Taweet is the Future of Twitter

Taweet (beta) is a unique Twitter application that adds a whole new dimension to your Twitter experience: the future. The casual format of Taweet allows users to answer one simple question: “What are you doing in the future?” …and search the future to see what others are doing.

You create posts on Taweet in the same way you would add items to a calendar or timeline. You describe a future event and add the date and time it will occur. Your post is then added to your “Future Tweets” and is visible on your Taweet profile. You can view the profile of any Twitter user on Taweet.

When a future tweet is created it also posts to Twitter, with the date included, to let your followers know you have a new event coming up. At the date and time each of your posts is scheduled they also appear on your Twitter profile. The short-URL at the end of each Twitter post links to your topic page on Taweet where others can add comments. When a comment is made it posts to the Twitter account of the commenter, again linking back to the original topic.

You can use the “Post Now” feature to override scheduling. Tweets sent with the “Post Now” feature also include a short-URL to allow all of your Twitter posts to have threaded comments.

All future tweets are visible on the Taweet search page. Taweet’s future search is novel solution for promoting future events or searching the future to see what others are doing.

Mixing Business and Social Media

Does social computing really deliver significantly better business performance? Or is it merely a minor incremental improvement? While many cases have shown successful implementations of collaborative social media style applications in the workplace, the benefit of Enterprise 2.0 is still a hotly debated topic. While the core concept is the integration of Web 2.0 and social networking workflow models into business processes, there are still a wide range of interpretations and outcomes that make it difficult to hone in on measurable returns.

Here are ten issues that commonly arise when mixing business with social media…

1. Lack of social media literacy amongst workers.

2. A perception that social tools won’t work well in a particular industry.

3. Social software is still perceived as too risky to use for core business activities.

4. Can’t get enough senior executives engaged with social tools.

5. There is vapor lock between IT and the social computing initiative.

6. Need to prove ROI before there will be support for social software.

7. Security concerns are holding up pilot projects/adoption plans.

8. The needs around community management have come as a surprise.

9. Difficulties sustaining external engagement.

10. Struggling to survive due to unexpected success.

Source: Enterprise Web 2.0

MySpace Charity Week Begins!

By the powers vested in me by the blogosphere I hereby declare this MySpace Charity Week! I urge everyone (who still has an active MySpace account) to login for a few minutes and post a bulletin, a few recent pictures or say hello to a friend you haven’t spoken to in a while. The “Forgot your password?” link may come in handy.
 
MySpace has seen some tough times lately. This May Facebook trumped MySpace as the number one social network in the U.S. and shortly after MySpace laid off 400 employees in an effort to stay afloat.
 
To pay tribute to MySpace as one of the driving forces of the social media revolution I think this movement is well worth five minutes of our time this week. MySpace is also still a great place to hear a plethora of new music from your favorite bands and artists.
 
Here is a 140 character friendly message you can send out on Twitter and Facebook…
 
MySpace Charity Week! Give MySpace a helping hand in slow times by making a few posts this week. Pass the word on!

I give credit to newly appointed CEO Owen Van Natta for captain-ing a sinking ship so let’s toss him a lifeline and maybe keep MySpace above water while they compose a strategy to turn things around.

Twelpforce: Best Buy Customer Service via Twitter

This weekend I was glancing at the television and took in a Best Buy commercial that I know I’ve seen heard before. Obviously I wasn’t really paying attention prior because this time I noticed the Twitter URL plain as day on the screen. I’m the type of person who does more listening to the TV than watching due to the fact that my face is usually buried between two computer screens.

[Taking a minute to watch commercials one and two again on YouTube]

Now that I’ve had a chance to scrutinize the commercials I see they are acting out the Twitter reference. I “get it” because I actually use Twitter, but I can guarantee very few who have never tweeted will make the connection, even with the URL on the screen. The name Twelpforce will definitely have several people confused. If they made at least one vocal reference to Twitter during the commercial they would most likely see stronger results.

For the first time we see a major brand promoting a Twitter based service on network television commercials. Corporate websites taking a backseat to social media is a trending topic this year. Not too long ago we talked about Volkswagen promoting their Facebook fan page on their commercials.

Here is how Twelpforce works: consumers tweet a question @twelpforce or include the #twelpforce hash tag in their post and a pool of Best Buy employees can answer via any Twitter enabled device. What’s interesting is how Best Buy is generating a strong buzz around their efforts to use Twitter as a customer service platform. What’s flat out amazing is they have what are probably mostly hourly wage employees participating in customer service off the clock. @dustinbby tweets, “Having a blast helping customers with @twelpforce! Answered many questions in the last 2 days. Time flew by at my second job today.” Well at least off Best Buy’s clock.

Facebook Plummets Productivity in the Workplace

A recent independent study conducted by Nucleus Research reports approximately 1.5% of enterprise productivity is lost due to employees accessing Facebook in the workplace. The study shows that 77% of company employees have a Facebook account and nearly half of all workers access Facebook on company time.

One in 33 employees say they only access Facebook from the office and some employees admit to using Facebook for several hours per work day.

“If your profitability is say two percent, this could be the difference between staying open or closing shop,” says Rebecca Wettemann, vice president of research for Nucleus Research.

I am curious to know if they asked employees what else they would be doing to kill time in the absence of Facebook. Rubberband ball anyone?

Excuse me while I update my Facebook status.

Source: Nucleus Research

Companies Capitalizing on Social Networks

Want a great deal? Check what your favorite brands are posting on Facebook and Twitter. Interacting with consumers through social media is becoming increasing more vital to corporate marketing strategies. The ability to globally broadcast praises and complaints about companies and brands has businesses very active on social networks.
 
“All the departments have gotten some sort of feedback from customers online. We benefit and our customers benefit,” says Amber Talbot, online public relations specialist for Scottrade. Talbot builds relationships with customers by monitoring what is being said about Scottrade online. The ability to search in real-time through Twitter allows companies to track keywords related to their brands and trademarks.
 
Starbucks spokeswoman Bridget Baker says, “It’s a great way to connect with customers. It’s where the people are.” Starbucks has almost 250,000 followers on Twitter and over 3 million fans through Facebook. This week Starbucks is giving away 800 coupons per hour for pints of ice cream to Facebook fans.
 
Scottrade and Starbucks also leverage the power of YouTube to offer customers educational and promotional videos.
 
MasterCard posts company news through Twitter, Victoria’s Secret and Gap provide original content for their Facebook fans, Zappos frequently tweets and posts specials from it’s 6pm.com discount site, and Southwest Airlines is active on the above mentioned along with Flickr and LinkedIn.
 
These are just a few examples of how social media networks are becoming important tools for businesses and consumers to communicate and interact.

Source: US News

Twitter Ten on 10 Follow Report, July 2009

Happy Follow Friday! Welcome to another edition of Twitter Ten on 10. If you understand what real-time is all about then you are probably already on Twitter, if not we need to have a chat. Top executives, marketers, entrepreneurs and technologists are tweeting out knowledge, ideas and news every second. If you blink you might miss it! Well, not really, you can actually search Twitter to see what is being said on pretty much any topic. So if you weren’t on Twitter at the beginning of this paragraph you better be now! Here are some influential tweeters to start following…

@kevinrose
Kevin Rose, entrepreneur, rock climber and founder of Digg

@briansolis
Brian Solis, principal of FutureWorks

@chrisbrogan
Chris Brogan, president of New Marketing Labs

@dmscott
David Meerman Scott, marketing speaker and author of The New Rules of Marketing and PR

@ginatrapani
Gina Trapani, book author, programmer, and founding editor of Lifehacker

@ijustine
Justine Ezarik, blogger, geek, internet video producer

@leeodden
Lee Odden, CEO at TopRank Online Marketing

@prsarahevans
Sarah Evans, social media freak and director of communications at Elgin Community College

@unmarketing
Scott Stratten, president of Un-Marketing.com and Jedi of viral marketing

@missrogue
Tara Hunt, author of The Whuffie Factor and owner of Citizen Space

@collabocom
Collabo.com, show some love!

If you have any recommendations for us please post in the comments below.

FriendFeed File Sharing Promotes Collaboration

Today FriendFeed rolls out a new file sharing feature to expand collaboration across the social networking platform. File sharing has been a common request by users, especially organizations that take advantage of FriendFeed groups. The new file sharing feature functions similar to photo sharing: simply click the “Files” link below the post box (conveniently located next to the “Photos” link) and browse for the file you would like to upload. You can also share files and photos via email through share@friendfeed.com by adding attachments.

Common file types that FriendFeed expects to see users uploading include documents, spreadsheets, Photoshop files, MP3s (limited to three per day), and altogether does not allow video or executable files. While a daily MB limit has not been publicly specified, we expect that FriendFeed will come to a determination in the near future based on common usage.

Latest Enterprise 2.0 Developments, Part 2

The Enterprise 2.0 Conference began today in Boston. Over 20 companies were chosen to announce their latest developments for business collaboration and enterprise social networking. Following up with Part 1 of this article, here is what will be introduced at the conference over the next few days…
 
nGenera Corporation unveils nGen Collaboration to enable companies to increase efficiency and productivity through an innovative collaboration platform. nGenera is also the creator of Collaborative Enterprise Management (CEM).
 
Open Text Social Media supports compliance and security while giving companies the social productivity tools that employees desire, enhanced by mobile access through devices such as the iPhone and Blackberry.
 
PIEmatrix launches project management “made for humans” through integrated “pie” and “matrix” models designed around the way people think. Create teams, manage, and execute projects in real-time.
 
RollStream enterprise community management and collaboration software announces a new Onboarding solution for accelerating growth within supplier and customer oriented communities.
 
SimpleFeed content syndication publishing and analytics platform will announce Twitter integration to allow users to seamlessly publish content to their Twitter accounts.
 
Socialtext announces a distributed social spreadsheet known as Socialcalc, updates to the Signals micro-blogging application including a full page Web UI, and will introduce a new mainstream offering this week at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference.
 
Sun Microsystems unveils SLX Enterprise, a video community platform for business. SLX enhances communication and collaboration between employees, customers, and partners through social media.
 
ThoughtFarmer releases the latest version of it’s turnkey social intranet software. New features in ThoughtFarmer 3.5 include Discussion Capture for monitoring email threads, an improved People Directory, tree-view navigation, and enhanced performance.
 
Tomoye Community Software 3.0 is a social community platform which can be deployed on top of Microsoft SharePoint or as a standalone system.
 
Twinsoft introduces Convertigo Enterprise Mashup Server 4.5 to capture Web and legacy data and processes to create Web 2.0 enterprise mashups.
 
Yakabox 3.1 knowledge sharing software from Yakabod combines collaboration, social networking, content management and search with security features that make it the choice of the U.S. intelligence community.

Enterprise 2.0 Products Debuting this Week, Part 1

The Enterprise 2.0 Conference will begin on Monday in Boston and more than 20 companies have been selected to showcase their new enterprise collaboration and business social media offerings. Here is what we can expect to see this week…
 
Alcatel-Lucent is integrating real-time communications and Web 2.0 technologies with OmniTouch My Instant Communicator.
 
ArtusLabs mixes collaboration and social networking with refined scientific data mining to drive research with Ensemble for Life Science 4.5.
 
blueKiwi combines social recommendations, micro-blogging, idea generation and widgets into a new business platform with bK2009 Social Board.
 
Bluenog will showcase an open source Enterprise 2.0 development platform, or Integrated Collaborative Environment: ICE 4.5.
 
Box.net has created a partnership with a global provider to offer users anytime-anywhere document shipping.
 
Brainpark productivity and collaboration software will announce a new Task Awareness system that learns from employee work history to provide recommendations on contacts and resources.
 
Central Desktop has developed a SaaS mico-blogging platform for business.
 
CMS Watch has updated it’s Enterprise Social Software & Collaboration research and will release the new results.
 
Joyent will announce two new products at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference. Develop, deploy and scale web applications with the Joyent Smart Platform. My.Joyent allows companies to monitor and control their Cloud Infrastructure within the Joyent Cloud via a new web interface.
 
Leverage Software will debut major updates to it’s business social networking platform including new conversation tools and enhanced privacy.
 
NewsGator’s Social Sites 3.0 beta, which is built on top of Microsoft SharePoint, will offer new features including self-assembling wikis called Socialpedias and the ability to rate Topic Experts.