and as diverse as The NY Times, Jimmy Buffet, AHHHH-nold Schwarzenegger, Heidi Montag, Ivanka Trump, Bob Saget, The Onion etc., etc.

It looks like Mr. Schmidt may convinced some of his friends to get involved as some of the poeple he follows exhibit either a very low level of activity or have made their tweets private.

So welcome aboard, Mr. Schmidt. After all, it may be good business to keep track of what’s going on in the ‘real time’ world. You never know when Google might want to take it over.

Twitter, Meet the President

Social media is about community, right? Social media is about relationships, correct? What is required in a genuine relationship? People exchanging ideas and thoughts with each other and getting to know each other is how I look at it in an incredibly basic sense. At least that’s what I think. While social media is considered to be advancing our ability to connect with others it is still important to caution just how much we trust who is saying what. In other words, your relationship with many is more likely to be with a handler than the real person.

I realize this is nothing new and I am not setting the world on fire with this but I came across this post at TechCrunch and it certainly made me think a little. Barack Obama, the President of the United States admitted on his current trip to China that he has never used Twitter. Huh? Wasn’t his campaign the one that utilized social media like never before so his supporters could have a feeling that they were truly a part of history in a real sense?

This is not a political discussion so if you are getting all “blue” or “red” state on me just go read something else. This is about someone who utilized a technology for some advantage in a very important situation then admitted that he never used the technology personally. I find that a little disturbing and we, as social media professionals and watchdogs, should have some opinion on this practice (not the person or anything else, just the practice). Oh and let’s put out ‘preemptive strike’ on all of the “If you were stupid enough to think it was actually him tweeting comments ………..” People wanting to believe they are part of something genuine is not stupid. In fact, in this world it’s hard to find.

MG Siegler reports

President Barack Obama has one of the most popular Twitter accounts with over 2.6 million followers. It should be no real surprise that most of the time it’s not him tweeting from it, instead its various people within the White House communication team that use the account to send out information. And now that he is the President, certainly there are some security concerns with him using something like Twitter. But, did you know that he’s actually never used Twitter at all?

That revelation was made tonight during a Q&A session at a town hall event with Chinese youth that was held in Shanghai this evening (which was streamed live on the web). The President fielded a question about the restricted use of Twitter in China and he had this to say, “I have never used Twitter but I’m an advocate of technology and not restricting internet access.”

Once again, I know it is silly to think that someone as busy as President Obama would have the time to knock out a tweet from time to time but if that’s the case (that he has NEVER used it) I really think it would have been more transparent to know this a little earlier. In fact, if I was one of the followers that felt like I was part of something bigger I would feel a little duped. To be transparent, I have not followed a politician (to my knowledge) on Twitter because I feel I get enough spin and rhetoric just being alive so I don’t to seek more from either side of the aisle.

TechCrunch’s visual take says it all in an ‘update’ to the President’s response to his Nobel Prize.

So who was / is actually updating this account with 2.7 million followers? I don’t know and probably never will. At this point, who really cares since we know that the President has never touched the account (although it is a Verified Account for Twitter which now means what?)

What we need to be looking at as social media “insiders” is talking a great game about transparency and then allowing the medium to be questioned and eventually devalued because there is nothing that is real. Will social media just become a place for online actors and actresses to portray others? Will we a need SMAG (Social Media Actor’s Guild) card to tweet at some point? We are treading on some thin ice in these areas when we talk about accessibility but then only fake it. Maybe being genuine is just old fashioned and overrated?

Maybe this is an emerging area of the online reputation monitoring and management industry which will require policies and actions on what to do when your social media persona is ‘found out’.

Comcast and Twitter: Can Words Overcome Products?

This is the classic social media case study that finally someone has put a real face on. I read MG Siegler’s account of Comcast’s CEO Brian Roberts speaking with John Batelle of Federated Media and was getting lulled into the same Comcast story we have been reading for months now. While it is a nice piece of PR there is still an underlying reality that is not mentioned by many. TechCrunch’s Siegler starts the coverage innocuously

Today at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts spoke on stage with Federated Media’s John Battelle . For the first part of the discussion, they talked about the usual stuff: the state of the industry, competition, and the like. The answers were pretty PR-friendly, as you’d expect. But a bit of a surprise came with Battelle asked about the role Twitter is playing with the company.

“It has changed the culture of our company,” Roberts said. Comcast has for a while now been using Twitter to scan for complaints and engage with customers. The idea was not his, but rather rose organically when someone in the company realized that a lot of public complaints were being sent over Twitter.

That’s the nice side of the story. Big company has customer service issues and the use of Twitter has made a huge difference in how they do business. Enter the platitudes for the poster-child of customer service Twittering, Frank Eliason. He says

Roberts went on to note that “Famous Frank,” also known as Frank Eliason (Comcastcares on Twitter), now has 11 people working under him simply to respond to information about Comcast being broadcast on Twitter. Roberts says that it’s an entirely different kind of dialogue coming in then the usual phone complaints, and he seems very pleased about the work the team has done with the customers on Twitter.

Now we hit the meat of the matter. Despite all of the positive vibe around using Twitter to change Comcast and the ability for a company to create a better customer facing effort, Siegler tells the real story that is the personal side of this whole thing. In other words, there may be more hype than reality to this whole story (shocking huh?)

As a very unhappy Comcast customer, I’ve had a number of interactions with Comcast’s Twitter team. There’s no doubt, they are very responsive, and are trying to be helpful. The real problem Comcast has is that their product and all other forms of service are simply not up to par, to put it nicely (I often put it much less nicely on Twitter).

Bingo! So is what Comcast doing with Twitter a more elaborate cover up for their apparent inability to bring their service in line with their new image as a customer caring organization or is it TRULY affecting the culture of the company? Cultural change would imply that the products get better and less fussing is required by their customers. Maybe C –level understanding of this kind of customer engagement and the ensuing publicity should go a little deeper than “Hey this makes us look good”. Maybe it would be smart for Comcast to address the issues that create the need for 11 people to handle complaints regarding their service?

So this feel good Twitter story may just be another marketing / PR tall tale. That’s too bad. At least Frank responded in the comment section to Siegler’s dissatisfaction.

MG, could you keep us up to date if the product eventually catches up with the customer service effort?

Shiny Future for Chrome?

For all of the talk of social media, software as a service (SaaS) and the future of the Internet one of the most important components for delivery is that workhorse of the whole deal; the browser. Right now, Internet Explorer is the market leader with Firefox a solid second. While Safari will always be limited to the Mac-iverse the introduction of Chrome version 3 for the PC reminds us that Google needs to be a part of this mix as well. Hey, it wouldn’t be the Internet unless Google was involved, right?

TechCrunch reports that there is more to the picture though as revealed in an interview by Reuters like Mac users finally getting their chance to see their reflection in the Chrome world.

While Chrome currently has just under 3 percent of the browser market currently, a year from now, they’re planning to have at least 5 percent. More importantly, 2 years from now, if Chrome doesn’t have at least 10 percent share, Google will be “exceptionally disappointed,” Chrome Engineering Director Linus Upson told Reuters. And Google’s own internal projections for the browser are even higher, apparently.

But Google also has a big wildcard it has yet to play: Mac support. And in the same Reuters article, Google confirmed that its Chrome for Mac will be available before the end of this year.

As pointed out in the article, right now Mac users are a bit stuck with a slow Firefox experience but a lot of add-ons or a quicker Safari with fewer bells and whistles. Chrome for the Mac promises to bring both to the table. Personally, I am very excited because I am wearing out the force quit on Firefox as a recent Mac convert. TC’s MG Siegler makes takes the anticipation to another level

Chrome promises to bring a combination of both speed and plug-ins to the Mac. I’ve been using the developer builds of Chromium (the open source project behind Chrome) for months now, and it’s definitely getting really, really close to being ready for prime time.

I’m in. What’s your browser preference and does Chrome look to be a part of your future?

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Google Wave of the Future Revolutionizing the Web

You know, just the other day I was using my email and I found myself scoffing with disgust. “This is so last century!”

Okay, not really. But apparently down at Google Australia, that’s exactly what they’ve been thinking lately—and Lars and Jens Rasmussen and Stephanie Hannon came up with a way to revolutionize email and instant messaging called Google Wave. As Lars says, “Wave is what email would look like if it were invented today.” (Official announcement.)

After a long demo, TechCrunch’s MG Siegler was inclined to agree with the seeming overstatement. Just reading about this new product is making my head spin. The integration of social and email here goes WAY beyond having a pane for GTalk in your Gmail.

Here’s a screenshot of the basic inbox, from TechCrunch:

The first two columns look pretty familiar if you’re used to the standard Gmail set up: the left-hand navigation has your folders and mailbox features as well as your GTalk contacts. The middle column has the inbox—but the difference here is that these aren’t individual messages, like you’d see in most mail clients, or even threaded “conversations” like you see in Gmail—these are the Waves that give the product its name.

How are Waves different from standard email? Well, for one thing you can communicate in not only “delay time,” like we do with email, but also real time (if you’re both online). And not just like IM, but see-as-you-type real time (though you can enable a “draft” feature if you want your friends to wait and see). Unlike email and even Gmail, you can click anywhere to start typing a reply to your friend’s messages—or other content, since you can include pictures, event invitations, games, maps, Wiki-style content and more.

Waves can also feature more than two people—just drag a friend’s photo from your contacts and drop it in the Wave to add them. They can sue the Playback feature to catch up on what you’ve been discussion.

Your head spinning yet? ‘Cause we’re just getting started.

Waves can remain private in your inbox or be published on the web, fully indexable by search engines. (They say that public waves are clearly marked as such in your inbox and in the wave itself.)

But that’s just the beginning of Wave’s portability. In the second phase of development, Waves will also integrate with other websites as a platform—for example, you could include a post from your blog in a Wave to discuss with friends, and have their comments in the Wave integrate with the comments on your blog (though all the details haven’t been hammered out on that one). Other commenters can also join in the wave.

And it’s not just blogs: the Google Wave team also sees lots of other kinds of sites using Wave for everything from customer service interface to contributor group chats.

And as if all that weren’t enough, Google’s also working hard with developers to make sure that the system is fully featured and ready for the masses. They have 50 internal Google developers who’ve created apps for Wave.

The APIs for Wave open tomorrow (tomorrow), but eventually the whole system is going open source as a protocol for its third phase. Waveprotocol.org has more details on that phase.

Which I know is making you wonder just when this is going to roll out. Google showed the launch at Google I/O, and though APIs are going to be available tomorrow, Wave itself is just a little ahead of its time. Google says its engineers are looking forward to HTML 5, which will enable Wave to operate within the browser without any necessary plugins (well, the “modern” browser, they say to exclude Internet Explorer).

And THAT is all. For now. You can sign up to be notified of the public launch at http://wave.google.com/.

So, if you’ve made it this far, what do you think? Are you salivating for the latest evolution of Internet communication, or are you shaking your fist at your monitor shouting “you crazy kids and your new fangled contraptions!”?

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