I have been using Foursquare for months now in other cities. [...]]]> 100 cities strong since their last roll out, Foursquare seems to be gaining some traction across the country. Everyone is making their predictions about whether Foursquare is the next Twitter [including me].

I have been using Foursquare for months now in other cities. When it hit my hometown of Charlotte a couple weeks back, I was surprised how many people jumped on. I had 150 friend requests the day after Charlotte was opened.

UNC Charlotte, my alma mater, only took about a week to see the potential of Foursquare on their campus. Last week they became the first University in the country to offer promotions through Foursquare across their campus.

Foursquare Goes to College

I interviewed Brian Baute, IT Director for Business Services at UNC Charlotte, about what their goals are for using Foursquare campus wide.

According to Foursquare, the only other campuses using their promotions are Columbia, who has one promotion running for their campus movie theater, and Harvard who is developing something campus wide.

College students are an interesting niche for testing Foursquare. While they love their smart phones and Facebook, they are not in tune with much else in the social space.

However, Foursquare is similar to Facebook in the fact that it let’s you see up to the second information about your friends. Foursquare is simple in that respect. I can see college students, who are always looking for the next party, latching on to the “where is everybody at” aspect of Foursquare pretty easily.

On Friday I was very excited to attend New Media Atlanta. Thursday evening I [...]]]> Allie Sullivan (@ashevilleallie) is an online marketing and advertising specialist, formerly from the non-profit industry. She is a do-gooder, connector, and trying to make a difference in the world.

The Ugly Was Brought!

On Friday I was very excited to attend New Media Atlanta. Thursday evening I was fortunate to go to the speaker dinner and meet several of the presenters, the co-founders, and those who worked behind the scenes. The one thing that each player had in common is that they were all pumped about being part of the very first New Media Atlanta! I was excited too!

At the start of New Media Atlanta, after the opening comments by conference founders Matt Fagioli and Brad Nix, Jeff Turner took the stage for his presentation on Social Media Is Here To Stay. It was 10 a.m., the conference was just kicking off, and Jeff brought attention to the conversations that were going on through BackNoise. BackNoise claims …

“BackNoise lets you create conversations on the fly, in meetings, watching TV, during class, on the train, anywhere and anytime. Talk about what you want, when you want, where you want, and how you want.”

BackNoise is a channel that allows people to express themselves, anonymously or known, in a real-time online conversation. What started out on BackNoise that day as speaker feedback and comments that people were tired or thirsty, quickly spiraled downhill to what I believe, people who brought out their “ugly.”

Photo via @BeeRealty

There are certain people in this world that have the disco balls to say pretty much about anything. Chris Brogan was the main speaker at New Media Atlanta and embraced BackNoise by presenting with the backchannel behind him. There were some interesting comments such as his fly was down and that the more he cursed, the more an anonymous BackNoise user wanted to kiss him. Funny, right? Brogan has the disco balls though. Everyone in conference attendance was waiting for the moment that he took the stage. They know him, or have heard of him, and respect his reputation.

What about a speaker that isn’t as well known and adored? Does this mean that it’s okay to send a BackNoise comment that encourages the audience to cough two times if you don’t like their presentation? What about stretch if you don’t like the next one? Believe it or not, that’s what happened!

I’m sorry, but to attend a conference and revert back to middle-school mentality is pathetic. If I knew who started these behaviors on BackNoise that day, I would call you out publicly, but alas, you were anonymous. I have no problem with people suggesting that the content presented was weak, or that you’re bored or tired but at some point, grow the heck up!

If you are bored, say why. If you were a speaker and getting bashed, wouldn’t you want to know why?

I don’t think trying to get people to cough is going to help someone learn where and how they can improve. I also don’t think that by creating fear for future speakers is going to make any speaker become better at it!

We encourage people in the online space to be real and transparent, pay-it-forward, not to be a social media douche bag, etc. Why do these understood rules of common decency fly out the window when you don’t actually have to be accountable for your words and actions? They shouldn’t.

When users on the backchannel complained about it being too dark, the lights were turned on. When comments suggested that we needed a break, a break was given.

It is very clear that New Media Atlanta was paying attention to what attendees were saying and constructive criticism was able to bring about positive change. I like that. This also means that speakers were able to see what was said about them. Comments that attacked speakers on a personal level more so than the content that they were delivering, well, I tend to like that less.

Backchannels Are Here To Stay

There is no doubt in my mind that people will continue to use backchannels. After attending New Media Atlanta, it is only my hope that people will choose to use them in a more constructive way. We all like to laugh and feel part of a group, which is what platforms such as BackNoise allows, but where do you draw the line?

I admit that I looked at the backchannel conversations that took place at the conference. I admit that some comments made me laugh. There is something extremely intriguing about watching a stream of thoughts from people that don’t have to identify themselves for speaking what a lot of us might be thinking … but crossing the line of professionalism to middle-school bully is something that can be avoided.

Think about your words. Thumper said, “If you can’t say something nice … don’t say nothing at all.” Backchannels give us the room to dismiss that message and also the accountability of our words. Would you participate on a backchannel? If so, where would you draw the line?

Google Sidewiki launched today. And they sent me a little poetry that fits pretty nicely with the goal of the project.

What do you think?
Music: Coal War – Joshua James http://wxpn.blogspot.com/2009/09/my-morning-download-92409-joshua-james.html

Some describe noise as irrelevant content in reference to a subject matter when looking at data in a particular channel. Noise can be spam. Noise can be [...]]]> Wayne Sutton is an entrepreneur, strategist, and producer who blogs at SocialWayne.com. He is also co-founder of OurHashtag, a community and technology event company.

Some describe noise as irrelevant content in reference to a subject matter when looking at data in a particular channel. Noise can be spam. Noise can be repeat content from the echo-chamber of the world wide web. Either way, filtering the noise should be on everyone’s mind today as we’re evolving from the static web to the conversational web to the real-time in your face web.

As someone who loves technology, gadgets and information, the real-time web is a geeks’ dreamland, but it’s also a huge time waster if you don’t have filters setup. Not only do you need filters to manage information gathering and filtering information online, but you also need self control. There are plenty of tools available, but it’s how well you manage those tools to filter the noise. Below are a few of the tools that I use.

RSS Reader

To manage my RSS feeds, I use Google Reader, just like Jason and Taylor. I’m currently subscribed to over 1600 feeds, each categorized into groups by topic.  Some of my groups include WordPress, Social Media, business, mac news and mobile. My RSS feeds list continues to grow, therefore having them categorized is very important. Inside of Google Reader I have a personal star rule. I star items that I want to read later and share items that I think others will find interesting. In other words, RSS feeds are not dead, and are very important to the social web.

Social Bookmarks

For social bookmarks, I use Diigo to bookmark blog posts that I may not be subscribed to, and save them to content-based groups. I have set up groups for topics like wordpress plugins and wordpress premium themes for blog posts pertaining to each.

Real-time

Gmail Filters

Every morning the first thing I do is open my Netvibes account. This pulls all the stories from my favorite news sites [...]]]> Hermione Way (@HermioneWay) is an entrepreneur and journalist, She is founder of newspepper.com and techfluff.tv and was named as on of The Spectator’s Stars of Tomorrow.

Netvibes

Every morning the first thing I do is open my Netvibes account. This pulls all the stories from my favorite news sites (BBC, Mashable, Wired, TechCrunch, Telegraph, TheNextWeb). Not only does it pull in these news sites but it also pulls in my Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube accounts. The reason why i choose Netvibes over Google Reader is because of the layout format. It shows me all the sites in mini format, on one page just like a newspaper. It enables me to check all my news without having to leave the site.

Tweetdeck

As more and more people are becoming their own news outlets, Tweetdeck enables me to follow the streams of people i deem bring me important informative news about my industry. For example i follow Mike Butcher, iJusine and Robert Scoble’s Twitter feed to see what they are up to, who they are meeting and any links they share.

Twitter hashtags

Twitter search enables me to search for a topic or subject of interest eg. #iranelection Twitter search produces real time search results for the searched topics which enables me to find out what people are thinking/talking about right now on a topic.

The more you engage in social media, the more you realize [...]]]> Beth Harte is a marketer, blogger, speaker, communicator, thinker, connector (people & dots), adjunct professor and Community Manager for MarketingProfs. Beth’s blog, The Harte of Marketing is featured in AdAge’s Power 150. Beth also blogs for MarketingProfs Daily Fix blog.

The more you engage in social media, the more you realize that there are a lot of folks out there talking just to talk and that there are some folks that aren’t as well known, but are absolutely brilliant. Of course, brilliant is a highly subjective term. For me brilliance isn’t someone who’s like Einstein. For me a brilliant person is the one who has a unique voice, isn’t a lemming, questions the status quo, always tries to spark a conversation (no matter how small or large) with an insightful post, tweet or comment, and someone I learn something new or different from.

So, how do I cut through the clutter to find these brilliant people?

Tweetdeck

When dealing with Twitter, I like to use Tweetdeck because it allows me to create groups…lots of groups! I create groups of friends, people who tweet on certain topics, keywords – you name it!
The more I can slice and dice (I am a marketer, after all), the more I can find those brilliant people and nuggets of information that they might be sharing.

BackType

BackType is a cool site that allows you to keep track of your comments, people who have commented about you and, more importantly, the comments that people you follow leave for others. BackType also allows you to search on keywords, again, very helpful to a marketer. The best part about BackType is I can see where the people I follow leave comments, which helps me to find blogs or smart folks that I may not have known about.

Google Reader

I’d be lost without my Google Reader. Every time I find a new blog using the tools above, I add it to my Google Reader. You can imagine that over time, I have a TON of blogs bookmarked. Every morning, I change the reader to the “All Items” view and I scroll down all the posts, not by blogger…but by date. Those with the best or intriguing titles win my attention. Again, I also look for posts on topics, people’s names, and information I might not have had access to previously.

These tools might seem basic, and perhaps not so cool, but for a marketer, they relieve a lot of the time burden that social media places on us.

Each one of us makes a very personal decision about how to find, filter and understand information to help us live our lives and succeed in our careers. Our goals, interests and personal [...]]]> Guest blog post by Taylor Davidson (@tdavidson); innovation, photography, travel and entrepreneurship, in some continually shifting combination and order.

Each one of us makes a very personal decision about how to find, filter and understand information to help us live our lives and succeed in our careers. Our goals, interests and personal styles shape what, why and how we sift through the content and context created by the maze of interactions on the web. Instead of focusing on the strategies and tactics that I use to filter the web, consider my own methods and tools as just the best way that I know how, right now, to achieve what I want; like all of us, I’m always looking for ideas and ways to improve.

Considerations and Creating a General Philosophy

Before you think about tools, think about you and what you want to achieve: how much time do you have to devote to consuming information? How much noise is “too much” for you? What methods have you tried, for how long, and what has been successful for you? What networks do you use to connect to people and information? What do you want to do with the information, insights and (hopefully) knowledge that passes through your filters? For example, do you want to find new sources of information, cut out repetitive sources, reduce the time you spend online, spend more time creating, automate your filters, focus on breaking news or in-depth, timeless analysis?

Think about these questions to create your own strategies and goals, but I’ll start with outlining my general philosophy:

• I devote an hour or two a day to reading news and in-depth analysis, and I like following a range of topics and a wide range of people.
• I’m willing to dig through a fair amount of noise to find great signals.
• I try to use algorithms and people to curate my news; I use a mix of searches and popularity-ranking algorithms to find information, but I depend on people to filter content and add their own analysis and point of view.
• I do not read newspapers or major primary news sources; again, I depend on interesting people to find what I should read.
• I feel no need to read everything that pops through my filters; if it’s important enough, it will find me again eventually.
• I’m not terribly concerned with keeping up with the real-time web; it often takes a bit of time to truly process new information and understand the second-order impacts.
• I love to engage bloggers and comment on posts in order to learn, refine my thoughts, and dig deeper into topics with knowledgeable people.
• I want to structure and pass on the information that I find in a way that goes beyond just passing along information but adds something to the conversation, whether it’s an insight, a connection between bits of information or people, or simple something too interesting not to share with my friends.

Given the philosophy, how do I do it?

Using Feeds to Follow People: Blogs, Backtype, Twitter

Blogs continue to be the focus of my filtering efforts due to my focus on long-form content, but as more and more content and interactions have shifted to micro-interactions I find myself needing to use more platforms to find information, links and people.

I use Backtype to create RSS feeds of searches through comments for terms and topics of interest, but I truly enjoy following the comment streams (using RSS feeds) from individuals as a way to see what is truly important to them.

I use Twitter to find links to information, but I don’t use any special tools or tactics other than dipping into the stream from time to time. I use feeds from Twitter search to follow certain keywords, but I also follow @ replies to certain people to see who is talking to them or sharing information with them.

Organizing the Feeds: Google Reader and PostRank

I know many people have sworn off RSS, but I continue to use RSS and RSS readers (my personal choice: Google Reader) as a way to consolidate the streams of information. I use RSS to bring to me a mix of blogs, searches and Google Alerts to follow the web, and I use categories in Google Reader to attempt to structure the information . I have a “best” category to follow the sources I find to be consistently interesting and a mixture of other categories organized into different topics or goals. This is far from static: I add and remove feeds, blogs, categories constantly to find new sources of information and new ways to organize.

Additionally I use PostRank and AideRSS’s Google Reader Firefox extension to integrate PostRank with Google Reader in an attempt to figure out which posts are “can’t-miss”; but given that I am open to sifting through a lot of noise and that I depend on many people that do not have a huge following, I find Postrank isn’t the best fit for my own filtering strategies. I’ve tested BlogRollr and Filtrbox to find and filter information, but I’m always on the lookout for new algorithms and methods for adding more “relevance” and context to my filtering tactics.

Yes, that’s a simple set of tools, somewhat inefficient and ripe for over-consumption, but the benefits from depending on loose networks and “structuring serendipity” to introduce me to great concepts, insights and people is simply too great to give up … yet.

We all cobble together our own method of sorting and filtering through the noise.

The “How I Filter The Noise” [...]]]> The vast amounts of information available online for any subject can get overwhelming quickly. As a self confessed news junkie, I dive in every day and devour massive amounts of news. Still, it becomes daunting.

We all cobble together our own method of sorting and filtering through the noise.

The “How I Filter The Noise” guest blog post series will is meant to be an insight with a few examples of how people find their way through such a wild web of content. Hopefully we can all learn a little bit. Thanks to the half dozen guest bloggers that will be joining me in sharing their filter strategies over the next week or two. Look for their posts soon.

I Stopped Tracking EVERYTHING

My Google Reader, a key to almost all filtering strategies, use to be full of Mashable, TechCrunch, ReadWriteWeb, and several other massive tech and social media blogs. Each of these blogs ramp up a dozen or two posts a day. At one point I was trying to skim through hundreds of blog posts and news articles each day. Trying to take in this amount of information was impossible. All I ended up doing is making it more difficult to find the news I cared the most about.

My middle ground was only subscribing to about 6 of the 30-40 bloggers that write for these sites – The ones who I thought touched on the most relevant information for me. This was a large improvement but still did not give me the relevance I was seeking.

I Steal My Reading List from Friends

Within Google Reader, you subscribe to articles that your friends share, as opposed to standard RSS feeds. I have been using this feature more and more recently and find it does wonders for screening quality content. I am more or less stealing the reading lists of my friends.

Not all my friends use this feature and not all of the ones that do share things I care about. But I have focused on about a dozen folks who share great stuff almost daily, but not so much content that it overwhelms me.

I Focus With A Second Twitter Account

Yes I follow somewhere near 30 thousand people on Twitter, and no I do not listen to all of them. I, of course, filter.

My main filter on Twitter is a second personal Twitter account where I follow about 150 people.

The second Twitter account is what I use to listen to the people I most care about. It is comprised of designers, social media thought leaders, friends, and people in my home town of Charlotte. It is my go to pulse for the internet. I use Tweetie on the iPhone and Tweetdeck on my desktop to easily listen from this second account, while still being able to reply from my main, public Twitter account, @jakrose.

I Find The Highlights

For technology I use Techmeme. They rarely miss a big tech story and usually have it hours or days before any other news outlet. Tweetmeme is fast becoming a good solution for this too. For politics I browse Politico. For any other subject I either check Digg‘s specific categories or Twitter Search.

That is it. Find valuable friends on Google Reader. Use a focused second Twitter account. And find a way to catch the highlights.

Kluster is a cool crowdsourcing community that launched at TED 2 years ago and fosters community collaboration on a unique level. Members submitted problems, suggested solutions, and voted to guide the creation of all kinds of products.

It was wide open, with little direction, creating everything from copywriting to website design to [...]]]>

Kluster is a cool crowdsourcing community that launched at TED 2 years ago and fosters community collaboration on a unique level. Members submitted problems, suggested solutions, and voted to guide the creation of all kinds of products.

It was wide open, with little direction, creating everything from copywriting to website design to industrial design and more. Since then kluster has tried to focus on more niche collaboration communities and today their newest effort, quirky, went live.

Quirky is focused on industrial and product design, and takes design collaboration to a new level. Creating new products, designing that next cool gadget, is how kluster started. Quirky builds on that idea, the thought that a group of creative people can combine unique ideas to solve simple problems, and profit from them together.

Got some undervalued  design skills? Constantly writing down ideas for inventions or new products? Give quirky a go and share your ideas with the world.

Their first product, the slingback, is already for sale. They describe it as the first universal cord retractor. I personally could use a half dozen of these. If industrial designers and idea folk embrace the concept of this community, the possibibillities seem very cool for quirky.

Kluster also brought us the copywriter’s playground that is NameThis.com, another favorite collaboration community.

I dig quirky because it brings an idea platform to the masses, a true outlet. Anyone can take an idea that may better the world, or maybe just improve the modern mousetrap, and share it with the world. Our collective intelligence gets a little more collective with sites like this.

And just imagine what they can do if they team up with charities, helping to design that next great mwater purifyer or mosquito deterent.

Nielsen reported last week that the retention rate of new Twitter users was pretty bloody, with only 30-40% of new users returning a month after joining.

More than 60% of US Twitter users fail to return the following month. Twitter’s retention rate is about 40%. For most of the past year, pre-Oprah, Twitter [...]]]>

Nielsen reported last week that the retention rate of new Twitter users was pretty bloody, with only 30-40% of new users returning a month after joining.

More than 60% of US Twitter users fail to return the following month. Twitter’s retention rate is about 40%. For most of the past year, pre-Oprah, Twitter has languished below 30% retention.

Many have pointed out these numbers do not take into account third party clients like Tweetdeck. For the sake of this post I am assuming that no matter the percentages, Twitter needs to improve the experience for new users and retain more of them. The fact that so many new users do not “get it” right away is not surprising (@’s and #’s be damned).

Twitter is not doing much to improve that intake process.

Weak Suggested Users

Twitter’s only big push to improve these numbers has been the suggested users list they started 2 months ago. The suggested users, in its current state, provide little value to a new user. Twitter defines these suggested users as:

a bit like your local book store’s staff picks. (We) developed a program that scans active Twitter accounts for a bunch of key ingredients such as how much of the profile is filled out

Where is the relevance to me personally?

Much of the value of Twitter comes from the personalization, shaping the information to be as relevant to our personal needs as possible. Random popular users are more novelty.

Below are some of my suggestions for Twitter.

Higher Relevance

• Location - Suggest users within a certain distance and create better location search options
• Industry - Allow users to define their industry with keywords,  suggest users accordingly
• Interests - Mine a new user’s bio and ongoing tweets,  suggest users accordingly

Show me people connected to me in these ways and I have something to talk about with them right away. I also have an immediate group of highly relevant tour guides and ambassadors to teach me how the game is played.

Ongoing Suggested Users

Keep these suggestions coming. List them in the sidebar or send an email or anything that gives suggested users a higher profile and does not depend upon new users discovering it on their own. I may miss it at signup. I may give you more information that improves the process.

A Real User’s Guide

I remember being pretty confused by Twitter when I first signed up. The basics are simple: type message and send. The breadth of the service, however, is quite complex. A couple short and simple video demos would do wonders for explaining to new users the potential the service holds.

If I see Twitter me this and Twitter me that on CNN and my local radio station, I might go sign up, but the people are what makes me stay. Finding people that provide me with information, entertainment, and relationships creates user investment. Once Twitter learns how to quickly provide that value to new users, their retention rate will rise accordingly.

None of It Really Matters

I would like to see Twitter make their intake process a little more user friendly, but at the end of the day, they don’t need to. I am sure their investors are eager to see retention rates rise, but Twitter already has insiders from tech, media, and Hollywood signed up and passionate about their product.

Twitter is a different type of service and can easily fail to appeal to the masses in the same way as Facebook, Myspace, or even LinkedIn. The important fact remains that Twitter has a rabid and influential customer base in their corner, and that is very valuable.