Liveblogging: Twitter CEO Evan Williams Keynote at SXSW

We’re here at SXSW Interactive waiting for the keynote with Twitter CEO Evan Williams who will discuss "The Next Generation of Social Media." There has been some speculation that an announcement of Twitter’s ad platform could occur at this event, but that may or may not happen. We’ll see.

Either way, I’ll be liveblogging the keynote below. Please forgive the inevitable typos.

Williams will be interviewed by Umair Haque of the Havas Media Lab."

Liveblogging starts

02:00:  Still waiting…

02:01: Introduction beginning…

02:03: Here we go…

Evan Williams announces…A new platform for integrating twitter into websites: it’s called @anywhere

Signin using twitter id, your own publications can be followed starting with amazon,huffpost youtube yahoo,….a bunch of others.

Umair asks – if i’m at newspaper and i want to read one of fav columnits

 

ev: @anywhere reduces friction – not strict rules lleaves alot of innovation up to devs and third parties…a lot to be done with it

easily tweet from column itself. you may just want to follow the columlnist….straight from byline

"one of the things we’ve found with twitter is discovery is one of the hardest challenges…"

twitter is very easy way to keep in touch.

 

Umair: what are key benefits to site?

ev: give you connection back to users that you didn’t hav before – twitter drives tons of traffic, so should reslt in more followers for a site than just sending out links…

 

hopefully result in more people who are your fans using twitter, talking about you content…

you can bring in users’ tweets into your site, and create a sub community with it

Umair: people and organizations build stronger relationships?

about lowering barrier to that according to Ev.

03:13: Ev: We’re still focused pretty much on how do we create the best experience for users and businesses…

How do we create a business out of this? There’s tons of business users on twitter today..

We just want to make that better, easier, and faster.

What is Twitter? Maybe the right question is what is twitter evolving to?

It’s always been a difficult question to answer. We think of it as an information network to help people discover what they care about (in the world)

You can follow the flaming lips if that’s what you care about….you can be smarter and make better choices…that’s valuable…

its like saying "what’s the internet?" it’s about who you are. what you need at the time.

02:16. As we grow, one of the things that becomes painful is having a lot of centralized decision making and forcing poeple through slow processes, so we have teams and try to give them the resources they need…

Role for interacting with teams?

I don’t get into the nuts and bolts of code…I personally like to get inovled in product and strategy…what we should be doing…the nitty gritty, work wth product teams. half my time. the other half think about company and right culture internally…

been thinking a lot lately about how to scale the company and adopt the characteristics we want…how to define these characteristics..paralllel between service and the company we want to create – openness big value of twitter . transparency. a company that behaves by that as well. easy to say and harder to do as you grow…

02:19 Openness means a lot of things. we debated whether openness or transparency is the right word. you can let people see what you’re doing, but a door lets people come in and mess with what you’re doing ..users have taken twitter and morphed it into what they want it to be. ….we’ve encouraged and supported that. a core part of being open.

Your basic assumptions are usually wrong. "Openness is a survival technique."

We talk about nine assumptions you should have one of them is assume there are more smart people outside the compay than inside. it’s a key thing to remember as you get bigger…

  02:21:   Deals with Bing/Google first guys we shared full stream of public twitter data with. a lot of debate…people inside twitter…if there’s all this data that could be highly moentizable., does it make sense to give this data away? We came to the decision by going to the principle by how do we create the most value for the user….the reason google/bing could help that – ther’es valuable knowledge within the twitter network. there’s a lot of valuable tweeting that people don’t necessarily see…it’s a way to bring more valuable to the tweets.

02:24: It was a tough decision to come to….big partners aren’t who they want to limit it too..announced a couple weeks ago that they would license the data to other partners…

One of the exciting next things to happen with the ecosystem …creating core experiences that fill holes in user expereince…sharing photos, shortening links, apps, etc.

Real businesses built off twitter – cotweet,etc. we know twitter can be used for customer support, but twitter.com interface isn’t built for that. cotweet recently got acquired who wants to focus on that more.

We’d love to see much more focus on creating those deep experiences.
 
"We’re pretty open." THere is some control we need to employ. if we were completly open, it could hur the users in time….it has to be managed a lot – being open and having an open api makes it much easier to build apps to spam twiter. sending cease and desists every day to spammers – using the twitter brand…

One reason third parties are so important – a lot of people falling for these guys’ tricks…we have to assert some kind of control.

02:29: An email i recently got…to support – someone in chile thanking twitter for helping communication…this is very gratifying for us because we’ve always held it important to make twitter reach the weakest signals in the world…because twitter’s so simple….sms still really important to us…

We’re really happy we’ve been able to get sms coverage…not as easy as just providing a service on the internet.

02:21: To me it comes back to is someone getting value out of twitter. if they’re search google and they come upon a tweet and get value out of a tweet, we consider them a user…ther is a curve for adoption. "we have a pretty wide definition of user." we’re trying to lower the barrier…at the beginning a lot of focus was on telling the world what you’re doing…now we’re getting to the point where there’s something interesting on twitter for almost everybody…mentions flaming lips again…critical that it’s a two way medium, but this could be as simple as a retweet or a reply…

02:35 Press secretary of the white house started using twitter in an authentic way from inside the white house in a way that you wouldn’t usually see things….official channel, but they’re using it in a new way. "very fun" to see.  It’s about reducing the walls beween people who have a lot of influence and the people they influence. That’s the most profound promise of the Internet, and we’re riding the wave I started on ten years ago with blogging…"

02:41: There’s more and more stuff every day you may want to follow and search for…our goal is not just to maximize that. We understand that people have limited time/attetion. We have no interest in increasing just the amount of time you spend on the Twitter site. "If anything, we’d like to decease it."

The open exchange of info has a positive impact on the world…

02:46: The obvious stuff will be just signing in and tweeting more stuff, but there’s another level of value created by lowering frition (@ platform)

If the channel helps the business get better, that tha’s very powerful.

02:49: If you live on the web, you’re used to having a relationship with companies/services you use..

A lot of people walked out of this keynote. I’m pretty sure the guy next to me fell asleep. No joke.

 

Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.

The Death (Or Redefinition) Of SEO Discussed

Some people would have you believe that search engine optimization is a dying art, and depending on how you define SEO, that may be true. But at OMS 2010 in San Diego, Greg Jarboe, the president and cofounder of SEO-PR, explained that other definitions of SEO make it very much alive.

Here’s the thing: as Jarboe admitted, “The era of ten blue links is dead.” People also can’t expect to optimize a page by just changing keyword metatags anymore. Indeed, much of what so many SEO experts learned ten years ago has become irrelevant.

The trick is that expanded search, which can be defined as “search wherever it happens,” is now important. Facebook, eBay, and YouTube users all perform searches, after all, and their attention is valuable. So Jarboe concluded, “If you focus on those kinds of fundamentals, then SEO is alive and kicking.”

Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.

Social Media Lessons from the Big Brands: Intuit Edition

A recent survey from E-Consultancy, in association with the Online Marketing Summit, found that most businesses are still only experimenting with social media. With this in mind, it seems worth paying attention to how some big and successful brands use social media in their own strategies.

Are you still in the experimentation phase with social media? Tell us about it.

One company that is finding social media incredibly useful is Intuit, makers of popular financial software like TurboTax, QuickBooks, and Quicken. Seth Greenberg, Director of National Media Buying and Digital Marketing for Intuit’s consumer group answered some of our questions about how effective the company’s efforts are in social media.

Intuit actively participates on Twitter and Facebook daily, as well as YouTube, and some advertising with MySpace and LinkedIn. When asked if they focus on any network more than others, Greenberg says, "Currently, Twitter and Facebook are the focus because more than 50% of customers use it. Twitter offers a transparent, real-time engagement with customers and prospects on questions, issues or general comments they may have.  Through both networks we are able to provide relevant, timely and valuable information to consumers."

We asked what ways the company participates. Intuit has employees all across the company that have a hand in the social media strategy, as it relates to their own roles. This covers everything from communications to marketing, and product people.

"TurboTax is very involved in social, as are other business units in the company," he says. "We recently launched @TeamTurboTax where taxpayers on Twitter can tweet questions to @TeamTurboTax and get fast, free answers from a team of tax, tech and product experts providing help and advice to make tax time easier. The account is managed by a cross-functional team of employees including those from PR, product management, marketing and support."

"In addition, there is a TurboTax Twitter account to also engage with consumers, but also provide tax tips, information, contests, etc," he adds. "We do have a Facebook page as you know and an interactive TurboTax Tax Break Blog, that includes the latest tax information, surveys and tips. Also, three years ago, TurboTax launched its Live Community, now used by more than 11 million people, to provide free instant answers from TurboTax users and tax experts online."

We asked how Intuit is integrating its on-site (proprietary domains and products) and off-site social marketing activities. "The in-product experience with Facebook Share gives customers the option to share to their Facebook news feed, creating a network effect when they share a comment or post a review. We know that fifty percent of TurboTax customers are on Facebook," says Greenberg. "The Friends Like You campaign (which Gigya is a partner with) allows customers not only to post a review, but for anyone looking for 3rd party recommendations about what product to use and their experience, to see and sort through reviews from friends (in their network) or from people like them (based on similar tax situations). Also, our national advertising with NBC highlights the Friends Like You campaign and drives people online for a total integration from offline to online to product."

When asked what technologies the company has implemented to help it maximize word of mouth traffic, he says, "The work we do with Gigya, is an example of applying technology to connect to Facebook and Bazaarvoice with our customer reviews. Live Community is an in-house technology that leverages community, where TurboTax users and experts ask and answer questions.  It is free in all products, but also to anyone that has tax questions through our website.  These are some of the ways that also lead to great SEO results."

Intuit uses metrics like click-throughs, network effect of "pass alongs" (consider that average Facebook user has 150 friends), engagement and conversion (both of new versus existing customers). When asked how Intuit’s social media efforts have contributed to the company’s sales, brand loyalty, and web traffic, Greenberg says they’re learning that social can be a "very potent avenue to driving revenue, and even be more influential than other channels when applied the right way."

"We have very active and passionate customers. We see that with the Live Community, with our Inner Circle (an opt-in community where customers provide feedback, beta testing, etc) and the incredible amount of customer reviews we receive with an average of 4.5star rating," he says. "Social is a tactic to help drive traffic and is built in to many of the initiatives we employ (drive traffic to a specific link, like the blog or to TurboTax.com)."

Of course mobile factors into the strategy, even for a software company like Intuit. "Mobile is a key strategy for Intuit and figuring out where/when it is relevant for consumers.  We do have social tax apps, like TaxCaster (an app to help estimate your tax refund) and SnapTax (an app that allows CA taxpayers with simple returns to file a federal/state tax return from their iPhone)."

"We’re fortunate to have the passionate customers that want to express themselves and give us their feedback…Given the right tools/technology, our customers can be our best sales force (help to spread WOM).  Overall, we look at engaging with people in a way that adds value to them, providing them with the information they need to make the right decisions."

What do you think of Intuit’s social media strategy based on Greenberg’s description? Do you see ways that the company is using  social media that you could apply to your own business? Share your thoughts here.

Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.

Should Social Media Be Held Accountable for User Actions?

A judge in Milan, Italy has convicted three Google executives over a video uploaded to YouTube in a case, which could have serious implications for social media and ultimately, the web in general, at least in Italy. The video, uploaded back in 2006, featured a group of school kids bullying an autistic child. Google says it worked with Italian authorities to help ID the person responsible for uploading it, and the uploader and other participants from the video were sentenced to community service.

Now, in 2010, Google executives David Drummond, Peter Fleischer and George Reyes(3 out of 4 defendants) have been convicted for "failure to comply with the Italian privacy code." They were all found not guilty of criminal defamation.

Should these Google execs be held accountable? Comment here.

"In essence this ruling means that employees of hosting platforms like Google Video are criminally responsible for content that users upload," writes Matt Sucherman, VP and Deputy General Counsel – Europe, Middle East and Africa on the Google Blog. "We will appeal this astonishing decision because the Google employees on trial had nothing to do with the video in question."

This is a case of a business being held accountable for user-generated content. Isn’t the entire web generated by users? What if Google’s search engine (algorithmically) indexed something illegal. Should company execs be penalized, even if they comply with authorities’ requests for removal of such content? Ask yourself these questions:

-  What if YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc. had to shut down because it couldn’t control the things users post?

- What if every blogging platform had to do the same?

- What if you went to jail for comments posted on your blog?

You’re not likely going to go to jail for comments posted on your blog, but the point is, that by allowing people to post comments on your blog, you are allowing user-generated content, that you can’t necessarily control until after it’s been posted, unless you don’t let them go live until approving them. Google is being held accountable for content that users uploaded, which was not in their control until after the fact. YouTube users upload 20 hours of video every minute, according to Google.

You can see why this case is much bigger than just the specific instance it involves. The case is subject to appeal, but if it is not overturned, what will this mean for the web? Tell us what you think.

"The video was totally reprehensible and we took it down within hours of being notified by the Italian police," says Sucherman.

"To be clear, none of the four Googlers charged had anything to do with this video," he says. "They did not appear in it, film it, upload it or review it. None of them know the people involved or were even aware of the video’s existence until after it was removed."

He goes on to talk about how the case "attacks the very principles of freedom on which the Internet is built," also mentioning that European Union law dictates that hosting providers have a safe harbor from liability as long as they remove illegal content once they are notified of its existence. "If that principle is swept aside and sites like Blogger, YouTube and indeed every social network and any community bulletin board, are held responsible for vetting every single piece of content that is uploaded to them — every piece of text, every photo, every file, every video — then the Web as we know it will cease to exist, and many of the economic, social, political and technological benefits it brings could disappear," Sucherman says.

If rulings such as the one against these Google execs were to become commonplace, how much do you think that would affect the social media industry? Companies like Google, Facebook, MySpace, etc. couldn’t let users upload content, which essentially means social media couldn’t exist. User-generated content couldn’t exist. How could you blog? How could you leave a status update on Facebook, or upload a family photo to Picasa? There is always the possibility that some user could make a death threat or upload child porn, so if the companies behind the services that were used to commit these crimes were held accountable, how could their businesses continue?

That’s why Google is not only upset about the ruling against its executives, but calls it a "serious threat to the web."

Should Google (or any other site) be held responsible for content that users upload (even when said content is removed)? Share your thoughts.

Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.

A Look At The Visual Future Of Search

Anyone who tries to picture the future of search will indeed see quite a lot of images, according to Anne Kennedy. At SES Chicago, Kennedy talked to Abby Johnson about how, in the next three to five years, online searches should become a much more visual affair.

Kennedy, who’s the founder and managing partner of Beyond Ink and the founding partner and director of marketing at Joblr.net, noted, “We’re a visual species.” She then continued, “People tend to respond better to visual information . . .” In fact, in a study, Microsoft recently measured a 28 percent better response to visual data than text data.

So pics and videos will show up more and more following standard searches. Thanks to the trend started by the iPhone, videos will become more common in the mobile environment, too.

As a result, Kennedy said, “As marketers, we need to pay close attention to how we can provide visual information, whether in videos or in images, and have those optimized.” Creating a YouTube channel is one option, since the cost of entry is so low.

Then there are just a couple of things to remember about producing videos that are actually good: attempt to make them both well-written and well-lit.

Correction: Google actually had 9 billion queries in August instead of the 9 million referenced in the above video.

Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.

Next Page »