Albinoriotman says Twitter your brand!

We recently had the pleasure of catching up with a mate of ours from the UK via Memphis, TN - the award winning copywriter and professional Tweeter - Jon Burkhart aka Albinoriotman . While in NZ we had an incredibly stimulating get together with the guys at iJump which resulted in this interview. Jon discusses Twitters ability to add depth to brands, create connection with consumers and entertain in the process.

The Conversation Economy - James Hurman

Colenso Planning Director James Hurman's take on the Conversation Economy is well worth a read and should be compulsory reading for anyone new to social media.

Auckland Tweet-Up

The Whisper Shop and our friends at iJump have taken it upon ourselves to organise a bit of a get together for businesses and people who engage in social networking as a business tool. There are so many of us out there muddling through this new world, while still doing all sorts of interesting things. By getting together we can explore what each other are doing and look for opportunities to learn more and ways we could possibly work in together.

The night's going to be pretty casual, there's no speakers or presentations, you get to buy your own drinks, you won't get sold to and you won't get a goodie bag. However you might meet lots of interesting people and you might get to swap some business cards.

Drop me an email or tweet if you intend to come or have any questions. We'll be down the back of the bar somewhere ...

For details click the image below to enlarge.

10a things I think I think about Twitter

I've been on twitter for quite some time now, but until recently my usage was fairly sporadic or client focused. In recent weeks I dived back in. Without doubt there will be more Twitter posts in coming weeks, but I thought I'd share a few thoughts I think that I think (in no particular order).

1. As I begin to type this I am tracking a live discussion at @designchat . What an incredible use for Twitter. It's amazing to see how people use the media to develop advanced uses, I think many more applications such as this will emerge.

1a. I think chats will be an annoyance for my followers who aren't part of the conversation.

2. I think that Twitter will bring out my latent voyeuristic side. I love basketball, so I've started following a bunch of NBA players. Last night Shaquille O'Neal told us what he had for dinner. I feel like a stalker.

2a. I think Twitter is going to change the way I watch basketball. Players I thought I liked (Rashard McCants) seem to be idiots, while players I thought would be idiots (Charlie Villenueva) seem to be intelligent, considered, good guys. Reassuringly, I still think Steve Nash is smart.

3. I think Twitter is great for people with short attention spans.

3a. I think digesting the amount of information provided via Twitter is not for people with short attention spans.

4. I think I just like to follow people because they are informative or entertaining.

4a. I think I should be more informative and entertaining when I Tweet.

5. I think I love it that when a bunch of us were complaining about the new NZ Ford campaign, the global head of Social Media for Ford chimed into the discussion.

5a. I think that it would have been good if the NZ head of social media had chimed in, or anyone from Ford in NZ at all. I think they didn't even know the conversation was taking place.

6. I think Twitter can build your brand in amazing ways.

6a. I also think the Dominos debacle shows it can destroy it.

7. I think Twitter is becoming mainstream

7a. I know that most people I know don't understand it or use it.

8. I think many famous people use Twitter to make them more famous, and I think that unless they use it correctly it'll backfire on them.

8a. I think a lot of people that use Twitter properly will become famous.

9. I think Twitter is about honesty.

9a. I think if you are obviously not being honest, it's ok to pretend (Shout out to @albinoriotman)

10. I think everything I've written here has some merit.

10a. I think I'm going to re-read this in 6 months and realise I had no idea what Twitter will become.

Myspace v Facebook

Without mediation, we are nothing

I want to bring to your attention an amazing post from the talent imitates, genius steals blog. The writer reflects on the increasing role of the internet providing mediation in our lives. Our desire to post updates to our friends via twitter and facebook, and our continual archiving of events, memories and experiences is changing the way we perceive reality.

"Virginia Woolf once said nothing is real until it is recorded. It seems like the rest of the world has caught up with her thought. We endlessly refract ourselves, mediate our lives, to reach out and connect and then, begin to construct ourselves, in response to what seems to drive attention our way.

As people we have always thought socially - seeing ourselves through the eyes of others. Increasingly it seems that without mediation, nothing seems real.

Next time you are at a concert - look at all the people capturing the moment, to mediate and broadcast it, to remember it and share it, to continue create themselves with it - even firsthand experiences require mediation."

Read the whole post

We got "Whitelisted" for Google Friend Connect

If you look in the landhand bar of this site and scroll on down you will see a new addition, a couple of windows from the new social networking tool Google Friend Connect. Many months ago we applied to be part of their trial, and the other day we got a little email saying we've been "Whitelisted" to use the product. Over the coming weeks we're going to explore ways in which we can use Friend Connect to benefit our business.

What's buzzing right now?

I urge you to check out Twitscoop a site that tracks what is buzzing on Twitter right now. If you want to understand what the most intriguing topics around the world are right now this site will tell you.

Vote for Change

This is a great example of a campaign that utilises the power of the web. The Vote for Change website utilises a number of online word of mouth tools to promote the Obama / Biden Presidential ticket. The site features videos of celebrities endorsing Obama and makes the files available in almost any format and availble to be syndicated to a multitude of social networking tools. Via the site, advocates can distribute and share the videos via iphone, ipod, facebook, myspace, PSP, Google or their very own sites. The creators of this campaign understand that the internet is most powerfully utilised when you create content that can be shared across the platforms that integrate into consumers lives, rather than the antiquated idea of asking their audience to come to them.


Click here for more videos from Vote For Change

Become a fan!

We think it would be lovely if you become a "fan" of The Whisper Shop on Facebook.

Google Friend Connect - Preview Launch

Over the last few weeks there has been considerable movement within the social network environment with both Facebook and Myspace announcing they are going to allow their networks to be accessed in open-source environments. Possibly the most fantastic news though, was the announcement of the launch of Google Friend Connect. Friend Connect will allow sites to integrate a social networking gadget into their site to bring social network environments to them. Below is the introductory video outlining the basic functionality of the gadget.

Why Twitter Matters

So for the observant types we now have a Twitter feed box, where you can read my (and eventually Angela's) last 5 Twitter posts (tweets).  Now possibly this may appear to be all a waste of time, but here's a few thoughts on why it truly matters ... personal branding, relationship and knowledge.

Twitter 101

You're probably aware of the social networking giants Facebook, Bebo, Linked in and MySpace . However keep an eye on Twitter. In their words "Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing? " With a word count limit of 140 characters (less than the 160 that a text message offers) creativity, lateral thinking and the mundane exist side by side.

The Washington Post have written a nice little introductory article on the site that's worth reading.

Real-life Facebook

An insight into what Facebook would be like if it was real life.

Facebook is evil (even the Guardian thinks so)

Everybody that knows me is aware, that i am one of the remaining bastions of facebook-rejection. Yes, it's true, I operate a word of mouth marketing agency, and yet i don't participate in the world's largest word of mouth forum.

Now lets get one thing straight. I'm not a technology neophyte. I am all too conversant with the principals and practice of social networking. In fact i was part of a team that won a Grand Prix at Cannes, in which the winning entry used Myspace as a key media component. The thing is, i just don't like online social networking. Maybe I'm getting old, but how about going out for a coffee, sending an email, or what ever happened to good old Skype or ichat like we used to use in the old days?

So, i sit round and abuse my friends for their participation in the ridiculous cult, and i in return get abused for not joining in. Thankfully the Guardian just published a full-frontal attack by Tom Hodgkinson.

Some of my favourite extracts:

"Why on God's earth would I need a computer to connect with the people around me? Why should my relationships be mediated through the imagination of a bunch of supergeeks in California? What was wrong with the pub?"

"And does Facebook really connect people? Doesn't it rather disconnect us, since instead of doing something enjoyable such as talking and eating and dancing and drinking with my friends, I am merely sending them little ungrammatical notes and amusing photos in cyberspace, "

"it is a social experiment, an expression of a particular kind of neoconservative libertarianism. On Facebook, you can be free to be who you want to be, as long as you don't mind being bombarded by adverts for the world's biggest brands."

"Although the project was initially conceived by media cover star Mark Zuckerberg, the real face behind Facebook is the 40-year-old Silicon Valley venture capitalist and futurist philosopher Peter Thiel ... But Thiel is more than just a clever and avaricious capitalist. He is a futurist philosopher and neocon activist. A philosophy graduate from Stanford, in 1998 he co-wrote a book called The Diversity Myth, which is a detailed attack on liberalism and the multiculturalist ideology that dominated Stanford. He claimed that the "multiculture" led to a lessening of individual freedoms."

"I listened to a podcast of an address Thiel gave about his ideas for the future. His philosophy, briefly, is this: since the 17th century, certain enlightened thinkers have been taking the world away from the old-fashioned nature-bound life, and here he quotes Thomas Hobbes' famous characterisation of life as "nasty, brutish and short", and towards a new virtual world where we have conquered nature. Value now exists in imaginary things. Thiel says that PayPal was motivated by this belief: that you can find value not in real manufactured objects, but in the relations between human beings. PayPal was a way of moving money around the world with no restriction. Bloomberg Markets puts it like this: "For Thiel, PayPal was all about freedom: it would enable people to skirt currency controls and move money around the globe."

Clearly, Facebook is another uber-capitalist experiment: can you make money out of friendship? Can you create communities free of national boundaries - and then sell Coca-Cola to them? Facebook is profoundly uncreative. It makes nothing at all. It simply mediates in relationships that were happening anyway."

"Thiel's philosophical mentor is one René Girard of Stanford University, proponent of a theory of human behaviour called mimetic desire. Girard reckons that people are essentially sheep-like and will copy one another without much reflection. The theory would also seem to be proved correct in the case of Thiel's virtual worlds: the desired object is irrelevant; all you need to know is that human beings will tend to move in flocks. Hence financial bubbles. Hence the enormous popularity of Facebook."

"So by his own admission, Thiel is trying to destroy the real world, which he also calls "nature", and install a virtual world in its place, and it is in this context that we must view the rise of Facebook. Facebook is a deliberate experiment in global manipulation, and Thiel is a bright young thing in the neoconservative pantheon, with a penchant for far-out techno-utopian fantasies. Not someone I want to help get any richer."

"The third board member of Facebook is Jim Breyer. He is a partner in the venture capital firm Accel Partners, who put $12.7m into Facebook in April 2005. On the board of such US giants as Wal-Mart and Marvel Entertainment, he is also a former chairman of the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA). Now these are the people who are really making things happen in America, because they invest in the new young talent, the Zuckerbergs and the like. Facebook's most recent round of funding was led by a company called Greylock Venture Capital, who put in the sum of $27.5m. One of Greylock's senior partners is called Howard Cox, another former chairman of the NVCA, who is also on the board of In-Q-Tel. What's In-Q-Tel? Well, believe it or not (and check out their website), this is the venture-capital wing of the CIA ... The US defence department and the CIA love technology because it makes spying easier. "

"Facebook pretends to be about freedom, but isn't it really more like an ideologically motivated virtual totalitarian regime with a population that will very soon exceed the UK's? Thiel and the rest have created their own country, a country of consumers.

Now, you may, like Thiel and the other new masters of the cyberverse, find this social experiment tremendously exciting. Here at last is the Enlightenment state longed for since the Puritans of the 17th century sailed away to North America, a world where everyone is free to express themselves as they please, according to who is watching. National boundaries are a thing of the past and everyone cavorts together in freewheeling virtual space. "

And just for fun here's his take on the Facebook privacy policy

Facebook's privacy policy

Just for fun, try substituting the words 'Big Brother' whenever you read the word 'Facebook'

1 We will advertise at you

"When you use Facebook, you may set up your personal profile, form relationships, send messages, perform searches and queries, form groups, set up events, add applications, and transmit information through various channels. We collect this information so that we can provide you the service and offer personalised features."

2 You can't delete anything

"When you update information, we usually keep a backup copy of the prior version for a reasonable period of time to enable reversion to the prior version of that information."

3 Anyone can glance at your intimate confessions

"... we cannot and do not guarantee that user content you post on the site will not be viewed by unauthorised persons. We are not responsible for circumvention of any privacy settings or security measures contained on the site. You understand and acknowledge that, even after removal, copies of user content may remain viewable in cached and archived pages or if other users have copied or stored your user content."

4 Our marketing profile of you will be unbeatable

"Facebook may also collect information about you from other sources, such as newspapers, blogs, instant messaging services, and other users of the Facebook service through the operation of the service (eg, photo tags) in order to provide you with more useful information and a more personalised experience."

5 Opting out doesn't mean opting out

"Facebook reserves the right to send you notices about your account even if you opt out of all voluntary email notifications."

6 The CIA may look at the stuff when they feel like it

"By using Facebook, you are consenting to have your personal data transferred to and processed in the United States ... We may be required to disclose user information pursuant to lawful requests, such as subpoenas or court orders, or in compliance with applicable laws. We do not reveal information until we have a good faith belief that an information request by law enforcement or private litigants meets applicable legal standards. Additionally, we may share account or other information when we believe it is necessary to comply with law, to protect our interests or property, to prevent fraud or other illegal activity perpetrated through the Facebook service or using the Facebook name, or to prevent imminent bodily harm. This may include sharing information with other companies, lawyers, agents or government agencies."

Maybe it's an article thats a little conspiratorial. But silly old me would just prefer to go out for a coffee with you rather than virtually poking you.

Here's the link to the full text of the article