News Snacking at 140 Characters and Trending

At the end of April, the Twitter world was abuzz with the news that HP had acquired Palm Computing. I noticed the first tweet at about 1:07 pm PT @siliconAlleyInsider broke the news. Seconds later, the floodgates opened with an outpouring of tweets on the topic. Then about 20 minutes after the first tweet, something interesting happened. The tone of some tweets changed. Sure people and news outlets were still tweeting about the acquisition, but now there was a new type of tweet in the mix—the “stop, I already know HP acquired Palm tweet.” In just under 20 minutes, the twitterverse had tired of the news.

As a self-proclaimed news junkie, this fatigue disturbed me. Other than an occasional tweet with a link to the press release there was only the one fact distributed in the tweets—HP had acquired Palm. It really wasn’t a story yet as many of the basics weren’t yet disseminated and even the Wall Street Journal took about 10 minutes to get out its basic story. But by the time the WSJ piece hit, the news had already been tweeted to a large audience. Soon the journalistic news stories started to hit providing more depth. But something strange happened; I didn’t click. The news felt old and dated—after all it was 30 minutes ago.

As I pondered this lack of desire to read more about the acquisition, I realized that this was happening far too often. I had a daily habit of getting the Twitter version of the news—or maybe on a good morning scanning the headlines of a news aggregator site. I was consuming my news without digesting at 140 characters at a time. It was initially satisfying, but ultimately left me empty.

So I’m asking readers to stop and take a look at how they are consuming news and to fight the urge to “snack” and “nibble” away at news. Go for more depth, actually click the links and read the content. Sure you won’t be able to cover as many topics, but you’ll have more depth of knowledge. I’m going to take the plunge because what do I actually know about the HP acquisition? Really I know nothing about it at all.

Social Media Week 2010 - San Francisco

The first week of February is Social Media Week and this month’s activities took place in six cities--from Berlin to Sao Paulo to right here in San Francisco. Festivities included a day long session at the Presidio, several panels and sessions and a variety of social gatherings attended by hundreds of people, including those new to social media, social media practitioners and our local and often world renowned experts.

Having attended several of these activities, an area of particular interest to me was the subject of measurement in social media. While there are many tools and strategies to help measure the impact of social media, the key to successful measurement begins with identifying⎯at the corporate level⎯why you’ve engaged in social media in the first place. Is the goal to build your brand? Reach influencers? Boost sales?

After defining your purpose and beginning measurement, how do you then analyze the data in a meaningful way? If you’re a start-up or smaller company, it’s probably a lot more manageable. But what if you’re at Accenture and want to know the impact of Tiger Wood’s negative publicity on your brand? At that point, you need tools to help analyze, understand and act on this tsunami of information.

The bottom line on measurement in social media? Know your purpose and then monitor, measure and react in ways that make sense based on your objectives and your business. Don’t rely on one tool. Take a look at free tools such as Google Alerts, Trendrr,Socialmention, Twitter’s search feature and BoardTracker. You’ll likely be able to combine tools so that you are monitoring what is most important to your company. If you need something more robust then look to the paid tools; there are a number of affordable options such as Filtrbox, eCairn, ScoutLabs and of course there are several high-end solutions such as Radian6.

If you’re looking for more information on how to put social media to work for your business or want to mingle with the social media-minded, visit the Social Media Club at www.socialmediaclub.org to find a meeting near you.

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