Quantity Vs Quality in the Micro-blogging-sphere

I was recently down in Melbourne giving a keynote on the future of social media for Open Connections. In the much-anticipated networking drinks I was asked a question I've heard several times before - "How do I get more followers on Twitter?"

This type of thinking usually shows a misunderstanding as to what Twitter is all about, but there are two solutions to this simple problem:

1) Pay for them.

2) Talk to them.

There are plenty of services out there that will spill 1000's of followers onto your account for a fee. Why anyone would want to do this is beyond me, unless your customers are lifeless server racks somewhere off the coast of Sri Lanka.

Twitter is a tool for connection and conversation. And conversation is part talking, part listening. Spam is not a form of communication, so don't treat Twitter like a soapbox for shouting. Find the niche your brand already fits into, listen in to the conversations taking place, then start offering unique, useful and genuine solutions/comments/ideas. This is no place to force-feed the company line, which is why many brands feel hesitant to engage with customers on Twitter.

You want quality followers, not a mass quantity of followers. It's better to have one follower who might buy your products than a million followers who never will.

Today, this "Quantity Vs Quality" concept has been rewritten for the social media landscape as "Popularity Vs Influence". Where you stand in regards to influencing people's opinions and habits is much more powerful than how many people you're connected to. Being a key influencer is really the goal of every social media manager in any organisation.

So if you're worried you're not performing on Twitter due to a lack of followers, do not be disheartened. So long as you've built a following through engaging and responsive conversation with customers you're in a far more influential space than those who have paid for pointless popularity.

Weather Stations Vs Swarm Intelligence

It happens every weekend for me. I wake up, check the weather on my phone, dress appropriately, then find myself sweating or freezing to death outside when the real weather is often the complete opposite of the cute icons on my online weather service.

It always perplexes me how we can spend billions of dollars on satellites, weather stations, pressure sensors, tide monitors and weather balloons only to be so completely off the mark day-in, day-out.

Last weekend I was at Sydney's iconic Bondi Beach. The weather had been sunny, but was about to storm. I checked my phone to get some indication of how much sunshine I had left, but neither Yahoo, Weatherzone or the official government Bureau of Meterology had any reference to a storm occurring...

A panicked thought went through me: Could the internet be wrong?

Suddenly I had a thought:

If we got everyone on the beach to guess the temperature, and guess what the weather would do based on their own experiences, would we get a more truthful result than empirical scientific apparatus and algorithms?

Tie this in with a service that is geo-location specific, maybe current photos of the skyline, opinions and polls, and perhaps we use our collective, non-specialist predictions to provide a better weather service to humanity?

It would be both a beautiful experiment and a wonderful idea.

Salad With Ren & Stimpy

I achieved a boyish brush with fame today when I was able to visit Jim Ballantine at his Sydney-based Flying Bark studios.

For those of you wondering what I'm talking about, this is the guy who made Ren and Stimpy a reality and changed the course of my tweenage years (not to mention my definition of what "funny" is).

As we sat over salads and sparkling water I was interested to hear Jim speak of the early days of Ren and Stimpy, when the network only had six episodes. These episodes would be repeated on rotation for 18 months. Each week, more and more people began watching the show and the network finally twigged that more content was needed.

This was back in the early 90's, which although is nearly 20 years ago now is essentially an analogue version of how YouTube success can be created. I saw many similarities between this and the Beached Az content I've been involved in over at The Handsomity Institute.

Jim was quick to point out the cruel impact of the digital social world on this method of building an audience; "I don't think this model would work now," Jim says.

Nonetheless I am always captivated when my eyes are opened up to moments that show me online content isn't the new and scary territory many paint it out to be. It is merely an extension of what we've been doing since not only 20 years ago, but since the birth of communication itself...

Telling stories.

Bring On Micropayments

For a while I've been frustrated at how hard it is to sdhare money around the web. Those of you who have endured one of my "light-on-the-facts-high-on-the-fizz" keynotes will know one of my visions for the future of the web is a payment system that allows us to share our money as easily as we currently share photos, text and video.

Sadly, that day isn't here yet, and we're still at the mercy of clumsy credit card systems, iTunes gated spaces and the profit-destroying PayPal options.

However, I was interested in the recent move by Facebook to sell Facebook Credits at Walmart and Target in the USA.

The current targeting of social gamers is validation of the power and growth of that area of online networking. If Facebook are exploring the territory aggressively, you know there must be some value to be found.

What I like most about this move by Facebook is that it has the potential to be applied across multiple platforms and perhaps become the web currency that we've been waiting for. Facebook has a quorum of users to give the scheme momentum, as well as an established marketplace and quite liberal anti-protectionist positioning. This small step of using Facebook Credits in the social gaming sphere with hopefully be used as a test case to iron out problems and collect consumer feedback.

I'm hoping in the coming months Facebook Credits will become a monetary extension of Facebook Connect, allowing anyone and everyone across the net to embed payment systems on their blogs, apps, websites, forums and pages. This will certainly spell out the beginning of a financial revolution as an online economy is born and raising revenue is a simpler task without being at the mercy of closed shops or expensive alternatives.

Bringing Advertising To Social Gaming

In the late 1800's, Jules Verne was approached by shipping operators to include references of their companies in his 1874 classic Around the World In Eighty Days. With these simple requests the age of product placement was born, and is a tool that still permeates our cinema, television, sporting and radio experiences.

136 years later, the new battlefield for brands is in the social media spaces, and no area is more ready to pop than social gaming.

In a report from Nielson analysing online habits of Americans between July 2009 and June 2010, it was shown that social gaming had surpassed personal email as the second most popular activity on the web (over 56 million Americans play online social games).

This (no doubt) will come as a shock to a lot of brands and businesses that still think the world of gaming is restricted to a youth/teen market. The ubiquitous assimilation of smartphones and social networking has presented society with a way to connect beyond the realm of status updates and political-career-ending party photos.

Our leisure time is now under assault from advertisers keen to find new markets and engage consumers in unique and interesting ways.

I think it's important to note here that brands must be willing to bend their brand image to suit the narrative of the social games they seek to interact with. Much like putting a video on YouTube and expecting it to go "viral" is a fallacy, expecting to stick your brand name in any social game will also miss the mark. Being creative in integration is just as important as being integrated when it comes to social gaming.

Personal case study: I always remember playing GoldenEye 64 in the late 1990's, and one of the tasks for me (AKA James Bond) was to recover a top secret video recording from a Russian bunker. When I discovered that recording was actually a VHS of the GoldenEye movie (complete with cover art) I literally got a little excited. I can only thank the lord in-app purchasing wasn't available in those days or I would have spent a lot of money.

So how can we integrate? How can brands get on board this social gaming wagon?

Currently the social gaming experience is dominated by brands and businesses offering retail goods, subscription services, surveys and branded videos. Engaging with these businesses online usually results in some form of virtual credit or currency.

Personally I like the idea of branded goods within the game as an easy first-step for brands. I find it has wider scope for creativity than the Hit Wall and less costly than building your own branded game. Have a look around the online space at some of the more popular games out there, and think about what virtual rewards or goods you might be able to offer players (read: "your consumers").

As always, think outside the box and keep it creative/radical. We play games to escape reality, so don't try and drag what you do in other media campaigns back through the digital door unchanged and expect results.

Photography From Radical Love's Anthony MacFarlane

I thought the social media world should be aware that the talents of Anthony MacFarlane are not limited to his handsome good looks nor his boyish charm.

It turns out the man takes a mean still image to compliment his broad talents in the realm of motion pictures.

For those that don't subscribe to his weekly blog updates over at rival blog community web.me.com I'm going to try and convince the man that art has a place in this space, and get him to post some of his finest here.

To start things moving I've chosen one of my favourites above, entitled "Madonna". This is possibly because of the very American legs on display, or possibly it was the soundtrack to the photoshoot...

Or maybe there's a religious element to all this I'm missing.

Either way, Macca himself says:

This is a composition of sea water taken at Bronte pool and a rough sandstone wall in the back of Waverley. The angles of the legs were to replicate the lines in the stonework.

Just awesome.

Virgin Blue Social Media Content

Big thanks to all the good eggs at Virgin Blue (especially Sir Richard Branson and John Borghetti) for letting us run a-muck in Melbourne during your 10th Birthday Celebration.

It was "unique" to spend four consecutive days within 50m of an airport, and unless we have our own volcanic action in the coming years, an event unlikely to be repeated in the history of my life.

Great people. Great times. Thanks!