Hey everyone… we decided to bring a little bit of SXSW day 4 right to you.  We just sat down to a packed house for the Day 4 keynote conversation with Evan Williams – cofounder of Twitter.  I’ll be doing my best to keep up with some of the most important highlights from the conversation.  Forgive the brevity of the updates – we’ll be able to go into more detail later.  Thanks for following along.  Cheers!

One note: we don’t have auto-refresh on Media Mosaic, so either set your browsers to refresh automatically or do it manually to follow along in realtime.

Real-time Notes:

- About to get started here… doors are closed as we’re at full capacity.  And this is a HUGE room…

- SXSW founder starting off by giving props to Twitter for allowing this conference to explode in the last 4 years.

- Ev Williams is now out on stage to a big round of applause.  He is starting out right away with the new content platform… this is big news folks.  It’s called @anywhere… now rolling a video of how it works…

- It’s content based… features immediate follow functionality and look much like Google contextual text ads.  Some sites already signed on… Amazon, Digg, Youtube, (list goes on – all huge names)…  First thought – this expands Twitter’s reach and drives the functionality and tool into the real mainstream.

- On sites like NYTimes.com (and all sites using this new feature) you can tweet directly from the column/article.  Thought: this will be huge for content-driven sites and expands the immediacy of thought distribution.  “It’s a platform that lets sites juice up their own platforms.”

- They’re labeling this “@platform”  - not necessarily a direct ad platform.

- The nature of this platform makes Twitter faster, easier, and more understandable in my opinion.  I also feel this could go a long way for publishers and news portals who are losing audience.  It’s now easier to share relevant content directly on those sites.

- Williams is now praising his Twitter staff and giving kudos to users who have not only helped shape this tool, but Twitter as a whole.  It’s very true… and give Twitter praise for recognizing needs and reshaping functionality based on what users want.

- Ev now talking about how openness is the key to Twitter as well as the basis to which his company runs.  They believe in the the concept of sharing information.  Openness does not necessarily mean transparency… he says “a window is transparent, but a door is open.”

- “Assume there are more smart people outside the company than inside it.”  - Williams preaches this to his employees.  I love that concept.

- Through discussion and debate about only making this available to the big bidders, Twitter is apparently going to eventually begin to make this available to everyone on the web… down to the small mom and pop sites.

- “Openness can be used against you.” – Williams… so they still have to manage. (blocking users, spam, cease-and-desist orders, etc.).  Though: that’s music to the ears of advertisers who are afraid of the nature of this type of an open ecosystem.

- Williams just read a pretty powerful email from a citizen in Chile praising and thanking Twitter for being the only tool they could use to communicate with the outside world during a time of disaster.  SMS capabilities in this for people who couldn’t get access to the internet.

Alright folks… that’s the big news.  I think this is going to be a pretty powerful tool and extend the use of Twitter by individuals, brands, and advertisers.  And, oh yeah, it’s going to make Twitter a lot of dough through these partnerships.  The session is wrapping up with some basic conversations… we’ll fill you in on all of that later.  If you have questions, drop us a line.  Thanks for following along!

One more update: for more information on @anywhere directly from the mouth of Twitter, check out http://blog.twitter.com/2010/03/anywhere.html

We will be attending two sessions later today that are going to be amazing.
The first is by Gary Vaynerchuk, if you don’t know who Gary is check out GaryVaynerchuk.com and Wine Library TV. He is one of the people on the forefront of social media and its use to help businesses grow and thrive. Gary is also one of the most passionate people in the world and that enthusiasm always translates to his on-stage presence.

The second is by Ev Williams, co-founder of Twitter. There has been a lot of speculation around what Twitter will announce at SXSW Interactive.  Most expect the announcement to be made during the keynote this afternoon. We’ll be breaking that news as it happens right here on Media Mosaic.

Keep checking back throughout the day for updates.  Also, make sure to check out our other SXSW content in the videos below. Cheers.

When reading through an AdAge article this morning about the recent news of Twitter and Yahoo! integration moving forward, I was quick to jump on the bandwagon of skeptics.  I knew there had to be a way that this relationship wouldn’t prove to be completely successful.  Why did those thoughts pop into my head?  Good question… and it’s one that is reminding me about an important concept in media/marketing – common sense.  I realized the thoughts stemmed from the fact that I don’t frequent the Yahoo! network of sites.  It’s natural for me to jump to a conclusion based on my own usage patterns.  I most likely won’t be knee-deep in the Twitter/Yahoo! integration, but common sense tells me a good number of the 600 million+ worldwide users of Yahoo sites will.

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s one of the simplest, yet often most overlooked concepts – devoting focus to fundamentals.  In the case of social/conversational media and marketing, we notice this oversight to be even more prevalent.  It’s understandable… with all the buzz, hype and excitement surrounding the social space today.   Brands and advertisers are rushing to have a presence on a popular platform, but aren’t taking the time to sit down and review the #1 key beforehand – objectives.

Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier this morning, Mashable released a stats-packed article discussing the social microblogging site’s growth flat-line.  The trend of slowing growth and traffic decline started in the mid-months of 2009 and has seemingly come to a standstill in recent months.  That is certainly a 180 degree shift from the 1,300%+ growth Twitter saw in February and March of ‘09.

Read the rest of this entry »