We start out today’s podcast with a shout out and sincere thank you from Cameron and I for the encouragement and input that we received as a result of our previous episode entitled Listener Feedback Welcome. Keep those cards and letters coming!
That lead us into the first half of our conversation about the fact that mainstream media outlets including CNN, Fox, PBS, ABC, NBC, CBS .. and MSNBC have all recently run stories about Twitter.
This topic came about after Cameron noticed a couple of my tweets while I was watching the Morning Joe host Willie Geist interview a reporter from CNBC named Dennis Kneale, who said things like “Twitter is the next Facebook” and “Twitter was invented to make me feel unhip and old” and “it’s like a new restaurant, everyone goes there because everyone goes there”.
Clearly there is a problem when CNBC’s Media and Technology Editor is oblivious to the power that the Twitter platform provides to the user base. My tweets were to show disgust that he said “it’s to make fun of people” and a reply to @hardaway that mainstream media is showing their ignorance and eventual obsolescence when they do segments showing a complete lack of understanding of the service. Then to top it all off, Dennis Kneale admits that he doesn’t even have a twitter account himself! He is certainly a big fan boy of Facebook though as he keeps trying to compare the two.
Watch the segment for yourself here.
Comedy Central and Jon Stewart have taken on the platform for a skit which is a bit more tongue in cheek so we’ll give him credit. We also discuss an interesting interview on The Charlie Rose Show, which put Evan Williams, Co-Founder of Twitter at the table to discuss the business.
An enlightening moment arrives near the end when Williams says to Charlie Rose discussing his joining Twitter, and he says “we’ll point you out and you’ll get hundreds of thousands of followers” … which is certainly a strategy that Twitter has started to initiate where they are trying to drive up follower numbers for high profile users in a less than organic way via the suggested user list.
How do you feel about this? Is this a service that undermines the organic discovery process at the heart of what the platform does, or is it simply a good way to get new users kickstarted on their way to using it?
We next turn our attention to the social networking platform called Flickr, that has been built to compete against the photo sharing sites such as Snapfish, Smug Mug, Photobucket, etc.
I have a photostream and here is Cameron’s photostream.
As with all social networking, there are ways to subscribe to other users photos, make comments on the photos, and even purchase the photos through Flickr.
An example of a brand strategy can be seen by what the podcasters at CoffeeCast.fm are doing with Flickr, trying to develop a social network of coffee drinkers who post photos of their experiences, and tagging them with the term CoffeeCast. Each tagged photo will appear in the Group and on the Coffeecast.fm site via a Flickr widget. This is a great way to encourage user generated content and brand loyalty from the audience.
Cameron loves to check out the inspiration from the “interesting today” category on FlickRiver. Other apps that we use include Flickup for the IPhone and My Flickr as a Facebook app.
(Update: I mentioned in the podcast that Flickup is a free app, but I just happened to check the App Store and it is listed as $2.99. Not sure if I got an early free version or not, but I don’t recall paying for it. JM)
There are some great terms regarding the protections that contributors are provided when uploading to Flickr. As you load photos you are able to decide what type of copyright protection you wish to assign to the image including the multiple variations of the widely used Creative Commons licensing. CC attributions could be a topic of multiple episodes, but we suggest looking at the development of the project and the extraordinary impact it has had on the burgeoning creative community online.
Also, keep us in mind as you post photos to Flickr. We’d love to get a link from you with your photostream .. we’ll post them here on Overflow.
