The Sounding Board

Twitter News to Keep Your Eye On

The last few weeks have certainly been busy for the team over at Twitter. If you blinked over the course of the last week, you likely missed some key announcements from the real-time information sharing giant:

• Acquisitions: Twitter made headlines last week when it was announced that the company had quietly acquired my favorite third-party Twitter app, TweetDeck. While TweetDeck's acquisition has been the subject of rumors for months, TechCrunch was all over this one weeks before anyone else, reporting that the purchase price was between $40-$50 million. And this morning, Y Combinator-backed start-up AdGrok announced that they too had been acquired by Twitter, bringing their search engine marketing analytics and campaign management know-how to Twitter's revenue engineering team.

• Photosharing: According to the team over at TechCrunch, Twitter is set to launch a photosharing service to compete with Twitpics and yFrog. Details are slim at the moment, but it's definitely one to watch. As TechCrunch said, "This shouldn't really come as a surprise to anyone, as photosharing is the next logical step of Twitter expanding its in app experience." TechCrunch followed up yesterday's rumor with more details today, including that Apple's new iOS 5 will include the option to share images on Twitter, baked into the OS.

• New Follow Button for Your Website: To round things out, earlier today,  Twitter launched the Follow Button, "a new way to discover and instantly follow Twitter accounts directly from the websites you visit everyday." For brands, adding the Follow Button to your site is a no-brainer. It enables people to follow you on Twitter in one click. Head over to twitter.com/followbutton for instructions on how to add the Follow Button to your site.

-Stephanie

100 Marketing Stats in One Useful Resource

Sometimes, you just need a great stat, chart or graph to help make your point. Finding that perfect *something* can be a bit of a pain sometimes.

For anyone interested in stats or slides related to inbound vs. outbound marketing, search engine optimization, social media, blogging, Facebook or Twitter, the great team over at Hubspot has pulled together a fantastic resource titled "100 Awesome Marketing Stats, Charts and Graphs."

I've already saved this one for future use (in Evernote, of course), and imagine that others might find this to be a useful resource as well.

-Stephanie

Everything's Better in Grozny

Hot Wing Recipe Lock-Down  in Buffalo, NY  (Credit: Public Domain)

Ah, tourism marketing. Is there anything more desperate or hilarious?

--Jonathan

Apps I love

Yesterday, I was having a conversation with someone who asked me what my go-to applications are these days. I love apps that help me do things better, easier or faster (all with a fantastic UI!), and am constantly trying out new things. At the end of the day, however, the following list represents apps I consistently call my favorites, and apps I can't imagine ever living without.

Check out each of these apps by clicking on the application names.

My favorites are below, but I'd love to hear... what are the applications you can't live without?
-Stephanie

Pretty much like everyone else in the entire world, Evernote is my favorite application of all time. And what's not to love about it? I like to think of Evernote as the Internet's version of Moleskin notebooks. I use it to jot down notes and ideas (including a running list of blog topics I'll get to someday... I promise), quickly save articles and links I want to check out later (thanks to the "Clip to Evernote" extension in Google Chrome), and for a wide range of personal stuff (I use it for everything from my online recipe book to trip planning, and as a place to save gift ideas for others).

Evernote is available basically everywhere I want it to be (I use the desktop and iPhone apps, and the web version), And, while it's free, I popped for a premium account last year because I genuinely love it and use it for way more than you'd ever imagine.

Somewhat in the same camp as Evernote (in terms of capturing links and things I want to save), I just got an invite to join Pinterest this week. I'm only three days in, but think it may have already won me over. (If you're looking for a Pinterest invite, let me know as I have a couple I'd be happy to share.)

Teuxdeux
I love, love, love Teuxdeux. It's my favorite to-do list app ever, which says a lot because I've tried out a number of them (including Remember the Milk, Google Tasks, and Todoist). Teuxdeux is by far the cleanest and most simple task management app I've used. It's browser-based, but I also use the iPhone app to have my list with me everywhere I go.

(I'm hooked on Teuxdeux, but have recently been hearing fantastic things about Wunderlist and Todo.ly.)

Google Reader
I don't buy any argument that says RSS is dying. Google Reader is my morning newspaper, with more than 150 feeds from my must read roster of media outlets and blogs. I'm not alone, and I don't see that changing any time soon. I've used Google Reader since October 2005, and while I've often wanted to like other RSS readers better (I'm looking at you, Feedly), I always find myself back at Google Reader.

The only thing I don't love about Google Reader is its iPhone app (and its comparatively weaker functionality). For my mobile RSS reader, Reeder is my absolute favorite (I also really liked MobileRSS, but ultimately preferred Reeder's UI).

If you're a fellow Google Reader user, feel free to follow my shared items!

TweetDeck
I've gone back and forth between TweetDeck and Seesmic Desktop for keeping up with my personal Twitter feed, but today, TweetDeck is my third-party Twitter app of choice on the desktop. While they offer many similar features, TweetDeck has always seemed a bit more intuitive to me, and Seesmic has a few bells and whistles (like its plugins) that I'm just not very interested in using.

When it comes to client Twitter accounts, I tend to bounce between CoTweet and HootSuite, preferring to keep these feeds separate from my personal account. While I significantly prefer CoTweet's cleaner look and feel, I greatly prefer HootSuite's customizable dashboard layout and more robust analytics.

Dropbox
Is anything better than Dropbox in terms of online backup and file sharing? If there is, I haven't seen it. It's just fantastic, and you get up to 2GB free, which has always been more than enough for my needs.

Live-Tweeting the Nixon-Kennedy Debates

David Plouffe demonstrates proper  punching technique on self  (credit: public domain)

I almost missed a nice little Time.com story last week about the original Odd Couple—messy traditionalist Oscar Axlrod and neat-as-a-pin metrosexual Felix Plouffe.

And now, @SecretService gets in on the action with...

And now, @SecretService gets in on the action with a Twitter post misstep of their own...
http://mhudack.com/post/5614356778/secret-service-fox-news

The CDC Provides Their Official Zombie Disaster Plan

You can never be too prepared for a disaster, whether it's on a small scale (e.g., Microsoft Word shuts down as you're trying to make edits to a press release) or something much more dangerous, like an earthquake. Apparently the CDC thinks that disaster and emergency preparedness can apply to a lot of things - including a zombie apocalypse. Yep, that's right. The CDC has a sense of humor that frankly, is pretty refreshing as far as government agencies go.

From the CDC.

In his "Preparedness 101: Zombie Apocalypse" post, Dr. Ali Khan, Assistant Surgeon General and Director, Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response, CDC, writes about how the CDC's coordinated response to a zombie invasion wouldn't look that much different than responding to a flood or pandemic outbreak. The post is part zombie-culture geek (he says his favorite movie is Resident Evil), part brilliant social media marketing campaign to educate the public about disaster preparedness. In addition to the downloadable widgets, buttons and badges carrying the zombie theme and CDC look and feel, Dr. Khan shares some important tips for your emergency plan should zombies came knocking on your door:

"...Plan your evacuation route. When zombies are hungry they won’t stop until they get food (i.e., brains), which means you need to get out of town fast! Plan where you would go and multiple routes you would take ahead of time so that the flesh eaters don’t have a chance! This is also helpful when natural disasters strike and you have to take shelter fast."  

Since Wednesday, when the story really went viral (pun intended), the CDC site has crashed from all of the site traffic. It should be working now and I recommend you read it. It is a really great example of using an idea from pop culture to hook the public, then drawing the connections to real-world situations and engaging in social media platforms where people can spread the message. 


Between the AMC show "The Walking Dead," which happens to take place in Atlanta where the main CDC building is located, and possible zombie sightings in our own backyard, I think this campaign couldn't have come out at a better time. What's your favorite zombie apocalypse tip?


--Pheniece 

Social Media Breakdown: Infographic

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words...

…or in this case, followers. No, it’s words. No wait, followers. Ok, let’s agree on both and move on.

A picture taken and Tweeted by a passenger on a flight bound for Palm Beach, Fla. has created a Twitter frenzy for herself. In her final minutes ascended in the air on Monday, Stefanie Gordon saw the launch of Endeavour’s final space shuttle mission and Tweeted a picture of the mind-blowing event. (If you’re like me and the rest of the 99.9 percent of the population who watched the event unfold on television, you’d probably agree that the sight, even from that view, was absolutely breathtaking. Side question: Do you think the airline charged its passengers extra for that experience? Just asking…)

Let’s look at the timeline: When Gordon left the NYC airport, she had 1,800 followers. Hours after Tweeting her picture, she found herself with 1,000 new connections, and three days later she had over 5,000 total. You do the math – it’s impressive.

Photographers live to take a picture like this. Journalists live to tell it. Gordon lives her life as an event planner, but found herself unintentionally living the dream of others. The lesson here? One blog post, podcast or Tweet could send you or your company into a tailspin, for better or worse. Be mindful of what you share, but more importantly, be proud of it. You never know whose shoes you could be wearing.

So which is it? Is this picture worth a thousand words or a thousand followers? It’s a toss up.

- Mary Evans

The Death of Print (An Infographic)

News of the slow but steady, and unfortunate decline of print media is nothing new. The team over at Get Satisfaction has published another fantastic infographic on the death of print newspapers and magazines, and the rise of digital media.

While 2010 may not have been the year that print died, it was certainly the year it bled ink. With magazine and newspaper subscriptions continuing to dip, and the introduction of the "print killer" - the iPad - there is no telling how many days print may have left.

-Stephanie

From the Get Satisfaction Blog

Facebook v. Google: Slapfight Escalates to PR Mudslinging

By now, everyone knows about Facebook’s attempted “whisper campaign” against Google, which attempted to stir up the Privacy Furies over Google’s new social network-like tool, Social Circle. Facebook’s public relations firm pointed to Social Circle as way for Google to scrape personal/private data from their users and calling it a major violation of privacy.

Beyond just pitching this notion out to journalists, bloggers and other influencers, the firm went a step further, offering to place opinion pieces authored by these influential thought leaders in high profile outlets like the Huffington Post. They apparently reached out to the wrong guy in Chris Soghoian, who, when the PR firm declined to name their “mystery client,” posted the email exchange in its entirety for the Internet to see.

This is a bad situation all around – it makes the PR firm look bad (I’d rather not name them in this post, but pretty much every article written on this fiasco puts them front and center), it makes Facebook look bad and it really makes the entire public relations industry look bad. Google’s no snow-white angel either, but they’re technically the victims in this instance.

So what lesson did we learn here? It’s one thing to run a campaign based on a broad, sweeping issue – privacy, for example. But calling out specific competitors of your NAME REDACTED client is very, very bad, not only because it’s unethical and likely to start a name-calling arms race, but it also raises suspicion in the eyes of whomever you’re pitching.

Keep it clean and you won’t find your firm (or your client) being dragged through the mud.

-John Terrill

TMA's May Event: "Creating Products that People Want to Buy"

The Technology Marketing Alliance has announced its May program entitled, "Product Management 2011: Creating Products that People Want to Buy."

The event will feature Steve Johnson from Pragmatic Marketing. Steve Johnson is a recognized thought-leader on the strategic role of product management and marketing. Broadly published and a frequent keynote speaker, Steve has been a Pragmatic Marketing instructor since 1996 and has personally trained thousands of product managers and hundreds of company senior executive teams on strategies for creating products that people want to buy.

Steve is a popular keynote speaker at forums throughout North America and author of many articles on technology product management. His ebook on product management has been downloaded thousands of times. He also blogs on the topic at productmarketing.com.

Event details are as follows:

Wednesday, May 11, 2011
7:30 –8:00 Networking
8:00 - 9:30 Program
9:30 - 10:00 Q&A and Networking
Tower Club - Tysons Corner
Cost: $75

For this event, we invite you bring along your product management and marketing folks to interact with other members and their teams. Note: non-members must accompany members to this event. All attendees will be entered in a drawing to win a copy of Tuned In, co-authored by Craig Stull, founder and CEO of Pragmatic Marketing.

Join your TMA members for what promises to be an engaging, dynamic session on successful strategies for product management and product marketers. Steve will specifically address staffing considerations, resources, and organizing priorities for products.

Click here to register for this event.  Hope to see you there.

In the meantime, take a look at Pragmatic's most recent Annual Product Management and Marketing Survey Results.

-  Katie Hanusik