Posts Tagged ‘twitter’
The 5 stages of Twitter from a PR perspective
July 16th, 2008
I began experimenting with Twitter at the start of the year, and in that short space of time have observed a dramatic change in usage patterns of the micro-blogging tool.
From a communications perspective, this can be broken down into different stages of adoption, which I feel offers valuable lessons in how user behaviour is evolving as a whole across social networks. Only today, within my own network of followers/followees, I felt we might be on the cusp of a new adopter stage, and so I thought it might be a useful exercise to analyse this in my own words, to see what lessons can be learnt.
- Discovery - at the start of the year (and admittedly the year beforehand), Twitter was very much in early adopter stage. The tech-savvy were the first to try it and decide whether or not it was a useful communications tool. This stage was characterised by a sense of ‘elite’ ownership i.e. those using it felt inspired by the fact that they were living at the cutting-edge of social media.
- Experimentation - Twitter asks the question : ‘What are you doing?’. Following early-adopter phase, users experiment with how they can respond to this question in an interesting way, increasingly pushing the boundaries of usage. Functionality moves from basic status updates to more engaging conversation.
- Self-promotion - as Twitter networks grow, users realise the profile-raising potential of the communications tool. Until very recently, there has been a noticeable increase in the number of people using Twitter for PR/self-promotion purposes. A growing trend has been to use the tool as a platform for seeding blog posts, product launches etc.
- Collaboration -we’ve been heading towards this for the past month or so, but today I saw Twitter come alive as a truly collaborative tool. Social media encourages openness and honesty, and within networks Twitter can be a great place to ask advice and receive timely, expert feedback. It’s a great virtual tool for the sharing of ideas, and bouncing around of creativity.
- Criticising - it’s bound to happen. Just as Twitter reaches its usage peak, people will start to want more than the tool is technically capable of delivering. Users will start asking “what’s next?”.
Which leaves us with ‘Migration’. I think Twitter has a bit more life left in it yet though!
Tweet about them and they will join Twitter
July 3rd, 2008
I had a new social media experience today. Yesterday I Tweeted about a new start-up called Hive Sight, and the next minute I see that they have joined Twitter. It could just be a coincidence and part of their online strategy already…but maybe I helped to speed things up a little!
Here is the series of events:
I tweeted about Hive Sight at 8.47 am on July 2nd.
12.39 pm that very day I am being followed by Co-founder @ HiveSight. I am also asked a question about my experiences of the site via Twitter.
It seems as though they have just created a new Twitter account.
It looks like Hive Sight have been monitoring online conversation and wanted to respond immediately and personally to my Tweet - absolutely the right thing to do!
More companies should take this swift approach of engaging in open conversation and actively monitoring online dialogue. If you don’t engage in online conversation, your company might find itself fighting fires that could have been nipped in the bud!
Top Followed Tech Twitters And Their Tag Clouds
June 20th, 2008
Today I have been delving into the top followed Twitters Twitter statistics to find out what they talk about and the best way to visually do this is via a tag cloud.
First off, in no particular order we have Robert Scoble or the Scobleizer as he likes to be called, his Twitter bio says “Bio Tech geek blogger”
Click on the tag cloud to see the full size preview:
Next up we have Guy Kawasaki his Twitter bio reads “ Alltop, Garage, and Truemors”
Chris Brogan is next, his Twitter bio reads” Social media type, but love the emerging enterprise tech space too”
Jeremiah Owyang Senior Analyst at Forrester Research: Social Computing.
Loic Le Meur serial entrepreneur & blogger
What do these tag clouds tell us:
After a quick review of the tag clouds some of the most popular words seem to be Twitter, Google, Facebook, and Friend Feed. Other prominent words were related to their own products e.g. Seesmic for Loic Le Meur. There was also a lot of @ loving between each other!
If you want to find out about other Twitter tag clouds go to Twitter Stats
What people really think of Twitter
June 9th, 2008
I think we all know that Twitter is massive at the moment, and it certainly is in the technology space that Liberate Media participates in. People and brands have cottoned onto the fact that Twitter is an important application in an alternative communications medium.
But what about the rest of you? What do you think of Twitter?
Thanks to a new tool I have come across called Brand tags, we can get a better idea of what people are saying about Twitter. Brand tags is a tagging system that tells you what people think of brands via a tag cloud or list.
This is what Brand Tags have to say about the site: “© Brand Tags: A collective experiment in brand perception. All tags are generated by people like you and do not reflect the opinions of the site owner or anyone else he knows. Have fun.”
To search for a brand click here
The Twitter results are in
Click here to see in a full screen:
That seems pretty conclusive to me, the top three words to describe Twitter are USELESS, STUPID and ANNOYING. Personally I have to disagree with that, as I’m a massive fan of Twitter and have learnt many things through participating and following conversations.
Twitter Rocks!
It’s not the Yellow Pages it’s the Twellow Pages!
June 2nd, 2008
Twitter is a hotbed for application creation at the moment, with new ones appearing every day.
Most of them are a waste of time, but this Twitter application caught my eye. It’s called Twellow, a name derived from the Yellow pages I suspect.
What is it?
It’s a kind of directory for Twitter. It works by looking at your public profile and detecting which best sub category you will fall into.
I have been put into the media category, which I would say is probably the correct category for me.
Why do I like it?
Pretty simple really - because it’s in the style of a directory you can go to any category you’re interested in, and follow anyone in that sector very easily. It also gives you a heads up to the most followed in each sector and their last Tweet.
But more importantly, it easily gives you the ability to follow a whole new spectrum of people if you’re getting tired of the same old people within your current network!
Which category has the most people in?
327 profiles under the News category.
248 Entertainment
232 Media
230 Management
223 Software
So the runaway leader is the news category, which makes sense because Twitter is becoming know as a bit of news breaking source.
If you want to follow me or any of the Liberate gang follow: andymerch, liberatelloyd or wendymcauliffe and we will follow you back.