The Community Connection

Michael Abbot, Twitter's VP of Engineering speaking at Mobilize in San Francisco

Speaking at Mobilize in San Francisco, Michael Abbott, VP of Engineering at Twitter stated that “[Twitter is] not a social network. We’re an information network.” This has caused a stir in the IT news outlets. [source]

How could one of the largest, most influencial social websites make this claim?

Abbot’s point is that within a Twitter stream, the ultimate goal is that the network will feed you information relevant to your situation. For example, when you are travelling, Twitter’s streams will adjust to your location and display local and relevant tweets of information.

In a sense, Abbot has a point. Watching a stream on Twitter is much like watching a news ticker as the information flows into the system. It’s the interaction, however, that – in my opinion – makes Twitter a social (if not social information) network.

When you post an article, an update, an image or any other content on Twitter, you are sharing that information with all of your followers. Your followers then have the ability to share that information with their followers, and everyone can engage in a socially interactive discussion. This is what makes Twitter a social network. While Twitter generally offers more informative streams than other social sites like Facebook, Four Square, etc., it is still a network of connected users with one main goal in mind: interaction.

What do you think? Is Twitter a social network, an information network, or something different altogether? Comment below.

Peter Russell
Internal Communications Manager

Big changes here at Innovatia! New clients, new employees and a host of new projects to keep everyone busy. For me, I have recently taken on the role of Internal Communications Manager. This is an exciting step for me within Innovatia, but also for my personal development goals.

So where does that leave social media and my previous role as Communications Manager? Very close, in fact. When discussing the direction my new position would take, one thing became truly clear to me: social media affects all parts of a business. Internal communications is another role that not only can, but SHOULD use social media to its advantage. My goal is to reduce the amount of email flow throughout the company, and focus on other ways of reaching my target audience (or fellow employees). Social media is one way I’m hoping to achieve that.

Some of the ways I’m hoping to leverage social media in my position include using Twitter for short, brief updates that affect employees, sharing fun photo streams through services like Flikr, and leveraging services like YouTube for more formal and personal announcements.

Those are some of my ideas – but maybe you have more. Comment below on how social media affects or could affect your position within your company, and how you plan to leverage it in the future. I’d love to hear it!

Exciting news coming from Innovatia, including the launch of our new product Procedure Accelerator. This is the first major stand-alone product launch that Innovatia has done by leveraging social media platforms – and we’re just getting started! From placing an overview on our YouTube channel, to promoting our new website through Twitter, Facebook, and our upcoming newsletter, and getting the new product site up and running, it’s been a busy couple of weeks.

The whole experience got me thinking about how far social media has developed. It’s now (or should be) an integrated part of any marketing initiative, and all of our businesses marketing activities. The use of social media as a medium to communicate a sales message means a broad reach at little to no cost. What a perfect world! Or is it?

The problem with this cheap (and still effective) method as a marketing tool is the sheer volume of messages distributed to every social media user at any given time. Will your message get lost? Here’s some tips to ensure your message is heard:

• Twitter: make sure your message is tagged with relevant hash-tags. Hash tags are keywords that users can follow and give some substance and category to your posts. For example, if you’re promoting a new fruit stand in your town, you may post something like “Bill’s #Fruit Stand now open! #Apples, #oranges and a number of #healthy #food!” Each hash-tag (marked by ‘#’) represents a subject that users may be interested in. For everyone following the hash-tag #Fruit, they’ll see your post, and it won’t get lost in their main news feed. Plus, if it’s relevant, it encourages people to “re-tweet” your message and distribute to their followers.
• Facebook: Make your post interesting enough for people to “Like”, “Share” and “Comment” on. The more people who interact with your post, the more likely it is to show up on a user’s Newsfeed as being “Top News” – the first page users see when they log into Facebook. Encourage comments, suggestions and feedback in your posts and this should come easily!
• Other social sites:  Like Facebook and Twitter, every social media site relies on user interaction. That’s the reason social media has become part of our everyday lives! People love to feel like they have control over content – and everyone loves to stay knowledgeable! Make sure your interaction with these sites encourage feedback, interaction, and more people to follow your business.

There is a science to social media, but no one really knows what it is. We’re all social media experts in our own right, but what practices we follow may not work for everyone. I’m still learning, and always will be. That’s the beauty of social media.

What are your thoughts? Have you tried marketing initiatives through social networks – did it work or fail, and what have you learned? I’d love to hear your experiences.

Peter Russell
Community Manager – Digital & Social Media

Hello world!

How many times have you been browsing the net and seen the sentence “Hello world!”? Wordpress uses this as their default post. There are domain names and online libraries dedicated to this phrase and a Google search results in 107,000,000 matches. So where did it come from?

The first use of Hello World in a technological term was used in 1974 – yes, a full 10 years before I was born. Coined by Brian Kernighan in an internal memo at Bell Laboratories, this was the output he produced with a piece of sample code in the internal guide “Programming in C: A Tutorial”.

Over time, this phrase has been adapted across millions of Internet pages, blogs and connected devices. Heck, even Google uses this in their introductory tutorial for developing Android applications.

So what’s my point? This simple phrase has been adapted time and time again to changes in technology, much like our idea of community. Ask my parents, and a community is a tangible group – people and places – that live, breathe, and work together. For my generation, a community can be anything from Facebook to Twitter, Kijiji to MySpace.

As my generation (the late-X to Y) begins the transition into the workplace, the parliament and beyond, we are seeing a change in traditional ways we work, connect and play. Social networking communities are no longer “new” or “cool” – they are a part of our lives; a best friend, a confident, the source of our anger and our happiness; a living and breathing (abeit digital) community.

So follow me as we explore the reach of social media, the internet and everything and anything relevant to my idea of community. Hopefully I will share some insights, and hopefully you will too. Comment here, or find me on Facebook, Twitter (@petejrussell) or LinkedIn. Now onto lunch – less eating, and more socializing. Goodbye cruel world!