Back in April I saw an article by security blogger (and CSTO?) Bruce Schneier titled Fake Facts on Twitter and was intruiged. In the beginning of April Bruce had instituted his own little Twitter experiment to see how effectively he could spread false facts among a group of eager republicans who were bickering over the details of the first stimulus. The results were shocking as he was able to spread his false information quickly and to a wide audience using Twitter and some social engineering as tools.
Let’s break this hack down and see if we can learn something about this and apply it to the legitimate business world.
1. Bruce created a Twitter account with a theme targeted for his audience,
2. He then harvested follower lists of popular republican Twitter accounts.
3. He used people’s tendencies to “follow back” to build a list of over 1000 followers.
4. He then spread his message which was highly targeted (and effective) to the audience.
In summary what Bruce did was create a brand, identify his market, acquire access to an audience (using Twitter) and then market to that audience his message.
Pretty simple when you break it down, and when you consider the reality that the effect would have been almost exactly the same even if the data was true, you start to realize how your business can benefit from social tools like Twitter combined with some creative thinking.
One of the key missteps I see many business owners make is they do steps 1 and 4, but without steps 2 and 3 their marketing and overall efforts in getting the word out either fall on deaf ears (wrong market) or aren’t heard at all.
Successful Twitter brands use the platform to build relationships, and engage the audience. Brands who simply ‘broadcast’ lose a majority of the benefits Twitter and social networks have to offer.
Further Reading: Swine flu: Twitter’s power to misinform
A big ol’ Google Train is coming down the tracks. SugarCRM … you might be next.
Some people will debate this, however I believe this is just the X step towards Google dominating the online app world and pushing consolidation of the smaller players.
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Google has released a new version of Google Apps called “Team Edition” that, on first blush, doesn’t offer much that’s new. The same document, spreadsheet, instant messaging, calendaring, and start page functionality that we’ve come to expect from Google Apps is here. But now it’s easier for groups within established organizations (businesses, universities, etc.) to collaborate using Google Apps without getting their entire organization to buy into Google Apps (quite literally) first.
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Mashable is offering a free listing on their (somewhat bare) marketplace for the next 48 hours. Expect things to get crowded, but currently there are only 4 listings, so depending on the first update you could get some good exposure from this highly ranked blog.
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This week we’re soft-launching something that I think fills a big need: a single place to buy, sell and trade modern websites, services and more. What’s more, everyone who lists within the next 48 hours gets a week’s free listing. It’s called, at least for now, the Web 2.0 Marketplace.
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Increasingly, companies are listing themselves on eBay and other marketplaces, but telling us they got more leads from Mashable. Pligg, for example, told us about the sale before anyone else. Or folks are trying to sell their Facebook applications, provide development services for Facebook applications and MySpace widgets, looking for suitable job candidates, looking to advertise their events and so on. Clearly, there needs to be a single point for all this activity. So here are some of the things you can list on the Web 2.0 Marketplace:
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Holy crap!
As I was browsing this AM looking for stories to clip+posts I see this on Techmeme>VentureBeat.
There’s going to be a lot of press and traffic to the CM site/service in the next few weeks. Let’s hope they handle it well!
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Forbes buys social bookmarking site Clipmarks
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 Clipmarks, one of the many startups that helps users collect and organize information from around the web, is being bought by Forbes Magazine, an inside source tells us.
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The New York-based startup lets you select text, photos or videos on web pages, then use Clipmark’s bookmarking feature to save the URL and your selected information to your Clipmarks folder. From there, you can share your “clips” with friends and colleagues and even search to find the most popular clips on the Clipmarks site.
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Amazon is the sleeper of the second generation tech weapons race. Most conversations about buyouts and investment in the tech industry have Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo! mentioned but you rarely hear much buzz around what Amazon is plotting.
‘undisclosed amount’ is how much they’re putting into Amie ST.
The news via VentureBeat is typical Amazon… “close to the vest’
We know music is social, and finding new music needs to be fun. Music discovery is best served by communication between people, so we reward fans when they recommend songs to their friends by giving them credit to buy more music. Whether you spend two minutes or two hours on Amie Street you are connected to a world of music lovers discovering new music together.
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We support our artists by giving them 70% of song sales and never taking ownership of their creative work. We want all artists on Amie Street to be successful and we believe that our unique marketplace will accomplish this goal to a degree never achieved before.
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I have no idea why this post has my header in the bg and looks like a total friggin’ disaster. ClipMarks doesnt make handling images very smooth and their code uses tables and inline CSS yikes!
feedbuddy answers the question no one asked; What is my RSS twin like?
It’s all about connecting people I know but who really wants to meet their RSS twin or cousin (assuming there’s no exact match)? But if there is a match, won’t some sort of portal open and you’ll both be sucked into some bizarro RSS world?
feedbuddy.de – Find your buddy by feed!
What is feedbuddy.de?
Feedbuddy.de offers you a completely free web portal to easily find buddies that have the same interests like you.
How does it work?
Subscribing to and reading special RSS-feeds characterizes you and your very special interests: they add up to your feed-profile. Once you have entered your feed-profile at feedbuddy.de you can easily find people with a matching feed-profile. As they have subscribed to at least one of your feeds, it is very likely you two have the same interests. Via various possibilities you can contact your new feedbuddy and discuss your special interests with him. This ensures you don’t end up with deadly boring contacts you don’t know what to talk about but with feedbuddies having the same special interests like you.
Sign up now
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CN is offering to post a Press Release for $49. Has anyone tried this and got good results? I’d be curious as several of my upcoming projects are perfect for this service.
If the math done by John Chow is correct and any indication of real payout rates for the AGLOCO network, the concept and company is doomed for failure.
For those of you who don’t know, John Chow (a minor Digg/blog celebrity) has amassed over 21,000 AGLOCO sign ups all originating from his highly trafficked and highly profitable blog. Having 21K referrals has put John on the top of the list in total referrals and most likely represents the highest payout of all AGLOCO members.
I’ll quote Chow from his blog posting yesterday so I don’t mis interpret what he was saying:
Basically, the ad revenue will be divided by the total number of network hours to arrive at a cost per hour (this is after AGLOCO takes their 10%). Once you have your cost per hour, take that number and multiply it by your total accumulated hours. For example I have 5,665.9 hours accumulated. If each hour was worth 15 cents, I would get $849.88.
So John Chow, at the literal top of the pyramid (pun intended) of the AGLCO scheme has only made $849.88 from having twenty one thousand referrals and 5,665.9 hours accumulated!
What this means for average users with almost no referrals is making money from AGLOCO is nearly impossible. To compare John’s payout with my potential payout (I have 1 inactive referral), you’d have to do some rough math;
$849.88 / 21,000 = $0.04
Which basically means I make more money finding random change on the ground than I would from AGLOCO. Unless of course I refer thousands and thousands of users and dupe them into running the crappy ad bar (a whole separate story to come.)
Second Life is one of those companies that just continues to amaze me in regards to how it is connecting with ‘real’ society and also how it continues to be a very profitable and expanding business/network. Always open with their metrics, SL released a newly updated Virtual Economy Metrics Excel notebook document (what no Google Documents or OpenOffice? how 1.0 icky) highlighting their various growth patterns.
Some highlights:
Total Hours Used:
Sept 2003 51,699
January 2007 10,817,668
Currency Exchange Summary
July 2006 USD Sales: $2,203
January 2007 USD Sales: $622,839
TechCrunch is estimating that Second Life is pulling in around $670,000/month in ‘hosting revenue’ or real estate sold in SL. That’s almost 8.1 million dollars per year, and with the kind of growth they have been showing that’s only going to increase in 2007.
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