You can’t monitor the whole Internet. Nobody can, not even Google. So what do you do? It’s obvious that you can’t ignore it? You need to be monitoring something.

“But I don’t have budget for fancy monitoring tools.” You don’t need any budget. There are dozens of free or nearly free tools to use but you could probably just monitor Twitter if you had to.The easiest and cheapest way is set up your team with TweetDeck, let it run in the background at work and run a search for your keywords.

I’m not advocating that you only monitor Twitter (and the above solution only works while TweetDeck is running) but I think if you only did one thing, it would be to monitor Twitter? Why? Why not blogs or set up alerts?

Twitter is the water cooler of the Internet. One could argue that it’s becoming the World’s Water Cooler. But they’d be wrong. The World has many Internet Water Coolers.

Facebook is the World’s Largest Water cooler.

The Facebook Water Cooler started off as a brand of water bottles exclusively sold at college. It quickly became the favorite water cooler brand in the US and is quickly become the favorite at all of the Internet’s international offices as well. After a redesign of the water cooler people complained that it released too much water too quickly but eventually they got used to it. People do get really uncomfortable when they run into both their x-girlfriend and their mom at the Facebook Water Cooler.

Twitter is the World’s Noisiest Water Cooler.

The Twitter Water Cooler is not the largest but is by far the noisiest water cooler in the office. This is the water cooler that people who don’t drink water hate having a desk to close to and put up signs outside their cubicle wall reminding people that there are people working asking conversations be kept to a minimum. The Twitter Water Cooler used to run out of water all the time but it’s been much better latley. They also have really, really small cups.

FriendFeed is the the Geekiest Water Cooler.

The FriendFeed Water Cooler is where IT support hangs out and bitches about everyone else. It has superior filtration. State of the art cooling and is more energy efficient. In fact they recently implemented new water reclamation from the air but only a few people know how to use it.

Internet vs The World

While there are many water coolers for what’s happening in the World Twitter is the one where everything on the Internet passes through. If there’s big news in the office everyone, including PR, and HR go over to the Twitter Water Cooler to find out what’s up an then go back to their water coolers to talk about it.

So some of you are rightfully thinking, “Tac the Internet *is* the World.” Yes it is. But many things in the World don’t raise to any significant level of awareness on the Internet. My wonderful wife spends more time on Facebook than any other Internet site. She get’s news about what’s happening in our neighborhood, community and in our friends and families lives. That stuff doesn’t make it on Twitter and you don’t need to know about it.

But if a plane crashes, a celebrity dies (or one allegedly dies), a nation revolts or your marketing campaign tanks, the Twitter Water Cooler knows about it. If you’re going to monitor only one thing right now, Twitter will get you 90% of what you want faster than anything.

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Things got a little noise around here this last month. The noise to signal ratio was definitely a little out of whack and for that I apologise.

I don’t make money on this blog. With the exception of the occasional Amazon affiliate link that Zemanta adds in automatically for me I run no ads and never have. But I definitely make money off this blog. A lot of money actually.

This blog is my testing ground. This blog is my sandbox. This is where I share my half baked ideas about things I find interesting. What I learn here I take and help my clients succeed in their businesses.

Posterous has turned out to be an unexpected pleasant surprise. I think it’s a powerful service that has larger  implications for the direction the Web is moving. I’ve had a Posterous account for the last 6 months and I never did much with it. But when they turned it into a Web CMS tool I, and many others took notice.

I have finally legitimized my account and given it a URL www.tacanderson.com and I have evolved the site from a toy to my life stream.

This blog will not go away. Far from it. I hope that my life stream becomes a breading ground for ideas that fuel this blog. I promise to bring the signal to noise ratio back in line. I also plan on using Posterous as one of the many tools I use to get content to this blog.

So if you’re still here, thanks. If you have feedback, please share it. And if you haven’t yet, go check out Posterous.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Tutorial: Getting Started with Zemanta (zemanta.com)
• Zemanta plus Google Alerts plus Posterous equals I don’t know. (newcommbiz.com)
• Using Zemanta with Posterous (zemanta.com)
• Marketers as Aggregators Creators and Distributors (newcommbiz.com)
• Expanding Posterous as a Workflow Tool (newcommbiz.com)

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Last month I started a Top 10 Blog Posts recap of the months most popular posts. Like last month.

For comparison I’ve also included the dates well as the PostRank score for each post. You can see this blogs full PostRank profile here (my profile is here). The raw numerical ranking is based off Google Analytics traffic numbers. The PostRank score is based off views, comments and the number of times it was shared on Twitter and FriendFeed (along with some other secret sauce I’m sure).

Two new developments; The top post from last month was the top post again this month and all of the top posts received a Post Rank score of 10. If that keeps up I’ll probably not include that in the report.

Maybe I’ll include number of comments or something.

1. FriendFeed is Reaching Critical Mass PR 10 5/20/09
2. Blogs Aren’t Dead, They’re Just Fragmenting PR 10 6/24/09
3. Excuse me, News Industry. Why did you matter? I forgot. PR 10 6/4/09
4. What I’m doing to fight the social media echo chamber PR 10 6/2/09
5. Do You Think Your Company Should Be On Twitter PR 10 6/16/09
6. The Next Big Thing is… PR 10 6/11/09
7. Which Bloggers Generate the Most Buzz and Which Bloggers are the Most Paranoid? PR 10 6/14/09
8. In Defense of Journalism PR 10 6/18/09
9. If you care about your job in marketing and PR, read this post. PR 10 6/12/09
10. FriendFeed and Posterous Redefine Content Management Systems PR 10 6/26/09

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People have used Twitter to complain since the first week it was launched (I don’t know this for a fact but I know human nature). The Twitterati have used it to rally their supporters to their side.

Celebs have used it to drive support around the causes they support but what happens when celebs use Twitter to air their complaints?Sometimes it works in their favor, sometimes they look like an ass.

It’s No Myth: Adam Savage Taps Twitter to Fight $11000 AT&T Bill Savage was using his AT&T USB Connect Mercury modem, according to a post on his Twitter feed, @donttrythis. AT&T claimed Savage uploaded/downloaded 9 … See all stories on this topic

Examiner.com

Author lashes out on Twitter, and a new review of Here on Earth by … Yesterday, angry author Alice Hoffman used Twitter to publish a reviewer’s phone number and (misspelled) email address. She encouraged her followers to … See all stories on this topic

The difference is that Savage had a legitimate complaint (AT&T overcharged him) Hoffman did not (she got a bad review).

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Download now or watch on posterous

MOV-0004.3gp (594 KB)

Posted via email from Zemashup

[Update/Explanation] I used this opportunity to demonstrate the ability to take a video live and post it via Posterous to this blog. I had issues cross posting to YouTube (It just took a while to load) and I can’t wait until Posterous gets their WP player bug worked out.

Warning. The video sucks, was really loud but demonstrated the capability.

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Some people are gifted designers and artists. I am not. But I’m still visual and surprising tactile, especially for really hard vague ideas like theories.

This is one picture drawn during a brainstorm. For the people on the phone during the meeting someone took a picture and emailed it around. That photo then got emailed around some more. It surprised me how one grainy picture of a bad drawing with the right context behind it made my most far fetched ideas (somewhat) understandable.

I think as move past early adopters to early majority and the mainstream with socila media visualization is going to be a big deal.

Sent via my phone.

Posted via email from Zemashup

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Download now or listen on posterous

Voice.wav (2860 KB)

Just how much more content can we continue to create and consume? One
thing’s for sre; We’re going to need a bigger boat.
 

Posted via email from Zemashup

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Levy’s prediction is just one of many, especially from the media industry. But I can’t help but to think that this is just market bolstering from the people who have the most to loose/gain.

Publicis CEO Levy: Advertising Recovery Starts Next Month | paidContent

Levy and others are really smart and I value their opinion but unless you’re willing to call not being in a free-fall I’m just not buying it. We may flatten but I don’t think we can expect much market wide growth.

The more important point to make is that market recovery will only accelerate trends.

Traditional marketing and advertising is hurting. Companies are de-investing in these mediums but I can tell you from personal experience that digital and social marketing are growing faster than most of us can handle.

When the market does recover do you honestly think companies will re-invest in traditional marketing?

No! It will only accelerate the move to digital and social marketing.

If you’re not ready now for that transition you’d better hope the market doesn’t turn around yet.

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Sent from my iPod

19 Twitter Desktop Apps Compared | Technology News
You’ve got access to your followers and friends, custom groups, earch (integrated with FriendFeed and One Riot), trends, tr.im and pic.im integration, multiple accounts, Ping.fm integration, filters, and three view options for a one or …
Technology News - http://technewsreport.co.cc/

I had no idea there were this many desktop apps. FriendFeed and One Riot integration sounds great.

Bookmarklet Fu « Webtropic
I use it to share things in Reader occasionally, but most of the time I share things either in twitter or in friendfeed. Why? They show up much faster and the crowds in these two services are so much bigger than Google Reader. …
Webtropic - http://webtropic.cc/

Or you can do what I do and have your shared Google Reader items go to FriendFeed and then post to Twitter. It’s not as fast but much more efficient.

Quitting FriendFeed » Webomatica - Entertainment and Tech Digest
Almost entirely at random, I got caught up in a FriendFeed thread by Aaron Brazell where he voiced dissatisfaction with … Webomatica - Entertainment and… - http://www.webomatica.wordpress.com

Let the FriendFeef quiting begin. A sure sign a service is getting ready to take off.

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• Get Off the Bus : CJR

  Need to spend some time to read this but it looks very interesting.

  tags: Citizen, Juornalism, GetOffTheBuss, NCB

• UBM’S TechWeb to Reorganize, Cut Jobs - B2B @ FolioMag.com

  It looks like even new media isn’t immune to the layoffs.

  tags: TechWeb, layoffs, media, NCB

  • United Business Media’s TechWeb is expected to announce a reorganization today that will result in a number of layoffs as well as management changes.

• The nine tribes of the internet

  A cool slideshare of Pew’s latest research. I find it interesting that the Digital Collaborators and the Desktop Veterans had the highest income are both high contributors and both have been online for the longest.

  tags: web, web2.0, NCB

• 10 Ways Journalism Schools Are Teaching Social Media

  It’s nice to see Journalism Schools recognize the importance of social media. Especially if they don’t want to turn out unemployable students.

  tags: Twitter, web2.0, trends, Journalism, socialmedia, social media, web, social, NCB

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

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