Twitter’s Impact On Web 2.0: Making The Web More Sensory Like

Tim O’Reilly, the driving force behind the concept of Web 2.0 and a genuine social media thought leader, details why Twitter is becoming the leading social network in today’s social media world. The interview is conducted by FORAtv.com President & CEO Blaise Zerega. Asked to compare social networks to human “senses” and to name the most important social network, O’Reilly nails it with these ideas:

• Unexpected impact: “I don’t know if there is a single new thing, right now, or if we will notice it right away. People didn’t know how big Google would be in 1998.  .  . if there is anything in that category today I would say it’s Twitter.”
• Twitter’s Impact: “The thing that has impressed me the most about Twitter is it’s brought real time to a peak on the web”
• Trend: Twitter’s impact on how we expect  real time information is “making the web more sensory like. . . “
• What Does it mean?: “It means you start to build systems for stimulus and response.”
• Humans & Computers: “There is a whole part in what we’re building here, is this new hybrid human computer machine”
• Constant Factor: We are moving toward a “Collective Intelligence” which will cause a “Revolution in Business.”

Plan & Disclosure Statement Conference Call 9-10-09: Okun Victims Sorting Through The Rubble

Courtesy Backgroundnow.com

September 10, 2009 Gerald McHale, US Chapter 11 Bankruptcy Trustee, lead a conference call Q & A session for the purpose of providing  “a forum for creditors and victims alike to ask any questions they may have had related to the Bankruptcy and also to the Class Action litigation against Ed Okun and his 1031 Tax Group.” With the way the victims have been victimized they might as well have scheduled this call for September 11th as a 9-1-1 call seems to mirror the entire case.

Conference Call Speakers

The following people connect to this case were invited to answer questions from the victims:

Participating in the call as speakers were:

• Gerard “Jerry” McHale, Chapter 11 Bankruptcy Trustee
• Jonathan Flaxer of Golenbock, Eiseman, who represents the Trustee
• Jacqueline Veit of Golenbock, Eiseman, who, with Michael Devorkin, serve as chief litigators for the Trustee
• John Sordillo of Deloitte, who served as Forensic Accountants and Real Estate Advisors for the Estate
• Robert “Rusty” Brace, who is the lead counsel in the Class Action litigation (no information available)
• Mark Felger of Cozen, O’Conner who acts as counsel for the Creditors’ Committee

Mission of the Call: McHale’s Statement

“We hope this call answered your questions you may have had regarding the Plan and future events related to the ongoing administration of the Liquidating Trust after the confirmation of the Plan.”

The Results

A call to action for the people involved with this call:

• Did the call help your understanding of circumstances surrounding your efforts to collect your monies?
• Were you satisfied with the format of the conference call?
• Did you feel you were given the opportunity to express your concerns or opinions?
• Are the results of this call confidential information or do you have the ability to express your opinions publicly?

Twitter Study: People Use Twitter to Connect With Products

Courtesy Penn State Facebook page

In a recent Penn State study “Tweeting is more than just self expression” Associate professor of information science and technology Jim Jansen and Abdur Chowdhury Twitter chief scientist examined 500,000 tweets to determine the messaging content. The results are very encouraging for businesses willing to view Twitter as a new marketing and sales channel in its infancy. The most important point in the study? Twitter strategies, Twitter planning, and Twitter etiquette must be formulated before a company launches their Twitter efforts.

5 Twitter Facts: Twitter Connects People to Brands, Companies, Products, Services

• 20% of the 500,000 tweets “contain requests for product information or responses to the requests” about companies and their products and service
• “People are using tweets to express their reaction, both positive and negative, as they engage with these products and services”
• “Tweets are about as close as one can get to the customer point of purchase for products and services.”
• “. . . people were using tweets to connect with the products”
• Many of the brand comments were positive and not negative as many companies initially anticipated

Sell Wine or Bust: Social Media Is A Winery’s Secret Weapon to Survival

Computer Shopper published this deansguide article 9-11-09

Is there empirical proof that social media sells wine? If you take my experience, as an example, it does sell wine. If you are a Chief Marketing Officer, Wine Tasting Room manager, or anyone tasked with selling wine you may say no to social media. You may have created a Facebook page. You may have registered on Twitter. You may have even established a blog. Yet all of your efforts have fallen flat with a resounding thud! No uptick in sales, no mad rush to the tasting room, no phone lines burning off the hook. What happened? You forgot to do a lot of something-here are 6 reasons nothing has happened yet:

1. Participation: you set up your Twitter, Facebook, blog, and LinkedIn presences thinking they would run themselves with minimal participation- wrong
2. Plan: you showed up on each network without a plan to engage, a strategy, or a purpose
3. Call to Action: you don’t ask your audience to do anything; your messages simply make statements without a compelling reason for audience participation with you
4. Targeting: you utilize the “more the merrier” approach where you will shotgun your messages without targeting the audience that is most interested in your products and services
5. Twitter: you are not utlizing Twitter as a source of sales leads and list building with consumers as well as businesses
6. Facebook: you are not utilizing Facebook as your customer relationship management tool to build and maintain customer loyalty
7. Measurement: you are not developing a system to track and analyze which messages are working to engage with customers, which messages are eliciting a call to action. Without this information, you can NOT continually tweak your strategy and messages to improve results

20 Google Facts That Will Surprise You

FoxNews , Post Tribune, &  The Courier News published this deansguide article 9-8-09

Google is the most influential force behind the proliferation of social media. Yet many of us think we know everything or close to everything we need to know about Google. In an eye opening article by Search Engine People’s Ruud Hein “20 Things You Don’t Know About Google” you can learn something new and in most cases be very surprised at what you did not know. Here is Ruud’s list and my impressions.

20 Google Facts

1. Adwords accounts for 99% Google’s annual revenue; dg: that seems obvious but we are just warming up

2. Google’s advertising revenue in 2008 was $21 billion; dg: incredible and more than I imagined!

3. 1.35% of the US’ Adwords advertisers make up 80% of Google US ad revenue; dg: this goes beyond the 90-10 rule

4. Adwords as we know it used to be called Adwords Select. The top banner position was sold old school style through a program call Adwords Premium; dg: I did NOT know that fact

5. The first Adwords Select ad was in 2000 for live mail-order lobsters; dg: you have to start somewhere, a precursor to WebVan?

6. Google’s pricing mechanism where the winner pays the runner up’s price was devised to prevent super-inflated bid prices but the second-price auctions resulted in higher prices for Google right away; dg: brilliant strategy

7. In 2009 Google began showing ads based on their previous online activities. User patterns are segmented in 20 categories and roughly 600 subcategories; dg: this will continue to expand and be refined

8. In 2008, 80% of 80,000 typo-squatting domains in the US alone were funded through Adsense; dg: that is a bit alarming

9. Google’s query forecasting models are founded in their efforts to understand and predict Adwords pricing and click patterns; dg: again this will continue to be refined

10. Although it doesn’t like to talk about using user data, Google cross references everything. “We have temperature data, weather data, and queries data, so we can do correlation and statistical modeling.”; dg: this is part of the power and “secret sauce” that makes Google

11. In the last 10 years Google’s latency has gone from 1000ms to 200ms.

12. In the last 10 years Google has made seven major rearchitecture changes.

13. Compared to 1999 Google’s index is now 100x larger but they update it 10,000 times faster; dg: growth and speed continue to be a Google staple and it is another building block that keeps them ahead of the other search engines

14. Google cataloged its trillionth web page in 2008; dg: with one trillion cataloged web pages will any company ever challenge Google’s supremacy in the search industry?

15. To translate one sentence Google does a million lookups in a multi-terabyte data structure.

16. To punish itself for artificial link inflation (paid links) Google penalized itself in 2009 by lowering the PageRank of it’s Japan domain from PR9 to PR5; dg: why not across the board?

17. Since January 2009 Gmail regularly beats YouTube in market share by US visits and is the 2nd most popular Google property; dg: very surprising considering Youtubes viral capabilities

18. The 3 largest traffic drivers for Gmail are Google, Facebook — and Yahoo! Mail…; dg: oh yea Yahoo helping Google is a bit like the Red Sox helping the Yankees–hard to understand

19. To encourage developer teams to move to new servers Google uses auctions where teams bid how many extra computers dedicated to their service it would take for them to move; the lowest bidding team wins.

20. In 2007 Google announced it will award $20 million to the 1st private team which builds a robot — and puts it on the moon; dg: my money is on Mark Cuban who is never shy about a challenge or the type of publicity this challenge would generate

10 Content Ideas For Winery Social Media Marketing

Wine Wikipedia

The biggest mistake being made by wineries in their social media marketing efforts is the lack of strategy in the messages they produce. Many wineries on Twitter are simply chatting with no apparent strategy to bring information forward about their product, service, benefits or features. Often times the messages are either too much hard sell or not enough “beef” about the winery. The following is a list of ten ideas that wineries can write about right now. The orgin of these ideas? The winery website-blog:

10 Social Media Marketing Ideas: What Do We Say?

1. History: what is the history of the winery, owners, and vineyards? Within this history, bring out the mission of the winery

2. Wine Club: features and benefits as well as the differentiating factor or why people should join your wine club

3. Harvest: every wine fan wants to know who is making the wine, what the harvest process looks like

4. Partnerships: if you have a restaurant, limo, resort partnership then give all details that benefit your customers

5. Education: if you offer hands on classes in wine making,  storage, or collecting give people the details

6. Discounts: in today’s economy always highlight the deals you are offering your consumers

7. Events: notify your audience about upcoming events

8. Tours: describe the tour(s) benefits, features, and history

9. Tasting Room People: many ultra premium bars in Las Vegas hire bartenders with followings and their own persona. Allow your tasting room staff to create their own persona and engage with your consumers

10. Food: food and wine go together naturally. Showcase the best pairing ideas

You Can Not Win In Business Without Evangelists: 10 Game Changing Benefits

Consumer “evangelists” are one of the most important components to a businesses’ success. But what do “evangelists” really mean to your business? The following is a list of benefits a evangelist can mean to your business. No matter how well branded your business may be, the lifeblood of your business future is advocacy by consumer evangelists.

10 Benefits of Evangelists

1. Early Adoption: they are the early adopters of your new products and services
2. Legitimize: they legitimize your products and services by using them first
3. Reviews: they almost always provide positive reviews on your products and services
4. Eyes and Ears: they are your eyes and ears. Eevangelists will often learn about important opportunities for your brand before you will. When they find something that needs to be addressed by their “favorite” company they inform them of where to look, show up, and provide answers
5. Opinion Makers: they can often sway public opinion in your favor
6. Reputation Management: evangelists will often defend your company’s reputation when under attack by other consumers
7. Crowdsourcing: they often can provide valuable feedback that can lead to improvements in your products or services
8. Broadcasting: they often lead the charge to popularize a new product or service by messaging across all social networks
9. Barometer: evangelists will often be the first people to tell you when you have done something wrong. They will often message you privately, if you have engaged with them correctly, in order to help you gauge your products and services
10. Niche: according to David Armano unlike mass media “the web drives the niche” and in so doing it is perfect for evangelists who can effect a brand on many different fronts and at many different levels

Social Media Strategies: Hobby Sites A Source of Business

Courtesy Flickr.com

Computer Shopper published this deansguide article 8-14-2009

Social media strategies often ignore one of the most important aspects of networking to produce leads: hobbies. Your hobby or passion can produce leads and new networking connections if you understand how to leverage Web 2.0 Social Media site. As a new fan to photography, equipped with a real camera, I am about to begin a life long desire to produce quality pictures. I am going to do both black and white and color shots concentrating on the beauty of Northern California. My social media tool of choice will be Flickr.com the photo sharing social network.

Social Niche Networking: Hobbyist

1. Make a list of your hobbies

2. Choose one hobby that you would like to write about for a community

3. Choose the right Social Media site for you

4. Provide articles, photos, podcasts, or video that communicates within the community

5. Link your work on this site to your blog, website, and your profiles around the Social Media System

Many times we connect through liked minded beliefs, hobbies, and interests. These efforts can lead to a business relationship as people begin to become more comfortable with new friends and the different ways to connect.

Twitter Strategies for Entrepreneurs: #FollowFriday Tips

Courtesy Twitter.com/hashtags

One of the most impressive Twitter “traditions”, and Twitter Strategies for adding followers, is an online meetup called #FollowFriday. In the spirit of giving, Twitterers have set aside Fridays as a day where they can recommend people in their network to other Twitterers as people worth following. Micah Baldwin the creator of #followfridays had no idea how big his online “meetup” and recognition party would become–a growing trend

#FollowFriday: How’s It Work?

The Hashtags aka pound sign before a word or set of words were created as:

• “Hashtags were developed as a means to create ”groupings” on Twitter without having to change the basic service”
• “A community-driven convention for adding additional context and metadata to your tweets”

#Followfriday is one example of a hashtag here are a few more:

• #Domus: Used by Domus Consulting Group for online training purposes as a place to gather webinar attendees
• #SanDiegoFires: Nate Ritter, the inventor of hashtags, used this method to mark his tweet updates on the San Diego Fires

Twitter Strategies: #Followfriday

• Mine Favorites: review your favorites section to find people who have added the most valuable links that you have saved
• List Favorites: write a list of people you have added into your Favorites section who give the most value for you
• Groups: write your #Followfriday messages with flair. Take a group of people from the same niche, industry, or category and recognize them together.Example: “Fantastic new thought social media strategiests worth following @pkitano @peterkim @Webguild @dannybrown @timoreilly #followfriday”
• Recommendations: during your #Followfriday efforts use a combination of messages. Write three #followfriday messages then create a Mr.Tweet recommendation. Note: make sure to check the auto tweet option on your Mr.Tweet recommendation so it shows up in your tweet stream

Ed Okun vs. LandAmerica Exchange Services: Different Situation Same Results?

Due Diligence Warning: I am neither an attorney, tax accountant, nor legal entity of any kind. The information provided is not a call to action nor is it advice on how to handle your financial situation with LandAmerica Exchange Services or any other financial institution. Before entering a 1031 Exchange or any other investment vehicle perform your due diligence investigation.

According to MarketWatch.com article dated November 26, 2008, LandAmerica Financial Group filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy protection and will sell 3 of it’s units to FNF.

According to NewsDaily.com “LandAmerica files for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection:

“I am deeply disappointed over the need to file for bankruptcy protection for the LandAmerica holding company and the 1031 company,” Chief Executive Theodore Chandler

Elizabeth Callagnan one of the Ed Okun 1031 Advance ponzi victims points out:

“. . . their (LES customers) 1031 is filing for bankruptcy which means all those exchangers are going to find themselves and their lifesavings mired in the same bankruptcy court hell that the 350 (Train wreck victims nickname for Ed Okun’s ponzi scheme victims) robbed by Okun are now drowning in.”

The following letter was forwarded to me by Elizabeth. It is the alleged letter sent to LES exchange clients regarding their monies. If any other readers, clients of LES, have received the same notice please comment below.

“Dear Valued Customer:

We regret to inform you that, effective November 24, 2008, Land America 1031 Exchange Services Company, Inc. (“LES) is accepting no new customers and is terminating it’s operations. Although the total par value of our 1031 exchange funds exceeds the value of all funds received from our customers, portions of the 1031 funds are invested in ILLIQUID auction rate securities. Our inability to sell or borrow against these securities has precipitated our decision to terminate operations.

Q: Why are 1031 client funds invested in anything without their knowledge? If clients were given the option to provide their 1031 monies for investment into “guaranteed student loans” how many would approve such an investment? Btw what does the term “illiquid” mean?

LES has long invested 1031 deposits only in investment Grade Securities Rated A or stronger, including auction rate securities backed by federally guaranteed student loans. Our goal for the exchange funds has been to maintain the full liquidity necessary to meet customer with-drawl demands. The auction rate securities in our exchange funds, which were sold to us by certain financial institutions, were highly liquid for many years. As has been widely publicized, the auction rate securities market froze earlier this year, and that extenuating circumstance prevents us from liquidating the auction rate securities held in the exchange funds.

Q: Are the 1031 exchange clients made aware of the practice of LES of investing 1031 exchanger monies in auction rate securities market?

We understand that this situation is detrimental to you, and we can only assure you that we have taken every reasonable step possible to avoid the problem, including pursuing numerous liquidity options to no avail. You will be provided soon with details regarding the establishment of a process for submitting claims relating to exchange funds.

This situation involves LES and not any other LandAmerica companies. Specifically, LandAmerica title insurers are highly regulated companies, with legal identities and assets completely separate from LES. These insurers have more than sufficient assets to meet their obligations to policyholder and escrow customers.

Q: Does the sentence ‘These insurers have more than sufficient assets to meet their obligations to policyholder and escrow customers’ guarantee that 1031 exchange clients of LES will have all of their invested monies returned to them in full?

Sincerely,

LANDAMERICA 1031 EXCHANGE SERVICES COMPANY, INC.”