Nonprofit uses Foursquare to spread environmental awareness

Love to see non-profit organizations like Earthjustice embracing social technologies.  Each time someone “checks in” at an Earthjustice poster in the San Francisco BART stations, one of Earthjustice’s donors will give $10 to support their cause. The ads, featuring images of Lake Tahoe, oil rig platforms, and the little furry endangered pika, can be found throughout the BART stations coming this summer.

Though Foursquare does not yet have the wide market penetration that Facebook and Twitter enjoy, the hope is that through its embrace of location-based services, Earthjustice can connect a younger audience to its work, whether it’s curbing oil and gas exploration in the Arctic or protecting endangered species like the pikas of the Sierra Nevada.
At the same time, Foursquare users on BART will get their shot at becoming the “mayor” of Earthjustice ads and help protect the environment, all while doing their daily commute. Aside from the donation aspect, [...]

Love to see non-profit organizations like Earthjustice embracing social technologies.  Each time someone “checks in” at an Earthjustice poster in the San Francisco BART stations, one of Earthjustice’s donors will give $10 to support their cause. The ads, featuring images of Lake Tahoe, oil rig platforms, and the little furry endangered pika, can be found throughout the BART stations coming this summer.

tahoe

Though Foursquare does not yet have the wide market penetration that Facebook and Twitter enjoy, the hope is that through its embrace of location-based services, Earthjustice can connect a younger audience to its work, whether it’s curbing oil and gas exploration in the Arctic or protecting endangered species like the pikas of the Sierra Nevada.

At the same time, Foursquare users on BART will get their shot at becoming the “mayor” of Earthjustice ads and help protect the environment, all while doing their daily commute. Aside from the donation aspect, the check-ins also encourage users to learn more about Earthjustice through other Foursquare features, such as tips or “shout outs.” You can follow them on Twitter here of “like” their Facebook page here. I just did.

To amplify the campaign even further, I would recommend the following:

  1. Aggregate all check ins and tweets somewhere on their web site
  2. Recognize and showcase each mayor (i.e. on their web site or fan page)
  3. Create a mechanism that integrates with the campaign and allow users to make contributions easily
  4. Tweetup / fund-raising event

Heck, I may even take Bart a few times when this launches to show my support. Hopefully you will too!

A Conversational Analysis of SxSW

Thank you Amita Paul, CEO of Objective Marketer for providing this fantastic analysis of SxSW and the conversational activity around the event.
The report provided influencer and demographic data and provides insights as to how information is shared during events.  Some of the key findings include:

Higher followership did not guarantee higher retweets but higher rewteets did require a higher number of followers
Most active users were with tweets in the range of 1,000 to 100,000.  Activity level of the users with fewer tweets was high. So, It is not necessary that people who are heavy twitter users will be the most active
Embedding multi-media content may not be as effective a strategy on Twitter as it is on Facebook. The retweets for messages without images (31.6%) was almost double than the retweets received for messages with images (16.8%)
The number of Retweets is significantly more when the follower /friend ratio [...]

twitter

Thank you Amita Paul, CEO of Objective Marketer for providing this fantastic analysis of SxSW and the conversational activity around the event.

The report provided influencer and demographic data and provides insights as to how information is shared during events.  Some of the key findings include:

  • Higher followership did not guarantee higher retweets but higher rewteets did require a higher number of followers
  • Most active users were with tweets in the range of 1,000 to 100,000.  Activity level of the users with fewer tweets was high. So, It is not necessary that people who are heavy twitter users will be the most active
  • Embedding multi-media content may not be as effective a strategy on Twitter as it is on Facebook. The retweets for messages without images (31.6%) was almost double than the retweets received for messages with images (16.8%)
  • The number of Retweets is significantly more when the follower /friend ratio > =1.
  • Tweets and Retweets can have different activity peaks.  Retweets followed Tweets for about 30 minutes to 1 hour.

Tool Time: Tweepi

With an estimated 50 million tweets generated across different platforms on a daily basis since its inception in 2006, Twitter remains to be one of the most dominant mass messaging service built on a social networking architecture today. And it keeps on getting stronger in terms of popularity and user registration given its [...]

With an estimated 50 million tweets generated across different platforms on a daily basis since its inception in 2006, Twitter remains to be one of the most dominant mass messaging service built on a social networking architecture today. And it keeps on getting stronger in terms of popularity and user registration given its rather limiting 140-character structure.

As revealed during its recent Chirp developer conference , the company revealed that it has a rated 300,000 number of new users signing up per day in addition to the approximate 105,779,710 currently registered. These are facts not lost among marketers, so we’ve established for their respective brands a venerable network of followers to easily broadcast their messages to the consumer, establish relationships at a much deeper level and boost SEO efforts.

The problem with keeping such a bevy of followers is the near constant need to organize your connections to make sure you are properly targeting the right people. While there are a handful of services online that would prove useful (and we’ve actually recommended some of them on this blog), Tweepi offers a handful of features to get the job done in a “geekier, faster way.”


Tweepi offers a straightforward interface and several “geeky” utilities to help you manage your network of Twitter contacts.
Click for a Closer look.

Developed by Thoughtpick , a social media developing company based in Amman, Jordan, Tweepi pushes for the “geeky” nomenclature with four utilities for organizing your Twitter network. Rows of information are presented with tables and figures for each user along with their location, number of followers, people they’re following, retweets sent and when they last tweeted, among others. So if you’re one of those spreadsheet-happy geeky types, this is just the tool for you.

While Geeky Follow lets enter a specific @username to discover Twitter users with the same field of interest based on their tweet activity patters and gives you the option to follow them, Geeky Flush lists the users you are following who are not following you back. Geeky Reciprocate, on the other hand, shows a table of users who are following you but you have yet to follow yourself. Finally, Geeky Cleanup filters out the profiles that offer no valuable content or don’t engage in actual Twitter conversations so you can easily unfollow them as you see fit.

In each utility, you can filter out the Twitter profiles through several presets like the number of tweets within the last seven days, influencers, high followers to following ratio and those who simply dispense linkless ramblings.

Tweepi is ostensibly in its beta stage and it’s pretty upfront about it, saying that continuous updates and the constant bug zapping are being conducted by its development team.

In essence, Tweepi looks to be the outcome when you put Friend or Follow and Untweeps in a blender and set it to “smoothie.” Not that Tweepi’s interface offers a gaudy candy-coated look and feel like these other tools, but its different features are seamlessly reconciled into a simple interface; straightforward enough for new users to utilize without having to leave its single domain.

To use Tweepi, like most third-party Twitter apps and services, it uses Twitter’s OAuth implementation so you can sign in using your Twitter login credentials.

Twitter Unveils Android App

Mobile has truly become an essential platform for Twitter , bolstered by the convenience afforded by the ubiquity of wireless connectivity and the steadily dropping prices of mobile phones. As such, many third-party Twitter clients and apps have sprouted from this side of the Twitterverse, carrying varying functionalities and value added services on top of [...]

Mobile has truly become an essential platform for Twitter , bolstered by the convenience afforded by the ubiquity of wireless connectivity and the steadily dropping prices of mobile phones. As such, many third-party Twitter clients and apps have sprouted from this side of the Twitterverse, carrying varying functionalities and value added services on top of the 140-character architecture.

To further push mobile Twitter use, the microblogging and messaging tool launched its official app for the Blackberry and acquired Atebits to retcon Tweetie as Twitter for iPhone within the same week last month. Now, hot off the heels of its obvious thrust to dominate the mobile space, Twitter has let out another in-house developed app and this time, it’s all set to target Google ’s developer-friendly mobile operating system, the Android .

This was announced by Twitter’s Leland Rechis this week on the official Twitter blog . He stated that sharing becomes second nature on machines as it does in person when apps work well with each other and that Android performs optimally in that regard.

As you can see from the screenshots we’ve included, usage is as straightforward as it can get, with Twitter capabilities implemented across other apps. Rechis further explains that sharing links and photos with your Twitter contacts are simple—by finding the share button in your favorite app and then tapping on Twitter on the menu list.

“Reading tweets is easy in a bunch of places on your phone.” Rechis likewise adds. “Quickly access your timeline with the home screen widget, view a tweet location on a map, and see your friend’s latest tweet in your phonebook, GoogleTalk list or any application that uses Android’s QuickContact bar.”

As with most Google-hinged product or feature roll outs, the code behind Twitter for Android will also be open sourced so we’ll probably see new independent developer-prompted feature tweaks and enhancements even before 2.0 comes out. Similarly, different variations of the Twitter API implemented on third-party apps for the Android are also definitely expected.

The Twitter for Android app is now available at the Android Market for mobile phones with Android 2.1 (aka Éclair) at the helm which pretty much covers anyone using the Motorola Droid , Google’s own Nexus One and the latest slew of HTC smartphones. No word though whether the app will be developed further to also support the other Android phones with version 1.6 (Donut) or 1.5 (Cupcake), however, their owners can instead use Twitter’s rudimentary mobile site by heading on over to http://mobile.twitter.com for the meantime.

Screenshots.
Click on each for a closer look.

Twitter Launches New Homepage

This week, Twitter unveiled its latest homepage design tweak and it features a meatier assemblage of information compared to its previous layout. This makeover was apparently done with the intention of give first-time visitors a better understanding of the value Twitter can provide beyond its role as a status updater.
“All of our recent changes [...]

This week, Twitter unveiled its latest homepage design tweak and it features a meatier assemblage of information compared to its previous layout. This makeover was apparently done with the intention of give first-time visitors a better understanding of the value Twitter can provide beyond its role as a status updater.

“All of our recent changes embrace the notion that Twitter is not just for status updates anymore.” said Doug Bowman , a creative director at Twitter, via a blog post officially announcing the redesign . “It’s a network where information is exchanged and consumed at a rapid clip every second of the day. With so much being shared, we know that there’s something of value for everyone.”

You may remember last year when the microblogging service modified its homepage from a simple landing page for logging in and reworked it display the trending topics. It is also here where they introduced and aggregated search.twitter.com on a search text box out front to allow both users and non-users an insight into the trending topics.

These same elements are still present on the new design which is basically a smarter and more organic reorganization of last year’s layout. As you can from the screenshot the popular topics which used to be gauged and organized according to minute, day and week, has been unified into a single vertically scrolling bar in the center. Meanwhile, new additions include a list of celebrities and other public figures who use Twitter and Top Tweets which presents the popular tweets being posted in real-time.

“We’ll be monitoring the data on this homepage design, and how its effects ripple out to other areas. Expect us to continually try new ideas that help users more easily discover who and what they can find on Twitter, and how they can personalize and filter the stream of rapidly flowing information.” Bowman adds.

Saturday Link Round Up (04-03-10)

35% of the Fortune 500 are tweeting, are you? (VisInsights)
Unlike a lot of small businesses, the corporate giants of the Fortune 500 were not so quick to incorporate social media into their marketing campaigns. Now, 22% of Fortune 500 firms run a public blog and 35% use Twitter. This demonstrates the growing importance of [...]

35% of the Fortune 500 are tweeting, are you? (VisInsights)

Unlike a lot of small businesses, the corporate giants of the Fortune 500 were not so quick to incorporate social media into their marketing campaigns. Now, 22% of Fortune 500 firms run a public blog and 35% use Twitter. This demonstrates the growing importance of social media in the business world.

Twitter Gets a New Homepage – It’s a Whole Thing (ReadWriteWeb)

In other news, Twitter just launched an updated, more dynamic homepage. Exchanging the trending topics cloud for Top Tweets and popular user features, it is aimed at enticing those who are still not on Twitter to jump in.

Facebook to scrap `become a fan of’ for `like’ (Yahoo! News)

Facebook is also making changes. Rather than ask people to “become a fan” of a particular brand or media personality, the social media platform will instead let users click that they like the subject.

Does Google AdWords Violate Trademark? (Social Media Mafia)

Google recently hit a legal snag when Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy claimed that the company’s advertising companies violated their trademark. This report makes us realize that there is more to keywords than simply a tool for gaining higher rankings.

10 Outstanding Social Media Infographics (NowSourcing)

Infographics are a wonderful mix of key data and visualization that can really bring the message home if put together correctly. This blog has compiled an awesome collection of effective social media infographics.

Saturday Link Round Up (03-13-10)

In the continuing battle for strong online presence, Twitter is by far the most important weapon in your social media arsenal. More than half the world uses the social media platform. To be able to successfully tap into that community can make all the difference for your brand or business. For this week’s Saturday Link [...]

In the continuing battle for strong online presence, Twitter is by far the most important weapon in your social media arsenal. More than half the world uses the social media platform. To be able to successfully tap into that community can make all the difference for your brand or business. For this week’s Saturday Link Round Up, we’ve assembled a list of great articles that can help your get Twitter working for you, from the best way to compose your tweets to proper use of hashtags .

How to Write the Perfect Tweet

Remember that Twitter is still considered more as a personal microblogging platform than as marketing medium. Send off the wrong vibes and you just might end up being ignored, even rejected, rather than followed. Twitterism provides some great advice on how to write the perfect tweet.

How to Retweet: A Simple Guide

Retweets and @replies breathe life into your Twitter. They make your account more personal and approachable. In excess, however, they reflect the opposite image. AJ Vaynerchuk’s tips, though old are not outdated. Except maybe, “RT” is more practical to use than “Retweet:” as a label.

HOW TO: Use Twitter Hashtags for Business

Mashable has always been one of our favorite sources for social media news and wisdom. Here, Mashable contributor Josh Catone sheds some light on the popular function known as hashtags and how they can be utilized to build your business.

How to Use Twitter “Follow Friday” Effectively

One hashtag twitter trend that has turned into an entity all its own is #FollowFriday. Michaelé Harrington presents how participating in the cult trend can help boost your online presence.

To Schedule Tweets or No? Two Reasons You Should.

There are pros and cons in scheduling tweets. The cons only show up when you exploit the function too much. Here, Kiesha Easley shares here solution for scheduling tweets without the risk of losing followers.

Yahoo! at SMX West and Real-Time Search

We had a great time at the SMX West conference this past week in Santa Clara, CA. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer kicked things off with his keynote speech, where he addressed several questions on the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance. Yahoo! participated in several different panels throughout the week, including Thursday’s keynote “The State off [...]

We had a great time at the SMX West conference this past week in Santa Clara, CA. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer kicked things off with his keynote speech, where he addressed several questions on the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance. Yahoo! participated in several different panels throughout the week, including Thursday’s keynote “The State off the Search Union” roundtable featuring David Roth, Director of Search Engine Marketing. (You can check out the full recap of this at Search Engine Land’s live-blog post.)

One of the hot topics discussed was real-time search, and I had the pleasure of sitting on a panel about that subject, titled “Real Time Search & the Major Search Engines.” Among other things, we discussed the real-time features we’ve rolled out for Yahoo! Search, like tweets in Yahoo! search results and getting the freshest information on developing news as well as some of the challenges and opportunities in this space.

In our down time I visited Yahoo!’s popular booth on the show floor – everyone loved our free coffee! Check out some of the highlights in the video below.

Ivan Davtchev

Yahoo! Search

Seesmic for Blackberry – Google Map, Picture Preview and ReTweet

Experience Twitter on your Blackberry with searches, lists, retweets, picture preview, Google maps geo-location and other powerful features. Point your blackberry to http://m.seesmic.com to get Seesmic within minutes.
Dedicated to listening to our community of users, we are happy to share that we have incorporated a set of features in the newest version of our Blackberry [...]

Seesmic

Experience Twitter on your Blackberry with searches, lists, retweets, picture preview, Google maps geo-location and other powerful features. Point your blackberry to http://m.seesmic.com to get Seesmic within minutes.

Dedicated to listening to our community of users, we are happy to share that we have incorporated a set of features in the newest version of our Blackberry application that will make your Twitter experience easier and helpful. Thanks to our user’s feedback and suggestions, we updated Seesmic for Blackberry with the following features:

ReTweets and Quote function
Seesmic for Blackberry has the new Twitter Retweet (RT) function, which allows you to officially RT a message. Apart from ReTweeting and viewing RTs in your timeline, you can see who ReTweeted you, which RTs you have done and which RTs were sent to you. If you also want to retweet, but also maintain the original message to edit, you can opt for the Quote feature, which integrates the quoted user at the end of the tweet.

ReTweets function

Picture Preview
We are excited to share that you can now see picture previews for image services within your timeline. Also, the same feature is included in the actual tweet Details view.

Google Map Location
Seesmic for BlackBerry users will now be able to see a detailed Google Map Location in their tweets. This feature reads the location as set in Twitter Geo location. Users can just go to tweet details and a precise Google Map of the place it was sent from, will appear.

Google Map Location

BIS-B Connection
Seesmic BlackBerry now becomes available to all mobile users, regardless of their Internet connection. Users who are using BIS-B mobile Internet network, will now be able to do so and enjoy Seesmic’s feature.

These integrated updates of Seesmic for BlackBerry maintain the appeal and functionality of the application. With your help and support, we willl continue to add features and improvements to make Seesmic the best application for mobile, web and desktop!

SocialTwist Tell-a-Friend



Want To Rank High in Google’s Real Time Search? Get More Twitter Followers

A month ago, Google added real-time search results in the form of Tweets from Twitter and other real-time search related sources. Yesterday at Search Engine Land I covered an interview with Amit Singhal of Google via Technology Review. The interview explains how Google ranks those real-time search results – on some level.

Want to rank high in those Google real-time results? It seems like all you need is a lot of followers and you should be set.

From the interview:

“One user following another in social media is analogous to one page linking to another on the Web. Both are a form of recommendation,” Singhal says. “As high-quality pages link to another page on the Web, the quality of the linked-to page goes up. Likewise, in social media, as established users follow another user, the quality of the followed user goes up as well.”

Obviously, Google needs to figure out the value of the followers of followers, but that shouldn’t be too hard in this equation.

Another interesting point was in regards to the use of hashtags in Tweets. The interview wrote that hashtags may “serve as red flags to lower tweet quality and attract spam-like content.”

Of course, this does not mean anything you Tweet will show up in Google’s search results. For that, they need to be trending topics, and a good way to see what is trending is to look at Google Trends.

Honestly, there are some interesting thoughts in the comments on my post at Search Engine Land.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorldand Google Web Search Help.


A month ago, Google added real-time search results in the form of Tweets from Twitter and other real-time search related sources. Yesterday at Search Engine Land I covered an interview with Amit Singhal of Google via Technology Review. The interview explains how Google ranks those real-time search results – on some level.

Want to rank high in those Google real-time results? It seems like all you need is a lot of followers and you should be set.

From the interview:

“One user following another in social media is analogous to one page linking to another on the Web. Both are a form of recommendation,” Singhal says. “As high-quality pages link to another page on the Web, the quality of the linked-to page goes up. Likewise, in social media, as established users follow another user, the quality of the followed user goes up as well.”

Obviously, Google needs to figure out the value of the followers of followers, but that shouldn’t be too hard in this equation.

Another interesting point was in regards to the use of hashtags in Tweets. The interview wrote that hashtags may “serve as red flags to lower tweet quality and attract spam-like content.”

Of course, this does not mean anything you Tweet will show up in Google’s search results. For that, they need to be trending topics, and a good way to see what is trending is to look at Google Trends.

Honestly, there are some interesting thoughts in the comments on my post at Search Engine Land.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorldand Google Web Search Help.



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