Subscribe to posts feed  Subscribe to comments feed
 
Thoughtpick: A unique perspective of the Web and social media...
A unique perspective of the Web and social media...

March 30, 2009

The Write Attitude Tips: A Snack for Bloggers!

In a virtual world wide web, where we are almost drowned in overflowing information clutters, what is the cloak-and-dagger able to drive your blog to stand out and scream: “Choose me, read me, I’m different!”

The answer comes in a form of 4 simple words: The right write attitude!

Attitudes are generally positive or negative views of a person, place, thing, or event. They could be in the form of extremities or just mellow reactions.

Whatever your attitude may be, one thing is certain: how you feel about what you’re blogging about, both affects and reflects, how intriguing the overall blog is.

Through my extensive research, I have noticed that the best tips I could gather for bloggers on the right write attitudes are:

  • Engage into real conversation with your visitors, by giving up sounding neutral, diplomatic or bland and forming honest and bold opinions.
  • Stop being anonymous and develop a sincere virtual persona.
  • Reveal your attitude in relevant titles to express what you feel and capture attention
  • Get to the the audience of one! Small groups are forming around common interests, aims, jobs, politics, hobbies, or obsessions, therefore you need to better know the communities you are blogging to on a more personal level to be able to better know which attitude will most suit them.
  • Personalize your overall approach! It’s never enough to have an attitude if it does not flow gently throughout your blog from how you greet your visitors to how you follow up on their comments and their personal blogs.
  • Remember that your blogging style reflects your attitude toward your readers; it implies a true desire for a two-way beneficial relationship.
  • If you want to amuse your audience, go beyond the norms and get into intricate details just as webzine has been able to do through its attitude.
  • Support your arguments with related links and relevant facts to give your attitude more reliability thus creating more interest and generating more responses!
  • Blog with passion! Whatever you are writing, write it with PASSION! Whether you feel outraged or extremely happy about what you’re blogging about, show it!
  • Don’t rely on words only to reveal your attitude, use visual appeal! Videos, images and graphs that are either informative, fun, annoying or all at the same time in order to help you deliver your attitude in a more subtle and more gentle manner to grasp.

So when you’re blogging, use the right write attitude to show your visitors that you will not waste their time, you will remember them, exceed their expectations and make them feel special and needed.

And remember: “Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it.”- Charles Swindoll.

Looking forward to your opinions and constructive criticisms :)

Filed under: Research-Based Topics — Tags: , , , , — Beirut @ 10:06 am

March 27, 2009

Is it time for Google to start tweeting?

Since Twitter introduced their new search engine the tech world has been debating the new introduced concept of a live streaming search engine and what does it mean in terms of how we perceive search in general and its effect on Google in particular? While some people argue that Twitter is not even a search engine, others give reasons of why Twitter’s is the future of web search.

When I tried Twitter’s search myself, I felt a sense of novelty and excitement that I haven’t felt about search for a long time. While aggregating live streaming gives you the latest updates of what you are looking for, the sense of having people say it in a relevant sentence gives a whole different dimension of credibility. No matter how smart Google algorithm can be, we – as people – still put out trust in other human predicaments. There is an Arabic proverb that says “Ask an experienced not an expert”.

On the other hand, Twitter’s search is limited in many ways. It doesn’t cover the areas Google search covers today. It is only an aggregation of live stream interactions where the most recent appears on the top, it doesn’t cover any popularity heritage, indexing or ranking methods that Google reside to in order to come up with better search results.

Of course, both of these search methods serve different search needs, but like many people, I prefer an integrated medium that offers both searches in one place. While I can’t see how Twitter would ever possibly offer Google’s search engine functionality due to their current business model, I can see it easily happening the other way around. Google has been trying to infiltrate the social networking arena through its Friend Connect service. They give people the tools to turn any website or blog into a social networking medium easily. If Friend Connect gains the needed popularity, it can be the right tool to build Google’s Twitter-like database. If it fails then maybe Google should consider buying Twitter?

Some people have already started working on integrating both searches. Consultant, Mark Carey, came up with a browser add-on that displays the 5 most recent Twitter search results on top of Google’s search results page.


It sounds like a good solution for now, but I prefer my own version of such implementation of having the whole set of Twitter’s search results to the side of Google’s search result. That would elemenate precendecy of search results giving both search methods equal space, and allows more search results from Twitter to appear directly without the need of further clicks. WebMynd extension offers such layout option of adding a Twitter search, along with other widgets, to the side of Google’s search results, but I think it is better if Google offer their own service and build their own micro-blogging database.

It is cool to try both searches! I can’t help but wonder: will Google create a micro-Blogger.com? What tricks will Twitter pull out of its hat? In 2015, do you think the current Google search can cut it? Let’s hear your opinion, comment below…

Filed under: Controversial Picks — Tags: , , , , , , — Fadi @ 3:05 pm

March 26, 2009

The Twitter Value: Top 10 Things That Make Twitter A Treat!

If “To tweet or not to tweet” is the question, I bet this article will help you find your answer!

In simple English, the word “value” is defined as utility, worth, excellence or desirability. Therefore, any object, topic or medium which captures the essence of those meanings is described as valuable. Taking things a step further by referring to human psychology, value is anything that gives us power and allows us to feel stronger, more lovable or maybe just more recognizable for who we are and what we represent or do.

But the value of value doesn’t end here!

Marketers have developed a more precise meaning of value defining it as: “the relationship between the consumer’s expectations of product/service quality to the actual amount paid for it”; the amount paid is not exclusive to money, it could also be time and effort spent acquiring or using a certain product/service. Moreover, anthropologists see value through the eyes of the societies or communities by stating that: “the concept of value is a social construct, and as such is defined by the culture using the concept”.

Now, delving further in the realm of micro-blogging, and specifically the “Twitter” phenomenon, what is the real value of this social construct? What makes “the act to tweet” a delicious treat?

After my comprehensive research on this subject, and despite the stubborn stands against “tweeting” claiming it’s a waste of time and breach of privacy, it seems that Twitter does provide value to its users!

The top 10 value-driven reasons to use Twitter are:

  • The marketing coup: Through consistent use, thousands of individuals and companies are utilizing Twitter to increase Web traffic, or to perpetuate a brand.
  • Using Twitter, as opposed to E-mail, Blogs and Instant messaging, provides the value of fast and compact communication. If used correctly, Twitter is an attractive tool for sharing relevant content quickly with interested users.
  • Twitter holds a high value to corporations. It helps them learn new things from their audience and in turn teach their target about their services/products; thus promoting collective intelligence.
  • Twitter proves to be a very good way to connect with current friends and meet new ones in an engaging environment. Furthermore, Twitter provides its followers with the luxury of “venting” to friends about feelings, likes, dislikes, interests and so on.
  • Twitter is everywhere! It has solved the problem of staying in touch when you’re not physically bound to your computer! Through Twitter, you can keep up with the buzz even when youíre on the move, with text or IM.
  • Twitter can help people become better writers. How? Well, eventually, Twitter users are forced to be concise, exercise their vocabulary and improve their editing skills!
  • Twitter cares about its developers! By opening an API, Twitter allows the information stored on its servers to be accessible by others, thus allowing developers to create applications that can make the Twitter experience simple/more fun.
  • Twitter gives its users real-time large scale interaction unmatched by any other service available.
  • Twitter is an addiction: it brings its followers the true social meaning of value; Microfame! By providing the psychological comfort of allowing them to quickly form an entourage, Twitter gives followers the feeling that they are important and do belong to a community or a crowd they seek to be a part of.
  • Finally, Twitter keeps you up to date with the hottest topics through Twitscoop.

For now, my answer is: To tweet! What is yours? I’m waiting for your comments down below! :)

Filed under: Research-Based Topics — Tags: , , , , , — Beirut @ 2:58 pm

March 24, 2009

Facebook protesters, you’ve got punked!

DO NOT write more articles about the redesign of Facebook, you’re playing right into the trap. The trick Facebook is using on us is an example of the art of reverse psychology. They tie us and our friends with a great service; annoy us with a forced redesign, which in turn forces us to rebel through the social media. We think we got back at Facebook, but in reality we were recruited to do free word of mouth advertising! Read on for my train of thoughts…

I’m no writer like Beirut and Fadi, but I do like to day dream and come up with weird theories, so to speak :).

We talked about Facebook’s redesign and our realization that Zuckerberg has a “God Complex”. Well, maybe not! Maybe he’s just a smart ass marketer with a psychology background, using his knowledge of human emotion to capture our time and attention. Maybe even manipulate us for no other reason but money!

My theory is based on the following factors:

  1. At this point, we, the users, are trapped and pressured to stick to Facebook. We cannot just simply click the ‘deactivate account’ button, because: Nearly all of us have tens or hundreds of “friends” on our Facebook accounts, and Facebook offers a great personal and social value for all of us.
  2. If a business owner, my drycleaner for instance, provokes me, I’d usually just seize dealing with him and his business. But in Facebook’s case, I do not (or can not) just stop using it simply for the reasons mentioned earlier. The normal outlet for my frustration would be to complain to others!
  3. Finally, as we all know, advertising is expensive, but word of mouth is cheap.

Now, to illustrate the trick Facebook plays on its users, I’ll put the pieces together under a story line:

One day, you wake up to check out what’s new on Facebook. You’re stunned that things are not where you recall them, and then you read the announcement of the new design. You want the old one back, the one you’re used to… but tough luck, it’s gone!

The value of Facebook’s services mean more to you than the fact that your opinion did not matter in a decision that directly affected you. You want to rebel, but the list of pros and cons are heavily tipped towards the pros of Facebook. So, you decide to bottle up your feelings, and just get used to the new design.

After a couple of days of being lost around the new site, you decide to rebel and complain to your blog followers as a way to vent your frustration. That’s it! You’ve fallen for Zuckerberg’s trick! You’ve just advertised his brand to your followers and the social Web.

I know what you must be thinking; this is some bad press! Keep in mind, that a new comer will not share your and my frustration from the redesign. He was never used to the old design, so he’ll just get used to the new one. This means that the tens of thousands of articles and comments posted in frustration about the new design will not leave a big negative impact on a non-Facebook user. It will just lead to curiosity to see why this design is such a ‘bad thing’, and leave an impact that: “Wow, 3 million signed this petition; it must be one hell of a social network. Let me join and see what’s the fuss about!”

To fight back DO NOT get tricked like we did, DO NOT post any more articles about the Facebook, just ignore it! I just hate feeling used, don’t you?

I’m looking forward for your comments… speak up below!

Filed under: Deductions and Realizations — Tags: , , , , — Amer Kawar @ 7:03 pm

March 23, 2009

The Zuckerburg God Complex: We Sympathize But We Will Never Empathize!!!

This article is dedicated to the sole purpose of demonstrating pure empathy for Zuckerberg and genuine care for the Facebook community in efforts to try to correct the numerous mistakes that are being made in the name of social networking!

Ranging from Facebook’s thrive to make more money using the Facebook beacon and moving on to the “automated stalking” news feeds and ending with the biggest joke of all: Facebook’s forced redesigns, Marc Zuckerberg seems to be proving, day after day, the fact that he suffers from what psychologists call “The God Complex”.

As defined by the Urban Dictionary: “The God complex (funny video) is a psychosis based in uncontrolled narcissism, inflated arrogance and a perceived need to subjugate and/or ridicule other individuals deemed to be inferior or unworthy. Some believe that “God complexes” are particularly common in arrogant, highly educated, worldly, or powerful people.”

In one of my previous graduate marketing courses discussing “Marketing Mistakes and Successes”, it was evident that the 3 C’s: Conceit, Complacency and Conservatism were and are still the main three reasons why great corporations might be drawn towards failure. Looking at Zuckerberg’s approach to changing and continuously making additions and new platforms introductions, we can safely say that he is as far away as possible from complacency and conservatism. But what about conceit? Is conceit taking over the way things work at Facebook?

Since conceit is directly related to The God Complex I have defined earlier, it seems that Zuckerberg is drowning in shallow waters!

Disregarding the fact that 94% of Facebook users “hate” the new Facebook redesign and the fact many articles were written and Facebook groups were created to attack what I’d like to call the “God-like position” Zuckerberg upholds by doing as he pleases and even more severely disregarding user’s needs and arguments repetitively, and finally exploiting users’ data for personal gains and adding options that only compromise privacy, all seem to point towards one direction: Zuckerburg’s pure and unarguable obsession with power!

Zuckerberg: We feel with you, we really do, but honestly we are not ready to surrender to your will, not yet at least! I believe that most bloggers know exactly what they are talking about when they say: “The Facebook’s new design sucks” and “It is time you listen to your users!”. I’d like to think that I have read enough articles and case studies that can show you the way to “social networking redemption”! With a little effort, you can easily do what large social networking sites such as Google, Yahoo and others have done by utilzing Beta development to gain better insights about whatever changes you are planning to introduce in order to give your “smart” users more options and breathing room!

I just want what is best for us, the people who count: the users who have made your success possible! And since your profile indicates that you’re a Harvard graduated and we all know that you are currently Facebook’s CEO, which in turn gives you power, I believe that you fit the profile of a person suffering the God Complex! Thus, since part of finding a solution is realizing the problem, I just thought I should pinpoint you to the right direction…

Wishing you a speedy healing and a hearty come back!

Filed under: Controversial Picks, Deductions and Realizations — Tags: , , , , , — Beirut @ 5:21 pm

March 18, 2009

Digg is bloggers’ Hollywood

Real life celebrity glamor is not that different from that over the Internet. As a Web marketer, you are probably continuously looking for ways to promote your blog to a celebrity-like status. Once it becomes a star, your website rank would spike. But making celebrities is a tough job, isn’t it? You definitely won’t be taking it to Hollywood, of course! It doesn’t work like this in the Web’s universe; we have other dream-come-true medium. Social bookmarking has created new platforms for stars-type posts to shine. Show up at Digg, and you will get a chance.

It is not really as simple as that. Not every submitted article at Digg make it to the first page. Although as Dave Naffziger, CEO of Brand Verity, points out in his analysis of Digg’s submissions that certain criteria make your article more likely to be dugg. Like, for instance, submitting your article on the weekends rather than on a weekday, or talking about Nintendo Wii rather than talking about golf. Putting that aside, we all know that the most essential part of any article remains in its content. The same classical story, you should be model material to make it in Hollywood. In other words, people would not bookmark or share your post if you don’t provide them with an adequate personal value.

After coming up with a decent content, a simple strategy of using a combination of different social bookmarking services would help. Try submitting your post to StumbleUpon and Digg, Twittering about it to spread the word, and then add the ‘Digg it’ button to your post. People would then start to show up and naturally click the ‘digg it’ if they found it interesting enough. The more diggs you get, the more people would want to take shots (add it to their own bookmarks over del.icio.us). Soon, your post would gain a celebrity status. Darren Rowse, a full time professional blogger, attracted 250k visitors over a single night using the same steps.

Then again, one shouldn’t ignore the importance of tags. Tagging has been at the core of social bookmarking. It offers a personal value in helping people to better manage, organise and retrieve their bookmarks when needed. This is the model Del.icio.us was built on in the first place, where personal value precedes network value. Tagging has become equally essential for other people in the network to find relevant information as well. Del.icio.us managed to aggregate the tags generated by the users and create a folksonomy framework. That’s the briliance of their approach and why they deserve the market share they currently hold.

The figure below (taken from Dave Naffziger’s article), illustrates some interesting trend data showing how his NWF Daily News website have gone from nothing to the top 20,000 websites according to Alexa through his impressive use of Digg. Notice the spikes Digg inflicted on their traffic!


To sum up, social bookmarking has changed the face of the Web for regular users, let alone Web marketers. Search engines are no longer the most single source of traffic. I , like many other people, tend to trust people’s verdicts. If you are a celebrity, then there is something worthy about you. Google would be my choice if I know exactly what I am looking for, but I would pick up Del.icio.us to find more relevant information through the connection of its tagging system. The internet navigation nature is changing, I wonder what is coming next?

Filed under: Research-Based Topics — Tags: , , , , , , , — Fadi @ 9:58 am

March 16, 2009

The Facebook Trap!

Almost 2 years ago, or maybe even before that, I started a Facebook account because everyone I knew was talking about it! I felt the need to check it out, see what all the fuss is about! In less than a month I had added and accepted around 200 “friends” and within a period of 3 months or so, my “friends” multiplied to 960 or so!

Now, since I had an already established blog which I used daily to publish my writings, and since this blog required a lot of time and attention and I didn’t have those, I didn’t mind the many “friends” and kept them there just to allow more people to view my writings and maybe even become regular readers.

After a while, I noticed that some people started adding me based on the profile picture I had placed and that in fact, they really had no interest in who I am or what I write about!

I started blocking people, deleting others and adding many to my limited profile list. You can imagine how some of those complained, others got upset and simply stopped contacting me!

Yet, I still was on Facebook… It helped me stay connected to real friends who lived in different countries.. It also helped me keep track of birthdays that I never seem to remember!

Then Facebook designers decided to change their interface! I hated it! I complained about it through my status feeds, I might have even written about it! All I wanted to do at that point was to deactivate my account but I couldn’t get myself to do so… I felt trapped: I needed to stay in touch with all those people and I needed my readers to keep track of my writings with the least effort possible but I didn’t want this interface!

Just recently, I suffered the same dilemma when Facebook designers decided to change the interface yet another time!

I feel caged!

If we think about it consciously, there may be a lot of factors that we are not very aware of that are able to “trap” us into never leaving this trap of social networking, and one main ones is peer pressure and the need to be in a crowd, a part of a group: the need to belong!

Nowadays, I hear people being shocked if they hear that “x” has no Facebook account! To them, it is natural to have it and abnormal to refuse to be sucked in to the chain of exposing your private life online and sharing it with everyone…

And now we come to the end of my story and the question remains: Will I ever be able to free myself from the Facebook chains?

I wonder… .

Filed under: Deductions and Realizations — Tags: , , — Beirut @ 1:03 pm

March 12, 2009

Facebook vs. Animal Shelters!

We can find a community almost everywhere! Nature is a great example of a wide range of different communities; take beehives as one example and a herd of sheep as another… But what factors transform a community into a social network?

While pondering on the idea of social networking, over and over again, I found this thought to be interesting: Animal shelters and how similar they are to our social networking environments, especially when comparing it to Facebook!

The following table explains it all!

Animal Shelter Facebook
Animals hunted and captured by Animal Control Users hunted and captured by peer pressure and the desire to “fit in”.
Animals stay because they are trapped in a cage and need to find a home & to be fed People stay because they are trapped in the metaphorical cage of needing to find love, friendships & entertainment
The cleanliness of the shelter is necessary for the well being of the animals The user-friendly platform is necessary to attract people to subscribe to the network & use it constantly
One size fits all cage, made from the same material to retain all animals Customized “cages” depending on what the user chooses his/her privacy settings to be! Example: Facebook and limited profile.
Building uncommon relationships between animals of different breeds. Example: Youtube clip Initiating unusual relationships through networks such as dating sites, crossing geographical and ethnic boundaries
Can animal shelters reserve animal rights and not be regarded as property, or used as food, clothing, research subjects, or entertainment? Will the future give us more examples to how some social networking sites treat us merely as page views and marketing sheep (maaaa)?
There are many type of shelters such as Open door centers, animal sanctuaries and such. Many different social networking sites are available such as dating websites, Facebook, LinkedIn etc.
The sad element is when no one claims or tries to adopt the animals The sad element is when people lose hope when they finally realize that most of their online relationships are of weak ties (on thin ice), and very few are of real value!
Animals are injured, diseased or even die sometimes from overpopulation Will greed or overpopulation end the era of Facebook?

So, did Facebook really become a prison/cage? And are single users able to break this chain by simply deciding to not use Facebook? Can peer-pressure keep playing its role in trapping users into Facebook’s social maze?

I urge you to think about that!

(written by Beirut)

Filed under: Deductions and Realizations, Research-Based Topics — Tags: , , , , , — Amer Kawar @ 1:35 pm

March 11, 2009

The e-Flu: Are you infected?

When did the common cold become such a welcomed phenomena? With the constant evolution of the Internet, Web marketing has rapidly transformed the term “viral” from a universally fearful term associated with disease into a welcomed – sought after – marketing strategy.

Since the beginning, Web services which excelled in building interactive, dynamic and social applications have been able to gain the interest (and visits) of the Internet-savvy crowd. Following that, the term “viral”- previously perceived as a word with one meaning: a contagious disease – now takes on a new meaning with more and more people aiming to be a part of it! May it be eBay, MySpace, Facebook and moving on to other highly ranked social networks such as Twitter, Digg and del.icio.us, we are clearly able to notice the trend of viral marketing’s expansion as a desired tool that is intentionally allowed to enter into private lives through searches, emails, video and picture sharing services.

YouTube, for instance, went from a few thousand users during 2005, and climbed to the top 10 most visited websites on the Web in less than 6 months. In my opinion, it’s all about filling a need and providing a useful, scalable service. YouTube did that by allowing people to freely host and publish videos on their platform, without the need to worry about bandwidth costs.

According to Dr. Ralph Wilson, E-Commerce Consultant, viral marketing “describes any strategy that encourages individuals to pass on a marketing message to others, creating the potential for exponential growth in the message’s exposure and influence“. He then goes on to mention the six basic principles of viral marketing, which our example, YouTube, is utilizing so well in its most basic concept. Simply, they offer their users a valuable service for free, as well as encourage them to socialize and share experiences. Doesn’t that by itself shout “Success!”?

Seth Godin (article), a thought leader in the principle of permission marketing, states that “viral marketing is a compounding function”. He gives the example of Numa Numa video, and how it “spread like a toxic waste spill because it was so transparent, reasonably funny and easy to share”. Godin said it, and I can’t agree more: It is of great importance that people understand, like, adopt and spread an idea in order for it to be amongst the list of effective viral infections! In laymen’s terms, if you have the ability to create a story worth telling, that makes people feel good about themselves, you can be the next infection to hit the Web!

Nothing in this life is of one plain color; there are no absolutes! As we can learn from this article, throughout every single day of our lives, new concepts are made and old ones are modified to help change our perception of the world and expand our horizons of thinking and methods of doing things!

Finally, and just as ants have been role models for hard work and dedication in many wisdom books, today viruses as well have proved their ability to teach us the importance of being viral to gain the most of your hard work!

Further readings and links:

Filed under: Research-Based Topics — Tags: , , , , , — Beirut @ 11:41 am
©2009 thoughtpick, copyrights reserved.