Webnomena

I will be on vacation next couple of weeks and actually in the air when this blog celebrates its one year anniversary.

So, dear blog, I wish you happy first year birthday in advance and I hope to have you around for many more years.

I can talk about all sorts of statistics showing my progress during this time but I think that if I learned one thing this year is that there is no single measure to capture the social media experience. There is no number that can tell what the new friends I made, thanks to this blog, means to me.

So, while I’m a way…

• I will check my personal email few days after landing (around 11/16) if not sooner
• I promise to follow back on Twitter as soon as I can
• I promise to think about new blog posts and deeply mediate about new web phenomena
• I will do some math about what worked and what did not this year and if I’ll gain new insight I promise sharing it here.
• Google, if you are rethinking my PageRank, this time give me the credit for being around more than one year. Yes, I  still do value stats

This is another great work from Ron Shoshani  – go check his photostream on Flickr.

Kfir Pravda is the person that inspired me into blogging. He is a great blogger himself, an extremely smart person, and a true friend. I can’t thank him enough. Kfir is this blog godfather (or as Cathy Browne suggested on Twitter – the blogfather). And if I get lucky I might even meet him on this trip.

Do you have a blogfather? maybe you can tweet his Twitter user name with the #blogfather hashtag so we can all look for new and inspiring people to follow (using Twitter Search).

Ciao.

 

I signed up recently to QWITTER , this service tells about people that stopped following me on Twitter. I had doubt about the value of this tool but since it was easy to use I gave it a try. Getting on-board only require your Twitter user name and email for sending you the notifications.The first couple of days I got one or two messages that looks like that:

Hi, kerendg.
<Twitter user name> – stopped following you on Twitter after you posted this tweet:
<my tweet>

Check out <Twitter user name> profile here:
http://twitter.com/<Twitter user name>

Best,
Qwitter

I could not find any logical connection between my innocent tweet and this person abandoning my Twittership.

Anyway, few more days passed and on the election day I was monitoring closely the tags on TwitScoop. At some point I notice the word Miracle on the screen. I clicked to check what conversations on Twitter mentioned this word and in what context.

Well, the conversation where basically saying that John McCain will need  a miracle to win this election.

So I sent a Tweet about this tag….

The following day I got three Qwitter messages that looks like this.

Hi, kerendg.
<Twitter user name> stopped following you on Twitter after you posted this tweet:
my tweet about TwitScoop capturing the MIRACLE tag <the TwitScoop tag>

Check out <Twitter user name> profile here:
http://twitter.com/<Twitter user name>
Best,
Qwitter

OK, now I can see some connection. I can assume that these followers were not too happy with the election results. I can assume that they assume from my Tweet that I’m favoring one party over another. By the way I did not vote in this election (I have to wait few more years to become an American citizen first) and I can’t say that I formed a rock solid opinion yet.

A wise friend once told me that if something happened once it is a fluke, if it happened twice it is a coincidence but if it happens three times then it is a system (or a pattern in my geeky world).

What can we learn from this example:

1. If there are more than one followers that un-follow you after a tweet then there is a chance for causality association between the tweet and the reaction.
2. If this works on the negative way there is a high chance that it will work in the positive direction too. Why only look for connections between poor tweets and people that stop following you. For a single twitter user it is easy to find what he said or did that won him a bunch of new followers. Yet, if QWITTER could tell me what others are doing that suddenly adds to their Twitter followers count I might learn a thing or two. 
3. Finally: It may not be my assumed political opinions that cost me three followers, it could be my insensitivity, sending this tweet in such troubled time for supporters of the other party was probably a poor social media action. I think that I’ve actually learned something from this service.

Your thoughts.

Few days ago Danny Brown the owner of PressReleasePR  and a good friend, asked me if I can answer seven questions about social media. I decided to take on this challenge. I had a lot of fun answering these excellent questions.

Here is the link to Discussing Social Media with… Keren Dagan

There are two previous blog posts in the Discussing Social Media with series and more are coming soon, so please make sure to check here.

As I wrote in my previous post about the role of social media delivering dramatic news events, this time around we have a real opportunity to experience the election day on an entire different level. We can converse on many social media platforms, we can listen to others talking about this election. We can get alerts, links, comments that will prompt us to react in real-time to news about this exciting day.

This is how I’m going to “watch” the election day:

• Check Twitter VoteReport – you can also set an iFrame page in your Blog or iGoogle (take only the url and remove the iFrame code)
• I’m going to use my TweetDeck window single view – pointing to TwitScoop
• I will double check with Twitter Search Trening Topics just in case the first two missed on something
• I’m going to rely on the people I follow on Twitter to share some news and links keeping me in the loop
• I may search  comments about the election on Backtype
• I can also search for the word election on FriendFeed or join the US Politics room

 

Others:

• http://election.twitter.com/
• http://www.perspctv.com/
• And I’m sure that there are more mashups out there coveing the election day

I will probably open the TV occasionally or read some news on a traditional news web-site. I may even read an article or two from the newspaper. Yet, I mostly plan to experience this event as socially as possible on the new media. I’m looking forward for your conversations.

The hard part – I need to wait few more years before I can vote. I’m only a permanent resident.

Happy election day and I wish America to come up with new president that will lead us through the challenges ahead.