The Awesome Slideshow. 20 Deeper Truths on Twitter.

April 28th, 2012 • Twitter, Underway
Tags: Amsterdam, Funny, Gerald, PR, Presentation, theass, Twitter, Underway

Two days ago I had the pleasure to present during The Awesome Slideshow at Amsterdam’s Boom Chicago. Tom De Bruyne, co-founder of Sue Amsterdam, was so kind to ask me to present ‘something connected to twitter’. And the following little deck was the result.

The starting point for this presentation was a simple thought: Twitter is far more than a digital tool. It is a philosophy machine – a thing that creates realities. And the following selection of some of my 20 most favorite tweets proved that.

Only Today. KLM tweets with a Living Alphabet.

September 20th, 2011 • 4 comments Brands, Twitter
Tags: Brands, Campaign, Cool, Funny, Ideas, KLM, Netherlands, Social Influence Marketing, social network, Twitter, visual

KLM tries hard to become the social web’s favorite attacker brand. After staging a bunch of interesting campaign micro-ideas they launched something more complicated today. As Social Times reported a tweet from KLM earlier today said…

The result: live customer service replies that are shaped by a living alaphabet made up of 140 KLM employees. Yes it is live and it reacts to customer tweets but only today (and only as as reaction to a few selected tweets).

Live Reply tweets are being uploaded to KLM’s Youtube Channel and shared on Twitter. So far they’ve sent video tweets to about ten people, but they’ve still got a lot of hours left in the campaign. The example below is one of them…

The whole campaign is funny but completely useless. Anyway, it’s again a great very short-term promotional stunt to spread the word about KLMs social platforms and to position KLM as a social-media-savvy brand. In this regard: Well done, KLM. I am looking forward to the next useless stunt.

Quora. Twitter gets a Jeopardy Update.

Januar 6th, 2011 • 9 comments Social, Tech, Trends, Twitter
Tags: buzz, Quora, Social, Tech, Tools, Trends, Twitter, Viral, World

Quora. Currently my favourite example of an overbuzzed platform and I strongly recommend to follow the bizarre network effects that are taking place these days.

Quora is a knowledge platform that was founded in summer 2009 by Facebook’s former CTO Adam D’Angelo and Charlie Cheever. Quora received some funding in March 2010 and is in closed beta since summer 2010. Quora basically is a polished version of a forum. It merges forum functionalities with social platforms such as twitter or Facebook to generate a new type of Q&A platform. That’s not dramatically new but it’s a nice, well presented concept.

Quora turned red hot in late December 2010 and early January 2011. And it seems everyone tries to get on board asap. On January 2nd Techcrunch mentioned Quora as one of the 7 technologies that will rock 2011. Quote: ‘Quora will have its twitter moment’:

…2011, which I believe will be the year Quora has its Twitter moment and start to really take off. Quora represents a bigger technology trend, which is the layering of an interest graph on top of people’s social graph. On Quora, you can follow not only people, but topics and questions. It defines the world by your interests, not just the people you may know or admire. This is a powerful concept and is not limited to Quora (both Twitter and Facebook also want to own the interest graph), but Quora is designed from the ground up to expose and help you explore your interests.

I agree that Quora is a great platform. It nevertheless is not the reinvention of earned media. And I don’t see how a Forum 2.0 + Digg functionalities should come close to a general, broad interaction platform. Anyway for a couple of days the tech press keeps on posting about Quora day in and out. Did you for example know that the former AOL chairman is posting on Quora as if there was no tomorrow? No? I didn’t as well. And I don’t care.

The reason why Quora is so successful is definitely related to it being a helpful, well set up platform. But the momentum behind the current craziness is based on some superstars of the scene pretending Friendfeed, Plancast, Foursquare Quora is the reinvention of anything digital. Oh, and if David Armano and Jeremiah Owyang are posting there as well…we all follow, right?

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KLM Surprise. How to effectively stage a small social idea.

Januar 5th, 2011 • 7 comments Brands, Experimental, Mobile, Social, Twitter, We like
Tags: Airline, Amsterdam, Brands, Cool, Creativity, Foursquare, Funny, Ideas, KLM, klmsurprise, Location, Netherlands, Social Influence Marketing, Tech, Tools, Twitter

Big ideas? Well sometimes you can make a difference with a nice little idea that costs $100 and makes people smile. What happened was simple – KLM Surprise follows passengers who tweet or login to Foursquare while they wait for their flights. KLM has checked out their profiles in advance and gives little personalized travel presents to them. Total costs? $100? $150? A small team with a low end social listening solution. And even though I doubt it was a highly effective campaign idea it at least generated this image video below. Something you would have called a TV commercial in 1994. A TV commercial about a caring, tech-savvy airline. Well done KLM. (via)

Promoted Tweets. Finally explained in 140 Seconds.

Juli 8th, 2010 • Media, Tools, Twitter
Tags: Diy, Media, Promoted Tweets, Social Media, Tools, Twitter

Promoted Tweets are already live for about two months now. But I (as most of you) did not have the chance to take a deeper look at it by now. Check out this crisp little tour to our kind-of-favourite new social advertising vehicle…or whatever you make out of it. (via)

Trends. The Info Snob Lifecycle.

Februar 15th, 2010 • 2 comments Trends, Twitter
Tags: Diagram, Trends, Truth, Twitter, visual, World

Getting the latest news can be a fetish thing when you’re well connected. Thanks to twitter or (maybe) google Buzz you have the choice: Being at the top of the information pyramid or the idiot who retweets breaking news two weeks after it happened. Here is a completely not data driven, but nevertheless pretty accurate visualization of a twitter trend lifecycle. Thanks to Meg Pickard for the wonderful diagram (and Dustin for the link) even though it’s a little bit older. Yeah, I am the idiot this time…

2010. What’s going to happen in 140 characters or less.

Dezember 23rd, 2009 • Business, Reports, Strategy, Twitter
Tags: Brands, Business, Cool, Diagram, Experimental, Ideas, Prediction, Presentation, Reports, Social Influence Marketing, Strategy, Trends, Truth, Twitter, World

As the year ends it’s time to think of the next big…year. 2010 is coming closer and while the Mayan Calendar seems to save us from the rapture for two more years, it is still time to think about next year’s trends. Okay…we get drown in trend predictions lately, but I liked this one – Trendspotting‘s third annual prediction report following major trends in six categories. This time with trend predictions by the industry’s rock stars in 140 characters or less. Good to go?

High Five. Twitter to Users: Go *!&*$”%& Yourself.

November 14th, 2009 • Twitter
Tags: Cool, Funny, Service, Tools, Truth, Twitter

Comedy.com has just reached out to twitter to ask about a response on frequent user complaints. Mark Logan, Twitter’s spokesman, has made a video to address all of these concerns. And I think…customer service isn’t exactly twitter’s strength.

Cool. Band gets social to apply as Faith No More’s Support Act.

Oktober 27th, 2009 • Twitter
Tags: Cool, Creativity, Funny, Ideas, Lifestyle, Music, Twitter, We like

I love clever little ideas. The kind of ideas with a clear message, no agencies involved…just something to make you smile. This one is one of these ideas: For about 17 years now I am a fan of Faith No More. I almost cried when they made worldwide reunion tour earlier this year. As they have just announced their U.S. tour, L.A. based band called “Feast of Fetus” applied to play as their support act. How?

Simply by writing a song which is basically a plea with the Prog Rock Gods. Enter your twitter username and password and you send a twitter message together with the song to Faith No More’s band members Roddy Bottum and Mr Gould. Nice, funny and hopefully effective (via FNM Blog).

But only if you support Feast of Fetus.

Twitter. If the community were 100 people.

September 1st, 2009 • 6 comments Twitter
Tags: Community, Diagram, Statistical, Trends, Twitter, visual

I found this beautiful piece of data viz on informationisbeautiful.net. I think I belong to the 5 loud mouths…