Yesterday I attended Jeff Pulver‘s 140 Conference in Tel Aviv. I really enjoyed @thekotel‘s presentation which unfortunately I didn’t film but go to the twitter profile and check it out. Alon Nir is doing a remarkable job there.

The lecture I enjoyed in particular was Yaniv Golan’s (CTO of Yedda)  “The 140-characters Netscape” where he stated:

“I believe that in 2 years the Twitter brand will be in the same position as the Netscape brand is in now: Twitter will be credited with starting the revolution, and paving the road for followers (pun intended). But at the same time, it will be pushed into a minor position in the market with other players taking the lead (or, as is the case with Netscape, will no longer exist).”

It’s an interesting position and definitely a realistic one. What do you think? Do you see each of the big players creating their own twitter-like services? Do you believe like Yaniv that twitter should switch to a wordpress type model? Check out the video below.

(Guest post by Dorine Sinigaglia)

Recently, I noticed a friend of mine following a food truck company on Twitter. Call me old-fashioned, but I didn’t even know food trucks were still around – let alone had Twitter accounts! Food vendors always reminded me of a place where starved businessmen would run to grab a quick bite in TV sitcoms. I realized I knew very little about this business, so I began to do some research, as the concept of food trucks’ branding and marketing tactics on Twitter began to intrigue me. I was amazed at the amount of information I found online revolving food vendors’ online presence and I quickly grew an appetite to write a new post.

Street food vendors, trucks and carts have been around way before the time of Twitter – so it’s evident that their primary source of growth and ways of  promoting locations on an hourly basis is not solely done through Twitter (most of them have developed websites with full menus and directions to daily location stops). On the other hand, since Twitter is now available as a means of marketing and promoting brands, food vendors have quickly jumped on the Twitter bandwagon and are utilizing its real-time status updates to their advantage. According to Ann Handley from Mashable, “a growing number of street vendors have been leveraging Twitter in innovative and interesting ways, serving up lessons for any business” – in her article Tweetable Eats: What Street Vendors Can Teach Businesses About Twitter. With the help of Twitter, street food vendors can promote their precise stopped locations and what they are serving throughout the day by tweeting to the hungry public.

Many brands are on Twitter but don’t know how to engage with their followers or create constant dialogue to keep them coming back to read about company news or industry updates. When searching for street food vendors’ presence on Twitter, I found that most of them didn’t have more than 2,500 followers – and some had as few as 250 followers. Since their target markets are “geographically constrained” – says Ann, you won’t find food vendors on Twitter with tens of thousands of followers. For street food vendors, “1,000 followers who will actually do business with you are ultimately more valuable to your business that 100,000 less-engaged people.” There are exceptions of course – like Kogi Korean BBQ –  an extremely successful Korean BBQ taco truck that has a dynamic website filled with photos, videos, a blog, and also a Twitter account with almost 50,000 followers! According to an article in the LA Times – Living section featuring this successful taco truck,  Kogi brings in “300 to 800 people each time it parks (often several times in an evening).” But overall, street food vendors have to do much more than just “follow” people on Twitter in hopes of gaining a customer or two – for it doesn’t matter how big the list is if they don’t make it to the food cart.

For street food vendors, it is about finding the right followers in order to ensure a successful lunch hour. There are a few important tips that food vendors must keep in mind in order to get proper exposure in general – and most importantly, before lunch time when its their busiest time for sales.

First, they must know who their target market is. If the local taco stand or hot dog cart tends to remain in the Los Angeles region, for example, roaming from one college campus to another within the same county boundaries, their target audience is specifically people who live in Los Angeles and attending students of those colleges. If the food cart tends to post up near local museums, on the other hand, their target market is much wider and appeals to a variety of crowds. In general, it is crucial to know who their target market is and where these customers roam in order to ensure a high attendance to their parked food cart.

Next, street food vendors must create a tasty demand for their products while simultaneously creating a sense of urgency in their tweets. Some vendors post a brief menu of their available foods or how many items they have left before they run out for the day to create that sense of urgency in the customer’s potential purchase and gets their mouth watering for the vendor’s food (if they can throw in a quick link to a picture of their melting grilled cheese sandwich or their sizzling hamburger, this helps wonders!). According to Ann, food vendors must “communicate the breadth and depth of your products or services on Twitter in a fresh, compelling way, and in a manner that speaks directly to your customer’s needs.”

Food vendors must humanize their brand in order to reach out to their customer’s hungry heart. Monitoring conversations online is key in this business and goes a long way in terms of keeping customers feeling appreciated and humanizing the brand. Responding to customer’s comments and questions in real-time is crucial to keep the business going successfully and they should listen to customer’s suggestions and feedback with the use of Twitter and use this vital information as a resource for product development and ways to improve their business. According to Ann, food vendors must “reveal a little bit about the people and personalities who run your business so that your customers can connect with you on a human level.”

And now, its all about continuous open communication. Twitter’s real-time social platform allows food vendors to be in regular, instant communication with its customers and keep them informed on news and updates – even if the news is not in their favor (for customers respect honesty and would rather know the truth than come hungry and be let down). Whether food vendors publicize their locations and hours on Twitter or send a tweet about how they didn’t find parking on the street, communication is key to keep the customer engaged and coming back for more tasty treats.

Done correctly and with style, Twitter goes a long way in having the ability to connect customers with their business in an immediate, intimate level. But since Twitter is only one social media tool for food vendors to utilize for promoting their brand, like any marketing efforts, spreading the word about their tasty foods is done best when integrated with other valuable tools – like having a company blog, a dynamic website and by reaching out to the blogosphere for other companies to write about their products. Now, Twitter is simply another great resource for food vendors to be able to reach out to their community in a quick fashion with real-time updates and tasty tweets that bring hungry customers to their cart simply because they feel they have to save the last, lonely hot dog from the stand before closing time.

Is it lunch time yet?

Dorine Sinigaglia is the Account & Content Manager at Blonde 2.0

While Biz Stone was in Israel this week, I was interviewed by Globes TV regarding twitter’s role in my life and how twitter can help both brands and individuals in building and enhancing their online image.  The interview was also broadcasted on Channel 1 in Israel. Please note, the interview is in Hebrew. To view, click here.

Illustration credit: Matt Hamm

I was invited yesterday morning to the Biz Stone press conference hosted by the College of Management . For me personally it was very exciting to meet one of the founders of the social platform that I love and admire the most. Biz didn’t surprise us with any new acquisition in Israel but mostly talked about the role that twitter has been playing until now and what the future holds for twitter. He did mention that 2010 is the year that twitter will start making real money.

For everyone who wanted to be there, but couldn’t, don’t say i didn’t think of you…here’s the video (separated into two due to Youtube limitations):

In my opinion twitter is the best tool we have today to engage with others, spread a message, network, meet other like-minded people, and stay on top of the news, in any industry. The only aspect I’ve always found problematic on twitter was the impossibility of organizing information. This is something that’s changed now with the new twitter lists which allow you to organize people in any sort of list you like.

So how have you been using lists? What sort of names have you been giving your lists?It’s quite interesting to see what lists people have put you under and how you have been “categorized”.  With twitter lists, I can put people I am following into specific categories. So for example, I have created lists of “bloggers”, “social media”, “brands”, etc.

Twitter lists are going to change the way we network and socialize.  No longer are we going to have a list of journalists’ emails to send a press release to but rather we will have a twitter list of all these journalists with their twitter handles. Patrick Kitano writes in his post entitled Twitter Lists will Organize the social graph: “It takes an individual an hour to build a 200-person Twitter List in comparison to the days / weeks it takes to attain a 200-fan FB page. This will make Twitter Lists the prolific standard for organizing the social graph.”

Each of us is organizing his/her own “following” or rather social graph is basically  helping twitter organize its database for them. These lists will become invaluable to us both professionally and socially.  However, please note that one twitter account can only create 20 lists and each list can only contain 500 members, so choose your lists carefully and who’s in them even more carefully.  Robert Scoble wrote an excellent post describing the limitations, bugs, impact and brilliance of twitter lists.

The feature itself I think is revolutionary. The interface and usability? Well, not as great. So here is my top 10 list of  suggestions for improving twitter lists:

10)  Include a “Featured Lists’ section each day/week, based on the user’s interests/preferences

9) Ability to invite people to a private list

8 ) Ability to combine lists

7) Ability to search within specific lists

6) “Ability to build lists by search across following/followers and automatic list creation. For example, I could build an instant list of Berkeley real estate agents by searching “Berkeley real estate” across my following, and clicking a presumed button called “Automatic List”  (Credit: Patrick Kitano)

5) Allow special features for lists, for example: Being able to send a message to all the members of a particular list

4) Allow the ability to decide which lists will display on your sidebar

3) Allow to easily search for people while adding them to lists

2) Ability to add more than 20 lists (perhaps a premium feature?)

1) Ability to add more than 500 members to a list (another premium feature?)

As Scoble writes, what will be the impact of this brilliant feature? “You’ll follow a lot more people. Why? Because you’ll find someone who has done a really great list, say, of programmers, and you’ll add the whole list. I’ve already done this a LOT and found that Twitter has gotten way more interesting because of it.”  Barak Hachamov, founder of My6Sense, a startup that learns users’ behavior over time and prioritizes their information streams for them tells me: This feature is so simple and yet has the potential to have such a huge impact on how people consume and discover real-time information.

I tweeted this week: “It’s no longer about how many followers you have. Now its about how many twitter lists you’re on.” and I stand behind what I said. It doesn’t matter anymore if 100,000 people are following you if you’re not on any one’s list. LindsayT tweeted me saying: “why does this matter? why isn’t the question-how many friends you interact with through this social medium? quality over quantity”. So I answer LindsayT in the most personal of ways: The more lists you’re on, the more you interact with others. People put you on a list because you specifically interact and made yourself a name in that particular category.  Twitter lists are the new measurement these days. Twitter lists are awesome. We will soon enough ask ourselves how we ever lived without them.

The name is Bond, James Bond but on twitter he’d be known as @jamesbond. This week we asked you what would Mr. Bond tweet about. This is what you had to say.

Let’s start off with a really sophisticated answer by @nealwiser: “Bet you in next movie Bond will use Twitter to get the girl & defeat the bad guy by tweeting fake nuclear launch codes.” @mottipeer jokes: “007 License to tweet”, @michaelbiddulph writes: “Just a drink, a Martini, shaken not stirred.” I like that. Another Martini reference comes from David Alexander on Facebook: “The bartender in the twelve cesars can’t make a descent martini.”

A few of you realists thought that he wouldn’t tweet at all. Andrew J Scott: “He wouldn’t. FFS is nothing sacred? ”.  @kfirpravda thinks that “he won’t twit. he will be too busy killing the bad guys”. @philipbuxton the master realist points out: “nothing – he’s a SECRET agent…!”

We got a few references to Moneypenny as well. A few professional. A few romantic.

@tomgriffola writes:  ”Moneypenny’s mad at me again, I can’t find any of my receipts and she’s refusing to sort my expenses.”  Gerry Cooney says: “Moneypenny, you know there is no other woman for me ”

I’ll end with a really great one by Bertrand Leseigneur: “M. why you didn’t create Twitter before the americans??”  Now isn’t that a classic James Bond tweet?

Monday as usual we will announce next week’s character. Thanks to everyone who participated this week.

Photo Credit: Shaun Wong

master Yoda

This week we asked you “What would Yoda tweet”?  Just like in previous weeks, we found our contest hero already has an active twitter account: @yoda, Quite an entertaining one actually. In his last tweet he dissed the twitter community saying: “RT you all do. Original force there is little of”.

So let’s see what you guys thought Yoda would say.  @ilan_peer wrote: “i feel the tweet is strong with this one”  @HeziAbrass said: “Powerful you have become, many followers I sense in you.” Perhaps he was referring to my tweet about finally hitting the 5000 followers mark on twitter.  @Mottipeer responded to him: “”Number of followers matters not, … Look at me. Judge me by followers, do you?”

@EyeView_Inc expresses a frustration that we often face in twitterland. Due to twitter’s 140 characters limit, users often find all kinds of tricks to get all the words in. EyeView writes: “What would Yoda tweet? Half the tweets I read sound like written by Yoda they were!”

@jrmk wondered if I am a Starwars-freak enough to understand the following Yoda tweet from him: “ afk #Dagobah”. Yes Jeremie. I got it. Funny For anyone who didn’t get the joke,  here’s some info for you about Dagobah.

@Guybendov notifies me that I dont need to run an @darthvader campaign because he’s already on twitter (not that this fact ever stopped us before).

On Facebook, Ephraim Rattner writes: “Powerful you have become, the Tweet side I sense in you.” And last but not least,  Raanan Avidor starred this week with a record 7 straight (and may I say, very creative and intelligent) answers. Here are some of them:

1) “ You must feel the Twitter around you; here, between you, me, the tree, the rock, everywhere, yes”

2) “That is why you fail – RT @Luke: I can’t believe it”

3) “Remember, a #Jedi’s strength flows from the #Force. But beware. Anger, fear, aggression. The dark side are they”

4) “May the Twitter be with you”

5) “May the #Force be with you”

You rock Raanan! Great job! You always star in our contests. Glad you like the subjects.

My personal favorite was @LiviuLica’s tweet: block spammers you must, spam is for the dark side, yes, blocked i have the jerk @darthvader

Monday we announce the next character. This time I already know who I am picking. Stay tuned…

‘Master Yoda’ photo by: Thomas Hawk

Guest Post written by Ilan Peer

For the past two years I have been active on twitter and only recently (as of June 2008) my close friends and colleagues began to show up on twitter and therefore increased the amount of related and relevant content for me. twitter has become a daily tool of communication which I use via Web browser, additional applications and on my mobile device.
Unlike other social networks, twitter is about connecting people in a way that appeals to me the most. The lack of
approval needed to follow others enables mass networking. The many-to-many interaction is fascinating and the academic world is starting to study the social behavior on twitter and other mass networking platforms.

I think eventually twitter (and other communication services) will change the way we think, act, make friends, shop and of course consume media.

Here are my personal twitter ethics and morals I live by:

Be nice, be polite – leave your rants to your blog or anonymous comments. Due to the vast search capability, it is likely you will show up on someone’s radar even if it wasn’t your intention.

Watch your language – if you tweet in other languages rather than English, make sure not to swamp your English
readers feed with a language they cannot understand. If you want to target one specific audience who are non-English
speakers, think about creating a separate account.

Think of your copy writing – try and conserve characters (even though you have up to 140 characters to begin with) If you hope to get retweeted , do not use up all of the 140 characters. Leave room so that when a person retweets the message, there is enough space for their user-name and the complete original tweet. This is a thoughtful way to make sure the entirety of the message is redistributed to the retweeter’s stream.

It’s not about quantity, it’s about quality – For a personal account you don’t actually need 30 thousand followers, and if you do – chances are you will lose the human touch (hey, that’s why we’re here in the first place). Try to find followers and be followed in a natural and organic manner. Don’t feel like you are in a race for increasing numbers. Get to know your community and let them get to know you.

Choose whatever twitter application is right for you – in my opinion there is no top application or service that beats them all. I’ve been using the same ol’ twitterfox for months now. I did try other tools but I didn’t stick with them.  twitterfox is  the most convenient way for me to tweet, and that is why I still use it.  As far as mobile goes, I can’t let go of my symbian application called Gravity. I’m so happy with that it made me a paying costumer even though there are other free mobile clients and apps.

Use all different kinds of media – take pictures with your mobile and upload them to twitpic or other twitter photo services, shoot videos and use twitter to spread them. Technology is so handy and these extra and rich tools add a lot of personal touch.

Be coherent and relevant – if you reply a tweet use the little reply arrow, this way the back and forth conversation between two users allows bystanders to follow the conversation.

Find your own way – there is no right or wrong, good or bad (you can even dismiss this whole post) on twitter. twitter is a personal communication tool where people  decide for themselves what is the best way to use the service. Try and get the most out of it and if you don’t see the need (nor understand the hype) give it a rest.  Somewhere down the line another service will come along and fill the  need for a mass communication tool.

if you want to connect with me on twitter, i am @ilan_peer.
Good luck!

photo credit to: gesamtbild

“Imagine.” Imagine if John Lennon were still alive and on Twitter. That was the theme of this week’s contest, what would they tweet? Unlike previous contestants, I haven’t found a fake Twitter account for the late musical genius, but the site historical tweets does have one tweet for the musical legend “I said we were bigger than the WHO” (in response to Lennon’s famous statement that The Beatles were bigger than Jesus). @sageeb had a different take on Lennon’s statement, writing instead that “we are more popular than @aplusk” ~ @johnlennon

Most people thought that Lennon would turn his songs into tweets. @welfeld wrote “Imagine all the twitters, twitting in your face. Your tweets are of a dreamer, but you are not the only one.” @niron had a different take on Imagine, writing instead, “You may say I’m on twitter, but I’m not the only one, Oprah and Ashton have been there long B4 I’ve tried” @reggriffin tweeted “Imagine there’s no facebook…it’s easy if you try.” On Facebook, Jim Woods responded, “Imagine all the Tweeple living life in peace.” Ilan Peer wrote “all i am tweeting, is give peace a chance” Michael Mullins wrote “Imagine There’s no Heaven.” Alex de Carvalho wrote “Imagine There’s No Facebook”. Neil Osman wrote “Imagine there is no middle eastern August.”

When asking what Lennon would tweet, Guillaume Decugis “I can’t IMAGINE ”

Blue Nim Rod referred to another Beatles song (although this one was actually written by Paul McCartney), “Let it be!”

Ben Pashkoff says Lennon would tweet, “We are all together – kuku kashoo”

@amitkurtz thought that Lennon would tweet “…there’s no heaven” @Mottipeer wrote “All you need is love” @niron had a similar take, tweeting that “John Lennon might have said: “Imagine all the people tweeting out for PEACE, yoohoo uhoohoo”.”

Raanan Avidor wrote that “Lennon has a lot of quotes that can be twitted like:

♫ All you twit is love. ♫

♫ All we are saying is give twit a chance. ♫

♫ There’s nothing you can twit that wasn’t twot. ♫

♫ Yeah we all twit on, like the moon, and the stars, and the sun. ♫”

Gil Ruda “For those of you in the cheap seats I’d like ya to clap your hands to this one; the rest of you can just rattle your Blackberry”

Other twitterers referenced Lennon’s untimely assassination. Frequent participant LiviuLica wrote that ‘he might of twitted – “there’s that loony that’s been stalking me, it’s time for us to have a chat”’ One user grimly mentioned both Michael Jackson’s death and Lennon’s. @welfeld, referring to Jackson’s ownership of the Beatle’s library, tweeted “Maybe now that Michael Jackson is dead, I can get my music’s rights back. Wait, I am dead too.”

@sageeb has another entry with this philosophical statement: “@god is a concept by which we measure our pain” ~@johnlennon

@Rubin is clearly not a fan of Twitter – or at least he thinks Lennon wouldn’t have been, tweeting “John Lennon would probably dismiss Twitter as useless.”

My own entry is “Twitter fields forever.”

This week you guys really rose to the occasion and came up with great responses to our weekly contest. This week we asked Twitterville what would Jesus tweet about.

As with Marilyn Monroe and Ari Gold, it appears that Jesus really does tweet.”

Here are some of the best responses we received:

By far my favorite response came from Raanan Avidor on Facebook. He says that Jesus would tweet “BRB”

Mottipeer writes:  ’Jesus tweet at Microsoft “What shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world but loses his soul”‘

Referring to another miracle, tomforemski writes “Jesus would Tweet: I just got pulled out of sea of Galilee – I forgot I had holes in my feet”

Another amusing (but perhaps a bit sacriligeous):  dotmad @blonde20 “My back is killing me”

Many of you wrote sacriligeous comments, such as:  ’Whatever he tweeted, it would only get retweeted for about 3 hours.’ (from ohnperrybarlow). Another interesting post came from Thailand. LukeInTH wrote “still stuck on the cross waiting of die.. boring.. thank god the romans have good wifi.”

Osherlana tweeted in the name of Jesus: “oh my dad”

Christopher Knuffke says that he’s “Not sure. . .guess he would have to answer that for himself!

Clearly Jim Woods knows Twitter. That’s probably why he’s on Facebook:

No, I don’t need to learn how to make money at home.

I already knew what you had for lunch.

And, MUST HEAL FAIL WHALE.

Would Jesus use twitter to spread his gospel? LiviuLica said that he would tweet: “Latest blog post – ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you’, please RT”

Jesus was in Israel, but despite what some think, we don’t ride on camels or speak Yiddish. Nor did Jesus (he spoke Aramaic), but Victor Weigner said that “He would say” VAT IS DIS” YOU ARE ALL MESHUGANA” (he spoke Yidish)…” (Funny, that Yiddish sounds a lot like English to me).

Raanan Avidor who also said that Jesus would tweet “BRB” clearly thinks Jesus would have liked Twitter. As he wrote

“Blessed are the twit, for they shall inherit the earth…” (Matt. 5:5) (Unless Facebook will do something about it)

Rafael Cosentino wrote that Jesus would have tweeted, “Thou shall not covet thy neighbor’s followers.”

When told that the contest ended tomorrow, raincoaster tweeted “Tomorrow is the last day? You’d think Jesus would give us a little more warning.”

If anyone had any doubts, Jesus would have participated in #followfriday. From 7son75: ‘He would have tweeted: “#FollowFriday @Judas. Great, loyal disciple. Always has your back. Not one of those sell-outs. BFF’s!”‘

Asher Idan thinks Jesus would have loved twitter. He wrote:

Jesus love revolutions. Social-Conversational Media is the biggest revolution since the printing press 550 years ago. the same is true abou Socrates and Writing revolution. Socrates and Jesus were murdered

For the last word, I leave you with sageeb‘s question: “are the last words of Jesus, before Twitter crashed, known as “The Last Tweet”?”

Who should we pick next week?