Delivering Unique Business-Relevant Tweets: Facebook IPO

Note: This post was originally published on the FirstRain Market Mine Blog on Friday, May 18th 2012, the day Facebook went IPO.

Today's Facebook's IPO although a more consumer focused interest story then what most of our customers are interested in, brought a huge amount of tweets on the subject as expected. (I would even venture to say that it was more then a 'consumer interest story' but rather a 'human interest story'). None the less, being that FirstRain is a Silicon Valley based company, the buzz is also being felt strongly outside the digital world for those of us that live here and have friends and acquaintances that are being directly impacted by facebook's IPO. Exciting times.



Yesterday, prior to Facebook's IPO we ran some stats using our FirstTweets™ technology and then redid the same exercise at the close of the market today. FirstTweets™ uses our patented FirstRain technology to uncover and deliver only high-quality, business-relevant tweets to sales and marketing professionals across the enterprise. Our analysis shows that less than 0.1% of daily tweets contain quality, business-related content, yet this still represents more than 200,000 tweets per day of business-focused intelligence.

The picture painted by the stats that we captured, aren't surprising but are interesting and illustrative on why our customers are seeing value in our FirstTweets- as YY Lee our COO tweeted this morning allowing them to "cut through the frenzied roar to net out the actual business discussion...".

On the day before Facebook's IPO:

At the close of Market on the day of Facebooks IPO:

Take me to the River, in the Octopus

The Octopus is Microsoft Co-Founder Paul Allen's Super Yacht, it doesn't even rank in the top ten of super yachts - but it is pretty darn nice (ok it is # 11). like super nice. If i got an invite, i would go on a ride and i would ask Paul to play Al Green's 'Take Me to the River' (Paul is a huge music fan so i would probably let him go through his own collection as well).

Last night, Doc Searls posted a reaction to Dave Winer who posted a reaction (and plea) to Jason Pontin's post 'Why Publishers Don't Like Apps' that i had read earlier in the day. Pontin the Editor in Chief and Publisher at The Technology Review tells a tale of woe of how the Technology Review decided to move away from creating their own News Apps.

Their main points?

KISS it Publishers. ((Keep it Simple))

Winer has been the 'Champion of Champions' for RSS and for what he has coined the River of News. In Searls' post 'Take Us to the Rivers' he provides a historical outline of what is known as a 'river of news'- essentially a scrolling list of headlines as it happens and begs publishers to listen to Winer.

The reading experience is quite different, visit the nytimesriver and then the front page of the New York Times website . Scanning each which one did you just get the most value from if your aim is to get a quick overview of what is happening in aggregate and not what the NYT editors deem as most important?

There are of course successful media publishers like the WSJ who's digital App strategy i think has brought them together unlike what it did to the Technology Review team, but these are the big brands with targeted audiences. They can afford diversification of delivery methods and their audiences will pay for immersive experiences, whether they are behind premium pay walls and/or through Apps.

Consumers of news content of course will have different wants, consumption habits and needs. You can (and should) even break down these consumers into at least two buckets- personal news consumers and enterprise news consumers (there are certainly others that publishers target- political junkies, sport fanatics, etc.). By keeping their content Kissable, most publishers can benefit by focusing on the content and the editorial value and leave the ultimate consumption experience to the user and the tool/aps/experience experts.

I personally like "sitting on the bank of a river, watching the boats go by" and today's sexy speed boats like Flipboard are a news consumer dreamboat where the fellow passengers are handpicked by the captain (that would be you of course), but when i am trying to keep up with content (news, blogs, social whatever) for work trying to deeply understand the diverse business needs of my partners, clients and competitors- i want to be a passenger on the Octopus.

Perhaps Winer, Searls, Pontin and myself will get an invite to take a trip on the Octopus so we can come up with some strategies to get publishers to listen. @PaulGAllen drop me a DM to let me know when the Octopus ports in San Francsico.

Disclaimer: i know absolutely nothing about Yacht's and can't vouch for the # of rivers the Octopus can sail down ;-).

Image | Flickr | andraspfaff 

FirstRain's FirstTweets Weren't Built for Me (But I Benefit)

Note: I recently joined FirstRain as Director of Business Development after 12 years at Dow Jones/Factiva working with Enterprise customers on information delivery and consumption solutions- my focus and passion is to find, deliver and insure adoption of enterprise B2B business intelligence information solutions. As always, the opinions expressed on this site are my own and do not necessarily represent those of my past, future or present employer or any organizations i might belong to unless explicitly stated that is the case.

This week's FirstRain's announcement of FirstTweets a solution for B2B users delivering "business-quality Twitter intelligence on thousands of global companies, industries and topics relevant to the specific business lines of your customers, industry and competitors"- was an exciting one for our team and our customers.

I have been on a couple of client calls where we previewed this new content stream and across the board the enthusiasm and spark of ideas around FirstTweets from them has been very inspiring. These are companies of all sizes across various industries- some that have been extremely active supporters of using Social Media as part of their strategies (e.g. Customer Care centers, tech support, brand monitoring etc) and others that are just starting out.

For example, some of these companies have tried to use their existing social media monitoring and measuring tools to 'push' relevant business content to their sales team, but none have been able to crack the code using their existing systems that are great for monitoring their own brands and customers using keywords- but can not deliver precise business focused content on thousands of companies and industries that their salesforce covers or their market intelligence teams needs to keep track of competitors and new business trends. Some have tried other 'sales intelligence' solutions that push social media buzz into their CRM systems- all based on keywords with low hit business relevancy results- turning off most users.

Now i have been an active user of Twitter for a bit over 5 years, just when the little twitter bird began chirping. i use Twitter outbound and to listen quite a bit. I would estimate that i have spent hundreds of hours, curating content, selecting people to follow (and unfollow!) , creating lists, monitoring client issues, company employees and general news. i am one of those 9% of digital news consumers that sees the news Break on Twitter.

I use Twitter effectively and teach others how to at any chance i get- but hundreds of hours of my time has been invested, and will continue to be since Twitter is not a set it and leave it information flow.

Is that the level of time investment that most companies want for their employees that are not responsible for monitoring and measuring social media??? Do companies want staff especially Sales who can benefit greatly from business intelligence found in Twitter- spending the same amount of time i have over the years??

I would venture to say no.

Now, i think that EVERY employee should consider using Twitter to engage with their peers in their industry, their customers and of course their friends and family- but i don't think the processes that i have developed over the years is sustainable for most sales and marketing people- especially as your markets become more competitive and the budget dollars to spend on the solutions you sell decrease.

And that is where i see the biggest promise for FirstTweets- delivering intelligence to better understand your customers' end-markets, strengthen relationships and improve overall sales strategy.

The customers i have talked to agree.

Note: Today April 18th is the official launch to existing FirstRain customers, i have been using FirstTweets in our Sandbox environment for about two weeks- and have found many gems that i would never have found using the various tools i use in my Twitter day to day use- so it wasn't built for "me"- but i sure will benefit from it!

Data Junkies: Straight to the Vein

It seems that everyone is talking about #bigdata- I found the album cover for the Data Junkies haphazardly the other day and had to write a post that would make sense to use it with, so here it is.

I have been in the business of selling 'news' data for a long time, and often our customers come to us for big chunks of data from our news full text archive- all for a nice chunk of cash, so paying for data is nothing new for companies that have budgets for it. There have always been two types of clients that wanted the news archives, big companies with big budgets or students, with little to no budgets- lately there is a bunch of other companies small, medium, big, technology, finance, retail, social etc. that want access to news data for analytic/predicitive/trending proposes.

A couple weeks back i bookmarked this O'Reilly Radar article that looks at data market offerings from four providers- Infochimps, Factual, Windows Azure Data Marketplace, and DataMark. I spent some time looking at their datasets, the typical fees, the terms of use, etc. Below is a chart (which is clickable on the site) that compares the 4 providers they highlight.

There are a lot of companies working in this space, and the numbers - from the technology companies, to the data providers, to the service providers have ballooned over the last year. Even the WhiteHouse has gotten in front of the trend and this Thursday, "The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy will host a live webcast at 3 p.m. eastern time to outline how the government can “help big data” with its Big Data Research and Development Initiative" (Via GigaOM).

Technologists, data scientists, geek out on this stuff- but usability for general users that need data insights to make business decisions still needs to be addressed. Consumers can get excited but need tools to be able to do things with it- they need the tools and skills to make sense of the data- general skills for everyday business users (although there is also a big demand for data scientists). There are some companies working on that issue/opportunity usability. For example, ClearStory is interesting company in the space, trying to address the 'ease of consumption' for the regular user but also the IT department.

Image|Data Junkies Album Cover

Image| Local Market in Cuenca, Ecuador- picture by me

Information Overload Not Just About Productivity But Quality of Life

Last month i was invited to attend an 'unconference' put together by the Information Overload Research Group. IORG, is a group of researchers, practitioners and technologists from academia, corporations, solution vendors and consultancies that are dedicated to reducing information overload, a problem that they believe "diminishes the productivity and quality of life of knowledge workers worldwide".

Charlie Davidson, CEO of Attensa who i have known for years via other industry events, sent me the invitation. Attensa is trying to solve the problem of Information Overload for businesses because "Overload not only hurts productivity, but also prevents people from using the information and knowledge that is critical to revenue generation, innovation and overall business results."

I had never heard of the Information Overload Research Group and upon Charlie's invitation i was immediately interested in having the opportunity to spend the day with academics and practitioners who are researching the issue of Information Overload.

It was a great day (and for me to say that because it was a Saturday, it was really worth my time, when i could have been running around with my toddler after a long week of work!)- i took many notes, and lately have been inspired to draw the concepts that are being discussed or that pop into my mind as the discussions happen- perhaps inspired by my two year old as she said ' mommy, so pretty' when i pulled the notes out to review recently.

I embedded them below as a flickr slideshow or you can click on the pages below for a bigger image. If anything doesn't make sense, or you need clarification on my 'wacky' imagery, drop me a comment!

Notes Page 1

Notes Page 2

Notes Page 3

Notes Page 4

Notes Page 5

Notes Page 6

I look forward to the next Information Overload Research Group Event, if you are interested in joining the group please visit their site.

RIP iPad 1 (Rest in Pieces)

Oh iPad 1, you have been a true member of our family since the summer of 2010. But now it is time to say goodbye....

You have helped us navigate the streets of Rome, Paris, Luxembourg, Frankfurt, Lisbon and oh so many other little cities in far away places as well as close to home. Using 3G, or snapping screen shots of maps in preparation on the hotel WIFI- we always found the way with your help, bought the tickets before we got there, confirmed the open hours and the train schedules, read up on the collections and you told us exactly what we needed to enjoy ourselves.

And on those long flights to get to those faraway places, with an infant and then a toddler- you entertained and made the time 'fly' from your many kid Apps, to Angry Birds when the kid fell asleep. When we went out to eat and it was way past her dinner time, in the streets of some romantic town square- you entertained her so she could enjoy being with us, we with her and the other dinner guest with themselves.

You taught my 9 month old the swipe motion (and at 2 she swipes many a thing that just don't swipe because that is how she expects all electronics to work), you also taught her ABCs and all the animal sounds, her love of Toy Story , the Monster at the End of the Book, Monkey Pre-school lunchbox, Peekaboo Barn and on and on.

During the evenings you let me read interesting content, from people i follow on twitter, facebook and other feeds with a fascinatingly beautiful interface in Flipboard that more and more is becoming a standard experience in consuming content as i predicted. There was no movie star that ever went unidentified or spoofs that we didn't keep an eye out for as we tuned into a movie.

You became my cookbook companion- never a recipe that couldn't be found and followed from the counter. Oops no butter in the house, no worry a substitute is a swipe away.

There was rarely a question that went unanswered when you were around.

But i failed you, i left you behind once and miraculously you were 'returned' to me and now i just committed the ultimate sin.

I left you on the roof of my car and drove away, at about 65mph you flew off. My husband saw something 'black that looked like a record' that the car behind us swerved to avoid, we had the sun roof opened, but the screen was on and the kid couldn't have thrown anything and we didn't think of you because you were supposed to be safely stored in my bag. Latter on when i was about to pull you out to keep the kid entertained as we ate, i shrugged it off and she didn't miss you- i must have left it at home . When i got home 5 hours later, i looked for you, i panicked- where did i leave you- and then snap- i asked- "you saw something that looked like a black record behind us on the highway as a car swerved???....."

He went out to find you on US1, risking life and limb so you could be put to rest. Lucky for me iPad3 is due next week, you my friend are not so lucky. Rest in Pieces.......

Grave Stone Image|Flickr|bknittle

Raising Arizona Image|Bill's Movie Emporium- if you don't get the reference you need to watch the movie!

iPad Images|Unfortunately my own...

This Ain't your Mother's Craft Fair

This weekend i headed over to the Renegade Holiday Craft Fair in San Francisco. In general i love crafty gatherings, from the beloved summer street fairs to special events like the one i went to today, i always get inspired and of course find some scores that i would never fine anywhere else.

One thing that i noticed is that this wasn't your typical holiday craft fair of yesteryear. Here are some of the highlights:

- Many reclaimed items made from recycled materials- these crafters are reusing materials from drum symbols and skateboards (yes i got me one of those) to vintage chair upholstery and creating beautiful items

- Almost every vendor had a Square (or similar) credit card reader- no more 'i don't have enough cash'- a good thing because some things were quite high-end and costly

- and last , more and more i am becoming a fan of etsy- the craft fair was a in person etsy convention- the majority of the vendors i took a close look at had an etsy store.

So aside from some new things i bought, i am also feeling pretty crafty- with a stayaction coming up for the holidays i am looking forward to some creative time- now off to look around the house for items that i can reclaim and get started with.