A version of this blog post appeared on Blogcritics on June 15, 2011.
It’s only natural. Each time you glance at your stats, you can’t help but notice that the number of your followers has dipped. Who defriended me, you wonder? Sometimes you have an inkling. Wouldn’t it be nice if there were a way to confirm your inkling, a service that automatically notified you of your shrinking status? Let’s review the top four free services that promise to do just that.
1. Goodbye, Buddy. If you follow @GoodbyeBuddy, within a day or two, this bare-bones program will chart anyone who’s unfollowed you. It checks for changes “many times a day,” and publishes the result every two.
The cons: The only way to see who’s unfollowed you is to visit GoodbyeBuddy.com; there’s no way to be notified—unless you pay $2/month, in which case you’ll get a DM for each defriending.
The takeaway: It doesn’t work. Despite having registered with the service about two weeks ago—and been unfollowed by more than a dozen people since then—Goodbye, Buddy reports that I have “0 unfollowers.”
2. TwentyFeet. TwentyFeet presents an array of tidy charts about your Twitter and Facebook accounts. (For $2.50/year/service, you also can learn more than you wanted to know about your bit.ly, MySpace, YouTube, and—WTF—Google Analytics accounts.)
The cons: No notification; the only way to see who’s unfollowed you is to visit TwentyFeet.com, where you need jump through several screens.
The takeaway: If you have patience and love data, give TwentyFeet a whirl.
3. Qwitter. Qwitter sends you a daily e-mail showing your former friends.
The pros: It’s been around for a while.
The cons: The “daily” e-mails arrive every month or so; the last one I received came on April 6.
The takeaway: Would be great if it worked as promised.
4. Nutshell Mail. Owned by Constant Contact, NutshellMail delivers a daily e-mail detailing your activities on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Foursquare, Yelp, and Citysearch. (It also tracks MySpace, but who uses MySpace anymore?)
The pros: Easy to use and powerful. You can specify the time of your e-mail, and customize which data the message displays.
The cons: None. (The e-mails don’t even have ads.)
The takeaway: To use NutshellMail is to love it.
Addendum: As it happens, the Gadget Cage blog recently ran a similar post.
A version of this blog post appeared on GovLoop (October 11, 2010) and K Street Cafe (October 12, 2010).
In pitching Twitter to a client, there invariably comes a point in the conversation where your client is intrigued but not yet sold. “I like the idea,” she says, “but I don’t have anything to tweet.”
Sure you do! Unless your organization produces no content whatsoever, you’re no doubt already swimming in possible tweets: op-eds, videos, speeches, congressional testimony, memos, blog posts, podcasts, news clips—even, if you must, news releases.
For example, whenever the Manhattan Institute publishes an op-ed, it tweets it, with the preface, “New Op-ed.” Whenever the Heritage Foundation releases a policy paper, it tweets, “New Policy Paper.” When the Cato Institute finishes a podcast, you can finish the sentence. New content is tweetable content.
The beauty of these arrangements is that once you create them, they run on auto-pilot; a free tool like Twitterfeed can auto-tweet new material as you release it. Simply spend 15 minutes on the setup, then watch as your mission and message spread to those who otherwise might never hear about them.
To be sure, while a combination of pushing and pulling—i.e., engagement—is vastly preferable to just pushing, rare is the client who wants to go all-in immediately. But there’s no rule that says to partake of social media, you need to go big or go home. Instead, it’s often best to start with the low-hanging fruit, and work your way up, as Google does with Chrome, incrementally.
Addendum (9/10/2011): While the above tactic can thrive on Twitter (additional automatons include the New York Times,GovLoop, and Gawker), it fails on Facebook. According to a new study, Facebook Pages that auto-publish receive an average of 70% fewer likes and comments. The study attributes this dramatic drop-off to Facebook’s policy that reduces the prominence of posts from third-party APIs, such as Twitterfeed.
By now, it’s a cliché that Twitter has real-world value. Yet if you really want to appreciate both the usefulness and hipness of microblogging, try participating in a social media conference where live Tweeting is not only encouraged, the Tweets also are displayed on JumboTrons flanking the on-stage speaker.
Such was the case earlier this week at the Open Government and Innovations Conference. Held at the Convention Center in Washington, DC, the two-day conference brought together 700 “gov 2.0” types from the federal government and the consulting community that supports it. As such, not only did most attendees pack a Twitter-appified PDA; many also toted laptops or netbooks.
To meet such demand, the conference organizers established a hash tag—a unique series of characters (e.g., “ogi”), prefaced by a hash symbol (#)—to group together all #ogi Tweets. Tags, of course, are nothing new; what was new (at least for me) were the two JumboTrons that showcased, in real time on a 3×2 grid, each #ogi Tweet, coupled with the Tweeter’s headshot and user name.
Initially, this setup was overwhelming. With so many things competing for attention—the speaker, his PowerPoint presentation, Twitter, the JumboTrons, the legs of the blonde two tables over—distraction was easy. Yet as the conference proceeded, information overload gave way to information empowerment.
How? Instead of indulging our inner ADD, participants stayed focused. At the same time we typed, we listened. At the same time we listened, we read. Multitasking was not optional.
Yes, of course, such juggling can be dizzying. It’s not for everyone, and it’s not for philosophy seminars. But social media isn’t philosophy, especially for those of us who do it for a living. And when we attend a conference on a subject with which we’re already familiar, we learn not only from the speakers but also from our peers.
For instance, after a panel on how to make the federal acquisitions process more transparent, I carried out a Tweeted conversation, with Jaime Gracia, on how to make RFP responses public. When I wanted to attend multiple panels that were taking place simultaneously, the #ogi tag allowed me to be in two places at once. When questions were being solicited for Chief Information Officer, Vivek Kundra, even though my colleague, Steve Radick, was back in McLean, his tagged Tweet appeared on the JumboTron and soon made its way to Kundra.
The beauty of this live Tweet showcase is its combination of transcriptions with punditry; that is, while some record what’s being said, others prefer to add their own thoughts. Put another way, a live Tweet showcase crowdsources note-taking. The best notes are re-Tweeted, the best note-takers are followed, and, in the end, there’s a digital trail, complete with headshots and links, of contacts made, water cooler gossip, enlightened dialogue, and everything in-between.
Addendum (7/27/2009): Ludo Van Vooren notes that the software used for the live Tweet showcase is called TwitterCamp.
Addendum (8/11/2009): Here’s another innovation from the OGI conference: The first-ever TweetBook, a compilation of hashgtagged tweets (in this case, #OGI). Don’t miss the pull-tweet on page 45.
Let me explain. For the most part, I Twittered halfheartedly and sporadically (usually when captive on the metro). For months, I didn’t know how to check replies—or even understand the concept of “re-Tweeting” (RT). I used only Twitter.com, rather than experimenting with any of the dozens of programs that inject Twitter with steroids. In sum, I viewed Twitter the same way I view picture taking: I’d rather be doing the things being Tweeted or photographed, i.e., living rather than recording.
What changed this attitude (which, please note, prevailed over my personal account but not those of clients)? The light bulb was a Tweet I stumbled upon by Web strategist Jeremiah Owyang. His advice: Tweet “what’s important to me” instead of “what am I doing.” This pearl caused me to rethink micro-blogging.
Posted by Jonathan Rick in 
Before entering the digital space…
I flacked for the American Conservative Union and the Cato Institute, and reported for Time magazine and the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.