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Happy Twitter Addict

January 5, 2012 2 comments

Twitter Profile

This is part 1 of the Products I Can’t Live Without series.

For about the last six months I’ve been wanting to clean out my Twitter feed and reorganize my lists. I had been following back everyone that follows me, and it had just become too hard to find good content regularly. Twitter is my main source for news and content (I have two computer screens set up at the office – one with TweetDeck up all the time, and the other I use for the rest of my work). And, when I’m not at my desk I’m checking Twitter about every hour during the week. So, not having a steady stream of quality content was driving me a bit crazy.

Over the holidays, I finally had a chance to revamp my Twitter. And, I set up new rules on whom I’ll follow.

I used two standards to set up these rules. The first, Tony Hsieh‘s rules on what to post on Twitter. He uses the anagram  ”ICEE” to remember it.

  • Inspire
  • Communicate
  • Educate
  • Entertain

I generally used these rules already for what I post on Twitter, but now I’m using them as a benchmark for whom I follow too. I want people and brands to inspire me, communicate with me, educate and entertain me.

Similarly, I used the AOL’s definition of valuable original content (which I wrote about here and here) as a benchmark for whom to follow. Per AOL,

Unique Content + Quality (trusted, fresh, relevant, authentic) Content = Valued Original Content.

With curation running rampant on the web (note, I don’t necessarily think that’s a bad thing), I come across many people sharing the same content. I want a steady stream of new (or, unique) content. So, I’m going to start following more people that either write original content and/or are excellent curators of content. In both cases that content has to be highly relevant to my intrinsic interests and their manifestations (social media, technology, entrepreneurship), and the person tweeting the content must be a trusted/authentic source (e.g. a successful VC or entrepreneur, an innovative marketer, a trusted journalist or blogger etc.)

The New Rules

So, here are the new rules for whom I follow:

  1. If someone I know or have met follows me, I’ll follow back (friends, colleagues, industry professionals, etc). These are people with whom I’m going to want to communicate
  2. I also will follow anyone that I deem will provide me with valuable original content that inspires, educates or entertains me (again, these individuals have to be sharing content that is highly relevant to me and have authenticity in the subject of the content they’re sharing)
  3. I will follow/follow back anyone that makes an intelligent remark about or reply to one of my tweets. A simple retweet is not enough, and the individual doesn’t necessarily have to agree with my tweet. S/he just needs to add value to the conversation – to be a valued community member, as I write about here
  4. I follow products that I regularly use, and that I’ll want/need updates on

And, that’s it. Four simple rules.

Lists

To help me organize my stream and community, I set up the following lists

  • big-fuelers - Big Fuel is a social media agency I used to work for. This is a list of people I worked with there, and helps me keep up with them
  • wcg-ers - WCG is the marketing and communications agency I currently work for. Again, this list helps me keep up with my colleagues
  • su - Syracuse University is my alma mater, and we have a very tight Twitter community. This is a list of anyone I’m connected to from SU.
  • startups - is a list of VCs, entrepreneurs and people I know that work at startups
  • marketing - is a list of everyone I know and follow in marketing (note: this list used to be called social media marketing, but really social media is ubiquitous across marketing channels. So, now the list is just called “marketing”
  • clients-past-present - is a list of brands I currently work with, or have in the past. It partially serves as a disclosure should I tweet anything about them, but also helps me keep track their activities
  • products - is a list of products I use regularly and want/need updates on
  • testing - is a list of individuals I’ve decided to follow/follow back, but want to test out their content before I put them in my main “filter” feed
  • filter - is my main feed. It’s the only list/feed that I refer to regularly. This is a list of everyone that has passed the follow test and are providing the best content (e.g. I don’t need the brands in the “products” list in my feed all the time; I just want to reference them every once in a while. So, they’re not included in the “filter” list)
  • nyc
  • la
  • san-francisco
  • austin
  • seattle
  • boston
  • boulder-co

The location lists are based on cities where I have lived, travel to and/or want to travel to. I’m hoping these lists will help me figure out people that I can connect with when I’m in those cities. Some I’ve met in person, and some I’ve only met through social media. Either way, connecting with them in person when I’m in town will help deepen those relationships.

The Result

Since revamping my Twitter stream, I unfollowed about 500 people, so now I’m only following 361 people. I actually went through and looked at every individual’s profile and tweets before deciding whether or not to continue to follow them, and how to list them.

My “filter” list/stream is now on fire. I have a constant stream of quality content – more than I can keep up with really (but, that’s a high class problem and a much better situation than the one I was in before). Also, I’m testing a product called Undrip - a San Francisco-based startup that is attempting to help individuals filter through all the noise in their streams and identify the best content in real-time, or from the last 24 hours or 7 days. I’m hoping this product will increase my efficiency in consuming and curating quality content for my community.

I’ve also lost about 60 or 70 followers. But, considering I un-followed about 500 individuals, that’s not so bad. Plus, it’s about the quality of the community, not the quantity of it. I preach that to clients all the time, and it’s the truth. I’d rather have less, but more engaged individuals following me than more, but less engaged individuals.

In fact, I have 590 Twitter followers, 441 Facebook friends and 391 LinkedIn connections (1,422 total across the three networks on which I’m most active; many of those people are duplicative – i.e. I’m connected with them on more than one of the networks). Klout measures my True Reach (the number of people I influence, both within my immediate network and across their extended networks) at 826 people. That means I’m influencing/engaging with 58%+ of my community at any given time. I’d say that’s pretty good!

My True Reach on Klout

I also noticed that, since revamping my Twitter stream, my Network Impact (which measures the influence of my network) increased about 10 points to a score of 33. So, not only am I now engaging with a higher percentage of my network, but that network is more influential on average!

My Network Impact on Klout

I was already addicted to Twitter. It’s my first source for news and information that I care about, and a way for me to connect with people and share ideas. But now, after the revamp, I’m a happy addict. More than ever, Twitter is a product that I can’t live without (or at least don’t want to). Thumbs up!

Thumbs Up

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A Case for Social TV

November 30, 2011 3 comments

Hollywood

Digital is the New Broadcast

When I left Hollywood and moved to NY Summer 2010, I started thinking about how I could start my own company, using digital media to disrupt the Hollywood system. I had just listened to Ted Turner’s autobiography, Call Me Ted, and was inspired by his innovation in the industry. I became convinced that digital to my generation was the broadcast to his generation and nothing significant had been done to tackle premium video entertainment (TV and movies) in a meaningful way.

Distribution Wields the Power

Having worked in the movie business, I had a first hand understanding that distributors (or aggregators) hold all the power and make most (if not all) of the money vs. the content producers. If you look at any of the media conglomerates’ financials, you’ll find that their distribution/syndication/aggregation businesses (i.e. studios’ theatrical distribution networks for movies, TV networks, MSOs) are the real moneymakers. This notion is validated by the book The Curse of the Mogul: What’s Wrong with the World’s Leading Media Companies.

While YouTube, Dailymotion, Vimeo and others had democratized the distribution of video content, those sites were populated by short, user-generated content. While fun to watch, this doesn’t satisfy those looking to fill the average of 3 hours of TV that people watch per day.

Furthermore, in the premium streaming business, companies like Netflix and Hulu don’t have live, or even up-to-date, content. Their streaming libraries are populated with older content that has been cleared for broader syndication. Again, while the content is valuable to satisfy short cravings for premium entertainment, they don’t satisfy the need for new, fresh, premium entertainment on a regular basis. The average person is filling 2 hours and 31 minutes of their day with TV programming.

The Rise of Mobile and Broadband

I also saw mobile entertainment beginning to mature. Gaming is the number one activity on mobile devices. The first iPad had just been released. And, i saw video eventually becoming the primary source of entertainment on those devices.

With broadband, WiFi and mobile data network speeds accelerating to the point that, not just streaming video, but live-streaming video, in good quality and without much buffering was possible, I felt even more strongly that premium video entertainment needs could be fulfilled on mobile devices.

How great would it be to have the ability to watch live, premium content on your mobile devices – anytime, anywhere?

TV Everywhere and the Digital Powerhouses

About this time I started hearing about TV Everywhere. MSOs and TV networks started releasing mobile apps where you could view their content.

Also, Google, Amazon and Apple started trying to enter the space with new products.

I figured with all these powerhouses, they were bound to get it right. So, I put the idea aside and moved on to my new job at Big Fuel – building a social content distribution network for the agency and its brand clients. Similar to how Ted Turner felt when he first conceived of a 24 hour news network: he just figured one of the other networks (ABC, CBS or NBC) had to be working on something like this. Ten years later he woke up and there was still no 24 hour news network. So, he founded CNN. Well, just over a year later, the media companies, Google, Amazon, Apple, Netflix… they still haven’t figured it out.

Sometimes the Best Way to Disrupt Is By Not Being (Too) Disruptive

I would venture to say that iTunes wasn’t that disruptive to the music industry. What was disruptive was Napster and other peer to peer music sharing sites. Then, Steve Jobs came in and offered record labels a lifeline: make premium recorded music (not the ripped, copied or live-recorded music that you found on Napster) available in the format that audiences now want it (single songs vs. whole albums), make it extremely easy for them to find and consume that content, and they’ll pay for it. What Steve Jobs did wasn’t necessarily disrupting the big music business, but, rather, saving it.

Similarly, movie studios, TV networks and MSOs are scared to death of losing control of their content, and with it, the advertising dollars that make them multi-million/multi-billion dollar companies. They’re the force behind the Protect IP Act (#stopPIPA) in the Senate and the Stop Online Piracy Act (#SOPA) (aka E-Parasite Act) in Congress. If you’re not familiar with these legislations, please see this video below.

PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

So, how do you play to the Hollywood moguls AND satisfy audience cravings for premium content, live, anytime, anywhere?

Subscription-based Social TV

Create a MSO that is socially integrated and socially distributed, meaning

  1. You can check into shows with friends and interact: My wife and her sister used to call each other on Monday nights and watch The Bachelor or The Bachelorette together. They loved engaging with the show, discussing the men and women, the dates and who might win. I can’t watch sports anymore without Twitter – especially Syracuse basketball. I’m constantly checking my feed on my iPhone or iPad (or both!) to see what other fans are saying.
    • The lesson here: valuable content + accessible platforms = scalable communities.
    • What does this mean for the moguls? More engaged audiences, around the most valuable content and the analytics to prove it. Traditional media relies on Nielsen data which many consider to be limited. But, online, MSOs could have access to an ocean of demographic and psychographic data about their audiences. This means higher rates for CPMs, sponsorships and product placement.
  1. You can share, rate and comment on shows/episodes: Say you’re on the NJ Transit commuting from NYC, or at the airport waiting for a flight, or visiting family or a friend that doesn’t have premium cable. How would you like to check your Facebook or Twitter stream and see that a friend has liked/shared an episode of your favorite show – or even a show that you’re not familiar with? You click on that show in your stream and are able to watch the show on Facebook or Twitter – never leaving the platform? And, because you trust that person’s taste, the show is relevant to you and you enjoy it? In fact, you enjoy it so much, that now you share, rate and/or comment on it? Suddenly, you have access to curated, relevant, premium content in your social stream.
    • Take that a step further. Say, instead of being restricted to viewing premium content at home on your TV (because that’s the device your MSO connects to) or on an app on your desktop/laptop/mobile device, you can log into your MSO on anyone’s Internet-connected device. And, when you log in, you have all the premium content channels your MSO bundle normally would have, plus a list (think DVR playlist) populated with the most shared, highly rated and reviewed content from your social and interest graphs (Facebook and Twitter, respectively). Channel surfing becomes curated content surfing. And, you can log into your parents computer and get access to all this content as if you were at home on your couch.
    • The lesson here: According to AOL’s study, “CONTENT: What Drives Consumption?”, Unique Content + Quality (trusted, fresh, relevant, authentic) Content = Valued Original Content. Or, as I like to say, content without social context is worthless :)
    • What does this mean for the moguls? Viral effect of their content to the most relevant/engaged audiences (i.e. more views and more engagement), again leading to higher rates for CPMs, sponsorships and product placement. In addition to more accurate data, producers will have direct feedback from audiences – what did they like/dislike about an episode? what do they think about specific characters and story-lines? Who should live or die or breakup or get married? Producers will have a new ability to engage with, and satisfy, its audiences.

If this can be accomplished while maintaining the security of the content, so that it can’t be ripped/pirated easily (and, I think it can), then the advertising model can stay relatively the same as it exists now. Not too disruptive to Hollywood, or out of their realm of understanding (giving them the benefit of the doubt here).

The Side Effects

  • The rich will get richer and the poor will fail: More accurate data on premium content will cause hit networks with hit movies and TV shows to be able to charge even more of a premium on advertising, while the niche networks with shows that reach smaller audiences and that rely on the MSOs forcing consumers to pay for their channels in their bundles, will cease to exist.
  • Pilots might get longer lifelines: Every season, networks produce and release new TV series. If pilots don’t perform well within the first few weeks of release, they’re terminated. The slots are filled with existing content (often in syndication) or by new pilots. But, with social integration, pilots will have the ability to create strong, engaged communities early on, improving their chances of succeeding (i.e. staying on air).
  • A middle class will rise: These are the Revision3, the Maker Studios, the YouTube Creators, etc. They’ll create low-cost, ongoing series in niche topics and genres that will be aggregated and programmed alongside premium, Hollywood content. They may or may not drive as much gross revenue as Hollywood content, but they will make healthy net revenue in context of their production/overhead costs.
  • A Cadenced Evolution of the Industry: I can’t predict what the industry’s business model will be 10, even 5, years from now. But, subscription-based, social TV can help Hollywood and digital-native content producers explore new business models without breaking Hollywood’s back the way that music sharing broke the music industry’s back.

Would you subscribe to social TV? Do you know any companies working on this?

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Categories: Entertainment, Social Media, Startups, Technology Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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