Useful Twitter Tools

Ever feel overwhelmed by the amount of information that is being posted on Twitter? Ever wonder how you could measure the number of times someone reposts an exclusive link? Want to get to know your beat reporters better? Below is a list of tools and sites that Sam Whitmore suggests PR professionals become accustomed with in order to take advantage of the massive amount of information being posted on twitter.

MuckRack
MuckRack is a resource for finding journalists on Twitter and read journalists tweets in real time. Muck Rack considers themselves a means for determining the news of tomorrow today. The main page features tweets from journalists that can be filtered by category, publication, beat, and links. “Muck Rack makes it easy to follow one line, real time reporting.”

Twibes
Twibes are groups of interest for twitter. Similar to facebook groups, Twibes allow twitter members to join a group of their interest and view tweets posted to the dedicated twibe handles. Twibes can be used to cultivate data and conduct market research of the twitter members who have joined the group. The site is set up to also be used for market research.

DailyRT
dailyRT is a tweet aggregator that gathers the most popular tweets on twitter and displays them using our own scoring algorithm and numerous filters. Some great uses that we've found so far are: discovering tomorrow's newspaper headlines today, tracking stories as they happen, exploring trends from specific dates in history, and finding out what the cool kids are talking about. dailyRT gives you the ability to search tweets based on keyword(s). You have the ability to search for tweets containing links, videos, and/or images. You can view tweets from people with a certain maximum and/or minimum number of followers. You can specify a timespan you would like to see tweets from. Once you are logged in, you have the option of only seeing tweets from the people you are following as well as being able to save your searches.

TweetStats
Tweetstats allows viewers to graph Twitter Stats including such as tweets per hour, tweets per month, tweet timeline, and reply statistics for anything that you search.

Exectweets
ExecTweets is a resource to help you find and follow the top business executives on Twitter. Created by Federated Media, in partnership with Microsoft, ExecTweets is a platform that aggregates the tweets of top business execs and empowers the community to surface the most insightful, business-related tweets.

Twendz
twendz is a Twitter mining Web application that utilizes the power of Twitter Search, highlighting conversation themes and sentiment of the tweets that talk about topics you are interested in. Mining Twitter conversations alerts you to brewing trends, conversation topics and points of view. twendz uses a keyword-based approach to score tweets. Meaningful words in each tweet are compared against a “dictionary” of thousands of words that are associated with positive or negative sentiment; each word receives a score that, when combined with the other scored words, allows twendz to make an educated guess at the overall tone of a tweet.

Is MySpace Going Down in the midst of Facebook/Twitter's Success?

With news that Facebook recently hit its 200 million user mark, it got me to think that it’s interesting to see how social networks i.e. Facebook, Twitter, Linked-in and MySpace are being branded in our own social media perceptions. For example, in the movie “He’s Just Not that into You” MySpace is snubbed as the “new booty call” in the modern dating world.



According to Fortune, MySpace is actually on the decline. While MySpace is by no means hurting it seems to be definitely falling behind Facebook. (Is “He’s Just Not that Into You” implying MySpace is the “sleazier” of the social media tools out there?) According to the article’s citing of Comscore measurements, Facebook now has more than 57 million U.S. visitors, up from 41 percent a year ago. On the international scope, Facebook saw 236 million visitors to MySpace’s 126 million in January.

I’m not sure if MySpace is happy about the message the movie portrayed or doesn’t care but at any rate it’s interesting to see how our perceptions of these social networks will contribute to their branding for better or for worse – especially in the face of Facebook's success.

Twitter a Journo

@ericasmith, who runs the graphicdesignr blog, has posted an amazing list of 793 reporters, editors and newspapers who are using Twitter. Following these folks will not only help you get a better perspective on what they are writing but also could lead to a valuable reporter relationship.

I have a Twitter stalker

Ok, maybe this can't really be classified as a genuine stalker case. But, today I received an e-mail informing me I was now being followed via Twitter. Normally this would be a fairly normal circumstance and I would think nothing of it. But my newly found Twitter friend is somebody I've never met with or spoken to before in my life.

Naturally I was intrigued as to who this person was and why they selected me as a friend to follow, so I did some research. In addition to me, this person follows people and organizations such as Barack Obama, CNN, Jet Blue and Sky News. I also discovered the person writes a Travel Blog in New York City and is planning a trip to Seattle this weekend.

Seattle? Is this a coincidence? Maybe they just want my opinion on some cool places to visit while in town. But I still ask, "Why me?" I know the person can't be subscribing to my Tweets because I'm a heavy influencer in the Seattle community. I don't think I can be accused as one who contributes thoughtful and meaningful messages. I mean, let's be realistic I only have six followers and my last Tweet was about bowling.

Of course all of the time and effort I've invested researching the person who is following me on Twitter does bring up the question..."Who's the real stalker here?"

Some times there are variables you just can’t control

Continuing the Conversation

Seattle was recently blessed by the presence of His Holiness the Dalai Lama among others who spoke at great length on the subject of compassion. Even for a cynical jerk like me, it was a pretty profound experience all and all. 

We attended the five day event and gathered the thoughts, reactions and ponderings of the people at the event and "compassionized" it into a series of podcasts, the first of which you can download here. If you like changing the world, adorable kids and NOT kicking puppies, then I encourage you to listen. More to come.

(Editor's Note: Extremely rough cut, overeager to share, updated version coming soon).

Duncan Wardle Makes Disney Dreams Come True

I attended Bulldog Reporters’ PR Summit 2008 earlier this week and had the opportunity to listen to some PR visionaries, like Duncan Wardle, VP of Global PR for Disney Parks. I’ll be sharing what I learned in the other sessions over the next few days so stay tuned!

Duncan is a phenomenal speaker, with a great accent I might add, and spoke about the Future of PR, the communication revolution if you will. He started out by showing the EPIC 2014 video (Evolving Personalized Information Construct by GoogleZone) which predicts that the press as we know it will cease to exist. Check out the clip below if you haven't seen it before - it's kind of creepy to see the early predictions come true. I think the video was made in 2004.



Duncan’s message was about being authentic and using real people to start that two way dialog with your customers. We’ve all heard Duncan’s message before, it’s by no means a new concept, but how many of us our tapping into our brand evangelists and leveraging their enthusiasm for the brand? According to Duncan, the only way to reach consumers in 3-5 years will be through our evangelists. We’ll have so many tools at our disposal to filter all the content out there in order to get what we really care about that it’s going to take our brand evangelists to help us reach the people we can’t.

It's about letting go and not trying to control the message at all times. As a result of this Disney created some really great social media programs like Disney Dream Job Experience and created a panel for Moms called Moms Panel where Mom's can share their experience and give their $.02 on what they want to see at Disney Parks.

The Disney Dream Job Experience turned out to be a huge viral success, generating thousands of consumer generated videos where brand evangelists had the chance to tell Disney what their dream Disney job would be. The ‘real people’ they used to kick off their campaign were their own employees! They found that their employees were just as passionate about Disney as their fans were and this was a chance for them to show it. By the way, this was one of Duncan's favorite videos that was submitted for the program.



One of the biggest challenges that Duncan admitted to was one that we can all relate to....legal interference. Again, it's about letting go of the message - that's what social media campaigns are all about!

According to Duncan, one of the biggest contributing factors for making this campaign a success was working together with all teams, including PR, Brand, Marketing and Advertising. By working together you accomplish great things for your campaign, like working with bigger sites (yahoo) and striking bigger deals. Creating programs like these is something that our team is focused on this year with clients like Coinstar and Wizards of the Coast, and we've already seen great things come from working together with everyone at the table.

Social Networking Sites From A to Z

Happy Friday! I've updated our PR Blog Roll to include a comprehensive list of the top PR and communications blogs authored by PR professionals covering a range of topics from PR to social media. If I have left anyone out please let me know and I'll be sure to add them in! Which of these blogs do you read on a daily/weekly basis?

I've also been meaning to post this article that a collegue of mine forwarded on to me this week that included this list of Social Networking Websites from A-Z. Enjoy!

Social Networking Websites from A to Z
http://www.cio.com/article/175250/Social_Networking_Websites_from_A_to_Z

Here's an A-to-Z list of professional and personal social networking sites to help you network your way around the world.

A: Advogato—free community dedicated to open-source software development
B: Blogger—popular blogging website (owned by Google)
C: Classmates.com—helps members keep in touch with classmates from school, college and military service
D: del.icio.us—a website dedicated to managing bookmarks through storing, sharing and discovering
E: Ecademy—online networking for business, offline networking events and global networking groups
F: Facebook—site once limited to connecting only college students has expanded to include the general public
G: GuildCafe—community for computer and video game players (funded by IDG Ventures)
H: Hi5—personal global social networking site that focuses on membership of young people
I: IMVU—instant-messenging software using customized 3-D avatars
J: Jobster—social networking intersects with job searching
K: Kwout—a way to quote a part of a webpage as an image with an image map
L: LinkedIn—site dedicated to strengthening your business contacts and professional network
M: MySpace—originally focused on musicians, this general social networking site has mass appeal
N: Nexopia—formerly known as Facebox, this Belgian site is popular among young Europeans
O: Orkut—known for its easy-to-create discussion forums, this is one of the most popular sites in Brazil (owned by Google)
P: Plaxo—online platform that allows auto updates of business address book information
Q: Quotiki—a social quotes site that lets you quickly find and enjoy quotes
R: Ryze—site designed to connect entrepreneurs and other business professionals
S: Second Life—a 3-D virtual world where users can use voice and text chat to socialize, connect and create
T: Twitter—micro-blogging service focused on connecting friends, family and coworkers
U: Utterz—allows users to update their blog via short-message service (SMS) and multimedia message service (MMS)
V: Vox—blog platform built with extensive permission settings
W: Windows Live Spaces—(also known as MSN Spaces) this is Microsoft's social networking platform
X: Xing—(formerly known as Open/BC—Open Business Club) displays how each member is connected together, creating an "it's a small world" network for professionals
Y: Yahoo 360—Yahoo's social networking platform
Z: Ziggs—allows users to professionally market themselves online