Twitter: Evolving past its design

I'm completely new to the whole Twitter concept so I do apologize if I get the lingo wrong. So recently we've been hearing so much about the new social media phenomenon, Twitter. Well what is it? I was browsing through TED.com and I managed to find a video that sort of gives a Twitter 101 speech on what it is and how it use has evolved beyond its design.

Evan Williams is the CEO of ODEO, the company that designed Twitter. With its initipal use as a simple status update (in 140 characters or less) or a SMS feed to family and friends, the real-time factor of its messaging system has evolved far beyond its original purpose. Now I'm beginning to see how the world is continuing to demand "CONSTANT" communication and Twitter has done just that! From wanting to tell your friends about where you are, what your eating, to a life threatening plea for help; Twitter can do it all for you!

Now the question I have about this revolutionary social networking tool is... doesn't the cell phone do this already? Isn't a simple text message the same? I guess it obviously doesn't have the same reach and it would take forever to send your status piece to everyone but is this not another form of SPAM for the average T

witter hater? Check out some comments and pics of what Twitter haters feel:

I think a lot of people see the use of Twitter but are misguided by its potential when they receive the most irrelevant social status updates from the people they follow! But the haters do have a point about how it might just be too much info to know the 'toilet just flushed at victor's house'. Use Twitter responsibly ... STOP SPAMMING and maybe even I will decide to pick it up someday ... (-.o)

Shop today... a click away!

For the longest time, I had insecurities about shopping online. Maybe its the caution asian upbringing or just my skeptical side speaking out about online retailers, but I just don't like shopping online! Too many things to worry about, credit card fraud, trusting a virtual seller or even worse yet, receiving SPAM from personal information leak! Honest truth, I haven't ever bought anything from E-bay, Craig's List, Kijiji, Facebook... you name it. But I know it works! I was reading up from a marketing stats website called "marketing charts.com" and looked up the top 10 online retail categories and the top 10 online retailers:

Interestingly enough the top 3 online retail categories (Computer Hardware, Automotive, Consumer Electronics) did not correlate with the top 10 online retailers! I'm really not too sure why this phenomenon exists because it appears the top 10 online retailers are mostly for grocery, flowers, medicine and generic type clothing. I guess its interesting that the most popular online retail categories with the more technologically advanced products probably elicit more search behaviors by customers. However, due to high prices for tech products, people may still choose to buy these products in-store.

I'm not sure about many of the other sites on the top 10 retailers list, but I do have an interesting story to tell about Quixtar. I was once recruited to join the company and to start up my own portal to sell their products. I never actually went through with it when I found out that most of my sales would probably come from close family and friends before it could a viral effect. As well, it would have take me much too long to introduce new people to startup their own portals under me before their key termed "residual income" would kick in. Don't get me wrong, i'm not against portal sales or online sales, to me its just one word. Risky.

New Mind Space: Viral Facebook Cult or Interactive Public Art?

I'm sure by know you guys have begun to realize that I like to put a little of my life's stories in my blogs and in light of me being back in Toronto for the week, here's an interesting little one about a viral action phenomenon called "New Mind Space". I first got a taste of it myself when I was in Toronto this past summer in a city wide pillow fight outside of Toronto's City Hall - Nathan Phillips Square. 

(yes that is me excitedly getting ready to slap someone)

So how did this all begin? They apparently started in New York as an interactive urban bliss, a getaway if you will for people in the big cities to let loose and have fun. Much like the concept of a "Flash Mob" in Asia (similarly people get together to do really random things for a 'flash second' and disperse rapidly). So one random day, I took a look on my facebook account and saw an invite to a city-wide pillow fight, and I thought "this must be some joke?" Looking into it further, I realized that there were thousands of people signed up to go to this event and tons of comments of anticipation for the pillow fight to happen! As curious as any urban city dweller would be, I grabbed a pillow and went off to City Hall.

I think the biggest lesson learned out of this is that Facebook has now been used as more than just a medium for social networking and ads, but also a collective movement (a call-to-action). So for all those online marketers out there, this is a way to harness Facebook's social presence and engage users to act in either hitting strangers with pillows or buying the next cutting-edge consumer technology.

Feel free to check out where the viral action all began - www.newmindspace.com

Blogging or Jobbing - A bus driver's dilemma?

So I was driving to school last wednesday, listening to the Beat 94.5. They were going on about their usual sex-related antics and to my surprise they had a guest speaker, one Michael Cox who had come on-air as a guest speaker. He was a bus driver employed by the Coast Mountain Bus Company. Note in the last sentence, he "WAS" a bus driver. 

So apparently, like any average Joe, he started up a blog about his life as a bus driver on his personal time just so he could share what it was like to be a bus driver. The blog was originally intended for his close family and friends, but to his surprise, many people began following his blog and reading up on his daily adventures! Coast Mountain caught wind about his blog "Short Turns"and one day called him in to the office and fired him claiming that the content on his blog was offensive and negative to the company!

In my perspective, all I have to say to Coast Mountain is ... DEAL WITH IT! You had a golden opportunity to encourage a worker and for him to write great blogs with a growing customer fan base! Its excellent PR and really 360 feed from workers to customers! Now instead of making the best of it, you fired a great employee, in trade for what? A bunch of bad press.

I just feel sorry for the guy... but I guess this goes to show, free speech (even on the internet) isn't overrated. 

Online News Ad Spend flips the boat on Print

My girlfriend always complains how I don't read enough of the newspaper, but I seem to always respond with "maybe you just can't see me reading behind my screen". Looking up a news article from the New York Times in 2006, and to my surprise the numbers astound me to how much ad spend on online news sites have grown!

In 2006, print ad spend only grew 0.3% to 10.5 billion, while online advertising grew 35% to 613 million! Even more astounding this trend continued to move up in 2007 where print ad spend went down to 10.1 billion and online news spend grew 21.1% to 773 million in Q3 of 2007! The chart below summarizes the ad spend data:

When information searching is so much apart of the daily lives of an urban citizen, one draws the question, what was life like before the internet? I don't know... but I'll be sure to search it up online. 

(source: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/06/business/media/06adco.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=Online%20News%20Ad%20spend&st=cse)