London’s Tower Bridge is on Twitter, I’ll be on the bridge later today

by Robert Scoble on July 5, 2009

Did you know that London’s Tower Bridge is on Twitter? What does it say? When it opens and closes. Fun example of an object in physical space using Twitter to communicate to the world. That reminds me of the Canadian border crossing that uses Twitter to tell the world how long waits are at the border. I wonder what other physical objects use Twitter?

I’ll be on that bridge with Rocky Barbanica (Building43 producer) and Rachel Clarke (she works for a web agency building websites) later today to kick off our Traveling Geeks week. We’re here meeting a ton of geeks and getting a look at all sorts of interesting tech companies and events.

Tonight, if you’re in London, please come by the Tweetup and say hi. Everyone is invited and tickets are still available.

The rest of our schedule this week is fairly packed. But I will try to sneak people into our schedule. Give me a call at +1-425-205-1921 and let’s talk.

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Tech execs: how to reach “normal” users with PR and with TechCrunch/GigaOm et al

by Robert Scoble on July 5, 2009

Ahh, the New York Times has an interesting article on PR in the tech industry. Funny that Brooke Hammerling doesn’t even live in Silicon Valley. But Silicon Valley is no longer a location, it’s a state of mind (I’m writing this in London where I am hanging out with a bunch of geeks and last night we met a bunch of local geeks who are doing some interesting things).

One quote, that caught my eye (it caught TechCrunch’s founder, Mike Arrington’s, too) is this one from Roger McNamee, after Brooke suggested a company’s founder talk to tech bloggers, like TechCrunch, All Things Digital, and GigaOm.

“Why shouldn’t we avoid them? They’re cynical,”

He didn’t like that advice, saying those blogs are cynical.

Whoa? GigaOm cynical? That’s your first mistake, Roger.

But that quote belies other mistakes in thinking as well.

First of all, it’s not the right reason to avoid TechCrunch or GigaOm.

The right reason?

Because people who will use your product don’t read those tech blogs and they don’t read the influentials who read those sites.

The influential part is very important. How do things get into the New York Times? Or on Oprah? Or on CNN?

Journalists from those sites and media properties read tech blogs like TechCrunch. How do I know that? Because I have dinner with journalists often and they tell me where they get their information.

They read Techmeme. They read TechCrunch. They read GigaOm.

How did Twitter get onto the front page of USA Today? Because they read TechMeme and know when something is getting hot.

So, the right answer is “are they (the tech blogs) the best way to build a story?”

When we launched Building43 at TechCrunch’s offices we didn’t just rely on TechCrunch for coverage.

I worked with people from the A list and people from the Z list (and continue to do that). I talked with tons of reporters from local media in Virginia to reporters from bigger publications.

One thing I’ve learned is that 15 “nobodies” can get the story out there.

Remember when I quit Microsoft? I told 15 people at a videoblogging conference. None of whom were on the “A list.”

Who broke the story? A guy I didn’t even know. A guy who wasn’t famous, well known, or at the top of ANYONE’s lists.

Within three days Waggener Edstrom (Microsoft’s PR firm) told me we had tens of millions of media impressions. 15 conversations led to that.

Anyway, how do I get my news? Some of it comes from PR firms. But most of the time if the PR firm does its job it will get EVERYONE talking about something. I watch Twitter and Facebook and FriendFeed for just that. My friends filter stuff for me and tell me what’s important.

The fact that no one is talking about Wordnik tells me that they both had a product that didn’t hit with anyone but also that their PR strategy is screwed up.

But why don’t you study how Twitter reached “normal users?”

Hint: Twitter got Leo Laporte and tons of tech influencers hot and bothered. I remember when Eddie Codel showed it to me and got me on it. Who is Eddie? He’s one of San Francisco’s most tied in people. You want a story to get out? Show it to Eddie (or people like him, he doesn’t even work in PR, he’s just someone I trust to bring me cool stuff). He’ll show it to me and to tons of other people who will push it along.

That’s what we did to Twitter. We kept telling our journalist friends about it. They kept saying “that’s lame” but sooner or later they started paying attention and talking about it to their audiences. And the ball kept going from there.

Today Twitter forgets that it’s Leo Laporte who really made Twitter’s day. He talked about it on TWiT and a week later it was the hit of SXSW 2007 (ironic that he’s not even on Twitter’s Suggested User List). See, after the story is built you don’t need influencers anymore, but they sure are nice at the beginning.

Me? I keep going back to the Corporate Weblog Manifesto I wrote in 2003. It is a good document for how to get PR. Even though I didn’t write it for that purpose (I was just about to start my job at Microsoft and wanted to remind myself how to stay on track with my blog).

What is rule #7 on the manifesto?

Talk to the grassroots first. Read the reason why. It still is important today.

Today I would rewrite rule #6 to be “don’t ignore TechCrunch and TechMeme.”

Rule #11 is important too. “Know the information gatekeepers.”

It’s amazing to me how bad most tech companies are at this stuff, even today.

It’s also amazing that PR companies haven’t figured out that using bloggers who use video is very important for building a story. More than one CEO told me they got to “normal users” by being on my show, even though my show isn’t very mainstream.

It’s doubly amazing that PR companies haven’t figured out yet that the traffic has moved onto social networks and that journalists and influencers are watching those like a hawk. Want to get on CNN? You better be on Twitter and you better get TONS of Twitterers to talk about your company to @ricksanchezcnn.

It’s amazing to me just how bad Roger’s advice was, not because it was wrong, but because of the reasoning behind it. If you are building a story you NEVER care if someone is cynical. In fact, the more cynical I am about a product the more I’ve helped them. Many people tell me they bought an Amazon Kindle because of how I bashed the product (they said I was right, it was poorly designed, but that the Kindle’s flaws didn’t matter to them).

Even cynical tech bloggers can help your company get its message out. But don’t call me, I’m not in the cynical news business anymore, I’m too busy exploring the 2010 web and looking for ways to be helpful to my community.

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How the SF Giants saved a million bucks with telecommunications upgrades

by Robert Scoble on July 3, 2009

A few weeks ago I attended a press event that the San Francisco Giants and Shoretel put on. The audio isn’t that great because we’re in the server room for the San Francisco Giants baseball team. Here SF Giants’ CIO, Bill Schlough, is showing off how the Giants saved a million bucks by upgrading its telecommunications equipment.

Remember that the ballpark that the Giants is in was originally named for PacBell, the local phone company. Interesting look at how phone systems have changed in just the past 10 years.

This is a nice win for Shoretel. How often do you get a customer to sing your praises like this? Especially one that so many people in the community like and appreciate?

The system will save the SF Giants about $1,000 a day. Not bad. Plus they got a ton of new features, which lets the Giants serve their customers better.

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Behind the scenes with @garyvee at one of the best wine stores in the world

by Robert Scoble on July 2, 2009

Gary Vaynerchuk’s dad came to the United States with nothing in his pocket. He worked for less than minimum wage and built up a business, Wine Library, that today sells $50 million a year in wine in a sizeable store in New Jersey.

Today Gary is building on top of his dad’s work and is taking the store global with a video show, Wine Library TV, that gets about 100,000 views a show. I remember when I first saw the impact he was having when I walked into a meeting at Revision 3 and the team was sitting around watching his show and drinking the wine he was talking about.

Here we visited Gary’s store and got more of how he’s using the 2010 web to bash in the skulls of his competitors. He calls it “bringing the thunder.” I call it the most innovative marketing I’ve seen on the web to date. We talked about a range of things from his dad to how he would compete with his show, if someone else had done Wine Library TV and he wanted in on the action.

This is part of our Building43 series of videos. Come over and join the community there, we’re looking for people who are fanatical about the 2010 web and who are looking to help other people and businesses get into this new world.

By the way, I’m a huge fan because Gary has never mislead me and he’s very willing to tell a CEO his/her wine is crap to his/her face (I’ve seen him do it, even after the CEO threw us a party).

Hope  you enjoy, tomorrow Rocky (behind the camera producer at Building43) and me are headed to London to find out what’s happening on the other side of the pond with regards to the 2010 web. Join us on Sunday night at a Tweetup in London.

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Really Secret Scoble

by Robert Scoble on July 2, 2009

After we had our Building43 launch party I wanted to explore more why small groups of people are so much better for actually learning something. By the way, Michael Sean Wright put together a neat little video of our launch party. He’s the one who produces Peter Himmelman’s awesome show on Tuesday nights.

Anyway, we’ve found that if you are throwing a party, somewhere around 200 people is the right number (or fewer). I’ve been to quite a few TechCrunch parties with 800 or so, and they just aren’t as satisfying. This holds true for weddings, too. I’ve been to weddings with 100 people and they are really fun. 300? Not so fun, they seem impersonal and more like a conference event.

Why are large numbers not conducive to learning and having a great experience? One reason is sheer noise. I remember meeting Del.icio.us’s founder, Joshua Schachter, at one of the large TechCrunch events with 700 or so and I was literally inches away from him and we both were yelling at each other but I still couldn’t hear him.

Another is distraction. In large groups you feel impelled to rotate through the crowd to meet as many people as you can, and grab their business cards. In smaller groups, like the one at the Building43 party, I didn’t feel that pressure and, if I did, I still could get around and meet most of the people and settle on a small group.

For the past year I’ve been playing with small groups over on FriendFeed. I setup a secret group there that I invited a few people into. Tonight I setup a new Twitter group that does the same thing. I’m studying what it’s like to have a small secret group of people inside a sea of a much much larger set of more public interactions.

Some things I’ve learned already. If you follow about 300 people, even industry luminaries, most of them don’t Tweet very often. So, the flow is very slow. There’s a lesson there. If you only want to Twitter a few minutes a day, keep the number of people you’re following to 300 or less. Once you get into the 1,000s your life is over. Heheh.

Another thing I’m learning? Because I hand picked all my friends in both of these secret groups and only included people I knew and cared about, my engagement level with them is higher than with groups that I don’t know as well (if at all). There’s a lesson in there for Twitter and is one huge reason why Facebook has more engagement than Twitter does. Do you really want to be engaged with Oprah? Not much, no. But your best friend? Or someone from work? Absolutely.

Some people have already started spreading around my “secret” Twitter address. Sorry, I won’t let anyone follow it. It’s a closed secret account and I want to keep interactions there very small and intimate.

I will let you know more about what I learn from these small secret groups, though, just like we shared what we learned at the Building43 launch party. Onward!

I wonder how many other people have secret groups or multiple Twitter accounts?

UPDATE: along these lines, the New York Times has a bunch of good advice for keeping your Twitter work sane. I found this on @steverubel’s Twitter account because he’s one of the secret people I subscribe to.

UPDATE 2: Security expert Bruce Schneier wrote about just this topic yesterday, as it pertains to security. I forgot to mention that my observations match Dunbar’s number and that Schneier’s article explains what that is and how it applies.

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How @loumongello turned vacation at Disney World into riches

by Robert Scoble on July 2, 2009

I love hearing stories about how people turned their passions into a career. Lou Mongello used to be a lawyer, but he kept going back to a childhood memory: his family kept taking the family to Walt Disney World in Orlando. He turned taking his own family there into a hobby and later quit his job as a lawyer and now has a media company that publishes books, CDs, magazines, and does a weekly radio show, er, podcast, about Walt Disney World. Very popular stuff and he is hitting a monetizable audience: traveling families who will spend lots of money.

Some things I learned in my interview with him: social networks are changing how he’s marketing and interacting with his customers. He uses real time services like Ustream to keep in touch and, of course, he has a Twitter account, where he publicizes meetups at the park.

You can find him at WDW Radio.

Oh, by the way, in the video, we talk about trademark concerns. He says that he worked to find a way to tie his brand to Walt Disney World’s brand without infringing on Walt Disney’s trademarks. That’s very smart and something that a lot of the folks who are using Twitter and Leo Laporte’s trademarks should consider because they are putting their business at significant risk of a trademark lawsuit if they don’t stay clear. Over on Facebook Jesse Stay reports that anyone who uses the word “face” in their Facebook applications will be banned outright. So, choosing a name that stays on the right side of the trademark battle is the best way to go.

In the interview we learn just a bit about Walt Disney World (he has hundreds of his own podcasts if you want to know more) and we cover how he’s using social networking to interact with his customers. You can find all of his Walt Disney World stuff at WDW Radio.

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