microsharing

An earlier version of this article was published on FastCompany.com and is reprinted here with permission.

If you can’t fathom how Twitter can help your company, read on.

When a student opened fire on the Virginia Tech campus, the school had no systematic way to alert those in harm’s way. In the days that followed, organizations nationwide began asking, “Does my organization have the ability, in a few minutes, in the event of a crisis, to notify everyone involved?” What if fire, an earthquake, an explosion, or a hurricane rendered our email and phone systems useless? How would people receive information critical to their lives?

Today organizations are considering how to systematically use micro-sharing, an emerging communications channel, made possible by Twitter and tools like it, to connect with the people they care about most. It allows organizations to reach people’s desktops, laptops, and devices already in pockets and purses without any dependency on local email servers or a phone tree.

In a few compact sentences, these utilities can quickly and effectively convey text or image messages across an extended enterprise, a decentralized workforce, a dispersed campus, a community of practice, a small group of friends, or just one person who needs to know.

Also referred to as micro-blogging, micro-sharing tools prove enterprise software need not be boring and difficult. It can be easy, engaging, portable, and rewarding.

With the unveiling of enterprise-focused Twitter cousins such as Yammer, Socialtext Signals, Socialcast, and Present.ly, managers can now bring micro-sharing capabilities in-house with the security of working behind the firewall to protect confidential information and the potential for explicit links back into enterprise-strength systems.

Enterprise micro-sharing can help address the dueling dilemmas organizations face — needing to move knowledge where people need it now as they work through business processes, while relieving worries and fears information is leaking out of the organization too easily.

Although some execs ban these tools and consumer counterparts widely available today, doing so leaves their organizations out of an important loop encompassing customers, partner networks and, even, families. Human Resources Executive has featured these tools on their front page several times in the last few year and last summer, technology market consultancy Gartner added micro-sharing to its list of technologies that will transform business over the next two to five years.

Twitter, a public micro-sharing network used by many early adopters, has become an integral part of my own professional practice and personal brain-building. I use it to connect, share, and discover information far beyond any other network. I’ve grown to realize the field might better be thought of as micro-learning where the conduit is tiny and the lessons spread are vast. Across an enterprise — be it around the globe or down the hall — the learning potential is endless, while the opportunities to connect to knowledge are exploding in number and variety.

I use it in a way similar to how I touch base with my friends and family, briefly and frequently, and I now extend that level of care to involve my coworkers and business partners. I can find someone to review an article as effortlessly as I can offer personal experience to a colleague on how to select a webinar platform or which organizations have successfully launched their own brand Wikipedia. This is all akin to the magic of open-source software, created through public grassroots collaboration.

Whether I’m working remotely or onsite, I find micro-sharing (micro-learning?) mediates a conversation where what we’re learning is not merely exchanged. Knowledge is extended, transformed, reshaped, and built on as we actually create new trains of thought.

See if any of these other benefits would prove valuable to your extended organization and your developing communications plans.

Individualized Updates

The meeting in the Wintergreen room moved to Culpepper… The sandwich cart won’t be downstairs today… The supplier has only two mini-laptops left… Reviews are due on Friday… A colleague can’t make the pitch in the morning so I’m on… Email is sent… Directions are scribbled on paper affixed to a door… A high priority phone message is left… I wade through fourteen screens. Ugh. Everyday stuff.

More common than occasional safety announcement, companies have operational updates that need to reach people at certain times to coordinate the dance that is an organization. There’s information each participant in an organizational ecosystem needs to learn to successfully help that enterprise succeed. This information can be broadcast to those needing a reminder about the speaker in the auditorium (until it becomes habit that’s the place to be Friday afternoons), narrowcast to groups like those whose meeting locale has changed or directed to individuals who have paperwork being processed.

Although most messages are generated by people (for instance someone from HR, accounting, at the front desk or in legal), some can be automated to inform people at critical times. An order processing system can kick out events and exceptions. A benefits system can signal coverage changes and enrollment deadlines. A learning management system can prompt it’s time for a certification renewal or a newly available online course. Micro-sharing systems offer unified access for information relevant to each of us, one at a time and all at the same time.

Yet that’s still only half of the story for organizational communication. I can follow news about my meetings, my paperwork or my provisions and I can also — here’s where it gets exciting — (at my own peril) select to be blissfully ignorant. We are far more attentive when we can actively choose to pay attention to what matters to us, and we feel the most empowered when we can select to organize our lives in ways that don’t overwhelm us and actually create value. Micro-sharing can be:

Me-centered. When individuals, rather than senders or suppliers, choose who to and how to trail interesting people, groups or even favorite key words, it heralds the beginning of a Network of Me. As needs and interests change over time, messaging systems let us adjust our inputs and conversations quickly. The network becomes a distributed relevancy mechanism to reach me wherever I am and on my own terms.

Free-market. Offer me information that matters to me, and I’ll follow what you have to say. Spit out junk, and I will stop the flow of information to the device in my hand or the screen in front of me. Instead, I’ll relegate it to the more cumbersome systems, available in the background, and look at them only when I have extra time.

Borderless options. There is a nothing to stop an organization from also publishing (or even just syndicating their micro bursts) to the intranet, communications wiki, personal dashboards, or even an electronic ticker tape running through the lobby.

Nestled between the big blocks called work, micro-sharing enables a people-focused value network and truly modern supply chain. Everyday stuff.

Collective Intelligence

A teammate goes to a conference and promises to share highlights in real-time… Anyone know the source of this stat I heard on my way into work?… I want to include customer stories in a whitepaper I’m writing… Is there a way the spreadsheet template can provide mean rather than average?… I’m new around here and wonder if anyone could use my expertise… My stuff and your stuff, together.

Too frequently organizational knowledge-sharing mirrors the news-cycle society around us, in which we share the highs and lows, ignoring the ordinary stuff in the middle. It’s in that middle ground people make sense of the work done around them, understand how we can play a part to help fulfill the vision, and know where we can turn to find the help we need. It’s the middle stuff that’s truly interesting and helps us connect with one another.

One message I saw said, “You all make me feel like I’m always surrounded by the most brilliant people on earth.” Another said, “I can get an answer to practically any question within minutes!” When we were beside one another as we did the work, we conveyed the information flow with every breath. Now to get smarter, we must connect intentionally.

Although receiving news from the enterprise meme-stream helps us work within the systems around us, learning with and from the people around us (physically or virtually in our space) increases organizational value.

Information we glean from one another exhibits bird-like flocking behavior, joining with other information that adds more value to it, creating clusters of concepts with the capacity to become something stronger than we can come up with alone.

Effortless-discovery. Learning often entails asking people how to do things. The trouble is, no matter our age, we customarily ask the person closest to us rather than someone known to have the right answer. Micro-sharing helps us reach the right people without even requiring us to know who they are. You can also enlist help en masse by asking large groups of people to focus on the same issue for a short burst of time to quickly bring about a creative solution.

Far-reaching collaboration. Most micro-sharing services require only an Internet connection so your colleagues and stakeholders in Australia, Ireland, Russia, Mexico and North Carolina can communicate, cooperate, and share information at the same time. Adding business partners, investors and customers in the learning mix no longer requires complex planning.

Culture-trickle. By identifying a few key influencers, new hires can follow ephemeral information and vetted practices can be shared easily and in real-time with little burden on a designated guide. A directory of personable resident experts, followed through micro-sharing with one click, makes targeted communication more efficient. Because these tools record exchanges, other people can watch how a concept, plan or project evolves.

In conjunction with individuals’ personal stream of reflections and observations, possibly with a link to a source for additional detail, the intelligence we gather and share becomes transparent and available to everyone. Organization power. My stuff and your stuff, together.

Social Seaming

Liz in benefits rocks… I need more sleep… This project is going to change the world… Extra sandwiches in Culpepper (not everyone showed for the meeting)… Who borrowed my stapler?… My kid’s sick, heading home, ping me there. Stuff in between.

How we feel influences our productivity in both subtle and obvious ways. Something fills the moments between doing our work and reading all the lame emails preventing us from reading messages that matter. It contributes to us feeling on target or out of sorts. If those empty “thanks” and “lights on in the parking lot” notes moved to a micro-sharing system, one where we could choose to follow based on the quality of posts or the interest we had in what someone said, we’d probably free up enough time to contribute to the flow, too, and get back to feel on.

These slender messages are interstitial; they lie in and fill the seams of organizations. The threads help us collectively construct understanding, foster new connections and grow existing bonds, making for more agile perspectives, tighter teams, and resilient morale.

Detail intimacy. As organizations and society-at-large dismantle boundaries between personal and work life, they enrich corporate cultures as well as foster greater productivity and loyalty from people who have long-dreaded leaving their private life in the parking lot as they walked through the door. Micro-sharing, the technological equivalent of water-cooler chat, offer us clues into those around us, leading us to help one another because we know and trust one another. It’s in the little learning moments where we’re reminded Jeff isn’t only a guy in product development, but a parent with a daughter about the same age as my son. Clients frequently tell me they have learned more about their coworkers and customers from their micro-messages and social media profiles than they have from working together for years.

Social serendipity. From technical information to breaking news, from what my friends are thinking about to what I need to be looking at and thinking about. These tools work similarly to how we converse while passing one another in the hallway, representing a live ecosystem that shifts from moment to moment, where it’s easier, faster and more effective for us to brain dump as events happen in a live and ongoing environment.

Life-stream immediacy. If you’re thinking, “…but my people have real work to do,” ask yourself this question: In the two minutes they have between a phone call and a report, would it be better for them to be sharing what they learned on the call or asking for insight for the report, rather than doodling, making a shopping list, or checking on their fantasy football spread? People need down time, change of pace time, rhythm of the day time, and for those of us who have discovered a gold mine in their micro-messages, we’ve been able to stay on task and gain a little peace. In-between.

Organizations are human creations and they change as people change. They adapt to serve social needs. Real-world knowledge sharing is social, business, and technical all rolled into one. An enterprise is an ecosystem of various parts all working together, even when they don’t know exactly how, and offering a simply way to reach the parts that doesn’t hamper the work getting on already can help us make great change. Micro-blogging is the capillary system.

Poet Nikki Giovanni said at the memorial service for those at Virginia Tech, “[we] embrace our own and reach out with open heart and hand to those who offer their hearts and minds. We are strong and brave and innocent and unafraid. We are better than we think, and not quite what we want to be.”

———-

Marcia Conner is an enterprise learning and social media analyst and a 20-year veteran of the enterprise technology market. She writes the Fast Company Learn at All Levels blog and is Senior Enterprise Strategist for Pistachio Consulting.

This post originally appeared on Adele McAlear’s blog and has been published to the Touchbase Blog with permission.

Ever wonder about the early days of Twitter? Long before @Oprah and @aplusk, many social media and technology early adopters hopped on board helping to spur the service forward. If you’ve ever wanted to do an historical study of Twitter, then I’ve got three services that will give you a snapshot of what it was like when you, or anyone else, were mere Twitter Hatchlings.

When Did You Join Twitter tells you just that. Nothing fancy. But it’s fascinating to see what dates some of the old school social media types joined. It appears October 24, 2006 is a landmark date for Twitter, attracting these early adopter hatchlings: @ChrisBrogan, @newmediajim (Jim Long), @BobGoyetche, @Julien (Julien Smith) and @jmoonah (Jay Moonah).

This sets up some interesting trivia:

• Bob Goyetche and Julien Smith were 2 of the very first podcasters in Canada, and both live in Montreal (like me).

• Bob Goyetche co-founded the PodCasters Across Borders conference, while Chris Brogan co-founded PodCamp. Jay Moonah co-founded PodCamp Toronto and was also an early podcaster.

• Chris Brogan and Julien Smith have gone on to write a book together.

• Both Bob Goyetche and Jim Long have said that they heard about Twitter from Chris Brogan. Jay Moonah said he got an invite from someone at the very first PodCamp in Boston, possibly Chris.

Looking at these early adopters started me thinking about how things go viral. What happened on October 24, 2006 for so many to join the fledgling service? Could Brogan be Patient Zero in the Twitter-gone-viral scenario?

It’s interesting to note that @Scobleizer (Robert Scoble) joined almost a month later than this bunch did, on November 20, 2006.

I’ve always known that I joined April 27, 2007 (Happy 2nd Twitterversary to me!) But it was fun to see that my friend, micro-sharing for business expert @Pistachio (Laura Fitton) joined the same month, on April 5, 2007.

My First Follow is another great Twitter app from @dacort (Damon Cortesi), who built three of my favouites, DM Whacker, TweetStats and TweepSearch. My First Follow tells you the first 10 people you followed (provided you’re still following them).

My first 10 Twitter follows were:

@julien, @davidusher, @acrossthesound, @jaffejuice, @mynameiskate, @Scobleizer, @socialmediaclub, @shel, @steverubel and @shelisrael.

MyFirstTweet resurrects your long lost first words on Twitter. But, sadly, the service is a little unreliable. Good thing I took a screen shot of mine ages ago.

Use When Did You Join Twitter , My First Follow and MyFirstTweet to do your own historical research of when you too were just a Twitter hatchling.

And if you know who is Twitter Patiend Zero, or why so many joined on October 24, 2006, please, let me know!

UPDATE 05/05/09: Thanks to Jay Moonah for providing some additional background information:

Your post got me interested so I dug into my old email file — it appears I got Twitter invites from Chris Brogan and Beth Kanter (http://twitter.com/kanter) on the auspicious date, both of whom I did indeed meet at Podcamp Boston, and both of whom have many thousands of followers more than me… not that I’m bitter. Anyway, I suspect most of the folks you named here also got invited by someone they met at the first Podcamp.

Part of message Chris wrote made me laugh reading it now: “Not exactly spam, but I just wanted to try and add you to my twitter account (which is this um.. I don’t know.. the guys from Odeo made it).“

Readers of ReadWriteWeb no doubt appreciated the hashtag refresher contained in Sarah Perez’ post, “What Does that Hashtag Mean? Tagalus Tells You.” As growth in Twitter has exploded, conversations, interest and confusion over #hashtags have spiked as well. How could they not? The problem is that for all of those new users, the # signs inserted into Tweets make no sense. David Pogue helped a lot of them when he tweeted a link to hashtag.org, where hashtags are defined as “a community-driven convention for adding additional context and metadata to your tweets. They’re like tags on Flickr, only added inline to your post. Tagalus, the service Perez blogged about in her hashtag post, is a Web service that defines hashtags. Think of it as a hashtag dictionary.

Tagalus aside, here’s a perspective that may bring you another step towards Twittervana:

#hashtags are the channels that you can tune to whatever signal will make Twitter useful at a given time.

Turn on, tune in, log out, to paraphrase a certain ’60s radical. Kevin Rose’s successful launch of WeFollow.com demonstrated that people will add classify their own accounts to particular channels in folksonomies. Each wants their product, service, brand or simply themselves to show up in search for that Twitter channel. Smart brands have long since figured that out and monitor those channels like Webby hawks, adding hashtagged keywords to seed each discussion. Every netizen can tune Twitter into precisely the channel he or she likes. It’s easy.

You see, on http://search.twitter.com, we’re all equal. Just tune in to the channel with the right hashtag.

Skeptics have rightly pointed out that many tweets are the ultimate in routine banality, expressing nothing but the author’s narcissism. Just watch the Twouble with Twitters for effective satire on that count. And for many users, they may be correct. Public access cable has had some real doozies on there, too, but that doesn’t make the medium – and most of what happens on it – trivial or useless. When you listen to Twitter using hashtags, however, it does’t matter if you have 174,456 followers, own a cable channel or play for the Suns. (Don’t worry, Shaq. Love to see you tweeting.) If someone is’t talking about the topic you’re searching for, it won’t matter. You’ve filtered them out.

If you like the Food Network, tune in to #foodie or #cooking. Or #recipe. If you’re a sports fan from New England and watch NESN, try #RedSox. Or try #NASCAR. Plenty of fans to go around. If you follow politics, you might have found #election interesting last November. You certainly will in 2010. True conservatives on Twitter (#TCOT) isn’t exactly like watching Fox News, though it’s a fair bet that there’s some crossover. President Obama’s name itself (#Obama) is a channel these days, especially during the “non-State of the Union” (#nsotu) earlier this year.

It’s safe to say that there are as many channels on Twitter as there are on cable. Not all of them have as much content, of course, but if Twitter continues to grow, each channel will fill with conversation. Twitter allows us all to create our very own channels and then seed them with even smaller categories. Creative and clever users — of which there are no shortage — have created Twitter #channels from the ether. Check out #HARO, #journchat, #GNO or #FollowFriday for well-known examples. Others are sure to come, whether they’re generated by natural disasters (#earthquake), terrorist attacks (#Mumbai), acts of televised heroism (#flight1549), sports events (#KentuckyDerby) or national holidays (#July4).

Twitter, for the moment, is offering the best real-time search of all of these conversations. If you want a snapshot of what the world is talking about, just check what’s trending on search.twitter.com. Or, if the noise about whatever has the world’s focus is not of interest, slice the conversation into precisely the vertical topic you care about, whether it’s #Enterprise2.0, #Olympics or #butterflies. You’ll find both signal and, most likely, a conversation with a group of people who are interested in the same subject, often bearing news about the area.

Many brands have awoken to the fact that Twitter has become a pre-eminent market for conversations about them. Some, like @ComcastCares, have forged new customer service models. Others, like #Dell or #Zappos, are even profiting from their engagement. As many online analysts have noted, however, each channel can fill up with noise, rendering the listener unable to find that useful signal. As Stacy Higginbotham quipped at GigaOm, Twitter “jumped the shark for digerati at SXSW” because the channel for the annual South by Southwest Interactive Festival in Austin (#SXSW) became jammed with banal status updates, not information. She linked to Dan Terdiman’s story at CNET, where he wrote at length about Twitter saturation at SXSW. The challenge posed for listeners at such events will be to tune their dials more carefully, either by creating groups in Tweetdeck or by refining Twitter’s advanced search capabilities. Connie Reece demonstrates how to do the latter in Twitter lessons from Mumbai.

Google’s success has shown that an audience that is searching for information, particularly about products, services or vendors, is in the best frame of mind to be advertised to for the given search term. That could well be the Twitter bird’s golden egg. Some observers believe “real-time search is probably one of Twitter’s most valuable features.” There was endless speculation this past week that Google would buy Twitter, creating a “Twoogle,” precisely because of this real-time search capability.

Time will reveal how — or if — Twitter find a way to monetize those conversations.

Alexander Howard is a Cambridge-based technology editor for a B2B IT media company. Until this December, he was the associate editor for WhatIs.com, the online IT encyclopedia. You can follow him @digiphile and find his compliance-related tweets @ITCompliance. This post originally appeared on digiphile.

When I talk with business people about the benefits of Twitter and microsharing in general, I inevitably get asked how I tolerate “waste-of-time” posts. The person asking may be referring to tweets announcing one’s streetcorner locale or a jingle stuck in their mind’s ear. More often than not, though, I learn the person I’m talking with is uncomfortable with a lowering wall between work life and personal life; talk of their client beside mention of their kid.

That leads me to tell them what brought me to Twitter for the first time and to offer my perspective on why bringing our full selves to work enhances our organization’s capacity to excel. My most recent post for Fast Company, “Twitterprise: Bringing Whole Selves to Work,” puts this story in print, and features four reasons I encourage organizations to connect work with the personal — the insights and the whys.

One of those reasons is to build trusted relationships.

I once read it takes new coworkers five months to trust one another enough for true collaboration. In my experience, that time is longer if you never spend time together in person, getting a feel for their priorities, experiencing firsthand their eccentricities, witnessing their humanity among to-dos. Something changes when you witness their adoration of bedtime stories, fine poetry, drooling mutts or Trader Joe’s. What you might have interpreted as an all-business style lightens as you realize you would welcome them on a camping trip or stuck beside you on a long late-night flight.

Another reason is to establish your voice, and another to preserve the soul.

If you haven’t yet begun tweeting the extracuricular or you’re struggling with the value of seemingly off-topic links, take a read and consider showing us the rest of you. We can handle it.

If you’re curious about even more benefits of social messaging and microsharing in the enterprise, join me (@marciamarcia), Laura Fitton (@pistachio) and Ross Mayfield of Socialtext (@Ross @Socialtext) for a free 3-part Twitterprise webinar series beginning Thursday April 9, 2009 at noon Eastern Time. Registration required. We look forward to learning with you.

Marcia Conner is an enterprise learning and social media strategist and a 20-year veteran of the enterprise technology market. She writes the Fast Company Learn at All Levels blog and is Sr. Enterprise Strategist for Pistachio Consulting.

When Twitter really is your village…

I LOVE the Twitter integrations that www.rentwiki.com just announced. One is “neighborhood talk” — a simple widget on their site that searches Twitter for mentions of the neighborhood. That means you can peek at what’s being said, and if you want, you can immediately reach out to the folks who are saying it. You can view the page for North Beach, SF that’s also pictured below:

RentWiki Twitter Integration

From their (excellent, by the way) pitch email:

“Wouldn’t it be nice if you could go into the coffee shop of a neighborhood you were interested in moving to and listen to what the locals are saying without feeling seriously awkward?”

You have to pick a city, drill down to “Neighborhood Review” and then click on a specific neighborhood to find the Twitter integration, but once you do it’s pretty sweet. In my talks and webinars I explain Twitter’s 5 “off-platform” benefits (SEO, Research, Content Generation Engine, Word of Mouth and PR Gravity) that help business whether or not your customers are even on Twitter. This is a GREAT example of what I mean by “content generation engine.” RentWiki’s readers don’t have to know a thing about Twitter to benefit from this integration.

But if they do, it gets even better…

Advice: WWTD?

What would Twitter do?

You can also get your friends’ opinions. Twitter’s GREAT at social shopping and getting advice. Right on each neighborhood reviews page there’s a button to autogenerate a Tweet asking your readers for advice:

I’m thinking about moving to [Neighborhood, City]. Any advice or feedback on this area?

It does this the right way too, without surprises or spammy* links. It routes you to Twitter.com and fills out the update box for you, but you have control over rewriting the tweet and posting it yourself. The suggested text is included in the URL (see below) and posting control remains with you.

http://twitter.com/home?status=I%27m+thinking+about+moving+to+University+Place,+Houston.+Any+advice+or+feedback+on+this+area?

(*I’d actually recommend they include a link back to the neighborhood page on RentWiki, so your readers know exactly what you mean, and to subtly but usefully promote their site.)

RentWiki Founder Eric Wu:

Once a place to start conversations, Twitter has quickly evolved into a market research tool, wholesaler of goods, search engine, news site, and even a rental search. The goal of RentWiki is to give people searching for a place to live real advice from renters living in that area. By integrating with Twitter, we are expanding the conversation beyond just our site and into the real-time social web.

Kudos to them for “getting it” and for creative use of Twitter in their business.
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When Socialtext was founded in 2002 no one thought, “We really ought to have microsharing capabilities.” Back then, they aimed to better the enterprise software space with emerging consumer web technologies, and by all measures they’ve succeeded. In recent years, though, the micro-noise has grown and an enterprise 2.0 platform seems almost old fashion without a way to quickly share updates Twitter style, 140 characters at a time.

Today Socialtext rounded out its existing enterprise social software platform by releasing into general availability Socialtext Signals, microsharing capabilities which make task completion and workflows an integral part of normal shared streams.

In October, we blogged about the Signals announcement and addressed how it expands Socialtext’s enterprise social networking and collaboration capabilities. Although we still believe the marketplace would benefit from a stand-alone version of Signals, we appreciate Socialtext’s dedication to the suite and applaud their commitment to helping organizations have the tools they need without complex integration.

Also announced today is a public beta for Socialtext Desktop, an Adobe AIR desktop application for monitoring and participating in social networking, collaboration and social messaging.

It won’t be long before we see how this release changes the landscape of the microsharing market, if other enterprise 2.0 players will aim to capture more of the social software platform space, and if Socialtext Signal’s inline approach to microsharing transforms the expectations we each have for how enterprises quickly capture and assess organizational fitness and how they can sense and respond to the people they serve.

Marcia Conner is an enterprise social media and learning strategist and a 20-year veteran of the enterprise technology market.

Woke up to find #skittles and Extreme Social are trending on Twitter search. Why?

Agency.com and Mars replaced www.skittles.com with a mashup of redirects to social media channels overlaid by a small navigation widget:

HOME: The already famous skittles Twitter search link. This is your home page. Take it away, folks.

PRODUCTS: Product information on your first click, then it becomes Wikipedia. What do YOU think our products are? Have at it. Wikipedians will keep us safe.

MEDIA: Video is their YouTube channel and Pics is, naturally a Flickr redirect. (Yes, of course I got pictures for thie post there. Who needs a social media press release when the assets are this easy to pick up and embed?)

CHATTER: Same as HOME: the Twitter search page

FRIENDS: Facebook page

CONTACT: well, ok, no social media hack here.

Terrific, self-propagating buzz, making the home page a Twitter search. It predictably stirred the Twitter community right up, the word Skittles “trended” to the top of Twitter Search and lots and lots and lots of word of mouth ensued.

Searching Twitter for Skittles and agency quickly reveals that Agency.com is behind the campaign and that agency Modernista did pretty much the same thing with their site. But as Brian Morrissey of AdWeek blog AdFreak puts it:

The Skittles site is an interesting case study for a consumer goods company. Let’s face it: Why would anyone go to a packaged-goods Web site? But nowadays, in social media, people are talking about all sorts of stuff. Agency.com gets that with a “chatter” link that pulls up the results of a “skittles” search on Twitter. It could be on to something. Does it really matter if Modernista or Zeus Jones got there first?

Did they realize the Twitter search would get graffiti’d and spammed? Of course they did. People like to see their mark on the wall. A floating box requires visitors to reveal their age and opt into a disclaimer about the content.

My first impressions? (In tweets, natch):

Waking up to word about the #skittles Twitter marketing stunt rt @kitson Here’s @Mashable’s take: http://sn.im/mashskit0302

If you’ve not seen it: www.skittles.com.is =a twitter search page for skittles. WOM + Buzz: generated. Curses: posted. Agency: Agency.com

re: skittles PRODUCTS links go to a wiki. FRIENDS: Facebook page MEDIA: YouTube. quite the social media diving in.

Lots of comments pro and con. I think it’s a great campaign, will get them LOADS of press, and experiments with some fun concepts in skating out a brand’s social media territory.

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When we get the link to The recorded webinar:

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• PR Squared: Laura Fitton - Pistachio in Residence (tsurch.com)

Really excited about our “Wednesdays at One” webinar series — a program of tightly focused, high-value webinars and clinics to help your business make the most of Twitter and microsharing. We’ve announced two dates already, with lots more to come. Expect specialized classes like Twitter for PR, Twitter for Executives and more, as well as small-group Q&A consulting calls. I hope you will join us! My speaking schedule is also filling up fast. Below, the Wednesdays at One series and my other public speaking events…

Wednesdays at One Webinar:
Twitter for Business 101
February 25, 2009 1 PM EST
FREE register now

MITX Panel: (in Boston)
MITX: 2008 Elections and Digital Technology
February 26, 2009 6:00 PM

Social Media Jungle: (in Boston)
Jeff Pulver’s Social Media Jungle Boston
March 10, 2009
Use referral code ZHNWGFCD for $50 off registration

Wednesdays at One Webinar:
Advanced Twitter for Business
March 11, 2009 1 PM EST
$250 register now (earlybird discounts available)

Wednesdays at One Webinar:
Twitter for Business, TBD
March 25, 2009 1 PM EST

ICA Panel and Interview: (in Boston)
ICA/AIGA event Design as Social Agent
–Social Networking for Social Good
–The Many Mutations of Viral Marketing
April 4, 2009

Wednesdays at One Webinar:
Twitter for Business, TBD
April 8, 2009 1 PM EDT

Wednesdays at One Webinar:
Twitter for Business, TBD
April 22, 2009 1 PM EDT

Keynote Discussion: (in San Francisco)
SNCR New Communications Forum
April 27-29, 2009

Wednesdays at One Webinar:
Twitter for Business, TBD
May 6, 2009 1 PM EDT

Panel Discussion: (in Chicago)
BlogHer
Chicago, July 23-25

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• Announcing: Social Media Jungle - Boston (pulverblog.pulver.com)

I’m long overdue announcing some of this, so I’ll roll it all out at once…

(and then jam over to @bostontwestival, organized by @justinmwhitaker and part of @Amanda Rose’s PHENOMENAL global Twestival movement. (Check it out NOW!) 20,000 Twitterers are gathering over a 24 hour period around the globe. The aim? raise $1 MILLION for Charity: Water, my absolute favorite charity)

Todd Defren and I are excited to officially announce* that SHIFT Communications is hosting Pistachio Consulting as a “specialist in residence.” In return for sharing space (and inspiration) in their beautiful offices in the New Balance building in Brighton, I’m working with their executives and teams on what Twitter can do for SHIFT’s clients. Since a majority of SHIFT-ers already Twitter, it’s awesome to dive right into sophisticated and strategic ideas that can rock out what they do for their clients.

We’ll do a few structured sessions that dig deep into Twitter’s utility for PR (yes, we’ll offer these to the public later on in our upcoming webinar series), as well as informal brainstorming sessions and lunch-and-learns.

(*Todd is very silly to use the “Q” word in his post. I blame Brian, Tara and a dollar store sash she gave me. Plus the fact I’m not nearly funny enough to score “Court Jester.”)

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, lots going on:

• Welcome, new Pistachio client Johnson & Johnson

Image via Wikipedia

• I’ll guest lecture at Harvard Business School this spring on Twitter for business. Prof. Andrew McAfee’s students will work with Twitter and enterprise microsharing tools throughout the semester, then lob tomatoes at me give me a rigorous grilling about the business applications and cases we’re seeing. I’m also speaking at the ICA April 4th in a special AIGA program around the Shepard Fairey exhibit.

• Monitor Talent signed me to their roster in December. Contact Mel Blake for high-energy, high-level briefings on Twitter’s business significance. It was completely humbling to meet folks like Dan Ariely, Dan Gillmor, Ethan Zuckerman and dozens more at their Access to Minds event.
  

• Mainstream media attention to the business use of Twitter is at an all-time high. Just my own personal recent clips alone include CIO Magazine, MassHighTech, Entrepreneur Magazine, US News & World Report, NECN, NPR, and CNET.com. Look for Forbes, WSJ and the GQ (UK) soon, too.

• TipJoy We had such a great time collaborating on the @WellWishes campaign (thanks all — YOU raised $25,000 and a whole lot of awareness for Charity: Water!) that Ivan and Abby Kirgin invited me to become an official advisor to TipJoy alongside Chris Sacca. I’d been looking for Twitter to get its own payments system for a long time, and have very high expectations for TipJoy.

• Society for New Communications Research included me in their 2009 Fellows lineup, along with Pistachio collaborator and Fast Company blogger Marcia Conner. Congrats to all the new Fellows, it’s amazing company to be in.

• TouchBase Blog and LinkBlog — Articles, ideas, case studies and links to what businesses need to know about Twitter and microsharing. Don’t have time to scour the social web for that latest information or sort through piles of Twitter news to discern what businesses need to know? We’re your one-stop-shop. Follow @touchbase to find out when we post or add valuable bookmarks to our TouchBase Link Blog (Delicious account). Tamar Weinberg holds house and home together on all of the above as our Editor in Chief alongside more than 25 AWESOME contributors and guest bloggers.

• Twitter for Dummies (old news, but never formally announced) We are writing Twitter for Dummies. I’m thrilled to be working with Michael Gruen (who is also on Pistachio’s advisory board) and Leslie Poston. The book is due out in July, and there’s a even a brainstorming community where you can add your ideas. Also follow @dummies on Twitter for updates when we have them.

We have some great stuff coming up - things that will add business value really cost-effectively, including webinars, hands-on trainings and seminars (starting in NYC) and a new series of white papers and eBooks on the business use of Twitter, enterprise microsharing and more. Also, look for us to (finally) post a team page soon to let you meet the people working hard behind the scenes over here. Speaking of “behind the scenes,” I hope to have even bigger news soon…

Please stay tuned!

Warmly, Pistachio

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