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Nine Things You Didn’t Know About Twitter

January 19, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Look more closely, and you’ll find that Twitter has been augmented, by the company and by other Internet toolmakers, with a virtual appliance store of simple, utilitarian features, widgets and services that let users find interesting posts, create photo albums or search Twitter more efficiently. Yet unlike, say, Facebook or Microsoft Office, Twitter’s power tools are easy to find and easy to figure out.

UPLOAD PHOTOS If you post a link to a photo from one of a long list of other sites, Twitter will automatically display the image in the right-hand “details” pane when another user looks at your post. These sites have a post-to-Twitter option on their image upload pages. There are 16 supported sites: DailyBooth, DeviantArt, Etsy, Flickr, Justin.tv, Kickstarter, Kiva, Photozou, Plixi, Twitgoo, TwitPic, Twitvid, Ustream, Vimeo, Yfrog and YouTube.

MAKE A GALLERY Moreover, Twitter creates a photo gallery page that displays each user’s last 100 uploaded images. (There’s no similar feature for video.) An independent site, Hashalbum, automatically groups Twitter users’ images into separate albums based on any hashtags included in the post to Twitter. For example, hashalbum.com/aquapets displays all the images whose URLs were posted to Twitter with the hashtag #aquapets.

SAVE YOUR FAVORITE TWEETS Everyone seems to know that you can retweet another user’s Twitter post on your own account’s feed. But many users have never tried the star-shaped Favorite button next to Twitter’s Retweet button. Clicking on Favorite below a Twitter status update adds it to your personal Favorites list, much like bookmarking a Web page in your browser. To see your Favorites, click Profile at the top of Twitter’s Web interface, then click the Favorites tab on the left-hand side of your profile page.

The Favorites list is more useful than it seems at first. Unlike a Web page you found on Google, a Twitter status update may be impossible to find in a few days because of the nearly 300 million new entries posted to Twitter every day and the small odds of a unique search keyword match in the short text posts. Just try to find that cogent comment about Paula Deen from this week. Even finding your own posts from a few months ago can be tiring. If you post something you want to save for the ages, click Favorite on it yourself.

DO POWER SEARCHES Twitter’s default search box often returns too many results, mostly from the last few hours, for just about any popular keyword. To zero in on a specific entry, click Refine Results near the top center of Twitter’s search results page. That will take you to Twitter’s advanced search page. There, you can specify further search filters, like a specific Twitter username or hashtag.

The separate Web site Topsy goes even further, so much so that Twitter recommends Topsy in its official guide for journalists. Topsy indexes Twitter updates with additional information that can be searched, like a date range for finding older posts. On Topsy, you can also filter out specific keywords to find, for example, posts that include the word “lady” but not the word “gaga.”

USE KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS Instead of clicking around with your mouse, you can operate Twitter by using your keyboard. Type a question mark at Twitter’s Web interface to pop up a panel with a list of the available keyboard commands. There are nearly 20 listed, including “r” to retweet a post, or “/” to jump to the search box. Some of the commands require two keystrokes, like “g p” to go to your profile page.

There are two more commands not listed on that pop-up panel. Typing “s p” will pop up a box to search only posts that include links to photos, and “s v” will initiate a similar search for videos.

CROSS-POST TO FACEBOOK You have the option to cross-post a Twitter status update to your Wall on Facebook by logging into Facebook and installing the Selective Tweets app. The app will prompt you for your Twitter username. So anytime you end a Twitter update with #fb, that post will also be sent to your Facebook page as long as you’re logged into Twitter and Facebook in your browser.

USE TWITTER VIA TEXT MESSAGES Most smartphones have plenty of free Twitter apps that you can download to send and read Twitter updates on your phone. But you can also use Twitter through SMS messages. Send a photo, and Twitter will upload and link to it. Text users can also follow you without needing a Twitter account of their own by sending a text to 40404 with the message, say, “follow paulboutin.”

JUMP TO THE INTERESTING STUFF Twitter has created two new buttons that appear next to the Home button atop the page: Connect and Discover. Connect is a one-click way to see everyone who is interacting with you on the network. It displays a list of members who have recently followed you, mentioned you, retweeted one of your posts or added one to their Favorites list. Discover tries to figure out your personal interests based on your location, who you follow and what topics are hot, much the way Facebook’s Top Stories section tries to guess which status updates you most likely want to read. The company is still improving Discover, so it should gradually get better at picking the right posts.

FIND SOMETHING LONGER TO READ Does scrolling through one-line status updates feel like listening to dogs bark? For those wanting a more intellectual experience, Twitter users have created an ad hoc hashtag, #longreads, for posts that link to longer articles, engaging blog posts and unusually fascinating PDF documents. Sometimes you can find in-depth information on current events by, say, searching for #longreads or #longreads followed by a specific word.

With the time you’ll save with these tricks, you’ll be able to grab something a lot longer than 140 characters to read.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=2895e899322b866469b960c61d0134a3

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Bucks Blog: Wednesday Reading: Visiting Manhattan on a Budget

December 14, 2011 by Leave a Comment

December 14

Wednesday Reading: Visiting Manhattan on a Budget

Visiting Midtown Manhattan on a budget, YouTube redesign draws user ire, Web sites extend free-shipping deadlines and other consumer-focused news from The New York Times.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=fa910a7d215fd819e87e5c4e2f97e6c6

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Occupy Movement Focuses on Staying Current on Social Networks

November 25, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Now, with cities starting to break up dozens of encampments from New York to Oakland, Calif., protesters may no longer have a physical presence that helps produce daily images and live streaming video for the 24-hour news cycle. And, despite having created a large network on social media sites, organizers within the movement and social media experts say that online tools alone are not enough to sustain it.

“I think the online component was critical — the ability to stream video, to capture the images and create records and narratives of sacrifice and resistance,” said Yochai Benkler, a professor at Harvard Law School and co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard. But he added that a complete retreat to an online-only form would be a mistake.

“The ability to focus on a national agenda will depend on actual, on-the-ground, face-to-face actions, laying your body down for your principles — with the ability to capture the images and project them to the world,” Mr. Benkler said, pointing to the outrage over the use of pepper spray at the University of California, Davis, last weekend as an example of an encounter that ratcheted up the online conversation.

It was video of that episode spreading on YouTube that helped get the conversation going. YouTube is part of the formidable digital presence that has been created with 1.7 million videos, viewed 73 million times, that are tagged with the keyword “occupy” in YouTube’s News and Politics category.

The movement counts more than 400 Facebook pages with 2.7 million fans around the world. On Tumblr.com, the “We Are the 99 Percent” blog continues to publish the personal stories of hundreds of people struggling with student debt, health care costs and foreclosure. There are also dozens of new wikis and Web pages, including OccupyWallSt.org and HowToOccupy.org.

On Twitter there are more than 100 accounts with tens of thousands of followers that come together under the hashtag #ows. The main account, @occupywallstnyc, has more than 94,000 followers.

But movement organizers recognize that they will need news to deliver updates.

To help propel the Occupy movement forward and prompt discussion across social networks, organizers are planning multiple protests in the coming weeks. A general strike has been called for Monday at University of California campuses, and a National Day of Action is planned for Dec. 6 to protest foreclosures. On Dec. 10, organizers are hoping to repeat the huge success they had in October when a call for a global day of action led to dozens of new encampments and protests that rippled from Asia to Europe. They are urging people to take to the streets on that day for a global human rights day.

Another global event would help provide fuel for the groups’ ambitious live video-streaming efforts. The real-time video showed people around the world what was happening in Zuccotti Park in New York, and also allowed them to talk about it on video-streaming platforms, including Livestream.com.

What began as one channel live streaming from the park has evolved into more than 200 Occupy-related unique channels on video-streaming sites.

“We can provide the real-time perspective, and we can also give people a place to talk about what they are seeing,” said Vlad Teichberg, 39, one of the volunteers who helps operate GlobalRevolution.tv, the first Occupy channel on Livestream.com.

Mr. Teichberg and other volunteers are planning to deliver regular broadcasts from a new television studio in a dilapidated building in the Bushwick area of Brooklyn. They want it to serve as the main portal for aggregating and curating video content about the movement from all over the world.

An analysis of the conversation on Twitter shows how important it is for the movement to have real things on the ground to talk about.

In the last month, the conversation about Occupy was beginning to wane but picked up again last week, according to an analysis by Trendrr, a social media analytics firm. That is due in part to the protests that followed the well-publicized police raid on the encampment at Zuccotti Park and the outrage at the pepper-spraying in California.

According to Jason Damata, a spokesman for Trendrr, the daily volume of posts about the movement on Twitter averaged 400,000 to 500,000 a day since Oct. 7. Mr. Damata said there were just over 2 million Twitter posts on Nov. 15, the day the police took apart the Zuccotti Park camp. This represented the highest volume of posts about the movement on Twitter during the last month.

But Occupy Wall Street’s online visibility could also diminish if other events, like the protests in Egypt this week, pick up momentum and drive the conversation online. Or they could help bolster it.

Another firm, 140Elect.com, which tracks political trends online, noted a rise in tweets in the last week that shared content from both the Occupy movement and Egypt, according to the firm’s co-founder, Adam Green.

Mr. Green also observed that the conversation on Twitter was shifting from what was taking place inside the Occupy encampments to major news about the movement and other large protests around the world, including Egypt.

“We are not trying to control the message,” said Justin Wedes, a former Brooklyn science teacher who helps manage the @occupywallstnyc Twitter account. “People are getting on board with the message of the 99 percent and they are sharing their stories and we have engagement from all over the world.”

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=4f496ede297bafbbfb8be9e2ac907862

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China Steps Up Web Monitoring, Driving Many Wi-Fi Users Away

July 26, 2011 by Leave a Comment

The software, which costs businesses about $3,100, provides public security officials the identities of those logging on to the wireless service of a restaurant, cafe or private school and monitors their Web activity. Those who ignore the regulation and provide unfettered access face a $2,300 fine and the possible revocation of their business license.

“From the point of view of the common people, this policy is unfair,” said Wang Bo, the owner of L’Infusion, a cafe that features crepes, waffles and the companionship of several dozing cats. “It’s just an effort to control the flow of information.”

It is unclear whether the new measures will be strictly enforced or applied beyond the area of central Beijing where they are already in effect. But they suggest that public security officials, unnerved by turmoil in the Middle East and North Africa partly enabled by the Internet, are undaunted in their efforts to increase controls.

China already has some of the world’s most far-reaching online restrictions. Last year, the government blocked more than a million Web sites, many of them pornographic, but also Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Evite. Recent regulations make it difficult for individuals unaffiliated with a company to create personal Web sites.

When it comes to search engines and microblogging, dictates from the central Propaganda Department filter out topics and words that the Communist Party deems a threat to national stability or its reputation. At public cybercafes, where much of China’s working class gains access to the Internet, customers must hand over state-issued identification before getting on a computer.

The new measures, it would appear, are designed to eliminate a loophole in “Internet management” as it is called, one that has allowed laptop- and iPad-owning college students and expatriates, as well as the hip and the underemployed, to while away their days at cafes and lounges surfing the Web in relative anonymity. It is this demographic that has been at the forefront of the microblogging juggernaut, one that has revolutionized how Chinese exchange information in ways that occasionally frighten officials.

“To be honest, I can get Internet at home or at work, but it’s nice to just sit in a comfortable place and surf the Web,” said Wang Fang, 28, an advertising sales agent who often conducts work from the leather wing chairs at Kubrick, a high-ceilinged, smartly designed cafe that unplugged its router earlier this month rather than pay for the software. “If there’s no Internet, there’s no reason to come here.” The manager said the loss of Wi-Fi had already led to a 30 percent drop in business.

The Dongcheng Public Security Bureau did not respond to requests for comment on Monday, but according to its publicly issued circular, the measure is designed to thwart criminals who use the Internet to “conduct blackmail, traffic goods, gamble, propagate damaging information and spread computer viruses.” Such nefarious activity, the notice says, “not only hurts the interests of the country and the masses, but has also caused some businesses to suffer economic losses.”

The maker of the program, Shanghai Rain-Soft Software, declined to discuss how the product operates, but a company employee said it had already been delivered to public security officials in Beijing. Shanghai Rain-Soft was paid about $310,000 to design the program, according to a government Web site that announced its winning bid.

One bookstore owner said she had already disconnected the shop’s free Wi-Fi, and not for monetary reasons. “I refuse to be part of an Orwellian surveillance system that forces my customers to disclose their identity to a government that wants to monitor how they use the Internet,” said the woman, who feared that disclosing her name or that of her shop would bring unwanted attention from the authorities.

During a survey of more than a dozen businesses on Monday, none said they were prepared to purchase the software, which is designed to handle 100 users at one time. For many, it was a matter of economics. “It might make sense for places like Starbucks or McDonald’s, but we only have a couple of users at a time,” said Ray Heng, the owner of Sand Pebbles Lounge, a Mexican restaurant.

Like several other business owners, he said he hoped official fervor for new regulations would soon die down. In fact, he said, he had no immediate plans to stop offering his customers free Wi-Fi. “We have no problem allowing our customers to surf the Internet; it’s the government that does,” he said. “If they want us to install the software, they should foot the bill.”

Adam Century contributed reporting.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=60cf51ca5fa5c1357a51e48db7c423fa

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Cultural Studies: No Stardom Until After Homework

July 17, 2011 by Leave a Comment

This was just a week after the amateur video for Ms. Black’s now-infamous song, “Friday,” in which Ms. Cinkle had a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo, began its viral Internet ascent.

Ms. Cinkle, who agreed to appear in the video with the expectation that no one would actually see it, was shocked by the news. By her own admission, she was just “that girl in pink who sits behind Rebecca in the car for four seconds and was a terrible dancer.”

When she first checked out her fan page that morning in March, there were already 2,000 followers. By the time she came home from school, there were 10 times as many. By Friday, the total had reached 75,000.

So Ms. Cinkle did what our current age of social media requires of those swept up in the viral undertow: she jumped into the fray with haste.

First, she set up an official Tumblr page to keep track of the rapid proliferation of animated GIFS (graphic files that display a simple loop of images) that had sprung up showcasing her all-thumbs dance moves. Two days later, she established a “Benni Cinkle (Girl Dancing Awkwardly — Official Page)” on Facebook. Next came her own YouTube channel, where she posted a video blog F.A.Q. addressing a range of popular inquiries from her new fans, including the gossipy (“Are you still friends with Rebecca Black?” No.) and the inane (“How long is your driveway?” 128 feet.)

After that, she posted a clip of a flash-mob dance set to “Friday” that she organized at the local mall (a vehicle, she said, to generate money and attention for earthquake relief for Japan); created an official Web page, thatgirlinpink.com; rebranded her Twitter account; and even began offering her own Internet Survival Guide, free to download after submitting your e-mail address. In less than a month, Benni Cinkle had gone from an anonymous high school student to micro-celebrity.

“Everything happened so fast, I just made sure to keep up,” she said.

Ms. Cinkle is not unique. Online fame is becoming just another aspect of teenage life for a generation raised on reality television and the perpetual flurry of status updates that ping across their smartphones, tablets and computer screens.

Not only have sites like YouTube made it possible for numerous unknown adolescents to be discovered — Greyson Chance, a 13-year-old from Oklahoma, got a record deal after Ellen DeGeneres mentioned his YouTube piano version of Lady Gaga’s “Paparazzi” on her talk show, for instance — but youngsters with no special talent, like Ms. Cinkle, are drawing mass followings as well. (The publicity wave that fueled Ms. Cinkle’s popularity was, in fact, driven overwhelmingly by viewers who hated the video she was performing in, routinely calling it “the worst song ever” even as they watched and forwarded it en masse.)

Trevor Michaels, 12, better known as iTr3vor, has received more than 5.5 million views on his YouTube channel for hyperactive dance moves he performs at various Apple stores when his mother takes him shopping at the mall. (He uploads videos of the dances on the spot.)

Then there are the legions of girls who post “haul” videos, short clips of themselves chattering about their most recent fashion and makeup purchases. The spots are unwatchable to most any adult, but they draw in hundreds of thousands of girls in their teens or younger who are eager to duplicate the shopping habits of their peers.

YouTube, the global video-sharing site, estimates that 10 percent of its most-subscribed users are 19 or younger and that, as a whole, more than one-third of the most successful participants in its revenue-sharing Partner Program are under 25. “It’s fascinating to see how many of the kids who have huge followings are almost going under the radar of most adults,” said Annie Baxter, who works in the partner program and recently helped oversee how-to courses for nascent YouTube stars at Google’s Manhattan offices.

For every success story, there are thousands of other teenagers poised and eager to seize their own moment, should it come. “Every teenager is already creating unique content for a multitude of social media accounts,” said Valerie Veatch, a filmmaker who is directing, with the artist Chris Moukarbel, a coming YouTube documentary, “Me At the Zoo,” which takes its title from the very first clip uploaded to the video-sharing site in 2005. “And in a way, constant social networking serves as training in the event that your content blows up on the Web. You’re prepared to engage the expectations of fans.”

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=8b656b6bbcc28ea41168a84066d83b77

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You’re the Boss: Small Businesses That Understand Social Media

July 11, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Blake Cervenka and his Yeti cake.Blake Cervenka and his Yeti cake.

Branded

An insider’s guide to small-business marketing.

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post questioning whether all small businesses should invest time and money in social media. The post was a reminder that business owners need to consider the costs and potential returns of social media before taking the leap.

Especially because that post prompted a lively discussion, I’d like to share a couple of examples of small businesses that are doing it right and getting impressive returns on their social media investment — along with a graphic that serves as a nice one-sheet guide to getting the most out of social media tools.

Example No. 1: Melrose Jewelers is a three-year-old, 70-employee, e-commerce retailer based in Los Angeles that sells luxury watches — Cartier, Rolex, Breitling — at an average cost of $4,000. Kyle Mitnick, director of marketing, said that since Melrose introduced its Facebook page, blog and YouTube channel last fall, the company has seen a 71-percent increase in year-over-year sales (and collected more than 100,000 Facebook “likes”).

“Facebook is a great forum for really conveying the trust of our business and helps us level the playing field in reaching younger, aspiring individuals who are technologically savvy,” said Mr. Mitnick. “Older customers, who have purchased luxury watches at stores, are a little bit hesitant to make a purchase that large online. With this group, our social presence — reviews by other Facebook users, posts and interaction with our fans — builds credibility.”

Melrose ran four Facebook campaigns simultaneously over a five-month period — including one in December that the company credits with attracting $100,000 in sales. “We came up with a concept of associating a watch with a person’s identity,” Mr. Mitnick said. “We have over 600 watches on our site. Customers will say, ‘I know I want a Breitling, but I don’t know which one.’” So the company created a quiz that asked a series of questions and — based on the answers — tied the person’s personality to a specific watch. The answers were posted on the quiz taker’s Facebook page. (Apparently I’m a Men’s Stainless Steel Blue Stick Dial Rolex Datejust. Who knew?)

Mr. Mitnick said the costs of the quiz campaign were just $160 to Wildfire Apps to build and run the quiz application for 30 days and about $7,000 in staff time.

Example No. 2: Walk into the offices of Yeti Coolers and you feel as if you are somehow in a family fishing camp located inside a warehouse. On a hot summer day in Austin, Tex., the mostly male employees dress like they’re heading to troll for redfish on the flats. This five-year-old company makes rugged coolers — with premium pricing to match. You can get the feel from a YouTube video that shows a 500-pound wrestler, Big Bald Mike, attempting to destroy a Yeti. He’s unsuccessful with the Yeti — but quickly decimates a competitor’s cooler.

Yeti Coolers was started in 2006 by two brothers, Roy and Ryan Seiders. They owned, respectively, a company that built custom fishing boats and one that built fly-fishing rods, and Roy was looking for a more durable ice chest to outfit his boats. The more he learned the more interested he got; eventually, he decided to stop selling boats and start selling coolers. Working with a manufacturer in the Philippines, they incorporated features like full-length metal rod hinges, rubber molded key latches, and three-inch thick lids. Outdoorsmen responded. Today, the coolers sell through Yeti’s online store and 1,500 dealers nationally, including sporting-goods destinations like Cabela’s and Bass Pro Shops. The 37-employee company has experienced 100-percent growth since its inception, and its inventory is moving rapidly through its new 35,000-square-foot complex. Every day, a 53-foot Fedex trailer leaves the warehouse full.

Yeti’s Facebook page, its blog and YouTube videos (more than 50, some with more than 10,000 views) are the watering holes where the tribe shares its enthusiasm. “Most of the time people are using coolers, they are doing something fun,” said Rick Wittenbraker, vice president of marketing. “They stop calling it a cooler and say, ‘Let’s go fill up the Yeti.’”

The Facebook page, with nearly 15,000 “likes,” is full of people sharing their Yeti moments, encouraged by photo contests and giveaways of hats, T-shirts and gear. “We are not in the game of saying, ‘Buy this cooler, on sale now!’ It’s about building our community and upselling. We have guest bloggers and profile our dealers. People on our Facebook page love sharing pictures of themselves in a Yeti hat in a cool place or sharing their fishing and hunting photos. Some of our customers created their own videos featuring their Yeti — one guy swimming with sharks and his Yeti — and uploaded it to their own YouTube channels.”

Mr. Wittenbraker makes a point to respond to every comment and finds it extremely useful as a customer-service forum. He estimates his team collectively spends at least 20 hours per week managing their social media and says the benefits have been immeasurable. Among the hundreds of photographs that members of Yeti Nation have posted online have been several wedding shots of proud grooms (that’s Blake Cervenka in the photo above) sharing their special day with Yeti-inspired wedding cakes, complete with ice cubes, fishtails and lures — the butter-cream frosting version of a real Yeti.

MP Mueller is the founder of Door Number 3, a boutique advertising agency in Austin, Tex. Follow Door Number 3 on Facebook.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=0da88ae564d2c17bfcdebfa8e3dc4229

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You’re the Boss: This Week in Small Business: Oprah, Banks and Credit Cards

May 31, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Dashboard

What’s affecting me, my clients and other small-business owners this week.

STORMS HIT HARD A devastating tornado hits Joplin, Mo., and a small-business owner copes with the aftermath. The Louisiana Small Business Development Center is preparing to assist businesses affected by the Mississippi flood waters. The Small Business Administration opens a recovery center in Decatur, Ill., to help businesses hit by the storms.

GOODBYE TO OPRAH, BANKS AND CREDIT CARDS Oprah Winfrey says bye-bye and her swansong leaves a void for small businesses. Seventy-seven banks also say bye-bye. Google’s commerce chief tells TechCrunch that it’s making a “huge bet” on near field communications technology and also plans to kill the credit card. Due to classic videos like this, YouTube celebrates its sixth birthday and gets three billion (yes, billion) views a day. A puppy celebrates its first birthday.

THE BUDGET GOES DOWN Anne All, a tech writer, wonders if the United States is becoming the new center of low cost manufacturing. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities says wars and the Bush tax cuts are driving our debt. President Obama’s February budget is defeated 0-97 in the Senate. An academic is defeated by his cat. The G.O.P. plans a vote on the debt ceiling. Are Democrats eyeing a 62-percent top tax rate? Susan Solovic, a blogger, says small businesses didn’t have much to celebrate during National Small Business Week.

CONSUMERS ARE HURTING Jobless claims unexpectedly rose last week and consumer spending cooled in the first quarter. The Fed’s Elizabeth Duke paints a gloomy picture for consumers. A new study by the National Bureau of Economic Research shows 50 percent of Americans would struggle to come up with $2,000 in a pinch. Many warn that a commercial real estate “day of reckoning” is coming. With costs rising 7.5 percent, Medicare breaks the inflation curve. At least honeymooners aren’t cutting back.

A SLOW ECONOMY, A FAST KID Russell Investments releases its update on the economy. Durable goods orders decline. The Richmond Fed reports a contraction in manufacturing. April business borrowing and credit quality improves. A three-year-old takes on an otter. Copper falls on slower China manufacturing. Japan falls into a recession. Gas prices decline. New home sales rise. Realtor.com lists the 10 markets where real estate prices are growing the fastest. Revised gross domestic product stays unrevised at an anemic 1.8 percent.

BRILLIANT IDEA OF THE WEEK Guitar picks from credit cards. Duh!

POMP AND UNFORTUNATE CIRCUMSTANCE We spend a lot more per capita on education, but do we get results? You might want to check out the returns. (Big surprise: artsy people earn less). I’m pretty sure these 20 kids won’t have much to worry about. Houghton Mifflin is giving away $250,000 to entrepreneurs who can offer ideas to fix our education system. The good news: three quarters of employers plan to hire recent college grads. Anna Lindow explains how to use social media for recruiting, like “you might consider creating a short video, as corporations like Facebook have done, to present your material in a more engaging manner.” Or you can just work more hours. Unfortunately, women still have a long way to go to be equal in the workplace. Guys, try not to be too happy.

ONE MORE THING TO BLAME ON MICROSOFT A survey says that 71 percent of small businesses are unaware of cloud computing. Intel debuts a “hybrid” cloud service for small business. Dropbox users save a million files every five minutes. Christopher Mims says mobile apps will soon be dead: “The seeds of destruction for both iOS and Android app stores have already been sown — by none other than Google.” Megan Conniff explains how the Five Guys burger chain implemented online ordering. Twitter buys TweetDeck. Signs show desktop virtualization is coming of age for small business. God allegedly blames Microsoft Outlook for missing the rapture. The L.A. Times’ Cyndia Zwahlen reports that hackers don’t care whether businesses are big or small. Coming soon: a climbing robot.

THE BEST BAD START-UP PITCH EVER David Lee and Ron Conway bust a few entrepreneurial myths on stage at Disrupt. Worcester Business Journal’s Matt Pilon writes about key slip-ups every start-up should avoid. Willis Wee logs some ideas from Startup Weekend Tokyo. A new venture that helps enable the transfer of health records over the Internet receives $5 million in funding. The executive director of the National Association for the Self-Employed lists five big myths about American small businesses. John Baldoni shares three traits of successful entrepreneurs. Paul Kedrosky thinks this is the best bad start-up pitch ever. Nokia wants your ideas. James Altucher explains how he self-published a book, and how you can, too: “There’s no financial benefit for going with a publisher if advances are going to zero and royalties are a few percentage points.”

IN DEFENSE OF BANKS? Mike Shedlock wants answers to a few important questions before the banks are attacked. Example: “I do not know how big the “strung along” category is, but the only ones in this category who were genuinely harmed to any significant degree are those who continued to make mortgage payments, strung along on a promise, when instead they could have and should have walked away. How many is that? You tell me.” Bank profits are the highest since 2007. Bank of America hires 75 small-business bankers in the mid-Atlantic area. Banks plan to offer cash transfers via cell numbers and e-mail addresses.

DON DRAPER TEACHES US MARKETING A study says that American small businesses will spend $36 billion on marketing activities in 2012. A matching service tries to pair small businesses with big business opportunities. Groupon figures out a great way to get unsubscribers to re-subscribe. Gail Goodman, Constant Contact’s chief executive, gives us six quick-hit marketing ideas for social media. Example: “Share a casual video message from yourself or one of your employees, or a customer testimonial video.” A graphic unravels the mysteries of affiliate marketing. Pitney Bowes announces a customer communications makeover contest for small-business owners. Sean Platt reveals what Don Draper knows about persuasion and success: “Even the most adventurous among us crave the sublime comfort of the familiar. Many writers and marketers understand this human need, but Don tumbles the thought by reminding us that true nostalgia isn’t a deep longing for the past so much as an affectionate feeling for a future that feels like a friend.”

BROTHELS WANT TO PAY TAXES Thousands of companies and nonprofits that received funds from the Obama administration’s economic stimulus program owe hundreds of millions of dollars in unpaid taxes. But Chrysler coughs it up to Uncle Sam. Some House committee members are trying to repeal the 3 percent withholding tax provision. The Nevada brothel industry wants to pay more taxes.

THE WEEK AHEAD The Consumer confidence index appears Tuesday. Look for Friday’s unemployment rate to still be high. Look for big crowds at Dunkin’ Donuts on Friday.

THIS WEEK’S AWARDS

STUPID INDEX Try to figure out your quality of life with the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development’s new Better Life Index. Ummm, is there anything here you wouldn’t rate highly?

ADVICE FOR GETTING CASH The Kauffman Foundation’s Brian O’Connell explains how to land health care (or other) seed money. Example: “Get to know your favorite V.C.s. You wouldn’t pick a business partner without getting to know every facial tic. So why wouldn’t you do the same for a venture capital firm, which is a close business partner by any definition? When you start to look for investors, make sure you know how they think, and what they want to see and hear from the companies they invest in. Go see them speak, attend the same seminars, read their books and white papers, study their Web sites, Google them, and yes, follow them on Facebook and Twitter, if that access is available. That way, when you do get a chance to present, you’ll know what clicks the pilot light on for that venture investor – and you can target your presentation accordingly.”

WISDOM BEYOND HIS YEARS Feross Aboukhadijeh, a Stanford student, says  none of us knows what we’re doing. Example: “Don’t listen to successful entrepreneurs. The folks who succeed have no way to know if their success was due to talent, skill, and planning, or merely dumb luck. If you ask them though, they’ll confidently spout reason after reason why they — and no one else – could possibly own 90 percent of the desktop PC market, or whatever they achieved. In their minds, it couldn’t have turned out any other way. Most of this is just after-the-fact rationalization, though. The truth is, they succeeded and have no idea why. They’re just explaining it in the best way they can.”

THIS WEEK’S QUESTION Do you feel confident that you know what you’re doing?

Gene Marks owns the Marks Group, a Bala Cynwyd, Pa., consulting firm that helps clients with customer relationship management. You can follow him on Twitter, and you can read his read his new book.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=486e354c256c8cb60aa0f979e7e83d30

Filed Under: Small Business Tagged With: , ,

Despite Restrictions, Microblogs Catch on in China

May 16, 2011 by Leave a Comment

“On Weibo, I’m mostly interested in current events, what my friends are saying, and some information related to health and psychology,” Mr. Wang said. “Every day I log in over five times, using either my computer or mobile phone. And I stay on for two or three hours.”

Mr. Wang and Weibo’s 140 million other registered users are one big reason American Internet companies like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube want to get into China. It has the world’s biggest Internet population, about 457 million users, and they are mostly young people who spend long periods engaged in social networking, online games and electronic commerce.

But for now, they cannot enter China. Although there are no regulations that prevent American companies from operating here, the three popular American Web sites have been blocked in China for several years. Analysts say this is probably because the Chinese government wants to prevent the services from distributing uncensored information.

Meanwhile, the Chinese social networking companies are booming. Two weeks ago, shares of the Chinese social networking site Renren soared after a dazzling initial public offering on Wall Street that, for a time, gave the start-up a market value of close to $7 billion.

But Renren, despite being called China’s Facebook, is not even the leader of this country’s hottest Internet craze. That company is Sina.com, the 13-year-old online portal that has reinvented itself with Sina Weibo. Shares of Sina listed on the Nasdaq exchange have jumped about 250 percent during the last year, and some analysts estimate that the company’s microblog unit could alone be worth $5 billion.

It’s all about traffic. In the two years since microblog services became widely available in China, they have attracted more than 220 million registered users.

Now, as microblogs have a powerful effect on public discourse and advertisers start to create campaigns aimed at microblog users, other Chinese Internet companies are scrambling to develop and promote their own microblog services.

“This is a big, big category,” said Zhao Chunming, an Internet analyst at the Susquehanna International Group. “The news media and celebrities are tweeting; so are C.E.O.’s. This is changing the way people receive their news and information.”

What is striking is that microblog services are booming here despite a recent Chinese government crackdown on social networking sites in the wake of democracy demonstrations in North Africa and the Middle East. The restrictions, which typically involve deleting or censoring politically charged content, seem to be aimed at preventing microblogs and other sites from being used to foster dissent or organize antigovernment protests.

Still, young Internet users in China seem unfazed by the restrictions, in part because microblog services are a compelling alternative to this country’s more heavily censored state-run media and, perhaps more important, because microblogs are a powerful tool for self-expression.

“There are just so many talkative people on Weibo,” said Guobin Yang, an associate professor at Barnard College in New York and the author of “The Power of the Internet in China: Citizen Activism Online.” He said, “They talk about anything, from Marx and McLuhan to personal relationships and love affairs. So the real success of Weibo is that it offers a place for this kind of chitchat.”

American companies have not given up. Groupon, the online coupon giant, recently formed an alliance with Tencent, China’s biggest Internet company. And last December, Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, visited Beijing and toured the offices of Sina and Baidu, China’s huge online search engine.

Facebook has dismissed rumors that it plans to enter China by teaming up with Baidu. Company executives have said only that they are exploring a way to enter China.

Analysts warn that the growth of Chinese microblogs could be curtailed if the government decided they have become too powerful a force in public opinion. But for the time being, microblog services are complying with censors and winning over new users, while social networking sites, like Renren, are struggling to keep pace, according to iResearch, an analytics firm based in Shanghai.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/16/business/global/16blogs.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Global Business Tagged With: , ,

New Apps to Post Videos With Ease

May 6, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Yet almost none of the millions of video clips stored on smartphones end up online.

The reason is simple: it’s easy to pull out your phone, call up the camera, and press record. But sharing your video is harder. How do you put it on Facebook? Some mobile Facebook apps have a video upload feature, but most people haven’t found it.

Phones that have a built-in option to post video to YouTube can force you through a mind-numbing multistep process. First, you upload the clip, which can’t be more than 15 minutes long. Then, you wait up to 20 minutes for YouTube to convert it and make it available. Then, you have to copy and paste the URL into Facebook or e-mail. It sounds easy in theory, but in practice it’s enough to keep most people from bothering.

If you try to send a video directly to a friend via e-mail or text message, you’ll almost certainly be thwarted. Either the clip is too big to send, or it’s too big for them to receive, or when they click it, they’ll only get an unhelpful error message like “the media being played is of an unsupported format.”

That’s why most of us resort to sharing video by holding our phones in front of other people’s faces.

In the last few weeks, though, new mobile apps have begun to make it almost as easy to share a video as it is to shoot. By automating the upload process, tying into Facebook and Twitter and reformatting clips so that they play on multiple types of phones as well as computers, these apps aim to make cellphone video as ubiquitous as still photos.

The most talked-about video app is Socialcam, a free app for iPhone and Android models that, as its name says, incorporates social media into the mix. To get started, download Socialcam from Apple’s App Store for iPhones or Google’s Android Market. The first time you fire it up, it will prompt you to log in using your Facebook account. Once you’re in, shoot-and-share is a lot easier than before.

You can use Socialcam to record video, or import clips from your camera roll. There’s no limit on how long your clip can be. You don’t need to think about uploading, because Socialcam automatically uploads the clip to its own servers in the background, and shares them from there. (The app is made by Justin.tv, a San Francisco start-up that popularized the genre of live video feeds a few years ago.)

Once you’re done recording, you have six options for sharing: Facebook, Twitter, SMS, e-mail, Tumblr and Posterous. You can post to your Facebook feed, or you can enter a Twitter user name and password to tweet a link to your video, which will play in any browser that supports the flash player or HTML5 video standard — that would include most desktop computers these days, and a growing array of mobile gadgets.

If you’d rather not share your clip with the entire Internet, you can e-mail a link to one or more contacts from your smartphone’s address book. Again, if they’re using a computer or phone that plays HTML5 video, it’ll play in the recipients’ browser. Socialcam also has its own social network in which you can tag, like and comment on friends’ Socialcam clips, which the app lets you browse in a gallery. If someone else tags you in a Socialcam video, it will get posted on your wall in Facebook. Yes, you can untag yourself.

Video uploads are good for more than party clips, date-hunting and “I’m at the beach and you’re not” messages. Real estate agents have begun to use them for walk-throughs of homes on the market. Protesters and counterprotesters at Wisconsin’s statehouse used them to document Gov. Scott Walker’s battle with public employee unions. Office workers have captured business meetings with less production quality, but also less awkward formality, than an official videographer.

But in many cases, the intended viewers may be trying to watch on a phone and not at their desks. Not all mobile phones can handle flash or HTML5 yet.

Another free app for iPhones, Thwapr (pronounced “THWAP-er”), solves the unsupported video format problem automatically. Thwapr video clips will play on hundreds of models of phones.

Like Socialcam, you point and shoot with Thwapr. Then you can send it to another phone owner or post to Facebook or Twitter, although Thwapr doesn’t have Socialcam’s tagging features.

Thwapr’s magic trick, though, is that if you send a Thwapr clip via e-mail or text message, you usually need not worry about what kind of phone your recipients are packing. They’ll get a link to click. When they do, their phone will request the video from Thwapr, which figures out what model of phone they have and how best to serve video to that phone. That includes automatically converting the video’s data format, which takes about 5 seconds.

Thwapr has a couple of restrictions. For now, the video recording app works only on iPhones, although the company says it is planning an Android app. Video uploads are limited to 10 minutes in length if you’re sending it over ATT or Verizon, or 45 minutes if you’re connected to a Wi-Fi network.

A third free app, Qik Video Connect (it’s pronounced quick, and is owned by Skype, makers of the Internet phone and video chat software), offers solutions for two of the shortcomings in Socialcam and Thwapr. First, there are Qik apps for recording video on a wide range of smartphones, not just iPhone and Android. They’re not as slick as Qik’s latest iPhone version, which has an easy-to-figure-out interface, but they’ll do the job.

Second, Qik was originally built for live video streaming. As it turns out, most users almost always prefer not to broadcast live on the Internet, but to record now and post later. Still, Qik makes it easy to create a video post on Facebook that looks and plays like a prerecorded clip, but is actually connected live to your phone’s camera. Qik’s iPhone app includes hooks for bloggers and self-publishers to create live or prerecorded video links on most of the popular blog platforms, or in an R.S.S. feed. Setting these up isn’t as easy as posting to Facebook, but any serious blogger should be able to figure them out in a few minutes.

One more thing you should do: trim your videos to the interesting parts. Qik and Thwapr have editing built in. Socialcam lets you import a clip edited in Apple’s iMovie or VidTrim on Android. Other video start-ups have found that most people won’t pay attention for longer than 10 or 12 seconds.

If you’re going to start posting videos from your phone, think before you shoot. You don’t want to become the Internet version of the older archetype: the guy who bores everyone with his never-ending home movies.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=c2edadfb69a025304e1e2e5448bb8a38

Filed Under: Business News Tagged With: , ,

Advertising: Small Carrier Gets Big Tailwind From Social Media

April 7, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Mr. Simmons stars in an in-flight safety video for Air New Zealand in which, along with providing standard instructions about oxygen masks and flotation devices, he leads crew members clad in fluorescent spandex and leg warmers in aerobic exercises. Since being uploaded to YouTube on March 28, it has garnered more than 1.9 million views.

Air New Zealand may be a small carrier with a modest presence in the United States (it flies only from airports in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Honolulu), but its online videos, just as surely as its airplanes, seem to always take off.

Another safety video from the airline that features a flight crew that is nude except for body paint applied to mimic uniforms, including neckties on men and scarves on women, has been viewed more than 6.1 million times since being uploaded to YouTube in 2009; a commercial featuring body-painted pilots and ground crews, which was shown only in New Zealand but also was posted to YouTube, has been viewed more than 6.5 million times.

Another video uploaded on March 29 stars the rapper Snoop Dogg and Rico, a puppet created for the airline by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop in Los Angeles. Rico, who began starring in online videos last year, has, according to his creators, parents of Ecuadorean and Italian descent, and his loose grasp of English leads him to inadvertently utter double entendres.

The video has been viewed more than 500,000 times on YouTube, while other videos featuring the puppet over the last six months collectively have been viewed more than a million times.

Rico videos carry a warning about “language and themes of a sensitive nature,” and if anything unifies the airline videos, all by the agency .99 of Auckland, part of the BBDO group, it is risqué humor.

•

“It’s quite a challenge getting people talking about Air New Zealand in international markets when in reality we’re a nation of about 4.5 million people at the bottom of the world,” said Mike Tod, general manager of marketing and communications for the airline. “Being safe is not going to attract attention, and we’re willing to take some risks.” Social media has acted as a tailwind for the Air New Zealand videos, with Snoop Dogg promoting his both on Facebook, where he has more than 7.8 million followers, and Twitter, where he has more than three million.

Mr. Simmons shared his video with his more modest fan base (about 7,300 on Twitter and 11,400 on Facebook), but the video also benefited from appearing first on the popular Web site Mashable, which was given advance notice by the airline’s United States public relations and marketing firm, the Los Angeles office of CRT/tanaka.

The airline itself has more than 150,000 followers on several Facebook pages and about 25,000 followers on Twitter. On YouTube, Air New Zealand has its own self-contained channel, where users following a link to one airline video are apt to encounter others, and the channel has more than 3,500 subscribers, who are sent links to new videos when they are uploaded.

“Brands can’t just rely on luck and serendipity and just have a post-and-pray strategy” when it comes to Web video, said Dan Greenberg, chief executive of Sharethrough, a San Francisco agency that develops online advertising and social media strategies for Internet content.

“Instead of Air New Zealand creating a single self-contained piece of content, what they’re really creating is a community and a conversation,” said Mr. Greenberg, who has not worked for the airline.

Some of the earliest viral videos by brands had little or no association with products, often appearing to be homegrown and gaining popularity before brands took credit. But videos by the airline, set on well-appointed airplanes and featuring attractive and charming Air New Zealand employees, puts the company front and center, and Mr. Greenberg said that reflected a growing trend.

“What is so exciting about right now is that brands can create content around the brands themselves that is entertaining and inspiring and that doesn’t shy away from the fact that it’s brand marketing,” Mr. Greenberg said. “People appreciate brands and identify with brands.”

What is more singular about many of the viral videos is that they resonate beyond the Internet: the Richard Simmons and body-paint safety videos, as well as other humorous safety videos featuring the New Zealand men’s national rugby team and Rico, the puppet, all convey the required safety information and are shown onboard before flights.

Air New Zealand is also using its Facebook presence for a decidedly more somber purpose — to lend support in the response to the February earthquake in Christchurch, with an estimated death toll of around 180. A special Facebook page by the airline in support of relief efforts has almost 5,000 followers.

According to Mr. Tod, the airline’s marketing manager, the carrier has contributed more than $12 million in reduced or free fares to transport emergency personnel as well as friends and family of victims and survivors.

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Mr. Tod said the latest viral videos were already in development at the time of the earthquake, and in one sense helped raise money for relief efforts.

When Mr. Simmons was in New Zealand to shoot the safety video in March, he also led a fund-raising exercise class at an Auckland gym, Les Mills. Among those joining Mr. Simmons dancing onstage at the class, which had a 1980s theme, was Air New Zealand’s chief executive, Rob Fyfe, who sported short pink shorts and a lavender headband. The class raised about $10,000 for response efforts for the Red Cross.

“The earthquake had a significant impact on the airline and its people,” Mr. Tod said. “We had many employees who lost family or friends or lost their homes.”

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=82d792bf9f4be8f8359f303b1166f925

Filed Under: Business News Tagged With: , ,
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