Twestival Vienna a success!

Feb 17, 2009 by Dan Taylor    No Comments    Posted under: Social Media

Despite the ups and downs of getting this event organized in a very short 2 weeks, the lack of a sponsor, and some interesting events happening during the event, Twestival Vienna was a success.  In just under 4 hours, I managed to raise 445 euro for charity:water.

A very special thanks go out to fatfoogoo.com for donating our grand prize, 2008′s hottest selling gaming console, the Nintendo wii.  Groops.at also deserves a big thanks for their donation of a logitech squeezebox boom box, which I got/get the impression was actually the more desirable object.  Who knew?  Vier Pfoten also generously donated 2 of their truly beautiful coffee table books.

Thanks are also in order to Chanda and Magda for helping with the raffle ticket sales.  Great job ladies, and thank you!

I also contibuted footage to TechFluff.TV, which should be cut into a master video, and available on the site shortly.  Here’s the full version (Be sure to catch the full HD version at Vimeo):

Twestival Wien – HELP NEEDED!

Jan 19, 2009 by Dan Taylor    5 Comments    Posted under: Social Media

Those of you involved in the twitter community have undoubtedly heard of ‘tweetups’, where the local twitter community organizes an event where they call all meet and socialize offline.  An outstanding idea in it’s own right, but a group of organizers from London have decided to take this concept one further and combine a charity fundraising event and tweetup into one cause.  On the 12th of February, twitter communities around the world will band together not only to meet each other, but to raise money for an amazing non-profit organization.

After hearing about the event, I took a drive on over to Twestival and did a bit more reading.  The non profit that twestival will be raising money for charity:water.  While I’ve never had any direct contact with this particular charity, I did work with the good folks from WaterAid a few years back, and know that what these folks are working on is truly a great thing.

Ok, looks good.  Who’s organizing the Vienna event?  Ummm.  No Vienna event?  Well, far be it from me to let my horrible german skills prevent me from organizing the Twestival Wien.  This was spawned on by a recent conversation I had with Amy from LetsFreckle.com.  She commented, “Wow, there’s so much tech going on in Vienna that I just don’t know about.”  You and me both Amy.  Hopefully, this event will not only raise money for a good cause, but spur on future twitter and tech events in Vienna.

And so it is born.  @MountainDan has become the official organizer for the Vienna branch of this global event.  As it stands right now, I’m also the only volunteer, organizer, location getter, and fundraiser (both corporate and private).  This is also my plea for help.  I’ve received a bunch of stuff from the Twestival folks, and to their credit, they’ve really mapped out a lot of procedures and ideas, but have ultimately left it up to the individual (or in most cases, local teams) to handle things on their end.

Right now, we have no sponsors, and no location.  The first official vienna.twestival.com blog post went up today, but sadly only with about the same info I’m writing to you here now.

Location

I do have a lead on a cool location, and thanks go to Thomas Fuchs for suggesting werkzeugH as another possible location.  I’ll be shooting them an email as soon as this blog post goes live.  Ideally the twestival location should have wifi access (the bigger the bandwidth, the better), multiple projectors (event organizers are currently working on live web streams of events around the world, and Thomas Fuchs and Amy Hoy are working on something tied in to twestival that would look VERY cool on a projector.  They’ve bound my lips with duct tape not to reveal any details, but is IS very cool), a decent but not overpowering (the whole point is to meet and talk) soundsystem, and perhaps most importantly: Booze.

Sponsors

Ok, here’s where the good news starts to flow.  I’ve already spoken with my boss, Martin Herdina from fatfoogoo about the event, and he’s verbally pledged support.  We have not, however, gotten into details about what form that support with take?  Cash only?  Cash plus entertainment (i.e. a video gaming station – yet again, need for those projectors), Cash plus some fatfoogoo staff to help organize and/or work the event?  Notice the casual dropping of the word cash?   Ideally, I’d like to see two sponsors for this event.  One that will sponsor the evening, and one that will make a matching donation for all funds raised.

Music

Music is the one of the things that I DO have nailed down.  Smartula, Stephono and hopefully I (time permitting) have our copies of Traktor fired up and will be laying down the niceties all night.  Other Vienna DJ’s are more than welcome to and encouraged to participate.  Simply get in touch (see below)!

PR

Martin has a great connection in Mirjam Mieschendahl from groops.at, and she’s offered to help out in any way she can.  Groops.at has a huge user base, hopefully some of which are involved with twitter as well.  She’s also got a Rolodex with some of the most important media contacts in Vienna (think FM4, Vienna Online, Kurier…etc.) and is the administrator for the women’s group at the Vienna BarCamp.  I’m also quite good friends with Ritchie Pettaur (@datadirt) from datadirt.net, and I’ll be calling upon him shortly.  Needless to say, we’ve got a good lead on getting some coverage, but as my grandmother always used to say – the more the better.  If you are, or have a media contact in Vienna, please let me know (see contact details below).

Prizes

As recommended by the twestival folks, prize raffles and/or silent auctions can be one of the most effective ways to raise money at this event.  Given the recent NPD report that the Nintendo wii was the console sales winner last year, a natural choice is to raffle off a wii.  Another thought that popped into my head was doing a silent auction for a night at the MonzaKart go-kart track in Vienna.  Who doesn’t love go-karts?

Staff

Once a location is secured the next step will be to ensure that we’ve got enough twestivalwien volunteers on site to make sure that the night runs smoothly.  Currently I need someone to work the door and collect tickets (I’ll update this post once I’ve heard a bit more info on that from twestival), and I would estimate 3-4 other folks that will be there in an official capacity just to make sure all of our high-tech is running the way it should.

Help

So here it is Vienna and the world.  You dear author of this blog (and others) needs your help.  Whether you can volunteer, offer your services, or simply donate to the cause, any and all help is now being accepted.

Remember, no donation or help is too small or insignificant.

Connect

Email address: twestivalwien@gmail.com
Official Organizer: MountainDan

So there you have it folks.  I’ve got just over three weeks to pull off what looks like a miracle.  Yes it’s going to be a lot of hard work, but at the end of the day, I’m quite certain it’s all going to be worth it.

SocialToo squashes twitter auto DM’s

Jan 3, 2009 by Dan Taylor    18 Comments    Posted under: Social Media, Technology

One of the nice features about twitter is the ability to Direct Message a fellow follower, and not put your entire conversation out there for the world to read (some things are just better left between party A and party B).  Conversely, the opposite is true: Automated DM’s can be a bit on the spammy side; ‘Thanks for following me, enter this code at www.xyz.com to receive a discount”.  This generally leads to an immediate ‘unfollow’ on my part, which is rather sad, as sometimes some of these people are genuinely adding meaningful points to a discussion.

The solution?  SocialToo.  SocialToo is an interesting tool that will allow you to tweak your twitter config.  SocialToo also plays nicely with facebook and indenti.ca.  Founder Jesse Stay apparently got a bit sick of the auto DM as well, and recently released a feature setting that will allow SocialToo users turn off auto direct messages from other SocialToo users if so desired.  SocialToo will also allow for blacklisting twitter users, auto-follow people that follow you, and auto-unfollow those that unfollow you, send an auto DM to those that follow you (highly NOT recommended) and as previously mentioned, disable auto DM’s.

But don’t just take my word for it, Chris Brogan makes an awesome case for using SocialToo, and squashing those auto DM’s at the source.

I URGE you to recommend that everyone use SocailToo for their robot behaviors. Because hey, if they want to, it’s a great service. But better still, it means I will never see a SocialToo robot DM ever again.

A simple check of the ‘Turn off automatic Direct Messages from other SocialToo.com users’ box is all that needs to be done.  Remember, this won’t turn off ALL automatic DM’s, as users need to be SocialToo users as well, and most spammers will certainly avoid this, but it’s a good start, and hopefully technology that twitter itself will adopt (read:buy).

Related articles

• Jesse Stay Kills His Own Robots- Humans Rejoice
• Survey: Automated “Direct Messages”
• Do you tweet… like I do?
• 17 Inspirational Auto DMs for Twitter
• DM Fail, Direct Messages That Are Accidentally Posted To Twitter

Twitter as micropayment mechanism

Dec 18, 2008 by Dan Taylor    16 Comments    Posted under: News, Social Media, Technology

Twitter as a way to make micropayments.  Sure there are plenty of microtransaction specialists out there, but lets say I just want a quick and easy way to shoot @datadirt my half of last night’s bar tab?  Sure, I could login to PayPal, enter Ritchie’s address, and he’d have the cash shortly.  But what if we’ve just met up in the office and I feel like a schmuck for not having the $30 on me?  What if I’m nowhere near a computer, but happen to have my iPhone with me?  Well…if Atlanta startup Twitpay gets their way, a simple ‘@datadirt twitpay $30 – inebriation would then have money in Mr. Pettaur’s Twitpay account within 30 minutes.

Twitpay facilitates the transaction by monitoring any and all tweets containing the phrase Twitpay.  Your Twitpay account can be replenished using a simple ‘pay all’ site such as PayPal.  Once a recipient has accumulated more than $10 in their Twitpay account, they can then cash this out in the form of Amazon Gift Cards, with hopefully more options down the road, a Twitpay charity, or Twitpay itself.  Twitpay will take a modest $.05 fee on all transfers over $.99.  Fair enough, you provide a convenient service; I’ll give you a nickel for it.

Settling last night’s bar tab might be one use for Twitpay, but I believe this application to have a number of other uses.  What about paying the bills?  @DIRECTV already has some of the best customer service I’ve ever seen via twitter, how about paying my monthly bill?  A simple @DIRECTV twitpay $125.99, @USGovStudentLoans twitpay $132.48, etc. all on the go with a simple tweet?  Could that be any easier?

How about the applications for free-to-play/microtransaction based video games?  @Battlefield Heroes twitpay $2 AK-47.  @Blizzard twitpay $15 character customization.  No complicated logins, no passwords to remember, just tweet it and pay it.

Better yet, talk about immediate emergency response.  Hurricane Katrina Strikes? California has (yet another) earthquake?  @RedCross twitpay $50.  At this time, $50 is the maximum amount allowed by Twitpay, but that’s not to say you couldn’t retweet the $50 more than once.  Given the rise in NPO interest in micro donations, Twitpay is something that they should ALL be seriously considering.

Twitpay CEO and Co-Founder Michael D. Ivey states, “Ideally we want to enable social giving on Twitter, but beyond that, we could enable charitable giving, such as to the Red Cross. We’re very excited to be able to help people do good over Twitter.”

Still in its infancy, Twitpay was created during the Atlanta Startup Weekend 2, an experiment in entrepreneurship designed to conceive, develop and launch a fully functional company within 54 hours.  Be sure not to miss their FAQ’s for an example on how FAQ’s should be written.

As more and more companies and brands begin to harness the power of social media, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a ‘Pay by Twitpay’ option popping up in more places than you’d expect.

Oh, and if you’re feeling particularly generous (after all, it IS the season of giving), @MountainDan is now accepting bribes gifts.

Related articles

• The Secret to Twitter Monetization Is…
• Twalala for Twitterflittering
• Gift Guide for the Twitter addict

Who to follow on Twitter

Nov 28, 2008 by Dan Taylor    12 Comments    Posted under: Technology

Twitter.  There’s a lot of conversations going on, but who’s good to listen to, and who’s not?  This is a common question I get when talking to others about the benefits of twitter.  Who the heck is Robert Scoble, and why should I listen to him?  Seth Go-who-din?

Agreed.  There ARE a lot of conversations out there and it IS often difficult to pick out the good ones from the well, let’s just say, less than interesting ones.  One of the best ways to get started is by following the ‘biggies’.  A quick google search of top 10 twitter folks brought up a number of names that I’ve already heard of, regularly read, and/or know at least something about.  I like to think of these folks as the movers and shakers of twitter.  They’re really driving and having great conversations – all out in the open for you and you and you and me to read.  My recommended top 10 twitterers are:

1. TechCruch
2. Scobelizer
3. Jason Calacanis
4. Guy Kawasaki
5. Ryan Carson
6. 1938Media
7. Kevin Rose
8. Leah Culver
9. Gary Vee
10. Ijustine
11. MountainDan
12. DataDirt

Ok, a bit of self promotion, but it’s my corner, and I’ll promote if I want to.

So we’re off to a good start by following some seriously good tweeple.  What I did when starting off with twitter is to watch conversations, specifically the @ conversations.  In twitter, an @ signifies a response to someone else, whether they’ve asked a question, posted something, etc.  By watching these top 10 folks and their responses to other tweets, you can being forming a base of people that have similar interests.  In my case: Tech, Marketing, Social Media, blog owners, etc.

Tools

A handy tool in who to follow selection comes via TweetDeck.  TweetDeck is hands down the best Twitter client I’ve ever used.  I thought Twhirl was pretty good, but lacked instant search and investigate features.  TweetDeck allows me to instantly view someone else’s profile in a new window with a simple click.  Sure, I could theoretically do this in a browser, but TweetDeck gives it to me all in one easy to manage window.  This way, I can keep on top of current tweets in action, while checking out someone’s profile, and if I want to follow them.

Directories

Eric Eldon (@eldon) from Venture Beat recently reported on some very interesting new search and social abilities via twitter.  He points out that while twitter is great for keeping the world up to date on what you’re up to, there’s a severe lack of social context to fuel further expansion of your personal network.  He recommends giving MrTweet a try.

The way it works is that you follow Mr. Tweet’s company Twitter account (@MrTweet), and it sends a link to a personalized report that it has generated for you. The report shows you meta-data about other users, like how often they post Twitter messages (called “tweets”), how likely they are to follow people who follow them, and more. In one part of the site, you can see rankings showing who “influential” Twitters are, partially based on whether they’re tweeting about the same topics as you, and also if they have a lot of followers.

Eric points out that the system does have some flaws including Mr.Tweet suggesting someone he’s already following and fails to find interesting people who aren’t already following him, and aren’t necessarily popular.  Twubble is a similar service that tries to automatically matchmake based on similarities, but again…no way to import your current twitter list in order to avoid duplication.

Twitter focused blog Twitterrati does provide some help in pointing us to some directories which help you sort tweeple by common interests.

Twellow is a twitter search service that allows you to search people by category, such as “Car buff” or “Xbox gamer”.  A similar service is offered by JustTweetIt.

In summation, twitter is a great tool that allows you to connect, broadcast to, and stay in touch with friends that you already know, and friends you’re about to meet.  Bringing it altogether in one cohesive “hey I know that guy, didn’t know he was on twitter” motion is/will be the holy grail.

Did I mention Facebook’s Connect? Until next time…..

Related articles

• Measure Your Twitter Influence: Twinfluence.com
• TweetValue.com – The Value Of Your Twitter Profile
• Perspectives From Guy Kawasaki: On Twitter, His Book: Reality Check And Life

Shaq on Twitter

Nov 22, 2008 by Dan Taylor    18 Comments    Posted under: News, Technology

I’m not the biggest fan of the hardwoods, but I AM a fan of watching real world superstars engage and utilize technology to directly converse with their fans..  So it came as a big of a surprise to me yesterday when I got a direct message from a fellow tweeter telling me to check out the_real_shaq, and give him a follow.  Like most, my first reaction was, Ok, fanboy here that thinks he can lay down the law like the Phoenix Suns starting center.

Well, shut my mouth, ‘cause a quick lookup on mashable shed some light on the fact that this might in fact be THE actual real live Shaq jumping into 21 century technology and actively engaging in conversations with his fans.  Are you kidding me?  OutSTANDing Mr. O’Neil!

If this wasn’t enough to make a social media advocate jump up and down, the story gets even better, as reported by Adam Ostrow yesterday afternoon.  To make his claim to twitter fame solid and permanent, Shaq actually reached across the great divide and actually called a fan that was in doubt as to the authenticity of ‘the real Shaq’.

Bryant Blount, aka Lord_b heard about Shaq’s tweets on a sports website and decided to give him a follow.  Shortly there after, much to Blount’s surprise, the_real_shaq returned the follow.  Blount then sent the message out, “Shaq has requested to follow me…boy is he gonna be disappointed.”

A bit later in the day, Blount then updated with, “still 30% skeptical about shaq tweeting…will continue to investigate and report back with any new findings.”

So far so good, nothing really wild and crazy to report here.  Well, strap your seatbelt on folks; this is where the ride is about to get started.  Apparently around 1am, Shaq wrote back with, “LORD B, DNT B SKEPTICAL, ITS ME GIMME A NUMBER I WILL CALL U.”

Oh SNAP!

Blount’s account is set to private (meaning his tweets aren’t public to the entire world), so he took the bait and posted his phone number.  Blount was sitting at is day to day, just doing his job when a blocked number showed up on his phone.  He answered and got the call of his life: THE real Shaq put the rumors to rest with one phone call.  After a 3-4 minute conversation that included chit chat about Twitter, the ‘fake’ Shaq, and Blount’s hometown, New Haven, CT, where Shaq played ball with some peeps, the two ended the conversation.

A few minutes later, Shaq updated with, “I just talk to my good friend lord b, hes cool, im a invite him to a game, him and his family.”

Shaq’s online marketing manager, Kathleen Hessert commented on the original Mashable post with, “Shaq is a joyful person and a riot to be around. He not only gets attention but actually attracts people – he’s magnetic and genuine. That’s why I recommended that he twitter. Frankly it suits him and he’s one of a select few who actually do care about his fans. He’s learning twitter on the run and tomorrow I’m showing him how to respond@ to a fan.”

This is outstanding.  This is putting the value and interest of fans and no-fans alike on a real world map.  Shaq’s managed to rack up 3000+ followers in just 3 days!  His first Twit pic had more than 1300 views within the first 10 minutes of posting.  If this isn’t a wake up call for any and all businesses and marketable properties that still don’t believe in the power of social media and marketing, I don’t know what is.  Kudos to you, Ms. Kathleen Hessert!

Related articles

• How a Tweet Lead to a Phone Call From Shaq
• The Real Shaq is on Twitter and He’s a Must-Follow

ThinkGeek – win a $250 gift certificate

Oct 10, 2008 by Dan Taylor    6 Comments    Posted under: Technology

A real quick one here that I just wanted to point out to my follow geeks readers:

Win $250 of ThinkGeek Stuff AND Your Very Own Zombie Horde to Protect it!
Win a Zombie Horde and a $250 TG Gift Cert!

Unless you’re one of those crazy minimalists, everybody likes free stuff. So we’ve decided to give two lucky winners $250 worth of ThinkGeek STUFF just because we like you. Not only are we giving out free stuff (in the form of two $250 Gift Certificates) but we’ll also provide you with your very own 5-member Zombie Horde to protect it. How do you enter to win such a fabulous prize? Simple. Just follow us on Twitter or post on our Facebook Wall and you’re entered. Easy Peasy. On Friday 10/10/08 at 11:59pm Eastern time, we’ll choose one random winner each from our Twitter Followers and our Facebook Wall to win a $250 ThinkGeek Gift Certificate and 5 Plush Zombies.

So get your Web 2.0 on, kids and follow us on Twitter or post on our Facebook Wall. Want to do both? OK, congrats – you’ve just doubled your chances of winning. Killer.

Twitter Follow us on Twitter:
http://twitter.com/thinkgeek

Facebook Post on our Wall on Facebook:
http://www.new.facebook.com/pages…6399067073

If you’re not already familiar with ThinkGeek.com, feel free to purchase and and all of my christmas presents there.

Sorry I got this so late, but just heard about it today.  Go fire up your twitter and facebook accounts and give a shout out to the thinking geeks by midnight tonight