Interview Series with Shel Israel – Part 1
Shel Israel is a well-known social media author and public speaker who co-wrote the book “Naked Conversations” with Robert Scoble in 2006. Mr Israel has contributed editorially to Business Week, Dow Jones Co and FastCompany TV.
His new book: Twitterville: How Businesses Can Thrive in the New Global Neighbourhoods, will be released September 8, 2009, and talks about potential business uses of Twitter.
Walter Schwabe had a chance to chat with Mr Israel and have a few questions about his views on social media answered. This will be the first interview in a series of them with Shel Israel, so be sure to check back often for the next interview! Read more
Another successful Social Web Meetup
We were lucky enough to have a couple of the guys from Touchmetric present their iPhone app, Surveyor, at Monday’s Social Web Meetup.
It’s an application that you can run on an iPhone or an iPod Touch and it allows you to do mobile surveys. It’s certainly cooler than the old pen and paper method and it tallies all the data automatically.
I’m familiar with the application as fusedlogic used it in a recent Edmonton social media project. It was cool that we were able to post real time survey results to the site. Who knows, maybe you’ll get more people responding to surveys because you get to plunk your answers down on a cool gadget?
Cool sites you’d have never known about
One thing I like about the Social Web Meetup is hearing about all the different projects people are working on and the different, cool websites they run across.
We had an opportunity to share our own site or a cool site we’ve been on, and here are a few:
East West Connect – Tait Lawton does Chinese translation and Chinese online marketing.
Community Intelligence – Tamara Stecyk’s blog. Congratulations to Tamara in her new job at Edmonton’s Foodbank.
Wefollow.com – This site, started up by Digg’s Kevin Rose, and is a Twitter directory organized according to interests. So, if you’re into #socialmedia @mashable is at the top of that category. Of course you should be following @fusedlogic as well! One thing to keep in mind is that just because someone is at the top of the list it doesn’t mean they’re an expert. Not by a long shot! These days I’ve noticed a large number of Twitter users out there who have thousands of followers and are following thousands but have a small number of Tweets. Numbers do not equate to knowledge, as much as some of these instant “experts” might hope.
Utils.me – It’s kind of a fun way to describe your utils, or relative satisfaction. Just add the hashtag #utils 50 or #utils -50 (or whatever number you like). Then check on the utils site and see the graph of your relative happiness over time. Doesn’t really seem to serve any purpose, but I’m sure someone will come up with one!
There were definitely more sites shared than I’ve listed and I probably missed yours. Let me know and I’ll put it up on the list, or just leave a comment with your site URL and a blurb about it.
Off to Brewster’s
After the last few Social Web Meetups we’ve headed to Brewster’s at Oliver Square where we’d reserved 20 seats. We’ve had no problem filling them either! We’ve always got to pull in a few more chairs. I had to laugh after reserving the tables there because they somehow had the impression that we were some kind of online dating service! I assured them we were not. I don’t know if anyone’s ever had a date because of a Meetup or a Tweetup in Edmonton, but you never know. Got any stories?
One thing that I have always enjoyed about the Social Web Meetup is the diversity of the group members. The experience level ranges from novice to veteran. There are some really interesting people who attend and I really enjoy hearing their stories. It’s great to be able to chat more at the pub afterwards too, and last night it seemed like almost everyone from the Meetup made it out to the pub. It’s the day after the Meetup and I’m already looking forward to the meeting next month!
Alain Saffel
Twitter and the media
Twitter has received a great deal of attention in Edmonton in recent weeks, with major Edmonton media outlets both reporting on Twitter and actually joining the conversation. The number of Edmonton Twitter users has really grown too.
It’s interesting because there’s been kind of a long running conversation on Twitter about breaking news and the mainstream media. Twitterers have been trumpeting their successes in breaking stories, leaving traditional media flatfooted. Twitter users have also taken some photos that mainstream media could never hope to get on the spot.
Smart phones with digital cameras mean that anyone can break news. It’s impossible for the media to compete with that, and the mainstream media will admit they just can’t break that kind of news as quickly.
The US Airways crash on the Hudson River photo is a classic example of how quick Twitter can be.
That’s fine in our instant gratification culture, but I think there are a lot of people on Twitter who fail to see the benefits of mainstream media. Twitter, in its construct, is limited to 140 characters per message. There’s no depth to it. You may witness a shooting, bombing or accident, but you are an observer, for what it’s worth. You can’t delve much beyond what you’ve witnessed and experienced.
My friend Patrycja Romanowska (@kamazonka) wrote a very good piece on the troubles in mainstream media recently. She pointed out that those in social media who deride mainstream media organizations tend to forget that the news is reported by those media organizations in the first place.
We’re not just referring to a Twitter user witnessing a plane crash, but to reporters sitting in dull city council meetings and reporting on what’s going to happen to your property tax bill next year, or attending a police press conference, etc.
So, if you’re one of the new media people inclined to gloat over the apparent death of mainstream media, keep in mind where you get the news to comment on in the first place.
This is not to say that people on Twitter can’t break news more quickly, but to understand the limitations of the medium. Twitter has as much depth as a mud puddle, but it is miles wide. You can’t beat its reach. If you want to understand what’s happening, you just won’t get it on Twitter. You need to go to print media, online or off, to get that depth.
Edmonton media on Twitter
I think it’s great to see many local media people getting on Twitter to see what it’s all about (Global Edmonton, Edmonton Journal, iNews 880). I’m sure they’ll find ways to leverage Twitter to help get their story out, and good for them. Twitter is excellent for that and I’ve noticed that when people become aware of local media personalities getting online, they get a large following on Twitter fairly quickly.
I find that fact interesting. If the mainstream media is apparently so irrelevant these days, why are so many on Twitter interested in following them and talking to them? It would seem that there’s more interest in mainstream media than you might hear on Twitter.
Not bashing Twitter
Having been a member of the media and a Twitter advocate, I really understand both sides of this issue. I also understand the limitations of mainstream media and the Twitter medium.
I love Twitter and find it to be an extremely useful tool. I know that I can find basic information out quite quickly on Twitter. Twitter excels at quickly pointing you towards important resources on almost any issue you can think of. Newspapers are where I find depth of understanding and can really learn more about all aspects of important issues.
While mainstream media is experiencing a great deal of difficulty lately, I’d attribute those difficulties more to the current economic situation and the reluctance of management to really take the Internet and social media as seriously as they need to. They’ve managed reactively and have jumped online, with the majority of media outlets not having quite figured it out yet.
So let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater and understand that Twitter and mainstream media are not a dichotomy. They can and will co-exist. You’re not going to wake up tomorrow and hear on Twitter that every mainstream media organization is now closed and your only source of information is online. I think some Twitterati would like that, but they live in a dream world.
Entering the social media with a strategy
I will be watching Edmonton media Twitterers to see how they use Twitter and experiment with it. Media organizations are smart to get involved in social media, but they should go in with a social media strategy to maximize the benefit they receive from it.
It’s easy for individuals to jump into Twitter and experiment, but large organizations should iron out some details and really understand the medium before they make the foray. It will save them a lot of headaches and make their efforts more effective.
Edmonton Social Web Meetup
At tonight’s Social Web Meetup, Edmonton’s expanding Twitter and social media community will be up for discussion, along with the media’s expanding presence on Twitter in Edmonton.
It should be an interesting discussion and I think it’s something that we could probably devote an entire Social Web Meetup to.
Get signed up on the Social Web Meetup page if you’re interested in going. It’s centrally located at NAIT at 7 p.m. and we head out afterwards to Brewster’s Pub at Oliver Square (104th Ave and 116 St.).
Alain Saffel
Guy Kawasaki interview Part 3
Here’s the final instalment in Walter Schwabe’s interview with Guy Kawasaki.
Click on the MP3 above to hear the third part of Walter’s interview of Guy Kawasaki.
Who do you think is probably one of the sharpest minds in the social web environment today?
“Probably Chris Brogan is one of them. The usual cast of characters like Dave Weiner, [Robert] Scoble, Mike Arrington, those people.”
Scoble has a large audience going back to when he was at Microsoft, so is it really that Scoble’s got that sharp of a mind or is it just that he’s got an audience?
“The two are not separable. I don’t think stupid people have large audiences, although you can’t make that case about some TV shows.”
“You’ll find that smart people have large audiences and large audiences find smart people.”
Walter: “He’s leveraging a multitude of technologies simultaneously to get content out the door, video being a large portion of what he does. We all know that. There’s sometimes a tendency for example to get into just reporter mode, if you will, and just kind of report on stuff that’s happening, as opposed to free thinking and leading the way on an innovation basis.”
Do you think he’s really being innovative in the stuff he’s doing?
“I think so. He’s definitely at the leading edge of social media stuff.”
What do you think of FriendFeed?
“We have Frienderati.alltop for the 50 or 100 most interesting people on FriendFeed. I am almost solely on Twitter. I have a FriendFeed account that all it does is aggregate my Tweets. I never go to FriendFeed in the sense that you mean. I never use FriendFeed. I’m just there. I grabbed my name on purpose in advance.”
“I hate to admit this, and it may be dangerous to admit this, but I primarily use these things for real business use of making Alltop better. Whereas I’m not trying to keep in touch with my friends. I’m not trying to get friends. I’m not trying to meet people and date people and all that other crap. It is a very very strict use for me.”
“I use Twitter, and therefore the FriendFeed aggregation of my Tweets, as a weapon for Alltop. Now to be an effective weapon I cannot simply promote Alltop because then it would just be seen as the Alltop channel, how interesting would that be?”
“So I have to put in a lot of things that are interesting in my Twitter feed about stuff that has nothing to do with Alltop: interesting sites that I’ve found, interesting tools that I’ve found, interesting pictures that I’ve seen, etc.”
“So there’s a lot of human nature stuff in my feed but all of this is because I use Twitter as a weapon, and that is probably not a popular thing to say. It’s probably even a dangerous thing to admit but that’s the truth. I am an anti-social social media person.”
Walter: “You’ve stayed exactly on that type of course. I see one of two types of Tweets from you, generally. One, it’s about something new that happened on Alltop or two, it’s some sort of unusual tidbit of information like someone saw Jesus in a piece of toast yesterday. I would have to give you the award for the most unusual bits of information on Twitter; the most unreal stuff.”
Guy: “That is completely on purpose, I hope you understand that some of that is automated. I take the stuff from Truemors and stick it into my feed using Twitterfeed. So that is on purpose but then I also… I spend a few, I don’t know about hours, but I spend a significant time every day looking for interesting websites and interesting things that I can Tweet about so that people want to follow me. It’s very very conscious. It’s not accidental. I do this so I can make Twitter a useful weapon for me.”
Walter: “One of the things that I’ve been doing, just as my own internal case study is I’ve been measuring my own results in a sense. So what I will do is, for example, I might be slightly negative with certain things about certain people or something, whether I get a response or what kind of response I get back. Then I might be overly happy and positive, so really kind of just simple things like that.”
Have you found there’s a type or bit of information or Tweet that gets you more response or more follows than others?
“I’m not that scientific. I don’t have the time to be that scientific. So basically if I find an interesting story about, like last night I found a very interesting website where it’s a web page and it tells you what time it is where you are, based on your computer and location. Then you can set an alarm and at 6 a.m. this alarm went off in my house telling me that it’s 6 a.m.”
Guy said he’s had problems at hotels where he hasn’t received wake-up calls or there have been issues with the clock radio and every one is different. Those are problems you don’t need at midnight.
“This is a web page that just sets the time and your computer starts chiming at that hour. This ain’t exactly… paradigm shifting, Nobel Prize winning technology, but it’s very useful for a traveller. So I Tweet that.”
“Now 17,000 people could have read that and a handful said this is really cool and useful. So now I just want to keep building credibility that when you read my Tweet or when you follow me, it’s not just Alltop. It’s also interesting stuff like this online alarm clock that is really useful when you travel.”
“Every day somebody sends a message to me that ‘I am no longer following you because you promote Alltop too much in your Tweets.’”
Walter: “I was one of those guys at one point, Guy. I was one of those guys at one point
Walter said he was one of those people and got frustrated with Guy’s Tweets and stopped following him. He blogged about it and Guy responded. Walter and Guy began to have a conversation.
Walter: “I started to recognize ‘okay, there must something else on the go here.’ And so you very quickly restored a positive feeling with respect to what you were doing. I was literally one of those guys at one point.”
Guy: “I think my model is sort of like NPR [National Public Radio] or public television. You know that the content is really good at NPR and public television, but every once in a while they have these donate-a-thons.”
Guy: “I want to have good enough content, interesting websites, interesting pictures, interesting things, whatever, so that you tolerate the advertising for Alltop. That’s the model, and if you can’t stand the advertising and if you can’t stand the fundraising at the public television station, you don’t watch it.”
Guy: “Life goes on. On the other hand, if you do value or humor or entertainment out of my other Tweets, then you tolerate my Alltop Tweets. If one person dropped me a day in 17,000 days I would have no followers.”
In light of baby boomers exiting the workforce in the next several years, how do you thing those organizations that resist change are going to fare versus those that really embrace change and are jumping into social media with both feet?
“This is a question that gets asked every 10 years for the last 200 years. Right? So, the people who don’t embrace change die. That’s why when’s the last time you used an NCR cash register or the last time you used a Data General computer? That’s the way it is.”
“This is not to say everybody has to embrace every thing but certainly if you embrace nothing you will die. …Even the most recalcitrant person who doesn’t want to adopt social media has to realize that to adopt nothing… maybe those people are still on rotary dial phone. Maybe they’re still on telegraph. That’s just the way it is.”
Do you think social media could be an effective HR tool to reduce attrition?
“I guess, conceptually, yes, but compared to what? Having clear goals set with clear functions and clear reporting and well managed? I would say if you do those things you don’t need Twitter and if you don’t have those things, even with Twitter, you’re going to have turnover. So social media is not going to fix everything.”
With the younger segments of the workforce, already labeled as transient, do you think social media can help them stay engaged?
“I think it’d play a role, however, it’s a small role. You’d do much better if you had clearly defined jobs with good supervision, interesting challenges and fair compensation. If you do that, you don’t need social media.”
“If you don’t do that, social media isn’t going to keep someone who doesn’t have a good boss, isn’t well compensated and has a crappy job.”
What about communication, in general, in an organization?
“That’s like saying 20 years ago, if you said do you think organizations with internal email systems will be able to retain people better? Well, yeah, I guess internal email and messaging will help, but the fact is, if you’re an organization that doesn’t communicate, slapping email isn’t going to fix the problem.”
What’s your personal mantra?
“Empower people.”
If you had to explain social media to an un-savvy audience, how would explain social media to them?
“It enables you to have conversations with anybody, anywhere, anytime.”
Feedback?
And that was it. It’s not often you get a chance to interview someone like Guy Kawasaki for such a long time. I’m sure I can speak for Walter in saying that we appreciate the time Guy spent talking to Walter. Long interviews aren’t always so interesting but I have to admit that after I listened to this one for the first time, it really didn’t feel like almost one hour.
Let us know what you thought of what Guy had to say and about how he uses Twitter.
Do you agree or disagree with what he has to say? Do you follow @guykawasaki?
Coming soon
We have an interview with Seth Godin that we’ll be putting up here soon. Keep checking back for that or sign up for our RSS feed.
And if you have any other questions or comments, you can always pass them along to me.
Alain Saffel alain@fusedlogic.com
Social Web Meetup at NAIT
Without a doubt, the turnout for last night’s Social Web Meetup was the best so far. I didn’t do the count but I think there were around 30 people in the room!
We were in NAIT’s new Nexen room that had two very large screens. They might give Imax a run for the money. SomethingTV was there chronicling the event and there were so many cameras there you’d think that it was a press conference.
Alberta government successfully implementing Web 2.0 & social media strategy
Our mystery guest was Troy Wason (@imparo on Twitter) and Troy gave us a great presentation about mypcmla.ca. Troy is the Senior Communications Officer – Social Media, for Government Caucus Communications.
That’s quite a mouthful, but boiling it down, Troy is helping the Alberta government with web 2.0. Yes, our government is successfully moving forward in engaging the public with modern new communications tools. That’s a good thing.
He said that there are some people who knock what he’s doing, but people would knock the party in power no matter what they did anyway. Regardless of your party affiliation, don’t you think that having your government open up a two-way dialogue online is a good thing? How can it be bad? As long as it’s a two-way dialogue, that’s a good start.
The site has only recently been rolled out and you should be seeing it change in the future. It’s worth checking out. If there’s something you’d like to see on the site, let them know.
Social media conversation at Brewster’s pub
@ivansf and @yuiIkari
We reserved a couple of large tables at Brewster’s pub in Oliver Square for a little socializing afterwards. At least half the people showed up there and we had a good time. Keeping on the theme of social media we had a good time talking about social media. I think it ended up being a popular choice, partly due to the 32 oz Schooner beers being on special.
Cameras were another popular topic, particularly Bruce Clarke’s new Canon 5D Mk II. I’m partial to Canon as well, having a Canon 30D on hand for the evening.
All in all it everyone seemed to have a really good time and it was nice to put faces to some of the names of people we might already be following on social media such as Twitter.
Next Social Web Meetup
Walter Schwabe of fusedlogic
Local realtor Jerry Aulenbach (@zoomjer on Twitter) sponsored the evening with refreshments. Thanks Jerry!
Our next Social Web Meetup is March 2 and will again be held at NAIT. Make sure you sign up on the site and RSVP whether or not you’ll be attending. Hope to see you there!
Alain Saffel
