Tony Adam - Innovator, Strategist, Marketer

5 Reasons You NEED to Attend Twiistup

2009-06-23T18:16:57Z

I don’t normally sit here and try to pitch a reason to go to a conference or an event. The most I’ll do is usually tweet about something going on. But, with Twiistup, I felt it was absolutely necessary just based on all the reasons to go. I went to Twiistup 5 and it was my first one, but, Francisco Dao has taken Twiistup 6 to the next level and is blowing it out of the park. So, here are the reasons I am going, and the reasons you should too.

1. The Sessions and Speaker List

The wide variety of entrepreneurs that will be speaking at Twiistup is unreal. I have never see a cast like this put together in a single day. Every single speaker is an entrepreneur and innovator in his or her own right. They have all been in the trenches, succeeded, and failed like all entrepreneurs. And, to be frank, some of them are just like you…running a business and trying to make moves.

Here are the speakers (taken from the Twiistup website):

Jason Calacanis Serial entrepreneur, founder of Mahalo and co-founder of TechCrunch 50 and Weblogs. Wikipedia Link
Chamillionaire Grammy Award-winning and chart topping musician and entrepreneur. Wikipedia Link
Cyan Banister Early stage investor in Facebook, Slide, Tagged and founder of TopFans.com and Zivity.
Todd Goldman Artist, entrepreneur, co-creator of BLAHGirls (with Ashton Kutcher) and founder of David and Goliath apparel. Wikipedia Link
Quincy Jones III (QD3) Music and film producer/entrepreneur. Wikipedia Link
Dave McClure Seed stage investor for the Founders Fund. Bio Link
Ian Rogers Former business partner of the Beastie Boys and former GM of Yahoo Music, now CEO of Topspin Media. Bio Link
Ben Huh CEO of viral phenomenon www.IcanHasCheezburger.com
Chris Brogan President of New Marketing Labs
Mark Suster GRP Partners, venture capital. Former VP Product Mgmt Salesforce.com & 2-time CEO and entrepreneur. Bio Link
Brian Solis Author of Now is Gone and Putting the Public Back in Public Relations, Publisher of PR 2.0 and bub.blicio.us, Founder of Future Works PR, and strategic advisor to Fortune 500 businesses and startups. Wikipedia Link
David O. Sacks Former COO of PayPal, founder and CEO of Geni.com and Yammer, movie producer Thank You For Smoking. Wikipedia Link
Brad Feld Co-founder of Foundry Group and Mobius Venture Capital, founder of Techstars.org startup incubator. Bio Link
Micah Baldwin Founder of Current Wisdom (sold 2007), VP of Business Development and Chief Evangelist for Lijit Networks. Bio Link

*Additional speakers are being added as availability is confirmed. All speakers appear during the daytime conference portion of the event.
**Sessions subject to change as additonal speakers join the program.

2. The ShowOffs

I don’t know of another conference that combines the ShowOff’s with amazing Panels. But, Twiistup isn’t going to bury you with 20-30 or a barrage of startups to bore you to death. These are going to be the best of the best 10 startups that were hand picked by the Twiistup crew.

3. Open Bar

Not many conferences have an open bar as readily available as Twiistup, and, they deliver. Let’s face it, we’re technologists and entrepreneurs that love to drink.

4. Innovation, Innovation, Innovation

Twiistup is just that, all about Innovation. You can go to another boring conference where you try to learn 2-3 things about Twitter or how to do SEO, or, you could attend a conference that is going to inspire you and invigorate you and your ideas to get you to take that next step. You’re going to watch these people on stage, you’re going to interact with others, and you will leave with a fire ignited ready to get stuff done.

5. The Networking

Not only is the speaker list phenominal, but, the attendees of the event are going to be unbelievable. You’ll be interacting with fellow business owners, innovators, marketers, people in the press, and investors. Personally, I always take away the personal interaction from the people attending a conference, it is the SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT reason that I attend. With Twiistup, it is definitely going to be that. I want to meet these people, I want to share the stories, hear what people have to say and get involved in some of the greatest conversations that will be happening in Los Angeles, this year. If there is one reason to attend, it would be the opportunity to be involved in the conversation that could shape innovation for the rest of the year.

SMX Advanced 2009 Wrap Up & Pictures

2009-06-11T00:05:03Z

Another SMX is in the books and I had a fantastic time! From checking out awesome Panels to speaking on the “Proving the Value of Social Media” Panel to the amazing people, SMX Advanced still is one of my favorite conferences to attend during the year.

Of course, this year, a bit topic of discussion was Microsoft launching Bing…which of course was the search engine formerly known as Live Search and MSN…wonder if Microsoft can pick a brand and stick to it with Bing now…

That said, there was some other major topics of discussion this year from the entire track dedicated to Social Media, which I truly enjoyed hearing about StumbleUpon from Brent Csutoras, to Twitter from Michael Gray, and well, my talk about proving the value of social media and the metrics and data behind it. I did have a couple interesting discussions though about the need for a seperation between the Monitoring and Corporate Social Media Profiles and the Persona based Social Media Marketing panels.

On the SEO side of things there is always a fun discussion with Paid Links with Michael Gray talking about Google Profiling SEOs. Michael and Matt definitely got into it a little bit at the Mixer and it was definitely made clear during the You & A with Matt Cutts. Also, during the Canonical Tag Panel there was a major debate apprently about how the tag is really not working as it is suppose to, and, how people are still using PageRank Sculpting. There was obviously some confusion about how the “nofollow” attribute is being used and some debate about how it is working.

That said, as always, my favorite part about the conference is the 1 on 1 conversations that I got to have with some of the most amazing people that I know in this industry. I had some amazing conversations with people like Michael Gray, Alex Bennert, Elisabeth Osmeloski, Brent Csutoras, Michelle Robbins, and Rae Hoffman. I also got a chance to uphold Yahoo!’s honor by beating Matt Cutts and Danny Sullivan at a game of Pool with Jonathan Hochman at the SEOMoz party. And, Carol Adam (my sister) helped out the Third Door Media team by volunteering to help and apparently did so well, others wanted to hire her as a Virtual Assistant! (Go Carol!)

Finally, I got to take some really cool pictures at the conference, here is the Flickr Slideshow:

See all the SMX Advanced Pictures!

Another #twitterfail? - Twitter turns on Mobile Notifications for Users

2009-05-19T23:38:44Z

So today I was going on about my business when I got like 10 sms messages in a row from Twitter. For no absolutely reason at all either. Then I was like…what the heck is going on? So I looked at who I was getting the text messages from and realized, these seem like people that I would have notifications on for.

But, wait a second, I haven’t turned on mobile notifications in a LONG time. I guess Twitter is at it again!

So, I logged into my mobile settings and saw this:

So, I quickly updated my settings so my phone would stop buzzing away like crazy. And, of course, like a good Social Media person (or something like that…) I did a quick twitter search to see that it wasn’t just me, oh no, it was everyone as it seems!

So, whatever happened to @biz saying that he was going to communicate things a little bit better. Expect to see a post from him on the Twitter Blog. But, I have to agree with one of the tweets sent out, you’d think by now twitter would have their act together with regard to SMS.

Keep the conversation going and follow me on twitter: @tonyadam

Twitter taking the Social out of Social Discovery

2009-05-13T22:15:40Z

The most trending topic on twitter right now as I am writing this post is #fixreplies. It is shocking to me that after weeks of proclaiming that twitter is all about social discovery, we see the biggest Bonehead Decision that twitter could have made. There are posts from around the industry talking about Twitter putting a Muzzle on your friends.

Originally, by default, twitter would not show you the @replies sent to other users until you went in and made the change under Settings -> Notices. Apparently, this caused confusion to many people, despite the help article explaining replies settings to users.

Where we use to see this:

We now see this!

What I am wondering is how they came to this decision?! Isn’t the point of Social Discovery to discover people that share the same friends or interests that you do. Turning this feature off only negates that experience.

Personally, I would like to know how many users have made the change in their settings to receive all @ replies. Not to mention, but, I thought that’s what Direct Messages were for, to keep the conversation personal. Twitter and Social Media is about conversations and by putting this “muzzle” on as @marshallk mentioned, we are losing out on that conversation and furthermore, we are witnessing Twitter taking the Social out of Social Discovery.

Update: SInce posting their note about the “small settings update,” Twitter has posted this in response to all the feedback that they apparently didn’t realize how important the social discovery aspects were to the community.

Update #2: Since this mornings chaos and feedback note Biz mentions that they have learned a lot and are working on changes to the replies functionality.

12 Seconds of SEO from GeekOut ‘09

2009-05-12T07:16:14Z

Sean Percival and I decided that we would give the crowd 12 seconds of SEO and show everyone why we are really geeks at the GeekOut ‘09. We are 2 of VERY few there that could truly say #iamageek.

GeekOut09: Why #iamageek on 12seconds.tv

Online Reputation Management DOES matter

2009-04-23T16:28:46Z

So, I wake up this morning and see a post written by Darren Slatten completely dismissing the importance of Online Reputation Management. And, I found the post a little comedic at best, so, I’ll give him a little bit of credit for that, but, one thing I won’t give him credit for is researching the topic. Now, I am not going to attack Darren personally or professionally, because I haven’t worked with him, nor do I know his abilities, and, it’s just not my place to do so. This is just a post telling you why Online Reputation Management is EXTREMELY important.

Why Online Reputation Management is important

For companies and individuals alike, there is a major need for reputation management. It’s the reason that conferences have panels specifically on the topic. That reason is that individuals and businesses alike can be affected by negative reputation. This isn’t just an issue of popularity either, it’s an issue of brand perception, an individuals brand perception, or even the ability to be hired/fired from a job.

Having Online Reputation Management concerns can cause revenue losses and/or income.

I really want to state that if you have not dealt with this or have no experience in understanding the Reputation Management space, then please, do not write about why it is not important.

Who are these people?!

Rather than continuing to tell you why ORM is so important, I’ll answer the question you might ask: “who are the people or companies that care about online reputation management?” Lets run through a few of these right here to provide a better understanding of why ORM is important:

CEOs

An organization with a CEO that has negative perceptions in the press or social atmosphere can lead to the organization or the brand of that organization having negative sentiments or perceptions. I’m not just talking about the SERPs here, but, in terms of Social Mentions in blogs, microblogs, and/or news results that surround that individual. Did you know 87% of people believe a CEO’s reputation reflects on the overall company’s reputation?

Political Figures

Think about the number of times have you seen a political figure that gets tons of bad press and has led to the downfall of his/her campaign or election/re-election to office. Social Media is now playing a part in the political climate and because of that we saw now President Obama reach millions of people.

But, to take this to the next level, lets look at an example that deals with President Obama. How many of you can say you know that he is a smoker? (Now, I am not judging him on this, but using it as a point of reference). This was downplayed a ton during the elections again because of the fact that his team did not want to create a negative perception of the candidate during the elections. This becoming an issue could have, hypothetically, led to the loss of many votes, especially from anti-cigarette and anti-smoking groups.

Companies and Brands

Companies and the brands of those companies alike experience the most pain when it comes to reputation management. Something that is a hard fact: Companies and Brands with negative search results tied to brand related queries will see a drop in revenue because a user/customer is likely to switch products/services based on that negative result. Even more interesting is that queries relative to corporate figures will also lead to a dip in revenue/sales. It’s estimated that 58% of searchers will visit a competing website after seeing negative search results.

An example of this is tied to PayPal and my experience working there. PayPal saw 4 of it’s top 10 search results tied to the brand query “paypal” go to flame sites. Working internally, there was an estimated figure in net revenue losses per negative search result. That is where that 58% number above comes in…because of this negative reputation caused by search results, users were switching.

Celebrities

Celebrities make the news all the time for the stupid things that they do. Whether it is someone driving drunk or who’s sleeping with who, it is all things that affect their personal brand. And, in this case, their personal brand is like that of a business, their personal brand is the most important thing to their livelihood.

Because I am all about examples, lets continue down that path and look at the sports figure that we all know I can’t stand: Kobe Bryant. He was accused of raping a girl in a hotel room back in 2003/2004. Luckily for Bryant this was during a time when Social Media was not as prominent, but, unluckily for Bryant it still effected him financially. He lost endorsement deals from companies like Nike because of the negative press and negative reputation.

The Job Market

The economic climate is horrible at the moment. Unemployment is at astonishing highs and it’s tough to find a job right now. Now, to add to that, recruiters and HR teams are getting saavier and understanding Search and Social Media extremely well. What does that mean for you? It means that Online Reputation Management is important to your personal brand. Because, not only are they looking, but 78% of recruiters research a candidate online and 35% actually reject a candidate based on this. Andy Beal even wrote a post on why your Google Reputation can hurt your career.

Creating a personal brand is even more important as researchers and experts in the job market reference this all the time. I can’t tell you how many times I’m watching CNN, (and let me tell you, I caught a lot of it while I only had a few channels the last couple months!), and these experts mention Facebook, Google, search, and your personal brand being EXTREMELY important, not just now during economic uncertainty, but, forever.

Don’t be silly, Online Reputation Management does matter:

Again, this is another situation where we have someone that is creating a post that is possibly baiting for reactions or what not. Or, we have another person in the industry that is writing something without actually researching the topic. But, please please please people, if you have no experience or expertise on a topic, then stay away from writing it, it just makes you look like you haven’t done your research. And, if you look at the stats above, then it’s pretty obvious that ORM does matter.

**Credit for ORM stats goes to Marketing Pilgrim and Oilman.

The Final Wrap Up to Jane & Robot at Yahoo! Santa Monica

2009-04-21T17:46:30Z

It’s been about a week since we had the Jane & Robot meetup at Yahoo! Santa Monica and I finally have a chance to wrap up the event. I have to say, putting that whole event together with help from some very wonderful people was probably one of the funnest things I’ve done.

First and foremost, it was awesome to have Nathan Buggia and Vanessa Fox out in Santa Monica talking about Search Friendly Web Development. Overall, their talk was great covering things like robots access, search friendly design, etc. I haven’t been around a lot of technical development issues in about 6 months, and, it was nice to hear a more ‘geeky’ side of the search world again.

I had started to use the hashtag #JRSM for the event and we got a few live tweets from the event to cover the whole thing. Virginia Nussey of Bruce Clay wrote a wrap up on Search Engine Land of the event. Also, we had lalawag covering the event without any sleezy LA gossip (thank god!).

Here is a video wrap up of the event as well:

Jane and Robot SEO Meetup Los Angeles from sean percival on Vimeo.

Overall, with about 50 people attending, some great conversations, a great talk by Vanessa and Nathan, and the coverage, I was REALLY pleased with the way things turned out! Thanks Everyone for coming and hopefully we’ll see you at the next event!

Recap of Startups Uncensored #5: Raising Angel Money from Investors

2009-03-31T18:25:47Z

I want to start by saying that raising funding or Angel Capital is something I have ABSOLUTELY no experience with, so, it was absolutely great to hear a panel on something where I was thoroughly engaged. Not to mention the rock star line up of Los Angeles Technology entrepreneurs that were on the panel: Brett Brewer, Rick Smith, Matt Coffin, Bryce Benjamin, Kamran Pouzanjani, and Jeff Tinsley.

Anywho, big thanks to Jason Nazar and Docstoc for setting this up again at the Santa Monica Public Library. As usual, in true Jason fashion he started out talking about Docstoc and their approach to raising capital. Then he started introducing the Panelists and the one thing that I could definitely say that all the panelists mentioned was “the Ecosystem in Los Angeles has never been this strong” and that they have “never seen this much startup energy in LA.” Everyone talked about the trials and tribulations along with how tough it was to get people to invest in a Los Angeles technology company.

It basically turned into the Matt Coffin hour once he started talking and I have to say, I wanted to constantly take notes, but I didn’t have to because I was so intrigued by hearing his story. He mentioned that Lower My Bills at the time was struggling and that they went all over to look for investors and ended up in Minnesota, of all places. Just goes to show that being creative about finding funding is important. He also mentioned that the startup environment was much different in ‘01 vs. ‘09 in that people that have been through it are a bit more open. Matt also really talked about how most the time, they are looking for momentum and/or the passion the entrepreneur has. He mentioned “0nly 10% of people who pitch to me, follow up,” which leads me to the most important thing that stuck out to me. Matt talked about how he wants to hear from you, but, not just to small talk, but to hear progress. He really went into this in detail, but, essentially, he wants to hear that you have set a goal and not only met it but exceeded it, every time he talks to you. It doesn’t have to be a feature being complete or anything, but, could be as simple as just working out something that was an idea that needed to be flushed out. Basically, show that you have some wins and exceed expectations.

Some other great points that were made that stuck in my head were by Kamran Pouzanjani of PriceGrabber. First and foremost he said that you can’t expect to leave you comfortable job and expect to make more money immediately. You are going to have to work long hours, you are going to have to “suffer through it,” and finally you are going to have to change your lifestyle drastically. (Although, I have to admit it was a bit funny hearing that someone left a job making 4x me that had to “suffer”, but, I can totally imagine that it must have been difficult no matter how much you make). The other big point that he made was that he doesn’t want to hear another pitch about a … wait for it … wait for it … “Web 2.0 company!” (Amen, checking my watch, I believe it was about 6:45 PM on March 26, 2009 that we can say Web 2.0 is officially dead!…ok maybe not just yet, but thought that was hilarious.) If you are starting another “me too” site or coming in at the end or starting another “video” site, you are basically irrelevant. He also mentioned that he doesn’t want to see the starters either (a la twitter), you basically want to come in right after that when its starting to rise to more mainstream audiences.

Jason then went into his keys to building a relationship with Angel investors and keys to raising Angel Capital and his overall experiences. Here they are:

Get in and tell them about yourself and tell them about you, remember, they are investing in the entrepreneur and not the idea.
Take the time to talk to them over a 6 month period and it could take that long.
Build a relationship over time and continue to make wins and show wins in that time frame.
Selling yourself is the most important factor, remember, they are investing in you.
Be 100% transparent and honest
Be persistent and relentless, but, don’t be pushy
After the investment, continue that relationship. Getting the investment is not the end of your discussions with the investor, it is the beginning of the relationship.

Finally, there were some other real good points made:

Although investors are mostly focused on the people and the entrepreneur him/herself, sometimes the idea sparks interest.
There are 3M’s important to investors: Management, Market Size, and Momentum
No investors like someone that has a huge EGO or thinks they know the only way to get things done. They like people that are open and know they have a lot to learn. They want someone that knows they might have to shift the company if the market requires it.
Again, Don’t be the guy that is still pitching web 2.0, because, that time has passed.
And again, I can’t keep saying it enough, they are investing in you, so, keep showing and talking about wins wins and that you are exceeding expectations.

Thanks Jason and the DocStoc crew for putting on another stellar night!

Twitter integrates search into main site

2009-03-07T01:37:30Z

Well, there has been talk about Twitter integrating its Search functionality into their main site. It turns out the twitter team was testing this out and it has now integrated into the main site, with some pretty interesting functionality.

Trending in Main Navigation

On the home page, twitter has integrated the latest Trends as a menu item in the main navigation as a drop down.

Twitter Search Results

Clicking on a trend will pull up the new twitter search page. Here is the search results for Watchmen (update: If you haven’t gotten the new search/trends rollout then the link for “watchmen” won’t work! sorry folks!)

Right Rail with Matching Users, Featured Users, and Trending

On that search page there is also some navigation on the right rail.

Matching Users:

Featured Users:

Trending Queries and Nifty Queries:

The future for twitter?

So, does this mean twitter is integrating search and becoming more of a search company. Probably not, but, I do see this as a way of them monetizing search results on that search page if it does become fully integrated. Wonder if that is where they are heading with this?

Also, I do have to say the “matching users” seems very basic and searching the twitter user name. I’d like to see this get a little more advanced based on like types of content the user is submitting, etc.

Keep the conversation going and follow me, @tonyadam, on twitter and subscribe to my blog!

Skittles Aggregated Website, is this a Win or Fail?

2009-03-02T09:18:09Z

Lots a brewing on the Skittles madness tonight because of they’re new “Social Media Aggregation” for their domain. The question I have is, was this a move of pure genius? Or, are they shooting themselves in the foot!

Age and Demographics to get Started:

To start with, before you start to interact with anything Skittles, they make you enter your age. Which, could be a great thing for the simple fact that they could start collecting the demographics of who their main audience is. But, how many people find this as a roadblock? Typically, unobtrusive UI is preferred for new users, but, it’s even worse when every time you hit the dot com, they continue to ask you. This is both a intrusive UI and possibility for skewed deomagraphical data.

End Result: FAIL

Twitter Search Home Page

After you’ve gotten past that point you are now stuck in a situation where you have to think about what you have to do. you are left with almost no outs and no where to go put to look at a twitter search screen and a modal window that has some links. If I was a normal user, my first thought was…”Um, I’m lost, I’m getting out of here.” or “Hmm, I wonder if I hit the wrong page?” It wouldn’t hit the normal user right away that there is a bit of a different user experience being exposed here.

End Result: FAIL

Twitter Trending Topics

You’ll notice that in Twitter Search, “#skittles” is a trending topic. But, this would obviously not last for long, otherwise, people would constantly initiate a twitter search on domains to create trending topics…but wait…did we just stumble upon a hole in the trending topics on twitter? We’ll wait to see where that goes and how Twitter deals with it. Either way, this won’t last for long, otherwise, “skittles” will be trending on twitter forever, and, I’m sure Twitter isn’t okay with this.

End Result: FAIL

Search Results and SEO

Lets take a minute to think about how this effects their Search Results and Traffic for skittles terms. As it stands sites like Wikipedia, YouTube, Facebook, etc. need no help with SEO. But, this new UI provides no content on the skittles.com domain for any of their product or relevant content. Instead, Skittles is now linking to sites like Wikipedia. As a matter of fact, clicking on any of the product links in the widget through skittles takes you to Wikipedia. The only link that keeps you on Skittles.com, “Products,” a generic search term.

Helping sites like Wikipedia and YouTube doesn’t help the SEO value on their domain. What it will do is a create a variety of sites that show up for brand related terms. The problem is that you could quite possibly be killing all internal SEO efforts and watching those sites rank and drive traffic outside your domain.

End Result: Push

Conversation, and Publicity

That all said, lets take a look at the most important questions about the new aggregated website. Starting with Conversation and Publicity. While, skittles is trending on twitter and tons of people are talking about it, the question we have to ask is, are we the ones that they really want talking? We all have to remember that we are a part of the small fraction of the population and that we shouldn’t live within the EchoChamber. The current conversation is definitely stuck within the tech community and we are all talking about it, which is good. The problem is, how much of us talking about it is their target audience, demographic, or is the average user they are trying to reach.

To sum up, we are talking, the cutting edge of the tech crowds that are following on twitter and such, but, the everyday consumer, well, this conversation probably isn’t getting to them…yet.

End Result: Push

Branding

With regards to branding, I feel like they are leaving themselves an opportunity for many failures. From what is being mentioned on the homepage via twitter, to the links being injected into the twitter stream via the trending search term, to possible porn spam or injecting content via framebusting. (credit Michael Gray).

Remember those Wikipedia pages I talked about a couple minutes ago, well, how about the people that will edit those pages and insert related content spam into Wikipedia. Those, those pages are editable, and, we could see an influx of spam on those pages.

Finally, imagine if you are a parent and you are watching your kid play around with skittles.com and have a porn link passed to your child in a spammy way. Next thing you know, twitter is being sued by many a parent and the branding just took a nose dive because of bad publicity.

End Result: FAIL

Overall Result: FAIL (4-2)

Make sure you Subscribe to my blog and check me out on twitter to keep the conversaton going!