LinkedIn Changes x2

Posted by luke on Dec 11, 2009 in Blog | 0 comments

Change #1

LinkedIn is changing its homepage quite a bit – there’s a good write up on Mashable – it’s not live for all users yet, so if you don’t see it, you will soon.

Really though, this post is more about….

Change #2

Since August, I’ve been delivering most of my training under the joint venture I set up with Web Matters (as Web Matters Training) – it’s worked very well for both of us and I’m proud to say we’ve now partnered up with 2e2 to provide a range of Social Media for Business Courses (launching in Feb ’09) based at their London (Victoria) training facility.

In line with this, I felt I should add “Trainer at Web Matters” to my LinkedIn profile, as the 2e2 venture is a partnership with WMT and it would make it clearer for anyone looking at my details via that site.

I’ll post again once the course details are live. Its a great opportunity and if it goes well, we’ll be looking to expand to their other centres around the UK – exciting times.

training, twitter and seminars

Posted by luke on May 12, 2009 in Blog | 1 comment

It’s been a busy few weeks here, with lots of training courses we’ve run on and off site and a visit to London for Internet World ’09.

I’ve also found that I’m using twitter more as a micro-blog and using this less, so if you wan’t to keep up to date with articles I think are worth sharing and other useful stuff, make sure you’re following me on twitter.

There are 2 things from all of this travelling and time away from the office I do want to write about:

1) I was asked during one of my sessions if twitter was “just the current thing”. Yes, Twitter may be a fad, micro-blogging / the real-time web / status updating is not.  For this reason, I make sure that any training is focussed on use of the tool and less on the tool itself.  Understanding why the way we use the internet is changing and how to utilise that, is far more valuable than a how-to twitter session.

2) Please remember that presentations are visual. I sat through a couple of talks at Internet World 09 and I have to say I was mostly dis-appointed (only one, on an exhibitor stand was the exception) – One session seemed to be behind the times, mentioning a technology that will “probably become available in the next year or so”… that I already use and in another the presenter just read off his slides (and people left during the talk). I won’t write an essay here on good presentation, but this is a basic point – DON’T READ OFF SLIDES! Slides should be used to re-inforce what you’re talking about, to offer visual interpretation of a concept or to entertain… not to mirror your speech, people read faster than they speak so your audience will finish before you’ve explained it.

qwitter is not so great

Posted by luke on Apr 14, 2009 in Blog | 0 comments

Qwitter sends you an email when someone stops following you and says what the last message was that you sent.

Aside from the fact I’m not 100% sure that services like this are a good idea – I’ll save that debate for Sean Bonners post which covers some of what I’d of said – twitter is best when not used like a social network, if i stop following you, its not because we’re not “friends” any more, it could be for any number of reasons, I frequently follow and un-follow people, although I’m increasingly using tweetdeck’s grouping feature to just follow everyone – more on that another day.

I was interested to trial Qwitter as a means of seeing why followers go up and down, I had some theories I wanted to test.

The first major thing i found is that the emails you get from Qwitter come in groups, now either I keep tweeting things that make people stop following me in groups… or its grouping the qwitters  together. Judging by the tweets that people stopped following me on, its almost certainly the latter.

The second was that some user accounts were adding and removing me more than once, the majority of these were spam-like accounts, I guess hoping for an auto-follow.

There were a couple of non-spam-like accounts doing it, this was curious, the only explanation i can have is that it keeps them near the top of my followers list – meaning new users who thought “ah, I wonder who else of interest I might find on Luke’s followers list” would more likely see them.

Its vaguely useful to know who has stopped following you, as long as you remember that its not personal and that the qwitter alerts most likely aren’t on the right tweet.

twitter training for business

Posted by luke on Apr 2, 2009 in Blog | 0 comments

Want to know what this twitter thing is all about and how you can use it in your business?

Perhaps you’ve tried twitter but didn’t “get it”?

Spending too much time on twitter and not seeing any benefit?

Can’t see how to measure ROI for twitter, or to develop an effective business strategy?

You need our Twitter Training – the first of our Wednesday evening sessions.

A 2 hour hands on workshop for business (or brand) use of the micro-blogging service, twitter. Covering everything you need to know to create and manage a successful business twitter account.

More details on twitter training in Bournemouth

what if twitter

Posted by luke on Feb 26, 2009 in Blog | 1 comment

started charging to sign up?

Part of the value in Twitter for a user is the ability to communicate with a wider circle of influence than you might otherwise of been able, as the masses join twitter the danger is that the noise to signal ratio increases making it less useful – but what if they’d started charging when they hit a certain number of users?

Would it start to make some real money that so far it has only hinted at being able to earn? Would people of left the service for another? Certainly charging existing users, would create a mass exodus… but some of the attraction for early adopters is the exclusive club feel – that would be, in some ways, amplified.

This is a very hypothetical post btw – it came from being asked why twitter was anything more than “the next big thing” – in their words, “it was all about friends reunited, then myspace, then facebook… now everyones joining twitter – its just another fad, I’m not signing up”.

That conversation led me to the thought above and also to wonder, what’s the next big thing?

What if twitter IS just a fad?

Some people lose a lot of money, the cool kids move on, the spammers and randomness takes over – this is based on what some people would perceive happened to myspace as a platform, although I would argue its reverted back to its “native” state of being a good place for bands/musicians/DJs/performers.

So what do you think?

Is it a fad?

If so, what’s next?