So Proud of my Alma Mater

Purdue University has developed a system that will soon integrate social tools such as Twitter and Facebook into the classroom. Taking a cue from many tech conferences, students will be able to post questions to a public forum visible to the professor and rest of the class. In addition, the system employs a Digg-style system which lets students vote up and down questions that they think is most important.

I'm incredibly proud of my former school for not just using this kind of technology, but for BUILDING it. 

Go Boilers!

30u30t Needs a New Home

Some of you may recall from a few months ago that I put together a program called 30u30t. It was a collection of individuals on Twitter who were under 30, and set a great example for their peers as mentors, leaders, or people who were just plain interesting. While I had every intention of continuing the project (you'll note that the first post included "Volume 1," I no longer have the bandwidth to do this and don't expect that to change any time soon.

I'm on a quest to hand off the 30u30t to someone who has the patience and interest in helping this directory live on. I believe that many people were introduced to each through this program and my hope is that this trend will continue with future volumes. If this is something that you think you'll have the commitment to pursue, please let me know. 

Again, a giant thank you to all the judges and nominees for helping Volume 1 come to life. The post will remain active on this blog so readers can continue to reference it.

Tweets Brands and Dollars

Tweets Brands and Dollars

View more presentations from lenkendall.

A recent Penn State study showed that about 20% of tweets were brand related whether good or bad. In order to see how this applied to my own behavior I took a look at the last 5 days of my Twitter updates and found that the stat wasn't that far off for me. 

Additionally, to take it a step further I wanted to calculate a rough estimate of the cost of the items I tweeted about. I left out large items or things that weren't realistic purchases for either people or companies. I'll leave it to the slideshare document to tell the story. As you'll see, it's quite amazing how much value small and large brands can be getting out of Twitter in terms of mentions and recommendations. 

5 Reasons Facebook Lite Won't Hurt Twitter

1. Different Populations. Despite the overlap we now see between our networks on Twitter and Facebook, the popular microblog was a channel for a very specific group of friends. Whether they be tech heads, ad junkies, or simply early adopters, Twitter has emerged as the place to sync up with X niche focused people whether you know them personally or not. This culture (and the type of conversation) has continued to grow. Although Facebook has updated itself as a tool to mirror Twitter, the people you're connected to remain the same. Will you therefore want to have the same style conversations with that group of individuals?

2. Asymmetrical relationships. Twitter established itself early on as a place where you could connect with people you DON'T know. While Facebook is moving in this direction with fan pages, the core audience of users has essentially grown up with building a network out of our actual "real" friends. Additionally, this psychology places Twitter into a higher bracket of credibility when it comes to information gathering. On Facebook we're all equal because we see updates from people who also see ours. On Twitter, a person with 10x more followers than friends is assumed to be smarter or more resourceful.

3. On the Go. While the Facebook iPhone application is absolutely stunning, let's take it out of the equation. Twitter updates and feeds can be much more easily digested on a vast arsenal of phones. Facebook has not had the benefits of this kind of mobile usage and thus has been branded as a web based destination not a mobile one. Although a slew of apps will most certainly come out now to support Facebook Lite, the Pavlovian behavior of updating your status when something interesting happens from the street has been established with Twitter.

4. Speaking of Apps. There are literally hundreds of applications built for Twitter. This creativity came from the fact that Twitter was extremely simple. Facebook conversley, went from very complex, to now relatively simple. Most of the interesting features coming from 3rd party Twitter apps for Twitter, can be done for Facebook Lite via Facebook regular. This potentially means that developers won't want to focus their creativity on Facebook lite and rather keep creating the innovative new tools for Twitter (thus driving more attention to the microblog with positive press).

5. Conditioning. Remember back in the 70's when Japanese cars revolutionized the product and how it was produced? When U.S. automakers started matching their Asian counterparts in quality and build (and they really did) did you see a massive migration back to domestic vehicles? The sentiment and buying decisions seem to favor the Japanese still. Twitter has made some tweaks since its inception but the essential function of the tool has remained the same. I've now lost count of how many times Facebook has drastically altered the structure of its home page. Let's just say it's 5 though. That's 5 times now that long time users have had to readjust their social networking habits to fit the model that Mark Zuckerberg thinks is best at the time. It's no secret, but humans don't like change. Where Twitter is a steady upward trending line with subtle increases in function over time, Facebook's life line looks more like the stock market. 

I'm sure there are bits and pieces of the story I need to investigate further that will strenghten or weaken my arguments. Would love your input.

Social Media IS Self Promotional. Just like every market.

But the problem lies in the implications many of those people are making. What many of the naysayers are alluding to is that social networks, let's use Twitter as an example, is comprised most of "social media experts" "consultants" and other individuals who add very little value to society. But in reality, the majority of twitter isn't composed of people self promoting their social media consulting, it's people who are self promoting REAL things. There are doctors tweeting about eye surgery, franchise pizza owners talking about their ventures in new media, start-ups sharing their growth, and even agency folks promoting their speaking gigs.

Twitter is a construct of various parties promoting themselves. But if everyone is promoting different things, you now have a marketplace.

People promote different things on Twitter and the majority of the time, you're not going to be in the market for any of them. But this mirrors real life. We see car ads when we're not looking for a new vehicle. We get supermarket circulars even though we shopped yesterday. We get advice from relatives, even though we never asked for it. The difference between self promotion on Twitter and the self promotion in life, is that you generally can't unfollow things or people in the real world.

Image Credit

The Twitter Questions eMarketer Should Have Asked

On July 28th, eMarketer shared a report that discussed Why People Use Twitter? You'll notice from the chart below that the majority of respondents (41.6%) claimed that they used Twitter to "Keep in touch with friends" with the next closest data point (29.1%) stating they use the service to "Update their status."

The questions that came to my mind after seeing the top response was:

What percentage of those that I follow are my friends?

What percentage of those people who follow me are my friends?

For me, the number falls somewhere between 5-10%. And if this were the case, then I would not be able to claim that my Twitter usage was focused on keeping in touch with my friends.

But perhaps I'm an anomaly. I polled my connections and asked them the same question, and unsurprisingly I got a similar sentiment from them. Overall the consensus was that Twitter was not a network based on connecting friends but rather one of meeting new acquaintances, mentors, and thought leaders.

Unless the population of my network is drastically different from the general one polled above, then I think the core flaw in the stats above come from a survey that wasn't asking the right questions OR one that didn't define what "friend" meant.

I don't know what the exact language of the questions were, but if I had to recommend some queries to prompt less vague results I would go with the following:

Do you use Twitter to meet new people in your geographic area?

Do you use Twitter to reach people in your industry?

Do you use Twitter to ask questions of large groups?

Do your Twitter connections largely (over 50%) overlap with Facebook? LinkedIn? Other?

Have you communicated in-person or digitally with over 50% of those following you?

What others do you suggest?

Silence in the Echo Chamber

Ironically, the topic of this blog post is something that has already been spoken of. It's the "echo chamber," the most common reference to the idea that much of the thoughts on the web are redundant or derivative. I find myself posting much less lately because I often will find fresh content that mirrors the ideas that I was planning on writing about. In effort to reduce the echo, I thought about what "walls" were being created that have stifled original content for myself and others:

The Walls

RSS Feeds: Those actively engaged with RSS feeds get a great deal of information (even in snack form) thrown at them. The topics in those feeds get our brains working, but it's often about the work or thoughts of other people. While there's great value in this kind of analysis, when brainstorming I suggest ignoring your feeds.

Livestreams/Microblogs: On Twitter today I posted the following: "Know how when you were a kid you'd invent things that already existed? To you, they were new? Happens a lot with thoughts now on Twitter." This proved true when three people replied to me saying that had just had that "epiphany" today as well. In terms of being a "wall" Twitter is still a mixed bag for me. It does two things, having it open forces me to think of creative questions and points, but it also leads me to read the same of others. Unless you can ignore your tweet stream and focus only on the "What are you doing?" box, I'd say close this up as well.

Lazy Reconfiguration: An author once told, there are 6 great stories out there when it comes to fiction books. They have all been written, new books are the same stories with new people, settings, and technology. The optimist in me doesn't want to believe that statement, but assuming it's somewhat true, it means that creative configuration of content is vital. It means telling the same story from a different perspective and adding your own analysis and critiques. (But also making sure your analysis/critiques aren't clones of other respondents)

Conferences and Mixers: Choose your live events carefully. Unless you are a speaker sharing knowledge, ask yourself a few questions. Is this conference going to bring something new to the table? Are the people here going to be different from the last one I went to? Am I going to act as a filter for the speaker and send out someone else's thoughts into the stream (conference tweeting) or am I going to listen to a unique perspective and then collect my thoughts and offer my own?

The above walls are not without value. They serve the purpose of SHARING content with those that can't access it or find it. But don't get confused and think that sharing content is the same as CREATING content. In the digital space, your audience is composed largely of people who do know where to get this information so instead of showing them the same film twice, write the sequel, do the remake, or add the directors commentary. 

What are your strategies for avoiding and not contributing to the echo chamber?

Follow Friday (Free Book Edition)

Hugh McLeod or @Gapingvoid as many of you may know him, was kind enough to send me a free book after I bought his new one titled "Ignore Everybody." Fortunately for you all, I don't need two of the same book. What I DO need is smart people to follow on Twitter. And since it's #FollowFriday, I thought I would use this opportunity to help discover new smart folks.

So here's the deal, in my comment section post 1 or more person that I should be following on Twitter. Then (optional, but helpful) tweet the following:

"I want "Ignore Everybody" so I'm telling @LenKendall who NOT to ignore. http://bit.ly/fAxa0"

The person who provides the most interesting individual for me to follow by end of July gets the book. I'll pay for shipping it inside the U.S.

If you're not sure if this book is for you, here are some great reviews:

Logic + Emotion

Jeremiah Owyang

Ryan Stephens

Happy Friday

Iran and Social Content. Tread carefully.

I usually don't talk about politics or philosophy on this blog, but as the Iranian situation is now intersecting with technology, I wanted to share some thoughts...

As Iranian leadership continues to shut down communication with the outside world by banning foreign journalists and blocking certain web channels, we here in the U.S. are applauding the power that social media is giving to Iranian protesters in terms of sharing their voice with the rest of the world. Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, etc are being filled with peepholes into people's lives and struggles and it's obvious that the majority of Americans and our media support these actions.

Let me be clear, I support the freedom of speech and I support what the protesters are doing. But I do wan't to offer a reality check:

The power that social media now wields in Iran to help act on the behalf of what is "right and good" as we percieve it, can just as easily be used for the opposite.

"Evil doers" are going to figure something out. They're going to figure out that they can't block this wave of information anymore. So the only option they are going to have is to fight fire with fire and stage their own information to pull the will of the crowd towards what they want to happen. Let's pretend for a second that the Iranian opposition leader Mousavi was in fact "evil." That once his green wearing supporters somehow managed to get him into power, that he would commit worse crimes against his people and the world than Ahmadinejad. AGAIN NOT SAYING THIS IS THE CASE, JUST CREATING A HYPOTHETICAL SITUATION. If such a thing were to take place it would be a very scary reality wouldn't it? It would mean there was an entity thatl was able to stir up the power of the masses, to flood twitter, to turn our avatars green, and to make us collectively bring something horrible into the world.

My point? We need to step back and be more critical than ever. Social media has the power to sway the hearts and minds of people around the world. This time it's for a cause you believe in, but next time it may not be.

10 Irrational Behaviors on Twitter that’d make you look crazy in Real Life

1. Write letters to inanimate objects or brands: “Dear 34 Bus, if you don’t show up in ten minutes, I’m going to consider hitch hiking as a permanent solution to transportation.”

2. Repeating a statement word for word that was just said minutes before.

3. Following someone even though they don’t want to talk to you.

4. Walking into a crowd on Friday morning and shouting out the names of eight best friends.

5. Quietly handing someone a note that is asking them to join your Spymaster league.

6. Proving someone wrong in a debate by referring to statement they made exactly twenty-four days ago at 3:30pm CST.

7. Carrying a rubber stamp in your pocket and slamming the word “FAIL” on everything you don’t like.

8. Jumping out of an alley and responding to a question that someone asked someone else.

9. Taking real words and melding them together cleverly while NOT being a rapper.

10. Having 100,000 people walking behind you and you’re NOT the Verizon guy.