When you build a new house, most people want their house to be immune to the perils of nature and society, and such is also the case with Twitter. The average person, I imagine, wants a sustainable following who values them, and who, in turn, they value.

I see no value in new followers who have no followers themselves, are following thousands of people, and have very few tweets to share. What does this say about a person/organization? This says “I want results but don’t know how to achieve them”.  They are building mobile homes. No foundation, no worthwhile content, and certainly no class.

If you can’t afford to take the time to build a solid home, don’t build one at all.

With Facebook making many changes to the way that it manages user data and allows data to be used outside of the Facebook network, it is only natural, and expected that users would have concerns about how their identity, information and privacy was being treated. With change comes resistance, it has oft been said.  I’d like to present my side of the argument for more openess on the internet.

I would like to propose that, over time and with the advent of technology, the average person’s privacy has severely diminished.  I supposed that this has done two very important things to the world. 

1. It has helped fuel an information revolution.  The internet is fueled by information, and all information is, at various levels, of some private nature.  Whether that is information about objects, people, concepts, etc, the information comes from someone and ultimately holds claim to some level of privacy.  In greater and greater degrees, people have let go of some, and in some cases, all of that privacy for the benefit of mankind. 
2. It has created an environment where people should know and understand that nothing that they publish can be private.  There are ways to be private. Internet publishing services are not it.

It is my general feeling that Facebook is following a great path.  I truly feel that openess of information will lead to far greater developments and that open communication and sharing is the key to revolution.  That being said, I strongly believe that users are under-educated as to their responsibilities when it comes to their own privacy. 

Some have proposed an “opt-in” model, however, in so many situations, opt-in fails to generate any results. Take for example the graph below.

For organ donation opt-in, the results are tremendously low. But for opt-out, the results are significantly higher.  Most people follow the status quo.  If this concept is applied to privacy, information openness would never go anywhere if it were not for companies like Facebook pushing the boundaries.

I congratulate Facebook on their forward thinking.  Ensuring that they are leading the trend when it comes to openness of information ensures that they remain the innovative company that they have always been, leading the world to a new information era.

I proceeded to ask the hot dog vendor why his hot dogs were $4,50 when I could buy one across the street for less money, to which he replied “Mine are better.”  Great! I’d be willing to pay a premium price for a premium product.  But I wanted to ensure that I was getting the best value for my money. I asked him why his hot dogs were better, to which he replied “They just are. You can go across the street if you don’t believe me.”  Now, having purchased a hot dog in from this vendor in the past, I knew that his hot dogs were no different than the hot dogs across the street because I’d made the mistake of purchasing a hot dog from him before without asking his price, assuming that he was competitive.

True story. This actually just happened to me, and I thought of a very very good point about how to operate a business.

You can make your customers pay more.

Now, you can go about this in a few different ways.  You can be ignorant to your competitive market and charge what you think is appropriate and think your product is the best. This will work once, it might work twice, and you will make more money on those sales. But as soon as your customer figures out that they can get a comparable product at a cheaper price, they’ll leave you for the competition.

You can ascribe a distinct benefit to your product. Had my first hot dog vendor said “My hot dogs are made locally” or “My hot dogs are organic” or even “My hot dogs have premium condiments”, I would have bought the more expensive product rather than crossing the street.

You can build a relationship with your clients and have them buy into your brand proposition. As soon as I crossed the street, the cheaper hot dog vendor captivated me with the story of her hot dog stand. She’s been there for over 20 years. She’s never raised her price. She even mentioned that she had never seen me and asked if I was new to the neighbourhood. I almost want to go back and buy more hot dogs just to chat her up.

If all else fails, and you just want a quick buck, you can just charge more and hope that your customers don’t figure out that they’ve been duped or you can be better and create longer, sustainable profits.

It looks like Twitter may be allowing multi-user support on corporate accounts as evidenced by Intuit‘s TurboTax account.

Note that under the tweet, it states “1 hour via web by TTaxChels“, one of their employees.  Prior to this point they’ve been using CoTweet and other methods but it would appear that individuals are now able to post under their own name.

New Feature?

These sorts of features could help Twitter move towards a Business friendly business model by adding such extra features for a fee. Other things that would be useful in the realm of business and could be coming soon:

• Long term archiving
• Tweet audit trail
• Assignment of tweets to specific users
• Tweet importance ratings
• Automatic searches and trending on company selected topics

Twitter could create a very effective and desirable revenue stream with these types of features.

Update (10:17pm EST February 24th)

It would seem that while Intuit’s Chelsea can neither confirm nor deny that Twitter has incorporated new features, Twitter is definitely working with large brands to ensure that their corporate Twitter experience is improved.

Presented for our consumption is the following set of statistics.

As per these new statistics on the use of Twitter in the UK released by Nielsen, it appears as thought 7% of all UK twitter users are creating 70% of the content, which Lee equates to a “circle jerk”.  I definitely agree that this statistic is not surprising and that if these 7% of Twitter users were to leave Twitter tomorrow, the service would disintegrate.

That being said, I firmly believe that Twitter is like the government.  For instance, only 3-7% of the population is employed by the government, depending on which statistics you believe, however, they are the decision makers. While they’re influenced by the greater population, they hold the keys to the creation of government content.

I feel like Twitter is much the same, except in a self-governed sort of way. Those who have stepped up to create the content have the opportunity to have their content consumed by everyone else and influence everyone else’s content.  So while the tool may be ephemeral, the impact of the tool is widespread.

We must remember that the medium of many-to-many media is still new in terms of it’s impact on communication evolution, and that Twitter but a building block to the overall evolution.  The influencers may move on but the impact will be long lasting to everyone, not just those involved.

I say architects of the future rather than circle jerk.

The friction that can be created when creating change in your environment can range from mild encounters with those who would rather continue on the path of least resistance to serious emotional breakdowns with those involved.

But positive change in your environment is likely critical to your continued success both as a person and for the company you work for. Whether you need to fix something, want to create a competitive advantage, or just need to remain current, the stress that you create, both on yourself and with your colleagues is necessary. That being said, it doesn’t have to be so hard.

Here are 5 tips that have helped me achieve change in my environment:

Provide a Purpose with Passion

When Martin Luther King Jr. stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and addressed hundreds of thousands of people, he didn’t say “I have a great plan.”  The strongest and most successful leaders of change have empowered people to see their vision, the outcome of their proposed change, and the benefits that stem from it. By providing purpose, people will buy into the change because of the outcome.

Pick your advocates

Just as two heads are better than one, two advocates are better than none. Find those who support your message of change and enable them to spread that message.  The effect can be viral. I’ve had great ideas take off at such a pace that those advocates were crucial in ensuring that the vision of change was managed and didn’t result in disaster. If you can’t find advocates, and no one wants to support your change, see the next point!

Understand the objections

Most of the time, people’s objections are founded in ignorance in the truest sense of the word. People just don’t know what they don’t know. It’s not their fault. Your opportunity is to enlighten them and provide them with the information that is driving your opinion.  I have even, at times, recognized that objections to change that I was implementing were founded in knowledge that I wasn’t equipped with, changing my perspective. Recognizing that objections can be overcome through open dialogue, trust and understanding is critical to the success of change.

Pick a time for change

While I completely disagree with the adage “Don’t fix it if it’s not broken.”, I think it really is important to point out that timing is everything. You can have the most desirable change in the world but if no one supports it, no one is ready for it, and you can’t find an advocate, then it just won’t happen.  No matter how hard you might try, you may not be the catalyst to change. But just because change isn’t now, doesn’t mean it won’t happen. Be ready when the time is right.

Start Early

When I was young, my parents and I would go to my aunt and uncle’s house for dinner on a weekly basis.  We would spend 4 hours there and mom would say “We’re leaving.” and I would argue that I hadn’t had enough time to play. My parents very quickly adapted to this. They would give me a departure time when we arrived, tell me an hour before we left that we were leaving in an hour, and then 30 minutes before, and 15, until it came time to leave and I had no objections. I had no objections because I’d been advised of the change early in the process and was kept aware of the change throughout.  The process is much of the same in a business environment. Start early, give people nuggets of your change in very small increments, keep them along for the ride.  80 small incremental changes will go over much better than 1 big change.

Good luck implementing your future changes!

Any other suggestions of things you’ve found to be helpful in supporting change within your environment?

The new flavour, called “Connect”, was developed on Facebook through a contest, endorsed by Canadian celebrity Steve Nash.

I was very excited when Vitamin Water launched a few years ago as I’m a bit of an indie-beverage aficionado.  I love anything that is not made by the big beverage conglomerates. Think craft-brewed root beers and old fashioned Cream Sodas.  Then I disappointingly found out that The Center for Responsible Hydration is, in actual fact, owned by Coca-Cola.  After overcoming my absolute underwhelmedness, and drinking a delicious bottle of Fifty Cent’s namesake beverage “Fifty”, I once again became a huge fan.

Launching in March 2010, the new Connect flavour will be Black Cherry-Lime.  You can read about it further here.

The production is running at the Danforth Music Hall through until January 2nd as per the website and tickets are available at the Danforth Music hall’s box office.

I’m usually a big fan of musicals, and have been to see many of the big name musicals that have made their way through Toronto’s large theatres, but this is one of the first productions I’ve seen that wasn’t brought to Toronto with large amounts of advertising and fanfare.  That being said, according to the website, Toxic Avenger has won some serious awards, including “Best New Musical” from the Outer Critics Circle, and it certainly lives up to it’s accolades.

Toxic avenger tells the story of Melvin Ferd the third who wants to clean up Tromaville New Jersey, which is being overrun by toxic pollution from New York. Melvin is stuffed into a bin of toxic waste by some miscreants and he turns into a mutant, but continues to fight the corruption that has led to the pollution, making him New Jersey’s first super-hero.

The cast was seriously talented, with only 5 actors playing well over a dozen characters, and costume changes occur at a speed that I’m surprised didn’t cause a sonic boom.  The music that accompanies the musical is modern and engaging while exploring a multitude of musical styles, from salsa and tango to some good old toxic-waste fighting rock and roll.  A few people that I spoke to even mentioned that they had bought the soundtrack.

If you have an opportunity prior to January 2nd, I would strongly recommend going to see The Toxic Avenger musical, and with rush tickets selling for 15$, you can’t really go wrong! Although now that Avenger is building a reputation here in Toronto, you may want to secure some seats before hand, and any seat is worthwhile for the quality of the production that you’ll experience.
Thanks again to Cheap Date Ideas for the tickets and props to DanCap productions for bringing The Toxic Avenger to Toronto.

I received an invite from a friend of mine and that invite asked that I join their community and I would receive one of these supposedly magnificent little devices.  Now, at the time, they had a bit of buzz around them, but I was skeptical.  I’d had 3 different Apple iPod devices, the 20GB iPod Click Wheel, the 30GB iPod 5th Gen, and finally, an 80GB iPod Classic which was unfortunately stolen from a bar in downtown Toronto.

After sharing information on all of my social networks, presumably to determine my status as an likely influencer to their brand, I was shipped the 8GB Zune with earbuds and a recommendation kit of sorts so that I could pass on the good brand vibes that the Zune would soon provide me with.

First step: Install the Zune software from their site.

First problem. The software was not available for my Mac. I was convinved that it would come at some point. But as a temporary measure, because I wanted to try out this possible iPod killer, I downloaded the software onto my company laptop, something which is strictly forbidden by our IT department. Only to load music. It was then promptly removed.  The software itself was terribly unintuitive but it did get the music onto the Zune after a certain amount of questioning just how to do that.

Now, part of my intuition suggests that I shouldn’t constantly compare the Zune to the fabled iPod, but in reality, the iPod is the giant in this market, and large companies like Microsoft don’t usually compete to be second best.

So what has my usage looked like in the past year? Well, for the first week that I owned the Zune, I listened to the FM radio. I wanted to try out the social component of the Zune, but without someone else I know having a Zune this seemed kind of useless. That’s it.

The Zune has been in a box for the past year. I discovered, or rather remembered that I could listen to all of these radio stations online, or I could stream music from services like Grooveshark.  When is a radio useful anyways? When I’m in my car? Nope, car does that. Certainly not when I’m at my desk. Maybe while I’m commuting? No, I’d rather listen to music on my iPod which was more user friendly from all perspectives.

The only possible use that I can think of for the FM tuner on my Zune: If we’re attacked by Zombies and I need to listen to the radio for updates, then my Zune would come in handy. So, I will keep my Zune in waiting for the Zombie apocalypse. In the meantime, I’m still using the headphones that came with it. But they’re not as good as the Apple ear buds.

Sorry Microsoft, the key to competing with the iPod is to make a better product.

Since the addition of the “Lists” feature, according to alexa.com, both time spent on site as well as pageviews per visit have increased.  Both these stats seemed to be in a slight decline over the prior month. While there was a spike, it will take time to see if this spike is sustained.

Mashable reported yesterday that Twitter has now added a ReTweet function.

While these features have slightly increased my Twitter.com usage, these alone won’t be enough to keep me from my Twitter clients. And I use a lot of them. For different reasons, on different platforms.

One reason that is likely for Twitter to be implementing many of these features to their site is to bring users back, and I would suspect it is in hopes of soon monetizing the service. I think Twitter would have a difficult time monetizing if users are using clients rather than the site itself. It might also have a harder time securing investors if its traffic numbers are trending negatively, which seems to have been happening since the massive traffic spikes it saw in February and March.

The problem that I see with what Twitter is doing is that it is in fact not innovating at all, but merely copying the competition, implementing features that have long been the reason that people have moved to clients like Tweetdeck, Seesmic Desktop, Tweetie, etc.

In the short term, Twitter may lure some users back to their homepage with these “new” features, but in the long run, I believe the only way that they can build sustainable user engagement on the site is to really innovate. Create new features that the community has not yet come up with without diluting the simplicity of Twitter.

Have Twitter’s new features brought you back to the site more often?