Personalized video, Facebook widget raising funds for BC Children’s Hospital

by | Aug 20, 2009 | Social Signal

As causes go, you can’t get much closer to our hearts than with a children’s hospital. The thought of having to take one of our kids there is wrenching, and I’m sobered by the fact that thousands upon thousands of children – and their parents – go through that every day.

We want those kids to get the care they need swiftly and effectively. We want our best medical knowledge brought to bear, and we want clean, quality facilities that promote good health as well as healing sickness.

So we jumped at the chance to work with the BC Children’s Hospital Foundation, helping them chart a social media strategy for engaging their audiences and raising money. The focus is their “Be a Superhero” campaign, in support of their $200-million plan to create one of the world’s top centres for children’s health.

Our first efforts are now live online, centered around what we believe is the first use of personalized video as a donor recognition and fundraising tool. The Be a Superhero video shows a newscast – using the donor’s or prospect’s name – that either thanks them for being a hero to BC kids, or invites them to step up to the plate.

Superhero Facebook applicationBut it doesn’t end there. You can add your superhero video to your Facebook profile and launch your own Facebook-based fundraising campaign, inviting your friends to be superheroes as well.

(We’ve also been helping the hospital engage their fans on Twitter – you can follow the foundation at @bcchf.)

It’s still early days, but we’re excited about breaking new ground for the hospital, and helping kids like ours across BC… and we’d love it to succeed. If you’d like to help, too, here’s how:

  1. Watch the video, and send it to as many of your friends as you can.
  2. Add the Facebook application, and install the fundraising widget on your profile.
  3. Become a fan of the BC Children’s Hospital Foundation Facebook page.
  4. Follow BCCHF on Twitter.

And finally…

Vancouver’s Twestival is coming on September 12, organized by the amazing Rebecca Bollwitt, aka Miss604.

Rebecca has launched an online poll to decide which local non-profit should be the beneficiary of the Twestival’s fundraising efforts – and the BC Children’s Hospital is a strong contender.

Voting closes tomorrow (Friday), so if you could take just a moment and vote now, or using the poll on the right-hand side of this page, we’d be delighted… thanks!

Alex and Rob to teach Introduction to Social Media at UBC

by | Aug 8, 2009 | Social Media, Social Signal, Vancouver

One of our favourite things about working in this field is the chance to pass on what we know, to see what happens when people start to grasp the potential of social media… and to see what they do when they run with it.

So I’m delighted to announce we’ll be teaching an introductory course in social media this September at the University of British Columbia. The course runs for three Wednesday evenings at UBC’s downtown Robson Square campus, from Sept. 9 to 23. Tuition is $375 plus GST.

Here are the details:

This introductory course provides an overview of social media: its history, theories and the principles behind online communication. Through hands-on demonstration of a variety of social media tools including YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, RSS, wikis and social bookmarking, you discover how these tools are shaping modern communication and how to incorporate them into everyday business and personal communications. Topics also include upcoming trends as well as predictions for what’s next in social media.

For more info or to sign up, visit UBC’s registration page. We hope to see you there!

(By the way, the first night of the course happens on – get this – 09/09/09. Can you imagine a more auspicious date?)

Just because there’s no price tag doesn’t make you aren’t paying for it

by | Aug 6, 2009 | Social Media, Social Signal

It happened again today. Every time an online service like Twitter or Facebook hits a roadbump, or stops working altogether, there’s an outcry of protest from its users. Then, just as quickly, comes the backlash: “How dare you complain about a FREE service?”

At one level, I understand the thinking: there is an army of developers, sysadmins, designers, administrators and other great people who work hard to conceive, create and maintain the web apps. And behind that, a lot of money is being invested.

On the other hand, there’s another kind of investment being made in these services, and that’s the time and content that you and I put into participating: the photos we post to Flickr, the videos we share on YouTube, the hours we pour into Facebook – and the millions of observations, complaints, links, updates, insights, jokes, memes and random stuff we tweet on Twitter.

That effort doesn’t just represent an opportunity cost on your part (you could be spending that time working out on your Wii, for example) – it represents value to the owners of the web service you’re using. Facebook’s business model involves delivering highly-targeted eyeballs to advertisers, as does YouTube’s. And while nobody’s quite sure what Twitter’s business model is, it isn’t philanthropy.

Look at it this way. If Twitter was nothing more than its hardware and software, does anyone seriously think people would be bouncing around multi-hundred-dollar valuation estimates?

The implicit bargain between social application provider and user is this: they’ll provide these amazing tools whenever and wherever you want them, and you’ll provide the content, conversations and relationships that create value and help them realize a return on their investment: financially or (in the case of reflected-glory marketing) in brand equity.

Now, most of us understand that these are still early days, and sites will have the occasional hiccup. But when repeated or lengthy outages seriously impair our access to tools, people and content – especially when those outages come without an explanation – then our patience rightly wears thin.

So if you’re a user on a social web site, do cut them some slack (especially during a denial-of-service attack)… but don’t feel you have to apologize for feeling irritated over repeated fail whales and error messages.

And if you’re running a social web site that’s running a mild fever or fending off a cough, thank your users for their patience, explain what’s happening… and do what it takes to get back up and running.

Some Twitter “crimes” are anything but

by | Aug 2, 2009 | Social Media, Social Signal

Twitter‘s no different than any other hot social-thing-of-the-moment: if you’re just getting into it, you’ll find lots of people out there with advice on how to use it (including us).

But not all of it is couched as advice or recommendations. Many of those voices are framing their suggestions as directives… even iron-clad laws. One blog post warns that disregarding its suggestions amounts to “Twitter crimes”.

May it please the court, I submit to you that many of those charged with Twitter crimes should be acquitted on the grounds of reasonable doubt – not just over their guilt, but over whether these should be crimes at all.

Here are four charges that the prosecution (in all its forms) is levelling… along with rebuttals from the defence.

1. The charge: Being followed without following back

The prosecution’s case: If you don’t follow back nearly everyone who follows you, you’re being hostile, standoffish and rude.

The defence rebuttal: My learned colleague has mistaken an arbitrary convention for legislation… and an artificial numerical parity for justice.

Okay, let me drop the flowery language. Just because someone is interested in what you’re saying doesn’t mean you feel the same way. And we all have different ways of listening on Twitter: some of us follow thousands upon thousands of people, segment them into groups and dip in and out of a lot of conversations; others decide they’ll focus their attention closely on a few conversations instead. Who’s to say going broader is better than going deeper?

2. The charge: Linking your RSS feed to your Twitter feed

The prosecution’s case: Twitter is for conversations, not broadcasting. Shovelling your content onto the web is just obnoxious.

The defence rebuttal: Your honour, if I follow Environment Canada’s weather feed on Twitter, it’s not so I can gripe about our recent hot spell; it’s because I want to know what the weather’s going to be like. The prosecution is making a classic mistake of thinking tools can only be used for the purpose for which they were originally created. For many people, Twitter isn’t just a conversational forum – it’s also becoming their alternative to an RSS reader. The defence is prepared to call witnesses from Social Signal who will testify that their most retweeted posts are often the ones tweeted automatically from their blogs.

3. The charge: Responding to celebrities

The prosecution’s case: If you reply to celebrities, you’ll look ridiculous… because what famous person is going to pay attention to you?

The defence rebuttal: My learned colleague from the prosecution wants to have it both ways. Apparently this is supposed to be a conversational medium… yet some are more worthy of conversation than others? Your honour, I am by no means a celebrity, yet I have had pleasant exchanges with them on Twitter. (Of course, most of my conversational salvos have gone unheeded… but that’s to be expected when you’re trying to catch the attention of someone following tens of thousands of people at once.) One of the great strengths of social media is its ability to flatten hierarchies – and fame is at least as vulnerable to that flattening as any other pecking order.

Incidentally, your honour, it often doesn’t matter whether the celebrity sees a response or not. My friends do, and it can spark a conversation among us that goes off in a whole different direction.

One last point: we have one set of prosecutors telling celebrities to follow everyone who follows them because that’s somehow conversational, and another set telling us not to engage in conversation with those same celebrities. The defence is preparing a motion to dismiss both counts on the grounds of whatever the Latin is for “get your acts together, people.”

4. The charge: Asking people to retweet you.

The prosecution’s case: If your tweet is worth repeating, people will do it on their own. Asking them to is just gauche.

The defence rebuttal: Your honour, my client understands that when she is asking people to retweet something, she’s asking for a favour. She’s asking them to spread the word – something we often do in other fields.

And the court will notice she is not deluging her friends with these requests; instead, she makes them judiciously, and repays her friends in kind.

Finally, she understands that these are requests, not demands. She asks politely, and only when she has something of value to share that she especially wants passed around.

In summation

It’s up to you, the jury. Should these in fact be crimes – the punishment being merciless unfollowing? Or should these and other laws be struck from the books? Render your verdict in the comments below.

The defence rests.

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