Twitter: Deliver the message, respect the reader

This week I ditched a guy I was following on Twitter because he stopped respecting the 140-character limit. I suspect he won’t be the last, either. “He managed to get more than 140 characters in?” some may wonder breathlessly. “How’d he do that? Can I do that too?” No, he didn’t, although people are already [...]

Social Media… a thousand words

Oh, the comic potential of the Venn diagram. The evil geniuses at Despair.com have come up with this little gem. Social Media: Unlocking the Awesome Potential of Behavioral Disorders Buy your t-shirt here. Follow Trae on Twitter

Deconstructing a Social Revolt: Small Hiccup or Thermonuclear Twit Storm?

On Tuesday, Twitter posted a notice to its blog regarding a “small settings update.” Others have done a fine job of detailing the changes (here’s monkey_bite’s), so I won’t belabor the point here. Suffice it to say, the update resulted in users no longer seeing every post of those they follow. The effect was noticeable. [...]

Twitter Getting Serious About Search

Remember a while back when I was pontificating about search becoming more social? Probably not. But, check this… Twitter’s new VP of Operations, Santosh Jayaram recently told CNET about some interesting changes coming to Twitter Search. Even now, searching on Twitter often provides faster and more relevant results than Google (note Jayaram’s earthquake story at [...]

Lock the Door… It’s Domino’s

Much has been written about the brand-tainting PR nightmare that hit Domino’s two weeks ago when two of its employees (now former) uploaded a video of themselves doing disgusting things with ingredients before putting them on people’s food. The interwebs blowed up as the company tried to contain the damage. A cautionary tale, indeed. As [...]

Twitters are Quitters?

ANALYSIS FAIL! In a weak attempt at being relevant in the social media space, Nielsen is reporting that 60% of Twitter users don’t return the following month. David Martin, Nielsen Online’s vice president for primary research, says: “Twitter has enjoyed a nice ride over the last few months, but it will not be able to [...]

Best Practices: Headlines

This post comes courtesy of Aaron Griffin, Director of Information Architecture at Targetbase: What can marketers learn from BBC News? I mean, aside from why we should fear swine (like we needed another reason). According to the “King of Usability” Jakob Nielsen, BBC News produces the world’s best headlines. His point is specifically about headline [...]