FT-HW1_Twitter

[|Andreas Weigend] Spring 2009-B MBA 267 Haas School of Business University of California at Berkeley
 * Marketing 2.x: The Social Data Revolution**

=Homework 1 for FULL TIME MBA students (EW MBA students's first homework is here) - to be completed individually= Assigned: Thu March 19, 2009 Due: Wed Apr 8, 2009, 5pm - DEADLINE EXTENDED to Wed. instead of Monday, as previously posted. Submit to: haas.ft.homework@gmail.com

=Microblogging=
 * Make an account and familiarize yourself with twitter. Understand the differences between Twitter and Facebook, esp for Marketing.
 * Read the [|O'Reilly Twitter Report]
 * Read [|8 tips for Twitter] to see what are the most common tools people are using Twitter
 * Read [|Can Twitter Survive What Is About To Happen To It?] which describes the problem of huge amounts of noise in the twitterverse, and potential ideas for relevance
 * Consider buying Julio Ojeda-Zapata: [|Twitter means Business – How Microblogging can help or hurt your company] (for purchase at happyabout.info)

1. Relevance (3 points)
//Twitter displays tweets in reverse chronological order. Can do better than this? What does it mean to do better? What are the metrics?Consider the user interface, how long since they last came, whether location should be taking into account, etc.!//
 * **Submit 3 crisp points on how you would develop a relevance function for twitter.**
 * What are the desired properties of relevance in this situation?
 * What data will you need create relevance?
 * How do you know whether you are doing a good job? (i.e., what are the metrics?)


 * __Sample Answer__**

Displaying twitter updates in reverse chronological order only makes sense if you are following a small number of people, and those people do not post a large number of messages. For instance, during my first two days as a tweeter user I followed six people who posted once or twice a day. In this scenario, the interface worked for me. However, I started following a user who submitted 10 updates a day and this user completely took over the interface (other users lost relevance). In other words, the only measure of relevance that I could see on the twitter interface is **(1) Who posts most recently and (2) who posts the most.** Here are three ways to develop a relevance function on twitter, which could be used to rank posts more effectively (on top of chronology).  > - Is the posting user your friend in facebook or other social applications? > - If the posting user is your friend on facebook, what is the relative volume of communication with this friend, compared to others? > - How many personal tweets have you received from this user? > - Do you receive email from this friend? > - Do you frequently send personal messages or responses to this user? > - Is this user a friend of your friends? How many of your friends is this user friends with? > - Are tweets from this user mass produced or are they addressed to you? > - Are updates from this user coming from other social applications? > - Key words in every post, as well as other posts by the same user > - Key words in the links or documents referenced by the post > - A grouping tags predefined by a tweeter user
 * 1) __Social relevance __: posts could be ranked based on “how close” you are to the posting user. The function would assign high relevance to those posts from users with whom we have the most social online interaction. Since no measure of “quality of friendship” exists today in facebook or twitter, a function to assign relevance in this space would need the following data:
 * 1) __Topic relevance __: in this case, posts cold be ranked by how closely they align with somebody’s topics of interest. This is somewhat similar to following RSS feeds for particular topics. A ranking function would need the following data on an update-by-update basis:
 * 1) __Grouping:  __it makes no sense to assign a //single// measure of relevance to all tweets based on the outcome of a function. Tweets should be grouped (the tweet deck is an example of how this can be done effectively) to segregate relevance by areas. The data needed in this case would be

How to know if the relevance function works? One would have to collect metrics of how often a user logs into twitter, responds to tweets, follows links in a tweet, and so on. An increased metric of activity would signal that the content in twitter is more relevant. Moreover, metrics of how often a user navigates to bottom pages (not the top) would also have to be collected, as well as how often a user reorganizes their dashboard. These metrics could also be used to measure relative relevance.
 * 2. Use for people discovery (3 points)** //Follow MrTweet, and explore the people suggested to you.//
 * **Propose 3 clear improvements for MrTweet.**
 * What do you like?
 * What do you not like?


 * __Sample Answer__**

The concept of MrTweet is a powerful one. The first difficulty a new Twitter user encounters is finding people to connect to to get conversations started. However, the results I have received from MrTweet seem heavily skewed toward Twitter “power users.” Nearly every suggestion I have received from MrTweet has been a Twitter user with thousands of followers and/or that user is following thousands of others. This process becomes self-reinforcing, where the most popular users become ever more popular because of MrTweet. My three suggestions to improve MrTweet: 
 * 1) Perhaps ask users to also identify their Facebook username, then scrape some basic demographic information about me - age, sex, location, industry, etc. Then make recommendations of people that fit my profile. Know that I’m a Berkeley grad student? Maybe it makes sense to recommend other Berkeley grad students that are Twitter users. Know I’ve worked in the wireless industry? Why not connect me to some of the bright minds of the Twitter universe that post about wireless topics?
 * 2) <span style="color: rgb(128,0,0);">Try to understand the context of the users you recommend. Just because a user has thousands of followers or is following thousands of others does not mean they are a legitimate contact. I’ve had multiple MrTweet recommendations that were very clearly marketing-driven profiles that may or may not have had a real person behind them.
 * 3) <span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #800000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Add location. Enable me to find Twitter users that live within a few blocks of me, or at the very least in San Francisco. Location often drives conversation, so connecting users in the same geographic area means those users likely have some things in common on which they can build conversations.

3. Use of twitter for class (3 points)
//How shall we use twitter to support class? Which needs will it be well suited for? Which ones not?// Think of communication attributes of Twitter e.g., leightweight, real-time, noisy, short messages. It might help to use specific real world examples such as the as the Monday March 30, 2009 San Jose earthquake.
 * **Briefly describe 3 use cases for use of twitter in our course**


 * __Sample Ideas__**


 * 1) <span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #800000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #800000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Load the Twitter Web page for the Web2.x account and project it onto the main screen in the classroom. As guest speakers are talking or a topic is being presented, students can tweet questions, thoughts or ideas in real-time. This also creates a searchable record of people’s reaction to the conversation. See <span style="color: rgb(0,0,255);">http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2009/03/if-youare-doing-an-event-bring-twitter-into-the-room.html <span style="font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(128,0,0);"> for more on this topic.
 * 2) <span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #800000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #800000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Notifications of real time events. There are often events such as someone breaking their leg who can’t attend class, a room change, or just simple reminders to the class of impending deadlines. For example I could twitter the class and say, broke my leg on the way to class, could someone send me their class notes? Those following the class would receive the real time notification and someone could reply that they could.
 * 3) <span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #800000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #800000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Platform for On and Off Classroom Discussion – People can Tweet about the class, post interesting links to relevant topics and in general get a better feel for both the topics discussed in class as well as the people in the class.
 * 4) <span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #800000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Crowdsourcing answers to questions. It took me awhile to understand hashtags and how they are used. By using twitter, I could tweet to the class “Can someone describe how these hashtag things work?” People could then reply to me with answers to contact them as they are hashtag experts. This way our class can more easily support each other with questions and not spam the instructor.

4. Use of twitter for enterprise (6 points)
//Familiarize yourself on the web with the use of microblogging in the enterprise.//
 * **Give 3 do's and 3 don'ts for companies that want to use Twitter for marketing**

<span style="color: rgb(128,0,0);">**__ Do’s __** <span style="color: rgb(128,0,0);">
 * __Sample Answer__**
 * 1) <span style="color: rgb(128,0,0);"> __<span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #800000; line-height: 115%; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Put a personality behind the people in your company. __<span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #800000; line-height: 115%; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> This makes it important that the person you select to tweet for your firm to have a good upbeat and friendly personality. As we saw with the Comcast example in the readings, putting a personality behind the company makes people feel much more connected with the enterprise. Like it is a personal rather than just a business relationship. This creates loyalty to your firm.
 * 2) <span style="color: rgb(128,0,0);"> __<span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #800000; line-height: 115%; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Listen to the tweets about your company __<span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #800000; line-height: 115%; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">. Companies need to acknowledge that the most powerful thing about twitter is that it is a 2 way communication. Most of the power in twitter isn’t broadcasting promotions and messages, it’s in listening to what your users are thinking and saying about you. Firms should both monitor macro trends about how many people are writing about them, as well as engage in personal conversations with individual customers and their stories.
 * 3) <span style="color: rgb(128,0,0);"> <span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #800000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">__<span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #800000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Make sure each tweet is consistent and valuable to your end customers. __ <span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #800000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Tweets about promotions exclusive to twitter users can make people feel like they are getting value in following your enterprise. They will also refer these offers to other users and expand the number of people following your company.
 * 4) <span style="color: rgb(128,0,0);"> <span style="color: rgb(128,0,0);">__<span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #800000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Use Twitter as a customer support tool __ <span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #800000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: rgb(128,0,0);"><span style="color: rgb(128,0,0);">. Comcast figured out early on ( <span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #0000ff; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">http://blogs.zdnet.com/social/?p=439 <span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #800000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">) <span style="color: rgb(128,0,0);">that the real-time nature of Twitter is perfect for people that want to complain about a problem they are having with a product or service. Comcast has been monitoring Twitter, Facebook and other social media for hints of customer problems, and then responding directly to consumers on how to fix these problems.
 * 5) <span style="color: rgb(128,0,0);"> <span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #800000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">__<span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #800000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Build User Community Around the Brand ____ . __<span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #800000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Let a conversation develop around the brand/company. Company representatives need to seed the process but must be willing to cede a great degree of control on the final form/content of the discussion. The idea is to allow for connections to develop organically between customers of the brand.
 * __ Don’ts __**
 * 1) <span style="color: rgb(128,0,0);"><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #800000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> __<span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #800000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">D __ __ <span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #800000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">on’t get into Micro-blogging unless you’re ready for an open conversation . __ It’s rough out there. If you are Wal-Mart or ExxonMobil, or some other firm that is disliked by large segments of the population, then Micro-blogging may not be for you. If you put yourself out there, be ready for lots of very candid feedback in a very public space. If your firm is disliked, you may be best sticking to traditional marketing techniques where you have greater control of the message.
 * 2) <span style="color: rgb(128,0,0);"><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #800000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> __<span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #800000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">D __ __ <span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #800000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">on’t just repeat the company line . __ <span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #800000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> As mentioned above you should ensure you are consistent with your marketing messages. However, if customers perceive that the micro-blogging account simply repeats what comes out from other channels, it will lose its authenticity. This channel should have a different voice from traditional channels. It should speak in the language of micro-blogging and employ the standard Twitter conventions.
 * 3) <span style="color: rgb(128,0,0);"> __<span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #800000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">D __ __ <span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #800000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">on’t neglect customer feedback . __<span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #800000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Customers will provide a lot of very valuable insights into your brand. Some may be frivolous or not well thought out. But you should ensure that customers feel that they have a voice and that you are valuing their opinions. A customer that is engaged in your brand is a great asset and one that should be listened to.
 * 4) <span style="color: rgb(128,0,0);">__<span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #800000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Don’t use for mission critical applications. __ <span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #800000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The platform has many outages and errors, better not depend on it as your new E911 mechanism.
 * 5) <span style="color: rgb(128,0,0);">__<span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #800000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Don’t bombard users with messages. __ <span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #800000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You need to be tactful in the types of messages delivered, the timing of the delivery and how frequently you deliver those messages. Otherwise, you’ll be seen as spam.