Social Customer

Why Twitter Rules (and What to Do About It)

By Patricia Seybold, CEO & Sr. Consultant/Analyst, Patricia Seybold Group

In the past few months, the Twitter phenomenon has reached epic proportions. Personally, I chalk this up to the malaise that is gripping us all as we struggle to make sense of both the economic crisis and the political seismic shifts that are upon us. Not content to consume news media and blogs, we now all want to make sense of it, to share our observations, and most of all to connect. So this odd 140-character microblogging platform, known as Twitter, has ballooned in importance. In the last week, the Financial Times published a full-page article about Twitter. U.S. Congresspeople tweeted during Obama’s speech to the joint houses of Congress, and Keith Olbermann’s CountDown described the Congressional "Twits tweeting," and John Stewart ran a great spoof on the new Congressional pastime of tweeting. (The software is called Twitter; the short messages you send are called “tweets.” And yes, anyone who IS anyone is doing it.) The best way to get up to speed on Twitter in my opinion is to use the Twitter How To's and links at Mashable. Feel free to drop me a note. My twitter handle is pattyinboothbay.

Acquisition for Automation—a New Route for Lithium

My first thought at hearing earlier this week about Lithium Technology’s acquisition of Keibi Technologies was “Why?” Admittedly, Keibi hasn’t been much on my radar, but its tag line as “The Leader in Moderation Solutions for User Generated Content” caused one of my brows to wrinkle, as Lithium already provides some pretty strong moderation-based service offerings. Seeing that Keibi also provides analytic services compounded my initial confusion, as Lithium has been beefing up the analytics side of its community solution, most recently through its Lithium Insights offering and Community Health Index. What could Keibi bring that enhances this mix?

Some digging brought a little clarity, which is centered on a key word: automation.

Keibi’s Java-based SaaS platform is built to scan and classify massive data sets of user-generated content (UGC). Not only text, but video clips, photographs and pictures, and animation files, as well. Members of online communities and social networking services are creating staggering volumes of UGC—YouTube claims hundreds of thousands of videos are uploaded daily to its system—and social media-aware companies continue laying the groundwork for their customers to create more. But how can companies, which are rightly concerned about (1) the potential negative impact on their brands due to inappropriate UGC, and (2) the gray areas surrounding intellectual property of UGC, reduce their exposure to risk while swamped with (and encouraging more of) content from customers?