Twittering from the Capital C offsite

The other day, as we sat in the Guvernment on those extremely uncomfortable chairs, little did anyone know that the rest of world was listening in. OK, not the entire world. But anyone who cared about what I had to say on Twitter got highlights of that amazing day.

As I sat in my chair, feeling the numbness creep into my behind, I began Twittering from my cellphone; I felt so empowered. Like a reporter from CNN.

My first post (a.k.a. “Tweet”) was about Doug and the purpose of the day’s event. See the bottom of the list in the image below:

Later on, I Tweeted about Geoff Craig, asking Twitterland: “What’s On Your Highlight Reel?”

There were a few responses from people that follow me or my “Followers”, which you can see I have 28 of. Some of them are fellow Cap C’ers. Others are friends, family and industry experts.

Regardless of who’s following me, the idea is my followers get my Tweets. Some on cellphones; others on a desktop widget like Twitterific. Or on the site www.twitter.com. Some get them on all 3. It depends.

To put this into context, think about our colleagues that could not make it to the offsite that day. Had they been following joeszabo on Twitter, they would have received the updates throughout the day. Heck, some of them could have Tweeted back, egging Tony on about his GO TEAM sign.

On a more serious note, the Los Angeles Fire Department is using Twitter to send updates as fire ravages through Southern California. Even people who have lost their internet connection as a result of losing their home or damage to the city’s infrastructure, they can still be kept up to date: they just have to follow LAFD on Twitter.

Truly amazing times.

Twittering (a.k.a. Micro Blogging) is beginning to take a stronghold. Google recently acquired Twitter’s competition, so if Google is keen (their stock went over the $700 USD mark today) then pretty much the rest of the world will be.

Just give it time.

Toronto loves Facebook

The world’s biggest free standing structure and the world’s biggest underground tunnel network isn’t enough for my hometown of Toronto.  Now the city can boast the world’s biggest Facebook network.  Given its relatively smaller population (among the world’s biggest cities that is), this distinction probably won’t last forever.  The following numbers come from blogger Ryan Feely

City	Metro Population	Facebook Members
Toronto, Canada	5,113,149	+500,000
London, UK	7,554,236	338,188
New York City	18,818,536	206,228
Chicago	9,505,748	195,410
Vancouver	2,116,581	159,947
Los Angeles	12,950,129	102,130
Calgary	1,079,310	90,859
Philadelphia	5,826,742	90,091
Montreal	3,635,571	82,922
Houston	5,539,949	69,682
San Francisco	4,180,027	48,496

A Few Non-boring Ways to Use Twitter For Marketing

Since around the time of SxSW and perhaps earlier, the buzz on Twitter has gone through the roof. Collecting groups of text messages and emails from people cataloguing “what they are doing now” might seem like a colossal waste of time, but it has found a devoted following from bloggers and those actively engaged in social media because of the immediacy and real time appeal of sharing your thoughts. This is different than blogging, this is like carrying a text based recorder on your shoulder to broadcast your location and current thoughts to the world. It’s not hard to see why this would appeal to bloggers who are already sharing their personal views of the world online. Twitter adds a frame of reference and has the same live appeal of instant messenger.

Still, a quick visit to the homepage of Twitter may leave the uninitiated unimpressed. It’s mostly a collection of people you don’t know talking about doing stuff you don’t care about. Even if you read these updates from people you do know, it’s tough to get excited about. The tool, though, offers a great platform for sharing experiences real time and has plenty of potential for marketing. Here are just a few non-boring ways to use Twitter for marketing:

1. Capture the live pulse of an event – This is one of the most popular marketing uses that I have seen for Twitter, where it is used to offer a visual display of conversations happening around an event. More and more interactive events have this, and I suspect other non-Web related events will start to incorporate it as well to offer participants a visual way to track the pulse of an event and determine where to spend time.
2. Deepen a static experience through live commentary – I saw an interesting story last week about how Fox is going to be using Twitter to promote their new show Drive by having the director provide live updates and directors commentary via Twitter throughout the show. We will definitely be seeing more of this type of marketing in the near future.
3. Facilitate collaborative watching – When it comes to watching video content online or on television, Twitter can allow you to watch something “alongside” anyone anywhere by sharing your impressions and reading impressions from others as a program unfolds. This is a powerful new method of sharing feedback and ideas
4. Add a new dimension to promotions – Scavenger hunts, user generated content campaigns, and other reality based marketing promotions are growing popularity as ways to encourage interaction from customers. Twitter can offer a way of encouraging dialogue between promotion participants and adding an “instant message style” dimension to a promotion without the privacy and contact acceptance barriers normally associated with using IM for marketing.

Tapping Twitter for marketing is still a relatively unique ocurrence — but from what I can see, there are plenty of opportunities. If the popularity of the site continues to grow it’s likely these opportunities will continue to get more appealing, and the list of ideas for using Twitter in marketing will grow as well.

Source: Rohit Bhargava

eBay for chores and odd jobs

From mowing the lawn or picking up dry cleaning to researching a cruise or planning a party, busy people can pay willing takers on DoMyStuff.com. Unlike posting a classified ad on Craigslist with a fixed price, DoMyStuff.com has an eBay style ratings and auction pricing model.

Facebook Dominates

For those of you (myself included) who have become addicted to the site, these numbers should come as no surprise. I’m intrigued that Facebook has supplanted Flickr as the no. 1 photo sharing site.

Read the story behind the making of Facebook.

How to create more traffic on your site with really shy people

Another social networking site – im in like with you although here’s the twist:

Their business model relies on shy people flirting with other shy people. To flirt with someone, you must bid for their attention. To bid, you must have points. You collect points by adding info to your profile, uploading photos and videos and logging into the site every day.

You know the geeks are gonna love this. It’s still in BETA and you have to be invited to participate. But watch for this one.

And for anyone who’s really interested, here’s how it works:

1. Post the best-looking picture of yourself that you have because iminlikewithyou users must bid to flirt with you. Don’t worry if you’re not best-looking. If you got invited to iminlikewithyou, you’re already in the top 15%.

2. Earn points and bid. To flirt with someone, you must bid for their attention. To bid, you must have points. You collect points by adding info to your profile, uploading photos and videos and logging into the site every day.

3. Start a flirting game. It’s a lot like “The Dating Game”. Pretty much anything qualifies as a game, like asking where is the best slice of pizza or are you from Prospect Park? The majority of Iminlikewithyou’s 550 users live in New York City because that’s where founders Charles Forman and Dal Albritton live. Once a user has bid on your game, you can encourage him or her by sending them a wink.

4. Bid on other games. You can bid to take PopSugar’s PartySugar to dinner or pick a Final Four winner for some dude in the East Village. Like eBay, you must outbid your competitors in order to win the product, or in this case, the attention of the game host.

5. Pick your date. After a game is completed, the game host (that’s you) can pick one from the top five competitors. Points are deducted from the winning bidder if you decide you want an introduction to that person.

6. Contact anonymously. iminlikewithyou makes up alias email address and phone numbers so don’t worry if you picked a weirdo or creep. You can always go back and start a new game.