Twitter is officially promoting new stories of how people and brands are using the service. Check out Twitter is about … Community.

SOAR’s 6th Annual Putting the Pieces Together: Building Effective Partnerships for Children, Youth & Families professional development and networking conference is June 25 at South Seattle Community College.

I am on a morning panel:
Leveraging Collaborative Technology to Better Serve Children & Youth

During this session, panelists will discuss practical tools and strategies for using social networking and collaborative technologies.  Panelists will share examples of innovative uses of social media for online collaboration and then break into small discussion groups based on topics of interest to participants. Whether you are considering beginning to use more collaborative technology in your work or if you have many experiences, this session will share new ideas, resources, and networking opportunities.

Presented by: Rachel Scott (SOAR and the King County Youth Development Network), Joel Ballezza (Foundation for Early Learning), Roni Ayalla (Puget SoundOff), Kathy Gill (Master of Communication in Digital Media, UW)

If there is time for formal presentation, I have slides (ppt).

There are several good analyses of the BP “brandjacking” that folks have kindly pointed me to subsequent to this post going live. Here are a few:

• 22 May — John Taylor: BP Gets Brandjacked on Twitter
• 24 May — Oliver Blanchard: Living in the past = working in the past: How not to get brandjacked like BP Global PR
• 24 May — AdAge: Why BP Isn’t Fretting Over Its Twitter Imposter

And here is a visual comparison of @BPGlobalPR, @BP_America and @oil_spill_2010, from TwitterCounter:

Comparison Of @BPGlobalPR, @BP_America, @oil_spill_2010 Using Twitter Counter

The advice is so old that it is trite: to conduct an effective crisis communications campaign, communicators have to be present and conversant in the channels/communities/media where they need to talk to people before disaster hits.

And a second piece of advice is also so tired that it seems trite: secure your company’s brand name whenever there’s a new technology. With web sites, I was advising folks in the mid-90s to secure the .com, .org and .net associated with their names … as well as logical “spoof” names. And that was when it cost bucks to secure names!

But it seems no one at BP had taken either adage to heart before last month’s explosion in the Gulf of Mexico.

@BPGlobalPR, A Spoof Twitter Account

In researching Business Week’s top 100 brands, I learned last year that BP had lost @bp, legitimately, to Brian Pendelton. The company has owned @BP_America since 12 August 2008, but didn’t really use the account until this month. This week someone began making hay with @BPGlobalPR (established 19 May 2010). In fact, although the account is less than a week old, it has three times as many followers as @BP_America.

@BP_America : BP America
Until the explosion in the Gulf of Mexico last month, @BP_America averaged about three tweets per month. That’s not quite one a week. The tweets were all one-way, perfunctory, allowing someone in corporate communications to be able to say: “we’re on Twitter.” This month, in the wake of the Gulf of Mexico disaster, @BP_America is averaging about nine tweets per day.

TweetStats for @BP_America

Although BP has been trying to “talk” with people Twitter for more than a year, has anyone been listening? Prior to the 20 March 2010 explosion, the answer was “not too many” which isn’t surprising given how little BP was using the service. However, data from TwitterCounter shows a marked rise in followers since 5 May (2,306), when it began tracking the account. As of this writing, there are 4,623 followers, and the account is on 313 lists.

@BP_America Twitter Followers

The tweets are overwhelmingly one-way announcements with only a few @replies (less than 1% of the total, that is, only two). Perhaps not surprisingly, the account retweets @oil_spill_2010 (what’s with the underscores?).

@oil_spill_2010 : DeepwaterHorizon JIC

TweetStats For @Oil_Spill_2010

The account bio reads: “Updates from the Deepwater Horizon Incident Joint Information Center (JIC) on Unified Command response efforts to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.” It links to the “response” website and was created on 29 April 2010. As of this writing there are 5,421 followers, and the account is on 375 lists. There have been 680 tweets, an average of 25 per day, almost three times as many as the @BP_America account.

So there are more people following this account and it’s more active. Moreover, unlike over at the @BP_America account, whomever is running @oil_spill_2010 is trying to engage with others on Twitter: about 1-in-10 tweets is an @reply. That’s not very high, but that’s better than 1-in-100.

@BPGlobalPR
The dark horse in this race for followers is @BPGlobalPR, a spoof account. In less than a week, the account has grown to 15,222 followers: more than three times that of @BP_America and almost three times that of @oil_spill_2010. And it’s on more lists: 394.

More importantly, from a PR perspective, people are talking about it and retweeting one of its 59 tweets. As of this writing, there are 12,774 tweets that mention the keyword bpglobalpr.

What do these tweets look like? Here’s a sampling:

@BPGlobalPR Tweet Sample

Whomever is tweeting on the account has created the hashtag #bpcares (a play on @comcastcares?). Currently that hashtag appears on 1,875 tweets: that’s about 30 for each tweet that @BPGlobalPR has made.

Not The Only Spoof Account
The @BPGlobalPR account is not the only spoof or opposition account created in response to the disaster, although it has the most traction with followers. Related accounts include:

• @AngryOilyBird (established 1 May 2010 by Save The Pelican) — 57 tweets, 360 followers
• @boycottbp (established 1 May 2010) — 489 tweets, 1,032 followers
• @BP_Fail (established 16 May 2010) — 34 tweets, 21 followers
• @bpglobal (established 9 November 2009 by Tricia Blocker) — 0 tweets, 1 follower
• @BPGulfLeak (established 21 May 2010) — 295 tweets, 115 followers
• @BPOilSpill (established 30 April 2010 by R. Haggerty) — 8,149 tweets, 337 followers
• @DrilledByBP (established 22 May 2010 by Jon Brett and Brandon Shuler) — 7 tweets, 48 followers
• @HealthyGulf (established 18 August 2008) — 167 tweets, 366 followers
• @IBRRC (established 16 May 2009 by International Bird Rescue) — 1,010 tweets, 670 followers
• @makebppay (established 7 May 2010 by Keith Haggert) — 1,716 tweets, 86 followers
• @oil_leaks (established 17 September 2009) — 2,476 tweets, 1,787 followers
• @ProtectTheOcean (established 7 May 2010) — 101 tweets, 347 followers
• @SaveOurGulf (established 2 May 2010 by the Waterkeeper Alliance) — 53 tweets, 170 followers
• @SpillBabySpill (established 30 April 2010) — 383 tweets, 140 followers
• @SpillBPSpill (established 9 May 2010) — 277 tweets, 32 followers

The disaster in the Gulf of Mexico cannot be mitigated by effective communication: actions do speak louder than words. And Twitter is certainly not the make-or-break space for BP’s public image. However, as the service goes more mainstream, it serves as a mirror for attitudes that extend beyond the techno-elite, attitudes that are held by influencers of all stripes.

Ignore it at your own peril.

Resources:

• @BP_America archive
• @oil_spill_2010 archive
• @BPGlobalPR archive
• #bpcares archive (1,875 tweets)
• #bpoilspill archive (1,503 tweets)
• #oilspill archive (5,081 tweets)
• bpglobalpr (12,774 tweets)
• BP Gulf Disaster (list by BPGulfLeak)
• BP Oil Spill (list by Australian Journalist Helen Tzarimas)

:: This article first appeared at Wiredpen.com
:: Related: Oil Explosion InfoGraphic
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This Chicago Sun-Times article features Dietzler Farms (@DietzlerFarms) from Elkhart, Wisconsin.

Dietzler signed up for Twitter last year out of curiosity. Her first tweet was an open invitation for a rack of short ribs.

“Within three minutes, Phillip Foss [the chef at Lockwood] texted me and said, ‘I’ll take them all,’ ” she says. Her second tweet included the link to Foss’ blog, the Pickled Tongue, which had details of the dinner that would feature those ribs.

This is a great example of both B2B and B2C tweeting!

What other farms are using Twitter?

The latest “celebrity death” to make the rounds on Twitter happened mid-day Thursday and was fueled by mainstream Canadian press. The “Drudge-ification” of North American news seems complete.

What’s more interesting than the Twitterstream is how the media treated their stories after the false report (AKA rumor) was outed.

Trendistic

The Gordon Lightfoot story was relatively short-lived and did not reach stratospheric numbers on Twitter (about 0.25% of all tweets). Some have used the short-life as an example of Twitter’s ability to self-correct. I don’t think that’s really the case; people were still making “he’s dead” retweets that contained links to the updated CANWEST story. That’s tweeting before thinking, a behavior that we need to haze.

Case Number 1: Keep the link, update the story

CANWEST was widely criticized for running the initial story reporting that Gordon Lightfoot had died. But rather than kill the link to the story, the media organization continued to update the story.

And the URL remained the same.

This is a key best practice. The revised story appeared on all CANWEST websites, so if someone clicked a link in a tweet that said ‘Gordon Lightfoot is dead’ — the result would be the news that the singer/songwriter was very much alive. Unfortunately, lots of people retweet without checking out the link that’s in the tweet.

Case Number 2: Kill the link, pretend it never happened

The converse happend at CBC Radio3. Maybe their software doesn’t allow revisions; if that’s the case, it’s time for application surgery (or burial).

An Incomplete Paper (erh, electronic) Trail

These tweets were harvested using Twitter’s advanced search. I searched for “Lightfoot and dead” as well as “Lightfoot and not dead.” I searched for “Lightfoot and died” as well as “Lightfoot and not died.” I also have what I think is a comprehensive archive of tweets with links that go back to 11.23 AM, the earliest Tweet that I found.

This post first appeared at WiredPen

Much has been made of Twitter’s role in helping raise money for victims of the Haitian earthquake. Less has been written about how Twitter makes it so easy to spread false information and the related need for digital literacy. I tackled these issues at several posts at WiredPen:

• Beware of Twitter Memes; How To Really Help Haiti
• A Case For Digital Media Literacy: Tracking Down A Meme
• More On AA/Haiti Twitter Meme

Prior to an interview on Friday about Twitter’s “staying power,” Caitlin Murphy (KIRO intern, UW grad) asked me that question. In preparation for our meeting, I tweeted: “Why do you like Twitter? Which is your favorite, Twitter or Facebook?” I also looked at some of the answers to the question “What would you say to a friend who asked you about Twitter?” from our spring survey.

Your Take-Aways

Here’s what some of y’all said on Twitter:

From Paolo Mottola (@paolojr):
Twitter is my social RSS feed, but Facebook is where I socialize. Facebook>Twitter IMO

From Tarja Kallinen (@tkallinen):
I like twitter because it’s easy (with iPhone), instant, brief, just main points. I like Facebook too but it’s more labor-intensive
and
One more thing about FB vs Twitter: on FB you’re communicating w/ friends-feels inappropriate to be too opinionated or political.

From James Roberts (@jrnoded):
twitter by a long [shot] — no hidden agendas (well maybe) but just conversation no fluff.

From Shannon Huggins (@shuggins_6):
Depends on what I want to do.

From Walt Boyes (@waltboyes)
twitter for fast breaking stuff, facebook for most everything else.

From Elaine Nelson (@epersonae)
re twitter vs facebook: twitter, definitely. it doesn’t try to absorb my whole online life.

And some of our anonymous survey participants (data to be released in 2010 with the Twitter book):

• [Twitter] connects you to your choice of social nervous system.
• Ultimately the value in Twitter is specifically due to the length restriction of messages.
• [Twitter is] the main way I keep in touch with friends, meet new people, get my news, follow what’s going on in Seattle…
• Twitter, from the view point of a television news person, offers a chance to communicate with the community and put a human face onto an industry often maligned as a “faceless corporate monster.”

My Take-Aways

Those comments mirror my biases:

• Brevity is good. (Count the number of characters in each of the 10 Commandments in the Old Testament — only two are more than 140 and I can easily edit those two to fewer than 140 characters without affecting meaning.)
• Simple is good. (I’m now using NutshellMail so that I don’t have to deal with the Facebook interface.)
• Openness is good. (I used to think of tweets as being ephemeral, but now that I’m getting Facebook updates via NutshellMail, I realize that it is the Facebook status that is truly ephemeral, if you have friended more than a few people).
• Single-purpose is good. (Generally speaking, I prefer tools designed for a job than a Swiss-army knife.)

When Caitlin asked “how do people use Twitter?” I laughed and replied, “how do people use the phone?”

I was being slightly facetious, but only slightly. For example, it wasn’t that long ago that one of my best friends from college kept a cellphone for “emergencies only” (think flat tire). At the same point in time, my mother was using a cellphone for its “weekends free” long distance plan: it was how she kept in touch with her sisters.

Twitter is a communications tool, a tool that can be used in a myriad of ways, just like the phone. Just like “the mail.” Just like faxes. Just like email. Just like “blogs.” Just like printing presses!

We talked about the differences between Twitter and Facebook (openness, reciprocity) and the current tension arising from Mark Zuckerman’s efforts to strong-arm members into being more “public” with their information (“user-generated content”).

On the “where do you think Twitter will be in five years” question (“staying power”) … I reminded her that five years ago we didn’t have YouTube (founded in February 2005) and yet by May 2006 its viewership has passed CNN. Instead, I told her that what we are calling “the real time” (public) web is what is here to stay.

How we are going to be accessing the real-time web in five years? That’s where my crystal ball gets cloudy. How clear is yours?

Related: Tim O’Reilly, Why I Love Twitter

This post first appeared at WiredPen

In Britain, the editor of The Guardian explains how Twitter helped reverse a “super injunction” that prevented news media from reporting on the “existence of court proceedings and court orders” related to a massive lawsuit.

It took one tweet on Monday evening as I left the office to light the virtual touchpaper. At five past nine I tapped: “Now Guardian prevented from reporting parliament for unreportable reasons. Did John Wilkes live in vain?” Twitter’s detractors are used to sneering that nothing of value can be said in 140 characters. My 104 characters did just fine.

By the time I got home, after stopping off for a meal with friends, the Twittersphere had gone into meltdown. Twitterers had sleuthed down Farrelly’s question, published the relevant links and were now seriously on the case. By midday on Tuesday “Trafigura” was one of the most searched terms in Europe, helped along by re-tweets by Stephen Fry and his 830,000-odd followers.

More details (and backstory) from the New York Times.

The eclectic one-item-at-a-time online store Woot! passed the 1 million follower mark in July. I just learned about it in their August email newsletter; today they have 1,197,831 followers and 2,671 tweets.

The Woot! Twitter feed advertises the sale of the day, which is available until it is sold out or until 11:59pm Central, when it is replaced with the next day’s item. There are usually two tweets a day, with the second being identified with a “Last Call” alert.

This is the same model used by AmazonMP3 (992,383 followers, 645 tweets), although Amazon has more than one offer each day. It is similar to that used by Dell Outlet (1,097,064 followers, 663 tweets). The DellOutlet account differs from the other two, however. In addition to the posts advertising products, Dell’s tweeter (@StefanieATDell) posts contents, retweets and @ replies. Dell HomeOffers, which is a sale posts only account like AmazonMP3 and Woot, has only 3,412 followers, but it is also a newer account with only 357 tweets.