The human touch still needed

Per BBC, a young Saudi girl who was married to an older man in his 50s has been granted a divorce in an out-of-court settlement.

A judge had earlier rejected the girl’s mother’s appeal in the town of Unaiza. He was replaced by a new judge who decided to nullify the case after the marriage was confirmed illegal by the girl’s husband, per BBC.

Twitterers had these reactions when the legal news first penetrated worldwide:

1. 
   Donnette (South Africa) a Saudi marriage officiate declared that a girl can be married at the age of one if sex is postponed http://tinyurl.com/cev327 14 Apr 2009 from TwitterFox
2. 
   danie_d (San Francisco, Calif.) 8 year old girl married to a 47 year old man in Saudi Arabia. U.S. doesn’t allow it to affect trade. But mention trade w/ Cuba and “OH NO.” 15 Apr 2009 from web
3. 
   quantifyme (Undisclosed) A 8 yr old Saudi girl married to a 50 yr old Saudi man is a shame. Not only is a violation of human rights, it is “child slavery” 16 Apr 2009 from TwitterFon
4. 
   newbert (Cape Town, South Africa) RT @geekstats 8: age of Saudi Arabian girl married by father to settle debts. (http://bit.ly/WrvB). This world can be hideous. 24 Apr 2009 from TweetDeck
5. 
   governancefocus (Undisclosed) A Saudi girl of 8 was married to a man in his 50’s and now they want to annul it. What do you expect from a country without democracy. 30 Apr 2009 from web

Following the most recent media reports, Twitterers noted these reactions today:

1. 
   michou83 (New Jersey) http://tinyurl.com/cwrmxa– Young Saudi girl’s marriage ended…. THANK GOD. Now they just need a real policy. 30 Apr 2009 from web
2. 
   forakin (Amsterdam, Netherlands) Young Saudi girl’s marriage ended but not by the courts and hidebound religious judges http://is.gd/vEqY 30 Apr 2009 from twhirl
3. 
   macleans (Undisclosed) Out-of-court settlement allows Saudi girl, 8, to divorce 50-year-old husband http://tinyurl.com/cqbcmk 30 Apr 2009 from twitterfeed

No immediate reaction could be found within Saudi Arabia itself. Tweets were searched for in both Arabic and English.

Eight-year-old Saudi girl’s marriage annulled

Looking beyond Twitter

As the legendary New York Yankees catcher Yogi Berra was rumoured to have said about a restaurant: “Nobody goes there anymore because it’s too crowded.” The same can be said of Twitter’s entrance into mainstream media.

With Oprah joining the Twitter community, and the ridiculous Ashton Vs CNN race, the end of the buzz is near. The cool geeks that first adopted it are now fed up of the constant stream of news about it. Mainstream media knows about it, and can’t stop yammering on about the dreaded microblogging service. While it’s adorable to see how big celebs like Oprah start stumbling around Twitter in the same way an adult watches a toddlertakes his first steps (“aww, look at Oprah twittering — how cute is that?”), the novelty dies out rather fast.

The entrance of the mainstream celebs into Twitter also changes the dynamic of the social network. Where once the sphere was dominated by eager geeks, now it’s become increasingly crowded by a bunch of marketers, brands, gurus, and celebrities that don’t really give a crap about whether you’re the 100,321st or 100,322nd follower. It’s as if Cheers became the watering hole of a bunch of big-talking “I make bank” douchebags and advertising execs.

Social media best practices for newsrooms

Joseph Lasica highlights some innovative use of social media in the newsroom

Dozens of journalists at the Austin American-Statesman are now using Twitter. Internet editor Robert Quigley and Tribune Interactive’s Daniel Honigman talk about how their organizations use Twitter for community outreach in this 9-minute video interview.

Andy Carvin, social media strategist for NPR, talks about how NPR has used social media, such as Ning, Facebook, Twitter and Flickr, in its inauguration and hurricane coverage.

In this audio podcast, general assignment reporter James Janega of the Chicago Tribune discusses how Twitter helps him in his daily reporting.

Poynter coverage on social media includes the recent Tidbit, “How to Use Twitter to Break News on Your Site When Staff’s Away.”

A dozen commenters have weighed in with additional examples here: How to use social media in the newsroom.

On Williams & Stone

An interesting profile of Twitter founders Evan Williams and Biz Stone. (Tks, Jack for the link).

Money graph:

The real Twitter revolution may prove to be much more everyday. When I stop for a latte at Peet’s Coffee on the way to the interview, the manager tells me that he plans to start sending out tweets to let regular customers know when a table is open. He isn’t alone. A Manhattan bakery twitters when warm cookies come out of the oven. “It’s those small stories that really inspire us,” says Mr. Stone. “Those are the things that transform people’s lives.”

Social media douchebags

“Don’t call me a social media guru,” said one social media consultant at a small gathering last Monday. If there’s one I hate most over recent times, it’s the term “Social Media guru/expert/enthusiast” on one’s Twitter profile page–it’s an annoying self-styled term that can be summed up in one word: Douchebag.

Let’s take a short history lesson in Internet douchebaggery. The douchebag term in the mid-2000s was “Web 2.0”, and it didn’t help that Malcolm Gladwell’s Tipping Point came up during that time. Soon, you had people all over the web putting 2 and 2 together and calling themselves “Web 2.0 Mavens” .

Smart readers like you realise that “Web 2.0” is a hollow term: it meant many things, and nothing at all. It was a vague rah-rah… marketing catch phrase. A glance at its Wikipedia entry admits as such: “‘Web 2.0’ refers to a perceived second generation of web development and design, that facilitates communication, secure information sharing, interoperability, and collaboration on the World Wide Web” (emphasis mine)

John C Dvorak sums it up well in his PC Mag column “Web 2.0 Baloney”:

During the late 1990s, the golden ring slipped just past the grip of a lot of wannabes, who are convinced that they can do it right this time around—if only there is another dot-com surge. Web 2.0 is a rallying point. Maybe cheerleading will make it happen! But what they are cheerleading for, a slew of vague and meaningless concepts, shows that they have no clue about what they are doing.

Fast-forward to 2009: “Web 2.0” is confined to the dustbin of overused catchphrases, and now in its place is “Social Media”, which, when you think hard enough, gives us no new insight. Wasn’t the Internet established as a social medium in the first place, where one computer-user would communicate with another? It’s like saying television is a visual media, or radio is a sound-based medium.  (Note: I realise the irony in saying this, given that our blog is about “Social Media” — more on that below)

The point is, there’s nothing new about Social Media, just as there was nothing new about “Web 2.0” compared to “Web 1.0”. It’s all about repackaging  and selling it to consumers who don’t know any better. Now, add “guru” or “enthusiast” to Social Media, and what do you get? That’s right. Nothing more than someone proclaiming that he/she likes to do lots of Twittering and Seesmicking in his/her underwear — though it’s more likely a him — while shouting “Twitter! Blog! Innovate! Engage!” and other cheerleader statements to prospective clients.

However, the irritating thing is that “Social Media”, just like “Web 2.0”, is a concept that sticks. As vague as it is, the phrase makes it easier for a general population to understand the nuances and the nature of Facebook, Twitter, blip.fms and what have yous. As much as one hated the overuse of the term “Web 2.0” and its vapor-like connotations, one can’t deny its effectiveness in pitching to clients who are still rubbing their eyes at the amazement of “the Google” while parsing the interwebs on their IE 6 browser.

In other words, say “microblogging service, data portability, social graph” and they won’t get you. Say “It’s a social media marketing tool,” and they’ll sorta get you.

Having said that, there are those who do do real consultancy work in this nascent field. I feel sorry for them, especially whenever someone else calls them a “social media guru”–I can see them visibly cringe upon hearing that. Brand Dialogue and BL Ochman provide some clues on how to tell the real deal, but they generally say the same thing: cut through the chatter, get to the real proof of concepts, ask for measurable metrics and strategies,  and don’t believe it when they say the strategy costs nothing and results can be shown in a short time.

So the next time you see me calling myself a Social Media Guru/Expert/Enthusiast, just slap me in the face and call me an self-hyping Twitterer.

The kids won’t pay

Here’s an interesting piece by Joshua Benton who discovered to his surprise that teens who practically live on Facebook, who spend about 60-90 minutes each night on the site, not counting the midday checks at computers in the school library or on their phones, would not be willing to pay US$10 per month if Facebook started charging.

Despite its centrality to their lives, they were willing to toss it aside because they wouldn’t pay $10 a month, he says, noting that these are well-off kids — they could afford it. The reason they gave was that they would simply move to some other social networking site that was free. This led Benton to conclude:

If these kids aren’t willing to pay for Facebook — something they engage with every single day, something they love, something they have already invested countless hours into to build up a network of friends and apps and what have you — what’s the chance they’re ever going to pay half a penny to read a news story?

Twitter & Google are a good fit

We here at FTW Media believe in free speech and I’m going to counter John Lim’s views about a possible Twitter buyout by Google. He thinks it’s a bad idea. I think it’s a good one.

I’ve written a piece about it which will be published in The Edge two weeks from now (it’s been held over due to space considerations). But here, in five bullet points, is the gist of what I have to say:

i) It’s good for Google which doesn’t currently have a good social media offering. (It has Orkut but that seems to be popular only in Brazil and India… go figure!).

ii) It will be hard for Google to monetize Twitter but that hasn’t stopped Google from buying online entities like YouTube.

iii) Twitter founders might be wary of going under the Google umbrella. After all, Jaiku and Dodgeball died a natural death under the aegis of Google. But then again, Blogger.com and YouTube thrived after being acquired.

iv) The danger for Twitter if it doesn’t sell out now is that it will suffer Friendster’s fate. Twitter should strike while the iron is hot. “Now is the time for Twitter to sell,” said Gartner Research Vice President Jeff Mann. “It is at the top of its hype range now. Monetizing on its own would be a long, hard slog.”

v) If Twitter had Google as its parent, it would no longer ever have to worry about funding and the Twitter team could instead focus on creative growth for the company. Obvious immediate improvements include Twitter postings appearing in Google results and no more “fail whale”.

Twitter to be acquired? Nah.

The big social media news (and I hate to write more on the “T-word”, but I gotta), is the is-it-on-no-it’s-off-yes-it’s-on-no-it’s-not-says-Ev rumoured deal between Google and Twitter first speculated by TechCrunch’s Mike Arrington.

There’s been much talk since TechCrunch posted how Google was in talks to acquire Twitter for what was expected to be “well, well north of USD250 million”, though the actual figure, said to be between USD250 to 750 million, was never revealed. Being the hot new social buzzword, Twitter got coverage all over the web (and still does, evidently), but one should keep in mind that TechCrunch has a history of getting things wrong, as in the case of the repeated Digg acquisition rumours.

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone has rebuffed the Twoogle rumours in his blogpost, saying that “Our goal is to build a profitable, independent company and we’re just getting started.” Which is not to say that talks didn’t happen, but they probably didn’t see eye-to-eye on what they’d both get out of the deal.

Social media satire

You know a social media service has reached its tipping point when people start spoofing it. And the most highly spoofed service of them all is Twitter!

First you had Twouble with Twitters, which is crazily funny.

Then you had Slate’s mockumentary, Flutter: The New Twitter, which is as ingenious as it is hilarious.

But the best has to be this news item about how the University of Phoenix plans to roll out a curriculum of courses delivered almost entirely through Twitter.

The university’s dean of faculty, Robert Stanton, is quoted as saying that the school will within three years offer full degree programs across all disciplines because Twitter, as a “near-universal, bidirectional communication system,” offers a “powerful pedagogical platform ideally suited to the mobile, fast-paced lives of many of our students.”

Turns out it was an April Fool’s joke. It could’ve fooled me (actually it did).

Alright you primitive corporate Twitterers, listen up!

As sure as spam follows mail, so will PR and Marketing follow the hype that is Twitter. “Let’s get on it,” I can hear the media planners say. “It’s what the cool kids are doing these days. Let’s make up new innovative ways of communicating our products and services to our target demographic, bla bla bla”

A couple of weeks back, on my debut — and hopefully not final– appearance for netV@lue’s Week In Tech (WIT), writer Aishah Mustapha and I talked about how corporations and Big Media would adapt Twitter into its communications strategy. I gave it a skeptical six months before they truly understood how to use it, mostly because I imagine it to be proposed and run by a bunch of 30-something corporate hacks who think that Facebook is still the cool bananas.

Though Twitter can be described as a “micro-blogging” service, it goes much deeper than that. When I first signed up in 2006 (thanks, Sarah), it took me a good few months to understand what the medium can do. So before any corporates wish to kick-start a social media marketing campaign (*cringe*) using such cool-kid tools like Twitter, consider the following points: