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Oct 20

Using Your Talent for Good, Linearb Style

October 20, 2008 • View Comments • Blogs, Meet People in Austin, Social Media for Social Good, Twitter

Lynn Bender at GeekAustin (aka @linearb to many other circles) is a phenomenal piano player. He heard about my sister Debby’s financial strife while trying to overcome graft-vs-host disease, and decided he’d like to play to help her raise some money to cover her expenses. Right now her health insurance is over $700 a month and she cannot work because she is too sick. She only collects disability right now. It is so difficult for her to overcome this disease which has killed many of her friends, so finances is the last thing she should really have to worry about.

If you appreciate Lynn’s awesome playing of the organ, please consider donating to my sister’s PayPal account. The link is at the bottom:

Take a look at my sister’s blog if you’d like to get to know the person you’d be helping. Please pass this around as well. On behalf of my sister and my family, thank you and God Bless!



debzokiss

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Sep 24

Result of My Social Media Tennis Experiment Thus Far

September 24, 2008 • View Comments • Twitter

I don’t hate on tech, but it is nice to see 2.0 used for something new. My last post asked if anyone played tennis in the area. I put the post up on Twitter, and Corey Pavletich (@tronovision), Cesar Torres (@cesart), Kristine Gloria (@gloriakt) and some others expressed interest. Corey even booked a court at Austin High today. So basically, a tennis meetup was organized without me even having to do anything. How cool is that?

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Jul 24

Why Not Downloading TweetDeck Could Be Hazardous

July 24, 2008 • View Comments • Twitter

Twitter users are as unique as they come. Sometimes you’ll follow someone only to find out that this person tweets any time he or she eats a brownie or goes for a walk outside. Other Twitter users are pseudo politicos out to change the world. What unifies them all?

When they see you in person, they expect that you’ve read their Tweets.

TweetDeck helps you organize your tweets into segmented lists so you can better keep track of the people you follow. Here’s why it’s important that you use TweetDeck if you follow a lot of people:

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

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Jul 18

Set the Tone for How Washington Communicates. Email Congress an Invite to Twitter

July 18, 2008 • View Comments • Twitter

This anti-Twitter stuff coming from House Democrats is absolutely ridiculous. This is a perfect example of politicians playing politics instead of actually acknowledging someone’s freedom of speech.

These politicians raise millions of dollars just to get a bunch of cheesy 30 second TV spots and conduct polls. Who the hell actually listens to those worthless ads anyway? How genuine are those user surveys? Here is a medium that is TOTALLY FREE, that gives them direct access to a user base that is educated and votes, and they want to turn it off? I say, get them all on there and let them duke it out for the hearts and minds of voters. I’d love to interact with Congresspeople. It will tell me who’s sincere and who’s smart, and who would be better off selling life insurance somewhere.

Let Congress Tweet? I say, bring it! You can’t hide from the internet, so you might as well embrace the tools that better allow you to leverage it.

Here are ways you can help:
1.) Email your Representative and tell them how you feel about this issue. Find out who to contact and how here.

2.) Contact the Franking Commission regarding this issue. The Franking Commission determines how Congress communicates with constituents. Since you cannot obtain House members’ emails (to prevent spam), I’ve included a link with each Franking Commission member’s contact form. Please let them know that we want to follow our Congresspeople on Twitter, in blogs, on Qik and Utterz, so that we may be more involved in our political process.

If you are busy and want just a pre-filled message, you can use this one if you wish:

Communication between Congresspeople and constituents is a natural part of every healthy democracy. Social media tools such as Twitter, Qik, Facebook, and blogs facilitate this communication better than any other tool throughout history. Twitter has saved people from forest fires, bailed a man who was unlawfully thrown in an Egyptian jail, organized blood drives and raised money against cancer, and spread the word about natural disaster relief efforts. It is a powerful tool that can help you make strong decisions for our nation. I would like to invite you and other Congresspeople to use these tools to more effectively serve your constituents.

You can sign up for some these services here:
http://www.twitter.com
http://www.qik.com
http://www.utterz.com
http://www.plurk.com

Here are the people on the Franking Commission. Just click on their name and it will take you to their contact page.:
Michael Capuano
Robert A. Brady
Zoe Lofgren Zoe does not allow for emails outside her district, so here is her phone number: (202) 225-3072.
Charles Gonzalez (no contact form. What a bum!)
Susan Davis
Artur Davis. He also requires you to be a constituent, so you might want to call at (202) 225-2665.
Vern Ehlers
Dan Lungren
Kevin McCarthy

Let’s let Congress know that it is more communication and not less that will improve our democracy.

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Apr 02

Twitter’s Wicked Gossip Rag: wasoverheard

April 2, 2008 • View Comments • Twitter

Someone: “Calacanis is like a fungus. He grows on you.” 04:00 PM March 29, 2008 from web

@tangofoxtrot: “we’re creating the 10 commandments on the web. 2 column tablet. Only displays in Moseszilla” 09:23 PM March 22, 2008 from web

@guykawasaki: “Sperm in your hair isn’t terrorism?” 06:07 PM March 17, 2008 from web

The Twittosphere is listening to you…

Don’t keep those funny Tweets/comments to yourself. Expose your friends’/foe’s funny and embarrassing comments to wasoverheard. Here’s how it works:
1.) Start following wasoverheard on Twitter.
2.) Wasoverheard will automatically follow you back.
3.) Listen in for stupid/crazy/witty stuff your friends say.
3.) When you hear something cool, direct message wasoverheard with @(person who said comment) and what they said, and the comment will be posted for all of wasoverheard’s followers to see. This will be posted anonymously, so you shouldn’t have any problems getting away with it.
4.) Laugh at your friend’s pain. Or don’t. That’s really up to you.
5.) Wasoverheard is a community project. The benefit of following it is a constant stream of funny one-liners flowing through your Twitterstream.

I have no idea who started wasoverheard, but I would like to thank the guys at b5media for pointing it out to me. Too funny!

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Jan 10

Web 2.0: Make Sure Your Marketers Sell What is Effective Instead of “the Next Big Thing”

January 10, 2008 • View Comments • Blogs, Twitter

If you work for a tech company (which if you read this, you probably do), you are probably tired of hearing about how social media is the absolute end all be all for your marketing. The truth is, this is not the case. Don’t believe me? Try reading Jakob Nielsen’s report on how Web 2.0 Can Be Dangerous. As I commented in my last post, this site really is not much to look at. Nielsen’s research is so established in the industry, he has a PR 8. Nielsen doesn’t need all the Ajax and crazy new widgets on his site to get backlinks. He doesn’t even have a forum on this site. He just has research that actually works.

So how can Web 2.0 be dangerous? It can divert resources away from what we should be doing to get out to our customers if we choose to not use them effectively. In Nielsen’s blunt but spot on language, “most business tasks are too boring to support community features. The fact that the city Sanitation Department will pick up Christmas trees sometime after December 25 isn’t likely to inspire a longing to discuss shared experiences on the department’s site.” Come on, really? Nielsen argues that most of many these communities suffer from “participation inequality“, where a few members contribute all of the time and most members contribute seldom if ever.

Does this mean we should drop everything and just go back to the old fashioned mailing list? We dropped these conventions because they are often time consuming and ineffective. What can be the solution? Pay attention to all of your customers, and then they will actually want to pay attention to you. The Web 2.0 community tools are there for us to more effectively do this, but we will end up with a lot of users in our community but very few participants if our customers think that any talking they do will just fall on deaf ears.

We can use the “Web 2.0″ community tools make us more effective. Without actually caring about our loyal customers’ concerns, they will not prove to be the magic bullet.

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