My personal Twitter policy. What’s yours?

June 29th, 2009

Hello, I'm David Spark and welcome to the Spark Minute.
I'm the founder of Spark Media Solutions, a firm that helps companies build industry voice through social media and storytelling. Find out how you can get recognized.

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With all the endless discussion about how one should and shouldn’t use Twitter, I think it’s important that each person come up with a personal Twitter policy of how they want to use the tool. You don’t have to publish it like I do below, but I think everyone should write it down and look to it every now and then alongside their past tweets and see if they’re actually adhering to the policy they set for themselves. The reason I recommend this is because extremely well known and respected social media gurus don’t seem to have any personal policy whatsoever. Twitter just becomes this avenue for which they blast out every random thought that crosses their mind. I’ve unfortunately had to stop following people I truly respect solely because their Tweets would flood my feed, dominating all other tweets. In one case I stopped following someone because their tweets were 17 of the 20 most recent tweets in my feed.

With that said, here’s my personal Twittering policy. I invite you to share yours as well.

The only times I send out a tweet is if it satisfies one of the following conditions:

Two last personal rules:

Do you have a personal Twitter policy? Does it achieve some personal or company goal? Does it help you build your brand? Or have you not even thought about it until now? Let me know.

Filed under: Advertising, Tech debate, Tips, Twitter-Tweets | 5 Comments »

Social media research is chock full of leading questions

June 29th, 2009

Jeremiah Owyang, Forrester

Jeremiah Owyang, Forrester

“We did research and asked consumers who they trust. 90% [of the people responded] said ‘people like them.’ Under 10% [of the people responded] trusted corporate blogs,” said Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester, as reported by Louis Gray at the San Francisco American Marketing Association (SFAMA) event last week, “How Tech Bloggers are Leading the Marketing 2.0 Revolution.”

Owyang is an industry friend and respected social media analyst, but I find this result to be obvious, yet at the same time misleading to the entire story of what corporations can do in the social media sphere. The question of “Do you trust corporate blogs?” is a leading question. Of course we know how people are going to answer it.

I attended the SFAMA event last Thursday and because I got distracted, I didn’t get a chance to question Jeremiah further. If I had, I know I would get a more in depth story, since consulting about social media for large corporations is what Owyang does for a living. The problem is when someone of his stature uses his well respected research outlet to make public statements such as, “Only ten percent of people trust corporate blogs” it resonates as if there’s no hope for corporations in social media and they simply should give up.

What were the questions Forrester asked that yielded those results? If all you do is simply ask a question, “Do you trust your friends’ blogs or corporate blogs more?” of course you’re going to get people saying they trust their friends over corporations. Even if Forrester split that question into two questions, it still would be lopsided.

What I’ve learned from all the social media events I’ve attended and research I’ve read is that social media research is chock full of leading questions. I’m sure that Forrester asked more involved questions, but unfortunately “corporate blogs are not trusted” is the result that’s being quoted. What researchers need to do is spend more time questioning the reader to see if there is any preconceptions, confusion, or conflicting stories. That’s where the real stories in social media research lie.

For example, sure, go ahead and ask that leading question, “Do you trust corporate blogging?” But then dig deeper and see if there are inconsistencies. Start asking the respondents the following questions:

(Continue asking if they read or follow any other well known corporate brands in the social media sphere)

You’ll be surprised that the same people who fell in the camp of “not trusting corporate brands” are also huge fans of well known and trusted corporate brands such as Southwest Airlines and Zappos. If you read, respond, and have a personal connection with a blog or Twitter account, you know there’s a person behind it. In those cases, do those respondents who track Southwest and Zappos even consider them as corporate brands?

What I would have liked to hear Owyang say, “Yes, we got people saying they hated corporate brands, but when we dug deeper, we discovered that they loved corporate brands that had a strong social media presence.” The problem is there’s a preconceived notion when people are asked, “Do you trust corporate blogs?” Please note that I am making this up and it’s only my prediction, but I’m sure there’s plenty of truth to it and I invite Owyang and anybody else who researches social media to agree or refute my estimates.

IDC’s misleading research about online advertising

A year ago I attended another social media conference, the SWAT Summit in San Francisco, and a woman from the research outlet IDC conducted an analysis of consumer social media use and attitudes towards targeted online advertising on social networking services (SNS). In the study, IDC asked people the question, “Do you want services tracking your online behavior and information so as to serve you more targeted advertisements?” Once again, as you might imagine, the overwhelming response was no. At the same time, they also asked people if they use Web 2.0 services such as Facebook, Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail, and Gmail which all track user behavior to serve up more targeted advertising. Do people even know that? Would they stop using them if they knew that? Did they even connect the question they were being asked to the way those tools behave?

Here’s what I was amazed by. The IDC researcher didn’t cross reference those responses. There’s obviously a huge discrepancy between what people say they want and what they actually use when it comes to Web 2.0 services. At the time, the IDC presenter said that since she had the information, all she needed to do was cross reference the results and she’ll get her answer. She said she would send those results to me. Guess what? It’s been one year and there’s no information. I’ll send her a reminder.

BTW, as a side note. In every single case where I’ve asked the question of “Do you have this information?” I often get the response, “Not right now, but I’ll send it to you.” In all the years that I’ve asked that question, no one has ever followed up, ever. I think they think if I’m really interested I’ll follow up with them and hound them.

Research companies need to tell the stories of discrepancies

The cross referencing of IDC’s research, between what people say they want and what they actually use is the story they should have uncovered. And that’s exactly what research companies such as IDC and Forrester need to do. Go ahead and ask the obvious questions, but show where people are confused about the tools they’re using. Don’t let them get away with an answer such as “security is really important to me” without discovering how often they change their passwords.

Ultimately though IDC’s data didn’t go deep enough and I need to learn more about the Forrester study.

My question out to all of you reading this is, do you take social media research results at face value or do you question them? Do you question the research methodologies? Do you simply never question the studies because you implicitly trust the research outfit? I mean, geez, it’s Forrester, it’s IDC, they’ve got to know more about research than I do, right?

No, not always. Because they’re not going for the stories that the research can reveal. It’s your job to push them and to constantly ask the questions. There’s always a story to be told.

Filed under: Advertising, Bloggers, San Francisco, Tech debate, Web 2.0 | 7 Comments »

A simple overview of cloud computing

June 25th, 2009

At GigaOm Structure ‘09, the cloud computing conference, in San Francisco, Paul Sagan, President and CEO of Akamai, gave a simple overview of cloud computing. While it was far too simple for the assembled audience, and it ended with a sales pitch that hasn’t changed in ten years, I thought it was valuable for those people who didn’t understand cloud computing.

No surprise that the mood of the room was that cloud computing is inevitable. The argument, as Sagan pointed out, is that every category now has a SAAS solution.

Here’s Sagan’s simple overview of cloud computing.

Ingredients for Cloud Computing

  1. Via the Internet
  2. Outsourced, shared infrastructure
  3. Scalable resources
  4. On demand
  5. Metered use
  6. Reporting, insight, and security

Why cloud has become inevitable

  1. Acceptance of Web-Enabled Technologies
  2. Economics of shared infrastructure
  3. Accelerating application time to market
  4. Security Improvements
  5. Greater efficiency and “Being Green”

Cloud Computing Enablers

  1. Virtualization (VMWare, Xen Server, Windows Server 2008) (below, built on top of each other)
  2. Infrastructure as a Service (Amazon Web Services, EMC2, Sun, HP, IBM, Savvis, Terremark) - enables this.
  3. Application Platform as a Service (force.com, Azure, AWS, Netsuite, Google App Engine)
  4. Software as a Service (salesforce.com, NetSuite, Taleo, OfficeLive, Autodesk, Concur, Bullhorn)

During Sagan’s sales pitch for Akamai, he claims (as he’s done for the past tne years), that the missing layer is optimization.

Top CIO Concerns with Cloud Computing (in order of concern)

  1. Security
  2. Performance
  3. Availability
  4. Integration
  5. Customization

Filed under: Computing, San Francisco, Web 2.0 | No Comments »

The cool and not-so-cool from BlogWell

June 23rd, 2009

Andy Sernovitz, Gaspedal

Andy Sernovitz, Gaspedal

Andy Sernovitz’s company Gaspedal produced BlogWell, a half-day seminar of social media case studies. A total of eight companies presented, but I could only be in the room for four of the sessions. Here’s a summary of the sessions I attended and what I thought it was cool and what was not cool.

Cool/Not-so-cool (UPDATED) - Announce engagement options upfront - At the meeting’s onset, the presenter announced that they welcome everyone to blog and tweet at the conference. The Twitter hashtag for the event was #blogwell and that if you added @gaspedal to your tweet they would retweet your tweet. It also verged on not-so-cool because they never actually put those words up on the giant screen to remind us what to do.

UPDATE: I am updating this post and calling it “Not-so-cool” because @gaspedal didn’t retweet people’s tweets yesterday like they said they would. In fact, they only retweeted two tweets when there were more than 40 tweets that @ replied his company Gaspedal. My tweet wasn’t one of those two tweets. Andy spoke at great length about ethics during his presentation midway through the show (see below “Social media rules of disclosure”) and I think he kind of blew it. I don’t think it was intentional because that’s not Andy’s style, but unfortunately that’s how it came off. His partner publicly asked the audience for publicity and said he would return the favor, and he didn’t. I chatted over email with Andy about this and he admitted that it fell through the cracks as there were many issues going on at the event and unfortunately they missed this one. But it’s not too late to rectify it. I invite Andy to now go ahead and retweet all those people that @ replied his company.

I should also mention that Andy was very kind to give me a pass to come to his event.

Cool - Don’t give coupons away online, mail them - Want to start a mailing list of people interested in your product? Mail them a coupon instead of letting them print one out for free. Yoplait Kids asked a simple question of their audience of moms: “If you liked our product so much, would you give us your name and address if we mailed you a free coupon?” Many of them said yes. General Mills collected the addresses, and the moms got the coupons. Later in the campaign they gave away coupons online and lowered the value on them. Ultimately, General Mills gave away 285,000+ free to high value coupons to moms and the redemption was exceptional. In return for the blogs, Yoplait Kids got tons of online conversation in traditional and new media. A total of  5,800 placements with 800+ on blogs. All those mentions delivered nearly 100 million impressions, said David Witt, General Mills Brand PR.

Cool - Influence of mom bloggers - Social media is the most credible and effective way to reach moms. I learned this last year when I attended the BlogHer conference in San Francisco. And according to a study they did last year with Compass Partners, more than half of women consider blogs a reliable source of advice. Not only that, but General Mills learned very quickly that mom bloggers want to give their opinion. For Yoplait kids, General Mills identified and built relationships with mom bloggers that would find their information relevant. They targeted moms with kids 0 to 4 years of age. They provided product information, samples, coupons, and prize packs that they could give away. In addition, they partnered with influential sites such as Sittercity, Modern Mom, Bargain Briana, TwitterMoms, Savvy Auntie, MommySavers, MomSpace, MomLogic, and My BlogSpark. This helped them get a a nice response from traditional media as well.

Cool - Reputation management system based on points - SAP gives points to community members for participating and contributing. You get points for blogging, wiki entries, reviews, and presenting at live events. Not redeemable, but you get reputation within the community.

Not-so-cool - PowerPoint presentations with way too much text - Uggh, when will people ever learn that you can’t copy and paste a document into a PowerPoint presentation? SAP’s presentation about communities was flooded with tons of text all over the screen. Much of it was really small so that us in the back of the room couldn’t read it. Nor are we speed readers that can also concentrate on what the speaker is saying at the same time. Yes SAP, you may have created tons of fantastic communities, but if you want to tell us your success story, you’ll have to reduce confusion. Deliver it to us all in a digestable format, not showing and telling us everything all at once. Reveal a little bit at a time over time. The overwhelming volume on text on screen was so distracting that it actually took away from the presenter. Honestly, I had a hard time understanding his points because with all that text it was unclear what the points were. And now I’ve stopped paying attention to him.

Not-so-cool - Making your presentation non-applicable to the audience - SAP’s presentation was so self-centric. It was all about SAP with no learning points as to how you could apply community within your organization.

Cool - Social media rules of disclosure - Sadly I have to say this is cool because basic rules of ethics in social media still need to be taught. Andy Sernovitz reminded the audience of word of mouth marketers that the average reader needs to understand the relationship between the content, who produced it, and their relationship to the organization in question. To pull this off you need to answer these questions: Who are you? Were you paid? Is it your real opinion? Often, said Sernovitz, you can answer all these questions at once with one simple statement, “I work for Company X, and this is my personal opinion.”

Sernovitz went on to explain that the two areas where we fall into trouble is when companies forget to train their employees about these ethical processes. And second when you question if something is ethical or not. Simple rule of thumb, if you have to ask if doing something would be considered unethical, then the answer is always no. If you questioned it, you’re probably not the only one.

Not-so-cool - Presenting a “case study” without explaining what you did - Kaiser Permanente’s case study “Harvesting the Low-Hanging Fruit of Internal Social Media Channels” was supposed to be about using internal collaboration tools to connect employees within a very large organization (160,000 employees). The entire presentation was spent on what their problems were but without focus. At one point she did explain that they used a wiki to reduce requirements. But many of the problems she presented she never answered, such as “How do you find people with expertise within your organization,” “How do you get people to collaborate,” and “How do you innovate within the organization?” She did explain that they have tools that they use, Jive Software, but she never explained why they chose Jive and how they actually used the tools to allow people to connect and collaborate. How did they get people to actually use the tools? In her entire presentation, there was one brief success story on one slide, but the rest was all very vague.

Cool - Integrating social media into your application - In an effort to help people who get confused and stressed by their products, Intuit is beginning to integrate social media directly into its products, such as QuickBooks. As you’re working, QuickBooks searches the social media sphere to find discussions on the area of the application you’re struggling with.

Cool - Shift from measuring impressions to growing connections - Consumer products such as Pepsi fall into the cycle of watching interest in their product go up and down with each marketing campaign. Shoot out a ton of advertising get lots of impressions. Stop the advertising and the interest falls away. Josh Karpf, Manager, Digital Media at PepsiCo wanted to move away from this yo-yo effect and to the gradual upward slope of growing your audience. To acheive this, here are some projects they tried that helped in building connections with their audience.

For more, check out Renee Blodgett’s write up as well. She covered a few sessions I wasn’t able to attend.

Filed under: Advertising, Bloggers, San Francisco, Tech debate, Tips, Twitter-Tweets, Web 2.0 | 3 Comments »

The truth behind “I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here” from Frangela

June 20th, 2009

frangelanbcI had lunch with Frances Callier and Angela Shelton yesterday. They’re also known as Frangela, and they’re a comedy duo that has a weekly radio show. I’ve known Frances Callier for years as she was my improv coach when I was training at and writing for Second City in Chicago.

Frances and Angela had just been eliminated/quit NBC’s “reality” show, “I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here” (Here’s their bio page on the show site). They’re scheduled to go back to Costa Rica to film the last few days of the show, which will air live. (UPDATE: According to their Twitter update, Frangela will NOT be going back to Costa Rica for the finale.) My wife and I had lunch with Frangela in Los Angeles, and the two of them told us all the horror stories of the production crew.

Watch “I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here” and it looks as if all the celebrities are sitting around doing a lot of nothing. That’s far from the case. The production crew constantly had the celebrities working their tails off: hiking, washing clothes, emptying latrine, gathering firewood, purifying water, making food from scratch, and more. But you never actually see any of that. While they truly were in the jungles of Costa Rica, all the hot lights on them makes it look like a sound stage.

Plus, the producers didn’t seem to truly care about the health of the people on camera. People would be getting hurt on camera, for example Lou Diamond Phillips got bitten by a rat, and the enormous production crew just stood there and stared instead of rushing to his aid or at bare minimum calling someone who could help. In addition, the producers simply forgot to give any of the celebrities bug spray for the first few days and everyone got horribly bitten up. I saw the bites all over Angela’s legs and arms.

Watch my eight minute video interview with Frangela as they dish the dirt on the show “I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here.”

Filed under: Comedy, Video | 2 Comments »

Cranky Geeks: Cranky on Hulu and the DTV transition

June 18th, 2009

This week on Cranky Geeks, myself, Dave Mathews, Sebastian Rupley, and John C. Dvorak all engaged in the usual banter. Mathews showed off his tech chops prowess in this episode, and I got to complaining about the most under reported part of the DTV transition (the upper channels being lost) and my prediction that Hulu will eventually develop a pay for model. Watch. Let me know what you think.

David Spark on Cranky Geeks

Filed under: Computing, San Francisco, Tech debate, Tips, Video | 1 Comment »

Blogging should be a core responsibility of a CEO

June 16th, 2009

Paul Levy is the CEO and President of the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, Massachusetts, and author of the blog, “Running a Hospital.”

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Summary of my interview with Paul Levy:

Listen to or download my interview with Paul Levy [17:50 m].

Full Paul Levy Article:

Paul Levy is the CEO and President of the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) in Boston, Massachusetts, which also happens to be the hospital where my father, Dr. Richard F. Spark has worked for more than 40 years as an endocrinologist. Levy has made a name for himself and his hospital by being very proactive in social media and authoring a blog entitled, “Running a Hospital,” where he talks about improving the operations at the BIDMC, reducing errors, keeping people healthy, and the overall state of health care in the United States.

Paul Levy, CEO Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
Paul Levy, CEO Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center

No experience? No problem. Just expose what you learn.

When Levy came on as CEO of the BIDMC, he had no previous experience running a hospital although his previous jobs (the state’s water and sewage system, Mass Water Resource Authority (MWRA), and the Boston Harbor Cleanup) did involve health issues.

Even though he knew nothing about health care or medicine, Levy found it rather fascinating and thought others might think so as well. So he decided to just start writing the blog. He didn’t ask anyone for permission. “It was the usual narcissistic approach to starting a blog. You think you have something interesting for the world to read and then you wonder if anybody’s going to show up and read it,” said Levy.

When Levy started there was surprisingly very little information out there about running a hospital. He went out of his way to post real time data about the BIDMC. In multiple cases, Levy’s written about issues of infections and hand washing. It became a very hotly contested topic and in some cases Levy had to admit that the hospital wasn’t doing the best job it could, but he talked about it openly and he spelled out what the hospital was doing to improve the issue.

“Part of the exposing was bragging about what we were doing,” said Levy, “I think most people in the hospital felt some pride in the fact that I was writing about that. I think it made a number of people a little bit nervous that I was publicizing things that normally aren’t talked about. But there is an underlying ethic to the BIDMC that people really want to improve the quality of care that we give and other hospitals give. And to the extent that stories about how we’re trying to do that are made public and might help the industry and the like, I think we’re well received.”

Public blogging actually inspiring clinicians

When asked if the blog is making a difference at the hospital, Levy definitely has seen evidence. With regard to issues of central line infections and ventilator related pneumonia, Levy said he saw internal emails where clinicians were reminding themselves that Levy would be posting their numbers. “They were already trying pretty hard to do well, [the blog gave] them the initial impetus to do better because the numbers would be there for the world to see. So I think those kinds of transparencies has its value in terms of creating or establishing a kind of creative tension for an organization to help it do better. So I think it makes a difference in that regard,” Levy said.

Blogging should be part of a CEO’s promotional duties

Levy is a very active blogger, writing one to two posts every day. Some of those posts have to do with the Red Sox (Fenway Park is just a few blocks from the BIDMC), but most have to do with the hospital. The writing of the posts is not what takes the time. The real time sink, said Levy, is keeping up with other people’s blogs which is really the same kind of research and time he would spend reading medical trade journals.

When I asked Levy about balancing his CEO duties with blogging, he didn’t think there shouldn’t be a distinction between the two. “If one of your jobs as CEO of an organization is to represent that organization before the public. With traditional venues being newspapers, speeches, lectures, and the like. Then use of social media is a logical extension of that corporate responsibility of the CEO. The outreach potential is excellent plus you can express your point of view not being filtered by reporters, or editors, or whatever,” Levy said.

Getting caught making a blogging faux pas

Levy, like other social media superstars, didn’t achieve success without making a few mistakes along the way. He admits to making the error of pasting an article, in whole, on his blog. A journalist caught the mistake and chided him for copyright infringement. He quickly corrected the error by amending the post and just pasting in excerpts which he realized made the post a lot more interesting as well.

With the continuing popularity of his blog, Levy realizes that there are a lot of people out there who are hungry and thirsty for ideas on how to improve the health care system. While he’s worked in public service before, Levy said running a hospital is the ultimate public service organization. Talking publicly about operations is one service he’s happy to provide his community and his hospital.

Filed under: Uncategorized | No Comments »

Photos from RoboGames, the world’s largest robot competition

June 14th, 2009

Guest blogger Joy Powers here.  On June 13, 2009, David Spark and I headed to the RoboGames in San Francisco.  While David was busy working as the on-screen talent for a documentary piece on the event, I kept myself busy by taking photos:

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A Bioloid dancing to Kung Fu Fighting

A Bioloid dancing to "Kung Fu Fighting"

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Badge Bots created by Liz Mamorsky

Badge Bots created by Liz Mamorsky

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This up-side-down combat bot knocked itself out of the competition

This up-side-down combat bot knocked itself out of the competition

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Combat robots at their finest

Combat robots at their finest

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Joule Thief Artbot

Joule Thief Artbot

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Cozy Rampage dolls

Cozy Rampage dolls

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The happiest robot at the event

The happiest robot at the event

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David Spark

David Spark

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Click here to see more photos from RoboGames.

To learn more about the event, check out official RoboGames website: http://robogames.net

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Filed under: San Francisco, Spark Minute | No Comments »

The benefits of working for yourself

June 10th, 2009

Last night I had dinner with my friend, fellow geek, and former junior high school classmate Andy Ihnatko. Walking back to the car we started discussing the advantages of working for yourself and not working in an office. We’re both big fans of it. You can watch it below, or click over to my Vimeo page and see it big and in HD.

Plus, here’s another video of me and Andy last time he was in town for MacWorld. Just the two of us talking about how we met back in junior high. Plus, another video of Andy complaining about me when I went to the bathroom.

Filed under: Comedy, San Francisco, Tech debate, Tips, Video | No Comments »

Social Media During a Crisis - Interview with Curtis Sliwa, WABC Radio

June 9th, 2009

Curtis Sliwa, WABC Radio

Last week I wrote an article for Mashable entitled “5 Unique Stories of Social Media Saving the Day.” It’s a piece about how social media technologies, most notably Twitter, are being used to connect people in times of need. Tonight, I appeared on air with Curtis Sliwa of WABC Radio in NYC to talk about social media coming to save the day. Time (14:21)

Filed under: Audio, Security, Tech debate, Tips, Twitter-Tweets | 1 Comment »

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