Answer Guy Central

I’m being less social. My Twitter Community has spoken.

As cool a thing as social networking is (or can be), every time you write something you risk rubbing the people who follow you the wrong way. You probably want to avoid the “I’m Eating Breakfast” messages that I’ve joked about, but how close to that standard is it OK to get, in the interest of being social?

I use Foursquare on my Droid. I’ve told you about the service / game / social networking tool before, and I’ve said both here and in conversation that I’m not really sure what its purpose is. The test goes on, but I’ve disabled one of Foursquare’s features.

Foursquare will no longer send my activity to Twitter.

My kids saw everywhere I went, and now they can’t. They tell me that’s a good thing; even my own children just weren’t interested in my moment-to-moment movements and periodic search for free WiFi. Occasionally, I got a funny response on Twitter from accounts that were set up specifically to annoy people who were broadcasting their movements the way I was.

And every now and then a real person would ping me back. But that opportunity for social networking interaction is no more. Ditto my use of AppAware, a program in my Droid that keeps me up on the latest trends in software for Android SmartPhones. I’m still using the software, but it’s no longer telling my Twitterverse when I add or remove software.

Why have I stopped using Twitter integration in AppAware and Foursquare? Because I was losing followers. Simply put, I was talking too much.

I’m not going to rant about the “right” way to do social networking. It’s simply: be genuine and bring value to the discussions you join. But in the quest for using social networking in your business change, keep an eye on what works and what doesn’t . . . and especially on what detracts. It seems that for now, automatic posts from one social networking platform to another may still be in that latter category.

Do you want to hear what I think of Tiger Woods’ apology-heard-round-the-world? I’ll tell you, but let me be clear this is a business change conversation, and not a gossip piece.

If you want to watch the entire speech Tiger gave today as apology for his recent behavior, you can see it here.

Here’s what I think: I don’t care how good a golfer this man is; I can’t look at him any more. I’m not making a moral judgment; Tiger Woods, like anyone, is a human being, and human beings make mistakes. We should all stay out of his personal life, period. Being a celebrity does indeed open you to scrutiny, but nobody needs to know what happens inside Tiger Woods’ home.

My brand-new issue in watching Tiger Woods is that as a superstar celebrity he needs to learn how to speak convincingly. I believe that he believed every word he uttered today, so sincerity isn’t technically in play here. But Tiger Woods gave a thirteen minute speech about the most intimate details of his life—or at least acknowledged them, which couldn’t have been easy—and sounded like a robot. John Kerry would have been President of the United States if he didn’t sound like a block of wood every time he spoke to the American people in 2000. And Senator Kerry’s subject matter on the campaign trail was never as personal as Tiger Woods’ was today.

This applies to you and your business.

In an era of ever-more social networking, where we blog, post details of our lives on Twitter and Facebook, and generally are more “with” people than ever before, it’s imperative that you’re perceived as “real”. Write and speak from the heart. Think hard about open processes and engagement . . . because pretty much everything you do and say is open.

Business Change is about change. Be social. Add value to conversations. Don’t be like Tiger Woods.

So it turns out that young people have stopped blogging.

Really? When were they?

It was only a few months ago that kids thought Twitter was stupid, and unsafe. Now, young people are embracing the world’s hottest social networking site in droves. But the impetus for this change isn’t that Twitter has become any better; the deal here is that regular blogging takes too long, while just spewing your thoughts 140 characters at a time is easy!

When I told you a few months ago that Miley Cyrus had stopped using Twitter, my commentary ran toward how bad a business decision that was. My recent comments about Kim Kardashian and her $10,000 Titter posts have been about business change in the advertising world and how things that look unimportant can be huge.

Then, there are my own recent thoughts that blogging, as important as it (or something like it) is to your future business success, might be “over” if only because there are so many blogs being written, often about the same thing. Clients ask me about that idea all the time. Is it too late to blog?

All of this ponits, ultimately, in the same direction: the amount of business change we’re going through at this moment in time might be unprecedented, and unique or not is a lot to manage. But manage it we must.

“Young people have moved from blogging to Twitter“? Then if you want to do business with them you’d better be there too, and understand how it works. Or, just do nothing; your competitors would love that.

Yesterday I came across an absolutely fascinating article about how much your Twitter Follower Count “matters”. It’s conclusion? Not at all. The article is ten months old, so this is a guy who was way ahead of his time in asking the question, witnessed by his reference to Ashton Kutcher trying to be the first person on Twitter with one million followers (he’s approaching 4.5 million as of today). That rate of increase, by the way, is a business change we could all live with.

He came to the conclusion that your follower count doesn’t matter. His point, well-taken as it was, was limited, though: the larger your follower count gets, the higher your percentage of not-real-people “followers” becomes.

A while back, I told you about Kim Kardashian ’s deal to be paid $10,000 per tweet by certain advertisers. I suggested that paying that amount of money to reach 2.8 million opted-in receivers of an advertising message was a relative bargain. Now, in light of the story I read yesterday I ask: what’s the real number of people being reached?

And the answer is: nobody knows.

There are services that will look at your followers and offer an opinion on how many are garbage, but that’s the easy part; if it turns out that 80% of her followers are garbage does that mean that the other 20% actually read what she writes? No; and . . . we don’t know how many DO, and as far as I know there’s no tool that will tell you that.

In fact, even if Twitter wanted to try to answer that question, it couldn’t.

I follow only about 50 people. Their tweets should up on my Droid. I scroll through them and scan for useful information, but let’s be honest: I miss a bunch. AND I’M ACTUALLY ONE OF THE PEOPLE WHO GOES THAT FAR. My fifty people, by the time I pick up my phone each morning, generally create about 200 stacked up tweets; people who follow lots of big names can’t possibly keep up!

Twitter is in no position to say anything meaningful on the subject, so there’s truly no fix. So can you even get a meaningful CPM figure to decide whether paying for access to Kim Kardashian ’s 2.8 million followers is worth it? No.

Nevertheless, this doesn’t invalidate the importance of social networking. Get on Twitter, and wherever else makes sense to you. Follow only people who are genuinely useful to you (ask us for help if you aren’t sure who that is).

And remember that business change, by its nature, is change. So don’t try to apply what you already “know”.

At least this one is over. Stay tuned for what’s next . . .

Last July, we told you about a young lady who, frustrated by the conditions in her rental housing, had posted on Twitter exactly what she thought about her landlord.

The landlord sued her for libel. Today, the case got thrown out.

I’d like to say “I told you so”, but I didn’t; not being an attorney I withheld opinion at the time. Now, with the court basically refusing to get involved one way or the other and going so far as to dismiss with prejudice (meaning the case can’t be refiled) my opinion deserves to be re-stated:

Business Change is hard, but unavoidable. USE TWITTER, but be careful how you do so.

Oh, to be Kevin Rose. The founder of Digg and several other “important” Internet companies has a problem on his hands.

Kevin is a smart guy, and—now into his thirties—no longer running on pure hubris. So I’m encouraged by his acknowledgment that Digg, one of the hottest companies on the Internet about 18 months ago, is about to undergo a major business change.

Here’s the question: When yesterday’s hot new property is today’s also-ran, is business change happening too fast?

Say the words ” social networking ” and even people who aren’t familiar with the phrase have a pretty good chance of mentioning Facebook and Twitter in response. But how many would name Digg? The news aggregation and recommendation service is very much a social networking site, and with our ever-expanding hunger for news so much in evidence it seem Digg is a better place for most of us to spend our time than on Facebook reading Uncle Joe’s latest musings on nothing or on Twitter reading Guy Kawasaki’s words on how brilliant Guy Kawasaki is. But it isn’t working out that way.

So kudos to Kevin Rose for seeing the business change writing on the wall. I wish him luck (although I’m guessing he’s already lost this war).

Now jump in a slightly different direction: five journalists are about to do the reality-TV thing in France, where their task will be to report on the news based only on information they gather on Facebook and Twitter.

I don’t want my news based only on what’s available on social networking sites. No matter how good these five journalists are at mining the social networking big two, not being allowed to also look elsewhere renders suspect the news they report.

Wasn’t it just yesterday I told you about The New York Times’ plans to start charging for their web site? Business Change is a tough sport. Find the balance between reactive and proactive, and keep watching for the next wave . . .

Does it matter if Bill Gates follows you on Twitter? You’d best hope not, because as of this writing he’s being watched by just under 200,000 people, but following just 40 in return. Here’s what DOES matter:

Bill Gates started tweeting just yesterday. He had 30,000 followers after fours hours, 100,000 after eight, and now, at approximately the twenty-hour mark, that number has doubled again. So the growth has slowed, as it does for everyone.

Most of the people Mr. Gates follows are not people at all, but charitable foundations. Makes sense; he’s the world’s largest philanthropist, and people watch those who are like them.

Bill also follows Steven Levy and Kara Swisher, technology journalists from way back. I’m a little jealous, since I actually dined with the then-Microsoft-Chairman twice back in the day, but Steven and Kara have stayed on the same path they were on once upon a time, while I went in a different direction.

And he follows Ashton Kutcher and Ashley Tisdale, which makes my head hurt.

Since the closest I’ve come to Bill Gates since about 1993 is when he and I went back-and-forth on LinkedIn last year I shouldn’t be surprised that I’m not in “the 40″. What I’m surprised at is that many otherwise-smart business people who tell me they understand the need for business change and the use of social media still aren’t doing this newfangled Twitter thing.

No, you aren’t likely to score 200,000 followers in twenty-four hours, and the chance of Bill Gates ever being one of yours is slim. But if that many people are looking, then you need to be in the place where they look.

The Business Change of Twitter, and social media. What are you waiting for? Lessons? Help? Guidance?

Please. You know where to look for that.

You heard it here first:

Two days ago, a Scam looking to steal your Twitter password ran wild. We warned you immediately. Twitter Phishing Scam!

A few minutes ago, I received notice from Twitter of the scam:

TWO DAYS, Twitter? And when you were warned?

Old saying: those who don’t remember history are doomed to repeat it.

Aside from the value that old axiom has with keeping young children in line and in school, it carries a business change lesson, too, and I’ll phrase it as another old saw: if you put lipstick on a pig, it’s still a pig.

Henry Blodget is one of new media’s superstars, and with his business pedigree he has the right to boast. But Henry’s made a mistake this morning in looking at the words of Bo Peabody and laying them out as an example of business sense. And Henry had better be wrong, because his own business will fail otherwise.

Peabody made a large fortune selling early social networking company Tripod to early search engine Lycos in 1998 and has been a venture capitalist since then. And he’s arguing that Facebook and Twitter are doomed to failure. I really do want to agree, but here’s why that’s wrong:

Many earlier Internet properties were never monetized. That includes Tripod, and it includes Lycos and the many other search engines that you’ve likely never heard of. Facebook is making serious advertising revenue. Twitter is . . . going to.

Bringing up the other side of this: advertising revenue isn’t enough.

That argument falls flat when there’s ENOUGH ad money. Sure it’s harder to survive on just advertising revenue in the narrowcasting era (just ask the big television networks), but Facebook and Twitter are about as broad as you can reasonably ask for. Remember the Kim Kardashian / Super Bowl / Paid Twitter story? Look at the numbers again.

Remember that Google was nothing but an advertising company for years, and the other things they are adding that create revenue are just now happening. If Facebook and/or Twitter and/or whomever can get big enough and generate enough ad revenue, there’s no reason to consign them to the same junk heap as Mr. Peabody’s examples.

Today’s Business Change Lesson is this: you will repeat history if put lipstick on your pig. And both Facebook and Twitter could still turn out to be examples of exactly that. But if you see new ways to do business and carry them out, business change will make for real success.

OK, year-end business change tidbit: And it’s more than a mouthful . . .

Business isn’t always an easy sport. I often say there’s very little about business that any reasonably intelligent person can’t figure out, but when it comes time to mix it up, roll it into a ball, and turn out a delicious piece of bread, things get . . . sticky.

So as we enter a new year, my question for you is: What is your Social Networking Strategy?

I’m not asking you about whether you’re on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. This isn’t about what level of activity you engage in or how much of your time you spend tweeting, linking, or . . . whatever we do on Facebook.  The question is: where is the intersection between social networking and making a pain out of yourself? And who decides?

I follow a few people on Twitter who abuse their positions. In particular, Gary Vaynerchuk and  Guy Kawasaki tweet way too much, with Guy actually sending out each of his tweets three times, eight hours apart. Yuck.

Yet I follow Guy anyway. And while we haven’t done business together I can tell you that we’ve affected each others’ days on several occasions. So are we friends? Business associates? Nothing?

If those are the only choices, “nothing” is the correct answer. But they aren’t the only choices at all. Further, since I don’t sell wine I’m not competing with Gary Vaynerchuk, and I’m not a venture capitalist like Guy Kawasaki.

Is this coopetition? Nope; while we all benefit from swirling our circles together, the only thing we’re all after is attention, and Gary and Guy are worth far more to me than I am to them. And that’s where this conversation gets interesting: they’re willing to help anyway.

Not too long ago I received a nasty note from Jon Skillings, the Managing Editor of CNet. To paraphrase, it said “please keep reading our material and feel free to take the extra time it takes to comment, but don’t you dare identify yourself“. I was flabbergasted. Then I responded to Mr. Skillings and he ignored me—twice.

Sometimes, you need to be Gary Vaynerchuk. Being Guy Kawasaki has its place, too. And that’s the point: sooner or later you have to decide how much social networking is too much, and then hold yourself to the same standards that you expect of those around you.

See you in 2010. My forecast? Business Change to continue . . .