I love the Twitter service, but it’s really all about the people that I connect with.  So when Twitter’s technical issues prevent me from talking with my online friends, I’ve often thought that there might be better ways to communicate.  I developed OpenMB earlier this year.  Although it isn’t finished, I was able to create a prototype that would allow people to communicate in a distributed system.  The problem with OpenMB is that it is a new application that needs to be perfected and adopted.  I’ve been thinking about easier alternatives.

The solution that I’m going to describe in this post may be superior to OpenMB in a lot of ways.  It uses existing standards for communicating between blogs.  In this solution, pingbacks are the open standard used for a distributed microblogging platform.

Posting

To post a Pingback Message (PM), you must have an account on a Hub Pingback Server (HPS).  Each account will have the ability to post a Pingback Message (PM) from his or her own blog.    The HPS is just another blog with the capacity to accept and store all of the PMs that are generated by its members. 

Reading

Each member of an HPS will subscribe to an RSS feed.  Each feed will be uniquely defined for the subscriber.  This means that the subscriber will determine which member’s PMs appear in his or her feed.  Additionally, a PM publisher will have the ability to Block specific subscribers from receiving his or her PMs.

Pingback Message Contents

A PM is simply a blog post.  I have identified the elements below using WordPress field names:

post_title = Content of the message.  This will probably be restricted to 140 characters in keeping with current standards.

post_content = [anchor text with link to Hub Pingback Server] | [HPS Username] | [HPS Secret] | [In-Reply-To URL]

Subscribing to Multiple Hubs

People can register with multiple Hub Pingback Servers and subscribe to the posts from each server.  The user can choose to create a combined RSS feed, allowing them to read all PMs in a single stream.

Challenges

There are a few challenges ahead in implementing Pingback Messaging:

1. Feed Subscriptions - Subscribing to multiple Hub Pingback Servers and creating combined feeds will be cumbersome for the user.  A process will need to be developed to make that easier.
2. Text Messaging interfaces - The initial focus is to provide communication across the web, however, there are many text-messaging plugins for blogs and RSS feeds.  It should not be difficult to add those features to this solution.
3. The Unknown -
   • How many users can a single HPS support? 
   • Will other blogging platforms support PMs (the entire message must fit in title)?
   • How will we offer users the ability to discover people across servers?
   • Should direct messages be supported, or was that just a nice feature of Twitter that doesn’t need replicating? 

Moving Forward

I have implemented a working prototype in WordPress.  It is currently a simple template that could be copied to any WordPress installation.  Very soon, I will be able to unveil the code for your consideration and suggestions for improvement.

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Do you really think you can be completely objective with the website you’re building.  You’ve been through countless iterations and worked into the wee hours of the morning on your “new baby?”  It always helps to have a second set of eyes, and even if you’re working with a team, it’s even better to have that second set of eyes come from the outside.

For your next project, I’d suggest hiring a website advisor.  This person should have a background in SEO, web design, usability, and just plain common sense.  Your website advisor should have an established reputation and be able to point to examples of his or her work.  They should also be willing to give you a preview of their expertise by reviewing one of your existing sites.

The website advisor’s job is to take a fresh look at what you’ve created.  This person should provide candid feedback and offer suggestions for improvements.  Bring in the website advisor toward the end of a project.  Yes, it could result in some rework, but better to do that than feel the wrath of your users later on.

Can I recommend a good website advisor?  Absolutely.  I’ve had personal experience working with Jim Spencer of JBS Partners.  He has a good eye for detail and was very helpful in making suggestions for My Tweeple.  Although, I must admit that I didn’t take all of his suggestions.  Any errors on the My Tweeple site are wholly my own.

Yes, it’s an additional expense for your projects.  You’ll need to weigh that expense against potential losses if your site is a failure.  If you lose your objectivity and thereby lose business, you’ll really wish you’d hired a website advisor. 

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As I write this post, the painters have arrived outside, grabbing their ladders and starting up their power-sanders.  My family lives in a hundred-year-old Victorian, so when it came time to repaint our painted-lady, we focused on the company’s reputation and prior work, as much as we did the price.  The owner of the company we selected, a local guy with over 30 years of experience, takes pride in his work and approaches each job with the fine-eye of an artist.  In his work, he can’t afford to do a poor job.  He depends on recommendations for future business.

Our painter can control the quality that he puts into this job, and he can manage his relationship with us, but in many ways he’s powerless when it comes to getting more business.  We will talk to our friends about his work, people may approach us for referrals, and others might judge his work as they walk by, later discussing what they saw with their friends.  The painter has no way to monitor those conversations.  He can’t respond to questions or refute incorrect statements. 

Our house and our next-door-neighbor’s house are both blue, although our neighbor’s home is, how shall I put it, more of an Electric Blue (with light and dark purple accents).  Someone might be discussing our painter’s job and mistakenly point to our neighbor’s home as his work.  He’ll never know about the mistake, and he has no power to correct it.  He might lose business.

With online conversations, it’s a lot easier to see what people are saying about you.  Most of the social media tools allow you to search out and view these conversations.  Usually, you even have an opportunity to participate in the discussions.

Although we’ve been telling companies to get involved in social media, we’ve often focused on this as a defensive maneuver.  “The conversation about your brand is already happening.  Join in, or you won’t be able to defend yourself.”  It’s as though we have to scare businesses into becoming participants in social media conversations.

Rather than be dragged into social media out of fear , I’d rather focus on how social media empowers business.  My painter can’t hear what’s being said about him.  In that regard, he’s completely powerless.  However, every company with an online presence has the ability to utilize social media.  Each businesses has the power to monitor and participate in conversations that affect their brand.  That’s control, that’s power, and that’s how the needs of the customers and the needs of the companies converge.  Social Media is not all about “Power to the People.”  The power is available for businesses to use as well, if they invest the time to learn how to wield it.

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There are many businesses working hard to figure out Social Media, and Twitter appears to be the latest nut to crack.  Companies are entering Twitter in droves, and more often than not, they are making some big mistakes.  For those of you who are considering opening a Twitter account and would like to avoid some of the most common mistakes, I hope the list below will help.  Warning:  You can do serious damage to your business if you attempt any of the following activities on Twitter.

#1 - Turn your Twitter account into a shout-board.

Washington Mutual (WaMu) entered Twitterdom earlier this year with its WaMuWhooHoo account.  Every tweet (Twitter post) began with a pithy factoid about WaMu’s services, ending with the phrase, “WhooHoo!!!”   WaMu was blasted by the Twitter community and made fun of in many different ways.  The WaMu approach failed for two big reasons:  People don’t want company slogans shouted at them through Twitter, and many of us don’t like it when companies follow us for the sole purpose of getting attention for their brand (see #5 below).

WaMu deleted their Twitter account, but the failure didn’t end there.  Someone else picked up the account and started parodying the original WaMuWhooHoo.  Now, you can enjoy the fake WaMuWhooHoo with equally inane slogans: “WaMu. We don’t nickle and dime you, we overdraft you. Whoo-hoo!!!.” 

Certainly it’s okay to make announcements about your company through Twitter, but that can’t be your only purpose for creating the account.

#2 - Use your company’s name as your Twitter screen name.

A lot of people will disagree with me on this one because there are ways to use your company name on Twitter and still be successful.  The problem is that most businesses aren’t able to properly execute that tactic.  In general, people don’t want to talk with the marketing arm of a company.  Customer service is a different story, and we’ve seen accounts like ComcastCares become very useful.  However, if your goal is more than customer service and you want to engage in conversation about your brand, you’ll need to join as a person, not a company.

Twitter accounts with a company name are immediately suspect.  Users will not look at your profile and will often block your account without even reviewing your bio.  It’s okay to include the name of your company in your screen name (i.e. JaneAtNissan), although you’ll also want to keep in mind that longer screen names will make it more difficult for people to reply to you within the 140-character limit.

#3 - Pretend to be someone else.

I’m not sure if this has happened that much on Twitter yet, but these tactics have had huge repercussions in the blogging world, and the same will happen on Twitter (or worse because of Twitter’s immediacy).  Do not create fake Twitter accounts in order to talk up your brand.  You will be discovered and you will be embarrassed.

#4 - Prove your expertise by entering Twitter as the “know-it-all.”

It may be tempting to come onboard in a flurry of self-promotion.  You are probably an expert in your area, why wouldn’t someone hang on your every word?  Here’s the thing about Twitter:  there is an equalizing effect across its members.  Junior-level employees are able to converse on Twitter alongside thirty-year-veterans.  It’s common and quite acceptable to have your views challenged, sometimes by people who have no knowledge of your field at all.  This provides you with an opportunity to show your talents through thoughtful dialogue.  Acting like a know-it-all, citing your credentials, and refusing to engage, will get you laughed out of the Twitterverse.

The best advice that I can give you is to do a lot of listening first.  Interject when appropriate and your expertise will become known.  This approach takes more time, but, if you come on too strong, people may tend to ignore you, or even worse, see you as the know-it-all who is ripe for being put in his or her place.

#5 - Follow massive numbers of people to gain an instant following.

Do not follow as many people as you can just to increase your own following.  This tactic is known as Twitter Spam.  People, like me, absolutely hate this practice.  I look at the profiles of the people who follow me.  I’m always interested to see if I can learn something new from a profile.  If you follow me as a company, and I didn’t initiate the relationship, you’re usually wasting my time.  If you come onto Twitter as a person (because you read #2 above) then it is less likely to be a problem. 

People also pay attention to your Follow-to-Follower ratio.  Try to keep the number of people you follow close to the number of people who follow you, especially when just getting started.  If you are following 2,918 people and you have one person following you, it’s very likely that you’ll be blocked.

Help!

If you found any of the points above confusing and you still have questions, I really recommend that you contact a PR agency to help you make your Twitter debut.  I’m following a number of people who work for great firms.  If you don’t have an agency already, you can look through the list of people who I follow for a good start.

Who’s Doing It Right?

ComcastCares is a great example of how customer service can be done well on Twitter.  I’ve had a conversation with @ComcastCares and I was very pleased with the dialogue.  They didn’t have to follow me to get my attention and I’m not following them, but I know they’re there if I need them.

StackSafe, a provider of pre-production staging and testing solutions for IT operations teams, has a presence on Twitter, but don’t look for @StackSafe; it doesn’t exist.  Jonah Paransky and Joe Pendry of StackSafe are both active on Twitter as @jonahparansky and @joependry, respectively.  They are engaging users on Twitter using the same approach that they use on their blog; they offer their expertise and talk with people on a human level.  Instead of focusing constantly on their brand, the folks at StackSafe aim to provide useful information first.  If you happen to find a need for their software along the way, fantastic, but they are not out their beating you over the head with a sales pitch.

There’s no way to really tell anyone how to be completely successful with Social Media.  You can have a great coach, but at some point you just have to try it on your own.  I always suggest that business users get their feet wet first by creating a personal account that isn’t affiliated with their brand.  That way you can learn, make mistakes, and come back later as an experienced representative of your company.

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I’m trying to find out if there is already a “Donate to Open Source” day.  I suppose it should really be, “Donate to Freeware,” or something along those lines.  There are a lot of great software programs, plugins, and utilities that we use everyday for free.  Often, we mean to give a little back to the developer for his or her hard work, but we don’t always get around to it.

Is there a Hallmark Card for your local struggling software artist?  Hopefully it would be a red envelope with a check inside.

I know that I’ve been guilty of using software and never rewarding the author, but I’ve also gone out of my way with some products to make an unsolicited payment.  I’ve received donations from people who appreciate my hard work.  All of the contributions that I’ve received mean a lot to me and my family.

How many of you have paid for your tiny url service?  How much have you spent on your Twitter client?  What about that plugin that displays your “greatest” posts?

While it all seems like a literal free-for-all, someone spent a good deal of time and effort building this software.  If we don’t have one already, there should be a special day when we remind ourselves to give back to the developers. 

Maybe there’s a day already and I’m just not aware of it.  If not, it’s time to ask ourselves, which day will become, “Donate to Open Source Day?”

– Photo Credit: Josh Bancroft

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