Twitter: Aging in Reverse?

There is an interesting read on mashable.com about increased Twitter usage by young people. We’ve been working with some institutions on social media solutions, and I’m wondering if this means we will see an increased use in this platform by colleges and universities that serve traditional-age students.

A highlight from the mashable article regarding trends in Twitter demographics: “In other words, unlike popular social sites before it – most notably Facebook and MySpace – Twitter is actually ‘aging in reverse,’ first gaining popularity with older users and only later teens and young adults.”

Social media and it’s growth, as we’ve seen, is difficult to predict. Some providers have focused on creating platforms (such as MySpace, Facebook, and Tumblr) where people can easily feed in a variety of links and media types, and Twitter lies on the other end of that spectrum. It’s almost the anti-Facebook; there are no ads, no goofy applications, no quizzes, and no rich media. You get 140 characters per post and that’s it, so each thought or link is usually fairly self-contained. If you want to link rich media you can still do it, but the Twitter service itself does not embed the media in your post. There are only two options for relating to other users: follow or don’t follow… Twitter has no groups, calendars, no fan pages, and no polls. Twitter makes its users communicate in a way that is arguably much simpler than the social media platforms that have have come before it.

In an age of information where “more is more” can a strategy that is focused on providing less actually work?

My theory is yes. I believe that Twitter and microblogging platforms like Twitter are going to continue to grow in popularity for a few reasons:

Sometimes, less is more. As we’ve seen, Facebook is increasingly filled with apps, ads, and robust media. In a best case scenario, robust media means a more immersive experience, and in a worst case scenario, it means you have to wade through a lot of irrelevant details to actually see what your friends are doing. The way Twitter distributes content is more like an RSS feed. So you can see what people are up to without having to do as much mental sifting.

Shorter, more informal communication seems to be the benchmark of social media. Twitter is kind of on the leading edge of this, because they give you hard cap on characters per post. The Twitter rule set forces you to be concise, even more so when providing a link. While it’s not quite as short as texting from a mobile phone, it’s the same kind of communication as texting. This is another reason I think we’ll see Twitter usage continue to increase with young people.

It’s flexible. The Twitter API is extremely easy to repurpose (i.e. RSS feeds), integrate with social networks that are trying to be a platform (like Facebook), or analyze (sites such as wefollow.com). Twitter isn’t trying to do everything, it’s just trying to do one thing really well. It’s less like a platform, and more like a good tool that can fit into just about any toolbox.

I’m fully aware that the future, and the fickle public may prove me wrong. For now, I’m going to keep an eye on the growth of Twitter and its changing demographics.

Posted by Doug Gapinski
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Twitter: 2009’s Second Life?

It seems so 2007, doesn’t it? But I well recall the frenzy and hype about Second Life in late 2006 and early 2007. I sat through a couple of really excruciating conference presentations with consultants insisting that the folks in the room—advancement officers, admissions officers, and others—had to have a presence in Second Life or students would shun them and alumni would stop giving.

I exaggerate. But only a little.

I confess that I was a skeptic about Second Life from the start. You can get a clue about my attitude toward it in the title of the first of several blog posts I wrote: Second Thoughts on Second Life. I got tired of having clients who had trouble managing their website asking me about how to build a campus in Second Life. To me, it’s a no-brainer. You don’t put on a shiny new roof if your foundation won’t support the extra weight and collapse the first time you get a heavy snowfall. [Here in Vermont, this is a real concern.]

I’m thinking about Second Life this morning because I read a thought-provoking blog post by Greg Verdino entitled Twitter is this year’s Second Life. Though I hadn’t made the connection with Second Life, I’ve been wondering about the longevity and utility of Twitter and Greg’s post has me thinking even harder.

Do you Twitter? And if you do, why? I’ve been pretty active on Twitter for about a month and a half [you can follow me @mstonerblog]. I’m enjoying the experience personally and I’m learning a lot, but I have to say that, for me, the jury is still out about how useful Twitter is or can be for mStoner’s clients.

I’ll write more about that in the future. Now, back to Twitter and Second Life.

Here’s another thought to add to the ten similarities that Greg identifies in this post. I’m seriously concerned about the apparent lack of a business model for Twitter, which—as far as I can tell, is one of the factors that sank Second Life. Despite all the desperate and fawning PR Twitter is getting, how will it fare in the econopocolypse?

I also worry about what the utility curve for Twitter will look like vis-a-vis the adoption curve in a year or so: will we find reasons for normal people to use Twitter? To Twitter fans, I’m sorry to say that most people have a limited appetite for trivia. Despite its allure, Twitter can get boring, fast, and it’s a huge time sink if you’re following people who tweet a lot. The jury’s still out.

But then again, one of the huge differences between Twitter and Second Life is that Twitter takes little time to learn to use. I confess that I just didn’t have the patience to spend much time in Second Life. It reminded me of what I heard from people who used the first generation of alumni community software: it was hard to learn, slow, buggy. And you spent a lot of effort … for not much return.

And I certainly agree with Verdino’s conclusion. It’s not about the tool, it’s about the strategy:

If your social media consultant is telling you that you absolutely must have a Twitter strategy, you need to have security escort them out of your building.  Immediately.  You don’t need a Twitter strategy.  You didn’t need a Second Life strategy.  In fact, there is no such thing as a Twitter or Second Life strategy.  Both of these things—along with the dozens of other emergent media options marketers can choose from—are at best tactics.  At worst, they’re just enabling technology platforms. They might have a place in your marketing strategy, but none of these things are the strategy in and of themselves.

And, for us, it’s about making sure that a tactic doesn’t cause our clients to lose focus on the really important tactics that yield bottom-line results.

Posted by Michael Stoner
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The YouTube Chronicles—Your Future is 16:9

Answer: 15 hours of content every minute.

Question: How much video goes up on YouTube, on average? That’s 60 minutes an hour, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. And this upload rate might actually increase.

But what does that number mean for you or your organization? If you have a say in your college or university’s video effort, isn’t YouTube just a social-networking site, far more appropriate for undergrads sharing their clips with friends (and possibly running the risk of bad-taste-by-association)?

That’s an outdated view. The future of online video standards will be driven by YouTube, and will stay that way for a while.

Why? For many really good and specific reasons, most centered on money. Leaving commerce aside for a while, from the tech side the main reason may be the most important: YouTube is a division of Google. And Google’s aim is to offer browser-based one-stop solutions for a variety of applications, from search (of course), to software (Google Docs, anyone?), to… high-quality, high-definition video hosting and distribution.

I had a chance to sit in on the “What’s Next?: The Digital Distribution Imperative” workshop at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, and YouTube’s director of content partnerships, Jordan Hoffner, brought the collected filmmakers to attention by formally announcing a few things that YouTube now does:

- YouTube offers full-HD capabilities, both for uploaded files and for clip playback. Users still have the option of viewing clips in normal quality, but HD likely will be the standard moving ahead. 

- They’ve switched over to a standard 16:9 player, even for older clips recorded in 4:3 format. As this change sinks in with web teams of all types, this has implications ranging from web design, to video-player specification, to actual video production.  Why plan on a 4:3 look and feel when the standard has changed?

- They’re going long-form. The old 10-minute limit has fallen by the wayside as YouTube recently soft-launched its feature-length channel, at http://www.youtube.com/movies.

I encourage you to visit, because this also means YouTube isn’t battling the film and television studios over copyrighted material anymore. It in fact has entered commercial partnerships with the BBC, CBS, Discovery, HBO, Lionsgate, MGM, PBS, Sony… and those were just the deals announced through January.

Did I mention the feature films available are free? It can a VERY mixed bag of quality, but a quick scan revealed “Koyaanisqatsi,” Richard Linklater’s “Slacker”, the 1967 “Casino Royale” directed by John Huston, “The Life And Times Of Allen Ginsberg”, and a personal favorite, “Drugstore Cowboy” from Gus Van Sant. 

All for free, and streaming to my browser just fine.

It’s this last point that is most significant for the rest of us.

The studios WANT you to watch these films, documentaries, TV episodes, and other available content, through YouTube. There are a lot of different ways they’ll make money from this… but to make money, all these parties are working to make sure you have the best, most consistent and most reliable viewing experience possible. YouTube is making sure its server ranches, its pipelines going in and coming out, and its featured “revenue-possible” content are of the highest quality possible.

That benefits everyone who watches content on YouTube, everyone who posts content to YouTube… and of course, everyone who uses YouTube as their media server of choice or default, such as colleges or universities that upload clips there, then bring them back into their own sites for display on their own web pages, viewable in as high quality as our largest tech and media companies can provide.

And that is a topic for further discussion.

Posted by James B. Hyatt
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How to Fix Search on Your Site

In the midst of creating great web user interfaces, it’s sometimes easy to overlook the second-most used user interface on your site: the search box.

Here’s list of 10 things you can do to make search work better:

1. Review your search logs. 
   What is it that people are searching for? Keep track of the top 50 search phrases on your site.
2. Check the format of your search results.
   Are you getting "clean" results? In plain English? Is it easy to read the title and description of each page in the listing? Or is there junk like navigation text in there? Nothing looks worse than the description of your page reading "About Us", "Admissions", "News and Events", and so on. Update the formatting of your results accordingly.
3. Make sure you have great content for your top search phrases.
   The best way to make sure you’re providing great search results is to have great content about the terms that visitors are searching for. Create at least one "perfect" page that a visitor who searched for a specific term would want to see.
4. Make use of "best bets" functionality.
   Many search engines have the ability to force certain content to the top of the search results by keyword. Create a best bet for each of your top search terms and point it at the perfect content you’ve created.
5. Review your metadata.
   Google and the major search engines may no longer pay attention to metadata, but you can use it to tune your internal search engine. Make sure all your pages have descriptive titles, meta keywords that make sense. and good meta descriptions.
6. Train your content authors.
   Put together a 2-pager on "how to make sure your content shows up properly on our search engine", and include it with the materials you give to all web authors on campus.
7. Check your indexes.
   Usually its been a while since you’ve checked what exactly your search engine is indexing. Have you brought up a new sub-site with a different URL? It may not be included in your index. Take a quick inventory of all your sites and make sure that the right ones are being spidered.
8. Axe the "advanced search."
   If there’s one thing that Google should have taught us by now its that simpler is better when it comes to search. You should have a single search box. No making the visitor pick the "collection" they want to search from. No and/or searches. And absolutely no option to "Search the Internet." Come on, if your visitor wants to search the Internet they will go to Google.com, not your site.
9. Tune your search tool.
   Check the settings on your search software. Configure duplicate checking to make sure you don’t show the same document more than once. Implement "no-index" tags to eliminate navigation and footers/copyrights from your search results.
10. Make it somebody’s job to maintain the quality of the search over time.
    Part of the problem is that at most institutions, it isn’t clear who is responsible for the quality of the search results. Someone in IT installs the search engine, sets it to spider the site, and nobody thinks about it again. Give someone the job of regularly checking those top searches (they will change over time, and you’ll see seasonal changes too), and making sure that you’re generating good results for those terms.
    

Once you’ve done all those, you might think about spending a couple of bucks on new search software. Which one should you buy? For what its worth, I would say 70% of our clients have selected Google Mini.

Posted by Rob Cima
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DIY College Website Redesign

(The kick-off of an ongoing series…)

With shrinking endowments, budget cuts and hiring freezes (or worse) fewer institutions are in a position to hire a hot-shot consulting or design firm to tackle all aspects of a far-reaching strategy / ia / design / content / html / cms implementation type of project.

Instead, colleges and universities (at least many of the folks we’re talking to lately) are looking for ways to do more with limited resources, which often means dividing work between internal teams and consultants like us. Partially to shave costs, partially to build internal capacity and partially just because a website redeployment is a lot of fun (really!). Sometimes we’ll do strategy and design and the college project team will handle writing and programming. Or the opposite. Or a completely different division of labor. The idea is to meet the client where they are: relying on their strengths, filling in gaps where additional expertise is needed.

But… in order for this divide / conquer approach to actually work (and to result in an actually great website) everybody needs an understanding of the nature of the work involved. So over the next few months we’re going to explain — in excruciating detail — the steps we run through in a “typical” website redesign (from initial planning to post-launch debrief meetings).

If you’re running your own project and this helps you keep it all straight, excellent. If you’re considering working with mStoner, it’s important to understand exactly how we work so you can determine what makes sense for you to do and what for us to do. No matter what, if you know up front all that’s involved in your big ol’ redesign then you can make some informed decisions about what to tackle on your own and when (if at all) to look for outside expertise.

The outline of our DIY Website Redesign guide looks like this:

• Groundwork
• Plan of Attack
• Design
• Content
• Technology
• Policies & Procedures
• Training Programs
• Sustainability

And, starting tomorrow we’re running through ‘Groundwork’ (probably an 8-part series).

Details to follow…

Posted by Patrick DiMichele
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Big Pipes, Small Screens and Great Stories

What kind of content works best on broadband platforms? What content is well-suited for the web and even the very-small screens of cells phones?  Any ideas? Anyone?

It’s a question a lot of smart people are grappling with, including programmers, artists, producers… and participants in the "Web Content – Where are the Big Ideas for Small Screens?" panel discussion Jan. 19 at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival. Coming out of the discussion, the consistent and oddly-reassuring answer is good content—the kind that deals with personal experiences and passions, told in a compelling way that also makes people want to take action. 

And why, exactly, would THAT tall order be considered a reassuring answer, when it immediately begs so many questions (especially in the context of a college or university’s web presence)?  The short answer is because it’s easier to tackle this question of good, compelling content than it is to resolve the questions centering on how best to record and deliver your content, and how to effectively stay on top of a rapidly changing tech arena notorious for trashing effective solutions in favor of the new. 

Panelists in the discussion, moderated by the American Film Institute’s Suzanne Stefanac, came from feature-length film and documentary backgrounds, but there was no common ground, no consensus in terms of how they produced their (far shorter) pieces.  Example: some panelists shoot using 16:9 ratios, others stay with 4:3, but no one disagreed with anyone else’s methods.  A few of the panelists shoot on professional-quality HD cameras and then "degrade" their content until it looks good when played back on a cell phone screen. Others do just the opposite: since the content will live on tiny screens, they use cellphones or palm-sized video cameras to record their footage, and edit as needed.  Combining these approaches worked for others, and there was a healthy use of still photos, manipulated to convey movement or to establish key points. 

What the panelists agreed on is that the technologies and methods for producing broadband content can vary wildly, change often, and will likely do so for quite a while—but what will never change is that good, compelling stories will find audiences.  That’s been true since firelight flickered across the first cave paintings, and it will continue to be true as we watch flickering images on the newest, shiniest, and smallest of screens.

Posted by James B. Hyatt
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Email: Still the “Killer App”

I’ve worked in the online sphere since 1995, and I really can’t remember a time when email wasn’t dubbed a ”killer app.”

A new study confirms that the moniker still applies. (The grain of salt: It was conducted on behalf of a company that specializes in email.)

A few of the study’s findings that caught my eye:

• 67 percent of respondents prefer email as a communications channel over other online vehicles. (Take that, Web 2.0!)
• Monthly emails and content and frequency options positively impacted a company’s reputation. (Here’s an earlier post on this topic.)
• Email will be as central to online commerce and communications in the future as it is today.
• More than 88 percent of respondents said they would like organizations to give them more choices over the content and frequency of the emails they receive, including options on advertisements, special offers, articles, newsletters, white papers and other specific content options.

The last bulleted point is an important one. That’s true not only because of the significant response, but also because creating a system that accurately reflects the many kinds of emails sent by a college or university is a big job. I know, because I’ve been there.

In my previous life as a web director at a large public university, I was part of a group tasked with creating efficient methods for alumni and friends to manage their email preferences. Using email addresses pulled from the institutional database, we sent mass emails to hundreds of groups—folks who graduated from specific academic programs; people who attended arts or athletic events; participants in outreach activities. All these and countless fundraising appeals, several dozen e-newsletters, plus the occasional survey.

The email calendar often was jam-packed in December, when there’d also be numerous holiday greetings; lots of year-end e-solicitations; and football bowl tours and game information … at least in winning years. One December, we had a mass email scheduled every work day for three weeks straight. Most of those were sent to small groups; even so, there was plenty of audience cross over.

Plus we knew that some units maintained their own email lists and sent mass emails that we didn’t know about until they occasionally landed in our in-boxes.

The institution’s policy was that each email offered the option of unsubscribing from that specific type group (e.g., e-solicitations from the College of Engineering). We established dozens and dozens of email drop codes in the institutional database, so users could make discrete decisions about the type of emails they wanted to receive.

Managing those codes became a challenge. We needed enough to accurately reflect the audience segments. But we didn’t want them to proliferate so much as to become unwieldy. On the web page where users could select their email preferences, we listed all the popular options, but omitted some of the more esoteric groups. The system worked, but it didn’t offer the user the level of control requested by 88 percent of study participants.

It takes a savvy and complex system to accurately reflect the nuances and diverse audience segments of a large, multi-faceted organization.

Nine out of 10 in this study wanted more control over the kinds of emails they receive. That statistic clearly confirms that a regular and systematic review of the email preferences web interface available to alumni and friends is time well spent.

Posted by Hilery Livengood
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Americans Really Like Online Video

Guess whose sites gets the most traffic? You’d be right if you guessed Google, which draws a whopping 38 percent of video viewers, who watched an average of 51 videos each; Fox Interactive Media sites rank second, with 4.2 percent. (Google owns YouTube, which draws the bulk of the traffic to the Google sites—98 percent; Fox Media owns MySpace and FOXSports.com, among other properties.)

Other notable findings:

73.7 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video.
84.8 million viewers watched 4.3 billion videos on YouTube.com (50.4 videos per viewer).
47.7 million viewers watched 400 million videos on MySpace.com (8.4 videos per viewer).
The average online video duration was 2.8 minutes.
The average online video viewer watched 235 minutes of video.

Source: comScore Press Release

Posted by Michael Stoner
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Sometimes More is Less … and More

I love my Kindle!
After a 45-day wait (they can’t seem to make them fast enough), it finally arrived five days ago. A trapezoidal piece of plastic roughly the width and height of a pencil. It’s got a screen that mimics actual paper and ink, but with the added ability to boost the font size to suit my eyes. Less than 11 ounces, a long battery life, over 100,000 titles, free book samples (you can download the first chapter of any book you want without charge), and all downloads priced at $9.99 or cheaper.

In less than 10 minutes, I’d set up my newest toy and purchased and downloaded Jim Butcher’s first Dresden Files novel, Michael Pollan’s ”In Defense of Food,” five first chapters from Christopher Moore’s growing oeuvre of disturbingly hysterical work, and snippets of John Irving’s and Michael Chabon’s latest books.

I was in heaven. Kindling while I prepped dinner. In the cab while heading to Chicago’s annual auto show. Friday night, curled up on the couch with a warm fire going. In five-minute segments when it wasn’t my turn to make the next martini. For someone like me who loves to read several books concurrently, travels frequently, and doesn’t get many chunks of unspoken-for time, this little gadget was the perfect companion—a way to finally whittle away at a long list of books I’ve been waiting to enjoy. And yet …

… I hate my Kindle!
Actually, hate’s a really strong word. Permit me to explain the irony of the timing.

My kindle came five days before our bookcases arrived. Four beautiful oak cases providing 50 feet of shelving to house the books we’d shoved into a closet when we moved into our home four years ago. Finally, the unpacking. I stumbled across my copy of Hemingway’s “The Garden of Eden.” I opened it up and saw my signature (my handwriting’s gotten better since) and the date I purchased the book—1990, 18 years ago now! I scanned the first paragraph and realized that at the time I read this book, I couldn’t even pronounce the name of the small French town in which Catherine and David were spending their honeymoon. Six years ago, I’d been there. I thought of three people instantly who would enjoy this book, and I slipped it into my briefcase for the first on that list.

We spent the afternoon sorting and shelving … our poetry collection, our travel books, installments from the Library of America, fiction, history, art, atlases, dictionaries, and Harry Potter. I found books sent from friends with notes saying “this made me think of you.” I remembered books that I’d loaned out and had yet to (and probably never would) get back.

And I realized the compromise inherent in the technology. The chances of my wandering back through my digital library are slim, and the opportunity to pass any given book on, nil. And in these ways, the convenience and portability and efficiency of my new plastic friend prove the adage “sometimes, more is less.” But still …

… I love my Kindle. Did I mention the long battery life and free samples?

Posted by Voltaire Santos Miran
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Rules for User-Generated Advertising

Anyone who’s read some of my commentary can imagine that I might have some issues with the “user” part. But, semantics aside, user-generated advertising inviting people who interact with your brand to create ads or contribute their insights or observations to a blog or other public space. For MasterCard, this meant the Priceless campaign, in which real people were invited to contribute content (images, comments) about real experiences that were “priceless” to them—and, of course, facilitated by MasterCard.

Why would anyone do this, particularly companies like MasterCard that are giving up control of their message in the process. Note that there’s a disclaimer on the Priceless website that states:

The opinions, activities, and businesses featured in Priceless Picks are not necessarily endorsed by MasterCard, or third parties that may be
leveraged within the content. Use of this information or content is at your sole discretion and risk. Priceless Picks may be moderated and will not
be posted until approved by the author/submitter.

Well, for one thing, people place a high value on authenticity these days. And they value the opinions of their peers. This week, there was some interesting reporting on sites that facilitate “group shopping”—which is sort of an extended version of what you can do on Netflix, where a recommendations engine looks at the movies you rank and how you like them and then compares your choices with those of other viewers, suggested movies that they liked but that you haven’t seen yet. Or the reviews on Amazon.com or eBags or any one of dozens of other websites.

User-generated content is much more authentic that the work done by marketing copywriters. Often cheesy, it’s also refreshing because it is so unpolished.

Colleges and universities are already taking significant advantage of user-generated content—most often in student recruitment, where blogs by current students offer an insider’s (often) unvarnished view of what life is really like on campus. Though I know it’s a scary step for admissions offices, I’m all for unmoderated, unedited blogs. Remember that the buzzword is authenticity. The best example I know of is Ball State’s multiple award-winning blogs.

The Ball State bloggers started off with text and still images, but are increasingly using video. Here’s another, often unheralded, example of user-generated content, this time in video: Duke’s Froshlife videos, which is what you get when you turn students loose with video cameras and iMovie and let them share their experiences as freshmen. What’s more impressive is that Duke students have been doing this since 2003 and it’s turned into a real film festival (or, that would be an iMovie festival to be completely accurate).

Entering the area of user-generated advertising is not for the faint of heart. Here’s a top ten list of principles for consumer-generated ad campaigns. There are all important, but my favorite is “Keep it authentic.”

Posted by Michael Stoner
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