Time 22:51

One part chat room, one part instant messenger, and one part blog, the microblogging platform Twitter has gained in credibility and usefulness among businesses and journalists. I don’t want to say popularity, although it has 3.2 million users, because this word is less meaningful. Useful is how the author of a new book Twitter Means Business, Juilio Ojeda-Zapata, shares his insights from his upcoming book.

At its core Ojeda, believes Twitter helps build relationships, and relationships underscore business in many ways. A journalist to his core, Ojeda has been with the St. Paul Pioneer Press since 1987 and a technology writer for more than a decade. In this podcast, he walks through his personal journey on Twitter and it was his second look at the platform that got him hooked.

According to Ojeda, Twitter is an alternative means to get a reporter’s attention in a non-intrusive way. I have found it is an excellent to learn more about a reporter’s interests, immediate and long-term projects, and how they interact with the Twitter community.

Two ways to learn who is on Twitter is to search key words in either Tweetscan www.tweetscan.com or search.twitter.com or browse through TwitterPacks, a wiki dedicated to allowing individuals to list by a variety of categories. For example, there is a Twitter public media category

Twitter Means Business is available to order at www.twitin.biz.

Society for New Communications Research Symposium, - November 14 in Cambridge, MA. I am a senior fellow for this organization and I invite you to review the agenda for this forum. It is a smaller venue that gives attendees exceptional opportunities to talk with some of the countries most thoughtful and experienced social media practitioners. Some of those practitioners attending will be Shel Holtz, Francois Gossieaux, Steve King and Todd Defren.

Time 16:00

Jeremiah Owyang, senior analyst for Forrester and author of the well-read Web Strategist blog, is our guest on the Marketing Edge. You know, as of this posting, he is at the top of the Tweeterboard, a ranking of influencers using the microblogging platform Twitter.

In this podcast, we touch upon his big three trends to look for in 2008 and the following items:

-Social media is like jazz: don’t ask, just listen. He explains it better than I can write about it.

-The corporate structure needs to become more flexible if social media is to gain greater status. Owyang believes 2008 will see a rise in the job function of community manager in large companies.

With more than 3,000 followers and friends on Twitter and Facebook, do you wonder how he juggles his day? First rule: Get up early.

We also get into one of my key themes about social media: It’s making companies incorporate some of the best practices of political and grassroots organizations. Listen, be responsive, be sensitive, seek consensus, build your base — those are just a few. Platforms like Twitter help facilitate the movement of people and opinions that give life to ideas. This is the essence of the political democratic process.

As corporations seek a greater understanding of social media, the social graph will play an important role. This is another Owyang prediction for 2008.

Wouldn’t it be great if you didn’t have to invite all your friends to join you on some other social network? Owyang predicts the expansion of widget networks and with it the expansion of the use of social media in 2008.

Lastly, I promised Jeremiah I’d post a link to one of my favorite places in San Francisco, the Buena Vista, home of the Irish Coffee.

Share your comments on this post. For each comment posted, Provident Partners gives a food item to a St. Paul food shelter.

Last call for the drawing of the book “Join the Conversation” by Joseph Jaffe. Send an e-mail to marketingedge@providentpartners.net and we will include you in the drawing. The winner gets a copy of the book with my comments in the margins; it’s our way of continuing the conversation. Get your e-mail in by midnight on Dec. 19.

The following is a conversation between Al Social and Darrin Marketer, their names have been changed to protect the innocent; they are both avid Twitter users with two very different perspectives on the platform. We invite you to interrupt them with your comments.

Al Social – Twitter has done so much to enrich my life.

Darrin Marketer – yeah me too

Al Social – This summer I kept in touch with the family while kayaking the Fjords of Norway, imagine that texting from my phone to post to a blog, website and mobile while in the water.

Darrin Marketer – Yeah, I saved 20% off a computer on Dell outlet

Al Social – New ideas about global warming from Tris Hussey, social media insights from Jeremiah Owyang and Todd Defren. Santa Cause gives twitterers great places to contribute to social change.

Darrin Marketer – it’s the greatest freakin’ opt-in Ad server on the planet, these people are agreeing to follow companies just to get essentially ads pushed at them. I’ve got plenty of clients using twitter to hawk their stuff and getting people to agree to get it.

Al Social – no dude, it’s not about ads it’s about idea exchange. You are just gaming the system. It’s all about the collective of people to advance change.

Darrin Marketer – yeah right, ok I got an idea, let’s get people to follow some company that pushes the latest super bargains for that week, what’s wrong with that? It’s all about me baby, all about me.

Al Social – No no, it’s a snapshot at people’s life is not a bazaar.

Darrin Marketer – that’s where you are wrong my friend, life is a bazaar, and everyone is trying to scrap a piece of turf, a piece of attention. Twitter is just another way to pull the spotlight over to you and there is nothing wrong with that. Oh and your boy Santa Cause, he’s helping promote business, so my friend you just proved my point.

Al Social - Well you are surely not being creative, you’re slapping an old model over a new way of connecting. That’s going to ruin it.

What do you think? Is twitter an opt-in ad server, a social hang out, or both?

I have to comment about Twitter, the micro-blogging tool at www.twitter.com. It is like instant messaging to those whom you are following and who follow you, plus your messages post to your page on the Twitter Web site. You can follow hundreds of people you’ve never met. It’s possible to share a subset of followers with others, but it is unlikely two people will have the exact same set of followers. The messages are usually fast and furious and can be disjointed because not every one has the exact same circle of followers.

Twitter’s prompt for your input is “What are you doing now?” The reason I detail this is to underscore the socialness in this particular platform. Twitter has two unique attributes:

1) it is about the now – quick flashes of ideas, reactions, questions and statements, and
2) it can have a very diverse group of people following each other – it’s less about groups of like-minded “friends” and more about sampling the snapshots of individuals’ lives.

This weekend a well-respected blogger, Marc Orchant, passed away. I read this as I was working and occasionally catching Twitter messages (known as “tweets”). At first I was taken by surprise because this harsh dose of reality is not something you’d expect to see. Then others who where among the people I follow paid their respects to Marc I was aware of Marc’s work on Blognation, but did not know him. I read that he and I were of the same generation. . I said a prayer for his family and friends. That’s when I started to think about “What are you doing now?”

This news caught my attention as I learned Marc has a family, and I reflected about when my mother died. I was 12; she was 41. Another tweet appeared. It was someone going to a party. Another tweet about some social media report, then another tweet about Orchant, and another about some new video platform.

Here I sat, observing exactly what micro-blogging and “What are you doing now?” is truly all about. These unique characteristics of Twitter give a snapshot of life, with a bit more detail in the image. It was like looking out of my grandmother’s apartment building in the Bronx when I was growing up right after my mother died. All around me, regular stuff was going on, just like you can overhear the conversations – a guy buys a newspaper, someone is yelling at the driver of a double-parked car, the elevated train rattles the windows – and for me at that pivotal moment in time, nothing was regular.

This was my first experience online with real-life stuff, not just a discussion of blogging or using video or some conference. It hit home that this forum, Twitter, and other forms of social media are different than most communications media that have come before.

This is not some place to hoist a billboard and pitch your wares. It is a place of ideas, for sure, but equally of emotions. It is a place of lives and, now I can see, a place of memories. Social media is first a people place. Marc, your leadership in this special place will be remembered.