Filed under: Environmentalism, Facebook, Hearts and Minds, Industry Reputation, Influence, Microblogging, MySpace, National Security, New Media Strategy, New PR, Online Communities, Online Community Outreach, Online Evangelism, Online Outreach, Online Participation, PR Tactics, Popular Culture, Propaganda, Propaganda Warfare, Public Affairs, Public Affairs Blogging, Public Relations, Public Space, Social Meda, Social Media Marketing, Social Media News Release, Stealth Marketing, Twitter, Viral Marketing, Viral PR, YouTube, YouTube Marketing, presidential election

T. Boone Picken’s, Texas oil man, 1980’s corporate raider and current manager of BP Capital Management has something new up his sleave. And it features an internet strategy.

In 1997, he shifted his focus to natural gas. and 10 years later, in 2007, on wind energy. He formed Mesa Power LP in west central Texas and is constructing what will likely be the world’s largest wind farm. The project will feature thousands of wind turbines and cost hundreds of millions of dollars. This follows his belief that natural gas remains the best alternative to oil for motor vehicle fuel. That’s why he formed Pickens Fuel Corp eleven years ago.

Now, with $4 a gallon gas prices, he’s funding a public affairs effort to help us cut out oil as a our primary fuel for transportation, substitute it with natural gas, and then substitute the use of gas for other types of energy needs with, you guessed it, wind energy.

Today, he’s launched an online public affairs effort to convince Americans to look to natural gas and wind as proper alternatives. He points out that we currently import 70% of our oil - up from 24% in 1970. What’s new about his effort, is that much of it is bein launched online.

He’s got a YouTube channel.
They’ve got a page on Twitter.
A fan page on Facebook.
And a page on Mypace.

They even have an online community that they’re building.

Pretty neat concept. I’ll be following this campaign to see how effectively they use social media.

No Comments » Posted on July 8th, 2008 by Jonathan Trenn

Filed under: Facebook, MySpace, Online PR, Online Public Relations, RedFly Marketing, Social Meda, Social Media Marketing, Social Media News Release, Social Media PR, Social Network Services, Social Networking, Social Networks, Twitter, jennifer mattern

Jennifer Mattern just wrote a great post answering some of your questions regarding the important question, Should You Jump Into Social Networks to Promote Your Business? over at RedFly Marketing via Chris Abraham:

There’s a lot of buzz in the online PR world about social networking, whether that be traditional social networks like MySpace and Facebook or social networking through microblogging services such as Twitter.

Should you jump into social networking to promote your business? And if so, with so many options available, how do you choose which social networks to participate in?

Read more…

No Comments » Posted on July 6th, 2008 by Chris Abraham

Filed under: Abraham Harrison LLC, Google, Robert Scoble, Twitter

Twitter’s become one of my favorite places to hang out when I’m online. But it’s become an increasingly frustrating place to be as there’s always something the matter with it. Part of it is down, the whole thing is down. Whatever.

This will eventually lead to a discussion as to whether Twitter will be able to maintain itself overtime or if it’s technical issues will cause enough problems for the service that it never creates the sense of critical mass that it may need to take it to the next level.

Scoble has a interesting take on Twitter’s viability. He says that the company’s lack of having a business model is unimportant at this point. In fact, he’s quite strong in his opinion.

In it he compares Twitter to Google of the late 1990’s. Google integrated itself into our lives and now is dominating the Internet.But I disagree. While I think that Twitter will be able to sustain itself, there are several differences between Google then and Twitter now.

No barrier to entry
All one has to do is head to google.com, plug in a term, and you’d get results. Click through and you were on your way. With Twitter, you have to sign up. And it can take weeks to figure out what it’s about. How to grow.

Amount of users
Googles users (or at least user sessions) went from thousands to millions to billions practically overnight. Twitter has less than 1,000,000 registered users.

User experience
In addition to the “in and out” aspect of Google, Google’s service is hardly ever down. Not so with Twitter. I’m starting to think that upside down birds and whales are my new best friends on Twitter. It’s happening to often and it may affect user loyalty.

Life integration
As much as the Internet was used by people in 1998-9, today it is that much more. The internet is no longer an essential tool, it’s part of people’s lifestyle. Twitter is one of may aspects of that and people will look to other similar services if it’s faltering, because…

Patience
may be a virtue, but its not as common as it used to be.

No Comments » Posted on July 1st, 2008 by Jonathan Trenn

Filed under: 2008 Elections, Cult of Personality, Election Strategy, Political Strategy, Polling Data, Polling Strategy, Popular Culture, Social Graphs, Social Meda, Social Media Index, Social Networking, Social Networks, Social News, Twitter

I’ve been looking at the graph that Twitter has given us for candidate mentions on Super Tuesday.

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The first thing that jumps out at me is the dominance of Barack Obama. The entire time he is the most mentioned candidate. At no time throughout the entire day is he overtaken by anyone else. What does this mean? I’m not sure. Is it because of popularity or is it because of the newsworthiness of his candidacy? Obviously, it’s some sort of combination.

What’s also interesting is the person with the second highest peak: Mike Huckabee. He’s been dissed by the mainstream media ever since New Hampshire. To me, that’s a combination of my belief that the mainstream media can’t relate to a evangelical Christian, along with the GOP delegate assignment system of winner take all. He’s done better in votes and on Twitter than most would be willing to give credit.

Hillary and McCain show no strength. That’s particularly for Clinton. You’d think she’s be mentioned more often in discussion regarding Obama. Pehaps this shows she, in comparison was a non-entity.

Here’s a telling stat that may show why:

Barack Obama has 6793 followers and he is following 6661 people.
Hillary Clinton has only 627 followers and is following 0 people.

Zero. Zilch. Nada. Nobody.

I’m not saying that this is why she is likely to lose the nomination, but I will say it does reflect an overall approach and mentality - a top-down mentality - that has just about killed her chances to be the next president of the United States.

1 Comment » Posted on February 27th, 2008 by Jonathan Trenn

Filed under: Social Graphs, Social Meda, Social Media Index, Social Networking, Social Networks, Social News, Twitter

Twitter has put out some interesting stats up on their blog. Trying to make sense of it.

Firsat of all, I must be hanging with some pretty connected people. I’ve got, as of this writing, 228 followers and I follow 277 people. And most of the people I’m connected to are more connected than I am.

But apparently, the average person on Twitter follows and is followed by around people. of course, this isn’t the best gauge - a lot of people join, follow one or two people and then never tweet. So the stats below aren’t really an strict indicator of involvement of those that are active. But nevertheless, it shows how loose hubs of people with common interests congregate.Followers/Following on Twitter GraphOne note here. It seems that most have more followers than they follow. That surprises me a bit. It seems easier to initially follow that to return the favor.

No Comments » Posted on February 27th, 2008 by Jonathan Trenn

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