Tag: Twitter

Twitter 210: Vanity URL Shortening

In Social Media 110, I highlighted 7 services for shrinking URLs as a way to pack more information into the 140 characters Twitter allows.

After all, if you can compress a 90-character URL into 20 characters or fewer when sharing a link, that leaves you more space to provide information on what people will see when they click the link. That serves you and your users in two ways:

  1. You can be more colorful in your description, to encourage people to click, and
  2. You can give enough info that they may not need to click right away, but can perhaps “favorite” the link for later viewing or for reference.

Any of those seven link-shortening options work well, and there are no doubt dozens more available.

I’m returning to the subject today with an option some of you might find helpful, particularly if you work for a large organization. But it isn’t necessary that you be with a big company. In fact, even a small (but global) university can do this, and it doesn’t have to cost a lot.

You may have noticed some different shortened URLs in your Twitter stream from time-to-time, following a format like:

These are, as you might have guessed, custom-shortened links for a YouTube video, a story in the New York Times and a program note on CSPAN.

Why would they do that?

I see two main reasons for this strategy:

Branding: With youtu.be, nyti.ms and cs.pn, these organizations are “getting their names out” with every tweet that uses a link from their domain. Instead of the link being http://bit.ly/giXAam and just looking like hundreds of millions of others, CSPAN’s version carries its network name. Likewise for YouTube and the Times.

User confidence: With a bit.ly or ow.ly or TinyURL.com link, you never really know what’s on the other end before you click it. Creating a custom-shortened link system with a domain that you control enables users to click your link without worrying whether a site that is NSFW is on the other end.

How did they do that?

That’s the topic of my next post, in which I will take you step-by-step through how I created this shortened link to my annual Christmas Letter:

http://leeaase.me/fRxcCt

Meanwhile, I have a closing question: Besides the two I mentioned…

What are some other reasons you would want to have a short custom URL for your organization?

Twitter 140: Explaining Twitter to Your Parents (and Kids)

I ran across an excellent overview of Twitter yesterday, via Mashable. Jessica Hische does a great job outlining who sees what when you post to Twitter, reply, retweet or use #hashtags, and also highlights some important differences between Facebook and Twitter.

As Jessica indicates, her guide isn’t just for moms, because the misunderstandings about Twitter span the generations. In fact, younger people (high school and college) are among those most likely to not “get” Twitter. They already have SMS texting, and Facebook chat, so they think their needs for the kind of communication Twitter provides are already met.

Maybe Jessica’s overview will help them see the value.

If I didn’t already have all of the low course numbers taken in the SMUG Twitter Curriculum, I probably would have made this one of the introductory courses, like Twitter 105.

So instead, I’m giving it a course number that is a particular honor in the Twitterverse:

Check out Twitter 140.

Behold The Power of Twitter

At noon today, I had an opportunity to conduct a Twitter training class for physicians from one of our clinical departments at Mayo Clinic.

I wanted to show them the reach and speed of Twitter, and how it can spread messages widely and quickly. So, at 12:28, I put out this tweet to my Twitter followers:

Within seconds, the responses started coming in:

Update: I went back to Tweetdeck to capture the actual times of the tweets. I think it makes the speed of the spread even more interesting. It also shows the half-life of a tweet.

The tweets above all arrived in the first hour. Since then, a few more trickled in…

Altogether, that’s 57 replies or retweets from 21 states, the District of Columbia and Canada.

The total potential reach of the message- to my followers plus the followers of those who tweeted – was 66,986. Of course not everyone among those followers saw the message. If they didn’t happen to be watching Twitter at the time, they missed it.

Still, I think that’s pretty amazing for a lunchtime experiment.

Thanks to everyone who participated by replying or retweeting!

More Social Media-Mass Media Synergy

In several previous posts here on SMUG and also on the Mayo Clinic News Blog and Podcast Blog, I’ve told the story about

Now WABC TV in New York has run a story about diagnosing mysterious wrist injuries, featuring Jayson and another another patient Dr. Berger has helped return to recreational golfing. It’s on ABC.com:

Social media tools such as YouTube and Twitter, while not directly mentioned in the WABC story, have played a huge role in spreading the word about Dr. Berger’s research discovery.

And as a result, many more patients will, like Erin, have an opportunity for a future without chronic wrist pain.

This post, which we put on the Mayo Clinic News Blog at the time of the first USA Today article and Twitter chat, has a list of the surgeons who have trained with Dr. Berger since he discovered the UT split. We’re sure many patients have been helped by these other surgeons as well.

This latest WABC story will continue to accelerate the diffusion of this research discovery, helping to fulfill the promise of social media as outlined in Thesis 33.

And in case you’re wondering how Jayson is doing now, check out his walk-off home run from yesterday’s game.

On World Peace, Labor Day and Blocking Facebook

I’m as big an advocate of social media as you’re likely to meet. Still, I think Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker went a bit overboard in yesterday’s offering, Facebook and social media offer the potential of peace:

Not to be a Pollyanna, but it is striking to realize that peace becomes plausible when barriers to communication are eliminated. More than 500 million people use Facebook alone. Of those, 70 percent are outside the United States. MySpace has 122 million monthly active users, and Twitter reports 145 million registered users.

I actually think Ms. Parker does have a bit of the Pollyanna principle running through her argument. And it’s kind of nice for me to have people like her occupying the “extreme optimism” end of the social media spectrum. It makes me seem more moderate. I agree that building more friendship connections is helpful, but I’m not anticipating a Nobel Peace Prize for Mark Zuckerberg.

While I don’t see social media ending the Middle East conflict, I do see these tools playing a huge role in connecting and strengthening relationships within organizations and among those with common interests.

That leads me to one of Parker’s paragraphs that I thought was particularly illuminating, as it relates to the practice of many companies in blocking access to social media sites from their corporate networks:

Obviously, some countries don’t like these media for the very reasons we do. People talk. Facebook is blocked in Syria and China and until recently was also blocked in Iran, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Where freedom flourishes, so do open channels of communication.

As we celebrate Labor Day in the United States, maybe opening access to social media sites at work wouldn’t rank among the all-time achievements for employee-friendly workplaces. It probably won’t usher in a Millennium of peace, either.

But at least it would make your company more open than China, Syria and Iran.

Does your company block access to Facebook, Twitter and YouTube at work?