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Great and lengthy presentation on social media. It’s obvious we need social media just to filter through the volume of information on the internet. If you are looking to do your own presentation, check out this blog post with more social media stats

I was checking out Wayne Sutton’s website and twitter stream today. He mentioned a presentation on SlideShare. The presentation is interesting and brings up some thoughts I’ve been having on “how much we share” in social media and the effects. I think social media will help people live richer more fulfilling lives. People will begin doing more with their lives because of influences. I started training for a triathlon this summer because someone I follow was training for a triathlon. You could build the case that social media could help with the U.S. over weight epidemic, because let’s face it, no one who is over weight or obese wants their picture on the internet.

And just as soon as I feel good about the impact of social media on people’s lives I become creeped out; have I shared too much? Time will tell how all this shakes out. What do you think will happen?

On June 15th, The FIRST murder mystery will launch using Twitter and various other social media tools as the delivery vehicles. This interesting experiment reminds me of Professor Plum in the library with the candlestick. But don’t be fooled, this is no board game. It’s an interesting way to entertain tweeple using Twitter.

This week I was able to share a few emails back and forth with Jenn Bailey from The SocialLites to get the scoop on this new Twitter experiment. Following is the interview and don’t forget to use tmod hashtag to see the thread.

What is Tweet Mystery of Death?

Tweet Mystery of Death is a Murder Mystery we’re writing on Twitter, 140 characters at a time. It isn’t a novel. It’s more like a play. A play that will last for 6 weeks. I personally see it as kind of an old-time radio show or one of those B-reel serials they’d show at the movies before the Main Feature. We’re doing that, but on Twitter.

Who are the master minds behind the Tweet Mystery of Death campaign?

Greg Fishbone is the big master mind. The idea is his. The rest of us are other writers who thought his idea was fun and we wanted to participate. Although we’ve created this together we’ve never met. We’ve worked out the plot arcs and story concept through email, a wiki and a Ning. So, besides Greg , your other Authors are:
Jenn Bailey, Sue Ford, Lisha Cauthen, Colleen Cook, Mary Pierce, Jan Kozlowski, Dawn Metcalf, and Rhonda Stapleton

Follow the authors and characters of Tweet Mystery of Death:

Follow Greg R. Fishbone author from Boston, MA and plays Dirk Rockwell the actor.

Follow Sue Ford author from Olathe, KS and plays Carissa Ainsley the model.

Follow Dawn Metcalf author from Connecticut and plays Lilli LeMue the artist.

Follow Rhonda Stapleton author from North Olmsted, OH and plays Pheonix MacAllister the rival.

Follow Colleen Ryckert Cook Cook author from Lenexa, KS and plays Sam Marlowe the reporter.

Follow Lisha Cauthen author from Kansas City, MO and plays Coffee Boy the gopher.

Follow Jan Kozlowski author from Southington, CT and plays Hanna Bleckter the stalker.

Follow Mary Pierce author from Rhode Island and plays Alex Berkley the agent.

Follow Jenn Bailey author from Overland Park, KS and plays Miss Plupp the assistant.

What was it like coming up with the characters?

More fun than you can imagine. We’ve spent hours giggling and building in back story. At times we got rather carried away, but that’s what happens when you throw together a bunch of dangerously creative people. Each author was responsible for their own character but we definitely collaborated. There are no Prima Donnas here.

How will tweeple/peeps interact with the characters?

Tweeple won’t be interacting with the characters so much as following along and interacting with each other as an audience. This experiment is a lot like a play. Everyone can follow the characters on Twitter but we’ve also set up a Ning were the audience can ask the authors questions or share “Who Done It” theories with each other. If we let people talk directly to the characters, there would be too much noise and followers might lose the plot points in all the chatter.

If people are late following the campaign, how are you going to get them up to speed?

We will have Daily and Weekly briefs that followers can subscribe to on the Ning . There will be no problem “catching up” if someone missed a day or joined us during the play.

You can also follow the Tweet Mystery of Death with hashtag tmod

How are you using twitter and other social media tools to promote Tweet Mystery of Death?

The story will take place entirely on Twitter. We’ll be using twitpic, blip.fm and perhaps some audioboo to enhance our messages. Besides the character accounts on Twitter, we have a @tweet_mystery account for any news, links, etc that we want to share with the readership. Our Ning is where the Daily Doses and Weekly Die-gests occur as well a place where fans can chat amongst themselves or talk to the authors. We’ve got RSS feeds so readers don’t have to “follow” all 9 characters (unless they want to) and we are building a facebook page. Lovely people like yourself are blogging for us. An early fan has already designed a T-shirt too so, who knows? We may be taking that to the Threadless community.

How can people get involved and help your efforts?

Join the Ning! Subscribe to the RSS feed. Follow the characters. There is going to be a contest too, so take the quiz and earn a prize. We authors are having fun and we want our readership to have fun too. The great thing about Social Media is, if we’ve missed a way to connect to our audience, our audience will create that way and lead us to it. We just hope folks give us a look-see.

Follow the Tweet Mystery of Death Cast

Dirk Rockwell recently divorced from Carissa Ainsley with an up and coming acting career. Look for a cat fight between Dirk’s ex-wife and new girlfriend, Lilli.

Carissa Ainsley While her modeling career is the place, she spends most of her time battling internal demons after the bitter divorce from Dirk Rockwell. I think a suicide would be good for this character.

Lilli LeMue she the typical artist type and apparently she’s a hot topic when it comes to the rumor scene. You can be guaranteed drama with this twitter follow.

Sam Marlowe the reporter in the group. I’m guessing there will be lots of reports about Lilli.

Hanna Bleckter the stalker in the cast. What mystery story using twitter wouldn’t have a stalker in the group?

Pheonix MacAllister He wants all things Dirk; he wants Dirk’s girlfriend Lilli and his movie start career! The rivals must have confrontations over twitter!

Miss Plupp loves marine life, but her true passion is being Dirk Rockwell’s assistant. I’m guessing she’s the quiet one in the group.

Alex Berkley is an agent in Hollyweird (too funny) and his newest client is Dirk Rockwell.

I’m getting ready to moderate a Roundtable at the Chicks Who Click in Kansas City on Friday, May 15 to Saturday, May 16. I’m pulling some information out of the search results about Twitter. First let’s talk about Twitter history you can find everything you want to know about the who and what of Twitter by checking 140characters.com

I’ve been writing manuals for clients on how to use Twitter and more importantly I’ve been looking for case studies on the successes of Twitter’s impact on our everyday lives. This video of Evan Williams gives all the Twitter case studies you will ever need to prove it’s impact! Enjoy

By: Anne Haynes

If you want to comment on this post – I’m a cobbler with bad shoes ;-) talk to me via social media @AnneHaynes

I remember in 1995 when AOL was the number 1 platform for internet access and Yahoo! was the number 1 search engine. During this time, when I socialized and talked about the internet everyone would talk about AOL. I was a producer for KSJS radio station and we broadcasted video and audio over the internet with an 8100 PowerPC AV. The show was Sound Bytes and Dan Fortune (my mentor) was the host for the technology radio/internet show. Dan Fortune was the first man to play guitar over the internet. All I wanted was to learn about building website. I knew I needed to be into HTML in order to have a website and by having an internship at KSJS an entire world opened up to me. I still can’t believe I’m writing about real-time video and audio in 1995 in the times of social media in 2009.

Bottom-line during the 1995-1997 era, mainstream people thought “the internet” was AOL. And in my world Netscape was “my internet” and Yahoo! was my number 1 search engine. When I talked about “internet radio” everyone mentioned AOL and not Yahoo!. AOL was the “Internet” and AOL members recieved applications via their service provider = AOL; AOL decided what you would see and what you would like as a paying subscriber.

After I graduated from San Jose State University with a Management Information Systems Degree and started working at Cisco System as an Information Systems Analyst I figured it out. At Cisco Systems I worked with teams to turn excel spreadsheets into databases with a pretty HTML/CSS look and feel (geekstrs:cgi and perl). It clicked and I figured it out; you were not informed if you were using AOL as your internet service provider (ISP). AOL was an application service provider (ASP).

Now fast forward to Facebook, the Harvard environment opened up and everyone can be a member of Facebook. It didn’t take long for Facebook applications to take off. Remember how AOL was the application service provider. Now 200 million plus Facebook members are haunted by applications. As much as I like a few of the Facebook applications, I don’t like the advertisements and forced “Send to Friends” features. I’ve seen so much spam and advertising rip-offs. All I want to do is hang out from a social media perspective. This is why my primary non-facebook applications are Brightkite.com > to Twitter.com> to Friendfeed.com> to Facebook. I have the easy button for social media and if you need some help send me a message on any of the solo social media applications by searching on @AnneHaynes. I will find your message and respond.

Remember, if you’ve never had an AOL account you are in good shape, but note Myspace and Facebook are ASPs.

by: Anne Haynes
I just finishing watching a breakfast meeting from the Kansas City Social Media Club and there was a woman speaking about being the social media face for her company. And while I believe people trust people over brand logos, I wonder what happens when this generation Y employee decides to seek greener pastures? Let’s face it the younger you are the more likely you are to make career moves. Will the employee have some level of job security if the social media trends are great and job scrutiny if the trends are low?

How do you hire a Social Media Community Manager? Do you give them a personality test? Do you grade them on their sense of humor and wit? Because let’s face it not all people in the social media environment are interesting. And more importantly, not everyone knows what “to say” and “not to say” in a social media forum. People have been fired from their jobs because they’ve made mistakes in communications through message boards, instant messaging and emails. David George-Cosh, a National Post technology reporter freaked out in Twitter when a marketing consultant was tardy in calling him back for an interview. And while David George-Cosh’s tweets on twitter were protected, he was called out in an open forum for being unprofessional and down right rude! In many ways social media is like building a home, think twice and type once. A rule growing up comes to mind as well; if you can’t say it over a loud speaker, don’t say it at all!

The social media industry will be interesting to watch and monitor in the next couple of years. Be certain that people will be placed under the microscope for the messages they send out as individuals and as organizations.

If you love FriendFeed as much as I do, you will love using this script to make FriendFeed your all in one social media desktop application. You can access twitter and and other social media services without ever leaving FriendFeed.

 
Click here…

By: Anne Haynes

I’ve been reading the Social Media Predictions 2009. The introduction by Peter Kim speaks volumes; he subscribes to RSS feeds. From the latest information I’ve seen RSS feed subscriptions are down. And it makes sense; people don’t have time to read thousands of RSS feeds in a day. I’ve been involved in the internet since the TRS-80 or 1980 when I used command line to get recipes over the internet. While recent studies suggests smarter people have thousands of RSS feeds, who really has time to read them? It’s the same analogy of having too many friends to follow with social media. How many social media friends have you never met in person are online friends? What defines a social media friend? Is it the person that says good morning after you’ve broadcasted “Good Morning” on Twitter? Is it when you’ve posted a photo of funny socks on Brightkite and everyone else takes photos of their socks and posts them on Brightkite? Or is it just the information and/or feeling you get when you learn about the Google and Yahoo deal and the fact that someone cares about your socks! I’m looking forward to seeing and witnessing the movements in social media. If you interested in what some of the experts are saying, check out the Social Media Predictions for 2009.

By: Anne Haynes

Today I met with two clients that have recently been given the keys to their Wordpress blogs. They have their userids/passwords and training on the back-end. Now it’s the exciting part; watch them grow and prosper in their freedom from monthly Content Management Systems (CMS) fees.

One of my clients is just growing social media legs and I gave him/her a good introduction into the space. Following is the email I sent him/her tonight, I hope you enjoy the message!

You MUST!!! Get on this internet marketing/social media/mobile computing ride! With me and the people you meet on these networks you will become the premier educator and strategist in the internet marketing world. What I’m introducing you to is so cutting edge! It reminds me of the days when I would hang out at bars and write out the word GOOGLE on a napkin so the person could go home and search on Google. We are in a new era! My mother always said to me, “Annie you are who you hang out with….” With social media we hang out with some of the elite in our industry and by association we become elite!!! You must walk cautiously because you are transparent in the social media world and everything you say or write online is consumed by the masses. If you keep your tone positive and educational you will move mountains one stone at a time. It’s not about getting 400 plus connections on linkedin, it’s about getting 400 plus recommendations on linkedin. It’s so easy to add people and include people with social media these days that you really need to set yourself aside from the norm and be special, exceptional and inspiring! So, we go in our quest to be exceptional in our interworkings with clients and social media friends.

by: Anne Haynes

I received my brightkite t-shirt today from Zazzle.com. I took a picture – because a picture speaks a thousand words!

.

The process of buying my shirt is interesting, so here it goes:

BigGuy: Brad and littleguy: Brad from bigguylittleguy.com (bigguy: @boffman and littleguy: @belpers) took a road trip to Brightkite in Colorado and they shared their trip on Brightkite. The first thing I noticed was the picture that was taken outside the Brightkite headquarters. There was Brad and Brad smiling for the camera with their thumbs up! Then came the Brightkite stickers! Oh man once I saw the stickers I had to have one. But wouldn’t a t-shirt be better? I posted a comment asking about a t-shirt. In minutes @brady (one of the founders of Brightkite) sent a message pointing me to Zazzle.com to buy a Brightkite t-shirt. I was done with my purchase in 2 minutes and my shirt arrived within a few days!

I spoke on the phone with littleguy tonight and he told me that Brightkite is about to open up the flood gates for everyone to join Brightkite. So, no need to ask me for an invite any more, everyone will have free access.

I’m looking forward to Brightkite opening up an advertising network because the already localized service it’s perfect for targeting specific geo markets. A little birdy and not twitter, also mentioned a video feature coming soon! I’m so excited and to think, just last week, I was talking about a Brightkite video feature being a natural extension of the already stellar service. Looks like I’m going to need to buck-up for additional memory on my cell phone now!

Think globally and act locally with Brightkite!