Top 10 Social Media Topics People Like to Make Top 10 Lists About

I must admit, I’m a recent culprit of this growing phenomenon myself. For some reason, the skyrocketing attention of SM, especially Twitter, is inspiring the twiterrati to list things for the rest of us.

Personally, I heart lists. I think they’re awesome for the following reasons:

1. They’re concise.

2. They’re direct.

3. They have good rhythm.

4. They make you sound smart.

5. They make you feel smart.

6. They don’t actually require you to be smart.

7. They’re easy to remember.

8. People like to share them with others so they can take credit for your smartness.

9. They fit in small spaces like sticky notes.

10. They can become action items for you to never actually attempt to achieve.

And so on. So I can totally see why everyone is so psyched about making lists these days. So here’s my latest contribution to the group: a list of social media topics it seems we’re seeing a lot of lists about.

1. Why You Should Be Using Social Media
This is one of mine recently, so glass house, watch out. Makes good sense. There are good reasons to get into the game. If you’re in business and you’re not in SM, it’s probably too late. So it’s a good service. But you probably get it by now. Get into social media: be cool, make money.

2. Who’s Using Social Media
One of the quickest ways to look smart in this arena is to decisively share someone else’s findings about SM behavior, like an article about Starbucks’ latest Facebook conquest. Nowhere is this better represented than in lists of things, like “Top CEOs on Twitter,” “Top 10 Fan Pages on FB,” or “Top 10 Highest Grossing Ad Campaigns Using Social Media.” Pretty sweet stuff, and definitely a good way to look smart, or at least in-the-know.

3. How to Use Twitter
This is a good one, and it’s not just lists. There are books and blogs and videos and documentation galore. This is one of my favorites. You can make an instruction manual out of anything these days, even a 140-character text box that has one button.

4. How to Use Facebook
Interestingly, this one is far less common, despite the fact that FB has Twitter licked 4-to-1 in users and is far more complex. But they’re out there: “Top 10 Ways to Make Friends,” “Top 10 Ways to Tell Someone You Don’t Want to Be Their Friend,” “Top 10 Ways to Be a Good Facebook Friend.” All valuable. I, for one, have 250+ friends and appreciate any advice on how to make each and every one feel special. Starbucks knows this: recently their director of digital strategy, Alexandra Wheeler, said about their Facebook fan page, “We now have 3.7 million fans. We love every single one of them.”

5. How to Make Money With Social Media
These are the gems of the lists, and generally bullshit, but also generally entertaining. People are making money with social media, but not how you think. Do some research, think carefully, and you’ll find the truth about how to do this.

6 . Why to Stay Away From Social Media
The best thing about these lists is that they’re most common on Facebook pages and blogs, disseminated through bitly Twitter posts.

7. How Social Media Is Changing Consumer Behavior
According to a recent Ad Week study, the recent meteoric growth of Facebook in Q1 and Q2 of ‘09 is directly responsible for a 348% increase in consumer-penned top 10 lists.

8. How [My Company] Is Using Social Media to Sell [My Clients'] Brands
The only thing better than looking smart by demonstrating what others are doing is by pretending to do it yourself. Chances are, if you’ve got a winning SM strategy that is making money for your clients, you’re not publishing a 10-step how-to guide. But if you are, awesome. Thanks.

9. Rules for Using Social Media
It’s important that you understand the do’s and don’ts of this grassroots, user-generated communication medium. The last thing we need is mavericks out there making shit up and trying something new. Keep it under control, people.

10. What’s Next in Social Media
This one is old school. Magazines (what?) have been doing the “What’s Next” list since their inception, so they get the credit, but there’s no lack of digital prognosticators out there predicting at what point the Twitter nano-chip will be embedded in the first human infant. I’m thinking October 15th.

I encourage you all to make your own lists of stuff that you think people should know. They’re very friendly and not at all sanctimonious, and people will love you for it. Trust me…

Five Reasons to Get Over Yourself and Just Get on Twitter

OK social media holdouts: it’s time to relent, get over yourselves, and get on Twitter.

You guys remind me of a chapter in one of my favorite books, Stuff White People Like. This chapter covers the fact that white people like not having a TV, so they can tell other white people that they don’t have a TV, thereby making them superior in every way, until something dramatic on American Idol happens and they look all forlorn.

I understand the trepidation, I do. Even among the big brains and talent here at GDD Interactive there is some regular grumbling and postulating about the intrinsic value of a communication medium that is a) limited to 140 characters (many of them cryptic symbols) and b) filled with a great deal of flotsam about what someone had for breakfast or is thinking about having for breakfast but isn’t quite sure because they don’t have any milk and, well, they did eat late last night and maybe they’ll wait until they get to the office, but then maybe they’ll be too hungry, so maybe just a little something…

Fair enough. But ignore this medium, whether you’re a Madison Avenue type or not, at your peril. Not only are you going to be left out of some great stuff that everyone else is going to know before you do, but you’re also going to miss out on an unprecedented opportunity: the chance to watch the face of human communication change before your very eyes.

 Like it or not, things are changing, and whether it’s Twitter, Facebook, the Google Phone, or whatever’s next, the vehicles of communication are quickly becoming irrelevant. What counts is what’s driving this medium: an increasingly “on” society that is sharing info, swapping stories, and passing ideas and opinions back and forth across the bit stream faster than your local news station can get itself to the local convenience store to cover the unveiling of the new gas pumps.

In case your vision isn’t quite so lofty, though, here are five easy-to-digest reasons you should be on Twitter—and a couple of tips for getting in without too much trouble.

1. Your customers are on Twitter.  And your competition. And your ex-boyfriend, too. And pretty much anyone who is unlikely to tell you the truth to your face, but who has strong opinions. Don’t believe me? Sign up for Twitter, then run some searches. Try #radioshack, #bestbuy, or #blockbuster and take a look. You’ll see what I mean. People don’t pull punches when they’re anonymous, and there’s invaluable intel here. If you’re smart you’ll tune in and learn something.

2. News is faster on Twitter.  Every major news outlet in the US, and many, many others across the globe, is pushing out news constantly, and at breakneck speed. It’s likely that a Twitter feed will alert you of breaking news quicker than a 24-hour-a-day news network, and with far less bullshit.

3. Deals are to be had on Twitter. Marketing agencies and retailers alike love a good fad, especially one that has  millions of eyes trained on their every word. And they’re rewarding the Twittersphere for it. It’s in Pizza Hut’s best interest to keep your eyes glued to their feed, and in exchange you’ll get the hot deals no one else gets. Amazon, too. And Overstock. And the list goes on.

4. You have a voice on Twitter. You don’t have to use it, but if you do, people will listen. See #1 and #3 above. Retailers, politicians, and anyone else who needs the trust and loyalty of the people to do business are listening to what the Twittersphere is saying. You don’t have to write your Congressman these days. Send him a tweet: “@mycongressman: we need a national ice cream holiday!”

5. It’s what’s next. Seriously. Is it that troublesome that we are, as a people, trying something new? Is it so scary, maddening, and generally off-putting that we are getting and giving information in short spurts? If I’m wrong I’ll eat my words, but I find it really unlikely that the human race will become so dependent on 140 character tweets sent and received from mobile devices that we cease to value the spoken word. Relax, people. We are human beings and will always require the company of other humans. Twitter (and what comes after) isn’t going to replace interaction. In fact, it’s enhancing it.

 

So get out there and take a look. Don’t want to tell people what you had for breakfast? No problem. Be stealthy. Go to http://www.tweetdeck.com and download the TweetDeck application. Then find some people to follow. Just sit back and watch. You don’t have to participate, just watch the tweets go by and see if you don’t start to change your mind a bit.

And if you do, join in. Share some thoughts, give some feedback. And if you get really inspired, I, for one, would love to know what you had for breakfast.

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Why iTunes Sucks

Why can’t I drag and drop a playlist into my iPod?  Seriously.  This must be one of the most obvious and off-repeated complaints that the iTunes product management team hears.  I can drag a song into a playlist, why I can’t do the same for the playlist onto the iPod?

In my mind’s eye, I imagine the iTunes team hearing this and wincing.  I’m an interaction designer and I’ve been on the receiving end of some less than flattering usability testing results myself.  If they’re anything like me, they really want to create an interface that’s easy, intuitive and even fun to use.  It probably pains them to hear such obvious criticisms and they probably really want to fix it. So what’s stopping them?

Sometimes the technology just can’t do what we designers want it to do.  There could well be a long winded technical explanation as to why it can’t be done.  After all, iTunes is a downloadable application and subject to different constraints than web interfaces .  Surely that’s the case or it would have been fixed long ago (which in the digital age means last year.)  At least that’s my hope: that the good people who design and manage the iTunes interface would make it better if they could. That’s the kind of cocked-eyed optimist I am. 

Another possibility is that sometimes other priorities get in the way.  I quite like the new Genius sidebar, a brilliant cross merchandising feature that’s prompted me to buy dozens of new songs since it launched, and I expect that took a lot of time and attention away from fixing the basics.   Maybe they’ve been itching to go back and tidy up the main interface and now that Genius is launched they’ve rushed back into the usability lab. 

<insert look of jaded skepticism>

Of course it’s possible they aren’t like me.  My suspicion is that the grand poobahs at iTunes either don’t know how maddening their product is, or worse—they don’t care.  My lesser angel whispers in my ear, “They don’t care about users.”  It wouldn’t be hard to imagine a team of young, hip and wildly arrogant interaction designers, steeped in the Apple mythos, who are convinced that, because they find the iTunes interface easy and intuitive, everyone should.  And it would fit with the overall Apple mystique.

“But Jen,” you say, “The iPod practically launched the digital age.  It is the pinnacle of interface design, lauded and imitated ad nauseam!  What’s yer beef?”  And I hear you but—let’s be clear—I am NOT equating the iTunes interface with the iPod interface. The iPod is innovation at its best, a brilliant, once-in-a-century, game-changing piece of technology.  But the gap in usability between the iPod and iTunes is roughly equivalent to the Grand Canyon.   Where the iPod is simple, elegant and reliable; iTunes is overly complex and prone to break downs (mine seizes up regularly).  If anyone out there is under the very mistaken impression that iTunes is a successful product then I suspect it’s because they’ve been blinded by the overwhelming success and universal acceptance of the iPod interface.  “Surely,” they say, “iTunes is practically perfect in every way!  Look how many people have adopted it?”  

But let’s face it, if there was another option out there, we’d all be using it.  iTunes is a necessary evil if we want to enjoy the fruits of the iPod.   But you can’t equate the success of the iPod with success for iTunes.  It’s faulty logic and it’s as reliable as a fashion critique by the townsfolk admiring the emperor’s new clothes.  I’m standing up to say that the emperor has no clothes, and iTunes Sucks.  Who’s with me?   

CNN uses social networking for good, not evil.

CNN really impressed us today with their nifty Facebook side bar on their web cast of the inaugeration today. Sitting next to their super sweet stream of the show was a rolling, real time updating list of status posts from the Facebook population commenting on the events of the day. With one click and a login through a small popup, a second tab displayed next to the at-large list, with just posts from my FB friends.

While ordering a pizza through a FB page is, I suppose, 2 seconds faster than opening a second browser window, and therefore kinda cool, it’s implementations like CNN’s today that really show what social networks are made of, and made for: bringing people together.

Positive and negative comments flew by, as they always do….. but it was the fact that they were flying by that made the experience all that much more visceral. We were gathered in the conference room, watching the web cast on the screen, and were simultaneously hearing from our fellow Americans, like we were all at a big inauguration watching party.

It’s this phenomenon of random and real time sounding off that pushes social networking deeper into the digital psyche, out of pop culture and into the mainstream. We’re watching as an entirely new way for people to share experiences emerges.

Is there money to be made on all of this? Oh a bit, here and there, but it’s not the sale that these applications are best for. It’s tying people together through common, or better yet disparate, experience. And if that means sacrificing a friend in the name of a flame broiled burger? So be it.

Flash Player 10 Install – it’s what’s for dinner.

I was confronted twice today with the need to install the Flash 10 plug in. Once on my PC at the office, the other here on my trusty mactop.

On my PC, a tiny window appeared. It said I need the new plug in and gave me a friendly round puffy “install” button that I clicked with trepidation. I was anticipating a repeat of similar downloads I’ve suffered through of late of silverlight. Not with this though. Even before the little window indicated that it was done installing, the Flash 10 content (in this case CNN’s stream of the inauguration)  had begun to play. I didn’t have to restart the browser or even click another button, and it was all done in literaly 5 seconds. Amazing.

The mac was a bit more difficult, but still charmingly quick. Took about a minute due to the OSX install sequence, and I had to close the browser. But when the install was done, which by itself took less than 5 seconds) it restarted Firefox for me.

This is great news for those of us itching to deliver player 10 content. Thanks Adobe for getting this process right.

Bill Gates is a Cry Baby, and Steve Jobs is one of the mean kids

Quick note before I start here: I was going to post some screen shots to this post from Microsoft’s I’m a PC campaign site, and I couldnt’ get it to run. Though I’ve installed Silverlight at least 3 times, this site still only works half the time. Greatness.

So, on to the campaign. The super geniuses at Crispin Porter were tagged (or tagged themselves) with creating a response to Apple’s ongoing jabs at the PC market. These ads have started a lot of skuttlebut around here, and in the ad community. Whether the computer buying public at large cares one way or the other remains to be seen.

Personally, I think these ads, which are ultimately saying “Stop making fun of us. You’re mean.” are completely off in the wrong direction. By refuting the Mac ads directly, they’re just lending weight to them. Some percentage of the commercial viewing population saw these ads not as an attack on PC users, but on the product itself. Let’s be honest: PCs don’t generally works as solidly as Macs*.  And even f they did, the fact is that they’re just not as sexy, fun to look at, or full of as much cache. In my opinion, this is the point of Apple’s ads. Easy to use, “it just works,” crazy sexy cool. Not “PC users are lame.”

So now here comes Gates and his new Agency saying “yeah, well, you might be a mac and cool and young and hip and stuff, but look at all these people the use PCs.” Ummm… and the point is what exactly? Was anyone under the illusion that there were more Mac users in the world? It’s pretty well established that the vast majority of computer users out there are using PCs, and that trend is likely continue despite MS’s best efforts to reverse engineer crappy operating systems.

By standing up and shouting that it’s OK to “be a PC” they’ve cemented the competition’s message in the minds of the consumer. If anyone out there was not thinking that the Apple folks were trying to make PC users look lame, they’re sure thinking it now. And the ads make it clear. If someone could explain to me what being a diver, a school teacher in Kenya, or a maker of head bands has to do with computing or association with a brand, I would feel better about this approach.

This is kind of Crispin’s thing, though. Buzz value and emotional response that may or may not actually move the bar. We’ll see in the next few quarters if this campaign has somehow endeared Microsoft to consumers. My guess is no, and in some cases (like yours truly) it’s drawn attention to an otherwise unnoticed connection between the product and everyday people that are uninteresting and in no way aspirational.

* You should know that I’m a PC guy, by the way. I’ve got my 17″ MacTop for meetings and airplanes and fitting in at the West Village Starbucks, but as a Flash developer and general lover of speed, my lightning fast PC with the mirror shiny Alien Ware case is my main ax.

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How the Internet Changed the Face of Politics

I spent $250 the other night. It was about 10:30PM and I was in my living room. As usual, I was doing a bit of surfing and responding to the day’s email, when an email popped up from the presidential campaign I was following . This was just one of what must be 200 emails I’ve gotten from the Obama Campaign Machine since signing up with both MoveOn.org and BarackObama.com.

Throughout the year I’ve gotten emails, seen display ads, and seen barackobama.com plastered everywhere. Now all campaigns have a web site, and the Obama campaign isn’t the first to leverage the web to generate votes. Never before, though, has it been done on this scale.

When Obama turned down public campaign financing early in his campaign, it is reported the Axelrod and the rest of the campaign team then turned inward. One might expect that the dialogue in the room went something like “oh, shit. Now what?”

So they began pressing the web for everything they could. Not only did they buy advertising at every turn, they also reached out to democratic bloggers across the country to get on their good side and get the eyes of young democrats who historically have lost faith in their government and the process. They live in this space, and the Obama campaign knew it.

They also made it stupidly easy to donate. They created a one-click re-donate engine that would make Amazon cry. Not only did they know that I’d donated, they knew when I’d donated, and they knew I’d donated $250. So now my emails don’t say “Dear MoveOn.org Member, can you donate at least $5?” they say “Hey Guy, we really need your help again. Can you donate another $250 to help elect Obama?” Damn.

This is the gold standard of email outreach, folks. As advertising types we’re all signed up for just about every client and competitor’s email list, offers and promotions and the like. And more often than not they’re a generic message to Customer 11, announcing several new products or promotions that may or may not be directed at the recipient’s gender, age, purchase history, or pant size. Casting the net this wide generally results in crappy open rates and a general “blah” transaction rate.

It’s not so hard to gather some info on people and hit them up with the best offers and communication based on their history. A little trickier, maybe, what with permission marketing being touchy, but clearly attainable, and the result for the Obama campaign, beyond just, you know, getting the guy elected, is a fund raising effort that blew all records out of the water, largely due to hundreds of thousands of monthly donations of $5 – $10 that came pouring in from the site.

It’s not just cash that blows me away though. The volunteer effort leveraged Internet technology in fantastic new ways. Calling into swing states was key for the Obama campaign, and they knew it. They also knew that it’s difficult to get people to work the phones. So they made it unbelievably easy with a web based calling tool very similar to those used by home-based customer service and phone list companies use. You simply sign up for a time, the screen gives you a name and number to call, they give you a handy script and everything, and as soon as you’re done you click the button and get the next screen with info. Simple.

There’s also the Obama Tax Plan calculator, that shows you what type of tax break you might get given your filing status and income, there’s the campaign trail blog, web casts, Obama video messages both on his site and you tube, there’s the Facebook and MySpace groups, donating your Facebook status for your candidate (Obama and McCain both did this), there’s campaign update text messages, and on and on.

All this on top of the news media leveraging online like never before with live simulcasts of the debates, Twitter minute-by-minute updates, Flash and Flex based election maps that, on election night, were reporting resutls quicker than their Cable counterparts, and a delicious mix of Flash, AJAX, and CSS to create some of the most sophisticated personalized interfaces we’ve seen out there, blowing away most of the worthless crap you see thrown together to publicize the newest Motorola flip phone (now with an extra 0 button!).

Does this change the face of campaigning and politicing forever? Hard to say. A lot of things fell into place to make all this happen, and it took some serious creative thinking. The biggest credit to the Obama campaign was their flexibility and ability to change tactics at a moment’s notice, leveraging whatever worked at the time.

But isn’t that EXACTLY the name of the game? Flexibility, quickness, an eye on whatever is available to get the word out, get people where they live, and make the call to action as easy as possible?

We’ll see if politics has been changed forever or if it was just this group of talented people who “get it” when it comes to interactive communication. I can tell you for sure, though, that this campaign season has put to rest any doubts about the power of the Internet to mobilize people and spread a message at lightning speed to every corner of the land.

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