Death By Twitter: Olympic Edition

While the rest of us settle in to watch the opening ceremonies tonight, Greece’s triple jumper Paraskevi Papachristou will likely have a very bittersweet experience.

Greece banned Paraskevi from the games this week, after she composed and tweeted what was deemed to be a racist comment from her Twitter account.  Ready for it?

"With so many Africans in Greece... the West Nile mosquitoes will at least eat homemade food!!!"

You can guarantee she regrets that one. 

Sentiments in Greece seem to be divided and reflect the opinions of a larger economic issue in the country, the influx of illegal immigrants from Africa and Asia. 

I was initially struck with what seemed like a double standard in the digital age.  I can’t help but remember just a couple weeks ago when Daniel Tosh all but threatened one of his comedy show patrons with “Wouldn’t it be funny if that girl got raped right now” with repercussions no more than an apology tweet.  What’s the difference?  How can Tosh get away with just typing an oops message and Paraskevi gets her life dream smashed? 

If there's a balance here, it must come down to who you represent.  Paraskevi was a face of her country.  Therefore, her tweets meant more than just random thoughts.  As the face of Greece in the Olympic games, she would also be the voice of Greece in the Olympic games.  And when you’re words have that weight, extra and extreme caution must be taken even in social media. 

Think before you tweet, people.

I don’t want you to be Death By Twitter’s next victim.

RECIPE FOR A PERFECT TWEET

1 cup of knowledge, a dash of insight and a pinch of humor. Isn't that the recipe for a perfect tweet?
If only it were that easy. What does that look like in the real twittersphere? What's the perfect combination of 140 characters to release to the world?
Earlier this month, All Twitter's Shea Bennett gave some insight into the perfect tweet that I wanted to recap for our readers. Shea is right on that the essentials are readability and retweetability.  
To help you achieve Tweeting Perfecton, check out these 6 tips.

1. Think Like Your Readers This is really just about knowing your customer. Don't tweet in a way that just appeals to you. Know who is reading your tweets and what they want to hear. Think like they think and you'll appeal to them. The result is more clicks, more retweets and more engagement. 2. Sell The Headline in a Non-Salesman Way No one wants to feel like they are being sold something. Even so, people need a good reason to click on or engage with a tweet! That is the conundrum that needs to be balanced for the perfect tweet. "This is cool" and "Buy my stuff now!" are among the worst statements to make next to a link. Steer clear also from making extreme promises or overhyping to your readers. If people find they can't trust your words, they will ignore them. 3. Use Correct Punctuation Just do it. Some people might not mind when you don't, but those that do, mind a lot! Use commas, put apostrophes in the correct places, employ parentheses when appropriate. Additionally, watch out for programs that auto generate tweets. While very helpful, some use erratic punctuation and hashtags that give a less than professional impression. 4. Check Your Spelling Comeon, guys. You probably know how I feel about spelling mistakes and the need to proof your own work. I've posted about it before. This goes for all tweets because this stuff matters. One caviat to this is "text-speak" such as "R U going?" or "Going 2 restrnt!". Obviously, this is not ideal. Sometimes in the twittersphere, however, it is very tempting to abbreviate because you can save yourself a few of your precious 140 characters. You need to avoid this at all costs. Here and there, I'll let you get away with a "u" instead of "you", but you are definitely better off taking an extra moment to craft the message differently and use proper spelling than resorting to text-speak. 5. Prepare For The Retweet Brace yourself. The perfect tweet shouldn't utilize all 140 characters. Yes, I am taking away some characters. To properly prepare for retweets, you need to leave room in the tweet for someone to retweet it. This is because many retweets add either your twitter handle or the retweeter's twitter handle to your original tweet. So, sorry, folks, but I am about to remove a piece of your 140-slice pie. Actually, 20 pieces. That's right, the ideal tweet is 120 characters, leaving 20 blank characters for retweeting. Granted, Twitter's internal retweeting removes the need for a shorter retweet (because it just copies your original message directly) but not everyone uses that specific type of retweet. So, strive for 120 characters when you can, but do not sacrifice the quality of your tweet. 6. Shorten Your Links Can I say this enough? Use Bitly to shorten your links. DanZarella, the social media scientist, shared a great chart that shows why Bitly is the best URL shortener. Try it, learn it, love it. Thoughts on our steps to the perfect tweet? What else would you advise?

Can Your Smartphone Predict Your Future?

An interesting new feature for smartphones is being tested in the UK. 

And when I say “interesting”, I really mean futuristic/crazy/almost scary intel!  Soon, your phone may be able to tell where you are going, predict your future movements throughout a day, and adjust accordingly. 

Now, understand this with me.  I do not mean GPS tracking where you are.  That is a cool feature and most people with at least a decent level of smartphone intelligence have benefited from real-time map directions, traffic updates, “near me” restaurant recommendations and weather reports.  Those are wonderful, but not what I am talking about here.

I am talking about future-predicting smartphones; basically tracking your past movements and recording what your friends do to determine what you are most likely doing next.

According to Mashable, researchers at the University of Birmingham have developed a remarkably accurate algorithm that follows users’ mobility patterns and factors in patterns of people in their social networks to adjust for abnormalities. 

The algorithm has been tested on 200 volunteers, whose smartphones tracked their every move for months. The result was pretty accurate predictions of where they would likely be 24 hours in the future. 

The challenge now is to establish the capabilities of this future-prediction feature that make it the most useful for users.  Personally, right now, I don’t want my phone to track every single move I make.  And I certainly don’t want it feeding information to anyone out there concerning where I might be in 24 hours!  Hello, stalker-much!? 

But, let’s take a little glimpse into the possibilities.  I might be okay with this entire process if, say, my phone could tell me there is a dry cleaners for the clothes I need laundered right next to the gym I was going to go to tomorrow after work.  And, better yet, give me a 30% off coupon for said dry cleaners.  Or if, say, my phone alerted me a day ahead of time that there was going to be heavy traffic on my way to work the next day due to an Obama-visit.  It might even offer to auto-set my alarm 30 minutes earlier for me.  Why, yes, dear smartphone.  Please do. 

Since the UK study and algorithm are still in prototype phase, I don’t know if these will be the future capabilities of the data.  Unlike the smartphones, I can’t predict the future.  But I do know it would need to be extremely safe and amazingly helpful for me to use this feature.  Only time will tell.

What would you want this future-predicting smartphone to help you with?

Happy Social Media Day!

You know you've hit it big when you have a day of the year dedicated to you.  I'm still waiting for Social Media Diva Day.  It has a nice ring to it, don't you think!

In the meantime, Social Media Day is here!  This Saturday, June 30th is Mashable's 3rd annual Social Media Day!  Started in 2010 by Mashable, the worldwide event is a celebration of "the digital revolution happening right before our eyes"!

Here's my challenge for you for Social Media Day 2012. Learn something new.

Yup, that's it.  Seems simple, huh?  And guess what!?  It IS simple! 

There are so many amazing sites that can simplify, deepen or enhance your life and your learning.  I've listed several of them below.  I want you to sign up for one of these, create a username and spend an hour digging around on the site.  Get involved in the conversation and the community.  And let me know what you learn.  I can't wait to hear about it.

http://www.facebook.com/ (really?  If you aren't on Facebook yet, we need to talk!)                  
http://www.tumblr.com/
 http://www.pinterest.com/
http://www.instagram.com/ http://www.meetup.com/                                                                                                                   http://www.twitter.com/
 http://www.digg.com/                                                                                                                       http://www.flickr.com/
 http://www.youtube.com/                                                                                                                 http://www.blogger.com/
 http://www.klout.com/                                                                                                                      http://www.reddit.com/
 https://plus.google.com/                                                                                                           http://www.stumbleupon.com/

 Bonus points:  Logon to to http://mashable.com/smday/ to see if there is a Meetup scheduled in your hometown.  You are sure to meet a ton of people and learn.   Strange enough, here in LA, our Meetup currently has no details!  But social media lovers are biting at the opportunity.   If deets aren't up soon, this is going to be a crowd sourced event!!!

Ever Committed A Twitterror!?

Eeeek! 

That feeling you get when you just hit the Tweet button and you see a glaring mistake in your 140 characters.  Or when re-reading a previous tweet you realize it could be interpreted differently. Or you calm down after a knee-jerk reaction to a snarky tweet and you’ve already let it all out into the Twittersphere. 

Twitter moves FAST.  That's one of its great features.  Just think how Twitter is now a trusted place for real-time news.  But this fact also makes Twitter a huge liability, especially in moments of post-tweet panic. 

What next?  It’s a lose-lose situation.  Deleting the tweet looks sneaky and suspicious, plus the words can live on through screenshots taken by other users.  Leaving the tweet allows it to be retweeted and spread, even if you issue another tweet apologizing.  What’s a tweeter to do!?

Last week, interface designer Oliver Reichenstein proposed a solution to this problem; give tweeters the choice of marking their tweets as “error”.  The original tweet would be edited and the “errored” words would be crossed out - indicating that the tweeter acknowledges the error and has since corrected it, probably in a follow-up tweet. 

This is still just an idea, but social media blogs and journalists have seemed to like it.  The Twitter Design Team, however, hasn’t yet jumped on board.  They think it would only be used by journalists, and aren’t convinced that spending resources on a feature that’s not universally used is a smart choice. 

Have you seen or committed a Twitterror??  Would you want to point out your errors?  Or just let them die in the Twittersphere?

IT'S ALL ABOUT THE TIMING!

A problem that is often brought up to Social Media Diva is that some Tweeters feel that their tweets are being ignored, and just sent out into the abyss and then…. nothing.  This is especially painful when you put a lot of thought and effort into constructing the best use of your 140 characters. 

It’s a difficult problem.  There are several avenues available for increasing the likeliness of retweets, clickthroughs and Twitter interaction; today lets look at timing.  After all, they say timing is everything!

Bitly, the url shortening site whose site update I blogged about earlier this month, recently conducted a study of retweets and clickthroughs based on what day and time tweets were posted. 

A pretty cool infogram from Raka Creative details their finding below.  Some takeaways: 

• Tweeting weekdays (specifically Mon- Thurs) between 1 and 3 pm Eastern will get you the most clickthroughs if you are sharing a link.   Hm!  Is it the afternoon slump or is everyone at Starbucks!?
• Fewest clickthroughs on links come after 8pm Mon- Thurs or 3pm on Fridays.

Be sure to take into consideration time zones and where your target audience is when you are tweeting!  These are all based on Eastern time zone... not sure why, west coast is the tech coast!

Tailored Trends on Twitter

Thanks to new tailoring, your trending topics will suit you even better!

“Trending topics” are valuable tools to help tweeters discover the most popular topics on Twitter but, until now, have been sortable only by geographic region. 

Yesterday, Twitter announced on its official blog that you will now be the center of its trend algorithm.  In other words, trends will now be displayed based on who you follow as well as on geographic location.

I am thrilled by this news.  Fingers crossed that it means less trending topics like “#URGhettoIf or #BeliebersUnite” --  Really, Twitter!  These are trends social diva and her BFFs find unappealing.  We want to know what our buddies are talking about most and trends early adopters are jumping on.

Of course, the general trending topics will be there if you want to check them out.  The tailored trends will be rolling out as a default setting, but Twitter reports that, if you “want to see a more general list of Trends, just change your location on twitter.com”.

Is your twitter account more au courant with better fitting trends?  Enlighten us, how is it?