Many of these enterprises never invested the time or staff to search the web and respond to postings that are static and will be there forever, as compared to these short time postings found in Twitter.

What I am seeing is that customers may now complain loudly in Twitter to their few hundred followers, get a tweet reply per chance from the vendor, and be directed to an email address or direct tweet conversation.

• What happened to customers going to the website and clicking a link for live chat?
• What happened to quick customer service on the phone lines?
• Being able to talk to a live person in a short time by dialing the phone?
• Is the live social media stream more important than the bigger customer base?

I disagree with all of that.  Social media is an additional solution to the customer service and web support.  I know reaching out to where the user may be is important.  Facebook is a large base, with the fan page growth and sharing.  Twitter has sharing, but relies on link tracking more than anything.  But who clicked the link?  Who was the primary sharing source?  Were the amount of followers they have the real reason your message got out?

Staff from all the panel members is dedicated to monitoring, answering, responding, watching and reporting.  AT&T mentioned they found about 11k actionable tweets from the ~100k (forgot exact number) out there.  None addressed why these people were not doing this same function on their website or phone lines.  Is there no community they have built for their customers to have accounts linked so easily solve problems, route issues and communicate quickly?

I don’t think the results they are finding just in a few social media sites, with dedicating teams or people, is the proper focus they made it sound.  I heard how they funnel things to R&D, customer support and even promotions.  Does this drive traffic page to their website? Do they capture data on who these Twitter users are in relation to their system?  Can they convert a username on Facebook or Twitter to an account to fix or up sell services?

Stop thinking of these social media services as a solution and more of an aggregated draw of traffic to your true core services and a new way to get them engaged.

The problem is, this is only seen when you log in via the web interface.  For new users, this is a common occurrence.  For power users and more, there are a slew of mobile and desktop clients in use that will never show this change.

How many of you use the phone number that might be known or an email address commonly known?  Most of you do and would say that it shouldn’t make a difference in any case.  But that shouldn’t be true.

I should have to opt in to have this information shared and the boxes themselves should not be checked automatically when I log in.  The default setting should be to disallow this type of search with explanation of what enabling these could expose.

The second portion was the ability to leave the selection to later.  Are these email addresses and phone numbers being exposed anywhere outside of the ability to find and add friends?    I didn’t see anything in the online help system for Twitter and only a few scattered articles.

Either way, get in there and establish your settings by logging in via the web interface.

Buzz was a reserved name in Gmail folders for some time, and now it is clear why.  I think Google realized that Wave should not have been the starting point with their jump into the real-time. Something that offered a simpler experience to a larger set of users was needed.  Tapping into Gmail gave them this very audience making it more than email.  It is now a Social Destination.

Before I go into how I see all the capabilities, you should understand that building your Google Profile is a key to bringing and bridging data together to make the most use of Buzz.  A simple way to see what services you have linked is the Google Dashboard I highlighted back in November.

Buzz is a layer that sits between your Gmail contacts and the social web.  It interacts with data (Buzz) generated by your contacts, and even recommended users.  Gone are the days of the 140 character post with a link to a picture.  Images are pulled in from links. Comments can be made.  Sharing is simple.  This is more than a conversation flow.  Google is coming in reverse of what Facebook is doing with Project Titan.  They are leveraging the large email base to make a social destination.  Facebook is trying to leverage their social network to build an email platform.  I think Google just won for the first part of the war.

A question that someone in the audience tried to pose, but was actually addressed in Todd’s portion of the presentation was on privacy controls.  The controls are inherently built in allowing sharing with the general public and small groups/individuals.  Buzz will remember the last setting you use and continue it until you manually make the change.  An excellent default mechanism on one hand and a way to screw yourself on the other.  Just remember to always double check how you are sending something before actual sharing.  I don’t care what service it is on.  Google will also hook together other Google service accounts you have established with no intervention needed.  Adding RSS feeds and other sites such as Twitter are built into the interface.  With PubSubHubBub integration available and an API, your output from Buzz will be open for you to grab as XML now.  This will allow developers to work with the stream and start building products.

Next up was the mobile integration and this is where things get enjoyable.  Currently supported are applications for iPhone and Android.  Simple steps like querying your location for the best location awareness to post Buzz is inherent. After a query, a list will bereturned and ask you to select it to say if you are there.   A layer in the new Google Maps has been added to show Buzz, which gives little balloons around your location with current Buzz.  This takes the term Nearby to a new level and puts a dent in Gowalla, Foursquare and Yelp while enhancing Google latitude (see my many posts right here on Latitude).  This becomes updates and geotagging on steroids.  While Buzz and Latitude operate independently still, a merge is coming (from the Q&A)

At the end, there was a brief Q&A session with the bloggers and press.  Privacy I addressed already above.   Another question was Google Wave integration.  I think that would not be a logical next step as Google answered.  Wave is a whole other dynamic and that would be a huge bridge to lay for the average user.

I have a screencast coming shortly, but this should get you all set for now.  I would suggest you also read Louis Gray’s posting on the announcement today for his excellent thoughts.

With any current reader, you are able to control subscriptions, read and unread marks, better sharing integration across networks and exploring and finding of other feeds through services like Toluu.  Twitter is a force feed of data from anyone that passes a link along to you.

While you build your own community of people you wish to follow, actually parsing the content is another thing, mainly when you follow ~16k people like he does.  This would be incomprehensible even in a feed reader to keep up with the sheer volume.

Twitter is about getting in and out of the stream.  Taking a dip in the information flow.  You only drown if you choose.  RSS readers store the data for retrieval when you are ready and are sorted nicely into tags and groups.  Twitter is not close to this with lists yet and has quite a way to go, as I have noted.

With such add-on tools as the Feedly extenson for Firefox, your RSS feeds turn into a newspaper, list or magazine covers with incredible amounts of sharing integration.

Twitter works in the reverse since people need to be present and watching the stream to catch what you send out.  Not many are able to watch ~16k feeds and have the time to see each and every one.  Now imagine them in real-time scrolling by.  You would not be able to click to read links by the time a slew of others roled across.

I think he is right in that is is a great news source, that I use as well, and has immediate impact on trends and breaking stories.  But for real commentary, RSS is here to stay.

P.S. yes I follow Robert and I think he follows me as well (if I go use the tools on EverythingTwitter to verify).  But I still don’t expect him to see my content scroll by.  So I tossed an @ symbol in the title instead.  Get it?  My content will scroll by quick, but a conversation marker can be seen across his Twitter client.

His entry chapter What is Twitter (and What It Is Not) lays the groundwork for the reasons most people don’t understand the whats and whys of Twitter and explains them in humor and direct example.  For those that still don’t get it, or those using it and don’t get it, this is for you.

After a couple chapters on establishing an account, setting up your profile and the please do’s and please do not’s, he talks of working beyond the website.  He does have chapters on outside tools, and I shook my head in amazement he left out EverythingTwitter as a great source to find whatever you need.  Yes, I mentioned this to him jokingly in email and he took it in great fun as he must have heard from many people.

Pay special attention to the chapter on The Trouble with Twitter as it does an excellent job of covering the fail whale, issues with some very personal information sharing, signal to noise ratios and dealing with the explosive growth of Twitter and how it affects the technical performance side.

Chapters 10 and 11 cover how to use Twitter for personal and business use respectively and make the most benefit of it no matter how you wish to use it. From communicating with friends and family to promoting products/services, events, conferences, podcasts and more.  In all he covers how Twitter is a tool to be used in so many ways and gives concrete examples of each.

Chapter 12 is an eye opener for most that only hear hype around using Twitter.  Tee talks about the darker side of what goes on and the dymanics of how we are all interconnected.  Who do you follow?  Who do you ignore?  Should you block?  What about spammers? Bots? Incomplete profiles and more.  It is succinct and honest about some of the behind the scenes issues that power users see daily.

Mr Morris leaves with why he is on Twitter and how he uses it in daily work and promotion before an appendix of some terms and more tools.

At ~260 pages, this is a must have for those entering social media with Twitter and makes for a clear and concise read with just enough technical information for any level of user.  Amazon has it for only $14.99 right now and I think that is quite the bargain.  Published by Que.

Disclaimers: This book was sent to read free of charge through some promo people and I was not obligated to say anything good or bad about it.  I actually read the darn thing and enjoyed it, even with how I use Twitter on a daily basis.  After meeting Tee Morris I saw some of the drive and determination he had and it made the remainder of the read even more enjoyable as you can place the author with the book.

I also run EverythingTwitter.com and shook him fiercely at BlogWorld when he failed to mention us, the largest review catalog of Twitter tools and add-ons.  Kidding, I never shook him.  He might have tripped, but I am unaware of who did it.

In reviewing GraphEdge for EverythingTwitter, I read a recent blog entry from their founder about a limit they hit on Twitter and the response received from Twitter when the subject was broached.

The crux of the issue was on the number of messages an account can send daily.  I went searching for this magic number and found it via Webtrepeneur in this article.  Only 1,000 total updates and 250 direct messages per day on any and all devices are allowed per account.

So the service that is being provided by GraphEdge wanted to send @ messages to customers instead of using their email addresses.  Since the service itself is based on Twitter, why not use Twitter.  They broke the limit and added another account to continue sending when the first reached it’s limit.  Twitter suspended that account.

The Issue

Now here comes the confusion.  Responses from Twitter said that @ messages were meant to be public only, not a conversation.  I think I am torn in this thought process.  A direct message is meant to be a private conversation.  The @ message is meant to be a public conversation.  Picture it much like you are in a room sitting in a circle.  I look across and talk to someone direct, but everyone can hear, follow and interact if they wish.  Then I go whisper in someones ear in the circle, closing the public facet, while still in the same community.

Both are modes of conversation in their own right and should be treated as such.  I understand the theoretical limit Twitter imposes to protect someone from just blasting tweets all day long.  You wouldn’t expect someone to do this in a room, you would ask them to stop and then quietly remove them.  Twitter could do this by slowing an account down and then silencing it for some period of time after the infraction grows.  Break the rule too many times, then you get suspended.  There is justified services that users may opt in to receive @ messages to get updates.

Some of you are thinking, what about the whitelist or firehose Twitter offers?  Those are consumption and application calls, not communication calls like @ and direct message types.  So the limits still stand for sending specific types of messages into the system.  I think there needs to be some balance between authorized and verified applications that require the user to sign in via oAuth and receive a source parameter (sent from “[MyApp]“ in your tweet).

The Opinion

Any type of action in sending a message on Twitter that occurs is considered communication.  Whether it is a public statement, an @ symbol or a direct message.  Limiting how much I talk (when it is not subject to spam) should not be controlled by automated systems.  A mute, ignore or other ability could be included to let my followers decide when I talk too much.

The idea is to have a giant room of your followers and let them come by an engage when they feel necessary no matter how often I stand on a box, talk to a person so it can be overheard or drag someone to a corner and whisper in their ear.

Caption courtesy Mashable posting

My opinion is that Twitter is too late to the game in the corporate space allowing third-party developers to overtake this area quite some time ago.  The web interface that Twitter offers by default, with a new contributor toolbar or not, is not condusive to performing long term work and management in the Twitter stream.  Missing is a wide array of tools needed to watch, forward, queue and otherwise control a corporate contributor toolset.

Twitter would have better luck purchasing one of the third-party developers like TweetFunnel, TweetRiver or Cotweet that have built a service, with subscribers, around this idea with more advanced tools and controls.

Twitter has slacked in making moves to purchase some of the add-on tools that have been created and with some remarkable success.   This is purely a business decision and move that should have occurred some time ago to strengthen Twitter as a corporate tool and provide immediate means to monetize.  I cannot see any company paying for this type of basic interface when other and better alternatives exist.

Disclosure: While I certainly don’t make any of these tools, the above links to the review site EverythingTwitter is also a site owned by me.  They are not paid postings or reviews and we often slam them.

Benefits of Twitter:

• building relationships
• networking and referrals – it is not about direct sales all the time, but using influence and influencers to promote your product
• brand awareness
• market research – using search.twitter.com and saved searches.
• integration

Downsides of Twitter:

• fear of unknown
• time
• ROI tracking

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My commentary – This was designed as a beginner session for businesses to enter into the Twitter foray and understand how to best begin using it.  It hit the point on that but then he used bullets for creating a Twitter account where some live demo information would have gone so far with the crowd.

As expected, attendees asked about what client to use and ROI or any kind of tracking.  This is incredibly hard unless you build links that have this type of service attached.

He was fast moving with good stories relating the slides to engage the audience, but a heard grumblings around me when he had a whole slide on his book for sale instead of listing it as a resource.

It seems that the PR people at these larger companies are still pondering how best to implement and which path to choose.  A decent flow for an hour, I am checking for the slides to be online.

Say I am looking for a list on the top social media people/companies to follow.  Where would you turn?  How would you begin your search?  I would start with a trusted social media person themselves to see what lists they created.  Then I would start following that list.  Done.  However, the person that created the list is not on the list since they cannot add themselves.  A break in the whole idea.  Here is one more example.  I follow the PR person that has been tweeting at company A for a long time with great content.  To allow themselves to show in a list for their company, they create a new account that will make a list to include everyone that tweets from the company, including themselves.  But how does everyone find that list from some unknown, or not yet followed, Twitter id?  Listorious?  No, a great sit but not the source the average user would find.

Need another example?  Wayne Sutton said it best.  He created a list for all the speakers at the SocialMediaBusinessForum using the SMBF Twitter account, that he also tweets under.  So we can follow the speakers but not the SMBF id itself on the list now.  Got it?

So the only true way to create a complete list, and have it found, it for the trusted authorities in the Twitterverse all create the lists that would never include themselves.  I created a list for the Atlanta Social Media Club. This means I got their main SMC account and all the officers in a single list and as an officer of the St Louis Club, I might be considered an authority.

UPDATE: I think I found a way!!  After creation of the list itself, you go back to your own profile page in Twitter.  From there the icon to say what lists that account will show in is active.  You can then click down and add yourself to any list!

How can you effectively build a list that everyone follows when the topic may contain yourself?

Scenario: If you build the top list ever, in any category, you can’t be on it!  You do not reap the benefit of making lists for a category unless you have yet another Twitter account.  Which in turn eliminates people finding you for creating the list.  A nasty circle they overlooked.