Category Archives: viral marketing

TwitClicks drops Twitter user feature?

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TwitClicks is a good URL shortening and analytics service. At free it is hard to complain too much.

However, there has been a noticeable absence of a key and unique qualitative reporting feature of TwitClicks – “Who Visited – See Best Guess”. While the domain of the traffic source shows up (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIN even Ning show up fine) since March or April 2009 there is no more data on specific Twitter users. Previously, this worked great and revealed which users were responding to which messages – essential for understanding response and viral propagation.

A simple test was performed on a recent post on this very blog to determine the source of the problem. A TwitClicks shortened URL was posted on Twitter and functioned fine.

TwitClicks results.

However, when it came to reporting the previously available user name feature TwitClicks consistently provides no data over several more tests. More specificlly, there are absolutely no user names of Twitter clickers anymore. Possibly, related to this it was determined after a referral monitoring test that Google Analytics was being used on a redirected TwitClicks page – basically in the middle between Twitter and the target landing page. While the redirect process is essential, it unclear what value the JavScript-based Google Analytics system brings in the context of TwitClicks.

With all the compeition for URL-shortners and Twitter analytics tools, it is odd that this feature was dropped at this time. Inquiries to TwitClicks have not been successful – would love to hear from other measurement-oriented folks if they are having the same experience.

Twitter Measurement…and More

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Michael Tchong of Ubercool does a nice job of looking at the measurement of social media/micro-blogging phenom Twitter for a recent issue of the OldTimers Newsletter.

Actual tracking of specific post is not covered but you can check out TwitClicks, one of the better URL shortener services that offer some of the basics you’d find and some hooks into Twitter’s API. More…

On another subject…Twitterer’s Narcissists?

I suspect Marshall McLuhan would agree.

Aaron Lynch Mystery Ends, He Passed Away

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If you found this page from entering his email: aaron@thoughtcontagion.com or aaron@mcs.net heads-up. 3 years and one month later – better late than never. I just learned that Aaron Lynch the author of Thought Contagion had passed away a few years ago.

Aaron was a phycist by training but really ahead of his time with his own ideas about memetics. I was introduced to him by my old boss from Louisville-based Military Channel (the original in ’98). When I saw his site and realized he was in Chicago, I contacted him and we met up with him for dinner on one visit and staid in touch. Aaron’s work hit on alot of what anecdotally worked in various viral marketing projects that I’ve been involved with – his work was very accessible.

Aaron and I last spoke over lunch at Charlie’s Ale House in Lincoln Park, Chicago back in June 2002 after I had returned from RealMedia. It was after 9/11 and he shared some new projects with me including 1) Sexually-Transmitted Beliefs, 2) Consulting work he was doing for the CBOT or Merc Exchange and 3) A hush-hush project that involved the government.

The Coroner’s Report stated that Aaron Lunch died from an accidental overdose of painkillers . He was laid to rest in Homewood Gardens, Illinois.

Journalism: Live by the Sword…

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…well, you know the rest.

Great piece by Shelly Palmer in the Jack Meyer’s Report on innuendo and rhetoric against facts in the online media world.

Several great examples of journalism and big media failing terribly to get it right – makes you wonder. Journalism and the Media are notoriously unaccountable for getting it wrong.

With the “cat out of the bag” on user-generated content, Journalism is up in arms.

Traffic and truth online are not necessarily related (really?).

Curiously, the M-word is not mentioned though. Online, the network effect of memes on reality is only becoming more powerful. With the proliferation of broadband Internet and software tools, faux news like the image of Sarah Palin with a machine gun and the viral ad (by Gatorade) of the the ballgirl leaping 1o’ straight up for a catch are only going to accelerate.

More troubling is that more recent example about Governor Palin and CNN support the notion of journalist and media bias – in the Bernard Goldberg sense of the word.

Memetic Marketing & Social Media

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A collection of interesting stories that I’m digesting around social media and related technologies:

Crossing the Chasm 2.0…

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For fans of the legendary treatise on enterprise technology marketing.

Geoffrey is a partner at Mohr Davidow these days and gave an interesting SVASE presentation at Microsoft’s campus on February 28, 2008 – very well-attended. He is working on a new book…guess what the names is?

🙂

In a Web 2.0-crowdsourcing-kind-of-genuflection, Geoffrey asked for feedback from attendees. Here are some thoughts albeit late that I’m repurposing from an email sent to Geoffrey.

  • There is less of a difference in the Web 1.0 vs. 2.0 split than it appears. Having been on both B-C and B-B sides of the world – both are subject to essentially viral/memetic considerations at the chasm point.
  • In Geoffrey Moore’s 1.0 model he called it, “Bowling Pins/Tornado”…Isn’t this really the same social phenomenon of the so-called “tipping point” of Malcom Gladwell?
  • True enough that market participant motivation is not exactly the same, but there is a finite set of human behaviors that still motivate purchase decisions: greed, fear, ego, etc…

Presentation Powerpoint.

An edited MP3 of the talk for online media/technology folks.