It’s so humbling to see simple social networking tools like spy which I created on a whim be discovered and serve purposes on a level I never would have anticipated. I first saw this when people found and used spy during the crisis in Mumbai but just today I discovered…

‘spy’ing on Volcano Stranded Travelers?

It seems the almost 1000 members of When Volcanoes Erupt: A Survival Guide for Stranded Travelers on Facebook are sharing and using a link to spy for the hash tag #getmehome. If this tool helps just one person get where they need to safely I am more than ecstatic.

This is a test!

Below I embedded my first Wave “Hello World… I mean Wave!”… The first of many likely… let’s see what it looks like out in public… I know many of you probably can’t see it… This is a test!

UPDATE: I believe and claimed this as the first Google Wave embed in a blog outside of the Googleplex! My claim on Twitter.

For those not in Wave yet here was a screenshot from 4pm 6/3/09.

Here we go…

(click into post to see it)

This post exists because I was asked to create a presentation of the high points of what I’ve discovered in my exploration of social media that could be conveyed to others just getting started looking at the space. I was asked to include why I was so interested to build my apps on my spare time (spy, retweet radar, and ConnectTweet) which are really about poking, prodding and learning about the social media conversation’s value by experimenting with it… not just technology hijinks (although that’s interesting too).

After a fair amount of brain freeze (still only partially defrosted at this point) I knew this “presentation” was largely a series of links to tools, great blog posts and examples… I quickly determined PowerPoint, the grand old corporate standard for this type of thing, could not capture or fairly represent the multifaceted and decentralized conversation around social media it dawned on me — a blog post — which by it’s nature is a containing thought, linking to others to expound upon it is open for debate [comments] just like the current malleable state of social media.

So here it is my “presentation”…

I come from the perspective that you don’t start doing something just because it’s the cool new thing – the buzzword buzzing in your peers/bosses/co-worker’s ears – rather you should see true value to your relationships, your work, your future… or simply some entertainment value. I am going to try to give you a walking tour through interesting aspects of social media channels specifically Twitter, which at it’s roots is a communication channel for short pointed messages… essentially an email message without the “blah blah” bloat and open for all to read. My goal will be to give you tools to discover why you care about participating in this channel, if in the end you just don’t see it that’s ok… forced conversation isn’t fun for anyone.

Listen first!

Your boss asked you why you aren’t on “The Web 2.0 Twitters” yet… you are itching to go out and create that Twitter account, even though I told you not to… don’t, you need to learn to listen first. [And don't worry (s)he's just asking because (s)he can't figure it out :)]

So many people go out create those shiny new empty accounts maybe add one or two friends [who don't participate] and say “it doesn’t work”, “I don’t get it” and “whats so interesting about this” here is the truth it’s not interesting or useful by itself… it’s a communication channel not a television! You need to discover interesting conversations and people and then jump in on it, your empty account is one of hundreds of thousands out there who didn’t realize discovery and a little work is a must.

Discover by Listening

Let’s find something interesting and see whats being said about it… this is where my first tool ‘spy‘ comes in but there are many others to look at too. The idea with ‘spy’ is to “listen in on the social media conversation going on around you” on something you already care about for example say the name of your company…

spy on Best Buy

Now we’re going to see all sorts of interesting things being said… you feel the vibe of the public towards you today… people hate us, people love us, people post weird [really weird] things… but in that mess at least one things will get you motivated you’ll read a post and say “hey, I can fix that for him”, “hey, she needs this product to make that better” or “hey, that’s completely not true where do I find this guy!” or any of a myriad of other responses… there it happened you found a connection an interaction you want to have this is one bud of a conversation in this global decentralized chatter going on around us every day. If you are an Apple nut or are argumentative about politics, among so many other examples, your sure to not go dry on topics to listen to and converse about.

Take something you personally care and plug them into tools like Twitter Search, ‘spy‘, monitter.com or maybe check out Twellow a list of Twitterers by their interests when you do get started you’ll know who you want to listen to.

Discover by Trends

One of my personal favorites is to watch trends, not “what’s next on the internet” but what are people talking about casually right now… Google can step aside here this is the rawest view on open conversations on the web — real time conversation trends. If you take a look at the “Trending topics” or “Trends” sections on Twitter Search and ‘spy‘ respectively click on any one that interests you you see up to the second conversation on that topic from hundreds or maybe thousands of participants. Yes you are going to see bad TV shows (American Idol and your sort I am looking at you…) celebrity gossip, and a bit of spam but real time shines during national or global events if you are watching you’ll know about any national event first far before the traditional media can report on it, even full time cable news.

During events like the US National Debates or the terror in Mumbai a real powerful side conversation is being had in real time of which you are listening and can participate, I remember watching the debates on the TV with real people’s Twitter commentary scrolling on my laptop in full screen on ‘spy’ totally changes the experience.

My second tool plays in this trends space, there is a concept on Twitter where you “retweet” someone’s Twitter post when you think it is important and you want more people to see it, more about retweets here. My tool retweet radar gathers all those “retweeted” messages and attempts to pull out relevant terms and plot them… this view quickly allows you to see what people think is interesting so far today and even right now, an interesting way to keep your finger on the pulse of the conversation and a fun little project.

Listen and Participate for Business

Listening as closely as possible to customers and interacting with them should be the first thing that comes to mind from a business mindset when we discuss these tools, we’ve already talked about it a bit above. You now have the unique ability to put your ear to the masses, ask them questions about your product and share in their excitement or pain using them.

In this medium some customers are turned into zealots on both positive and negative sides of the fence, they have a megaphone to speak their mind and they do. This can be good for you, they serve to keep you honest, keep a spotlight on you and spread the word of your brand and products this channel allows you to keep up a conversation with zealots and use them as a leading indicator for your decisions, maybe even including some of them in those directions.

As an example, the day a new Best Buy marketing pieces hits people’s homes the social media channels erupt in conversation both good and bad an almost immediate barometer on the impact of that offer, particularly today a get $100 off an iPhone offer hit all Best Buy RewardZone Silver customers and the social media conversation was very positive. A further example, the day RewardZone Black was accidentally emailed to millions of people, Barry Judge our CMO noticed the increased conversation on the ‘spy’ in his office and quickly issued an apology through his Twitter account and his blog a first for Best Buy in both speed and openness to admit our mistake.

Best Buy and other Twin Cities companies were written up in this Pioneer Press article for our early social media efforts including blueshirts from the stores, corporate workers and even our CMO on Twitter not to mention some nice ‘spy’ coverage. Outside of Best Buy using ‘spy’ to watch the social media conversation in the Hub, HP has implemented ‘spy’ in their internal marketing portal to help their workers keep up on the conversation around their company.

Chris Brogan and others covers ideas for business well in video and bullet point format so read on.

Participate for Yourself – Your Growth, Your Career.

Wherever and however your expertise, passion and occupation line up there are a limited number of people who do what you do, the way you do with the experiences you have… social media thrives on this fuel. People who throw out that new idea, business tip, graphic design guide, free font or nugget of web development advice are lifted up. People are eager to hear from others cross pollinate ideas and practices and generally to learn, putting yourself in this pool and being looked to for advice by this international group of “followers” can propel you to learn more, advance your skills and show you the market out there for you as a leader in your space.

I have been writing this blog for about 8 months now, polluting the internet and social media with my then poor, now slightly better, writing abilities; I progressed, I helped people, I participated in thousands of conversations with people I would have never met including many big names on the internet and getting my name out there.

Your ability to use social media, build your niche and “personal brand” as they say is nearly limitless. If you are the “best X person in the office” take it to the web, I guarantee you will learn something further and people will recognize your skills and you will be rewarded as many times as I feel I have been, your company, your industry, your world can be flattened by these barrier crossing social media connections.

I just received word from Pam Dearen at HP of some great launch news partially powered by spy.appspot.com!

Our new internal Digital Marketing Community Portal launched as planned on January 15. One of its top features is our “HP Buzz” — our custom version of your Spy app.

It’s truly exciting to see big business gravitating toward social media and empowering employees to listen fulfilling my vision for ‘spy’ — it was never about the technology or the website but finding and amassing these relevant and timely social media conversations and getting them in front of people who care about them but may not yet participate in the social media space.

HP’s “Buzz” section of their internal Digital Marketing Community Portal does all of this well, the employees in this group will see a constantly refreshed and relevant view of what people are saying about HP, if they only find one actionable nugget of information from their customers via this method it would feel great to me and I am positive they will.

I really appreciate the quick and relevant work they have done here, the very kind attribution and the clear view and message that empowering employees with more direct channels to listen to and interact with their customers can only better the experience for all customers and help to shape business decisions we all make every day. Kudos to the HP Digital Marketing team for getting out there, testing and trying new avenues and listening to their customers wherever are.


Click for full size.

ConnectTweet is a simple utility built under the concept [reality in my opinion] that all groups, companies or brands are just collections of many people whose passion, ideas and behavior completely shape it. Often those people’s voices are drowned out in communications by a need to feel “official” instead making it feel robotic, monochromatic and cold… this is especially evident as companies are showing up in social mediums like Twitter where forced news releases and push marketing stick out like a sore thumb.

There needs to be a better way for a company to be represented on Twitter by many passionate people on the inside versus a robot or a single voice.

Making it happen with ConnectTweet

ConnectTweet flips that equation for groups and lets the real people all across your organization to show through on Twitter and be your voice. They can have real, human conversations with customers and share their unique perspectives and passion for their work as people at the front lines of your organization. This unique transparency shows the vibrancy that networks like Twitter have is inside your organization it’s just waiting to be shown the light of day.

First, you need to find and tap the passionates… the people all over your organization many of whom may already use tools like Twitter for their own uses, ask them to be your voice, to share openly their perspectives, interesting tidbits (guarantee you will learn something too) and to answer other users questions about the company on Twitter tagging each of their company posts with #companyname.

ConnectTweet can be then setup to gather up the tweets from the approved users and post them to your organization’s Twitter account allowing your followers to clearly see the human voices on the inside and give your organization that true human interface your customer always wanted to see.

A simple example

Below ConnectTweet has posted to the Twitter account of one of my tools a message I relayed from my personal account to let the tool’s approximately 1000 followers know about something cool that just happened. I simply posted this to my account, and the below tweet appeared in @retweetradar‘s stream. If ten people worked for retweetradar.com they all could do the same thing creating an organic stream of information about the site right from the people on the front lines.

ConnectTweet is in a limited Alpha test but I would love to hear if you’d find it useful and would be interested in trying it out.

I have to admit it’s nice to have people around you that can drop a killer new web design with one hand and build in, from the beginning, an understanding of how those designs can be executed on today’s browsers with the other…

Jason Galep stopped by out of the blue and asked if he could contribute a design for retweetradar… the contemplation period was brief and something like a “heck yeah” came from my mouth… I have no delusions that I am a designer and this opportunity was perfect timing for both of us. We worked back and forth over just a couple hours and a few emails and it was executed… a rapidly built, high quality, and great looking new face for retweetradar.com!

Hearing some great feedback on the design already via Twitter… what do you think? Tweet your feedback here!

Captured http://retweetradar.com as it is today here on Flickr, since we all know the train doesn’t stop and changes will keep coming!

Thanks for all the interest in my little project!
-Ben

Act I: Bigger != Better

From the first installment: The Web Development Elves

These great little sites didn’t require a multi-million dollar creative agency. They didn’t require a creative brief. And they didn’t require a million dollar investment from a major corporate client. They just needed the curiosity, ingenuity, creativity, time, and effort of one clever tinkerer.

I really appreciate that Mike, dead on. Mike writes on the same vein I am about theses applications, it’s not the change in technology that’s critically important here it’s the openness and pervasiveness of the new tools… anyone can do this… it’s no longer just the game of big IT or big agencies.

Small websites, tools, and online services, built by independent developers will eventually dwarf the contributions of the major digital creative agencies.

Act II: Efforts playing outside influence the day job? – Benefits to Best Buy (my employer)

In the second installment: Web Development Elves II: Double Agent Mike picks up on the excellent article in the Economist “Generation Y goes to work” that mentions some of our work at Best Buy and sees:

Another Net Gener at the company cobbled together a mobile-phone version of Best Buy’s website for fun in seven days in his spare time.

Mike got in contact with me and asked… yep, he got me again… turned it into this post: Web Development Elves II: Double Agent Read the whole post, but this was his final flurry and I couldn’t agree more!

Big corporations are so used to working with big agencies on big projects that it’s difficult for them to adapt to this new way of working. Small projects. Iterative process. Limited bureaucracy. But, best of all, small budgets and limited risk.

Every corporation in the world should be seeking out this kind of embedded intelligence, and making effective use of it. Create systems for discovering these talents. Create regular rewards for employees who share these talents. And create ways for groups of employees to find each other and begin collaborating.

More and more you will find that this is how people expect to work – flexible interests, collaborative, non-hierarchical – because this is how the internet works. Adapt.

Fun stuff! …Now back to the lab…

Then out of the blue I see Robert received a tweet back from Tim O’Reilly with feedback on retweetradar!

I read it, thought about it, and you know he was right on… the mixing of terms, people and links made the cloud too busy and “people” were not the topic of the tweets they we just authors and interested parties… I needed to jump to work couldn’t waste my chance to show Tim and the many others showing attention yesterday what could be done.

I reworked the interface so “people” and “links” had their own area but were still prominent and displayed the top ten of each among a few other minor tweaks. I let Tim know I made some changes, not expecting a response, but par for the course on this odd day I got one! Tim responded that the tool was now more useful to him.

I sent a tweet thanking Tim for taking any time to look at my little app and then sent him the link to my previous post on retweetradar’s launch. I wanted him to understand this wasn’t supposed to be a technical feat but that I was trying to evangelize the use of the amazing tools we have at out fingertips today to create anything we like on the web, in this instance Google App Engine and Open APIs. Suffice it to say Tim got it, as the father of the real concept of Web 2.0 should!

Quite a day indeed… one for the books…
-Ben

So I was getting a little restless and decided to work on another Google App Engine app, this time without all the Python learning curve and with some real world experience with the Google tools under the belt from http://spy.appspot.com. The goal was to see how fast I could go from concept to useful application leveraging a few of the revolutionary tools we all have at our fingertips today. In the end with about one days work an app was released, likely with a few bugs, but some fun things happened and I believe a bit of foreshadowing of the future of building web apps.

The Concept

I had an idea that I really wanted to extract meaning from a large-ish set of social media messages in near real time and visually trend it over time, showing topics heating up in conversations even while still slightly off the conventional news radar. We’ve all seen lately the groundswell social media conversation routinely outpacing tradition broadcast media in speed and openess of accounting, this app would be yet another way to put your finger on that pulse.

The class of information that looked interesting was “retweets” in other words messages where Twitter users were quoting someone else’s post, essentially saying they liked it, or spreading the word. Tech blogger Robert Scoble called out the same last Friday saying “[Retweets] …by the way, great place to find news!”

The How

So now to the how, obviously Google App Engine was my choice for delivering this application, it’s ease of access, familiar development environment, ease to scale and obvious lack of initial cost make it a winner — Paul McDonald and Tom Stocky being very great folks to talk to, among other Googlers on the App Engine team I am sure, helps as well.

Next I needed the information, Twitter’s great search API acquired with the Summize purchase makes pulling tweets in near real time a non event. Now the value add, the real magic in the idea was to pull relevant information from the tweets and trend them, for that the lesser known Yahoo Term Extraction API was chosen, it’s simple interface, reliability and quality results. So the parts were chosen… we have the ability to capture social media posts, process out key terms, save, count and display them on the web… very nice. So in the equivalent of one days work over the last two days I took these parts and pieces, shook them up with jQuery and released http://retweetradar.com to the world.

The Outcome

The outcome was astounding http://www.retweetradar.com launched publicly via a Tweet and FriendFeed posts at around 8pm CST on Saturday, given the work done on Friday and Saturday certainly no greater than one common work day from start to launch. Once Sunday came around I tweeted the news to a few folks, Dan Zarrella was one he has done work on the data behind viral messaging on Twitter another of note was Robert Scoble to close the loop on his tweet about the value of retweets… then things took and unexpected turn… an inconspicuous but cool “like” came in from Scoble on Friendfeed.

Next thing I know Robert Scoble is using me as an example in a great blog post about events the mainstream media and even Internet media miss…

Robert says:

I love developers who try new things out. Check this out. Is this on TechMeme? No. Plus using Google’s App Engine, which is another trend we’re tracking: cloud computing.

I couldn’t agree more with the topic of that blog, even if I wasn’t involved! You did read it right?

This isn’t about launching another web app…

The fact this is possible is the real star here, the ability for anyone to bring an idea to the web in a highly reliable and scalable way for little to no initial investment shows a bright light toward the future… folks used to say the same for picking up some shared hosting for $5.95 and knocking out some PHP but realistically that app tipped over the second it saw real traffic and was hard to say whether it would be up day by day based on the other people, number of whom soaring each month, who shared your hardware.

Google App Engine and Open APIs clearly show where the web is going, the playing field is leveled… get out there and deploy those ideas you say you have scrawled on those napkins that you say are going to revolutionize the world, the tools you need to prove it are out there right now.

So, draw your own conclusions to the viability of my new app retweetradar – No, please do! Contact me with feedback on whether it is useful and any ideas to make it better – it’s really not a huge concern long term… but I don’t believe it is possible to argue that these tools be it social media, cloud computing or whatever you want to call them are truly leveling the playing field, flattening the world and company hierarchies and making whatever the future of the web will be possible for anyone.

My little Social Media ‘spy’ application http://spy.appspot.com makes “15 Useful Google App Engine Applications” on LouisGray.com written by Mike Fruchter! I just slid in there at 15… hoping to keep plugging along adding useful features and using ‘spy’ to expose more and more folks to the value of Social Media.

Google App Engine really does make it possible to kick out an idea out into the world delivering scalability, quality and efficiency right out of the gate. I hope developers continue to discover it’s power, Python and Django are nothing to be afraid of in fact I really value learning them.

Thanks again to Mike and Louis!