Don't Leave Your Brain at the Door: Why Twitter is just a data-point

In high school I took an SAT review course with Princeton Review. The idea of the course was to teach you strategies for taking the test. Under their system, you didn't just know definitions of words and then pick the best answer, but you learned how to eliminate answers and, if necessary, make the best guess.

That said, the week before the test the teachers reminded us "Don't leave your brain at the door." That is, if you see something on the test that you know immediately, don't bother going through all the motions, just answer the question!

The same rules apply to social media. I'm watching with fascination as people become enamored with Twitter and look to the number of followers as a measure of influence.

Sure, it's great to have 500, 1000 or 20,000 followers, but does that translate into real influence today? I'm not so convinced. It may mean something down the road, but today it's just a number.

As the Web Ecology Project points out in its report on Twitter influence:

In general, the more followers a user possess, the more impact he appears to make in the Twitter environment, because he seems more popular (namely, that users follow him). This statement makes sense assuming that Twitter acts as a successful broadcast medium, where a user publishes a tweet and it is read by every follower. However, this view of Twitter as a broadcast medium ignores the potential for users to interact with the content on the platform.

The report takes some interesting approaches to influence, looking not just at numbers of followers and friends, but also in how information is used, retweeted or referenced by other members of Twitters.

Of course, the analysis is limited to Twitter and relative only there.

Rapleaf also conducted an interesting study and found that there's a growing popularity gap. Meaning, once you're popular on Twitter, you become popular for being popular. During the recent growth surge on Twitter, the more popular people saw their follower number surge at a rate much faster than people who were less popular.

Let's look at Newton, Mass. for a moment, if you were to look at the TwitterGrader "Twitter Elite" rankings for my hometown, you'd see that Sean Lindsay (883 followers) is ranked 8th and Software Analyst Judith Hurwitz (2075 followers) comes in 10th. Greg Reibman (224 followers, pictured right) doesn't rank. Yet, he is the publisher of the TAB Newspapers and in this city that carries a lot of weight. People read it, both online and off, and talk about the articles all the time. Greg helps drive the local conversation. Though, that conversation doesn't always spill over onto Twitter, it happens on the phone, in front of schools, at bus stops and over breakfast.

Also not on the list is Mayoral Candidate Setti Warren (120 followers) who served in the Clinton administration and was Chief of Staff to John Kerry. Those are some good friends to have.

If you were to rely on Twitter and the online tools that measure influence, you wouldn't find these names.

If your corporate goal was to influence behavior in Newton you could use Twitter, but it would only accomplish part of your goal. Twitter is just a single data point in a much larger picture.

Part of this is Twitter's age, but part is that the tools to measure online influence don't extend to an offline environment. Influence, in large part, remains a one-to-one game, one played by shaking hands, looking into people's eyes and saying "hello." It's not about just adding followers to Twitter.

That said, Twitter offers a great use for helping viral campaigns, especially those online. It is a wonderful starting point and can provide some useful and immediate market intelligence. And of course, you need the followers to even start a campaign.

But don't leave your brain at the door.

What Role does Google Play in Editorial Decisions?

The blog at the Nieman Journalism Lab has two seemingly unrelated stories on its site today that I thought actually bring up an interesting question.

Today's top story centers around a directive by the New York Post not to credit bloggers or other sources who break stories first. In the case written about in the Neiman article, which is worth a complete read, the reporter, Alex Ginsberg, re-reported the work of a Brooklyn blogger who uncovered a major zoning violation in her neighborhood. (side note: Ezra Butler recently asked if citizen journalism is really working out. In this case the answer would be "yes.")

On the blog, Ginsberg wrote in a comment:

Post policy prevented me from crediting you in print. Allow me to do so now. You did a fantastic reporting job. All I had to do was follow your steps (and make a few extra phone calls).

I won’t discuss at length the policy of not crediting blogs (or anyone else). I’ll just briefly explain that as long as we can independently verify every bit of info, we don’t credit.

You will find that the Daily News observes the same policy, but the Times does not. (They often write an explanatory phrase like, ‘The investigation into Mr. Spitzer was first reported in the New York Post.’ That’s not a real one. I just made it up. Although I would note that another Times policy would prevent them from actually printing the name of your blog, presenting them with an unresolvable conflict between two inflexible rules.)

Looking forward to “amplifying” more of your good work in the future.

There is still a question as to whether this is Post policy or, as the Neiman article calls it, a "marketing goof."

Also on the Neiman blog is a piece about what it takes to get on Google News, as spelled out in a Google video. In the list of tips is this gem:

It can detect phrases like “the Los Angeles Times reported” in wire stories and promote the original L.A. Times piece among the many other versions of the story.

That just makes me wonder if the Post move is more defensive than anything. Not just fighting with the Daily News, but also trying to simply eliminate one thing that may put them at a disadvantage in the eyes of Google.

More importantly, is this an effort to make sure that bloggers don't move up the chain and become more respected news sources? Today, Google still makes a distinction between blogs and news, but does that distinction come down if a number of publications say "as first reported in the blog..."?

The Art of Pitching

I have only pitched Adam Gaffin once, and rather unsuccessfully at that. Frankly, I wasn't so much pitching him as making him aware of my Boston-based client.

That said, I have managed to be referenced on his highly-trafficked Universal Hub blog quite a bit, because over time I've learned how to write blog entries that he finds useful and that, I believe, he'd find useful to share with his readers. If I notice he hasn't linked to something I believe is relevant, I may drop him a quick email to make him aware of the post.

That's just Adam. You can send him a traditional pitch, and he may even use it, but you're better off writing on your own Boston-based blog something about the community. Ultimately, that's what Universal Hub is all about.

Someone like Robert Scoble is a different story, he's very pitchable if you know how to reach him. He'll listen and tell you if you're full of crap or if you have something he can use.

Of course, you'll find none of this data on the database most used by PR people called Cision. I could tell the very first day my blog got listed in Cision, because I immediately got deluged with laundry list of bad pitches, few of any relevance.

I could blame this on Cision, but as a (former) Cision user I don't think that would be fair. It's actually user error. I found that a lot of people would do some searching, create a list and then just start pounding away. If they stopped and looked first, reading a few blog posts, perusing a few articles, looking at a LinkedIn profile or two, they'd immediately determine which names on their lists are for real and the best approach for each person.

Of course, that kind of work takes billable hours to do, and right now the name of the game is to keep hours low and hits high.

So Adam is going to continue to get pitched about "nipple covers for 'moms hitting up the pool.'" Only, with Twitter he can complain about it.

But to Cision's credit, Ruth McFarland has been very responsive to complaints, but the fault doesn't always lie with them.

Your Town's Ad Play: PaperG

An article in Sunday's Boston Globe asking "What Went Wrong" started with an interesting anecdote about how the Globe turned away a stake in Monster.com at the beginning of the Internet revolution.

One one level you can read the story as a lost opportunity. On another you can read it as a company simply doing what had always made it successful. Hindsight is always 20/20. If I knew then what I know now I would have taken jobs "coding" in the mid-90s when I really wanted to be a writer. At the time "coding" meant putting HTML tags on documents, I thought it was something more complex that I didn't understand.

The people who took those jobs went on to become pretty good journalists, but that's all hindsight.

So I found it very interesting to get an email from a young CEO named Victor Wong of PaperG touting how the Your Town section of Boston.com will be using the company's "Flyerboards." These are like local bulletin boards for Your Town sites like those in Newton, Wellesley, Needham and Waltham that tap into the local ad market.

You can read into it what you want, but here is a small, young comapny started by a bunch of smart guys that has managed to tap into the Globe. Though, given the Globe's current financial state I have to wonder if any money changed hands or if PaperG is just eating what it kills.

Gatehouse v. New York Times

In just a few days the media pundits have jumped on the lawsuit between Gatehouse Media and the New York Times over Boston.com's hyper-local concept. Dan Kennedy is doing the best job at keeping us all updated.

At the heart of the issue is the question of whether Boston.com is simply linking to stories by Gatehouse media's local papers, like the Newton TAB, or if has based its entire business model on using content developed by another commercial news organization.

Adam Reilly has a great take on this when he asks:

Imagine that I decide to start a new, web-only newspaper devoted to the city of Boston. Then imagine I fill my new publication--let's call it the "Boston Gazette"--entirely with links to articles from the Boston Globe. Is that journalistically legit? Nope. It's just a lame, transparent attempt to repackage someone else's work as my own.

It's a fair question and what I believe the Globe is doing right now. Do they have the potential for more? Of course. The problem is that the site, as it stands, spread the information out into a number of different areas. But the main page is only part of the problem.

The Newton site includes a local wiki in which the editors are asking people to submit information, any information and then self-police it. This is a fanciful notion to make a Wikipedia type play, but that's only likely to work if they can also get a number of local overzealous editors.

During the launch meeting one person asked a simple question: what's to stop the Globe from eventually taking that information, restricting access and selling it back to us? The editors assured us this would never happen. Though, that assumes the current editors are always in charge. What happens if and when Boston.com gets sold. Wouldn't another owner look at any repository of information as a potential revenue source?

The editors also noted that any information submitted by an individual remains the property of that individual. OK, that's fair. But what happens when my writeup of Taste Coffee House in Newtonville gets edited by a Globe editor, and then added to by another customer? Who owns the content then? How do you track that ownership?

Jeff Jarvis portrays the Gatehouse folks as ignorant stooges who don't seem to understand how the Internet works. However, as one of the few people writing on this issue who actually LIVES in Newton and also operates a hyper-local site, I have a little better idea of the personalities involved.

It happens that the Newton TAB folks understand new media very well. They are on Twitter, blog regularly and use Facebook all in an attempt to get closer to their readers. They went from being a weekly to having an active local news site with a regular blog long before the Globe even bothered letting readers comment on its own local blog.

This is a group that understands the implications of what it's doing. But it also knows the economic realities of the situation. If a local business is looking to spend money advertising, are they going to advertise with the TAB (and on its online site) or with Boston.com? If Newtonians are flocking to Boston.com/Newton, a site that is made up mostly of content reported by Gatehouse, then the money is going to flow there, plain and simple.

In fact, the entire Boston.com hyper-local operation feels more like an adveristing play than anything else. They created a site, hired a single (very young) editor, then simply reorganized much of its existing content so it focused heavily on one city.

One final very telling note in all this. When Boston.com started rolling out its site it invited a number of local thought-leaders to the Newton War Memorial Auditorium to show it off. This group included a number of bloggers, advertisers, people who have local TV shows and a few others who are well known. The mockup they showed included articles from the TAB in addition to other bloggers, some of who were in attendence, and they even pointed out that they were going to aggregate information from every site, including the TAB.

They never invited the TAB to the meeting. The editors first heard about it when I posted about it on TheGardenCity.net