The Social Media Blog - Methodical Madness

What’s in a name? If the name is iPad, a great big joke.

Steve Jobs helped menstrual humor go mainstream. That’s probably not what you’re looking for when you launch a new product.

 

Apple has been grooming the public over the past decade. With the release of the iPod Touch and the iPhone, we’ve been subtly conditioned by Apple to use the iPad. From initial reports, using the iPad is just like using the iPhone, only bigger. With 75 million iProducts sold, Apple has a built-in audience virtually guaranteeing success. 

But that doesn’t mean they’re invulnerable. In 2009, we saw Tropicana redesign their brand and suddenly disappear from the market as people couldn’t find their distinctive logo. Gatorade changed their logo to a big “G” and fans were not amused. Now Apple has launched the iPad. For those of us not baptized into the Cult of Apple, it’s easy to sit back and laugh at the product and the somewhat unfortunate connotations the name brings to mind.

When it was still rumored, the iPad had lots of names including iTablet and iSlate (both of which would have been a better choice). It’s curious that Apple would pick a name that could so easily be mocked and linked with feminine hygiene products. In a blog post on the New York Times, Claire Cain Miller goes into detail about how women have cringed at the name. On Twitter, the word “iTampon” is more popular than “iPad”, with the hashtag #iTampon hitting the top spot for trending topics. Here are some of the funniest tweets: 
 

@celeva93: Uncomfortable cramping and bloating? There's an app for that 

@godispretend Steve Jobs, I'ma let you finish, but Moses had the greatest tablet announcement of all time. #itampon

@melizeche "I'm not buying an iPad. Period." #iTampon

@kathycacace: Okay, just one more. The iPad: protecting your data from embarrassing incidents. #iTampon 

@Johnpapa: "64 gig iPad will forever be known as the heavy flow model." #iTampon 

@Lymed: Does the Period Tracker app come free? #iPad, #iTampon

@NellMood: It's so beautiful when an electronics company finally becomes a woman... #iPad #iTampon

@vlvtjones: So will iffy Wifi coverage be called iSpotting? #iPad #iTampon

@DaniGray: You can do things with #iTampon that you just can't do with #iPad - like biking, horseback riding and swimming.LOL

@Knightd427: Please follow all safety precautions when applying iPad. Remember, iPad does not protect against STDs such as SYFY. #itampon

And then there was the obligatory “Hitler responds” video:

Someone even found a MadTV sketch from 2006 that featured an iPad from Apple, though it has a slightly different use.

Apple had to have known they were going to alienate women and become the source of ridicule for others. The connection is to obvious. The question has been jokingly asked, “Are there any women on the marketing team for the iPad?” You have to wonder if they were there, why didn’t any of them object? The good news for Apple is they have such a strong brand that most of the criticism will have no long term effects on the sales of the product, but if a weaker brand had released this, it would probably have sunk the product before it went out the door.

Early reactions to the iPad have been mixed. Gizmondo is giving it a big thumbs down but TechCrunch has been very positive. It’s too early to tell if the iPad will be the big hit Apple hopes it will be or if it will be another toy used by a few to feel more elite. In the meantime, there is a heavy flow of jokes to be made at Apple’s expense while we wait to get the product in our hands.

Stefan Halley is the Digital Project Leader for The Duffy Agency. He loves to talk about social media and won't shut up about Twitter.

A complete list of Apple iPad features

Steve Jobs’ latest creation has the tech world in an uproar, but will it really revolutionize our lives?

 

The level of excitement surrounding the release of Apple’s newest product, the iPad, is normally reserved for the likes of Star Trekkers, comic book geeks and sci-fi convention goers. The Cult of Apple is strong among those that consider themselves to be hip and trendy. There are very good reasons for this fanboy behavior. Over the past decade, Steve Jobs has taken his company from the brink of collapse to one of the strongest and best known brands today, launching products that have helped shape our modern lives. Coming off a string of hits like iTunes, the iPod and iPhone, Apple’s iPad is sure to be a must have product.

The internet has been a buzz with rumor of what exactly this product will be and tonight the rumors can end. Jason Calacanis leaked many features earlier today through his Twitter account. Jobs has finally revealed his latest brain child and the list of features is even more impressive than we expected. 

• .5 inches thin
• 1.5 pounds
• 9.7 inch IPS display
• powered by 1GHz Apple A4 chip
• Available in 16 GB, 32GB or 64GB 
• Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR
• full capacity multitouch
• WiFi 802.11n
• Accelerator + compass
• Speaker
• Microphone
• 30 pin connector
• 10 hour battery life, with a month of standby
• resizeable apps
• runs all iPhone apps
• apps bought for iPhone can be transferred to iPad without additional cost
• iPhone SKD support the iPad
• built in iTunes store, YouTube and YouTube HD
• smooth iPhone like scrolling
• built-in calendar
• click through photos and email like iPhone
• change view screen from horizontal to vertical by movie iPad
• menus pop down from the top
• onscreen popup keyboard
• iPhoto access with Google geolocations tied in
• iTunes access is similar to the laptop interface
• GPS
• built in painting app
• live video within apps
• iBooks, Amazon Kindle like book reader. They have deals in place with Simon & Schuster, Penguin, HarperCollins, MacMillan and Hatchett Book Group.
• changeable font in iBooks
• iWorks redesigned for iPad
• iWorks apps will be priced at $9.99 a piece
• projector connection
• syncs to iTunes like iPod and iPhone does via USB
• $14.99 for up to 250 MB of data
• $29.99 for unlimited data
• free use of ATT WiFi hotspots
• iPad 3G models come unlocked and uses new GSM micro SIMs
• international deals by June/July
• pricing starts at $499 up to $699
• shipping in 60 days
• keyboard docking station
• Kindle like case can be used as a stand
• no multitasking
• no phone
• no camera
• no built in DVD player

Only time will tell if the iPad will be the next iPhone or the next Newton. All signs point to it being the former, but there’s certainly room for failure. It’s not a cheap piece of hardware (and there’s a bit of a recession going on, last I heard), and exactly what it’ll do for your average Joe to change their day-to-day life isn’t crystal clear. The iPod let us carry thousands of songs in our pocket. The iPhone turned mobile phones into mobile computers. What mobile need is the new tablet really satisfying? The need to carry an entire mobile entertainment center with us wherever we go?

If you’re planning on buying an iPad, leave a comment and tell us why you think it’s worth putting down your hard earned cash for when you’ve already got a laptop, an MP3 player and a smart phone. As for us, we’re still debating whether or not to join the fans camping out overnight to get one the day it’s released. Maybe we’ll see you there. 

APPLE FACTS:

250 million iPods sold

284 Apple Stores

50 million visitors last quarter

140,000 apps

3 billion downloads

50.6 billion in revenue last year

World's largest mobile device company

Rumored Apple Tablet Features

 

The highly anticipated Apple Tablet/iSlate/iPad is being announced today.  Mahalo founder Jason Calacanis on his Twitter profile leaked some of the presumed features of the new device. He has been playing with one for the past two weeks. If what he says proves to be true, then Steve Jobs will once again have out done himself. But, the road to success hasn’t always been an easy one for Apple and their list of bombed devices almost out weights their successes. Jason lists the following features.

• connects to other tablets over wifi for gaming
• two cameras for video conferencing, one in the front and one in the back
• solar panel to help recharge the battery
• thumbpads on each side for mouse gestures
• fingerprint identification
• runs multiple apps at the same time
• OLED screen
• price will be $599, $699 and $799 depending on size and memory
• built in HDTV tuner and pvr
• wireless keyboard and mouse for TV

Fans have their hopes set so astronomically high there could well be a major letdown looming. But if it can do everything we're dreaming it can, maybe it will be that next leap forward.  We’ll have to wait and see what materializes later today. 

You can watch the big reveal at these sites.

Macrumorslive

Engadget

Gizmodo Live

Svenska Macworld

Slashgear

4 tools to add your RSS feed to your Twitter profile

With so many social media websites, the more you can automate your processes, the easier it is to stay on top of things. If you create a lot of content in a week, you can spend just as much time promoting your work as producing it, and who has time for that. 

RSS feeds give you a great solution for reducing this workload. Every blog these days has an RSS feed built into it. With it, you can update your Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or MySpace account with your latest updates instantly. But not all RSS feed tools were created equal. 

I sat down with my co-workers and created a wish-list of qualities that we as marketing people want in an RSS feeder tool. As usual, all the tools have to be free and not require a download. Beyond that, we wanted to be able to:

• have an easy-to-use interface
• get the hang of it quickly
• send updates to Twitter and other sites
• easily configure it
• add hashtags
• determine the number of updates
• change how often it updates our accounts
• have some form of useable analytics
• selectable URL shortening software


The evaluation method was simple. I visited each site and registered. After my profile loaded, I took a screenshot of the interface and then spent about ten minutes looking around the site. A decent site should be able to explain itself in that time. After using the application, I rated each site against my wish list.

 

TwitterFeed is probably the best known of the RSS feeder tools. Signing up is simple and they allow you to use OpenID to register with the site. This means if you already have a Gmail account (and who doesn’t these days), you don’t have to create a new account to use TwitterFeed. You can add as many RSS feeds as you want and they can feed any number of Twitter, Laconica, Ping.fm, Hellotxt and Facebook accounts. You don’t have to worry about flooding your audience with information as it allows you to choose how often it updates and how many of your posts it pulls. You can also change what content gets posted – title only, title & description or description only. There are 21 different shortening link settings and you can add either a post prefix or suffix to make use of hashtags.

PROS: Very easy and highly functional RSS tool. Lots of features and the ability to add multiple accounts and limitless feeds make TwitterFeed an extremely effective single feature site.

CONS: The built-in analytics on the site don’t provide much insight. It’s best used in conjunction with another site like Bit.ly.

RATING: Thumbs Up

RSS2 Twitter is very similar to TwitterFeed, except it’s more limited. You add an RSS feed, decide what to include (title, description, or both), which Twitter account to update, filter keywords and add a prefix. It also automatically shortens URLs and provides analytics on the number of clicks you get from your links. The site uses OAuth to login, which makes it easy to login without a needlessly elaborate form. 

PROS: Easy to use and customizable. The analytics look good with an easy to understand chart.

CONS: Needs more features. Hopefully RSS2 Twitter will add more customizable features to their service. Doesn’t allow you to add additional social media sites. Doesn’t allow 3rd party URL shortening.

RATINGS: Thumbs down

Hootsuite is basically a browser based version of TweetDeck. The site allows you to monitor and update your Twitter feed, create columns to monitor based on hashtags or keywords, has built-in statistics and you can update multiple social networks. Hootsuite is a great online tool and one that makes monitoring your Twitter profile from any computer very easy without having to use a downloadable client, like TweetDeck and Seesmic do. 

PROS: Easy to use, lots of features and the ability to add multiple RSS feeds and social media accounts makes it a great way to update your Twitter profile via RSS feed.

CONS: Hootsuite will only allow you to use their Ow.ly url shortening. This can come into conflict if you’re using Bit.ly or other URL shortening tools. There is also no ability to add hashtags to your post. 

RATINGS: Thumbs Up

Twt.sy is another solid entry into the RSS feeder category. The site allows you to add multiple feeds and Twitter profiles. It doesn’t allow you to add additional social media sites. When you add an RSS feed, you can adjust the tweet update times, what to include in the tweet and any prefixes and keywords to filter by. The main asset of this site is a dashboard that shows the number of clicks, the most popular clicks from that past hour, the most recent links and the links that have the most clicks. You can also see where clicks are originating from thanks to their mashup with Google Maps. It’s a unique feature to Twt.sy. 

PROS: Good use of analytics that no other site has. You can add multiple twitter accounts and RSS feeds.

CONS: Doesn’t allow for updating to additional social media sites. Doesn’t allow third party URL shortening. Needs to add more customizable features. 

RATING: Thumbs down

CONCLUSION:

All the sites in this category are useful tools. It comes down to personal taste and needs. I like to have as many features as possible and that’s why for an RSS feeder, I have to choose TwitterFeed. True, Hootsuite has more overall features but just looking at the RSS features, it falls a little short. If you’re not already using a Twitter interface client, I would recommend using Hootsuite because it will cover all your basic needs and then some. If you’re already using TweetDeck or Seesmic, the extra features aren’t necessary and TwitterFeed’s excellent abilities will more than meet your needs.

Stefan Halley is the Digital Project Leader for The Duffy Agency. He loves to talk about social media and won't shut up about Twitter.

Download the Slideshare version of this blog post.

The limitations of growing a social media campaign

A look at the technical restrictions we discovered during our last social media campaign

We ended 2009 with an eight week social media campaign for a client. The client wanted a Facebook page, a Twitter account and a YouTube channel to drive traffic to and raise awareness of their campaign site. They wanted to cover their target market on both a personal and professional level, as well as attract people interested in their cause. Starting at zero, we wanted to create as aggressive a social media campaign as possible over the eight weeks. What we discovered is that there are ceilings and lots of unwritten rules that must be followed.

Due to the tight deadlines we had and the brevity of the campaign, we mounted as aggressive a campaign as we could to push out the client's message. We don’t recommend using social media assets as aggressively as we did for this campaign. Social media growth should be paced and nurtured, not a quick grab for as many followers as you can attract. These sites should be used to develop a community and build brand loyalty. By being as aggressive as we were, our actions could have just as easily been deemed spam and our entire campaign could have collapsed as quickly as it started. Fortunately, that wasn’t the case. The following information is for general knowledge of what we learned from the campaign and not recommended as a best practice scenario. 

Before we even began, we did our research and targeted individuals that self-identified with our client’s cause. By doing extensive market research, we were able to propel the campaign forward and get the client’s message out to the people that would be most receptive to it. This step was the most important thing we did. Before any social media campaign begins, having a plan of attack and good research will make your efforts go much further.

Looking to reach as many people as quickly as possible, we used Twitter as our main tool. Twitter allowed us to grow the other assets and drive traffic to the site more than anything else we did in the beginning. Through it, we promoted the pages of the site we wanted people to pay attention to, alert people to the other social media campaigns and find new followers. The Twitter 2000 follower ceiling is well documented. You can’t follow 2000 more people than are following you. What is less known is how it applies to the first 2000 followers. Twitter doesn’t want individuals to create accounts and just go crazy following people. It created a problem in growing followers as we hit that ceiling. Here are the limits we found:

• You can’t follow more than 500 people in a day
• You can’t have 2000 more followings than followers
• Twitter will block you from following people if you are too aggressive 
• Once you reach the 2000 following limit, you can delete followers and add new people until your follower total catches up

We used Facebook as gathering place for people to allow them to self-identify with the campaign. With 350 million users, it’s the place to go to find people interested in any brand or cause. We created a Facebook fan page and a profile page based on the brand. The fan page was used to push our message and keep fans updated on what was happening with the campaign. The profile page was created to find people and directly interact with them in a way you can’t with a fan page. From the profile, we were able to find people and then invite them to join the page and the website. Through the profile page, we were also able to join other groups and leave comments on their walls. Facebook’s limits are more cryptic than Twitter’s and appear to be arbitrary. Here are a few of the limits we discovered:

• Sending out more than 50 friend requests will get your friending privileges revoked for a period
• You can’t post the same message on more than five wall’s 
• Slightly vary your message from wall to wall. It will take the Facebook algorithm time to discover your activity
• If you’re going to be aggressive in your Facebook activity, limit it to one day a week, then use the site on a slower level through the rest of the week to keep from getting flagged.

The campaign site focused heavily on a video component, which naturally brought YouTube into play. The site encouraged people to leave a video that would then be uploaded onto the YouTube channel. The more videos we uploaded, the more traffic the channel got. This is the one area that really took care of itself. There aren’t many limits with YouTube, but we did find a couple:

• You can only subscribe to 10 channels a day
• If you don’t upload your own videos, the analytics won’t work.

For the first half of the campaign, the social media effort was the only advertising that was used. We saw great initial site traffic, but once people saw our message, it was difficult to attract them back and site traffic trailed off. In week 6, we added Google AdWords and Facebook ads and saw our traffic more than double the projected total site traffic.

In the end, the social media campaign was successful. Our final numbers were:

Twitter: 2042 followers
Facebook: 324 fans
YouTube: 719 views

Given the limitations of the campaign (no initial advertising, almost zero awareness of the issue and creating all assets from the ground up), after eight weeks, we had 3.7 million targeted impressions and over 15 thousand people interacted with the brand. 

Five lessons learned:

1. The more planning you do up front, the easier it will be to connect to the right people.
2. Don’t try to outsmart the sites. It’s not worth the potential backlash you attract.
3. The more you don’t talk about yourself, the better people respond.
4. If you feel like you’re spamming people, you probably are.
5. It’s ok to be aggressive, just know the limits.

Stefan Halley is the Digital Project Leader for The Duffy Agency. He loves to talk about social media and won't shut up about Twitter.

Methodical Madness needs your vote

Methodical Madness closed out 2009 winning the blog of month for November. Then we were short-listed by Social Media Examiner along with 20 others for the distinction of the world's Top 10 Social Media Blogs. Our fellow finalists include a roster of stellar blogs like  Chris Brogan, CopyBlogger, Mashable , and Social Media Explorer . Winners to be decided soon by jury.

Methodical Madness is also short-listed with 12 other finalists on Fuel Line's Ad Agency Blog of the Year. Please VOTE before Friday, January 22. Below you can see the Fuel Lines poll results live. 

CLICK HERE to VOTE for The Duffy Agency

How Twitter can (and can’t) change the world

Acting through Twitter helps, but it can’t end there

When a crisis hits, most of us feel a gut instinct to help. But most of us won’t go that far out of our way to do something. That’s exactly why Twitter has inspired such huge numbers of people to get involved in causes: they can contribute to a better world in 140 characters or less (or at least feel like they have). Millions have devoted their time and money to solving the world’s biggest issues. But for that effort to not go to waste, we need to get our feet back on the ground and accept that social media can’t solve the world’s problems by itself – it can only contribute to the hands on solution. Many of us seem to be losing sight of this.

Losing sight is understandable considering Twitter’s remarkable achievements. Within hours of the 7.0 earthquake rocking Haiti, Twitter was giving people a way to show the world images of the carnage and a medium to tell their stories. With the country’s infrastructure devastated, there weren’t many other options for getting the message out. And with that message spreading across Twitter like wildfire, millions opened their wallets to support relief efforts – including more than $20 million donated to the Red Cross’s text message campaign.

  

But while the donation is instant and simple, relief getting to the people is far from it. The mobile industry has regulations which delay the donations by 90 days, and the aid that is available is delayed in getting to the people due to a lack of rescue workers. In other words, there are great big on the ground problems that need people’s help which Twitter can’t solve, but aren’t getting due attention. The people in need are still facing a dire situation, but that is masked to some extent when we go on about the impressive amount of involvement that’s taken place.

The quake highlights both the inherent triumphs and shortcomings of what a Twitter campaign by itself is capable of. Social media efforts need to have comprehensive strategies – from your computer screen to the end result – to accomplish their goals. That probably sounds obvious, but how many people do you think write their tweet, feel like they’ve done their part and forget about the issue? Sometimes social media provides answers that are in fact a little too easy to be true, and leaves people feeling absolved of responsibility anyway. 

It’s still early days in utilizing Twitter in crisis response, and its ability to generate massive, global awareness within minutes of an event is already a landmark achievement in the history of communication. Never before have we been able to make so many people aware of a crisis so quickly, and then get them to do something. But we have to get real about what Twitter and social media can accomplish before they will truly change the world for the better. If action stops at the keyboard, it will only amount to a drop in the ocean. What you do out there in the real world is still what wins the day. 

Though it isn’t the whole solution, money is still desperately needed to save lives in Haiti. Check out our previous post to learn 10 ways you can contribute, including campaigns to send workers into the field.

Jason Ross is a copywriter for The Duffy Agency. He loves working on both traditional and social media projects and speculating on the future of the ad industry. 

10 ways you can help the people of Haiti right now

Do your bit in just a few clicks

The devastation in Haiti is on a level scarcely imaginable for most of us. It’s made doubly nightmarish by the fact that Haiti is far from being one of the wealthier countries in the world. But millions of dollars are being donated through internet fund raising campaigns that allow people to lend a hand instantly. To make your contribution of desperately needed funding, check out the options below. And after you’ve made a donation, tweet a link to the organization’s site or write about it on Facebook.

Remember to be wary of giving money to an unknown group, as scam sites have popped up to take advantage of people’s good will, and every dollar counts as it will help provide desperately needed medical supplies and shelter. If you’re unsure about a charity group, check out the Better Business Bureau’s site dedicated to reviewing charity organizations.

Most of these sites suggest donation amounts, but you can enter whatever amount of money you have to spare. Every little bit will help.


Oxfam’s emergency response team (whose regional headquarters happen to be in Haiti) is working hard to provide water and sanitation services in the hope of stemming the spread of disease that usually follows this kind of disaster. More money means more clean water for the people.

Google Support Disaster Relief Google pitched in the first million dollars themselves, but there’s a long way to go in recovering from the quake. On their disaster relief page, you can quickly and simply submit whatever amount you want donated to either UNICEF, who are working to help children affected by the earthquake, or CARE who are sending rescue workers to the country. There’s also an interactive Google Earth map on the page that gives you a look at how badly the country was hit.

Doctors Without Borders are saving lives on the ground by providing emergency medical care. The donated money will help them supplement Haiti’s devastated infrastructure.

United Nations World Food Program is pooling resources to provide food for 2 million people affected by the earthquake over the next 6 months. Already the poorest country in the Western hemisphere, Haiti needs help more than ever to feed their hungry.

AMURT With a decade of relief work in Haiti under their belt, AMURT are organizing both staff members and teams of volunteers for relief efforts. Donations will help support the teams already there and fund additional teams being sent to Haiti.


World Vision has already sent 18 tons of relief supplies to Haiti. Help them send more by making a donation.

AmeriCares is raising funding for critical medical supplies and medicines, as there is an especially great need of them with a major hospital having collapsed.

Catholic Relief Services have a staff on the ground in Port-au-Prince. They are accepting donations of any amount to buy and distribute emergency supplies.

Direct Relief International is supplying their partner organizations working in Haiti with emergency supplies. More funding means more critical supplies will reach people.

You can also donate money through a text message. To contribute $10 to the Red Cross ‘s disaster relief efforts, send an SMS with the message “HAITI” to the number 90999. You can also make a $5 donation via text message to the Yele Haiti earthquake fund by texting “Yele” to the number 501501.

With a little help from each of us out here in cyberspace, the people of Haiti will be able to put their lives back together much faster. Feel free to add to our list of ways to contribute in the comments section.

Jason Ross is a copywriter for The Duffy Agency. He loves working on both traditional and social media projects and speculating on the future of the ad industry. 

6 ways to visualize your Twitter stream

Sometimes you need a visual aid to get your head around what’s happening on Twitter

Trying to explain Twitter in a presentation or grasp how popular a keyword is can be tricky. Fortunately, there are several sites that show what’s happening on Twitter in a fun, visual presentation. They can strengthen your presentations by illustrating how Twitter works or make a more compelling event by dynamically showing people what’s being tweeted about.

I sat down with my co-workers and created a wish-list of qualities that we as marketing people want in an Twitter visualization tool. As usual, all the tools have to be free. Beyond that, we wanted to be able to:

• have an easy-to-use interface
• get the hang of it quickly
• stream tweets based on keywords
• easily configure it
• make our tweets visually interesting
• have adjustable settings


The evaluation method was simple. I visited each site and registered. After my profile loaded, I took a screenshot of the interface and then spent about ten minutes looking around the site. A decent site should be able to explain itself in that time. After using the application, I rated each site against my wish list.

 

Tori’s Eye  takes an origami approach to Twitter visualization. The site is highly visual and easy to use. Enter the word you want to track and watch the blue birds float by as the occasional cloud passes in the background. You can see what tweets are wafting by by holding your cursor over the bird. You get the Twitter account name, a link to their profile, when it was said and the tweet.

PROS:
Easy to use and very visual.
CONS:
No features outside of the ability to search on a word. It would be nice to see tweets maybe trailing behind the birds instead of having to click on the birds to read the message.

RESULTS: Thumbs Up

Twittospheric works the same way as Tori’s Eye. You enter a keyword and the site searches Twitter for the results. Except it doesn’t work very well. Initially it looks impressive. The Twitter bird slides past the screen and the user profile image appears, a link to the tweeter’s profile and their tweet appear in a little box. When you do a search, it appears to break the site. The birds still fly by but they no longer display any tweets.

PROS:
Easy to use and visually interesting
CONS:
Once you add a search word, the site quits working. I waited for about 20 minutes and then moved on. It went into a search mode but never displayed anything again.

RATING: Thumbs Down

TWITTERMOTION

TwitterMotion is an interesting concept done horribly wrong. It presents the tweets in an interesting way. You enter your Twitter name and password, then your tweets fly by in oversized text. Initially it looks quite fun but then you realize that you can barely read the tweets as they fly by. It’s worth looking at once but the gimmick wears thin quickly.

PROS:
Visually interesting way to display your tweets.
CONS:
Hard to read and understand what you’re looking at.

RATING: Thumbs Down

Twitt3D this black and white site is visually interesting but difficult to use. After logging into the site, it displays the most recent tweets from your followers in a 3D block. Focusing in on a tweet takes a bit of playing with to get the hang of. The tweet shows up on the vertical plain, while the tweeter is on a 90 degree perpendicular angle. There is also something called a Bird’s Eye Map but I never figured out what it was for.

PROS:
Visually interesting and fun to play with.
CONS:
Difficult to understand how it works or what you’re looking at. Once you submit your Twitter username and password, it runs its search and then never updates again. I’m not sure what the point of the site is except to present tweets in a convoluted fashion.

RATING: Thumbs Down

Twittearth is a cute view of the world with little monsters representing tweeters in different parts of the world. As new tweets appear, the globe spins to show where in the world the tweet is coming from. It takes a random sampling of tweets to display. You can login to your Twitter account to display the tweets in your Twitter stream but it appears to be broken as I could never login.

PROS:
Simple and fun to use. Watching the world spin around as new tweets pop up is fun to watch.
CONS:
It’s worthless if you can’t control it. You can’t login to display your Twitter stream and you can’t enter a keyword to track.

RATING: Thumbs Down

Twitterfall is the most adaptable site. You can select a current trend, a list, do a search, or show tweets based on geolocation. As each tweet appears, you can DM, follow, retweet, reply and more. They also give you customizable setting such as speed at which new tweets appear, the fall size, language selection, text size and more. It’s a great site with lots of features to make it more useable.

PROS:
Despite having a ton of features, the site is simple to use and easy to understand. The waterfall effect as new tweets appear keeps new tweets easy to read.
CONS:
You have to refresh the page to get new searches to work sometimes. Not very visually exciting.

RATING: Thumbs Up

CONCLUSION: The clear winner here would be Twitterfall. It’s not the most creatively visual, that would be Tori’s Eye, but it offers the most features and customizability with six different ways to change your viewing experience. Nothing else even comes close...or works. How do you like to see Twitter visualized?

Stefan Halley is the Digital Project Leader for The Duffy Agency. He loves to talk about social media and won't shut up about Twitter.

Download the Slideshare version of this blog post.

7 social media predictions for 2010

 

2009 was a great year for social media. Twitter went mainstream and Facebook dominated the world, replacing social networking websites that had a strong foothold in their country. As the world became more aware of social media and web 2.0 techniques, we saw some interesting marketing efforts from Pepsi, Fiat and Pringles, among others. With the new year upon us, let’s take a moment to look ahead at what we think will be the big game changers of the new year.

Micro communities - Facebook, MySpace and Twitter are the big impersonal dogs that dominate the social media world as we know it. People are starting to look for smaller, more relevant communities in the coming year. 2010 will see the rise of Ning, Xing and Linked In, as well as location based communities like Foursquare and Gowalla, which will be purchased and incorporated into Facebook and Google in 2011.

Facebook starts to slip - After obtaining the seemingly impossible in five years (350 million members), Facebook has justly secured their place as top dog in the social media world. There is no where to go but down from here. While expanding their functionality and destroying their credibility through poor decisions on how to handle user privacy, Facebook will lose members as users become overwhelmed with follow requests, app requests, security settings and a million other little things.

Google makes search more relevant - Google released real-time search at the end of 2009, but it’s not as refined as it could be. Google will continue to refine their search techniques based on the personal experience of the user. This means my search for a thai restaurant in San Francisco could be completely different from your search. Google rushed real-time search out in order to beat Bing to the punch, but expect it to be streamlined by the end of the year.

Gaming becomes more social - We talked about console gaming going social in our hugely popular blog post last month, but it’s just the tip of the iceberg. 2010 will be a rebirth in gaming with games not just linking to Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, but by allowing users to create original content through them as well. Add to that online gaming companies like Zynga, Playfish and Crowdstar who are expanding the capability of their games. Also, expect mobile gaming to go to great heights with the iPhone and Android phones changing the way we envision mobile gaming.

Big Brother won’t have to watch us – we’ll do it ourselves - In our ever expanding need to feel relevant and hip, we now do what people a decade years ago would have viewed as implausible. Privacy isn’t an issue like it used to be. We now tell people where we are and what we’re doing every moment. Thanks to Foursquare, Google Geotagging, Gowalla and Britekite, we can automatically update our location without lifting a finger. Expect this trend to continue, and get much more invasive, before it gets better.

iPhone loses ground to Android - Sure, the iPhone is great, but it has one major drawback: it’s only available on one phone. Now imagine the same software that makes the iPhone great spread over several phones with cheaper price-tags. The Android has the potential to be a game changer in next gen phone development. With several phones coming out in 2010, the huge market share that the iPhone now controls will quickly erode.

Companies discover how to use social media - 2009 was the year that businesses discovered that the internet isn’t just a children’s toy any more. 2010 will be the year that companies finally start using social media as an important marketing tool and will devote more of the advertising funds to online efforts. 2009 saw some interesting uses of Twitter, Facebook and iPhone apps as companies dipped their toes in the pond. Now that they’ve explored a little, expect some interesting online campaigns.