A View from the Isle

It’s not often that a link to a press release get circulated around Twitter, but this morning there was one going around, and it wasn’t because we thought it was great.

Internet marketer Matt Barak pushed out a press release via PRWeb about him scoring 99.9% on TwitterGrader. Only problem is that one’s TwitterGrader scores are, rather fluid and don’t really mean you’re in the “Twitter elite”, but Matt put up the press release regardless:

What’s better than soaring to the top of a popular social networking site? How about skyrocketing to the summit of two of them? That’s the envious position The Powerful Promoter, Matt Bacak, found himself in last month when he entered the Twitter elite. Proving just how powerful his Internet marketing promotional strategies are, Bacak not only became a top three Atlanta Twitterer, but he currently outranks 99.9% of all members of the site. Internet marketers who would like to follow The Powerful Promoter’s tweets and improve their own promotional efforts can do so online at http://twitter.com/mattbacak.

[From The Powerful Promoter Promotes Himself Straight to the Top of Twitter - Matt Bacak Achieves Another Social Networking Milestone]

So here is his Twitter grade: Matt Bacak and yes he is marked as in the “Twitter elite for Atlanta, GA“, see there are lots of folks there too, not to mention I also have a 99.9% grade and am in the Twitter elite for Vancouver, BC so what’s the deal here?

Did Matt blow it tooting his own horn or not?

Sorta.

The chatter and sentiment on Digg is less than charitable, but really we’re all edge cases in this regard. We understand that what you get from TwitterGrader is more like a fun little thing not to be taken seriously. We’re all thinking this guy is an idiot. None of us have heard of him (I’ve @ replied to him and haven’t gotten a ping back, so I guess he’s not monitoring-bad call there) and we shaking our heads.

However think about his potential clients, folks who aren’t into social media, etc, they’ll go, oooh aaaahhh. Not to mention we’re all talking about it, like they say there’s no such thing as bad PR.

I think this is another case of the divide between the savvy and the tactically smart (or lucky). We know that the release is BS. That one’s rise to the pantheon of twitter, if there is such a place, isn’t something that gets handed down from on high. The rest of the world doesn’t though. I’m simultaneously grateful, bewildered, and cognizant of the fact that I have about 2650 Twitter followers. I’m flattered that people follow me, I don’t think I say very many profound things, but I know that if I send something out it has a broad audience.

And I as much as I catch myself lacking humility about the number of followers I have, I figure I’m still a small fish. Lots of people have more followers. Lots of people with fewer followers have a lot more interesting things to say than I.

So Matt put out a press release that potential clients will eat up, he looks like an internet marketing god to them while the echo chamber laughs (and maybe out of a small about of jealousy). I’m wondering if Matt might just be laughing all the way to the bank.

Last night there was a Tazzu dinner in Yaletown where the big even of the night was going to be Tanya (Netchick) drawing the winner of her $500 cash prize for donating to her Team Diabetes run.

Tanya had the lovely Monica Hamburg do the draw (since she didn’t have any entries in, unlike John Chow with 52 and myself with 7) and she pulled Marketwire!

The funny thing is that everyone wanted to know who would be next and it Gus … who works at Marketwire and helped to get the sponsorship for Tanya!

Marketwire showed how cool they are by putting the money back in. It doesn’t end there because one of Tanya’s teammates Christine is about $1000 shy of her goal, so Tanya gave the money to her and is encouraging us to help her as well (yes, Tanya has indeed met her goal, hence the $500 give-away).

Nice. Great work everyone.

So Tanya are you going to live stream your run?

Read Tanya’s post: (Tanya aka NetChick) This Chick’s Life- » Marketwire wins… And so does Team Diabetes!

You can see my whole Flickr set from the evening below (I was borrowing a Nikon P6000 point-n-shoot from work last night):

This weekend we’ve had an example of social media rising up to roast a company over the coals. I think this isn’t always the best example of the power of social media, the ad might not have been great, but whether it is out there or not doesn’t really affect the world at large.

Now a non-neutral net with ISPs throttling P2P or just blocking traffic is something that affects all of us. This weekend’s heated discussion couldn’t have been possible without the free and open net that allow us to not only discuss the topic in real time, but to also have allowed Twitter itself to be born.

Here in Canada we don’t have a particularly pro-Internet, or rather pro-free internet, administration. SaveOurNet has been working hard, and Steve has been emailing be frequently reminding me of the importance of the issue at hand. Today Parliament opens its new session, and I think it would be a good idea to contact our various members of Parliament and let them know how we feel.

The Conservative federal government is NOT inclined to support an open Internet. To keep a level playing field on the Internet we’ll need a robust citizens movement to put pressure on politicians and policy makers and shape policy that protects equal access. The social web community can provide the foundation for this burgeoning movement - perhaps even serve as a catalyst. Consider this a call to action.

[From Does Social Media Have an Immune System? | SaveOurNet.ca]

The Conservatives might have a pretty large minority government, and the Liberals aren’t in much of a place to influence much, but our voices together can raise the issue to the fore.

I’ll be writing an email today to my MP, how about you?

Jim Turner and I worked together at One By One Media and Bloggers For Hire when business blogging was a new and unproven way to reach customers. Yes, it was often a hard slog, but blogging was hot in the media and a lot of people were being told to “get a blog for us” so we did. Now times are a wee tougher and Jim is seeing the predictable backlash.

I can see a pattern to something that is beginning to make me think that the economy is hitting even the professional blogging industry. In some respects there has been an increase in companies seeking ways to help reduce their marketing, advertising and other online marketing budgets through the use of outsourcing bloggers. This helps them reduce the spending they have in those areas yet increase their productivity. This has kept my phone and email smoking of late from those companies in that camp. In other areas, like for instance in the larger companies with larger budgets, I’m seeing the opposite. It’s time to shed the ballast is their minds. What is considered ballast? Anything that is not nailed down. Employees and departments that were once hiring professional bloggers in the field are tightening their belts and putting their noses to the grindstone. It is time to protect them and their own. Department heads are having to do with 10 what they used to do with 15 people. What was once considered a luxury of having money to pay someone to blog, department heads are now having to do for themselves, or worse yet, not at all.

[From It’s Not You…It’s Me - The Great Business Blogging Breakup | Bloggers For Hire]

The question I have to ask businesses thinking about pulling back from social media, etc, when does it ever make good business sense to stop listening to your customers?

That’s what this is really all about. Sure starting a blog is about writing and Twitter is about … umm … stream of consciousness (or conversation on ADD, you choose), but what is really is opening the door to talk and listen to your customers.

Fine, this sounds like touchy-feely hooey, but the times when companies have listened to me I’ve appreciated it and they’ve gained my loyalty.

Seems to me, then, that when times are tough, when you need more customers, when don’t want to lose customers, that doing things to help that along should be considered a “good thing”.

Okay, maybe you don’t want someone to blog for you on your business blog on a regular basis, that’s okay, but keep the folks like Jim around to bounce ideas off of and help guide you in the conversation. You know what though, if you do have to tighten your belts and budgets, do more with less, doesn’t it make sense to give you and your employees a leg up on social media? How about you give your employes more time to do other things and let someone make sure your blog is updated, current, and relevant?

See now is the time when tapping into social media is a wise investment. Social media isn’t some new thing now, it is how people are talking, working, and sharing.

Are you still listening to your customers?

Over the weekend we got word that version 0.20 of TweetDeck was nearly done and being sent to early testers (Iain, pls can I be an early tester for the next round) and planned for updating today (ish). True to form TweetDeck told me that an update was ready for me and I quickly said “Yes! Upgrade me!”. Here are the release notes for this new version:

Version 0.20 beta - 17/11/2008 (more info)

* - Added patches 0.19.1, 2 & 3 fixes
* - Added API rate limit info added to top right
* - Added no notifications for your own tweets
* - Added pulling maximum number of tweets on each call
* - Added user added to friend list when followed
* - Added user removed from friend list when followed
* - Added user added to friend list when profile viewed and already followed (and not present in DB)
* - Added Persian character fix
* - Added “clear read tweets” button to column function
* - Added deduping methods for each column type
* - Added control logic on adding columns - can’t have multiples of same content
* - Added unread tweets counter to each column
* - Added “in reply to” link to appropriate tweets
* - Added mark as read in one column now marks same tweet as read across all columns
* - Added deleting your own tweet & deleting a DM now actually deletes from twitter
* - Added your sent tweet immediately added to All Tweets column - live updating
* - Added column specific filter bar for tweet text, username, source & timeframe, both include & exclude
* - Added http://idek.net/about.html url shortening service
* - Added clicking on notification window will close it immediately
* - Added favorites column
* - Added an “add to group” button implemented in certain tweets & profile panel
* - Updated advanced search.twitter.com support - except “near:”, error with API
* - Removed local search
* - Fixed user avatar not showing or updating
* - Fixed display problem with < symbol
* - Fixed bugs with enter key showing new line & sending tweet when tweet panel not in focus

[From TweetDeck]

I am really loving being able to add someone to a group with a couple clicks. That is so convenient. TweetDeck also seems peppier this morning as well. I did have a small hitch in my update, I had a group of tweets from the CBC, BreakingNewsOn, etc (News headlines) that disappeared. I certainly could have accidentally deleted it, but it doesn’t matter I’ve rebuilt the list now (and it was much faster too ).

With the update to AIR this morning as well, it is becoming apparent that TweetDeck is going to be central part of my infostreaming hub. It is almost my dashboard for all info as it is. I still have NetNewsWire for RSS and Mail for email, but that covers it. Amazing isn’t it, moving from so many apps to just a few? Yes, of course Firefox is open to read pages and I’m posting with Ecto now (for the time being, not too keen on it’s spell checker), but when I need info, I rely on TweetDeck and NetNewsWire. Some info comes in via email, but not a heck of a lot. That’s correspondence now.

Focused attention, pulling many streams into one. That’s how to win the day in the new infoeconomy.

Update: Twitip has a review of TweetDeck, but it looks like only 0.19.3b was reviewed.

There is more press on the Motrin ad this morning. Last night I wrote more about the peril of not being tuned into social media more than the ad itself (again, I thought it was patronising), Chip Griffin brings a more accepting take on the whole incident:

Unfortunately, Motrin ran into the Blogosphere Buzzsaw when a number of “Mommy Bloggers” and other social media leaders took exception to the video. Some objected to the spot’s suggestion that Moms might seem harried and even look a little crazy after treking around with their kids all day. Others claimed that devices like slings eliminate pain and alleged that Motrin was targeting Moms who used them.

And, of course, when nobody from Motrin stepped up within the first few hours to respond, the piling on spread beyond Moms to many others from their blog and Twitter pulpits. After all, the unwritten rules state that a company must respond when and how the Blogosphere wants at all times. Otherwise, they “don’t get it” or “don’t care.”

[From Forget Motrin, Take a Deep Breath - Media Bullseye]

Granted social media folks do tend to get all in a dither about a topic quickly and when we do the posts and tweets fly around like blazes. Yes, sometimes these are tempests in teapots, other times not. however that doesn’t mean the concerns aren’t valid nor that they shouldn’t be responded to.

Chip makes some good counter points to the criticism that’s flying around, but I have to take issue with this bit:

Not Everyone Monitors 24/7. As someone who owns a media intelligence company, I would love to see every company have someone dedicated around the clock, 365 days a year to monitoring everything remotely relevant in both traditional and online media. But that’s an absurd expectation — unless you are a blogger on the warpath. In the case of Motrin, we’re not talking about a crisis involving tainted pills or something life-threatening, or even a case of a serious ethical or moral transgression, but rather stylistic and tonal objections to an online ad campaign. If there’s no response on a Saturday afternoon, that’s not an indication that the company doesn’t get it or ignores social media. It’s possible that some of the bloggers and Twitterers may actually step away from their computers for a few hours every now and then.

Having launched lots of sites in the Web 1.0-2.0 worlds, some of which potential controversial (like an HIV site for a pharma that made the two main HIV drugs at the time), we were on call and actively watching for reaction (or hacking) for the first couple days or so. It didn’t matter if we launched on Friday or not, it was just prudent (this is also why I like to launch new sites on Tuesday or Wednesday, so I don’t lose a weekend if something blows up). So I don’t buy Chip’s point here. If I were Taxi NYC - McNeil wouldn’t have launched late in the week, especially not on a Friday, and would have had all hands on deck to monitor the conversation.

No, you don’t have to sit in front of your machine all the time. Bookmarking a twitter search, having Google alerts mailed to you, few RSS tricks and you can monitor and have a life in the critical first 48 hours.

Sure, maybe the video didn’t need to be pulled. Maybe it could have been done differently. Maybe they were all listening but chasing their tails trying to figure out what to do. The bottom line is that today there a bunch of people who have gotten their first social media black eye and now need to do some damage control and bridge building.

That’s life in the hyperconnected world of the world of social media.

It’s the weekend so a large company is going to get trashed on Twitter for a social media gaff. This week’s winner is Motrin.

Katja Presnal has a great summary (and the video that caused the uproar) on her blog and Mashable has a post by Sarah Evans giving some additional commentary on what went on but let me give you the short sentence version.

PR-advertising agency Taxi NYC made a site-promotion for Motrin targeted at mom’s who “wear” their babies (that is using a sling, snugglie, etc) that used a video clip that came off dismissive and patronizing at the same time. Twitter exploded with commentary last night, and it’s still going on today (check out this Twitter search for “motrinmoms”). Commentary is the polite way of saying “had their ass handed to them” because whoa I would not want to be the account manager for Motrin right now. Like Katja tweeted today:

“Motrin will take a lesser hit than their PR agency” by @skydiver
8 minutes ago from web

KatjaPresnal

[From Twitter / Katja Presnal: "Motrin will take a lesser ...]

Yes, McNeil hired Taxi NYC for the campaign, and they signed off on it (they had to and agency can’t blow their nose without three levels of regulatory approval when doing a pharma project), but I don’t place the place on the Motrin product managers. They don’t have time to figure all this stuff out, that’s what an agency is for. Yes, gut feel is important. Yes, I’ve seen projects get tanked by PMs because it was too close to the edge, but I think the blame rests firmly on Taxi for this one.

While this isn’t a social media campaign per se it became one as soon as it lit the Twitter-verse on fire. So where is Taxi in all this? There is a MotrinMoms Twitter account but as far as I can see they aren’t clued into the conversation about the campaign. There is no discussion with the thought leaders who are tweeting and writing about. The tweets are just, I don’t have a word for how bad, like fiddling while Rome burns.

There are so many great lessons here that I know I won’t catch them all, but here’s a good go at them:

• If you are the product manager at a company it’s time to have some basic education about social media
• When hiring an agency their social media savvy is a must check- must have.
• Agencies, you must be on point and monitoring the social media world from the moment a campaign goes live. You have to be read for anything
• If things are starting to go off the rails, reach out. Find the players and influencers and connect with them one-on-one. If they are big enough to have influence, they will be easy to find and contact.
• Agencies, if you don’t have social media specialists (or at least experts) on staff, time to hire some. Yesterday.

Dave Knox echoes these points in his post: “Congratulations Motrin. You just proved why every brand needs to understand Social Media ” and reminds me of Brian Solis’ post on crisis communications (which I can’t find at the moment). You can’t be blissfully ignorant of social media anymore. Brand managers, product mangers, agencies, you all need to step up and get a handle on the world of social media and how you work within it.

Go to a conference, check out a Third Tuesday, heck hire a social media consultant for a day or two for workshops (I’m available), because if you don’t you’re going to have a Monday like the folks at Taxi NYC and the Motrin brand team are going to have. Yeah they’re going to need some Motrin tomorrow.

Update: Just posted from Mathew Ingram and now Toby Bloomberg.

More updates: I missed in the first go round Laura (Pistachio) Fitton’s original post and GuruofNew

Feel free to leave more links in the comments.

Today is World Diabetes Day. Diabetes is something close to me. My Grandmother had it and died of the eventual complications.

Buzz Bishop has an auction going at 95Crave for some cool things:

[From 95Crave Auctions for World Diabetes Day | The Blog According to Buzz Bishop]

And he and Tanya Davis are running a freakin’ half-marathon in January to raise money for diabetes research.

I’ve donated, how about you?

Okay folks we really blew it this week. How many times have we been told not to give out our passwords? How many times have you refused to give a tech support person your password? Yeah lots, but this week I think we collectively blew it. Not just once, but twice!

First was SocialMinder then it was Twitterank. Both spread like wildfire working off what powers social media the most, us.

A friend passes something along or see a tweet with “My Twitterank is…” from a friend, well of course it should be safe, right?

Doh!

That is the simplest bit of social engineering and we fell for it.

As well, it should be a wake-up call for everyone to be a lot more careful about sharing your personal information. It should also be a reminder that changing your passwords on a regular basis, and not using the same password for every online service is a good digital habit.

More: Louis Gray has a post about Twitterank, and how he’s not too concerned about people hacking into his Twitter account.

[From Getting Sloppy With Data/Passwords | Mark Evans]

Yes, Twitter needs to make some changes so we have have interesting things like Twitterank safely, but wow we’ve got to think harder. I can’t count the number of times I’m asked for a password for one service by another to do something that I’d like.

Sure most of the time this is cool, but it doesn’t take much to make it very uncool. Uncool that could become really, really bad.

Fine lesson learned, but really there are legitimate reasons for this kind of thing and I don’t know an easy way for us to vett the good from the bad.

AIR apps, Facebook apps, all these things…I hope someone smarter than I has an idea on this because besides OAuth and OpenID I don’t know a solution.

You?

Update: I was going to include this link to Alexander van Elsas’ post on the 5 dangers of social media .

Fresh on the heels of what could be argued as the first President that social media elected came a social media gaff in Vancouver’s mayoral race.

The story broke in the Vancouver Sun and was tweeted and blogged by many local digerati including Colleen of BuzzNetworker:

The lessons to take out of this? Register your name and your company name in all of the social marketing sites right away. Not owning your own name could come with serious consequences. And, if you’re trying to get people to choose you over another option, don’t try to win that vote by point out what the other guy is doing wrong.  In this age of transparency and honesty, you just look petty and childish. Source: Local Politics use Twitter Poorly

And Michael Tippett of NowPublic who also commented on the fact that while we were arguing over a social media gaff, the current city council put us all on the hook for $100 million to guarantee that the Olympic Village will be finished on time (no mention of whether the social housing will actually make it).

Now you want the truly ironic part? The last mayoral debate before the election on this Wednesday which is hosted by the CBC will take questions from Twitter and be live-tweeting the event!

I’ve had a long while to think about this whole Twitter-jacking business. In the great scheme of things, it was a pretty stupid thing to actually use the Twitter account. Yes, “fakePeterLadner” would have been much better from the get go. I think the Vision Vancouver team has taken some well-deserved lumps from the social media community on this issue. There are any number of us who are Vision supporters, including myself, who they could have bounced the idea off of and all of us (I hope) would have told them not to do it, just sit on the name.

The greater point is that, like we heard at the Vancouver Board of Trade panel recently, you can’t just sit back and ignore social media. Fine, don’t participate, but at least stake your claim. Buy domains, reserve names on Twitter, etc. if nothing else so they can’t be used against you.

Remember when the web was young and the idea of a candidate or party website was alien to most politicians? Remember how many got burned when domains were bought out from under them?

Social media is just the same, so get with the program people. Good grief the Ladner and NPA campaign could have used “Twittergate” to distract us from the greater issue of the $100 million dollars voted on in secret and seal as in camera. Alas they didn’t.

I guess the only thing left to do is to listen to the debate on Wednesday and vote two days later.

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Image by comicbase via Flickr

Welcome to a new world. Like most of the world, I watched the results from the U.S. election last night (yes I voted and yes I voted for Obama). I was anxious, hopeful, maybe a little fearful. We’ve been let down before by the American electoral system.  Now this morning we wake to a new era. How did we get here? Social media.

In 2004 blogs were a factor but not mainstream by any stretch. We could only dream of going from pictures and short videos posted from cell phones to live streaming from cell phones. Twitter didn’t exist.

Today it is expected that a candidate will have a blog, be on Twitter, organize through Facebook, release material on YouTube.

Social media has become so engrained in how we organize ourselves, not just information, that now we expect it.

All the networks were talking about Twitter, and using Twitter, this election. Rick Sanchez’s whole show on CNN was often guided by what people were saying on Twitter.

Did McCain miss this? Was that a factor in his defeat last night? That is a debate that could go on for hours, but it’s fair to say that Obama, by leveraging social media, certainly gave him some kind of boost.

Now let’s see if it continues into his administration.

Updated: I’m not the only one who has seen this connection between Obama, social media, and his victory. Both Buzznetworker and LIVEdigitally have similar posts.

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Contrary to what a lot of folks might think, we social media folks do emerge in sunlight, aren’t stuck behind computers, or incapable of speaking in English. This afternoon a quartet of the best of Vancouver’s social media gurus told the folks at the Vancouver Board of Trade how to make social media can work for them.

Colleen moderated the session and Rebecca live blogged the whole thing (and much better than my live tweeting) while I snapped a few shots:

You could be a little cynical about the content of the panel. Many of you reading this post would be saying “yes we knew that three years ago…”, however integrating social media as a tool and not a fad or “we need this too…” tactic isn’t easy. The information is slow to trickle down to all levels.

You mix in new tools like Twitter, well things can really get wonky.

I think some of the best things the panel repeated were to:

• be open, honest, and transparent
• at least listen to the conversation
• whatever you do or say online will be noted, indexed, and be “on record”
• you can’t hide from social media, you’re already in it even if you aren’t listening.

It’s important for us all to remember that we still need to keep listening, keep teaching, keep learning.

Keep growing social media

How many of you were followed by FlyLady yesterday on Twitter? From the looks of things lots of you, but do you know who FlyLady is? When the web was young (like Web 0.5) FlyLady emerged with a Yahoo group with the goal to end CHAOS (Can’t Have Anyone Over Syndrome), have a cleaner house, and be better organized. Think GTD for your home.

She knows how to organize her community. In fact I’d say she is the mother of all community managers. Her devotees are called “FlyBabies” and often received personal messages of encouragement from her in the group’s emails. I don’t know how FlyLady has done it, but she’s been going strong for probably 13-14 years now. Yeah years.

Now you want to talk about volume? Yeah I tried to subscribing for a while, but holy smokes she sends out a lot of stuff. Hey they are all great ideas for keeping CHAOS at bay, but wow.

Now FlyLady is on Twitter and we should welcome her with open arms. Heck I’ve followed her back and she’ll go in my watch list soon (thank God her tweets aren’t as active as emails!). Her FLyBabies are joining Twitter as well and following the people she is following. She has over 1,600 followers in about 20 hours. Yeah hours. If that isn’t having an uber loyal and loving community, I don’t know what is.

Props to FlyLady and welcome to Twitter. Now, please share your community building wisdom with us, cause you’re our Queen.

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Thanks to a little late night tweeting and e-mailing I have a media pass to today’s Vancouver Board of Trade event and will be there with camera and laptop in hand (or on back):

As part of the Vancouver Board of Trade’s Tough Talk for Tender Causes™ series, the Case for New Communication Tools panel includes:
Michael Allison, Communications Co-ordinator, Pace Group
Stephen P. Jagger, Founding Partner, Reachd.com
John Starkey, President, FCV Technologies

Moderator: Colleen Coplick, Blogger, Buzznetworker.com, B5Media Network Source: Vancouver Board of Trade - Events Calendar

I’m looking forward to this panel, if only to heckle Michael Allison (kidding), because it touches on something that many non-profits miss. Social media isn’t expensive, it isn’t hard, it doesn’t require serious voodoo to make work. Social media tools are perfect for non-profits to tell their story online. That basic connection between a group and the public is what can make or break it. People love the connection, the stories, the passion. Non-profits, come on bring it!

I certainly hope this panel isn’t the each panelist gets up and gives a spiel then the whole group takes questions. A panel that gives a semi-structured group talk with Q&A throughout is much more interesting, IMHO. Though I’m sure Colleen can keep these guys in line and keep the topics moving.

I’ll be there with Rebecca Bollwitt (maybe I can cede live coverage to her) who also worked the social media magic to get a media pass to the event (Remember luck favours the bold).

Now, let’s hope I have enough business cards on hand for the networking reception afterwards

All the brew-ha-ha about the death of blogging last week didn’t really surprise me much (See Mark Evans, Mathew Ingram, Wired and Tish Grier). I had a post percolating in my head about the whole issue, but it wasn’t until Rebecca’s post today that it all clicked together for me:

I think blogging is changing; it’s evolving into something much bigger, allowing for more applications and tools to emerge in the online realm. It’s changing the conversation and allowing for more of a two-way street; you and your audience, wired and mobile, on and offline. Source: Blogging is Dead » Vancouver Blog Miss 604 by Rebecca Bollwitt

This is what I’ve been saying-have said-will continue to say (and you thought verb conjugation would never be helpful!) for years now. Blogging is changing and evolving. Blogging is writing. It’s a tool. At either Gnomedex or Affiliate Summit or BlogWorldExpo over the summer someone said “Saying I blog is like saying I paper.” it’s just one technology that lets us share and exchange information quickly.

Rebecca’s right, live tweeting is overtaking live blogging. Why? I think because there is more immediacy to a Twitter stream of coverage, certainly more brevity, and you can reach a broader audience with less effort. I have something like 2200 followers on Twitter and I know not all of them read my blog, but on Twitter they can get the info easily.

FriendFeed is becoming a hub for information, one that I haven’t been using as much lately because TweetDeck doesn’t have FriendFeed integration, rather than Techmeme or similar aggregators.

All of these tools are based on what we’ve learned and developed through blogging. RSS, remote posting, following people, friends, connections. It’s an evolution, a process, and frankly it’s damn exciting.

I’m still writing here, and will continue to do so until I run out of things to say. Is this a blog or my personal magazine of Tris?

In the end, does it really matter?