Greetings,

I wanted to provide a quick update on some exciting news. We are happy to announce that Filtrbox Inc. has been acquired by Jive Software. This exciting for us and the market as a whole because the two companies share a similar perspective on the value social software can provide to the entire enterprise.

The combined company will now tackle a much bigger opportunity in the marketplace as we will provide the only integrated social business software offering that both discovers conversations and provides the community space to enhance and facilitate the conversation.

Look for more on the specifics on the integration and the combined offering soon. In the meantime thanks for all of the the support and rest assured that we aren’t going anywhere and will only continue to improve our the service you’ve come to know and love.

Best Regards,
Ari

Even though it’s a short work week for most it doesn’t mean there is a shortage of top material for this weeks social media top 5. Here’s the best content we have discovered during the week while monitoring social media.

Our top pick is a hilarious video from The Onion explaining the findings of the lost civilization of Friendster by an internet archealogist. Next we have another video, this on the hot topic of augmented reality. It’s an iPhone within an iPhone…you better be sitting down for that one.

The third is a story on how the USGS is monitoring Twitter to measure how powerful earthquakes are by people’s reaction on Twitter. Next we have an interesting graphic that breaks down the top social media applications by Geography. Lots of Facebook green with some other interesting surprises.

Finally, we leave you with an awesome video created by DC Shoes. It’s a bit over the top with product placements but it is artistically stimulating and we love to see our customers doing cool things. I guess it ties in with the old saying that goes something like: “Advertising is good when it stops interrupting what you’re watching and becomes what you want to watch.”

Thanks for coming by, have a great holiday season from all of us at Filtrbox.

The remains of Friendster discovered
http://www.theonion.com/content/video/internet_archaeologists_find

Iphone in an Iphone
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4IjeO7g6kA

Earthquakes
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091215/ap_on_hi_te/us_tec_techbit_earthquakes_twitter

Social Media World Map - Top Social Media applications by geography
http://www.techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/worldmap.png

Artistic DC shoes video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWSxhEU8KUI&feature=popular

80 year old uses a fax machine to tweet -
http://www.newser.com/story/76508/80-year-old-granny-twitters-by-fax.html?utm_source=syn&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=tec.

Homeless guy “Mustard” covers Radiohead’s “Creep”…rather nicely.
http://www.bannedinhollywood.com/homeless-guy-mustard-sings-radioheads-creep/

Iranian Cyber Attack
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/12/20091218132325311321.html

YouTube video of the Universe shared by the American Museum of Natural History
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17jymDn0W6U

Adrian Peterson and Sports Illustrated social media by conducting an interview through Digg Dialog
http://digg.com/dialogg/Adrian_Peterson_1

Facebook in real life?
http://www.bitrebels.com/social/facebook-in-real-life/

YouTube microwave
http://itvt.com/story/6214/microwave-oven-plays-youtube-videos-while-heating-food

Minneapolis using social media to share storm warnings
http://www.examiner.com/x-5611-Minneapolis-Tech-Culture-Examiner~y2009m12d10-City-of-Minneapolis-utilizes-social-media-to-announce-snow-emergencies

Google Earth technology to show deforestation
http://earth2tech.com/2009/12/10/copenhagen-google-launches-forest-monitoring-tool/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

Possible UFO?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hrWjkn_DHs

As part of listening to the real time web we often stumble upon some entertaining tidbits. We found some interesting nuggets over this past week that range from a primate’s photos on her Facebook fan page to a well-known actor recycling a fund-raising idea. In case you missed these, here’s our top 5 most interesting social media stories of the week:

Nonga, an Orangutang’s Facebook Fan Page. She has a raisin-dispenser that dubs as a camera that uploads her photos directly to her Fan Page.

Fiesta Movement agents and their Twitter friends gathered at the Palladium in West Hollywood Tuesday night and set a new Guinness World Record for the “most attendees at a tweetup” Coverage here.

Sean Kingston: “Follow Me (Twitter Song)”. Sing Kingston tries to gain Twitter followers through song…it’s actually pretty good. Audio here.

Ben Stiller attempts to raise funds for schools in Haiti with StillerStrong. Not sure if he’s serious, but our headbands are en route to the Filtrbox office!

Comcast’s purchase of NBC Universal could shake the up social media in a big way in terms of the way we watch “television” programs. Here’s the Hulu video clip of Conan O’brien’s humerous reaction to the purchase.

USA Today’s article about social media and Customer Service touches on some key topics and realities for consumer brand companies embracing Twitter, etc. In the article they indicate that over 50% of the Fortune 100 is using Twitter for customer service (CS) today. Exciting news, right?

Yes…but (there’s always a but), it often comes with an avalanche of traffic and noise. For some brands, its probably like building out a new call center, lighting up 50 phones and only hiring 2 new people to staff them. There is a risk of INCREASED customer frustration in some cases. Twitter is just a new communication channel for customers and companies to converse. Email forever changed the world of phone-based support. Web tickets and Wikis dramatically changed email-based support, and Live chat blew them both away. Twitter is now doing the same. There is still a lot of learning to be done but some companies are managing it well and leading the charge.

With new channels and new technology come innovations and adaptations. Twitter’s meta-data allows customer service to understand more about who they are talking to than ever before. Your influence and relevancy can be immediately assessed, and can be used (in both directions!) by the company to triage who to respond to first. As much as we’d like to think every cry for help should be treated equally, it will be interesting to see how social media metrics and influence play a role in the service pecking order. Will influence assessment be taught as part of the CS team’s social media training? Will they all start using our TwitterRank to figure out who to respond to?

If @scobleizer starts (sorry Robert, you are always a great example) complaining about a product on Twitter, will the Twitter-savvy CS team be on him in seconds? You bet. If I complain, will they even care? Maybe…if I file an FCC complaint.

In customer service situations, we, as consumers hope for a democratized experience. It wil be interesting to see how social media policy shakes out between departments. In marketing, its all about finding influencers. In customer service, will this be ignored, or will SOP be to assess influence as the triage mechanism for complaints and cries for help?

Do you use Twitter and other social media outlets for customer service? Do you evaluate influence as part of the process? If so we’d love to hear your thoughts!

We have some exciting news to share! Filtrbox and E SOURCE are working together to provide North American utilities with strategic social media guidance, supported by a robust monitoring, analysis and engagement platform. Utilities, like many other industries, are starting to embrace social media as a way to effectively communicate with their customers, via tools such as Twitter, YouTube, and corporate blogs.

Working with E SOURCE on this project has been great. We are glad to see the Utilities starting to better leverage social media. We think proactive social media listening and engagement will greatly benefit the companies that fully embrace it, especially in times of service problems or ongoing issues. E SOURCE is also leveraging our TwitterRank technology to assess who the most influential Utilities are on Twitter.

“Although social media is a relatively new space, utilities are learning that they can effectively leverage these evolving channels to better serve their customers, manage their brands, and increase satisfaction levels,” said Matthew Burks of E SOURCE. “An integrated social media strategy has strong potential benefits; however, even the first step of listening can provide invaluable insight into public opinion and critical brand and operational concerns. By teaming with Filtrbox, we give our utility clients the ability to monitor, analyze and, if appropriate, engage in relevant real-time online conversations.”

More about E SOURCE: They have been providing unbiased, objective energy business intelligence to over 300 utilities and large energy users for more than 20 years. Our research analysts and consultants are among the best minds in the business, delivering significant and timely research that equips our customers with the right information at the right time to make better, faster decisions. We predict and address trends, technologies, and problems related to energy efficiency, utility customer satisfaction, program design, marketing, customer management, and sustainability.

Link to press release on PitchEngine: Filtrbox and E SOURCE Join Forces to Bring Social Media Marketing Strategies to the Utility Industry

When everyone’s a twitter about social media, how do companies adjust to the changing role of marketing in an era of social media vs. traditional marketing, interactive vs. traditional media, and real time consumer feedback? Does your company need to have a presence on Facebook? Should you be hiring someone to Twitter instead of using direct mail – or should you use both? Although some companies have embraced social media marketing very successfully many are still wondering where to even start, and how to integrate into existing programs.

Join us and Stage Two Consulting on September 18th at 1 PM ET/ 10 AM PT for a complimentary webinar— as we discuss how social media marketing and traditional marketing integrate, how your company can leverage social media, along with best practices, how to listen, monitor, engage and interact, with highlights of specific case studies.
During our 60 minute seminar you will learn how to build a basic framework for social media activities within your organization, as well as:

• The evolution of marketing
• Traditional marketing vs. Social media marketing
• Looking ahead - blending social and traditional marketing
• How do we get there?
• Listening, monitoring, engaging
• Everyone doesn’t need a Facebook page
• Opt in via Twitter: is Twitter the new Direct Mail?
• Micro Blogs
• Best practices
• Case Studies
• Q&A

Sign up!

Are your Twitter followers of any value to you? Can you get them to take action or respond to questions? What happened to blog subscribers being the end-all, be-all yardstick of “voice”? I’ve been thinking about this topic a bunch lately, and recently came across a good post on GigaOm that talks about this very topic.

There are some useful points in the GigaOm article. Namely that blog subscribers are more valuable in general because of the intent and level of effort required to subscribe and the conscious decision it represents. Subscribing to blogs is pretty easy for most, but it does indeed take more thought than the single-click “follow” event that happens millions of times a day on Twitter.

Of particular relevance to us at Filtrbox was a point made about “deficient continuity”. Here’s the issue;
If you are not watching your twitter stream every second of the day, or spending quality time every day scanning your profile page to see what your followers said earlier in the day, you are missing the conversation and missing the posts/links/stories/opinions you care about. You miss everything you don’t watch. Filtrbox solves this problem because the monitoring is persistent, but that’s another post…

This may be part of the problem - if you don’t see the tweet, how can you possibly engage and respond? With a blog post, it comes to you when you are on the task of reading or consuming news. Its either in your inbox, in an RSS reader, or you have hit a portal page with your feeds on them. Does this make you more likely to respond?

Taking a look at our own blog, our subscribers were growing at a much slower rate than Twitter followers. I also have noticed that we don’t get as many comments or responses to blog posts. (Granted - we’ve not done a great job of updating this blog with good, fresh content) The questions I started pondering were:

• Has the conversation totally moved to Twitter?
• Has information overload finally saturated our readers?
• Is the audience/community/group of readers of a different profile?
• Do we have to work harder to convince people to subscribe to the blog? Is it more work to consume the content?

Something else I’ve noticed is that just like more traditional news stories, time of day and day of week matter on Twitter. In fact, I’d suspect the “deficient continuity” problem is quite a bit worse, and the attention/responses you’ll get evenings, weekends, etc is vastly different than, say, Tuesday morning.

What do you think? Are your Twitter followers more valuable than your blog subscribers?