Happy to welcome my daughter Lauren Schaefer back as a guest blogger on {grow} …   

Hello readers! It has been too long and I’ve missed you!  I’ve been a bit busy graduating from college, moving to New York City,  starting my job as a professional event planner and writing my own blog that has nothing to do with social media. But now I’ve had some time to breathe, so time to write!

As I have immersed myself in this new “young-professional” role, I’ve been noticing some social media trends among my twenty-something peers that you might find surprising.  What’s hot? What’s useful?  What do we not give a crap about?

Here are some intelligent and good-looking opinions on the platforms that we loathe and love:

Twitter:  Among young professionals, Twitter is becoming the holiest of holy. The exclusive and elite. The smart and creative. You can be witty, you can be hip, #YouCanComeUpWithHashtagsThatAreSoBrilliant. And best of all, grandma — who is all over Facebook — doesn’t know about it. Twitter is the world without the politics and drama of Facebook and it is the coolest of the cool right now.

LinkedIn: Every day I receive new notifications from my classmates. FINALLY. Hop on board friends. It’s been a realization for my group that not only is this a tool we need while looking for our jobs, it’s also necessary to keep movin’ on up.

Facebook:  No, we’re not leaving Facebook.  My generation will never really let go of Facebook. We’ve gone through too much together. Too many photos, too many exes to stalk, too much history together.  But we have also trudged through all of the constant change Facebook has put us through and frankly, it’s exhausting.

Among my peers, there are two classes of people on Facebook — those on Twitter and those who aren’t. Those who are “Twitter-less” continue to post their lives, their trials, their tribulations on FB.  But those of us on the 140 character machine, bitch openly on Twitter and “family-friendly filter” on Facebook. Twitter is the conversation. Facebook is just a place to archive photos post lame jokes.  We can have Facebook open at work because we’ll never post anything incriminating there. Twitter is where the juicy stuff lives.

Google+  In a word, FAIL.  Seriously.  We don’t give a crap about our impact on SEO.  I joined and built my “circles” and there have only been two updates ever … and one is from my mother saying, “great , something else I need to update. ”

Everything that is cool about Google+ can be found somewhere else and we’re already happy and comfortable with those other platforms.

Now, let’s talk about a hot social media site for the young professional crowd and you probably have never heard of it: OK Cupid.

Yep.  A dating site.

But there is something very interesting going on here.  Once I got past the initial “creepy” factor of realizing that I’m old enough to be on a dating site, I discovered an exciting new social networking model emerging here.  It’s kind of like a combination of Facebook and Twitter for people you don’t know — people who are not currently your friends but who might become your friends, or in Cupid-terms, an “adventure buddy.”

Many of my friends are now spending more time on OK Cupid than Facebook. They are finding it fun to socialize, share restaurant recommendations, chat about music and books, etc. with new people who have similar interests.

Of course there are other social sites but I’m over my word limit and Dad is ringing the bell.

What do you think about these observations? Any surprises?

Lauren Schaefer is a recent college grad, new NYC resident, and nonprofit event planner with an interest in all things social media. She documents her new journey as a young professional at her blog From the Fifth Floor. Twitter: @leschaef

This is the time of year for predictions and it’s all starting to sound like yada-yada to me.  Probably you too?

But how many bloggers go back and actually let you know how they did with last year’s predictions? Let’s start there, and then I will add four surprising 2012 predictions of my own at the end.

Here are social media predictions I made throughout 2011 and my grade for my guess!

Google+ will not be the Facebook killer. People went crazy when I predicted this, especially since at that point I had not even tried it! Doesn’t matter. The switching costs are too high among Facebook’s core audience. I think Google+ is important and it will survive but it will not upend Facebook.  Am I right?  Too early to tell, but I think I am trending correct on this one. I’ll have to give myself an incomplete.

Quora is not the next big thing.  In early 2011 I was the lone voice it seemed not piling on the Robert Scoble bandwagon. Scoble had declared that Quora would replace blogging and was more useful and elegant than Facebook and Twitter.  I said no, there was not going to be a Quorgasm — it was too easily gamed, too noisy and too difficult to navigate. Yes, I was right.  Grade = A +

QR Codes will soon be obsolete — Many people predicted that QR codes would rock the world in 2011 simply because they were so popular in Japan. That’s the first mistake. Never assume what takes in Japan will take someplace else.  I said that QR codes are the eight-track tapes of our generation because will be a mis-applied, over-used gimmick and people will end up not trusting them.   I saw an article last week declaring QR Codes dead so it is too early to tell but I think I am trending positive on this.  I’ll give myself at least a B.

Augmented reality gets big.   I was a little ahead of my time on this. I thought AR would take off in a bigger way in 2011 but it is still in the silent movie stages. I still think I’m right but it didn’t happen as fast as I thought. Grade = C

Social Media “re-set” – I thought that during the 2012 budget planning process, marketing executives who were caught in the early social media hype would look over their budgets and figure out they’re not getting the traction they expected.  Too early to tell if there will be a budget re-set, but I think the anecdotal evidence I hear is that I’m wrong.  Small businesses are still catching up of course and the big brands I’m talking to are moving ahead with some pretty advanced stuff.  Would like to know what you think.  Grade = D

Social scoring takes center stage – A year ago when I made this prediction, nobody had heard of Klout.  Yeah, I got this one right.  Way right.  Grade = A+

Social for the enterprise – I wrote that internal uses of social media was the next big frontier for social media. Since that time, Yammer, a leading enterprise provider, had a nearly 200 percent growth rate according to various reports and now has some type of installation in 80 percent of the Fortune 500 companies. And it’s just getting started. Yes, yes, yes.  Grade = A

Micro payments – finally? Facebook started dipping its toe into micro payments in 2010 by giving out free credits to help condition customers use the new credit system.  Yes, this is taking off for virtual goods you can buy on Farmville but it is not the general monetization system for art, music and even blogging that I envisioned. Could still happen but not there yet, Grade = D.

OK … Here are four offbeat predictions for 2012:

1) 2012 will be The Year of the Bird.  On a percentage basis, Twitter will be the fastest-growing social media platform. It’s not new, it’s not sexy, but right now it is getting hot in high schools and that is where the cool stuff starts. It is also exploding overseas.  Watch out for Twitter.

2) Facebook will create alternate universes.  Facebook is too freaking complicated and changes too much.  And while it grew on the back of teens, Grandma represents the fastest-growing demographic. The platform will have to design user interfaces tailored for different market segments … more analytics for geeks, cool new skins for the kids, a larger typeface for the senior crowd.

3) Crowdsourcing goes enterprise. Crowdsourcing has so much potential but also carries a stigma of unfair labor practices.  Based on growth rates calculated by DailyCrowdsourcing.com, it look like this has the potential to finally take off on an enterprise level if companies can be assured of politically-correct and fairly-paid sources of labor.

4) Social Scoring — You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet.  Klout stumbled and fumbled in 2011 but they also made breathtaking progress that was rewarded by brands.  But the real breakthrough is going to happen in 2012 —  Connecting online conversations to offline behavior. It’s already happening in small ways but the real rocket will be the Facebook Timeline.  Will work like this: Joey just posted and tweeted about a new record. Facebook Timeline shows Joey’s friends bought the record.  Record companies send Joey free stuff.

Along these same lines, I think Klout will continue to dominate this niche in 2012.  Although the entry barriers to this niche are really low (come up with an algorithm, attach it to the Twitter API and go), distilling wisdom from that big data takes some fire-power. Klout is far ahead in this respect.   However, I do think there is room for social scores based on different influence niches like teens, fashionistas, foodies, politics, and local measures of influence.  I also predict Klout Klubs will emerge so topical experts can find each other and interact based on this social proof.

What did I hit?  What did I miss?  Would love to hear your opinions in the comment section!

By Neicole Crepeau, Contributing {grow} Columnist

I’m going to get flak for this post, but I don’t care.

I’m so frustrated that I have to write something. I love Twitter.  It’s my main social media outpost, my main information source, and where I connect with a lot of my friends. But Twitter is dying, and it’s all because of you.

Tribes are killing Twitter

I’m a content curator and I spend time every morning reading content and sharing the best of what I find that day, on topics like social media, technology, marketing, and website and mobile design. I look first to Feedly where I can review the latest posts from the bloggers I trust. Then I go to a Twitter List of my favorite Tweeps.

That’s where the problem is. It’s been happening for a while, but today it really drove me crazy. Three tweeps shared the same post with the same title. It sounded like a useful article, but when I clicked to read it, the content was actually mediocre and not very readable.

Continuing to scan my Twitter stream, I kept see the same posts, each tweeted by several people. They weren’t great posts that were being shared because they were uncommonly good. They were average posts being shared because these folks are in the same tribe as the author.

Spam, spam, and more spam 

When I first started curating content, I used LinkedIn groups as a source. It took a lot of work to comb through the discussions and find good content. Too often, a headline looked good, but the article behind it was junk.

Later, I added Twitter to the mix. I had better success with Twitter as it was faster to scan the stream and the content shared on Twitter was much better. Over the years, I created a list of other curators who regularly shared good links. Eventually, I abandoned LinkedIn.

In the last six months or so, I’ve seen the quality of the content being shared on Twitter drop dramatically.  While it’s still easier to scan the stream than use other social networks, too often clicking a link leads to junk–or at least subpar content.

It’s become a big spam-fest on Twitter.  I find myself going back to LinkedIn and also using Google Plus. I’m thinking that I may try to use Facebook more or a third-party tool like Alltop.

You’re part of the problem

I know I’m not alone.  I’ve heard you out there complaining about the same thing. Let’s be clear. If you think there’s too much spam, too much arbitrary link-sharing on Twitter, and you’re using a tool like Triberr to auto-tweet links yourself, then you’re being hypocritical. You’re part of the problem.

We all want traffic to our blog, preferably traffic consisting of our target audience. We’re all busy and find it hard to juggle maintaining a presence Twitter, so auto-tweeting seems like a good option. But it’s not. It’s just turning Twitter into a big blogger ad-space.

We are part of the Twitter ecosystem. We get value from promoting our content on Twitter, among other uses of it. But being part of the ecosystem means we also must protect that ecosystem by being responsible about our use of Twitter. The consequence of not being responsible is that Twitter will become less useful, lose users, and therefore stop being valuable for us, too. If you continue to contribute to the problem, you have only yourself to blame when Twitter is no longer viable.

Prisoner’s Dilemma

I don’t really expect you’ll quit, though. It’s a prisoner’s dilemma situation. Everyone else is doing it, so if you don’t, you’re missing the boat. We’ve seen this story play out before in many different venues.

Which is why I’m hoping the jailor is going to step in and solve the prisoner’s dilemma. The best solution would be if Twitter banned auto-tweeting. I’m not talking about scheduled tweets here. It’s a very different thing for you to manually schedule a tweet. You have to make an effort, and if you’re taking the time to schedule the sharing of a link, you’ve probably read the content you’re sharing. The same is true if you’re using a tool like Triberr in manual mode, where you have to approve the share.

I’m talking about auto-tweeting, where an application shares links on your behalf without you having to manually do anything. I’m really, really hoping that Twitter figures out what is happening and bans third-party apps that auto-tweet. After all, Twitter has the most to lose from the practice of flooding streams.

Twitter doesn’t have a good track record of seizing opportunities or identifying and responding to problems. But it’s in their best interest to not let Twitter become a spam-playground. So I hope they will take action this time. It’s also in your best interests. So here’s hoping you’ll help the ecosystem. Take a positive action. Turn off auto-tweeting and tell your fellow tweeps that you’re #notautotweeting.

Neicole Crepeau a blogger at Coherent Social Media and the creator of CurateXpress, a content curation tool. She works at Coherent Interactive on social media, website design, mobile apps, & marketing. Connect with Neicole on Twitter at @neicolec

Last year I started “collecting” great Twitter bios and kind of got hooked.  When I decided to publish “The All-Time Best Twitter bios,” and “The 20 Funniest Twitter Bios,” readers of {grow} seemed to get hooked too!  So here we are with the third edition. These are all real Twitter bios …

@MichaelACaruso

September 11, 2001.  That was a day many of us experienced a single emotion for the first time — horror.  Not the movie kind. True, real-life, gut-wrenching, nauseating horror.  I will never forget it.

And as I watched the tenth anniversary news coverage, I had this weird thought.

I’m so glad we didn’t have Twitter back then.

“Nine eleven” was a day of complete chaos.  Planes were falling out of the sky. We didn’t know what was happening or why. And maybe most profound, we didn’t know what was going to happen next.  Agents of terror had seemingly used the nation’s infrastructure at will to kill thousands of innocent people on our own soil.

What would be the next target? The water supply? A nuclear power plant? The air that we breathe? You’ll recall that within the week there was an anthrax letter attack on the nation’s capital too. Did we need to lock ourselves up in our homes? Prepare for a nuclear or biological attack?

Can you imagine having Twitter on top of that confustion? What would Twitter be like in the midst of terror and chaos? Although there might be ways that Twitter connections can help in an emergency and maybe even save lives, certainly, when applied to the scale of the 2001 attack, it would also magnify the terror.

When every confused eye witness with a cell phone becomes a reporter and the most ridiculous innuendo can become a viral “fact” today, I shudder to think how much more emotional and psychological damage could have been done had we been following a Twitter stream that day.  How would terrorists use social media to spread misinformation to make the situation even more dangerous?  It would have been another layer of chaos on top of chaos, horror on top of horror.

Instead, we had to rely on “traditional” media.  And for all its faults, there was probably some psychological and emotional advantage in waiting for official statements from emergency services and the government.

Think back to that terrible moment.  Would social media accounts of that day have made the situation any better? Or like me, do you think it would have just added to your fear and confusion? Any lessons or thoughts on this?

Photo:  AP Photo/Suzanne Plunkett

Do social media technologies isolate people and promote false relationships? Or are there important benefits associated with being connected to others in this way?

The Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project decided to examine these questions in a survey that explored people’s overall social networks and how use of these technologies is related to trust, tolerance, social support, and community and political engagement.

Among the many interesting findings, Pew reports that the social relationship “boost” received by Facebook users is equivalent to about half the total support that the average American receives as a result of being married.

I always enjoy reading these reports because Pew is one of the few reliably valid sources of research out there!  The findings presented here paint a rich and complex picture of the role that digital technology plays in people’s social worlds. Here is a summary: 

The number using social networking sites has doubled since 2008 and has gotten older.

In this Pew Internet sample, 79% of American adults said they used the internet and nearly half of adults (47%), or 59% of internet users, say they use at least one site. This is close to double the 26% of adults (34% of Internet users) who used a social site in 2008. Among other things, this means the average age of social media users has shifted from 33 in 2008 to 38 in 2010.  Over half of all adult social site users are now over the age of 35. 

Facebook dominates the social space in this survey: 92% of social media users are on Facebook; 29% use MySpace, 18% used LinkedIn and 13% use Twitter.

By percentage, Twitter has experienced the most growth.  Nearly 60% of Twitter users, 39% of Facebook users, and 36% of LinkedIn users joined within the past year

There is considerable variance in the way people use various social networking sites.

52% of Facebook users and 33% of Twitter users engage with the platform daily, while only 7% of MySpace and 6% of LinkedIn users do the same.

On Facebook on an average day:

• 15% of Facebook users update their own status.
• 22% comment on another’s post or status.
• 20% comment on another user’s photos.
• 26% “Like” another user’s content.

 Twitter is for girls, LinkedIn is for boys?

Facebook users are more trusting than others.

Pew asked people if they felt “that most people can be trusted.” They found that the typical Internet user is more than twice as likely as others to feel that people can be trusted. Further, they found that Facebook users are even more likely to be trusting. They found that a Facebook user who uses the site multiple times per day is 43% more likely than other Internet users and more than three times as likely as non-internet users to feel that most people can be trusted.

Facebook users have more close relationships.

The average American has just over two close Facebook confidants (2.16) – that is, people with whom they discuss important matters. This is a modest, but significantly larger number than the average of 1.93 core ties reported in 2008. They found that someone who uses Facebook several times per day averages 9% more close, core ties in their overall social network compared with other Internet users.  

Follow the money

Facebook users get more social support than other people.

Pew looked at how much total support, emotional support, companionship, and instrumental aid adults receive. On a scale of 100, the average American scored 75/100 on a scale of total support, 75/100 on emotional support (such as receiving advice), 76/100 in companionship (such as having people to spend time with), and 75/100 in instrumental aid (such as having someone to help if they are sick in bed).

Internet users in general score 3 points higher in total support, 6 points higher in companionship, and 4 points higher in instrumental support. A Facebook user who uses the site multiple times per day tends to score an additional 5 points higher in total support, 5 points higher in emotional support, and 5 points higher in companionship, than internet users of similar demographic characteristics. For Facebook users, the additional boost is equivalent to about half the total support that the average American receives as a result of being married or cohabitating with a partner.

Social media users are much more politically engaged than most people.

The survey was conducted over the November 2010 elections. At that time, 10% of Americans reported that they had attended a political rally, 23% reported that they had tried to convince someone to vote for a specific candidate, and 66% reported that they had or intended to vote. Internet users in general were over twice as likely to attend a political meeting, 78% more likely to try and influence someone’s vote, and 53% more likely to have voted or intended to vote.  

Compared with other Internet users, and users of other social platforms, a Facebook user who uses the site multiple times per day was an additional two and half times more likely to attend a political rally, 57% more likely to persuade someone on their vote, and an additional 43% more likely to have said they would vote. Participants in LinkedIn were the most politically active.

The report contains a wealth of detailed information but I hope this summary has been helpful. Any surprises?

A few months ago I introduced a blog post about the 20 all-time greatest Twitter bios I had come across.  I have had more requests to repeat this effort than any other blog post I have ever written (I’m heartened to see that I’m making such an impact!).

Could Twitter bios be the ultimate creative effort?  It’s not easy stating your case in 160 characters.  So here we go Twitter lovers — Round Deux of the funniest Twitter bios ever … and all of these are real (and fabulous)!

@badbanana
Sometimes I just want to give it all up and become a handsome billionaire.

@jeffnoelmidlife
Aggressively unfancy.

@ZacharyColbert
S P E C T A C U L A R V E R N A C U L A R

@bgibbs73
Currently working towards an MBA with an emphasis in fantasy football.

@killer_bunnie
Have own hair and like ugly things

@JAMCollective
Puttin’ the ‘elation’ in ‘Public Relations’

@iamaveronica
I always feel sad for seedless watermelons, because what if they wanted babies?

@TheBloggess
I have friends in spite of myself.

@matsbe
Probably the best meat eater in the world

@jpundyk
Nice guys finish lunch.

@HotAmishChick
Will show ankle for five minutes of wireless

@JeffCThorson
I recently gave up Warcraft so my productivity, and drinking, have increased dramatically.

@growden
there is a problem with this mattress

@howardgr
A man of mystery and power, whose power is exceeded only by his mystery.

@ohyesshecan
social strategy & implementation. will work for shoes.

@katefettie
You know the burnt-out college student in front of you in line at Target who was intermittently chuckling to herself? Nice to meet you, too.

@radmul
If I could sum up my life in one line I would die of embarrassment

@nancyfalls
I’m @JasonFalls’s wife. I am not on Twitter. Go do something useful.

@shariv67
I’m 25% mom 25% comedian 62% boobs 48% mathematician and 100% woman-monkey.

@robburnsbrain
I once sneezed a beenie weenie through my nose. I also made a horse faint in Costa Rica.

Well, there you go!  If you enjoyed this post, why not consider subscribing to {grow} so you can receive weekly insights on social media marketing, business … and even a little humor thrown in now and then!  Thanks for stopping by!

A Facebook site for US government agencies

I’ve had the honor of providing business strategy consultation recently to a UK agency and in the process became immersed in current uses of social media in government. I learned so much that I considered a five-part series on the topic, but one post will have to do for now!

There are unique political, security and infrastructure challenges presented by government applications of social media, but the power and potential is awe-inspiring. Let’s see if you agree. Here are five significant and fascinating trends …

1) The cry for transparency

“This is a terrible time to be a control freak” – Hillary Clinton, U.S. Secretary of State

There is a broad recognition that government information belongs to the people and technology is enabling a new wave of sharing.  A best practice is the newly-designed U.S. Goverment Printing Office site where volumes of documents are now available at your finger tips.

Iceland is looking at social media as a method of “sustainable transparency” through a constant flow of information.

Many UK ambassadors are now blogging on a regular basis. Check out this this post presenting a personal view of the situation in Libya. The government also uses podcasts to address foreign policy issues.

Israel Defense Forces has a YouTube channel chronicling its activities.

Both Brazil and South Korea have created national government documentation portals.

A new site, publicmarkup.org, allows citizens to view, and propose suggestions, to specific U.S. federal legislation as it is in process.

A recent Pew Internet study showed the scope of citizen online activities:

• 48% of adult Internet users have looked for information about a public policy or issue
• 41% have downloaded government forms
• 35% have researched government documents or statistics
• 25% have received online advice from a government agency

2) Beyond transparency – citizen engagement

The opportunity of social media and government is not economic or technological. It’s emotional.” — Aneesh Chopra, CTO of the U.S. Government

I recently had a chance to meet Mr. Chopra, America’s first Chief Technology Adviser to the President, who described his role as a government “convener.” I love that idea. Under his watch the government has crowd-sourced solutions to make procurement more efficient and reduce waste. A new site called Challenge.gov rewards citizens with cash prizes for solving government problems.

Australia is also experimenting with this concept in its “Government 2.0 Taskforce,” which funded 17 projects.

The South African government employed social media to “stimulate a constructive Nation Building debate on values and ethics.” The debate took place last week on the Presidency’s Facebook page.

NASA has a range of programs that encourage active citizen participation in agency projects. You can even customize your own NASA project page.

The Israeli Consulate in New York City has more than 11,000 Twitter followers and a Klout score (social influence) of a respectable 57.

Studies show that citizens who engage with government online have a more positive view of government.  Promoting close online engagement also:

• Creates better decisions by capturing local knowledge
• Increases capacity of society to understand complexity of problems
• Increases public support by legitimizing the solutions

3) Humanizing government

“Social media is not a second website, it’s a community.” — Tristram Perry, U.S. State Department

Governments are beginning to recognize that people are people and take lessons from how brands are engaging and building an emotional connection with stakeholders. Certainly you would expect a clash between the open culture of social media and the button-up culture of government, but I think the areas that can overcome that institutional hurdle will reap benefits.

• I love that the city of Reno pokes fun at itself with YouTube videos about its problematic, crooked Christmas tree. The city’s communications manager Kristy Fifelski even uses a sock puppet in her videos.
• The President of Rwanda Paul Kagame is extremely active on Twitter and responds frankly to issues about his country.
• The U.S. Consulate in Lahore Pakistan is having a Facebook contest and giving away iPods.
• The Love UK Facebook page has discussions about favorite bridges, natural wonders and people of the nation. They attract hundreds of comments on their posts.
• The U.S. Embassy in Jakarta has more Facebook fans than all other embassies combined. Their best practices:
  • Spark discussion and give people a reason to belong.
  • Know your market and customize your information for your audience.
  • Develop unique, engaging content.
  • Post regularly.
  • Set goals and reassess them periodically.

4) Crisis management

“The Singapore government, as a whole, is not averse to using new media. But we’re not completely sure how to use it yet.”  – Goh Yam Song, Deputy Director, Emergency Preparedness, Singapore

Tragically, our world is always experiencing crises and there are plenty of examples where social media may be the ONLY lifeline available to connect with people.

I watched the US and UK embassies in Tripoli use Facebook to instruct evacuations amidst revolution, connecting its citizens with ferries out of the way of danger.

Israel recently held a Twitter press conference about the situation in Gaza.

Emergency management agencies like the Federal Emergency Management Agency (@FEMAinFocus) or state first responders like the Virginia Department of Emergency Management (@VDEM) are active on Twitter, sharing information during crises.

The Canadian Government has set up its own private social network called Connect2Canada to keep a pulse on citizen needs around the world.

5) Real-time response

Democratic governments are here to serve and protect their people, at least in theory.  It is the ultimate customer service organization, right? In the private sector, there are many case studies about companies using social media as an effective tool to solve problems in real-time. In fact, the biggest brands are establishing social media “war rooms” to monitor sentiment and help customers.

These practices are beginning to be adopted by state and city governments. With a tweet or text — potholes, broken street lights and other issues are being reported and fixed. The 311-Twitter service in San Franciso, for example, has answered over 7 million calls and thousands of more requests online.

Why wouldn’t we expect national governments to do the same?  Unfortunately there are very few examples of this happening so far, but certainly this trend will catch on.

So that’s my take on the high-level trends of government and social media. What is happening in your country, region or city?  Any social media success stories?

Here is Twitter by the numbers, courtesy of the Twitter blog:

#tweets

• 3 years, 2 months and 1 day. The time it took from the first Tweet to the billionth Tweet.
• 1 week. The time it now takes for users to send a billion Tweets.
• 50 million. The average number of Tweets people sent per day, one year ago.
• 140 million. The average number of Tweets people sent per day, in the last month.
• 177 million. Tweets sent on March 11, 2011.
• 456. Tweets per second (TPS) when Michael Jackson died on June 25, 2009 (a record at that time).
• 6,939. Current TPS record, set 4 seconds after midnight in Japan on New Year’s Day.
  

#accounts

• 572,000. Number of new accounts created on March 12, 2011.
• 460,000. Average number of new accounts per day over the last month.
• 182%. Increase in number of mobile users over the past year.

#employees

• 8. 29. 130. 350. 400. Number of Twitter employees in Jan 2008, Jan 2009, Jan 2010, Jan 2011 and today.

I had the strangest call from Charlie Sheen yesterday.

“OK man, I’ve got 2 MILLION freaking people following me on Twitter and my Klout score still sucks.  Ya gotta help me!”

“Charlie,” I calmly replied, “Klout scores really don’t tell you much of anything. Don’t worry about it.”

“But Mark,” he stammered, “This is all about WINNING my friend. And I am NOT WINNING if I have a Klout score lower than you. That is just pathetic. My tiger blood is raging here. What do I do???”

Sadly, this type of celebrity Twitter rant has become (yawn) routine for me.  And every bit of that conversation is absolutely true, except the part about Charlie Sheen calling me.

Well, I do get requests from folks asking for Twitter help every day … usually to re-tweet a notable blog post or perhaps in support of a charity.  I’m glad to help where I can but I’ll let you in on a little secret: It doesn’t work.

Some people look at the number of followers I have and a relatively high Klout score and imagine that I can be their gateway to social influence.  I’ve been around long enough to know that these factors do not translate into influence at all.  Even when I ask people to take action on something I really believe in, typically very little action occurs.  This is not a matter of being humble or gracious. It is simply the truth. When I tweet something, it rarely results in tangible action.

Sorry, there is little true influence on Twitter

This phenomenon was also noted in Tom Webster’s fine Brand Savant blog. (It seems like I am quoting him a lot lately!) In an extraordinary measure, he personally contacted every Klout-infested A-list blogger he could think of to help him with a New Zealand earthquake charity appeal.

Tom calculated that the “reach” of his message easily exceeding 600,000. Out of that number, his appeal received 389 clicks and 10 submissions to his cause. Tom admits there were some complications that could have depressed the number but he pithily states that this conversion rate — compliments of some of the world’s greatest Twitter “influencers” — was significantly lower than what would be expected from a random pop-up ad.

In a post on the Networked Nature of Twitter by Megan Garber, she reported that actress Alyssa Milano — with a Klout score of 84 — sent out a tweet to her nearly 1.2 million followers: a link to the Amazon page of a book called Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks & How They Shape Our Lives.

Can you imagine the influence of a tweet from one of Twitter’s biggest stars?  Wouldn’t that really help the author’s career?! Well, the impact was zero. Literally zero. Not one additional book sale resulted from the tweet.

I’ve also had my blog posts tweeted by Alyssa and other Twitterati, and while it definitely sends a short-term spike in page views, it has never resulted in any measurable difference in new blog subscribers. In fact, after Guy Kawasaki tweeted my post five times in 24 hours, my blog reader subscriptions went down.

For those swooning over Twitter-derived influence scores like Klout, this should be a wake-up call. It’s true. On Twitter, no one can hear you scream.

But blogs are another matter …

Marketers should be looking for influence in blog communities. That is where the real magic is happening. Tom Webster made an insightful point in his post — The people who finally took action on his request were strong connections nurtured through his blog-oriented relationships.

I have had the same experience.  I KNOW I can move my blog community to action and they can move me to action, too. The connections built through a blog community are extremely strong compared to the weak ties on Twitter.

Curiously, blog activity is not accounted for on most of the popular social scoring measures. In fact, Klout is only looking at those weak Twitter ties right now.  One measure that seems to at least take a crack at blog influence is Post Rank. Post Rank is one of the milestones used by AdAge to rate the world’s marketing blogs. What does it really measure? Nobody knows for sure … it is certainly an amalgam of tweets, comments and other forms of online engagement taking place between the blogger and the community.  I actually hired a CPA to try to de-tangle the formula for this article and she couldn’t do it!

Nevertheless, if you buy into the notion that blogs nurture strong connections that lead to influence, wouldn’t this elevate a measure like Top Rank ahead of something like Klout?

I think REAL influence is taking place in the smaller, stronger groups found in passionate blog communities.  I plucked out the top-rated bloggers via Post Rank and yeah, these people certainly exhibit thought leadership and influence on their communities and beyond.

By explanation — most blogs on the AdAge Power 150 are run by companies, have a staff of bloggers, or aggregated content. I left them off. So while Brian Clark is most associated with Copyblogger, his name is left off because the site is populated by a staff of writers.

Another observation as I looked at this list — there were a few names I did not recognize. How do those names stack up for you?

Any way, something to think about. Does this make sense to you?  Are you forming strong ties in blog communities, on Twitter, Facebook or elsewhere? What form of online engagement influences YOU?