Recently Rachel Levy sparked an interesting discussion on her blog when she posed the question “To Cross-Post or Not to Cross-Post”. Rachel was of course referring to the dilemma some social network users face when deciding whether their Facebook friends want to see what’s happening in their Twitter streams, or their Twitter followers want to see what’s happening in their LinkedIn accounts, or the various other combinations of conversations on one social network finding their way onto another. Todd Clayton & I had similar conversations as we prepared for the recent Defrag conference, and you can see some of the results reflected in Todd’s presentation.
Looking back on some of those discussions and comparing them with the comments that are flowing into Rachel’s post, there seems to be one thing we can all agree on: LinkedIn is the No Fun Social Network. If all the social networks got together for a party, Twitter would be the person who talks a mile a minute, never lacks for conversation starters, and loves meeting new people; Facebook would be having lots of fun conversations with some occasional business ones mixed in, but would generally confine them to people he already knows well; MySpace would be provocatively dressed and flirting with everyone in close proximity…
And finally, over there in the corner would be LinkedIn. He’d stick out like a sore thumb, the stuffy guy in the tweed jacket who confines all conversations to business and has zero sense of humor. Don’t bother trying to say hello to LinkedIn unless you already know him. The only way to meet him is to have an associate in common OR to correctly guess his e-mail address. If you’re fortunate enough to be introduced, you can expect a long spiel about his great credentials and degrees, his career accomplishments, and all the people who recommend him. LinkedIn is a name-dropper if there ever was one.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I think LinkedIn is an invaluable resource that plays a vital role in the social space. There certainly is a need to connect people who want to succeed in their careers and promote their businesses. I’m not suggesting LinkedIn should do anything to change the features I just indirectly described. However, I do believe it’s time for them to have some fun with that image. How easy would it be for LinkedIn to produce a web marketing video with the LinkedIn character doing some wild and crazy stuff that we’d never expect to see? For example, can you imagine LinkedIn recreating the canonball scene from Anchorman? Instant win, right? People love to laugh, and the potential to produce a marketing video that goes viral is always there. Sometimes proving you can laugh at yourself is the secret formula to making everyone stop, take notice, and maybe change their opinion of you. I would imagine content producers like my friend Eric Guerin at SmartMarket Media would have a field day with this opportunity.
My advice for LinkedIn: it’s fine to be the No Fun Social Network, but at least have some fun with it!
Todd gave the following presentation at the Defrag Conference 2009 in Denver yesterday. It’s also featured today on Slideshare’s home page in one of the Spotlight secitons. As usual, feedback is welcomed.
UPDATE: We have posted a video of the presentation.
Follow the links below to view the slides or view the slides through the embedded presentation:
Last Friday night I attended the very special NomX3-GaryVee taping at The Estate in Boston. Prior to the event, my experiences with @GaryVee had been hot and cold. There were some days when his energy level on WineLibraryTV was nothing short of infectious; there were others when I was ready to throw my laptop out the window if I had to hear “hustle” one more time. Authenticity is a word that gets thrown around the social media universe quite a bit, and I wasn’t sure if Gary had it. I wanted to support my friends @MikeLangford & @JeffCutler so this was a great chance to go try to uncover the true @GaryVee. These were some of my observations from the evening:
It didn’t take long for me to have my first brush with Gary since I walked in the door right behind him. He checked his coat ahead of me and bantered with a couple of the other guests, then when he turned around I introduced myself. As I later tweeted, it surprised me that he traveled solo. I was expecting some sort of entourage on hand to direct menacing stares at people who got too close, fetch drinks for him when he was thirsty, and emit that “the person I’m with is so important that he needs me to do what regular people do for themselves” vibe. Not seeing this presence immediately elevated his status in my eyes.
My other thought as we shook hands: I hope this guy uses LOTS of hand sanitizer. Flu season is approaching and I can only imagine how many hands he’s going to shake during his book tour.
The Estate’s dress code bans many items including flannel shirts. I’m guessing that L.L. Bean didn’t spend much time partying here during his younger years.
Prior to the taping, Gary mingled with the crowd and welcomed conversation. This was a change from other events I’d attended where the keynote speakers preferred to spend their time “backstage” rather than engaging the audience.
If Jeff was going for comedy with the wines he chose for the taping, he succeeded! I wish the vintner had been on hand to hear his or her creation compared to animal feces.
Mike, Gary & Jeff had a nice stage chemistry. The conversation was easy with no awkward pauses. I was curious whether Mike & Jeff would be able to rein in Gary and keep to the standard format of their NomX3 show, but that proved to be no problem.
Had Forrest Gump attended, he could have reused his description of the Vietnam protest emcee for Gary: “He liked to say the F-word, A LOT!”. I didn’t sense that he was forcing the adult language into his talk.
I won’t document what Gary had to say since you can watch it for yourself. Obviously he was there to promote his book and his belief that the Internet can be anyone’s pathway to the American dream. It’s hard to argue with his call for people who hate their jobs to pursue something that they’re passionate about. I’ll be curious to see how much substance there is behind that message as I read the book, but Friday night convinced me of one thing: @garyvee is real, and he’s not going to change whether you love him or hate him. I’ll take a genuine person who occasionally annoys me over someone who fakes it any day of the week.
Big thanks to @MikeLangford & @JeffCutler for organizing a great event. Be sure to watch NomX3 if you don’t already. It’s a fun show that doesn’t lack for strong opinions.
I’ve been a big fan of Saturday Night Live since my freshman year in high school. The first episode that caught my attention was hosted by Tom Hanks, and his “Mr. Short Term Memory” sketch was all I could talk about when I went to school on Monday morning. Gradually my friends started watching, and we would do complete recaps/reviews during study halls. To this day one of my more vivid high school memories was dressing up with a friend of mine as Hans & Franz to attend our sophomore Halloween dance. I wonder if it was a coincidence that I didn’t participate in any slow dances that evening?! But I digress…
We’ve all grown accustomed to the acronyms that are bandied about in our electronic conversations to mask the use of offensive language: WTH; WTF; LMFAO; OMFG. But every so often, people will come out and use the real thing (WARNING- don’t click that link unless you’re willing to view “the queen mother of dirty words”). I follow a handful of folks who use vulgar language in every other tweet, while some save the language for when they’re very worked up about something. There are plenty in my list who probably would never think of using vulgar language on Twitter.
I’ll admit it – I fall into that last camp. You might see me use an occasional swear acronym like WTH, but you won’t find any adult language in my stream. I just don’t want to risk having someone view it and form a negative impression of me based on some choice words. After all, there are plenty of folks on Twitter who feel certain language should be reserved for comedy clubs & HBO:
On the other hand, it would be unlikely for me to base a decision to follow or unfollow someone on bad language unless there was some sort of abuse or personal attack associated with it.
So what’s your Twitter language policy? Do you censor your own tweets in any way? Would you base follow/unfollow decisions on vulgar language? I’m curious to get your take! Just don’t curse me out for bringing up the topic…
Recently I was annoyed with one of my personal online service providers. SmugMug, the photo sharing site I pay $39.95 per year to use, was intermittently failing to accept my uploads. With 2 children starting school and a new soccer season, I have family members & friends chomping at the bit to share in all the excitement by viewing my photos. Obviously any delay in getting these albums posted is a problem, especially when it results in a “where are those photos???” phone call from my mom.
Soon after that a couple things happened: SmugMug founder & CEO Don MacAskill started following me, and I received a tweet reply from SmugMug offering assistance via their help page/email. This got me thinking back to about a year ago when I tried using SmugMug as my HD video service. I upgraded to a Pro account and found that the upload speeds were too slow for me (note: this might have changed over the past year!). At that time I emailed SmugMug support and they could not have handled things better. They immediately downgraded my account and refunded the difference on my upgrade without any hassle whatsoever.
That’s when I started to feel remorse over my tweet complaint, for a couple reasons:
This was a company that had established a track record of reliable support with me. Perhaps I should have sent an e-mail instead of delivering a public spanking-by-tweet.
SmugMug is family owned and operated. Don is an entrepreneur just like me. Normally I tend to give small operations the benefit of the doubt when it comes to issues because I’ve been there before and I understand what it’s like to support a customer base with limited resources.
Looking back, the main reason I tweeted was because SmugMug is not free. As a paid service, I hold it to a higher standard even though it’s basically a start-up.
Obviously social media channels give people voices and influencing power they never had in the past. It wasn’t long ago that a terrible interaction with your phone or cable company might result in a bashing session around the office water cooler and perhaps a letter or e-mail complaint which never received a response. These days we can notify a mass of users in seconds via tools like Twitter & Facebook. Due to the viral nature of these broadcasts, one negative situation can quickly snowball.
So now that we have these public channels available to us, the question becomes: when do we use them? What causes consumers to take that next step and go public with their issues and general complaints? Here are some factors I consider before I “go public”:
Free vs. Paid: I generally expect more from a service I pay for
Previous Support Interactions: if I’ve gotten quality support from you in the past, I’ll lean toward keeping things private
Provider’s Background: entrepreneurs/start-ups usually get the benefit of the doubt because I can relate; big corporations like cable companies, phone companies, etc are easier to scream at because they’re nameless/faceless
Do I aspire to do business with your company one day?: no sense burning bridges before they’ve been built!
I find there are no hard and fast rules on this list. Facebook is a free service (at least in terms of monetary payment), yet I wouldn’t hesitate to rant about Facebook in a public forum. On the other hand Charter is a big company that has won me over through its proactive use of Twitter.
I’m curious to know how others feel about public gripes. What’s your main reason for complaining about a product or service on public channels? Do you get a better response from providers when you go this route? Do you consider the size of the company or what you’ve read about them before you complain? Please chime in below!
Since we’re heading to Digital ID World next week, we thought it might be interesting to show a demo of why virtual directories can help companies build social media driven applications. This post is a follow-up to my previous blog posts on “Virtualizing Social Networks” (Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3) by using a virtual directory to incorporate social media information into a virtual directory like Radiant Logic’s RadiantOne VDS. Our demo shows how you can leverage Twitter to promote products to your users based upon the people following and followed by the user.
Here is the general scenario. Company A is building a portal and would like to expose enhanced information to their customers. They are interested in enriching their user profiles by combining social network information into the data. This makes the information available in the portal more relevant for the users. They decide to start by incorporating information from Twitter into the system. This will allow them to promote products purchased by people following the user and whom the user is following. The following identity/data repositories are involved:
Enterprise Directory containing a list of all users in the portal
Order database
Twitter
One of the key requirements is that they want to minimize the application development costs and also position themselves for incorporating other social networks. They decided to leverage a virtual directory to create a view into the identity and data repositories which allows them to easily consume this information within their application. This also allows them to incorporate additional social networks without making other application changes.
Our demo highlights how you can easily incorporate data from Twitter and combine the data with information coming from both the enterprise directory and the order database without needing to make significant application changes or modify the underlying data sources. The following diagram highlights the logical design:
We used the following approach to create the demo:
Created an Enterprise Directory with the list of customers
Joined the customer directory to the order database to get a list of products purchased by the user
Joined the customer directory to Twitter to get the list of followers and who the user is following
Set the Twitter handles of other users in the VDS store to Twitter handles that match so that we show the relationships (note that we could use something like ICS to do more sophisticated matching without necessarily needed the matching Twitter ID)
The demo shows how to create two different directory tree structures for consumption by the portal:
The “Following View” shows the orders purchased by the user and the people following or being followed by the user on Twitter. The “Purchased View” extends this information to show what products have been purchased across the user’s social graph.
As a sneak peak, here’s a video walking you through what we are showing:
Charlie asked me to take a break from the “wordy” posts I’ve been doing and write “something that any monkey can understand” (his words, not mine). So, let’s give it a shot!
For employers, Twitter—where users post updates, or “tweets,” of no more than 140 characters—offers one more way to find and attract candidates, and a cheaper alternative to big online job boards. It also helps companies target social-media-savvy job hunters and convey an innovative image. For job seekers, Twitter offers the chance to interact one-on-one with companies’ recruiters and can be more convenient than job boards.
No doubt Twitter is a great way to engage with recruiters and potential employers, but how do you find what you’re looking for AND keep track of it? That’s where ChatterBox comes in:
Create a ChatterBox focused on the job search terms and/or job feed handles you’re interested in
Customize your Categories to distinguish different types of roles or specific areas of expertise
Customize your Status to reflect where you are in the process (initial response, sent resume, etc)
Create as many similar ChatterBoxes as you’d like
There you have it- a quick, easy way to manage your Twitter-based job search and know exactly what you’ve responded to.
My previous post described how every company can benefit from using ChatterBox. Today’s post will focus on a specific type of company: the Public Relations (PR) firm.
Before we begin, let’s quickly review what ChatterBox is all about. A ChatterBox is a shared team workspace built around a Twitter search. The Twitter search itself can be a simple list of terms and users, or it can use advanced search operators. Once you have Tweets coming into your ChatterBox, you can:
Categorize them
Tag them
Prioritize them
Assign them to other users who have access to the ChatterBox
Respond to them via the Twitter handle of your choosing
Extract what’s happening in the ChatterBox via RSS
You can create as many ChatterBoxes as you want, and you can share them with whomever you want. The Tweets that get pulled into a ChatterBox are searchable and accessible for as long as you’d like them to be.
When we began sharing our ChatterBox concept with folks outside of the company, we noticed a consistent pattern of people predicting that PR firms would love the app. These predictions were based on a couple of key features:
Each ChatterBox is its own universe that can be shared with a unique set of users. This fits perfectly with a PR firm that’s assigning a distinct set of users to listen and engage on behalf of clients.
A ChatterBox can be shared with anyone. All you need to provide is an e-mail address. We don’t mandate that the person you’re sharing with must be part of your company or your e-mail domain. This is what makes sharing with clients, partners, and service providers possible.
Let’s get one thing settled before I continue- I am not a PR professional or an expert on what makes a good PR firm. Most of the information I know about the industry comes from blogs (PerkettPRsuasion.com is a favorite of mine) and Twitter. But part of the inspiration for ChatterBox came from this Jeremiah Owyang post in the fall of last year. While commenting on what PR firms can do to enhance existing functions, Jeremiah writes:
Be a filter for clients: There’s a tremendous amount of noise now being created, creating an opportunity for PR folks to filter, sort, and prioritize what matters. You’ll need both access and understanding of brand monitoring tools as well as the ability to see patterns in the noise.
ChatterBox certainly enables the filtering that Jeremiah mentions. As an added benefit PR professionals can manage multiple clients through a single interface, ensuring that the proper internal AND external users are able to participate.
Let’s use the example of Roger, a PR professional who is assigned to listen and engage on behalf of 3 companies:
MufflerStop, an auto service center
Ready2Wear, a women’s apparel designer
WarningTrack, a sports bar chain
Roger works with a team of 3 other Account Managers to services these 3 clients. He’s able to easily listen, engage, and collaborate on behalf of these clients through ChatterBox. Here’s an example of how easy it is to set this up:
ChatterBox #1: MufflerStop
Roger creates a ChatterBox focused on generic mentions of the word “muffler” and his client, MufflerStop. He configures Category values of ‘Positive’, ‘Neutral’, and ‘Negative’ for sentiment analysis, and ‘Opportunity’ for any chances to promote his client.
He sets Respond From to ‘Users can only respond from a Twitter account of my choosing’ and enters the credentials for MufflerStop’s Twitter handle.
He invites fellow Account Manager Sara to participate in the ChatterBox. He also invites Charles, who is MufflerStop’s Community Manager.
After the save, Roger has created a workspace that provides full visibility to his client.
ChatterBox #2: Ready2Wear
Roger creates a ChatterBox focused on what’s happening in the women’s apparel space. His client is brand new, so their approach is to learn by listening and engage with people who show a passion for their space and their company. He enters search terms like ‘handbag’, ‘purse’, and of course their name ‘Ready2Wear’.
He sets Respond From to ‘Users can respond from any Twitter account’ since Ready2Wear prefers to respond from multiple handles depending on the topic area.
He invites his colleague Sam as well as two members of Ready2Wear’s customer care staff to participate.
After the save, Roger also sends an RSS feed for assigned items from the ChatterBox to Ready2Wear’s CEO Jennifer, who is an avid fan of Google Reader. This way Jennifer is able to keep track of interactions with the click of a button.
ChatterBox #3: WarningTrack
WarningTrack is primarily interested in tracking the Twitter promotions they run. To start, Roger creates a ChatterBox with a single search term (’WarningTrack’). In the future they intend to take advantage of Twitter’s location-based search to engage with sports fans in the areas where they have restaurant locations.
He sets Respond From so that all responses will originate from the WarningTrack Twitter handle.
He invites his colleague Sherry to participate. WarningTrack’s community team prefers to monitor progress via RSS feed readers on their iPhones.
Using ChatterBox, Roger & Sherry will be able to tag and track the success of the promotions and contests they’ve recommended to WarningTrack.
That’s all there is to it! In just a few minutes time, Roger has:
Created collaborative workspaces for 3 clients
Simplified client management by sharing access to the ChatterBoxes with only those colleagues who are responsible for the accounts
Given his clients access to monitor progress through either of 2 channels: direct participation or RSS
Minimized the chance of overlap when multiple people are listening and engaging from a single Twitter handle
I’d be interested to hear from PR folks about the use case I just described. Are there additional feature you’d like to see that are specific to your industry? Please leave a comment or reach out to me with your ideas on Twitter!
In my previous post I promised to describe some ways that companies and individuals can benefit from using ChatterBox. Today I’m going to write about a common scenario that I call “The Every Company”. Your business falls into this category if it:
Sells stuff (products, services, etc)
Competes against companies that sell similar stuff
Is aware of relevant industry-specific OR company-specific mentions being made on Twitter. (this is important- even if your company isn’t heavily discussed on Twitter, chances are there’s still discussion going on about your industry)
You probably just read through those bullets and are saying to yourself, “well, that is every company.” And so therein lies the truth and simplicity of the title of this entry.
By now I’m sure you’ve read all about social media and why you need to pay attention. Anyone can initiate a Twitter Search and see the latest conversations on any topic. Michael Jackson, the Red Sox, alligators, you name it. Twitter Search can provide information, opportunities and feedback for folks from many different backgrounds. However, there are limits to what Twitter search can do for you:
Due to the sheer volume of tweets that accumulates on Twitter, the scope of the information you’re searching is limited to the previous 7 days. The good news is that the Tweets you’d like to rescind are harder to find 1 week after the fact; the bad news is this limits you from finding and preserving all that useful information that can benefit your business.
Once you’ve narrowed your Twitter search, what can you do with the information besides read it? There is no capability to categorize, tag, or otherwise take action on specific items that matter to you.
In the increasingly common scenario where there is shared responsibility for listening and responding to Tweets about your company, products, services, etc., it is challenging (if not impossible) to ensure that you don’t trip on other folks who are doing the same. This tracking becomes even more important when responses are coming from a single Twitter handle.
So how can ChatterBox help you extend the power of a Twitter search? You can read about it in more detail here, but to give a quick summary:
Once you conduct your searches through ChatterBox, they live within the app. The Tweets you choose to archive will be searchable days, weeks, or even months after the fact. The 7-day search limit no longer applies!
ChatterBox allows you to categorize, prioritize, assign, tag, and apply status to Tweets so that you’ll always know why each one is valuable to you, and which ones require follow-up action.
Each ChatterBox you create is its own world, a collaborative team space for Twitter! Shared responsibilities for listening and engaging are natural because ChatterBox lets you know where each item stands. You can even specify a common Twitter handle from which all the responses for a given ChatterBox will originate. Tripping over fellow team members becomes a distant memory.
Now that you know some of the ways ChatterBox can help you bring more value to search, you might be wondering how to make this happen. Here are a few ChatterBox ideas to create your first ChatterBoxes:
ChatterBox #1 – Your Stuff
Create this ChatterBox using the name(s) of your company, products & services as search terms
Adjust the Categories and other metadata values as you see fit. For example- you might want to stick with the sentiment analysis (Postive or Negative) approach that comes by default, OR you might opt to change these values to be more support-oriented (Question, Problem, Complaint, etc.)
Determine if you’d like responses from this ChatterBox to originate from a single Twitter handle (your company’s handle), or you may allow users to respond from any handle they have access to.
Share this ChatterBox with anyone you would like to listen and engage on your company’s behalf. This can include folks from outside agencies such as a PR firm, as we do not restrict who you can share each ChatterBox with.
ChatterBox #2 – Your Competitor(s)
This ChatterBox should be a place to listen in on what others are saying about your competitors’ products & services. If your competitors’ have a particularly high volume of tweets, then you may opt to create separate ChatterBoxes for each competitor.
For Categories & metadata values, think about what you want to do with this information once you collect it. If you plan to be a passive listener then your approach might be different than someone who wants to actively lure competitors’ customers over to their product or service.
Share the ChatterBox with the appropriate audience. This ChatterBox might be better suited for team members who have a vested interest in understanding competitive offerings and developing strategies to counter them.
ChatterBox #3 – Industry Voices
Make this ChatterBox the home for people who like to talk about your industry and other relevant topics. You might be surprised at how many Forrester analysts are active on Twitter! You can use Advanced Search to define a list of Twitter accounts you want to listen to, and you can combine this with certain keywords to further narrow the search. This way you won’t have to hear what people having for lunch that day .
Set up your Categories and other metadata values so that you can track trends and intelligently contribute to these conversations. Sometimes these analysts will be looking for products & solutions to solve a particular problem. A recent ChatterBox blog post was a direct response to a challenge issued by Forrester Analyst Jeremiah Owyang.
Share this ChatterBox with members of your team (internal or 3rd parties such as PR firms) who are responsible for engaging with these influential voices and staying on their radars.
ChatterBox #4 – Events
Is your organization participating in an upcoming event such as a tradeshow, conference or TweetUp? Why not create a ChatterBox to listen and engage in the buzz leading up to the event. The current trend is to use hashtags for tweets that relate to a specific event, such as the TwtrCon series.
Use your Categories and other metadata values to prepare for the event and interact with folks who will be there with you. Once you’re at the event, you’ll have an easy way to listen and engage with your fellow attendees.
Share the ChatterBox with co-workers and 3rd parties who are responsible for promoting your company’s participation.
There you have it- 4 simple ChatterBox ideas that will help you get started! As always, we’re here to help. Please contact me directly if you have any questions (@chadnorthrup on Twitter), or feel free to pose them in the comment section below.
In 1997 I became a member of the professional services team for a CRM company called Onyx Software. At the time the CRM concept was just taking hold, and the idea of creating a “360 degree view” of customer relationships was something that interested companies in a variety of different fields. As Onyx acquired more customers within verticals such as High Tech, Healthcare, and Financial Services, common business rules and feature requests began to emerge within each industry. In an effort to create a new revenue stream while simultaneously reducing the time it took to deploy a new account, Onyx began combining these common business rules and features into named service packs (ex. the “High Tech Service Pack”) that it could sell as packaged solutions. The advantage of this approach was clear: make the product work in a customized way for the companies whose industries required it, but keep the core product generic enough that anyone could use and benefit from it.
When we put together the development plan for ChatterBox several months back, one of our immediate questions was “exactly how will this application be used??”. We didn’t doubt the value of collaborating around Twitter and other social networks, but we wanted to be sure we weren’t missing industry-specific features that were critical for growth. After discussing our options, we opted to take a generic approach with the ChatterBox feature set. This is not to say we can’t specialize down the road, but for now we’ve opted to provide features that we believe ALL users can benefit from and see where we end up.
The good news about this approach: ChatterBox maintains flexibility, and users are free to dream up any use cases they can imagine. We remain in feedback collection mode, looking to surface common issues & feature requests that we can use to improve the app.
The bad news: some users don’t know how to begin.
With that in mind, we’re going to begin a series of blog posts for those who are interested in learning how to get started with ChatterBox. We’ll describe some possible ChatterBox setups for the following use cases:
The Every Company – do you sell products & services? Do you compete against others who do the same? Do you listen to and engage with the analysts who cover your space?
The PR Firm – do you manage social networking interactions on behalf of multiple clients? Do you collaborate with other team members, or maybe even the clients themselves?
The Media Person/Power Blogger – are you always on the lookout for interesting topics to write about? Want to do some casual back-and-forth conversation before you pull your story together?
The Celebrity – do you have more people interested in you than you could ever possibly keep up with? Want to engage with your fans on hot topics now and then to let them know the conversation is a 2-way street?
The Job Seeker - do you want to keep track of what’s going on in your industry while interacting with the companies who might be your next employer? Are you interested in finding out which hiring agencies can help you? Do you need to keep track of these conversations in a central place?
For the potential ChatterBoxers who fall outside of these buckets, perhaps seeing what can be done for a different use case will stir up some ideas for what YOU can do! Keep your eyes open for more entries in the coming days and weeks. For those who are already part of the private beta, we’d love to hear about all the unique ways ChatterBox is helping people to engage and collaborate around social networks like Twitter.
Recently Rachel Levy sparked an interesting discussion on her blog when she posed the question “To Cross-Post or Not to Cross-Post”. Rachel was of course referring to the dilemma some social network users face when deciding whether their Facebook friends want to see what’s happening in their Twitter streams, or their Twitter followers want to see what’s happening in their LinkedIn accounts, or the various other combinations of conversations on one social network finding their way onto another. Todd Clayton & I had similar conversations as we prepared for the recent Defrag conference, and you can see some of the results reflected in Todd’s presentation.
SNL has provided plenty of 
