Now you can view your followers in a list form or opt for an expanded list with the user’s latest tweet. This is pretty cool if you want to get an idea of what the person tweets about before you follow them and you don’t want to click to every users’ profile before following. On the followers page it also shows you whether you’re already following the person or not.

There’s a drop down menu on the right hand side (looks a little like Seesmic desktop’s icons) that lets you mention, direct message, un follow or block the individual.

All in all it’s a nice improvement, though nothing earth-shattering that’s going to keep me away from Tweetdeck or Seesmic.

Then they discovered that Federal and State safety net organizations who support poor and homeless families do not provide diapers for babies. Federal support funds like W.I.C. and food stamps do not allow the funds they give to be used for buying diapers. This leaves poor mothers in the position of deciding to use what expendable cash they have to buy diapers or food.

So they set out on their own to change things. They contacted their personal network of friends and family. They set up Amazon wish-lists so people could donate funds directly, publicized the lists on their blog and set up several direct drop locations where people could donate. Although the original target date was for Mother’s day, the response was so overwhelming that by the end of May they had collected over 15,000 diapers, as well as thousands of other hygiene items for babies, children and mothers.

Lisa says “A year ago I was totally anti- social media - Facebook, Twitter, blogs, all that stuff. Once I got on Twitter and started talking about what we were doing it just took off!

Now we’ve got 700 followers and we’ve connected with so many people across the country that have the same passion as we do. We’ve seen some far flung friends who saw what we posted and became very closely involved and host drives in San Diego and Santa Clara. A friend in Italy heard about it and got her friends in Tucson to set up a program.

The blog has been good too. People are linking back to us. We got in touch with a couple of good connectors who had bigger networks than we do, and they shared it with their networks.”

While on Twitter Lisa noticed that some Silicon valley moms were talking to Katie Couric about children in the recession. She picked up on their Twitter hashtag and basically crashed their Twitter conversation to tell them about what Help a Mother Out was doing. Although she never heard from Couric, Kim Tracy Prince picked up on it, and became the Los Angeles coordinator for a program there. A producer at KGO radio in San Francisco ead a blog post about them on SFAppeal.com and brought them onto the show for an interview.

They also started a conversation with a diaper bank in Michigan, and Sally Lieber (a former California assembly member) started a conversation to encourage changes in the way WIC works so they begin to cover diapers.

Help a Mother Out teamed up with a tiny baby shop called Baby Buzz in San Jose’s Willow Glen neighborhood for a donation drive. The goal was to bring in 1000 diapers for a local women’s shelter. Local bloggers picked it up and blogged and tweeted about it and a local bank (Valley Credit Union) saw it on Twitter, gathered up over 1,000 diapers and the staff delivered them to the shop that very day.

The immediacy of seeing something Tweeted, being able to take action and get immediate satisfaction of helping is a very powerful thing. Valley Credit staff did a video of the event and posted it on their Facebook page, which was linked to by many supporters of Help a Mother Out as well as people in Valley Credit Union’s network and it was a clear win for everyone involved. The store got great publicity and felt good for helping. Help a Mother Out donated the diapers to a family shelter and an Asian women’s shelter in San Jose. Valley Credit Union staff got the immediate satisfaction of taking action and helping out as well as positive press as caring members of the community.

“The Help A Mother Out campaign is exactly the kind of grassroots effort that is needed today. Social networking in service of supporting mothers in need is a fabulous idea. Through innovation and utilizing the free tools the internet has to offer, HAMO has made a big difference the lives of many women and children, and in such a short period of time.” –Danica Remy, President, Point Foundation - Publisher, Whole Earth Magazine & Catalog

There are hundreds of examples like this of grassroots organizations springing up organically around a simple desire to help. Social media allows them to quickly spread the word to their networks and if the idea is valid it’s likely to take off very quickly.

Dunbar’s number is named after Robin Dunbar, a British Anthropologist who theorized that the average human brain can only effectively maintain a social relationship with approximately150 people at one time. (Dunbar never set an exact number, but this is the one most frequently quoted).You can learn a lot more about Dunbar and his theories here ( the presentation is fascinating), but I wonder how these theories really relate to the communication tools we use today. I argue that social media enables us to reach out to many more people and make more relationships at a time. Although many of those relationships may not be as deep as family or close personal friends, they still enrich our lives and expand what we are able to experience.

Currently I’ve got about 6,000 people at the first level of my various networks, and while I don’t communicate regularly with all of them, I work hard to have some kind of connection and refresh the contact periodically in some way. My connections range widely in interest areas, as does my business, so each of these interest areas has it’s own sub-network as well. I may share some information or a connection within one of these subgroups, thus nurturing the relationship with the group and the people I’ve connected. Generally there will be some feedback, some give and take or conversation resulting from this either on or off line. New introductions will be made and new conversations started.

I’m not supporting building humongous numbers of “friends” for the sake of the numbers. I will never support that kind of list building. What I am saying is–if you do have a large network it’s possible to connect with a lot more people than 150 effectively.

Don’t take my word for it, take Chuck Hester for example. He’s got over 9,000 people in just ONE of his networks, yet I know from experience he does actively engage a large number of his connections regularly. Ari Herzog is another good example. On his blog he talks about connecting with friends from social media connections face to face and it feels like beers with long time co-workers. Both are using social media to create real relationships with large networks and it works.

So what do you think? Are our meager brains limited in capacity to 150 connections? Or are they complex enough to a lot more. Do the tools we have now enable us to reach more people and still have real relationships? How do you manage your network?

kwout pulls a lot of the best features of some of these apps together in a bookmarklet that enables clipping images and text, but the cool part is you can clip a screen shot of a set of links and kwout converts the image to an image map so all the links are active. How cool is that? You can then post the info to your blog, Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, Gmail, Evernote and a host of other sites that allow embedding.

So let’s say I want to share this post from KD Paine’s blog about the changing dynamics for Marketers and PR folks, and specifically the links to the reports she mentions. I can clip the item with kwout, send it straight to Twitter, drop it into Evernote for later use, or add it to my blog as a click able image map and a link to her site so you can read the rest of it.

How cool is that?

KDPaine’s PR Measurement Blog: Why 31% of Marketers and most PR people will probably lose their jobs via kwout

Once you’ve posted something using kwout you can go to their site, drop in your domain name and see a history of posted items.

I have to say I spent some time messing around with the annotation tools as well. These are 3rd party apps from Pixir and Any Canvas, and they don’t really compete with the ease of use in Skitch, but all in all this is a very cool tool, and an excellent addition to your blogging toolkit.

People are more comfortable knowing the rules
I’ve encountered staff on many occasions who were simply terrified of social media. Where to start? What to say? How to use the tools and would they get in trouble? A little guidance and training and they were just fine. Use your social media engagement policy as a way to show them the ropes and give them models to follow.

Three good reasons for a social media corporate policy.

1) Set branding standards for communication
Clearly you can’t have people making up their own logos and color schemes for your company. If your marketing department has a style guide, put the best bits in your corporate policy document. It saves everybody a lot of headaches if they can create a profile with a company approved logo and a color scheme that reflects the company with outguessing. Make the resources they need available and they’ll be more likely to dive in and you won’t have to assign a hall monitor.

2) Educate your team
What terms do you use to describe your product? Are there particular industry or work related terms you need to have associated with the product? Are there terms you NEVER want used with your product? Here’s where you educate the team. Somebody from production may have no idea of the carefully worded press release you just sent out in which you said the margin for error in your product was .006 % but he may know the last test results he saw were .02%. Make sure they both have the facts so they can put your best foot forward.

3) Set expectations for behaviour
Again, if people know the rules and what is expected from them they are less likely to make mistakes. State clearly what standards of performance you expect. A little personal responsibility and some common sense goes a long way. This also sets the corporate nay-sayers a bit more at ease.

Now I’m not saying you should strangle your team in what they can and cannot say. This is very hard to understand for many larger corporations where the legal department approves every press release and the PR department approves every statement on the website before it can go live.

Social media doesn’t work like this. If your statements appear to be canned or professionally produced it’s bound to fall flat. Let the team know the facts when a new product comes out or you reach a noteworthy milestone. Then let them put it into their own words.

What goes into a typical corporate social media policy doc?
Rather than blather on, here are some examples to learn from. Scan a few and you’ll get the idea. Then adapt to fit your own needs.

• Intel did a fabulous job with their social media guidelines. It’s clear what they expect and the whole thing is in clear easy to understand language.
• Cisco’s policy is a little cryptic, but it does outline employee responsibilities on social sites both corporate owned and external networks.
• D.M. Scott posted an overview of the social media efforts of the U.S. Air Force on his blog, complete with flow charts for responding to a blog comment that are as detailed as one might expect from the government.
• GM’s blogging policy is short and to the point and then references Charlene Li’s recommendations for more information.
• Sun’s “Guidelines on Public Disclosure” are much like Intel’s. Simple, to the point and all about transparency.
• Minneapolis’ Walker Art Center blogging guidelines clearly state the goals of the Walker’s blogs, with advice on finding images, responding to comments and refers to the EFF’s legal guide for bloggers.
• The BBC has a hands-off approach to personal blogs as long as the writer does not identify themselves with the BBC on their personal blog. Staff are allowed to talk about programs, etc, but are required to include a disclaimer for personal editorial comments on blogs.
• Here’s what HP says in their “Blogging Code of Conduct”:

After 5 minutes he understood the power of social media. “OH, so it’s a big referral network!” He got really excited, and we started bouncing ideas around. It was fun, and exactly why I love this job. Seeing somebody really “get it” and then being able to coach them through the ropes and watch them run with it is exciting.

Ok, but is social media a referral network? It can be. For someone who truly nurtures their relationships with contacts like this, social media is just that, the biggest referral network you could ask for. These seasoned sales people work for years on their relationships with potential, current and even ex-clients because you never know where that referral is going to come from.

They send gifts on holidays and special occasions. They know when your kid is graduating, that your wife likes dark chocolate and you like Scotch (only Highland Single Malt). He also knows this about your secretary, your partner and the competition, and he gives every contact some personal attention on a regular basis to keep in touch.

Imagine the power social media can have in the skilled hands of a relationship builder like this. He can be even faster to respond to events and news, cross reference his connections and make sure to introduce people to others they need to know to make their lives easier and better.

He can use the tools to listen to what’s going on in the market and be the first to share it with his connections and to share the solution to a problem before they even know they have it. He can send less Scotch (I prefer Springbank 12 yr old, thank you ) and spend more time in conversation.

Best of all, once he’s got his listening tools set up and a strategy to engage, he’ll have more time for sales.

TweetPsych uses two different analysis algorithms–Regressive Imagery Dictionary and Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count) to create a psychological profile for you based on your last 1,000 tweets. Type in a username and TweetPsyche comes back with a profile of cognitive, primordial, conceptual and emotional content of your Tweets.

Granted, if you re-tweet a lot, your profile might get mixed up with those of the people you re-tweet, but then again if the Tweets you re-tweet resonated with you in the first place it’s probably pretty close.The other issue may be how you shorten your Tweets. For example if you tend to abbreviate particular phrases they may not be interprested correctly.

I’d love to see how a tool like this would work on blogs, which tend to be more thoughtful than the stream of conciousness posts people typically post to Twitter.

At the very least it gives food for thought as to the contents of the tweets you’re sending out into the universe and how you may be perceived by others.

If you’re interested in the linguistic algorithms used, Dan’s blog is a good place to start.

Since Facebook opened the floodgates just a short while ago over 500,000 people have registered their user names. So go to Facebook and register your name if you think it’s important to retain it for branding purposes or otherwise.

One small thought before you go. Once you set your Facebook user name you can’t change it (for that email address anyway) so take a moment to think about what you want it to be. Many people use Facebook for just their friends and family and don’t relate it to business at all. Do you really want all of your Linkedin and Twitter friends to friend you on Facebook too? If you keep more personal information on Facebook as opposed to your other networks maybe not.  True, if they really want to find you on Facebook they can, but maybe having it be default makes it too easy?

By the way, Facebook page owners will also be able to register their business name. For the moment it’s only for businesses with over 1,000 users for the page, but as of  June 28, 2009 any small business will be able to register their business Facebook page as well. For now you’ll have to make do with filing a notice of Trademark violation if you feel that is the case.

It starts simply. Following a few links you found on Twitter then the blogs you’re reading have really great links and the sites at the end of those links have really cool videos and then you get lost in you-tube for an hour wandering down a trail of videos that quickly change from being fact filled and data laden to silly and funny and completely worthless but now your brain is so fried you just don’t care.

That’s usually when your boss or a client calls and you cannot form a complete sentence in response to their vitally important question. No amount of explaining will get you out of the hole you’re in, so you blame it on sleep deprivation (without telling them you were posting videos on Seesmic all night) and promise to be bright eyed and bushy tailed at the meeting in an hour. That’s the one with the proposal you were supposed to be writing while you were watching pointless but beautifully filmed Vimeo videos or playing Spymaster.

I’m pretty sure this has happened at least once to every social media contact I have. I refuse to disclose how many times it’s happened to me.

There is a way to survive this phenomenon and gain back at least a smidgeon of your productivity. It’s called scheduling. There is no earthly reason you have to have Facebook, Twitter, Google Reader and FriendFeed open 24/7. Missing a post by an hour or two or even (gasp) 6 will not destroy your business. (Unless you’re doing customer support on these networks).

Set up a schedule you can live with. Stick to it and you’ll suddenly have lots of free time in your workday for those mundane but necessary tasks.

For example:

• Check your Twitter stream 3-4 times a day. In the morning, coffee break, lunch and at the end of your WORK day.
• The rest of the day rely on notifications and alerts to let you know when you need to respond to someone.
• Figure out the times the people you want to engage with are usually online and let that guide when you log on.
• Set up reminders to ping you when you get a direct message (who reads these?) or a reply on Twitter.
• Set up listening tools to alert you of mentions of you or your brand.
• Create an email address that lands all of your notifications in one e-mail box and then check it every couple of hours. Rome will not burn if a comment doesn’t get responded to in a couple of hours.
• Missed a post and you think it’s too late to respond? Try email. You can make your response longer and richer. You might even try the telephone.

Now, I’m not saying this will work for everybody, but give it a try and see how to customize it to work for you. You might be surprised to see you can be connected and productive at the same time.