* Twitter Confirms Paid Pro Accounts Are on the Way.
You knew it had to happen. A cool, fun, open and transparent, community ap for no apparent use other than its members and their interests, passions, lives, humor, craziness, events...And, the adults come in with money and rules and change it.
Granted. It takes money to run this thing called Twitter. I got it. And it's growth takes even more money.
But...I kinda laugh when this thing called Twitter offers analytics and identity confirmations. In the past, in its days of Eden, there was too much fun and too many connections being made to worry about either. And who cared if they looked at your twitter page? What mattered was if they joined the conversation and offered something to the collective, twittersphere.
Life. It changes. And with social media, it changes quickly, right before our eyes.
Personally, I'd much rather everyone pay a cover-charge ($3.00 a month?) to join this thing called twitter. A monthly cover charge levels the playing field. Everyone gets the same party and some tools, the same tools, to make it their party.
And the adults, companies and their marketing departments, can join too. But they can't stand outside and listen only.
Link from peterfrancis.
Blog post at Business Insider.
* Social Media...Advantage Small Business
A short list of action steps for small business and social media campaigns.
I've said this before and this post inspires me to say it again...Social Media is the tool/resource to level the playing field for small business competing against big business. It's the proverbial sling for small business David's battling the global Goliaths.
Use it.
Link from SternalMrktg
Posted at Grey Matter Minute
* 27 Twitter Applications for Your Small Business..
Ewwww. I'm rubbing my hands in wicked anticipation for this article. A quick glance through shows me Twitoria and Monitter and Twitter Gallery (Gawd, I still need to do something with my twitter landing page...) and there's 24 more applications...
Link from fredabramson
Posted at Small Business CEO (great blog)
* Obama Makes History in Live Video Chat
A president taking questions from the public...? It's a first step. And if done frequently, then it's less likely the ballot box will be stuffed... with stoners wanting to know when weed's free or at least legal. Cool and all. I just want a broader range of questions. Regardless, the questions from the people were far better than the question from MSNBC's Chuck Todd:
Why, given this new era of responsible that you're asking for, why haven't you asked for something specific that the public should be sacrificing to participate in this economic recovery?
I guess Mr. Todd, you haven't either read the news or digested the news to discover unemployment is rushing past 10% and that doesn't include those fulltime workers now working part-time or freelancers or those whose unemployment benefits have expired. Much of this rise in unemployment came from existing companies where the skills and talents of their workers were no longer needed. And those same skills and talents, particularly in auto-assembly line workers, are no longer needed...anywhere. No fault of the worker. They did their job. The fault rests with the company who failed to maximize their talents and invest in their training. But they're unemployed. And being unemployed, it means, they may lose their homes or their kids may not be able to afford college or their family may lose its health insurance. Chuck, did you know that almost 50% of personal bankruptcies are caused from catastrophic healthcare expenses?
All this looks like a sacrifice to me, don't you think, Chuck?
Or this classic from Ed Henry of CNN:
But Mr. President, why did it take you days to come out about the AIG bonus mess when Cuomo was on it immediately???
President Obama: Because I like to know what I'm talking about before I speak. Next?
Me: Ohhhhh. Snap! More like Ohhhh, smackdown! Done so concisely and crisply, too.
Here's Ed Henry's after-action review of his performance. My read is he put more thought into his post-presser spin post, than he did in preparing for his moment. Reverse that ratio and there's no need for the follow-up spin. Every one else will do that for him. It's called POSITIVE Word-of-Mouth. Ed, I believe, offered material for negative word-of-mouth. And his consumers delivered.
Every newspaper's management, owners, investors, reporters, editors, delivery-people...everyone associated with a newspaper and who wants that newspaper to succeed should read this post.
For that matter, anyone who wants to read great content, thoughtful and kind and introspective, should read that post and the blog by John Swanson at Levite Chronicles.
I'd riff on it. But I'd only diminish or distract from its import. Go there. Read it. Decide.
* How Twitter, Facebook and Social Media are Shaping Healthcare.
Power to the people and our social media to create the solutions that fit our needs. Like with Obama's Video Chat press conference, social media lets us ask for and deliver solutions for our needs. And these are solutions that fit our budgets, not building our budgets to meet the company's needs for pricing. See the shift. It's huge. Social media allows us, you and me, voters and consumers, to decide...what we want.
Link from SoSpokeSaroj.
Article's at Health Affairs.
* A Control-Freak's Guide to Social Media
There it is: social media's C word. Control. And here's its description and prescription in the words of the blogpost:
Losing control is a primary reason stated by brands who are unwilling to open themselves up to the conversation - and a major reason why most continue to use social media as little more than a brochure on the web. And yet the illusion of control is just that – an illusion. By not involving yourself you actually do more to remove control than if you did.
There it is. Control's an illusion in the market place, aka the conversation. And by not jumping in on that conversation, by not joining it...you've effectively abandons your brand to the conversation; you know, the one you're not part of.
You can run, but you can't hide. You can spin, but you can't control. You can join the conversation and we'll listen.
Link from Emily Luiz.
Post at Mashable.
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