Just a few days short of its 4th birthday, Twitter marked a milestone of 10 billion tweets at approximately 16:54:11 Pacific Time on Thursday, March 4, 2010.

That makes approximately 6,925,208 tweets for each of the 1,444 days since Twitter was founded on March 21, 2006. Though, we know that most of those tweets have been in the last year.  In fact, was only 5 months ago that Twitter celebrated the 5 billionth tweet. Just last month Twitter reported that it was processing 50 million tweets a day. That represents 1.2 billion tweets per month and TechCrunch reported that January 2010 saw 75 million unique visitors to Twitter.

But who made the landmark 10 billionth tweet? I asked my friend @Kosso to check the Twitter API for me to find out. However, the tweet was made from a private account.

“One instance where I can say we should ignore our privacy policy: when big round numbers are involved,” proclaimed Twitter employee Doug Williams (@dougw) after the event.

And although we don’t know who made number 10 billion, congratulations will go to Brazilian Rafaela Marques (@lelamarques) on having number 9,999,999,999.

The Twitter team were excitedly watching the numbers tick over and tweeting up a storm to see if one of their own might be the one to score the 10 billionth. (Number 5 billion was made by @robinsloan, who now works at Twitter, as shown below.)

And then, when the moment came,

they celebrated (with a flurry of Macbooks).

The milestone was anticipated earlier today when TechCrunch ran a story highlighting the event and explained that GigaTweet’s measurement was not entirely accurate. Even Twitter employee Ryan King (@rk) used tweet number 9,995,692,516 to remark:

But since the start, for those of us who’ve been around Twitter for a while, and those who’ve built businesses on and around the simplicity of 140 characters, it’s a time to cheer on the evolution and success of a service that has changed the way we communicate, changed lives and brought so many of us together.

[Companies must integrate customers behavior on social networks to their corporate website
to increase relevancy, word of mouth, and trust]

Jeremiah then lays out eight functions, from sharing to cross-publishing and social context, that Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, MySpace and Twitter each have that can bring life back to your corporate website. The idea is that by engaging social networks you can connect with both your customers and prospects.

I completely agree that static websites offer little in the way of interaction and by integrating social networks into your site, either by pulling in or pushing out, you have more opportunities to connect to people. Social sharing and other components of the matrix that Jeremiah presented are key to connecting existing customers to prospects and influencing new business.

“While many have used community platforms to allow customers to connect to each other on branded domains, this strategy works for loyal customers and often may not reach prospects. “

This is where I see tremendous opportunity for companies with the right company culture and excellent customer service and I’ve asked Jeremiah to expand his matrix to include those community platforms.

Imagine that you have an active forum of involved brand champions, or a Ning, Google or Yahoo Group of customers who feel a sense of pride and ownership in your brand. And perhaps you use a customer service and feedback platform like Get Satisfaction to quickly resolve questions and requests. How could you leverage that positive customer relationship to reach prospects? By integrating them into your site in an open way and connecting them to social networks. In the comments of Jeremiah’s post, I said:

“Using these platforms to strengthen existing customer relations with an open window to a great company culture that supports its clientele, and the confidence to show it off, would be a persuasive way to win new prospects - no matter how they came to the corporate web site.”

According to Jeremiah, the goal of integrating social networks into corporate web sites is to “increase relevancy, word of mouth, and trust.” What better way to do that than to make it easy for your happy customers to tell their friends how great you are? Bringing together community platforms with social networks and incorporating them into your site could provide a very powerful way to spread the good word about your company and products.

But, for this to work, you’d better have excellent customer service. Because any less, and this exercise will backfire. This takes a company culture that supports the customer from the C-level right down the food chain to the people who have first line of contact, be it face-to-face, on the telephone or on the web.

Take, for example, the recent experience of Jim Long (@newmediajim), NBC network cameraman, Twitter early adopter and social media enthusiast. Jim has a substantial reach in his social networks, so when he encountered  problems with Sears customer service with the repair of his dryer, in frustration (like many) he turned to Twitter.

As is the case with many brands, Sears has a listening post on Twitter (@MySears) and a Social Engagement Manager (@scottfmurphy) who was helpful in trying to resolve the issue. However, it was the on-the-ground service component of this story that repeatedly failed to deliver on customer satisfaction.

In Jim’s post, he sums up his frustration with this culture split by saying,

“Once a customer service complaint has reached the Twitters, your customer service team has likely failed.  It’s the online equivalent of  ‘I will not leave this store and I will stand here shouting at the cash register until I speak to the manager!’”

He’s got a good point.

So, before you use social media for customer service, before you link social media to your corporate web site, and before you integrate your community platforms into an open window to your customers, take a long, hard look at the importance of customer service quality throughout your ranks. And then ask yourself, is your company culture nurturing or poisoning  your customers’ ability to sing your praises, not only on social networks, but in the world at large?

10 Things PodCamp Is:

1. not just about podcasting
2. an unconference for new and social media
3. free (in most cities)
4. a great place to learn
5. open to anyone to present - just sign up
6. relaxed in attitude
7. just as exciting in the hallways and at meet-ups
8. wonderful for bringing avatars to life
9. filled with interesting folks
10. inspiring

Rule of Two Feet:

• This rule of PodCamp is that you are free to leave any session at any time if  you are not learning anything from it. Don’t stay in one spot if you’d rather be somewhere else. It’s OK. No one will be offended. Off you go!

5 Essential Things to Bring to Podcamp:

1. Business cards - you’ll be meeting a lot of people
2. Breath mints - see #1
3. An open mind
4. Comfortable shoes
5. A smile

5 Optional Things to Bring to Podcamp:

1. Media creation devices: camera / video camera / audio recorder
2. Laptop / smart phone
3. Water bottle
4. Knowledge to share freely
5. Courage to talk to strangers

More Info:

• My session: Saturday, February 20 @ 3:30 PM in room RCC 201 & brief podcast about it here.
• List of all the sessions at Podcamp Toronto
• Podcamp Toronto 2010 schedule
• Check out podcamp.org for more information about Podcamp, including upcoming and previous cities,
• Check out my video interview about the history of Podcamp with it’s co-founder, Chris Brogan.

See you there!

I’m pleased to announce the launch of DeathAndDigitalLegacy.com.

Since first starting to explore this subject more than two years ago, I’ve realized that it stretches wider than I ever could have imagined. As I delved deeper, questions surrounding law, security, privacy, bereavement, preservation, development, and even immortality came to the forefront.

Speaking at PodCamp Montreal last September proved to me that digital legacy issues can be a revelation to people when they stop to consider it. That session really ramped up interest in this topic and led to interviews with the New York Times and others, additional speaking opportunities, and people stepping forward to share their stories with me about death, the digital world and its personal impact on them.

I plan on continuing to research, write and speak about this important topic. But, I am sensitive to the fact that people who come to this blog looking for marketing and technology related posts may not always appreciate hearing about death or the issues surrounding it. It’s not a subject for all moods or all people.

So, if you have an interest in digital legacy, digital afterlife, digital immortality or related issues, and wonder about what you need to consider for the future, I welcome your perspective at DeathAndDigitalLegacy.com. To get you started, there are two new posts over there:

What is a Digital Executor?
HOW TO: Use Gmail For Digital Executor Instructions and Access

And  now we’ll return to our regularly scheduled programming.

UPDATE 10/29/30 - Google releases Sidewiki bookmarklet - “utilize Google Sidewiki on any browser, even if you don’t have the Google Toolbar installed.”

Tonight I came across Ed Lee’s post about Google Sidewiki, along with his recommendations. In it, he calls attention to Dave Jones, VP Digital Communications at Hill & Knowlton who doesn’t care much for Google Sidewiki. He says, “Sidewiki is like a bunch of people walking through that virtual front door and helping themselves to a boardroom to have a noisy chat about all the things they love and hate about the organization.”

To try to get people to leave comments on his blog rather than in Sidewiki, Dave Jones has posted his position and his request to the Sidewiki on his home page of DaveJones.ca.

Now, whether you like Sidewiki or not, I think it’s a good idea to post a welcome message there for your own site. Maybe you want to encourage people to comment right on your site, or, maybe you want to tell them why you don’t allow commenting and explain your position. Whatever you post, be aware that:

• you have no control over what people will post to the Sidewiki
• the comments are indexable by Google, including your own message
• comments are not physically contained on your site, but within Google
• commenters can highlight text on the page and comment upon it in Sidewiki
• every page of your site has its own Sidewiki

This last point is particularly important for implementing your welcome message. Be sure that you are posting the message to the home page of your site. But, also be aware that people may come to your site via a link to a blog post or may land on an interior page of your site. Where warranted, you may want to add a message to additional pages where comments may have been turned off for a specific reason. But, I would resist the urge to post to every page in your site as it might be viewed as company-generated spam.

As a site owner, Google Sidewiki will “pin” your post to the top of the Sidewiki and highlight it in green. After you’ve downloaded Google Toolbar and clicked open your Sidewiki, you’ll see this:

If you have not yet verified your site with Google’s Webmaster Tools and linked the site to your Google Account, you’ll need to go through those steps. The whole process is outlined here.

You can’t control what people will write on your pages’ Sidewikis, but perhaps you can help to set the tone and maybe even direct people to site resources where they are equally free to express themselves.

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Photo: Jerome Paradis

Last week, I spoke at webcom Montreal 09 along with Shel Holtz, Sean Moffitt and a host of other great speakers. This bi-annual conference features topics aimed at decision-makers and professionals in marketing, internal and external communications and those who want to understand and master the Internet.

I delivered my session, Twitter Tools for Strategic Marketing, with the aim of helping marketers who represent brands to get more out of their Twitter experience. It highlighted which 3rd party applications they could use to add real value and market intelligence to their Twitter efforts.

Because having the right tools to do your job is essential to success, I presented applications that were a selection of what is available to help manage corporate tweets, analyze sentiment, track opinions, conduct market research, find influencers, monitor brand mentions, track trends in real-time and more.

Shel Holtz gave the keynote Tactical Transparency: The Value of Access to Information and then followed up with a second  session on how Your Employees are Your Brand. Here’s a brief excerpt (apologies for the itty bitty jiggy cam):

One of my favourite sessions of the day was Sylvain Grand’Maison’s rapid-fire presentation The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: Traditional Media’s Web Experience. In it, he highlighted how francophone mainstream media in Quebec are failing to deliver a good online experience.

Another highlight of the day was discovering WebCamp. In its 4th year, it was held upstairs from web  com and got back to basics. The concept of Praized co-founder, and well-known Montreal developer, Sylvain Carle, the un-conference was a circle discussion of issues important to the community. I was only able to stay for a short time but was excited by a concept that Sylvain had – a networking event similar to speed dating, but for Marketers and business people to meet developers and programmers. (Coincidentally, I’d had this very thought several days earlier!) This led into a discussion about self-branding for techies and IdentityCamp. I’m always impressed with the level of creativity and commitment to innovation that the Montreal development community has. If you want to view some of the discussions (mostly in French), they are here on Laurent Lasalle’s Qik. <link to Laurent’s Qik>

My thanks to Claude Malaison for inviting me to speak at webcom 09 and congratulations to him for holding another successful conference.

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Yesterday The New York Times ran the interview I did about The Digital Afterlife and the need to appoint a digital executor:

Internet Protocol is Jenna Wortham’s advice column for technology. The question was:

Not to be morbid, but I have a lot of private information and details stored on my computer — in various Google Chat logs, e-mail and social networking accounts — that I wouldn’t want to be revealed when I log off for good. Who should I consult or what do I need to do to ensure my cache is cleared and e-mail and social networking sites accounts are deleted when I die?

This person wants to keep private things quiet. Perhaps they have another online persona or have made some online indiscretions or simply don’t want their family to know about certain dealings?

Things become much more complicated in attempting to keep this secret after they pass. Although there are automated services to notify your friends on social networks or selected individuals of your passing, in the case above, you’d still have to rely on someone to access your computer if you want your cache or sensitive files deleted. Yes, you’d need the digital equivalent of a “porn buddy” to wipe your computer clean of sensitive information, from financial information to, well, porn.

You can read my advice on appointing a digital executor here. What would you advise?

Have you appointed a digital executor to keep your online digital legacy alive? What about someone to delete private information from your computer or from online? Have you thought about it at all?

Let me know what you think.

Unfortunately, if you are not part of the Beta roll out, Twitter will not allow you to see the URLs of lists, even if they’ve been tagged as public. For the benefit of everyone, I will include screen shots, where practical, in addition to the link.

WHY DID TWITTER LISTS LEAVE DEVELOPERS OUT?

In the September 30th blog announcement. Nick Kallen, the project lead on Lists stated on the Twitter blog that there will be a Lists API. “This will allow developers to add support for Lists into your favorite Twitter apps.”

It seems that developers were an afterthought on this Twitter Feature. Normally, developers are notified of major feature roll outs such as this well in advance and are afforded the opportunity to work with the API in before the launch. However, the development community weren’t even informed that Twitter Lists was on the development roadmap until September 30th, likely well after Twitter would have started working on it.

When the feature was released yesterday, the vast majority of developers (but interestingly, not all) didn’t even have access to the Lists API documentation until last night. When users like Robert Scoble started building lists and tweeting about them, the dev community cried foul and a draft of the API documentation was quickly made available, sending developers scrambling to integrate Lists into their offerings throughout the wee hours of last night.

HOW WILL TWITTER LISTS IMPACT DESKTOP CLIENTS?

Many original users of TweetDeck or Seesmic Desktop were drawn to the services because of the list/group functionality that they offered. Those services have now evolved to offer a host of additional features, but, for many the list/group function remains the primary benefit. With the Lists API, TweetDeck and Seesmic Desktop will face a whole slew of Twitter client competition who didn’t previously have a lists or a grouping function.

Now you may be thinking, yes, but I use TweetDeck/Seesmic and so using Twitter Lists doesn’t bring me any extra value. Consider that TweetDeck’s groups are confined to TweetDeck . Twitter Lists, once the developers set to work on it, will start popping up in all sorts of different apps and locations that have been built specifically to add value to the user experience. Twitter Lists will not be confined to the client that you’re running. And that reality will surely cut into established client applications’ market share.

WHAT WILL TWITTER LISTS DO TO “FOLLOW” DIRECTORIES?

The inclusion of a Lists API will threaten recommendation applications like WeFollow, Twellow, Mr. Tweet or Twibes. The categorization of people on these types of services are usually self-submitted, or in some cases, chosen by an algorithm. The resulting recommendations may not always be vetted according to your personal standards. And let’s face it, following people based on their own self-categorization is just not the same as having a personal recommendation from someone you know. Personal referrals are the preferred way that people make purchasing decisions and deciding who to invest your time with on Twitter is not much different.

Rather than taking random recommendations from Follow Directories, you could easily visit the profile of someone who’s opinion you trust and select from their lists. Let’s say you want to learn more about the players in venture capital. By clicking on his lists counter from the profile page, I can examine which lists that Guy Kawasaki has been included on. This netted me a great starter list from Christine Lu: http://twitter.com/christinelu/vc-and-angels.

As it’s possible to subscribe to lists without actually following each individual in the group, I can simply click “Follow List” from the main list page and follow the tweets of a great subset of Twitter, chosen by someone I know.

Twitter Lists also goes head-to-head with other applications which allow you to follow groups with a single click. Take TweepML for example. The developers launched their one-click group app on September 9th, exactly 3 weeks before Twitter announced Lists. Had the developers known what laid ahead on the Twitter features road map,  I wonder if they’d have developed the same product. As it stands, TweepML was quick off the mark and explained on their blog last night that it was easy to import your Twitter Lists to their service.

Thousands of applications currently exist that work with the Twitter API, from desktop and mobile clients to statistics and search properties. Smart developers should follow the lead of TweepML and integrate Twitter Lists into their products. By finding ways to use Twitter Lists to add value to existing applications, they’ll be in a better position to survive the inevitable surge of new offerings that have surely sprouted in the last 16 days.

Next up: Part 3: Popularity

Read Part 1: What Are Twitter Lists?

Part 4 will look at the opportunities that brands will have with Twitter Lists.

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WHAT IS IT?

Back on September 30th, Twitter announced on their blog that they would be launching their new Lists feature to a small group of users to Beta test. Lists allow Twitter users to organize the people they follow into groups. By segmenting your following list into groups, you can then filter tweets from your main stream and just view the tweets originating from a selected list. You can also subscribe to other people’s lists.

HOW DOES IT WORK?

There is a new section in the right-hand sidebar for List management. Create a new list by clicking on New List the sidebar. Give the list a name and it will become a URL that you can use wherever, for example, http://twitter.com/adelemcalear/montrealers. Decide if you want the list public or private.

There is a new Lists drop down menu located beside the Tools menu. From the Lists drop down you can add people to any of your groups from their profile page or from your following list.

If you’ve been added to a list it will show up in a new Lists counter beside the number of following and followers you have. If you’ve added someone to a private list, it will not register on their counter.

When you click on the URL to someone’s list, you are given the single click option to “Follow This List.” According to How Twitter Lists Work, when you follow a list your following count does not increase, because “you don’t have to be following someone to add them to a list.”

When visiting someone’s profile page, you can click on their list counter under their bio to see which lists they have been included on and which they follow. (The Twitter url ends in /lists/membership.)

The Lists membership dashboard shows two tabs: Lists following you and Lists your are following. The Twitter user and name of list on the left side. On this page Following refers to how many people are included on the list. Followers refers to how many people have subscribed to the list.

If you want to view the lists that someone has created themselves, you will see a list of them in the right-hand side bar on that person’s profile page, right underneath their Favorites link. The lists  I followed showed up hear as well.

LIMITATIONS

While merrily starting out making my lists, it occurred to me that I might hit a limit. So I sought out the person I knew who would be trying his best to break the new feature, Robert Scoble. Sure enough, he’d found limits already.

It’s not yet clear if the limit of 20 lists includes created and subscribed to, or created only.

There were some  annoyances that came up in my brief test prior to writing this post.

At this time, you must add people individually to your lists, which could be quite time consuming if you follow a lot of people. It would be much faster if you could select multiple people from your following page and add them in bunches to lists.

There is no way of organizing the order in which your lists appear, either in the drop down menu when adding people or in the right-hand side bar of your profile page. The newest list is always on top, with the oldest at the bottom.

Also, and this has nothing to do with functionality, but the font style used on the individual list pages doesn’t match anything else in the Twitter brand. What can I say? I’m a marketer and for years I’ve worked with companies to build brands through consistency. I find it irritating and unprofessional for a company with $155 million in funding  to launch a new feature that doesn’t  seamlessly blend with the rest of their look and feel.

In Part 2 of this series I’ll look at the impact of Twitter Lists on desktop client applications, followers services and popularity ratings. Read Part 2: Twitter Lists: Developers and Applications

Part 3 will examine the effect of Twitter Lists on popularity.

Part 3 Part 4 will look at the opportunities that brands will have with Twitter Lists.

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1. everyone in Quebec speaks French as their first language
2. everyone in the rest of Canada speaks English as their first language
3. everyone in Canada speaks both languages  fluently (if at all)

Yesterday, I sent a customer support question to Air Miles, a Canadian loyalty/rewards program. As is the case with national companies in Canada, there are two mirrored sites: one in French, one in English. I visited the English site and sent my question in English. Here is the automated email I received acknowledging my request:

Bonjour,
Nous desirons seulement confirmer la reception de votre courriel. Votre question est dans nos systemes et un Specialiste du service a la clientele AIR MILESmd vous repondra personnellement d’ici 5-7 jours ouvrable.
A bientot,

Programme de recompense AIR MILES(md)

Hey, gee. Thanks.

The site likely detected that my IP address was in Quebec. The form didn’t ask my location or language, so the people who programmed and approved the Air Miles site must have thought it would be clever to respond to inquiries according to geographically-based language assumptions.

Although, I do speak some French and know enough to be able to read and understand the message, rather than being helpful, this type of response totally misses the mark.

The politics of language in Canada aside, what if I didn’t understand French at all? What if I was only in Quebec on business when I sent the email? Shouldn’t their web site programming be intelligent enough to know that I was sending the inquiry from the English site, and therefore it’s a safe bet to respond in English?

Same goes for the reverse. If my first language was French and I lived in Brandon, Manitoba, or in the officially bilingual province of New Brunswick, or anywhere else in Canada for that matter, and I sent my inquiry from the French site, shouldn’t I be served in that language?

Rather than feeling like Air Miles wants to help me, I know that they’re simply not paying attention to their customers.

It’s very simple. If you have a web site that is available in multiple languages, whatever they are - French, Spanish or Urdu - ensure that your infrastructure is designed to respond to people in the browsing language of your visitors. Ignoring such a fundamental component of communication will only serve to tell your customers that you are not listening to them. That may be the only part of the message that they will understand.

(And don’t even get me started on why it will take Air Miles 5 to 7 business days to respond to a simple query.)

UPDATE 10/07/09: I received a response to my inquiry. In English.

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