Kerstin Baker-Ash

The Value of Twitter

I'm relatively new to being a twit. My interest in social media and community integration started a while back, but I didn't get into Twitter until much later in the game, but nonetheless, I'm hooked. I joined Twitter back in March, after hearing absolutely everyone talk about it at SES New York; I haven't looked back. I can follow some of the people I consider gurus of the industry, and I've gotten a lot of helpful information and tips from just being "out there". However, I'm wondering if other people get real value out of Twitter? My "follower" rate has gone up exponentially since joining, and I'm not in it to get more followers by just adding new people to follow. I want to make sure that I'm getting the most out of the noise, not just have other people.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy getting new followers. What I don't think is useful is to follow a bunch of people to try to get them to follow you back. It's a nice feeling to get someone following you on Twitter, but it almost makes me feel cheap to see that they're following five thousand other people in addition to little ol' me. In an ideal world (hey, I'm on a utopian bend at the moment, please forgive me), people would follow each other for genuine value, but where there's the potential for spam, spammers will always be. It just doesn't seem that these spammers are very intelligent.

Twitter spam has been tweeted about a lot lately; can it even exist? Just this afternoon, Stop Twitter Spam blogged about their theory of so-called spammers shutting down the service. If you read further down, they talk about charging super-users a fee. Sure - if you can have a system which calculates the value of each contribution that a super-user offers. I'm not saying that Robert Scoble, or Jason Calacanis are perfect or not noisy by any stretch of the imagination, but a lot of people would argue that their popularity (even though they follow a massive amount of people) and insight is valuable. What the not-so-smart-so-called-spammers don't realize is that most people don't have auto-follow. Also, if you're following tons of people and are that desperate to get people to follow you back, chances are what you're trying to say isn't worth hearing about.

I'm selective. I want real information, entertainment and rants - not messages about how great you think your web design company is, or how great your weight loss regimen is. So that's why I'm not following you, but following some pretty interesting and funky people. In short, Twitter spam can't really exist as long as you don't feel it necessary to use auto-follow. And feel free to un-follow me if you don't think I'm providing any value to you, whether it be my witty commentary on the guy who orders for his entire office and always manages to get in front of me in the mornings or replying to other twits. I value conversation, and would love to engage in one with you.

Sorry if you thought this was a post about Twitter having $15 million and not using it to upgrade their architecture...

Back to my block list, then.

Opening Up

I've described in previous posts that I'm quite new to the whole work-related blogging thing, but I have been blogging in "secret" for quite a while now. I've password-protected my other site, where I blog about my rollercoaster weight loss and gain, and have been doing this since early 2005.

I came into this blog to do a bit of self-branding in SEM, open the conversation and learn. What I didn't realize is that my private life, and specifically my weight loss journey which makes up a large part of my personality, is so intertwined with this wonderful industry I'm in. For the past two weeks, I've been debating about opening up my personal blog and sharing my journey with a wider audience.

I'm interested to know what people think. If you'd like the password before (or not) I open it up, please e-mail me - kerstin at the address of this blog.com.

ProBlogger Contest

I'm Blogging That are sponsoring a contest to win one of five copies of ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income. While I'm relatively new to the whole blogging-as-work thing, I'm kind of interested in the book, and it's sold out on Amazon... so here goes. Not only does Katy (and the sponsor, Wiley) get a link back, but it's a great way to do the whole work-around for sold out books. As the kids over here say, easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy.

The Social Web and Paid Search - Can It Work?

We all know that there are millions of examples out there for social media and SEO to run harmoniously through dewy meadows holding hands and singing Joan Baez songs, but what about their rich and lonely paid search friend? The advent of social networks have promised those of us on the paid search side some way to monetize and mobilize the masses that engage in social media on a daily basis; it just hasn't happened yet.

Sure, I've seen the ads "targeting" people on Facebook, my favorite being this:

Advertisers are promised a hugely relevant sample to advertise to, and yet their efforts get them what you see above. Simply, this translates into a really poor CTR. Bob Gilbreath blogged about his recent experience with Facebook advertising, which got him a whopping 0.2% (read 12 people out of 71023 who saw the ad) of CTR for a supposedly highly-targeted audience. Is it any wonder that paid SEMs are shying away from advertising on social networks?

I do believe that there's a light on the horizon though. As we become more sophisticated and willing to try new things, platforms are being challenged to think of new ways to reel advertisers in. The easiest way to do this is an auction system; we're used to it, we know it, and it doesn't take a huge learning curve to adapt to it. Integrating this with social media platforms in a content-style platform is going to be wonderful. Hold on... doesn't this already exist? Yes, it absolutely does. The problem (and the soon-to-come solution) is targeting. Platforms need to get their targeting sorted out, and people need to become educated about the thin line between targeted advertising and invasion of privacy. The best example I've seen for this so far has actually been ThinCloud's Twitter for iPhone platform, which regularly serves me up ads related to Mac products, external hard drives and other applications that can increase my Mac-loving (sorry for the awful Superbad pun). I'm more likely to click on it because they've made it extremely targeted. Why can't Facebook, which promises that, deliver? I guess everything is on scale, but I'm hoping that the next year brings about a change in the way people think about behavioral targeting. It's the next logical step.

Microsoft Advertising - New B2B Brand

I'd been noticing a new swirly logo at the bottom of our account manager's e-mail for a week now, and the news is now out that they've launched a new one-stop-shop for advertisers, publishers and agencies. The rebranding promises to use "the powerful combination of our media and technology helps us to connect your advertising with a larger audience than ever before."

It sounds like a neat idea; wrap everything that we already use into a single interface - but that single interface unfortunately doesn't exist. Instead, it's the birth of a new and integrated way of dealing with the myriad of advertising platforms MSN uses... just not yet. There's a reason MSN were voted the top digital sales service by UK agencies: they do provide great service. I just wish the actual adCenter interface was smooth and easy to use.

Where's our invite to use ACE, though? Apparently, MSN aren't releasing beta invites to UK advertisers; they're only available in the US and the UK will be invited to start using it towards the end of the year once the American beta users have had the kinks worked out.

Shhh... I'm looking forward to a sneaky UK preview next week.

Paddy Power - Need to Check Your Copy

I really try not to get worked up about things like this. Personal feelings are often best left out of business, but this is one of the first times when my personal feelings have clashed with a vertical within my industry, and I really feel like I need to blog about this.

Avram Grant is the manager of Chelsea FC, who played Manchester United last night during the Champions League final. Paddy Power are a betting company in Ireland, and like most other businesses who can't get past Google's rules on gambling, do a lot of e-mail marketing. The screengrab above is taken from their e-shot yesterday, and shows a photo of Grant under the title "Final Solution". At best, it's extremely tasteless and ignorant. Why post a photo of Grant, who has been the target of anti-Semitic attacks in the past, under a title which harkens back to Hitler's catchphrase about the systematic and complete destruction of the Jewish people?

Whatever your opinion about Grant and his coaching abilities (or personal feelings about Chelsea, I couldn't care less - I've never followed the football), it's definitely not okay to post photos about Avram Grant under Nazi-coined phrases.

Shame on you, Paddy Power. I'd encourage you to e-mail them and express your disgust about their choice of e-shots, too.

Seeking Social Web Organization and Integration

I'm currently looking for a complete aggregator - somewhere where I can keep all my social media logins organized and updated concurrently.

I originally thought that OpenID would be a good solution, storing login information and preferences in one place. Also, you don't need to remember several different logins, passwords, etc. The problem with OpenID is that some of the larger players have been slow on the uptake, and they don't work well with a number of social media sites which I frequent regularly.

Secondbrain looked like it could solve a lot of issues around information gathering, but again it doesn't pull anything from some of the newer and more interesting networks, not to mention Facebook.

I might be a bit slow on the uptake, but where are all the aggregators at? Where can I keep one, big, box-like hold-all for Facebook, Twitter, Brightkite, LinkedIn, Tumblr, MyBlogLog, Sphinn, BlogCatalog, EatonWeb, Adsense Alternatives, Blog Search Engine, Superblog Directory, Blog Listings, Blog Flux Directory, etc? Are some of my feeds, directories and blog memberships too niche?

Interestingly, I've found that Sphinn is the best way to organize all of my profile data in one place - for the time being. There still isn't support for Brightkite or Tumblr, so I'm looking for suggestions. Don't be shy.

Google Health Profile Scares Me

Call it the next logical step for Google to take online, or call it a very strange invasion of privacy that can ultimately lead to the potentiality for your personal medical record to be exposed online.  Fred Wilson posted about his bewilderment that he couldn't make his own health records public.  There are a couple of problems with this.

Firstly, the United States does not have a healthcare system anywhere near the free level (like Canada or even the UK - no, I haven't seen Sicko, I grew up in Canada, and live in the UK now).  By sharing your healthcare history, you are potentially opening up a can of worms for insurance companies to hike up your premiums based on pre-existing health conditions.  Like Fred, I don't believe that anything should be hidden from an insurance company or loved ones.  Unlike Fred (and not singling him out to be nasty by any means), most of us do not have the luxury of being able to bear premium increases based on an insurance company deciding that lactose intolerance requires more specialist attention and therefore is a greater risk of a claim.  Put that information in front of potential employers, and the problem gets bigger; they can make a judgement call based on a five-year old condition, or an increased risk of health issues based on familial medical history.  It's not in my interest to share that information, and it's not in anyone else's, not even someone who is self-employed and financially independent enough to weather any type of diagnosis (again, not taking a pot shot, this is just most peoples' reality). 

To be fair, we should all have the ultimate say in determining what amount of information we make public, but with a caveat.  If my parents decide to post their medical histories online and "share" them, what are the ramifications for my employment and insurance coverage should my parents disclose a condition which could or could not be hereditary?

To treat Google Health like the next network for collaboration is naïve.  Of course we would benefit from sharing what treatments worked for us, and what treatments worked for others - these tools already exist in platforms like WebMD, allowing users to remain anonymous without linking our prescription history from Walgreen's.  Coming together to insure everyone - absolutely!  But where would the doctors and pharmaceutical companies be without their massive profits? 

Don't get me wrong, I think the idea of Google Health is wonderful; doctors already have access to information online anyway, why not make it available to the patient as well?  The problem here is that should anyone wish to share this information, it can become immediately available in the public domain and therefore put insurance policies in jeopardy because of a communal effort to find out how to make yourself better.    

Whirlwind Weekend

Two of my girlfriends from elementary school have been visiting my husband and I this weekend in London, and it's been a jam-packed four days.  It's funny, I thought when I moved here that I would have all these things to see in the UK - the reality is that we both prefer to stay local at the weekends because it's a nice break (and we have a new house).

When they arrived on Thursday, we stuck to Hertfordshire, going on a walk around the woods next to our house and shaking out the jet lag cobwebs (been there, hate jet lag).  On Friday, we played tourist in London and did all the touristy things; Westminster, Buckingham Palace, Piccadilly Circus, Soho, the lot.  By the time we got back, we were pretty wiped.  Saturday and Sunday, we ventured further afield and did Oxford and Cambridge (we were feeling academic).  One of my girlfriends' roomate's brother (long-winded, I know) is a post-doc at Oxford, so we got a personalised and inside access tour, which was great.  Eights Week is this week, so we watched the rowing a bit, walked around Worcester College and walked around the Ashmolean Museum.

I'll post photos on Flickr soon, once we've uploaded them from the three cameras that have been snapping away in the last four days.

iPod Battery Class Action Suit Settled

So Apple have, without admitting any wrongdoing, settled a class-action lawsuit in Canada over allegedly false claims about battery life.  Anyone who bought a first-, second- or third-generation iPod in Canada can claim a CAD $45 store voucher.

The battery life of the iPod was basically the only reason I held off buying one until I just couldn't resist anymore.  I watched the Neistat brothers' film and resolved not to even think about the gorgeous design and functionality of an iPod until Apple had resolved the battery issue.  Thanks to iPod's Dirty Secret, Apple soon changed their battery policy tune and I finally caved.  I'm ineligible for the $45 refund, though - I bought my iPod in Canada, but I waited long enough for the heavy iPod Photo (4G) to come out.

We're a pretty Mac-dependent house (despite my husband constantly protesting about it - he's definitely a PC), but still, that $45 might've come in handy...