Twitter- Is over-capacity a good thing?

Went to follow a Twitter feed this morning for a great marketing site called 'Gaping Void', and got a few 'try again' errors, and then a big fat whale. (Not gaping void's fault--I was on Twitter.com by the time this happened.) Cute picture-- little tweet birds holding up a whale-- but curious. A system designed to get instant updates from millions of users (I would hope) has bandwidth and server resources as a top priority.

We're not all perfect, but it does remind me of a story:

British Loyalty Program 'Nectar' had a huge problem when they launched a few years ago, when they had their website go down. The marketing dept. however saw this as an opportunity and used PR to spin this IT problem into "Overwhelming demand has crashed the internet" (in so many words...). It's a great example of spinning a problem into an opportunity, but in this day and age-- should any websites go down? Ever? We're evaluating resources and things like that at work these days, and I think that under-promising and over-delivering is the way to go. Thoughts?

Facebook Profile redesign has legs

The new page and profile design Facebook is testing in their developer sandbox actually looks good. I didn't think I was going to like having to re-learn things, as I typically don't like new things (--cough) but I think they're on to something.

From what I've been reading over the last few months on the Facebook Developer Blog and the Profile Preview page, many of the changes being implemented are to quell the disapproval of the users with the infiltration of tens of thousands of Facebook Apps-- while avoiding the inevitable alienation of the app developers themselves.

The new design features a new sub-tab level with Feed, Info, Wall, Boxes, and More+ which hides the stuff that was normally residing on a users mile long profile page, viewable all at the same time. It does allow a little more flexibility with each though, as the real estate for each has increased slightly. The feed example is that instead of just ten items, it looks like there are now about 30 postings to the feed-- but that's it on the page.

The other big change is from a centered-fixed-width design to a floating-width design with a top floating nav, and a centered main content section. I'm curious to see where the advertising will go in this new design. It doesn't immediately present an opportunity on the left or bottom like the current design.

One last nice change (and I'm sure there are more, and I just have yet to discover them) is the AJAX live edit feature for many of the components. As a user hovers over a box, an edit crayon/pencil appears and the feed story can be reduced in size (for example) or the networks list can be hidden.

Is Twitter a real marketing tool, or a time waster?

If you judge a marketing channel by reach and frequency then we may just have to have a discussion about Twitter. "What am I doing?" I'll tell you what I'm doing-- I'm trying to figure out if the reach is sufficient to justify any investment or planning to use Twitter in a digital marketing strategy.

There's no cheating this one. It's not like email where you can spam 000's of people with your message and hope for a 'ok' conversion rate. Users of Twitter have already created a blacklist of people whose following-to-follower ratio is too high. So what then?

Maybe it's just a good way to stay connected. A way to let your friends, family, colleagues and total strangers know what you're thinking, dreaming, txting, surfing, stumbling about... If I've got a product or service and I want to spread the word virally, then all I really need is a hard-core group of influencers-- a seeding group. If it's the right message, to the right target audience, then the right influencers can spread the word faster than a million poorly targeted emails.

If you're in Canada, and work in marketing, advertising, media, loyalty or interactive: Follow Me and I'll follow you...

UPDATE: Check out Andrei's post about using Twitter for special announcements.

MySpace, Google and Facebook share content with other sites

On Thursday, MySpace announced a system that will allow users to port data like profile pictures and other social content between their site and other trusted sites. On board so far are Yahoo!, Twitter, Photobucket, and eBay. The thinking was to create a platform or central profile control, with MySpace as the hub. This would let the data go only one direction, and secure MySpace a spot in the future of this multi-site profile sharing world... except...

Facebook quickly followed suit Friday with their announcement of Facebook Connect, a similar system to allow the sharing of privacy-restricted social content on other sites like Digg, but also was quick to add that the same privacy and control will be in the hands of users. Sorry MySpace. From the FB Blog:

Trusted Authentication
Users will be able to connect their Facebook account with any partner website using a trusted authentication method. Whether at login, or anywhere else a developer would like to add social context, the user will be able to authenticate and connect their account in a trusted environment. The user will have total control of the permissions granted.

Real Identity
Facebook users represent themselves with their real names and real identities. With Facebook Connect, users can bring their real identity information with them wherever they go on the Web, including: basic profile information, profile picture, name, friends, photos, events, groups, and more.

Friends Access
Users count on Facebook to stay connected to their friends and family. With Facebook Connect, users can take their friends with them wherever they go on the Web. Developers will be able to add rich social context to their websites. Developers will even be able to dynamically show which of their Facebook friends already have accounts on their sites.

Dynamic Privacy
As a user moves around the open Web, their privacy settings will follow, ensuring that users' information and privacy rules are always up-to-date. For example, if a user changes their profile picture, or removes a friend connection, this will be automatically updated in the external website.

Google is also in on the sharing action, and may actually be the instigator. It seems that Google's Friend Connect has many of the same features and descriptions as Facebook (although with a Google spin) and even goes so far as to name Facebook as a site that will play ball with Google.

So what does this mean to the user? People often complain about the need to keep multiple profiles up-to-date. Changing pictures, maintaining different identities, and deciding what level of information will be shared based on the level of trust with the site. Now, assuming you have a trust level with MySpace or Facebook or Google, the privacy settings need only be determined once.

Facebook has had some issued with sharing data across other sites, and I'm referring to their 'Beacon' troubles of September of last year. Even though they've announced that the service will be available in the next few weeks, I can see this being a cautious foray for the average user.

On top of the obvious security concerns, sometimes being multiple people is advantageous. You may choose to be a little more liberal in your profile for Facebook than you would for say-- LinkedIn, and for those that are currently friends with 13,500 punk bands on MySpace, I could see a different level of expectations for their sync'd Facebook profile. At the same time, my Google account controls my blog, my adsense, my GMail, and many other Google Services-- do I want to risk that account/personality in the rest of the web? It should be interesting to see how it rolls out, but at the end of the day-- if it doesn't work-- who cares? These companies are extremely well funded, and can afford to throw a few things at the wall.

The opportunities exist: Marketers just need to seize them

UPDATE: I must be good, because I totally called it!!!

In a world filled with some of the dumbest and most useless video, youtube does manage to expose some gems from time to time. I stumbled across this video of some friends 'getting into their jeans'. If there were more elaborate ways to put your pants on, I'm sure that these guys will add them to Episode II, but for now, I wanted to just highlight this as an example of a great opportunity.

Brand Agencies, and brands marketers themselves are always looking for things to do to get attention, and positive spin for their brand, but in a way that's cost effective, with a great ROI. To use the Coca-Cola example, some nerds started playing with Mentos and Diet Coke, and it was only when someone finally said "Hey, maybe this could be good for us" did Coke get on board.

This Jeans video is the same, just before the virus as spread. What could Levi's or some other Jeans brand do with a great viral video like this? Make a comment with how you would integrate a User-Generated video like this into a campaign or on it's own?

**VIDEO: Four guys jumping around and doing tricks---while putting on their jeans.

Understanding and marketing to GREEN consumers

Marketing to consumers in this green world has a lot to do with consumer attitudes, and those attitudes are changing. The April 2008 Harris|Decima research study "Understanding Modern Environmentalism" points out that now is the time for change, and that consumers aren't going to wait for the government or industry to save the day, they're actually going to start to do something on their own. Now that being said, there is a clear acknowledgment that big changes are needed, and that big changes come from big actions, and from high-levels of government. Government influences Industry via policy (via their wallet) which leads to actionable change by industry, and a possible improvement. Without a motivation by businesses to save money for example, by reducing emissions to avoid a carbon tax, industry won't change, and we'll see no such improvement.

To view full screen, click the logo in the bottom right of the player, and then click 'full screen'