How Stan Lee Became a Social Media Superhero "EXCLUSIVE"

by Sam Laird

 Excelsior! At 89 years-old, comic book legend Stan Lee shows no signs of slowing down. In fact, the creative force behind iconic Marvel characters, including Spiderman, Iron Man and the Incredible Hulk, is more digitally connected than many whippersnappers half his age.
Lee will launch his own comic convention — Stan Lee’s Comikaze, Presented by POW! Entertainment — in September. The event is partnering with the location-based social engagement app Buzzmob to provide exclusive content to fans at the show, as well as connect those unable to attend.
Mashable recently sat down via Skype video chat with the Generalissimo himself, as well as with Comikaze CEO Regina Carpinelli. We talked comics, tech and social media — areas in which Lee also excels.
On Twitter, he’s amassed about 280,000 followers and tweets regularly from his home and office computers. (“I wear out a keyboard a week,” says @therealstanlee. “That’s how hard I hit them!”) He also just launched a new YouTube channel, Stan Lee’s World of Heroes.
Buzzmob, meanwhile, will give Comikaze a sophisticated level of social and mobile interaction. The app functions as a mini-social network for fans in attendance, letting them see who else is nearby and what else is going on at the convention, while simultaneously allowing Lee and other organizers to send out timely contests and notifications. But that’s not all — comic book fans who can’t make it to Los Angeles for the show can check in for a digital experience.
“It doesn’t matter if you live in Cambodia or Temecula,” says Carpinelli. “We want everyone to be a part of the show.”
Read on to see why Lee and Carpinelli partnered up for Comikaze, how Lee practically invented social media (you’ll be surprised), and his thoughts on how technology has changed the world of comic books. Also, stay tuned for one more upcoming treat — the entire Skype conversation in video form.

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Q&A With Stan Lee

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So what’s your first convention going to be like?
Lee: It’s going to be fan-tastic! I’ve always wanted to have my expo, my own comic con. But that’s not my business — I don’t know how to run them. Then I met Regina! She said, ‘Stan, how would you like to be a part of Comikaze?’ I had been to the first Comikaze, and it was wonderful! So I said, ‘By all means.’ Not only am I part of it, she put my name in front! It’s now Stan Lee’s Comikaze.
I’m real excited about this — it’s going to be a fan convention. The fans are everything, they’re going to be thrilled, they’re going to see new things they haven’t seen before. It’s going to just be the most fun convention there has ever been.
Carpinelli: And tickets are only $15! It’s jam-packed with amazing guests. Stan invited Todd McFarlane, and Elvira’s coming and doing all kinds of interactive content…
Lee: The Mistress of the Dark!
Carpinelli: We’re all about our fans and doing something awesome for our community. Eventually we’re going to take over the world.
Lee: Why haven’t we already?
What’s Buzzmob’s social integration going to bring to the table? How’s that going to help Comikaze?
Lee: We’re going to accommodate all the people who can’t make it, and we’re going to be in touch with them on the web! We’re going to have all sorts of things on the web for people to participate. I’m going to let Regina talk about it because, for one thing, she’s prettier than than I am, and my throat is getting hoarse.

“Keeping up with technology is really important. Anyone can have a regular convention. We want to change how conventions are made.”

Carpinelli: If you’re at the show as an attendee and you log in, you get exclusive content: downloads, contests with magical gifts and prizes. If you’re in a panel room, but there’s something else going on, you could still be following that on your phone. But the greatest thing is, if you can’t be at the show because you live far away, you can still log in and get special stuff and see videos and photos. It’s just like being at the show — but on your phone.
There are also two websites you want to go on. One is ComikazeExpo.com. Then Stan has an amazing site called TheRealStanLee.com. Stan is such a tastemaker, and he’s always at the front of technology.
Lee: No, no — she didn’t say I’m wearing a pacemaker. I am a pacemaker!
Carpinelli: A tastemaker!
Lee: Oh — a tastemaker. Okay. Well, I’m a pacemaker, also.
That seems like a pretty cutting edge approach for a comic convention. Why did you guys feel like it was so important to introduce that mobile, social element?
Carpinelli: Keeping up with technology is really important. Anyone can have a regular convention. We want to change how conventions are made.
Lee: We want to change how the world goes on! See, we can’t bear the thought of one human being missing out on all this wonderment. That’s why, through Buzzmob, if we can contact everyone in the world through the web and let them be part of all these great things we’re doing, its almost as if we’re performing a great public service, you see.
I think we shouldn’t have to pay taxes, because what we do is for the good of all mankind. I’d say more, but I’m getting all choked up emotionally.
Carpinelli: I keep trying to get Stan to run for president.
Lee: How about King of the World? President seems so local.
Was it easy or hard for you to get into Twitter, and why do you keep up with it so diligently? Not every 89-year-old man is doing that.
Lee: I always try to be out there somehow. One of my big fears is that somebody anywhere in the world might forget me, and I must never let that happen.
Twitter was easy to get into. When I was doing the comics, I had a column called “Stan’s Soapbox” that ran every issue of every book, and I would just talk about anything I felt like — of course, I made it incredibly entertaining and knowledgable for the readers. But Twitter is the same thing.
Twitter’s only the beginning of your social media expertise, though. What’s up with your new YouTube channel, Stan Lee’s World of Heroes?
Carpinelli: What is going on is they have all these fantastic, fabulous shows. There’s Stan’s Rants, where Stan complains about things — and it’s amazing. There’s Cocktails With Stan, where he sits with Jenna Busch, and they have drinks and interview these amazing people.
Lee: But we never drink too much! For our younger viewers out there, one sip and that’s all we have.
Carpinelli: There’s also an awesome show called Adrianne Curry’s Super Fans. She’s this beautiful model, reality show host — and huge, giant nerd. You can send in your videos and tell Adrianne how nerdy you are and why you are the biggest super fan, then she shows up at your house and looks at all your nerd stuff.
Lee: Somehow I feel like the conversation is never as interesting when it’s not about me.
Carpinelli: Elvira also launched an interactive web series with us, called Elvira’s Horror Hunt. Amateur filmmakers can send in their horror films. The winner gets flown out to L.A. and gets a screening of their movie with a red carpet premier at the Vista Theatre. The next day, they’ll be a guest at Stan Lee’s Comikaze.
Lee: I hope everyone is taking copious notes. There may be an exam!
Here’s a question from our reader, wdeg: “You’ve had an incredible career and could easily be kicking back on an island somewhere enjoying the fruits of your labor. So, why aren’t you retired? What keeps you getting up motivated every morning?”

“Most guys say, ‘I can’t wait to retire so I can do what I really want to do’ — play golf and so forth. But I’m already doing what I really want to do!”

Lee: I wouldn’t dare retire, because when I think of all the enjoyment that I bring to people out there, I know I couldn’t deprive them. It wouldn’t be fair for me to not let them enjoy me as much as humanly possible.
Carpinelli: Stan’s a giver.
Lee: That’s right. And I love the fans and want them to know I’m always there for them. See, most guys say, ‘I can’t wait to retire so I can do what I really want to do’ — play golf and so forth. But I’m already doing what I really want to do! Please don’t make me have to spend time on the golf course. That would be like a prison sentence!
This one’s from another Mashable reader and fan of yours, Manny Redruello: “If Twitter and social media had been around during the early stages of your career, how do you think you would have used it then?”
Lee: Well, I didn’t have Twitter, but I had my column and we had letters pages in the comic books, where readers would write letters. You know the reason I wear glasses now? Because I strained my eyes! I read every damn letter and answered as many as I could. I was writing to them and they were writing to me, and it felt like I had a million friends all over. So that was my Twitter in those days.
And I never thought of them as fans — they were friends. Everyone who writes to us and tweets to us now — these are friends of ours, and you’ve got to be good to your friends. You can’t be on the golf course when your friends need you.
Carpinelli: It’s amazing to see how gracious he is to his fans, and how they respond. I’ve seen people cry when they meet him. It’s fantastic.
Lee: You notice when people say nice things like that, I never interrupt? I let her talk and talk. About people crying to meet me, though — I hope that isn’t taken the wrong way.
Carpinelli: They’re tears of joy!

“Everything changes. Everything advances. To me, most of the changes are improvements. We can’t live in a way where we say, ‘I like the old stuff better!’”

A number of readers had questions along these lines: How have you seen technology change comic books over the past couple decades, and do you think it’s been good for the industry?
Lee: When it comes to stories, no change at all. We could write a good story today that was like an old story — there’s no difference. But some of the comic books have a whole new look now — they look like beautifully illustrated tablets. They look like paintings, rather than just regular comic book drawings, and it’s the addition of the computer coloring and computer lettering.
There are some purists who feel that we ought to go back to the old comics, that they were more like real comics. But everything changes. Everything advances. To me, most of the changes are improvements. We can’t live in a way where we say, ‘I like the old stuff better!’
It’s impossible to go back to yesterday — you have to keep moving along with today and tomorrow. To me, what makes the arts so much fun is that they keep changing with the times….Hey, that was a great speech!
Thumbnail image courtesy Gage Skidmore, Flickr.

10:10 by Robert dawne · 1

Pepsi to Provide Free Music Downloads on "Twitter"

Pepsi will begin curating new music for fans on Twitter through a year-long partnership with the messaging platform, both companies announced Wednesday.
The “Live for Now Music” initiative is an extension of Pepsi’s recently launched “Live for Now” global campaign, will offer free music downloads, music videos and a series of pop-up concerts this summer and fall. Every Wednesday for the next 52 weeks, Pepsi will offer videos providing an overview of the artists, music and music news trending on Twitter that week.
In addition, @pepsi will offer free downloads from the Amazon MP3 store for fans who follow the brand on Twitter and use the hashtag #PepsiMusicNOW in their tweets. The brand will also use Twitter to announce pop-up concerts, which it will offer on-demand afterward for fans who want to watch it later.
The deal comes about two weeks after Twitter announced another long-term deal with ESPN to create custom ad programs around major sporting events. Twitter, which makes most of its money from advertising, is poised to post ad revenues of $259.9 million this year, according to eMarketer.

For Pepsi, the deal is a social media twist on a promotion it has run before: In 2004, the brand rolled out an ad scored by Green Day’s rendition of “I Fought the Law” that announced 100 million free downloads via iTunes.

09:59 by Robert dawne · 1

Today’s Top Stories: Mark Zuckerberg’s Hoodie, Sony’s Powerful LTE Smartphones

Welcome to this morning’s edition of “First To Know,” a series in which we keep you in the know on what’s happening in the digital world. Today, we’re looking at three particularly interesting stories.
Mark Zuckerberg’s Hoodie a “Mark of Immaturity”
Mark Zuckerberg went to a meeting in New York on Monday with potential investors wearing a hoodie, and analyst Michael Pachter thinks it’s a mark of immaturity. “I think that he has to realize he’s bringing investors in as a new constituency right now, and I think he’s got to show them the respect that they deserve because he’s asking them for their money,” Pachter said in an interview on Bloomberg TV.
Sony Unveils Two LTE Smartphones for the Japanese Market
Sony has unveiled two powerful LTE smartphones to be launched in Japan this summer: The Xperia GX and the Xperia SX. The first smartphone sports a dual core, 1.5GHz CPU, a 13-megapixel camera and a 4.6-inch screen, which makes it one of the most powerful devices in Sony’s lineup.
The Xperia SX is much smaller, with an 8-megapixel camera and a 3.7-inch screen. The device weighs only 95 grams, and Sony claims it’s the lightest LTE device in the world right now. Both devices will launch with Android 4.0.
Twitter Debunks Hacking Claims
Reacting to the claims that 55,000 Twitter accounts have been hacked with users’ credentials posted online, Twitter said those claims are largely false. Those accounts are mostly duplicates, Twitter claims, or contain the username and password information for suspended spam accounts.

11:10 by Robert dawne · 0

Easy Ways to Fit Social Media Into Your Business

How do you incorporate the latest and greatest new social media platforms into your marketing strategy without increasing the workload?
We got advice from members of the Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC), an invite-only nonprofit organization of promising young entrepreneurs that has access to tools, mentoring and resources that support each stage of business development. The organization promotes entrepreneurship as a solution to unemployment and under-employment.
1. Determine the goal. "[Look at] how the new social media platform aligns with your overall social media goals by asking these questions: Will it create more sales? More engagement? Better customer service? Next, establish forecasts and measure the costs against the benefits. If it makes sense to add the new platform to the mix, try it out for a few weeks to see what happens."
— Logan Lenz, founder and president of Endagon
2. Outsource other things. "Unless you want your social media accounts to read like robots are writing, you're going to have to put in some time and effort. Outsource other things that you don't do well so you can focus on true engagement. Social media is a strong tool to nurture clients and leads. Of course it's going to take work, but it's well worth the returns."
— Kelly Azevedo, founder of She's Got Systems
3. Syndicate existing content. "Whenever a new social media platform appears on the scene, I start by syndicating what I'm already doing to [the new one]. It's rarely the best approach to get full benefits, but it allows me to start learning that platform without stressing about using it perfectly. That way, the new platform doesn't dramatically add to the workload. Then, as best practices emerge, I can evolve my strategies and rearrange priorities."
— Thursday Bram, consultant for Hyper Modern Consulting
4. Focus on quality. "It’s all about quality over quantity when it comes to social media. Post strategically and you will not have to overload yourself trying to keep up a constant presence on all new sites. Prioritize each social media platform by which one has provided you with the best ROI and focus the majority of your time there."
— John Hall, CEO of Digital Talent Agents
5. Prioritize your presence. "Prioritize where you want to focus your social marketing efforts. You don’t have to be present on every little social media platform. Find the ones that fit your needs and provide the most success and focus your time there."
— Brent Beshore, owner and CEO of AdVentures
6. Repurpose old content. "If you have posts that worked well on Twitter or Facebook, rewrite them in a different way and share them on new networks when they emerge (such as Pinterest). Content is king and if you have valuable stuff, don't spend time re-creating it. Instead, spend your time distributing it to the masses."
— Lucas Sommer, founder and CEO of Audimated
7. Adapt to a management platform. "Using tools like HootSuite or Buffer, you can add multiple social network accounts into one dashboard to view. Send all of your updates from there. Both tools allow you to schedule updates to go out on multiple platforms. Buffer especially will find the best times for you to tweet to receive the most return response and maximum exposure. HootSuite enables you to have side-by-side timelines for reading and sending."
— Lane Sutton, social media coach at Social Media From a Teen
8. Make it work with ifttt. "[The company]'s claim that it will 'put the Internet to work for you,' is a good one. Social media can take up a lot of time, so a tool [such as ifttt] that gives you one hub where you can update numerous platforms is a touchdown. Update one platform from ifttt while it updates the others without you having to manually do it."
— Ashley Bodi, co-founder of Business Beware
Put these resources to work for your business by trying these tips from upcoming entrepreneurs on effective social media strategies.
What helpful advice have you gotten about social media lately?

07:21 by Robert dawne · 0

What’s America’s Most Engaging Social Network? You’ll Be Surprised

Try to guess America’s most engaging social network. Facebook? Wrong. Twitter? Wrong. Pinterest? Wrong again. According to comScore‘s most recent social networking data, from the month of March, the San Francisco based site Tagged engages users like no other service. It was the only site to finish in the top two in both of comScore’s engagement metrics.
Tagged users visited an average of 18 times each during March according to ComScore, second only to Facebook’s average of 36 visits per vistor. And each time a Tagged user visited the site, he or she stuck around for 12.1 minutes — which trailed only Tumblr (14.7 minutes) and beat out Facebook (10.9 minutes).
Tagged co-founder and CEO Greg Tseng says he’s happy about ComScore’s March data, but that his company has been among America’s most engaging social networks for about a year now. The secret to Tagged’s success? A pivot Tseng and co-founder Johann Schleier-Smith made around the beginning of 2008.
The longtime friends started Tagged in 2004, at the time angling it to be a Facebook-like social network for high schoolers. Eventually, however, Facebook expanded beyond a closed college network and allowed anyone over the age of 12 to join.
“We took a hard look and decided we weren’t going to win,” Tseng says. “But we had found out a lot of our users were actually using Tagged to meet new people, so that led us to pivot into a new space called ‘social discovery,’ where people use sites to make new social relationships.”
As opposed to sites like Facebook, where people primarily organize and maintain relationships established offline, Tagged functions mostly as a portal to meet new people online for romance or simply friendship. The site’s algorithms encourage users to connect based on shared interests, tastes and hobbies.
Tseng says Tagged’s 10 million core monthly active users form an average of 100 million new connections per month. The site has been profitable since 2008, and over the past year tripled its staff to a current count of more than 170.
With social discovery as a whole seen by many to be a rising tide, Tseng believes Tagged’s success will continue to grow.
“If I look out at the next five or 10 years, I really see social discovery as big as social networking — in some sense I think you can think of social discovery as the engine for social networking,” he says, referencing Dunbar’s number, which theorizes that humans can maintain an average of 150 connections at a time.
“Facebook is the place where you maintain your current 150,” he says. “And Tagged will be the place where you refresh that 150.”
Do you think social discovery is the next big thing? Let us know in the comments.

10:09 by Robert dawne · 0

How to Maximize Your Facebook Engagement

If you have a Facebook page, you likely know how important it is to get likes and comments. Without those, your EdgeRank suffers, and your posts are seen by fewer fans in the future. Facebook has already admitted that the average Facebook page only reaches about 17% of its fans. Since less than 1 to 2% of fans go back to your page, EdgeRank and newsfeed visibility are critical.
When you get a new fan, you have the opportunity to keep them engaged. If you don’t, they’ll simply stop reading your posts. Here are some of the things you should keep in mind as you determine how best to engage your Facebook customers.

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Which Days are Your Fans Most Responsive?

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You need to maximize likes and comments to be visible to fans. Part of getting better engagement results is knowing which days of the week your fans are most and least responsive. This is different for every company and industry. Knowing the best day of the week for all Facebook pages won’t help you with your brand. So even if the best overall day is Tuesday, your company’s best day might be Sunday. For example, recent research indicated that the most responsive day for high-fashion brand pages is Wednesday, while the most responsive day for outdoor clothing brand pages is Thursday. Why should brands care? Well, even if you post every day, your greatest focus should go to those days when followers are most responsive. So, if your best day is on the weekend, make sure you have that covered.
It also turns out that the best days of the week to post on Facebook are not always the same days brands create the most posts. Sometimes it’s a Sunday, and maybe no one is working. It appears that the amount a brand posts is not based on their most responsive days, but perhaps just on convenience or coincidence.

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Case Study: Chanel

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When you compare individual companies, you see that the days they do the most posts are not the same days that they get the most likes and comments per post. For example, see the following charts: Here is when Chanel posts the most (average posts per day over 90 days):

 

And here is when their fans are the most responsive (likes + comments per post):

 

Chanel’s fans are most responsive on Saturdays, but it’s their second-to-least posted on day of the week. Most likely, their social media person isn’t working that day, and they’re not scheduling posts for that day. Without realizing it, they’re missing out on a lot of likes and comments, which of course hurts their Edgerank and lowers their fan page’s post visibility.
This highlights that you shouldn’t post most when it’s convenient for you, but when your fans are most responsive.

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How to Maximize the Most Engaging Days

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If you want to figure out this data for your page, here are the steps:

• 1. Go to your Facebook page insights and click on likes.
• 2. Click on export data. Choose post level data, then select at least a two-month range so you have a good sample.
• 3. Save it and open it in Excel.
• 4. There’s not a quick way in Excel to group dates by day of week, but with a bit of manual work, you can find the average lifetime of engaged users per post, per day of the week.

The only shortcoming here is that the data is limited by how good and engaging your posts have been. It’s better to look at 10 to 20 brand pages per industry. You will have to manually look at hundreds of posts, or find a way to scrape that data. Then you can find the average likes and comments per post, per day of the week across an entire industry.
If one of your competitors is doing a much better job at getting likes and comments, you might want to follow their lead. It could be, in part, the days of the week they post, and also the type and quality of content.

10:26 by Robert dawne · 0

Women Are More Likely Than Men to Have a Blog, Facebook Profile [STUDY]

When it comes to the demographic discrepancies of social media usage, we tend to think primarily about age. Young people, we assume, are Facebook addicts; older people, we assume, are Facebook-phobes. And while generational divisions have represented, and continue to represent, a primary division in the way Americans use social media, there’s another important factor, as well: gender.
In a report released Friday, Nielsen found that women, overall, are significantly more likely to engage with social media than men. Per Nielsen’s Internet-usage index, women are 8% more likely than the average online adult to build or update a personal blog — while men are 9% less likely to do so. Similarly, women are 18% more likely than the baseline American to follow a brand on Facebook or other social media sites … while men are 21% less likely. Have created at least one social networking profile? Women: 6% more likely to have done that. Men: 7% less likely. Used the Internet to purchase a product featured on TV? The ladies: 12% more likely. The dudes: 14% less likely.
These are striking discrepancies — particularly because they’re not just about purchasing trends. (It’s long been documented — and Nielsen reiterates it in this report — that women are the more active gender when it comes to digital brands and online purchasing. Just as they tend to dominate with traditional brands and analog purchasing.) The Nielsen findings suggest an intriguing generality, though, to women’s digital affinities: The ladies aren’t just more likely to buy stuff online; they’re more likely to be online in the first place. They’re more likely to blog. They’re more likely to be on Facebook or Twitter. They’re more likely, in general, to represent themselves as digital personas.
That’s fascinating, in particular, because it’s part of a clear trend. A June 2010 comScore study found that women, globally, spend more time online than men (24.8 hours a month for women, as compared to 22.9 hours for men.) A September 2011 report from Rebtel, the mobile VOIP provider, found that 68% of women who use the web to stay in touch with friends, family and acquaintances do so using social media, while only 54% of men do the same. And a February 2012 report from the firm Porter Novelli found a similar breakdown: In a survey of U.K. women, 65% said they used social media at least once a week, while only 51% of men said the same. (The same survey, however, found results that contradict one element of today’s Nielsen findings: Men, it concluded, were more likely than women to write their own blogs, read others’ blogs, and comment on others’ blogs.) And a February Pew survey determined that “women use Facebook more than men,” with women averaging 11 updates a week — compared to 6 updates for their male counterparts.
Those are striking findings, and worth many, many follow-up studies. They’re also a good reason for optimism when it comes to the web as an agent of social change.

10:06 by Robert dawne · 0

How One Entrepreneur Is Profiting From March Madness

When the men of Kentucky try to drive through Kansas’s powerful defense tonight, the cheers and groans of March Madness fans will be easily known, thanks partly to Kevin S. Ryan.
The former newspaper editor and publishing exec has built a business consulting and teaching how to create social media strategies. March is madness for him. His company, KSRyan Group, partners with Turner Sports Interactive to manage social media features for March Madness Live, the video app that lets fans watch the NCAA tournament on their computers and mobile devices. Viewers can see Ryan’s work, a torrent of fans’ comments on each matchup, flowing alongside game video.
"These are fans interacting with fans," says Ryan, 48, who lives and works in New Hyde Park, N.Y. "It’s analogous to a viewing party or the bar stool conversation people have while you’re watching the game. You want to talk about what you’re seeing…It allows viewers to participate in ways they hadn’t before."
It’s an incredible gig for someone who’s been working on his own for just two years. He started out as a newspaper reporter and editor before joining Barnesandnoble.com in 2000 as a vice president and web editor. "When I left The New York Times in early ‘97, it was somewhat of a risky move," Ryan says. “I remember people saying, ‘why would you want to leave The Times?’ But the fast pace, always moving Internet schedule, was very similar to what I lived with in my journalism days.’’
He learned about marketing and online content, working on ways authors and readers could interact. He created online book clubs at the moment when people were starting to blog. He plunged into social media, building the book conglomerate’s presence among Facebook and Twitter users.
Ryan began to think about how he could marshal this new technology in his own business that would let him spend more time with his wife and three children. He realized that social media is just another way to tell stories and that he could help a business “build a narrative for customers.’’
Ryan consults and trains, getting businesses to understand and build a social media strategy. “A lot of companies are still trying to figure out what they should do on a Facebook page,’’ he says. “If you’re not paying attention to what that conversation is, then you’re at risk of allowing brand damage to be done without you knowing about it.’’
March Madness work is Ryan’s most intensive part of the job. He helped define the social product features for the March Madness Live app, organized the social arena features on Facebook, worked with vendors and managed the kit and caboodle throughout the tournament.
Ryan’s work with customers through social media had trained him well to judge when someone’s comments were helpful and when they were made just to get noticed, says Michael Adamson, Turner interactive vice president for new products.
For the fan chatter, Ryan and his March Madness colleagues set up Twitter feeds for each of the 68 college teams that played, filtering out swear words and insensitive or inaccurate remarks.
Monitoring is important, he says. "Social media is a no-holds-barred kind of enterprise and people will push the envelope with what they can say," Ryan says.
Take for example the NCAA’s decision to suspend Syracuse starter Fab Melo for academic reasons. “The Twittersphere just blew up,’’  Adamson says. Turner and NCAA relied on Ryan’s journalism training to filter through the posts. "We wanted to make sure we were filtering out the ‘you sons of b--ches’’’ and included what most fans were writing:  “Holy Cow! I need to change my bracket!”
A 1985 graduate of Syracuse University, Ryan says the Orange men’s loss on March 24 to Ohio State didn’t crush him. “They’re going to break your heart at some point,’’ he says. “Now it’s easier to focus on the work.’’
The folks at Turner hope the conversation will be “absolutely crazy,’’ Adamson says. “I hope [Ryan] gets slammed. That means there are interesting stories and the fans are talking.’’

19:07 by Robert dawne · 0

Should You Focus on Facebook or Twitter?

A new poll of small-business owners found that entrepreneurs ranked their time as their business's most valuable asset (yes, even ahead of their computers).
So with time scarce, and with business owners performing multiple roles, something has to give. Should it be Facebook or Twitter? (Sproutsocial, a startup that builds social media management tools for small businesses, suggests as a rule of thumb that Facebook is better for business-to-consumer marketing, while Twitter trumps for business-to-business.)
A new study suggests Facebook engages fans better than Twitter, at least if the biggest brands on the Internet are any guide.
Social media analytics company SocialBakers compared top brands' Facebook and Twitter presences over a month-long period. It concluded that brands such as Coca-Cola, Starbucks, Playstation and McDonalds were getting better results—sometimes dramatically better results—on Facebook.
Starbucks, for example, which has spent millions on Twitter efforts, gets 80 percent engagement on Facebook but less than 5 percent engagement on the microblogging site.
Of the 10 brands studied, just one—Oreo—got eye-popping numbers on Twitter: Nearly 80 percent engagement. Oreo gets just under 20 percent on Facebook. It and Skittles are the only two of the 10 brands that do better on Twitter than on Facebook. (Check out Oreos' Tweets, which seem heavy on chances to win some free sandwich cookies.)
Coca-Cola and Pringles did equally well with Twitter and with Facebook, though "well" is a relative term; Coca-Cola's engagement rate was about 5 percent, while Pringles's was 10 percent.
The study did not offer analysis of the results, though mediabistro's AllTwitter found them surprising.
Observed Lauren Dugan: "McDonalds and Starbucks, for instance, have been among the beta testers for Twitter’s advertising products, Promoted Products, since they launched. Both brands have spent millions on advertising on Twitter, offering coupons, free coffees and discounts—but their engagement rates are between 1 and 5 percent on Twitter, while they’re seeing between 30 and 80 percent engagement on Facebook."
How to improve your own engagement rates on Facebook? Socialbakers suggests taking advantage of the site's new "Facebook questions" feature, which can be used to ask questions of fans without forcing them to add any applications to answer them (a deterrent).
Socialbakers gives the feature's "viral-ability" a thumbs up, observing: Questions appear not only on your page’s wall as full stories but each time one of your fans answers the question, it appears as a full story on all of their friends feeds. If their friend answers, then it also shows as a full story in their feed and so on. Anyone who sees the poll can also post comments and “follow” the question to be alerted of future comments and outcomes.

09:46 by Robert dawne · 0

Viralheat Adds Social Media Publishing With Version 2.0,

Viralheat is launching version 2.0 of its social media tools today, an upgrade that takes the product beyond the standard monitoring and listening.
One of the biggest changes in version 2.0 is a new feature that Viralheat is calling engagement, and which basically means you can post comments to Facebook and Twitter directly from the service. Posting to social networks may not sound like a big deal, but CEO Raj Kaddam says it makes life a lot easier for customers.
Instead of using one tool (such as, well, Viralheat) for monitoring social media mentions and sentiment, then jumping to a different application (such as CoTweet) to actually publish content, Viralheat allows you to do both in one place. Wherever you are in the service, there’s a button at the top right that lets you post to social networks. When you’re reading through Facebook and Twitter comments, you can hover over them to get more details about the commenter, then click to respond directly.
Viralheat 2.0 also refreshes the product’s user interface to one what Kaddam says is “more of an inbox-type layout.” One of the big goals, he says, was to make it easy to access all of Viralheat’s reports with fewer clicks. And the upgrade also incorporates Facebook Insights, giving companies more information about the conversations on the Facebook Pages, and more data from Twitter.
The company’s investors include Mayfield Fund. You can see a demo of the new version below.

10:30 by iliot Atlas · 0

Posterous Acquired By Twitter

Twitter has acquired Posterous, the blog-posting service that grew out of the Y Combinator program in 2008. The terms of the sale were not disclosed, but Posterous seems to have traded its staff for Twitter’s wider audience.
In September Posterous launched Spaces to give users more sharing control over their content and so far, the new features have been successful in increasing engagement. According to the company’s blog, “four times as many photos and five times as many videos are shared on private Spaces as on public Spaces.”
Shortly afterward, the company started raising money. The most recent round of funding through Redpoint Ventures and Jafco Ventures brought in $5 million, for a total of $10.1 million since the founders first participated in the Y Combinator fundraising and mentoring program in 2008.
News of the acquisition follows a report in late February that Posterous had “absolutely no plans to sell,” according to TheNextWeb’s sources.
But sometime between then and yesterday’s announcement, Posterous changed its tune. They wrote, “We couldn’t be happier about bringing our team’s expertise to a product that reaches hundreds of millions of users around the globe.”
Twitter explained in a blog post, “We’re always looking for talented people who have the passion and personality to join Twitter. Acquisitions have given us people and technology that have enabled us to more quickly build a better Twitter for you.”
They weren’t kidding. Gawker got a hold of Twitter’s 2011 financials and learned that the company was hemmorhaging money, in part by doubling its team of 450 employees in mid 2011 to nearly 900. Twitter has since been working on new sources of revenue, including a self-serve ad platform, paid access to historical tweets, and smartphone ads.
Twitter has assured Posterous users that the blogging platform “will remain up and running without disruption,” while Posterous has an FAQ page that will at some point have more information on how to transfer your files in the event that this changes. But our sister blog, AllTwitter, advises users to start packing now.

14:05 by Robert dawne · 0

Twitter Surrenders One User’s Data to Police Investigation

Three months after being subpoenaed by a Boston district attorney, Twitter has handed over user data from one account that tweeted data allegedly obtained by hacking into police websites.
The district attorney of Suffolk County had subpoenaed Twitter in December, requesting “all available subscriber information” for @p0isAn0N, @OccupyBoston, #BostonPD and #d0xcak. The subpoena also included the name Guido Fawkes, which is associated with the @p0isAn0n account.
On December 28, after the subpoena was issued, @p0isAn0n tweeted: “Haha. Boston PD submitted to Twitter for my information. Lololol? For what? Posting info pulled from public domains? #comeatmebro.”
Twitter spokesman Matt Graves told Boston.com that @p0isAn0n is the only account for which Twitter ultimately provided any information, and he declined to comment when the website asked about how Twitter dealt with the request for information related to the Occupy Boston account.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) was among the most public opponents of the subpoena, and it challenged the measure in court. All court proceedings and documents involved in that challenge were sealed.
A judge ruled last week against the challenge and Twitter complied with the decision, according to Boston.com.
“We continue to believe that our client has a constitutional right to speak, and to speak anonymously; and that this administrative subpoena both exceeded the scope of the administrative subpoena statute and infringed our client’s rights under the First Amendment,” ACLU lawyer Peter Krupp said in a statement Thursday. “With the turnover of these documents any subsequent review of these issues will be moot.”
Should Twitter be obligated to hand over information about its users to law enforcement? Do you see such requests as necessary to investigations or as attacks on free speech? Let us know in the comments.

09:58 by Robert dawne · 0

The Secrets of a Twitter Co-Founder's Success

Entrepreneurs need to take pride in their mistakes, because otherwise it's impossible to succeed, said Twitter co-founder Biz Stone.
The 37-year-old entrepreneur was speaking to an audience of 1,000 at the Board of Trade of Metropolitan Montreal.
"Failure is great," said Stone, who co-founded the microblogging site in 2006 with Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass and Evan Williams. "It's really scary, but it's totally worth it, because you can't succeed at these exponential levels until you dramatically fail."
One failure of his own: Starting a company that allowed people to send broadcasts to iPods. "We thought we were geniuses, and it turns out it was called podcasting and people were already doing it," Stone said, according to the Montreal Gazette.
Twitter's beginning was not auspicious.
"When we started it, nobody thought it was a very good idea," he said. "But we kept working on it."
An early sign that the naysayers might be wrong: When Stone attended Austin's South by Southwest in 2007.
"One person tweeted to tell a few people to meet him at a bar, and in the eight minutes it took him to walk to that bar, it had filled to capacity and there was a line out the door," he said.
The site now has some 500 million users.
He suggested entrepreneurs not fear madcap ideas to solve problems–in fact, entrepreneurs actively should look for the most off-the-wall solution and see if it works.
"I learned creativity is a renewable resource," Stone said, referring to his first job, which was as a graphic designer. "It's a wonderful way of thinking about challenges, because it turns work into play. It makes everything fun, and you can always take another crack at something."
He also advised businesses to own up publicly to their mistakes. (Twitter had to do this as recently as last week. When it was revealed that the user agreement allowed the company to store information from contact lists of iPhone users for 18 months, the site apologized and changed the agreement.) Not surprisingly, he suggested Twitter and social media are a great way to do this.
"I think vulnerability is essential," he said. "For so long, companies and brands thought they needed to seem bulletproof. I think when a brand uses Twitter, they're able to communicate when they make a mistake. I think when you do things like that you reveal you're open and honest and willing to change and admit to your mistakes. I think brands are using it to really build trust with consumers."
He also said no one should spend hours on Twitter at a time – that it "sounds unhealthy."
"I like the kind of engagement where you go to the website and you leave because you've found what you are looking for or you found something very interesting and you learned something," he said. "I think that's a much healthier engagement. Obviously, we want you to come frequently."
Stone said his goal for any of his projects is that they help improve the world, make money and have fun. He advocates socially conscious business.
"It just makes good business sense because consumers and good employees are attracted to products and companies that care about the world," said Stone, who is vegan. "If there's a $5-million marketing budget, maybe, you can spend $4 million bringing clean water to a region in India, and another million making a big deal about that."
He told the audience he was proud that Twitter hired a corporate social responsibility employee before it hired its first salesperson.

06:23 by Robert dawne · 0

Twitter Co-Founder: Spending Too Much Time On the Site is ‘Unhealthy’

Biz Stone, a cofounder of Twitter, told an audience in Montreal this week that spending up to 12 hours a day on the platform is not necessarily a great idea.
“To me, that sounds unhealthy,” he said on Wednesday at the Board of Trade of Metropolitan Montreal business conference, according to a report in The Guardian. Stone told the audience that users should leave the site after they found the information they were looking for.
“I like the kind of engagement where you go to the website and you leave because you’ve found what you are looking for or you found something very interesting and you learned something,” Stone said, according to the report.”I think that’s a much healthier engagement. Obviously, we want you to come frequently.”
Twitter doesn’t provide stats on the average amount of time users spend on the site. Alexa, however, pegs that time at about four and a half minutes a day on the site. According to a 2009 report by Sysomos, only 1.13% of Twitter users update more than 10 times a day. Some 85.4% of Twitter members tweet zero times a day and about 6.5% tweet once a day.
The relative healthiness or unhealthiness of compulsive tweeting wasn’t the only subject that Stone discussed. He also described how he thought it was important for entrepreneurs to take pride in their mistakes. Before Stone helped create Twitter in 2006 with Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass and Evan Williams, he created a company that let people send broadcasts to iPods. “We thought we were geniuses,” Stone said, according to The Montreal Gazette. “It turns out it was called podcasting and people were already doing it.”
Stone also outlined his vision of social media — including Twitter — as a positive force. “The more connected we get through all social media, the more humanity can move as one,” he said. “Maybe I’m just being hallucinogenically optimistic, but the idea that once we’re connected we’ll be able to move together, suggests we’ll be able to get a lot more done in a lot shorter time.”

13:13 by Robert dawne · 0

Decide if Social Media Is Right for Your Business

Social media is often a big help when you're developing your brand. It allows businesses to connect to customers on a more personal level. But that doesn't mean it's right for every small business.
Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of Facebook, believes that 9 million small businesses in the U.S. use Facebook.
Twitter and Facebook are useful in different ways. Twitter is known to be better for customer engagement, while Facebook helps funnel traffic to your site. Both sites help you better your search engine optimization (SEO).
Take three steps before launching Twitter and Facebook campaigns and decide which social media platform is right for your small business.
1. Is social media right for your company?
Remember the old question, “If everyone was jumping off a bridge would you do it too?”
The buzz makes everybody feel that social media helps their business. It's likely that's true, but it’s vital that you decide if social media is necessary for your business to succeed right now.
Though millions of small businesses have jumped on the social media train, your target audience might not be caught up in it. If you feel that's the case, it makes sense to hold off. Or, perhaps you aren’t ready to make the most of social media's benefits, so wait until your company is ready.
2. Timing is everything
Having a strong presence in social media takes a lot of time and a lot of resources. If you can’t dedicate the manpower to keeping up a quality profile, it might hurt your brand in the long run.
Look at your team and decide if your business can handle the workload. If it can, then be fully prepared to implement it. Like any good marketing campaign, your social media portfolio has to have a clear identity, and reach your target audience.
If you forge ahead, prepare the information you want to share each week. Figure out what time of the day your posts and tweets have the most impact by reaching your core customers.
3. Set goals and guidelines
In 2011, companies saw a 63 percent increase in marketing effectiveness. But businesses of all sizes are trying to establish a strong ROI when it comes to social media.
Setting goals for the next few weeks, months and years helps you decide if your valuable time is worth the effort and if you’re using social media successfully. It’s also important to set ground rules of who in your company will handle your social media sites.
Decide on what content is and isn’t appropriate to post. Learn how to handle customer interaction and what steps to take if something goes wrong. Then spend some time educating your staff before the first day of having a visible social media profile.
Once you have created a place for your business in the social media realm, look around your direct and indirect competitors' pages. It helps you understand what the best practices are to engage customers.
Also research the different ways social media platforms are reaching out to help small businesses advertise. See if those steps are right for your brand as well.
In the end, social media is another tool for your company’s toolbox. It will only be effective if you can take the time to learn how to use it properly.

16:43 by iliot Atlas · 0

5 Clever Social Media Campaigns to Learn From

You don't have to be in the market for a Super Bowl ad to learn who the world's biggest marketers are. In fact, as a quick visit to Facebook illustrates, social media has a leveling effect: Whether you're Coca-Cola or Jones Soda, your Facebook page looks pretty much the same. Coke's billions won't buy a dedicated wing on Twitter, either.
With this in mind, the following social media campaigns from marketers big and small are designed to be idea generators. This isn't a ranking of the most effective social media campaigns of the year, but rather the ones that have the most to offer a small-business owner with big ideas and a not-so-big marketing budget.
1. Kraft Macaroni & Cheese's Jinx
Last March, the venerable Kraft brand launched an interesting campaign on Twitter: Whenever two people individually used the phrase "mac & cheese" in a tweet, Kraft sent both a link pointing out the "Mac & Jinx" (as in the childhood game Jinx.) The first one to reply back got five free boxes of Kraft Mac & Cheese and a t-shirt.
What you can learn from this: This is a very low-cost way to track down potential fans on Twitter. All you have to do is search a given term and identify two people who tweet the same phrase at (roughly) the same time. In return, you'll gain goodwill, a likely follower and probably some good word-of-mouth buzz on the social network.
2. Ingo's Face Logo
When Swedish ad agencies Grey Stockholm and Ogilvy Stockholm merged last year, they wanted to get social media fans involved. The two agencies asked fans to participate by signing into Facebook to see the new name. Every time new people logged on to the dedicated site, the logo added their profile picture. With every picture, the logo got a little bigger, until 2,890 fan photos comprised the full name, Ingo, over a four-hour period.
What you can learn from this: This is another inexpensive way to get fans literally enmeshed with the brand. Another alternative is to create a real-life mosaic based on pictures of your Facebook fans, a project that Mashable recently completed in its headquarters.
3. BlueCross BlueShield of Minnesota's Human Doing
What better way to illustrate the plight of the common man than an actual common man? That was the thinking behind a BlueCross BlueShield of Minnesota program last year that put Scott Jorgenson, a St. Paul resident, in a glass apartment in the Mall of America for a month. To demonstrate the recuperative effects of exercise, Jorgenson was put on a workout routine for the month that compelled him to exercise three to five times a day, in 10-minute spurts. In a social media twist, Twitter and Facebook followers dictated the type of exercise for each session.
What you can learn from this: Creating an event, especially one that involves social media fans, is an alternative to launching an ad campaign. Humanizing a problem for which your company provides a solution is also a good idea.
4. GranataPet's Foursquare-Enabled Billboard
Pet food brand GranataPet earned worldwide attention last year for its billboard in Agenta, Germany. This wasn't just any billboard, though. It was rigged so that if a consumer checked in on Foursquare, the billboard would dispense some of the company's dog food. Someone from Granata's ad agency filmed the billboard in action, and the video now has more than 50,000 views on YouTube (in various iterations).
What you can learn from this: In the social media age, a single ad or a single billboard can generate images, press and videos, but only if it's clever enough.
5. Reinert Sausages's Wurst-Face App
Another German brand, Reinert Sausages, transcended its roots with a clever Facebook app that lets users upload their photo and receive a "Wurst Face," a graven image of themselves in cold cuts. The name "Wurst Face" comes from the extra piece of sausage that kids get for free at the butcher.
What you can learn from this: If you can create an app that's social, fun and brand-appropriate, it will function more effectively than even a high-budget ad campaign.

10:59 by Robert dawne · 0

5 Free Ways to Market Your Nonprofit

Just like any for-profit business, nonprofit organizations need to have a marketing strategy to survive and thrive.
Nancy Schwartz, founder and president of the nonprofit marketing firm Getting Attention, emphasizes that marketing for nonprofits is all about building relationships, and those relationships are vital to an organization's success.
“The goal of marketing is to build and strengthen relationships," says Schwartz, who in addition to her consulting work also serves on the board of the Nonprofit Technology Network and on marketing committees for her synagogue, local high school and PTA. "Nonprofits are based on fundraising, but you can’t meet someone the first time and ask for money. You need to build that relationship."
Nonprofits don't have a lot of money to throw around on marketing, however. So it's important for you to make every penny count. Luckily, free marketing opportunities abound. It's just a matter of being innovative, creative and flexible in your marketing approach.
Here are five ideas for affordable nonprofit marketing.
Engage your current supporters
Nurturing and engaging your current supporters, donors and volunteers is, according to Schwartz, one of the most effective free marketing strategies for nonprofits.
“You have to be very appreciative of your supporters," explains Schwartz. "Nurturing your existing supporters is the best low-cost, highly-effective marketing strategy. It’s always easier to retain existing supporters than it is to get new people in the door.”
That means keeping them updated and informed, and it also means getting them to do things with and for your organization. And here is where the second part of this strategy comes in: Ask them to tell their friends, family and colleagues about your organization.
"Not only does that expand your reach and increase the number of folks engaged in your organization, it’s asking people to get involved more than just writing a check," says Schwartz. "It works to get your existing supporters engaged.”
Social media
Social media sites are a gold mine of free marketing opportunities. Set up a business page on Facebook, and use it to communicate with your various constituencies—posting photos, updates, links and information. Create a Twitter account and mingle with others, keeping them up-to-date about your nonprofit's activities. LinkedIn, too, provides plenty of opportunities to market, by creating a business page, promoting your organization and keeping in touch with like-minded people. Look, too, for smaller, lesser-known social media outlets that are specific to the focus of your organization.
It's important to remember, however, that though there's often no upfront cost associated with these sites, it does take time for someone within your organization to keep them updated—and time is money.
"The key to effective use of social media is engagement, and engagement means that somebody from your organization is engaging with people through that conduit," explains Hamilton Wallace, owner of SmallBusinessMarketingConsultant.com. "To have an authentic voice and create engagement, it needs to come from someone inside the firm."
Blogging
Create a blog on your website and update it daily with helpful and useful information that readers be likely to share with others. The more useful the information you give, the more it will help your marketing strategy, increase awareness of your organization and mission and engage your audience. Another upside of blogging is it will draw people to the rest of your site, where they can see what you're doing and learn how they can support your activities.
Videos
Anyone with a smartphone and simple editing software can create professional videos that can be posted on YouTube or directly on your organization's website.
"We're a video-oriented culture, especially with YouTube," says Valerie Moody, owner of Fodeo, which provides photography and video services for individuals and organizations. “Anything we want to do we can go to YouTube and find something that shows us how to do that."
Your nonprofit might post an instructional video, for instance, or a video message from the director, or clips showing community service and involvement. Getting people to watch and share your videos will help spread your message.
Speaking engagements
Line up representatives of your organization to speak at conferences, trade shows and other events related to your field. This is a chance for free publicity and an opportunity to get your message out there. You can put information about possible speakers and topics on your website, so people searching for a speaker will be able to track down your organization, or you can register with a speaker's bureau.
Each of these techniques works in tandem with others. Thus, you can promote your speech-making over social media, or mention it in your blog. An e-mail newsletter can point people to your Facebook page. T-shirts that your employees wear to community events can have your organization's name and website on them.
Great marketing doesn't have to be expensive. In fact, the more creative you are with your marketing, the less you'll have to spend.
Vivian Wagner is a freelance writer in New Concord, Ohio. Vivian blogs via Contently.com.
Photo credit: Thinkstock

 American Express OPEN Forum

11:45 by Robert dawne · 1

As OS X Mountain Lion Proves, Twitter Is Apple’s Social Network

At Apple’s WWDC event last June, Twitter made a new best friend: Apple. The tech giant announced that it would bake the social network into every single iOS device by way of the new iOS 5 software. This left many stunned for two reasons. 1) Apple rarely does such deep partnerships with third-parties. 2) It wasn’t Facebook.
It was all-around a huge win for Twitter. And a win for Apple as well, as it has been proven throughout the years that they don’t get social — a subject which was a topic of debate again yesterday coincidentally. Apple needs to build it’s own social network, Dan Frommer argued! No, they need to get their social platform right, argued TechCrunch editor Eric Eldon. Well, today they’re taking a big step: by doubling down on Twitter.
Apple has just revealed that Twitter is also going to be baked into the latest version of OS X, Mountain Lion. This means that every single new Mac sold beginning this summer will have Twitter functionality built in. And all of the older ones that upgrade will have it too. There are now just over 60 million Macs out there. Again, a huge win for Twitter.
Twitter CEO Dick Costolo said in December that following the iOS 5 integration, Twitter monthly sign-ups jumped 25 percent. iOS already has a much larger user base than the Mac does, but still, Twitter could see another double digit jump from this integration as well.
More importantly, Twitter has now firmly established itself as not just the iOS go-to social service, but Apple’s go-to social service. Sure, Apple could always rip Twitter out of iOS and OS X at any point in the future, but doing so would now piss off users who are being trained to expect it as an Apple core OS feature. For a service still not making a ton of money and as such, has its future questioned constantly, this is important. It’s a huge endorsement.
It’s also big news for Twitter because it opens up a whole new world for the service as a method of authentication. With iOS, apps can choose to use Twitter to ease new sign-ups — allowing people to get going with one or two clicks. Now Mac apps will be able to do the same thing. I don’t think there’s any question that Facebook still dominates this authentication space, but Twitter’s Apple alliance is making them much more compelling for this purpose — for developers, at the very least.
Just last week, some were criticizing Twitter for seemingly wayward focus. Today, they just scored a second massive partnership with the most valuable company on the planet. That sure seems like a sign of good focus to me.

15:15 by Robert dawne · 0

A History of the Business of Social Media

Social media has come a long way since it's humble beginnings over 30 years ago. This infographic gives us a short history of the many innovative companies that have helped shape the environment that we so heavily rely on to communicate and also takes a look at some of the business deals behind them. What's next? You decide.

14:07 by Robert dawne · 0

Twitter Investors, Including Employees, Can Only Sell 20% of Their Stock [REPORT]

In a move designed to forestall an IPO for as long as possible,Twitter has a rule barring any investor, including employees, from selling more than 20% of their stock, according to a report.

Twitter initiated the rule about a year ago, but it hadn’t been made public, according to CNNMoney. The guideline is somewhat controversial within the company and allegedly prompted Senior Technical Engineer Evan Weaver to resign last August.

According to the article, Weaver’s departure prompted an explanatory email to staffers from CEO Dick Costolo. The email outlined Twitter’s reason behind the policy: To keep to the SEC-dictated limit of under 500 investors. Beyond that number, Twitter would have to go public. “We don’t want to be public until we have very predictable quarterly earnings growth,” Costolo wrote in his August email, according to the article. “We’re not ready to be a public company for a couple years… There is one reasonable way to do this: Let everybody with vested common stock sell only some fraction of their shares,” Costolo added.

Twitter reps could not be reached for comment on the report.

Costolo’s stance on going public mirrors his other recent public statements. Like other social media firms, including, for a time, Facebook, Twitter appears to be holding off an IPO as a way of limiting outsider investors’ influence. That approach has hardly dimmed enthusiasm for the stock, though. Last March, Twitter’s valuationhit $7.7 billion on Sharespost, which trades shares on the secondary market.

Limiting shareholders means catering to deep-pocketed investors, including Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, who sank $300 million into the company in December. Like Facebook, Twitter has also stopped giving out stock to employees instead offering them restricted stock units (RSUs), which can only be converted to actual shares after an IPO or a corporate buyout, according to the report.

Image courtesy of Flickr, eldh

15:52 by Robert dawne · 0