Social

Cheryl Morris

The Best Way to Share News on Twitter

Cheryl Morris | July 29th, 2010

People use Twitter in a number of ways, from promoting their business or carving out a personality to talking with friends and staying on top of what favorite celebs and brands are doing. Regardless of why you’re on Twitter, there’s a good chance you’ve sent out a link to a news article or blog post. In fact, 12% of tweets are just this. Pinyadda makes sharing news to Twitter easy, saving you time and giving you the most control over however you want to flavor your tweets.

Here’s why Pinyadda is the best way to share news on Twitter, including examples from our community:

Know the best articles and blog posts to share

Pinyadda is like your personal assistant for news and information. Instead of having to go site-to-site or do searches (and often dig) for the news and blog posts that you want to click on, Pinyadda sifts through the firehose of content for you and collects the articles and posts you’re most likely interested in. Pinyadda serves the good stuff to you in real-time, filing each article as it’s published into clean pages you can browse based on topics, sites and people you follow (click for a quick 30-sec video overview).

With Pinyadda, you know the articles you’ll be into sharing to Twitter without lifting a finger:

  • Want to tweet about news on a particular topic? Go to that topic page and see articles being published about it from sites across the web on everything from your city or favorite sports team to things like celebrities, food, social media, autos or green tech.
  • Want to tweet articles from your go-to sites? View a feed of what’s been published most recently from all your favorites, and if you have one site in mind go to it’s individual feed page. (Tip: Here you can even tell Pinyadda to show you only articles published from a few sections of that site. It’s great for big sites like Boston.com where you may only be interested in a couple sections, like sports and events.)
  • Want to share an article that lots of people are talking about? Go to your Home feed to see what articles people you follow are sharing (we call it pinning). You can also toggle to the “All People” feed to see what’s buzzing in the whole community on Pinyadda — lots of people use Pinyadda like a digital water cooler to share and discuss articles with groups of friends and colleagues, so you can always find great stuff.

Craft engaging news-related tweets

Since people use Twitter for different reasons, we designed Pinyadda’s integration with it with flexibility top of mind. This way you stay in the drivers seat of your voice and can mold your tweets as you like. Here are examples of some of the most effective ways to share all the news goodness on Pinyadda to Twitter:

  1. Share a headline. This is the most basic way to share news to your Twitter followers. Just copy and paste the headline from the feed into the comment box. It’s straightforward, easy, and gets the news out quickly to your followers. (Tip: If you you want to legitimize the source of the link, include its Twitter handle, e.g. I know Boston.com is @bostonupdate.)
  2. Share a quote, main point, question, or data point from the article. These are great ways to shake up how you share news articles to Twitter. These often grab your followers attention better than a straight headline, and shows you’re putting some TLC into your tweets.
  3. Add value to the article by including your own commentary. This is a great way to demonstrate your expertise, opinions, or simply add some humor to the news you share with your followers.
  4. Direct an article to a Twitter follower. Often when we read an article we think of someone – be it an inside joke, something that will help them in their job, or is relevant to other aspects of their lives. If the person you’re thinking of isn’t as ahead of the curve as you and on Pinyadda too, include their Twitter handle at the beginning. (Better yet, invite them to Pinyadda!)
  5. Share a discussion to Twitter. If you’re part of or come across a great discussion on an article on Pinyadda that your followers on Twitter would like, simply enter  something like “check out this great discussion about X” when sharing the link to Twitter. (Tip: Combining #4 and #5 is killer if you know someone’s really into a subject,e.g. tweeting “thought you’d want in on this convo.”)
  6. Promote a site you think is great. If you come across a site on Pinyadda you want your Twitter followers to know about, simply visit that site’s page and click on the big blue “share this site” button. You can even customize the message you want to tweet out with it.
  7. Share your profile on Pinyadda to Twitter. Want people to know what topics and sites you follow, how many followers you’ve gained, and what you’ve pinned on Pinyadda? (We like to call this your news graph.) Simply tweet out the URL to your Pinyadda profile or include it in your Twitter bio.
  8. Share your Yadda shwag to boost your cred on Twitter. Pinyadda’s points system allows you to compete to earn coveted spots as the “Maven” of topics or “Ambassadors” of your favorite sites. You can also unlock fun badges (some even have coupon codes attached) just for pinning the news you’re into. For example, we teamed up with the marketing gurus over at Hubspot and you can earn their Inbound Marketing Ninja badge set by pinning inbound marketing news. You can share all this cred by clicking on what you’ve earned from your profile. Want to be the Maven of Twitter?  Sounds like it’s time to get your yadda on!

Connecting Pinyadda to your Twitter account is easy.

Connecting Pinyadda with your Twitter account is simple. Choose an article you want to tweet, enter text you’d like to tweet in the comment box, select the Twitter checkbox, and hit the “Pin it” button (click here for a 30-second video). If it’s your first time doing this you’ll be prompted with a pop-up to enter your Twitter username and password. Once that’s done, the text in the comment box and a unique short URL will hit your Twitter feed.

When one of your Twitter followers clicks on the link, they’ll be brought to a page with the article. If the text you entered in the comment box exceed Twitter’s 140 character limit, Pinyadda automatically truncates. Rest assured, because when your Twitter followers click the URL they’ll see your full comment.

To manage your Twitter account on Pinyadda, visit the Contacts tab of your settings. There you can even see who out of the people you follow on Twitter are also on Pinyadda.

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Do you have other examples of great ways to share news to Twitter?  How can we make sharing links to Twitter better for you? Leave your thoughts in the comments!

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Chase Garbarino

Introducing the News Graph

Chase Garbarino | May 25th, 2010

For the last couple of years, much of the focus regarding the evolution of the web has centered on the concept of the social graph.  The social graph, or the digital collective set of personal connections established by users on social networking sites, has laid the foundation for deeper engagement with others online.  We update our personal networks on everything from the mundane eating of a sandwich to marriage proposals, separations and births.  Simply, our social lives are now hosted online for our worlds to see.

As the web has evolved, and we have evolved with it, we have started to see that “one size fits all” doesn’t apply to graphing our personal connections online, and more particularly it does not apply when hosting different types of user behaviors.  This is why we manage and engage with our business connections on Linkedin and not typically on Facebook, to give one example.   Considering that social media is still a very young medium, it is safe to expect that more platforms will emerge hosting different connection types and user behaviors.

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Chase Garbarino

Facebook, Twitter and Buzz: Who shares your personal information best?

Chase Garbarino | March 4th, 2010

John Perry Barlow, co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, once stated that, “Relying on the government to protect your privacy is like asking a peeping tom to install your window blinds.” After Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s recent comments about the death of privacy, one has to wonder whether Barlow’s statement may be more relevant to the times if phrased: “Relying on the government to protect your privacy is like asking Facebook to respect the private information of its users.”

While there are plenty of smart people arguing the pros and cons of the effects of Facebook’s new privacy changes and Google Buzz’s auto-following model on users’ private information online, I am more interested in the business implications of these developments.  The industry powers like Facebook and Google seem to be in a mad dash to make more information public; however, I wonder if this push for extended network connectivity is smart for all networks.

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Cheryl Morris

The Power of the Collective Mind in the Workplace

Cheryl Morris | February 5th, 2010

We’ve had amazing discussions around article content on Pinyadda this week. The ideas and knowledge being shared is incredible. It underscores how our information system can really advance the power of the collective mind. I also had the pleasure of listening to Mikolaj Jan Piskorski (Misiek) speak this week, who believes there is an unfulfilled need for a social networking platform for internal use at companies. By enabling and facilitating collective intelligence, Pinyadda could be an effective social networking platform for fostering innovation, communication, and community in the workplace. (more…)

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Austin Gardner-Smith

For Newspapers, Closed Access is an Open Invitation for Failure

Austin Gardner-Smith | January 22nd, 2010

Last February, The New York Times announced they’d be opening up their archives via an API. I was pumped. It was a really cool development that didn’t quite get the attention it deserved, and it made me believe that the Times “gets it,” something I often say about that institution when the newspaper industry comes up in conversation (if that doesn’t happen to you, well, just pretend – the point is that I stick up for the Times).

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Austin Gardner-Smith

Content Evangelism, or, Why Big Media Should Pay Its Readers

Austin Gardner-Smith | January 13th, 2010

Tonight I emailed someone I follow on an un-named social network. It felt a little bit creepy and a little bit exciting, much like friending a not-quite-mutual acquaintance on Facebook once felt. I have been following this person for over a year, and almost all of their posts resonated with me because we share a similar aesthetic sense of what it means for something to be well-done, or successfully designed, or generally pleasing to the senses.

So why, after nearly a year of asymmetric loyalty (web voyeurism, almost) did I reach out today? The answer is relatively simple, but it tells a complex story about how media trends are changing. I wanted to know where this person found the inspiration for their posts, many of which contain fantastic photos seemingly culled from a vast repository of design-oriented source material that I can’t find, despite what I consider relatively exhaustive searches.

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Cheryl Morris

What Domino’s Could Learn From Sean Ellis

Cheryl Morris | January 12th, 2010

Dear Dominos,

Thanks for reiterating the critical feedback you received from customers in a $75mm ad campaign and subsequently not making the necessary changes to satisfy your customers taste buds. It’s a great example of how not to go about finding product market fit.

When I first saw Domino’s video ad (no, not the one from a few months ago where employees blew snot rockets on some very unlucky customers’ food) I gave immediate props for taking on their “harshest critics” and was interested (and hungry) enough to place an order for delivery. Result 1: Domino’s counts a $16 incremental sale, directly attributable to the campaign. The delivery smell quickly brought me back to my late-night, freshman fifteen and I was as excited as ever to try the new recipe. A few bites later, and the verdict: slightly spicier sauce, maybe less-greasy cheese and the same tasteless, cardboard crust. Domino’s ad campaign had tricked me into believing they had actually made a good pizza, but upon taste instead lived up to being a “sad excuse for real pizza.” Just about everyone I’ve asked has voiced similar sentiments. Result 2: Let down customer.

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Kevin McCarthy

TechCrunch, Mashable, ReadWriteWeb, VentureBeat: Who Publishes the Most about Twitter?

Kevin McCarthy | January 11th, 2010

Rolling Stone recently published the Top 100 Albums of the Decade. To my surprise, not one but two Bruce Springsteen albums made the top 25 (The Rising at 15 and Magic at 24). Now, as blasphemous as this sounds coming from a Jersey man, there is no way that Magic belongs in top 100 of the decade or even the top 100 of 2007.

Why is Bruce so blatantly overrepresented in this countdown? The only answer is that Bruce Springsteen is important to the Rolling Stone business. When Bruce does well, Rolling Stone sells more magazines/ad space. This got me thinking about social media…

What about Twitter? Which of the four major tech blogs (TechCrunch, Mashable, ReadWriteWeb and VentureBeat) publishes the most content about Twitter? For this, I took a quick look at our Pinyadda index from November and formulated the following chart (click image to enlarge):

Twitter-centric Posts as % of all Posts:
TechCrunch, Mashable, ReadWriteWeb and VentureBeat


As you can see, TechCrunch is far and wide the most prolific of the publications, producing approximately 2 times the amount of content as Mashable, 4.5 times the amount as ReadWriteWeb and 3.3 times the amount as VentureBeat.

Scanning titles and various meta-data for ‘twitter’, it appears that only 7.8% of TechCrunch’s articles are about Twitter. Compare that the the 8.6% for VentureBeat, 15.1% for ReadWriteWeb and a whopping 20.7% for Mashable.

Yes, one-fifth of Mashable’s content for the month of November was Twitter-centric. Imagine, if you will, that Twitter’s popularity wanes (gasp!). What is Mashable to do? Produce less content? Unlikely. Fill the gaping content hole with other content? Likely.

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Austin Gardner-Smith

Product Trends of 2010

Austin Gardner-Smith | January 5th, 2010

From a product standpoint, it’s hard to deny that 2009 has been the year of the Twitter explosion. For better or worse, the simple microblogging service has changed the way we think about social media, ingrained the phrase “real-time” in all of our brains, and left our centuries-old grammatical traditions rotting in the attic, sacrificed in the name of 140-character uber-brevity.

Twitter, with its revolutionary open platform, has also forever changed the way web applications think about their data and the possibilities that come from sharing it, instead of hoarding it. The implications of this are vast and I suspect will be long-standing. Many have and will continue to wonder if this decision will have positive or negative effects on Twitter’s revenue model, and perhaps only time will tell. But it has made it nearly impossible to create a product strategy that doesn’t involve an API.

Though this may be the most important product influence to come from Twitter, there are a few more that I suspect will make their way into many of the new entries into the consumer internet market next year. To be sure, Twitter isn’t the only thing to cause these trends, but it’s almost certainly the most important. Without further ado, here are the things I expect to see in profusion over the coming year:

- The dominance of the stream. While we may have already seen the stream format of content consumption take the wheel, 2010 will be the year it achieves total domination. In recent months we’ve seen stream-based models mosey their way into almost every corner of the internet, even penetrating the veritable Fort Knox of Google search results pages. With new services springing up on this model left and right and more and more people getting comfortable with their format and aesthetics, I wouldn’t be surprised if more than one major media outlet (read newspaper) moved entirely toward a stream-based interface. And I think they’d all be smart to adopt some version of it – the box and column layout of print never translated well to the web.

- Asymmetric social connections. It used to be simple: I’m your friend, so you’re my friend, right? Wrong. Twitter and every other social media service have brought us into the era of one-to-many communication – the “follow” model. I can follow you, you don’t have to follow me. While at first glance it seems to make relationships less meaningful, it can often make them more useful. From location services to music streaming, asymmetric connections are making all kinds of social services easier to engage with and more valuable.

- Stackable networking. This is the phenomenon I like to think about as ‘everyone plays nice with everyone else,’ and it’s almost – dare I say it? – web socialism. But the web has always been a symbiotic culture, of sorts, and the emergence of open data platforms and the adoption of a few open (err, mostly open, thanks FB) protocols is ultimately something that creates more value for everyone. Sure, some of these companies are probably bleeding value by outsourcing their networks, in a sense, but if that’s the case they probably aren’t going to make it anyways. The community of applications gets more powerful and more efficient, and ultimately the users are the ones that win. All in all it’s a good trend and one we’ll see continue in 2010.

- Privately created, publicly available curations. Twitter Lists is the easiest example to cite here, but there are tons of other examples of this phenomenon: music blogs and services like blip.fm and last.fm, product wish lists like those we find on Amazon and now others, and the thousands of lists of books, movies – almost anything you can imagine. I think we’ll see lots of ways to curate and then publish personalized content materialize in 2010, and we hope Pinyadda’s a big part of that trend. By giving our users a unique way to discover content from all over web and easily share what they’ve found, we hope that we might make the process of consuming content on the web just a little more enjoyable and social in 2010.

What do you think about the future of the consumer internet? Are we destined for a fundamental shift in the way we experience the web, or just a continuation of the trends we’ve already seen? And what will come of Twitter? Leave your predictions in the comments.

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Chase Garbarino

Tearing Down Bridges in Order to Connect the World

Chase Garbarino | December 16th, 2009
I recently had an interesting conversation about how the Internet is changing the structure of people’s social graphs that I thought I would share here. I have written before about the concept of the “weak tie” (WT) in network analysis and the important role they play in the dissemination of information through social networks (link to Granovetter’s Strength of WT paper). My recent conversation was about the extinction of “bridges” online. A bridge is formally defined as an edge within a graph that if deleted, would cause its endpoints to to lie in different components of a graph. An easier way to understand a bridge is to see the image to the right – the members of the two groups would have no connections to the other group if Bill and Mike did not have a relationship. Their connection is the bridge between the two groups.
Building your social graph has become relatively frictionless online – the click of a button on a social network or the sending of an email creates a connection between you and another person, most of which would be classified as “weak ties”. However, as our graphs expand and we interact with more people online, the concept of a bridge is beginning to face extinction. Interaction used to have physical limitations before the Internet, and as the web and specifically social media evolves, our interactions with people are increasing exponentially. While bridges are far from being extinct – our world’s population is around 7B and world Internet population is around 1.67B as of June 2009 according to Miniwatts Marketing Group – it will inevitably happen at some point. In fact, once global internet use rises above 50-60%, the extinction of bridges will be expedited significantly.
So what does this mean for theories like Granovetter’s and the overall social structure with regards to the dissemination of information? Well, starting with the first part of the question, Granovetter’s theory will still hold. Good information will still pass through weak ties, since your strong ties typically have access to much of the same information that you do which does not lead to the discovery of new things. Granovetter simply used the concept of a bridge to validate a weak tie within a network, so future studies of information dissemination will have to find more sophisticated ways to determine the strength of people’s relationships – such as measuring the amount of times people interact through different platforms, how they interact, what they share, etc. The range of measurements on ties will increase, and we will see many more relational classifications. Many fascinating theories and insights will come from these advanced studies. We will begin to see a rapid increase in these starting in the next 2-3 years.
The effect on the overall social structure that the extinction of bridges will have is already starting to show. It is democratizing. It allows for the free and open exchange of information and ideas that in the past was stymied by physical restraints of delivery and production systems, as well as oppressive people with power over others – the production and delivery restraints and pretty much gone, and oppression will struggle to survive as the world becomes mores connected. I believe movements like those seen in Iran will become more commonplace as coordination and communication between peoples online is very hard to prevent.
Bridge extinction is bringing incredible collaboration and competition to just about everything in the world. Typically in the past bridges were symbols of connection and progress, however in the digital age we live in, it is the extinction of bridges that is bringing people from all over the world closer together for good.

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