OK, not huge news here, in fact I’ve said it’s the trend over and over again.  But here are some facts to back it up:

According to a 2008 survey by Technorati, which runs a search engine for blogs, only 7.4 million out of the 133 million blogs the company tracks had been updated in the past 120 days. That translates to 95 percent of blogs being essentially abandoned, left to lie fallow on the Web, where they become public remnants of a dream — or at least an ambition — unfulfilled.

Here’s the other side of the coin. Tweetdeck issues a new release tonight.

TweetDeck however thought it was time for a major upgrade in features as well. So along with the ability to sync with the iPhone app, they have implemented an array of new features, small and big. Two of the biggest: multiple accounts and unlimited columns. Here’s a quick highlight of some of the important ones, with screenshots showing these features in action:

1. “Block and Report Spam” button: Clicking on this button will not only delete the spam message, but it will block that specific user and report them to Twitter. Simply brilliant.
2. “Reply All” feature: You can now tweet to everyone who is mentioned in a specific tweet.
3. “TweetDeck Recommends” column: Just as it sounds, it’s a column with a list of recommended people to follow.

4. Deeper video playback support: Qik, 12seconds, and other video clips are fully supported in TweetDeck.
5. Auto-suggest filter: When you start typing someone’s username, it will find the person and allow you to add them to a group quickly.

6. Integration with YFrog for photo sharing.
7. RE (In reference to): A new menu feature that allows you to reference a specific user or a tweet in your own message.

8. Multiple accounts and unlimited columns: Yes, two of TweetDeck’s most requested features have arrived.

And like we said earlier, these are just a few of the features that TweetDeck’s desktop version has added.

It’s just human nature to go to the path of least resistance, so is narcissism.  Twitter is that.  Journalists are still good bloggers and I enjoy upwards of 200 blogs a day to get the real news rather than the bias of the MSM.  For most though, the model has shifted to micro-blogging and the ability to punch out 140 characters from a mobile device is a paradigm shift.

I sat down with Gary Barnett of the Bathwick Group to discuss the state of Analyst relations.  Gary confirmed some things that I believe to be true such as the relationship is key to working with analysts.  Further, he confirms that analysts have great value to the sales cycle and that it is in the best interest of A/R to use them as a best practice.

Note: To best hear this, you will want to use headphones.

Special thanks to Gary for his time and thoughts.  I hope this helps the A/R profession.

As always, it is interesting to hear the analysts on their view of good and bad practices by the A/R community and what we could do better.

I likely am not going to make a lot of friends, but I’ve taken many personality tests and have read a great deal about relationships and the differences between Men and Women.

Recently, a story came out from Harvard Business Publishing on Twitter users.

Here is the part of the story that stood out for me, in fact it hit me between the eyes like a 2×4:

Although men and women follow a similar number of Twitter users, men have 15% more followers than women. Men also have more reciprocated relationships, in which two users follow each other. This “follower split” suggests that women are driven less by followers than men, or have more stringent thresholds for reciprocating relationships. This is intriguing, especially given that females hold a slight majority on Twitter: we found that men comprise 45% of Twitter users, while women represent 55%. To get this figure, we cross-referenced users’ “real names” against a database of 40,000 strongly gendered names.

Even more interesting is who follows whom. We found that an average man is almost twice more likely to follow another man than a woman. Similarly, an average woman is 25% more likely to follow a man than a woman. Finally, an average man is 40% more likely to be followed by another man than by a woman. These results cannot be explained by different tweeting activity - both men and women tweet at the same rate.

These results are stunning given what previous research has found in the context of online social networks. On a typical online social network, most of the activity is focused around women - men follow content produced by women they do and do not know, and women follow content produced by women they knowⁱ. Generally, men receive comparatively little attention from other men or from women. We wonder to what extent this pattern of results arises because men and women find the content produced by other men on Twitter more compelling than on a typical social network, and men find the content produced by women less compelling (because of a lack of photo sharing, detailed biographies, etc.).

WHY MEN?

Here is what became very apparent to me.  Most studies agree that women talk through there problems to arrive at a solution.  Men think through a problem and talk when they’ve arrived at a solution.  140 characters is just not enough to talk your way through an issue, ergo better suited for men.

Also, Men know the above is true even if they haven’t read the study and  get into trouble with women by trying to solve the problem before their woman friends have talked their way through the issue.  The other way we get into trouble is to try to solve everything for a woman when just listening is what a woman wants.  Men don’t do that well, we try to fix things (that’s why your female friends are there for you, not us).  Also, we’re bottom line people.  We don’t need the details, just the result so 140 fits the bill.

That should give some inside to the following numbers issue.  We know that men have usually been through the thought process already rather than using it as a solution oriented process.

MEN DON’T WANT TO COMMUNICATE THEIR FEELINGS

Men don’t really want to communicate that much, at all. That is why 140 characters works so well.  We learn this at puberty when most sons answer their parents with a grunt which is good for yes, no, maybe and I don’t know.  We don’t really want to talk that much, to anyone unless it is about sports, conquests, the details of an engine, the shotgun formation or other testosterone based issues.   We really don’t want to talk about feelings or emotions either.

I think that 140 characters is limiting for effective communication by women by nature.  Most studies (and husbands, boyfriends) will back this up.  That is why twitter doesn’t match up to other social media platforms.  Facebook, MySpace and all the others offer unlimited characters, more picture capability and other tools that lend themselves to a more verbose and sharing atmosphere.

I’m good with a couple of grunts and rarely need 140 characters.  It works for me just fine and I rarely reach the character limit.

My Father is gone now, along with a lot of soldiers from WWII.  Their sacrifice should never be forgotten though.  It was through the courage of those from many countries who came together to being the re-taking of Europe to it’s eventual freedom and victory over the oppression that Nazi Germany that allow the world to be what it is today.

Many men made the ultimate sacrifice that day, June 6, 1944.  Never forget, freedom is not free.  Thank God for men like Churchill and Eisenhower who had the guts to call evil evil, and fight against it.

Here is the official Army site for D-Day where it says:

June 6, 1944, 160,000 Allied troops landed along a 50-mile stretch of heavily-fortified French coastline to fight Nazi Germany on the beaches of Normandy, France. General Dwight D. Eisenhower called the operation a crusade in which “we will accept nothing less than full victory.” More than 5,000 Ships and 13,000 aircraft supported the D-Day invasion, and by day’s end on June 6, the Allies gained a foot- hold in Normandy. The D-Day cost was high -more than 9,000 Allied Soldiers were killed or wounded — but more than 100,000 Soldiers began the march across Europe to defeat Hitler.

One of my favorite Milbloggers, Blackfive has a great write up.  Here is a portion, click on the link as he has a huge number of stories by those who remember it:

“In the final choice, a soldier’s pack is not so heavy a burden as a prisoner’s chains.” - General Dwight D. Eisenhower

On June 6th, 1944, over 150,000 men landed by air and sea in Normandy to liberate Europe from Nazi oppression. Operation Overlord planned for the invasion of the 50-mile stretch of coast to be completed in just 24 hours.

In years past, we’ve had a military bloggers and friends post about D-Day. (We used to call them blog-bursts.) So, in an effort to continue to preserve the history and honor of our efforts long ago, we will post these blog posts and add new ones every year. We intend to keep this at the top of the blog until June 7th. The D-Day blog burst is after the Jump and will be updated as bloggers submit (send me your links via email).

Because, in the end, it is about our legacy…

“..The Rangers looked up and saw the enemy soldiers at the edge of the cliffs, shooting down at them with machine guns and throwing grenades. And the American Rangers began to climb…” - President Ronald Reagan, at the Ranger Monument, 6 June 1984, in Pointe Du Hoc, Normandy, France

Welcome to a MilBlogs And Friends Special Edition of the Anniversary of D-Day!

Below you will find links to extraordinary bloggers telling the stories of D-Day from their unique perspectives. Instead of term paper descriptions, you’ll see the beaches and cliffs of the Normandy coast, you’ll read letters of the survivors and hear about the great sacrifices made by our neighbors to the north…and you’ll never forget the Greatest Generation.

I only hope that our president respects it when he goes to the beaches of Normandy and gives it the due it deserves.

Getting to the person you want to meet with or communicate with when you want to is vital.

Relationships ultimately are very important, but I find that an A/R best practice is knowing the Back Channel.

My First Back Channel

I’m skipping the phone in this discussion.  Most people screen calls.

Backing up a few years when I was in PR, I remember when public email first started.  We were using MCI Mail on DOS and  300 baud modems back in the mid 80’s to reach influential people in the industry like John Dvorak, Paul Sommerson, Bill Machrone and others.  I think there were about 10 of us using it.  I was beating the big PR agencies and they couldn’t figure out why, as I was working for a small company that shouldn’t have had the presence we had.  We were the inside club.

Email then of course became mainstream so we lost that advantage.

The Next Tool -  IM

It’s hard to believe that as much as we use instant messaging now,  that at the beginning of the technology not many were using it and again it was the way to reach those who were using it.  At this point, Email immunity was beginning to take hold and if you weren’t important, you fell quickly out of the realm of first responders.  I read a tweet from an analyst recently who noted his inbox was so far gone that he was about to delete everything and just start over.

IM also fell to everyone abusing it and we moved on.

Twitter:

Skip forward a few years and you have  Twitter.  This worked until the recent explosion of everyone being on the platform and it again became commonplace.  It still is somewhat effective if you are high on the other parties list.

The Point of this Post:

I was meeting with an very influential analyst a few nights ago and to be honest, I’m not that high on his list.  I decided to ask him, what is his back channel when I really need to reach him.   The condition was that I wouldn’t abuse it so that when I really was using it, I had something of value to speak about.   He was up front and gave me a personal address that he said he will look at.  Bingo.

It occurred to me that this is the best practice.  First, be high on the relationship, you will get through that way.  Next, find out how the analyst wants to be communicated with as a preference and DON”T abuse it.

When you use that method, you get to them and they answer.  Sure they will answer you anyway out of courtesy, but at some point, you have an I need it now, or you are on the road and don’t have your usual access.  In a way, it’s part of managing the relationship properly anyway.

These two stories came together today, Dilbert and this:

The quote was attributed to French composer Maurice Jarre who died in March.

Shane Fitzgerald, 22, a final-year student studying sociology and economics at University College Dublin, told the newspaper he placed the quote on the website as an experiment when doing research on globalisation.

He quoted Oscar-winning composer Jarre as saying, “One could say my life itself has been one long soundtrack. Music was my life, music brought me to life, and music is how I will be remembered long after I leave this life.

“When I die there will be a final waltz playing in my head, that only I can hear.”

The quote was posted on Wikipedia shortly after Jarre’s death and later appeared in obituaries in major British, Indian and Australian newspapers.

Mr Fitzgerald told the newspaper he picked Wikipedia because it was something a lot of journalists look at and it can be edited by anyone.

My points are these.  You for the most part can find more facts about the truth in blogging than the traditional news.  We’ve become too reliant on Wikepedia, yet the truth is out there and can be found by an Army of Davids.

Further tell the truth and you will be a trusted source.

There is enough information out there where you can and will be found out.

This week Apple was buying Twitter, the Swine Flu was the next Bubonic Plague.  Just be careful and don’t jump to conclusions.

Via Gizmodo, Carter Lusher - this is for you.

While he’s not technically an analyst, I decided to interview an industry “Sage” about the A/R discipline.

As with other similar podcasts, I ask Carter Lusher about the state of A/R, to which he gives very poignant answers that will hit home for both A/R professionals and I’m sure our analyst colleagues.  Carter and I see things eye to eye on a lot of subjects, not the least of which is social media.  While we don’t go over it in the podcast, it turns out we are both serious trekkies and both of us await the new Star Trek movie.

We also go over good and bad A/R practices.  This is a very interesting section where Carter calls out a major faux pas that those in A/R who DON’T pay attention to Social media/blogs/twitter could get caught up in.

Finally, we cover his view of how A/R can improve and move from a cost to profit center. If you are in the industry, there is advice here that one should have to pay a lot of money for.

It is in the spirit of making the A/R practice better for all that I do this. I hope you enjoy listening to as much as I did recording it.

Many thanks to Carter who graciously donated his time and thoughts to both me and to you the listeners.

We hold hundreds of global analyst conference calls at IBM.  We also hold many conferences.  At the end of each are the obligatory evaluation forms and question and answer sessions.  Note that our scale of dealing with events is in the many thousands of attendees and often hundreds of analysts worldwide to coordinate, no small feat.

An innocuous tweet set off an action for us that now has twitter incorporated into our mainstream analyst support function.

Here is the link to the tweet by RedMonk’s cote

I think IBM AR has cracked the use of Twitter. They sent out a hashtag to use for the con-call I’m on: #InfoAgenda.

At a recent briefing, our A/R support team lead by Arline @phoeni1 sent out a hastag #infoagenda. Voila, we had instant feedback as to what was going on real time during the call.

Arline asked me to host a twitter education session yesterday with her team consisting of Cynthia, Kelly, Sylvia and Arline.  We discovered many uses of twitter to announce the call, host real time q&a, find analysts who couldn’t attend or dial in and other necessary etiquette issues to successfully handle an analyst event.  I’ve included the links to their twitter handles above so that you can follow them.

Let me back up to say that this team handles the Analyst Relations Communications and Operations.  This means all the logistics, coordination and running of a major event at IBM.  In english, it means we couldn’t pull off a call or an event without them.

That they self chose to incorporate twitter to help advance the functionality and feedback in a method the analysts have told us they want to use in itself a revelation…..and in my book a best practice.