Marketers Studio - David Berkowitz's Marketing Blog

Six Questions for 100 Metrics

What can the scores of social media metrics available really tell you about the success of your marketing programs? It's fitting to start the exploration with a question, since we'll focus on six of them now: Who, What, Where, When, Why, and How.

Last week, we looked at 100 ways to measure social media, a master list that's meant to give marketers an idea of all of the metrics they can consider. As many commenters observed, a given marketer may not even need 90% of the list. What matters are the metrics that any marketer is held accountable for, such as sales or customer satisfaction. Just as important in this context are the relevant metrics that either act as proxies for measuring a marketer's core objectives, or that can give marketers a deeper understanding of how effective their efforts are.

A master list of 100 metrics is rather daunting. One way to make it more manageable is to look at which metrics answer which of the six questions posed above. I have to give credit here to my colleagues at my agency 360i, who heavily shaped my thinking around applying these questions. To be fair to them though, they haven't vetted this breakout, so any errors in judgment here are mine alone.

Below is a sampling of how the 100 metrics help answer the six questions. The complete list is available on my blog, and also accessible via the shortened URL bit.ly/whowhat.

WHO - Who interacted? What do you know about these consumers?

·       Fans, followers, friends

·       Demographics of audience reached through social media

·       Social media habits/interests of target audience

·       Customers assisted

·       Attendance generated at in-person events

WHAT - What was discussed? What was shared? What did consumers engage with?

·       Volume of consumer-created buzz for a brand based on number of posts or impressions

·       Buzz by stage in purchase funnel (e.g., researching vs. completing transaction vs. post-purchase)

·       Rate of virality, embedding, or downloading

·       Clicks, view-throughs, interactions

·       Leads generated or products sampled

WHERE - Where were the conversations happening, whether in terms of the social channels or the geography of the consumers reached?

·       Buzz by social channel (forums, social networks, blogs, Twitter, etc)

·       Influence of publishers reached (e.g., blogs)

·       Geography of participating consumers

·       Registrations from third-party social logins (e.g., Facebook Connect, Twitter OAuth)

·       Registrations by channel (e.g., Web, desktop application, mobile application, SMS, etc)

WHEN - When did the results happen? When did other promotions run that could have had an impact on a social marketing program?

·       Shift in buzz over time

·       Buzz by time of day / daypart

·       Seasonality of buzz

·       Change in virality rates over time

·       Impact of offline marketing/events on social marketing programs or buzz

WHY - Why were consumers engaging or feeling this way?

·       Sentiment by volume of posts or impressions

·       Shift in sentiment before, during, and after social marketing programs

·       Increase in searches due to social activity

·       Attributes of tags (e.g., how well they match the brand's perception of itself)

·       Customer satisfaction

HOW - How much of an impact did the social marketing have? How do results hold up against benchmarks? How do they translate to brand metrics? How does this add to the bottom line?

·       Brand association, purchase consideration

·       Savings per customer assisted through direct social media interactions compared to other channels (e.g., call centers, in-store)

·       Suggestions implemented from social feedback

·       Impact on online or offline sales, or on other offline behavior

·       Conversion change due to user ratings, reviews

Again, this is meant to be a start -- just one lens for viewing the possibilities of social media measurement. Some metrics can also answer multiple questions. More important is the process of asking the questions, and then figuring out the best possible way to answer them through the ever-expanding possibilities that social media offers.

The Who, What, Where, When, Why, and How of the 100 Ways to Measure Social Media

As another way to look at the 100 ways to measure social media, I've broken it out into how the metrics answer six key questions: Who, What, Where, When, Why, and How.

I welcome your thoughts on this in the comments and look forward to exploring more ways to organize this.

WHO – Who interacted? What do you know about these consumers?

1.  Fans

2.  Followers

3.  Friends

4.  Growth rate of fans, followers, and friends

5.  Second-degree reach (connections to fans, followers, and friends exposed - by people or impressions)

6.  Influence of consumers reached

7.  Demographics of target audience engaged with social channels

8.  Demographics of audience reached through social media

9.  Social media habits/interests of target audience

10.  Languages spoken by participating consumers

11.  Customers assisted

12.  Number of chat room participants

13.  Wiki contributors

14.  Responses to socially posted events

15.  Attendance generated at in-person events

16.  Employees reached (for internal programs)

17.  Job applications received

 

A Book Review for Big Heads: Start-Up Nation

 
A country of about 7 million people leads the world in venture capital investments per capita, leads all countries outside of the U.S. for number of companies on the NASDAQ, and leads in civilian research & development expenditures.

In Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel's Economic Miracle, Dan Senor and Saul Singer attempt to answer how that's possible. And they answer how periods of massive growth have occurred even during times of conflict such as the Second Intifadah and the Second Lebanon War. They make one heck of a case.

If my relatives read my blog, I could predict their reaction - "It's about time. You mentioned 14 books - 14! - about Egypt, and what, you couldn't mention one on Israel where you also just traveled to, to spend a short visit with your family?"

Here, Israel finally gets its due.  The book's title sells a miracle and delivers on it. Anyone focused on technology, venture capital, innovation, or geopolitics for that matter should love this.

The answers lie heavily in the army. Even when they're not talking about the army, they're talking about it. They're talking about what officers did when they came out of it. They're talking about how the military was created in the first place, and how it's still evolving today. They're talking about civilian industries that had their roots in the army. And then for a bit, they have a section on immigration - notably Soviet immigration - that doesn't have as much to do with the military.

Here's one example of thought process that comes from the army:

In the Israeli army, soldiers are divided into those who think with a rosh gadol - literally, a "big head" - and those who operate with a rosh katan, or "little head." Rosh katan behavior, which is shunned, means interpreting orders as narrowly as possible to avoid taking on responsibility or extra work. Rosh gadol thinking means following orders but doing so in the best possible way, using judgment, and investing whatever effort is necessary. It emphasizes improvisation over discipline, and challenging the chief over respect and hierarchy.

And yet, it's not all about the army after all. It's about people who have made the most about their training in the army. And it's about people who have taken obstacles - living in a desert surrounded by enemies with too many makeshift industries to name - and turned them into opportunities.

I'll admit it, it's inspiring. And it's a good, quick read where you'll also learn a few surprising tidbits about the history of the semiconductor industry and the future of the automotive industry. The book's full of this rosh gadol thinking, and your rosh probably will get something out of it.

100 Ways to Measure Social Media

Originally published in MediaPost's Social Media Insider

If there's anyone out there left who says you can't measure social media, here are a hundred answers.

At most of the events I've been to lately, measurement continues to be a hot topic. The first question that comes up is, "What can I measure?" That's where this cheat sheet can come in handy: a list of 100 thought-starters.

Some entries here can be interpreted several ways. Depending on how you define them, some of these metrics may seem redundant, while others may seem so broad that they can be broken out further. Many of these can be combined with each other to create new metrics that can then be tracked over time. It's a start, though, so dive in and consider which ones may apply to programs you're working on.

1.     Volume of consumer-created buzz for a brand based on number of posts

2.     Amount of buzz based on number of impressions

3.     Shift in buzz over time

4.     Buzz by time of day / daypart

5.     Seasonality of buzz

6.     Competitive buzz

7.     Buzz by category / topic

8.     Buzz by social channel (forums, social networks, blogs, Twitter, etc)

9.     Buzz by stage in purchase funnel (e.g., researching vs. completing transaction vs. post-purchase)

10.  Asset popularity (e.g., if several videos are available to embed, which is used more)

11.  Mainstream media mentions

12.  Fans

13.  Followers

14.  Friends

15.  Growth rate of fans, followers, and friends

16.  Rate of virality / pass-along

17.  Change in virality rates over time

18.  Second-degree reach (connections to fans, followers, and friends exposed - by people or impressions)

19.  Embeds / Installs

20.  Downloads

21.  Uploads

22.  User-initiated views (e.g., for videos)

23.  Ratio of embeds or favoriting to views

24.  Likes / favorites

25.  Comments

26.  Ratings

27.  Social bookmarks

28.  Subscriptions (RSS, podcasts, video series)

29.  Pageviews (for blogs, microsites, etc)

30.  Effective CPM based on spend per impressions received

31.  Change in search engine rankings for the site linked to through social media

32.  Change in search engine share of voice for all social sites promoting the brand

33.  Increase in searches due to social activity

34.  Percentage of buzz containing links

35.  Links ranked by influence of publishers

36.  Percentage of buzz containing multimedia (images, video, audio)

37.  Share of voice on social sites when running earned and paid media in same environment

38.  Influence of consumers reached

39.  Influence of publishers reached (e.g., blogs)

40.  Influence of brands participating in social channels

41.  Demographics of target audience engaged with social channels

42.  Demographics of audience reached through social media

43.  Social media habits/interests of target audience

44.  Geography of participating consumers

45.  Sentiment by volume of posts

46.  Sentiment by volume of impressions

47.  Shift in sentiment before, during, and after social marketing programs

48.  Languages spoken by participating consumers

49.  Time spent with distributed content

50.  Time spent on site through social media referrals

51.  Method of content discovery (search, pass-along, discovery engines, etc)

52.  Clicks

53.  Percentage of traffic generated from earned media

54.  View-throughs

55.  Number of interactions

56.  Interaction/engagement rate

57.  Frequency of social interactions per consumer

58.  Percentage of videos viewed

59.  Polls taken / votes received

60.  Brand association

61.  Purchase consideration

62.  Number of user-generated submissions received

63.  Exposures of virtual gifts

64.  Number of virtual gifts given

65.  Relative popularity of content

66.  Tags added

67.  Attributes of tags (e.g., how well they match the brand's perception of itself)

68.  Registrations from third-party social logins (e.g., Facebook Connect, Twitter OAuth)

69.  Registrations by channel (e.g., Web, desktop application, mobile application, SMS, etc)

70.  Contest entries

71.  Number of chat room participants

72.  Wiki contributors

73.  Impact of offline marketing/events on social marketing programs or buzz

74.  User-generated content created that can be used by the marketer in other channels

75.  Customers assisted

76.  Savings per customer assisted through direct social media interactions compared to other channels (e.g., call centers, in-store)

77.  Savings generated by enabling customers to connect with each other

78.  Impact on first contact resolution (FCR) (hat tip to Forrester Research for that one)

79.  Customer satisfaction

80.  Volume of customer feedback generated

81.  Research & development time saved based on feedback from social media

82.  Suggestions implemented from social feedback

83.  Costs saved from not spending on traditional research

84.  Impact on online sales

85.  Impact on offline sales

86.  Discount redemption rate

87.  Impact on other offline behavior (e.g., TV tune-in)

88.  Leads generated

89.  Products sampled

90.  Visits to store locator pages

91.  Conversion change due to user ratings, reviews

92.  Rate of customer/visitor retention

93.  Impact on customer lifetime value

94.  Customer acquisition / retention costs through social media

95.  Change in market share

96.  Earned media's impact on results from paid media

97.  Responses to socially posted events

98.  Attendance generated at in-person events

99.  Employees reached (for internal programs)

100.  Job applications received

There you go. I welcome other entries in the comments. It's also just the start of the answer to the broader question: "How do I measure it?" Ultimately, you need to start with figuring out your business objectives and then apply these metrics accordingly.

Allstate Insurance’s Social Media Case Study at BDI Event

Continuing the coverage of BDI’s Social Consumer: B2C Case Studies, Allstate Insurance’s Marcia Hansen, responsible for direct marketing, talked about Allstate’s social media program. More at @marciahansen and @allstate, (For more coverage, see the tweet recap from the McDonald’s case study)

Approach:

• Provide educational and entertaining content, largely focused on Vehicle Vibes
• Video series: Vehicle Vibes - http://www.vehiclevibes.com/car-maintenance-video-series/ 
  • 5 month period: syndicated videos. 6.4 million impressions, 4.9% of people who viewed the video clicked.
  • Car Smarts Challenge Videos – www.youtube.com/vehiclevibes
• Allstate games on Vehicle Vibes – reskins popular games
• Friender Benders – choose a character, play a game where you try to avoid bad video habits
• Blog Talk Radio – Vehicle Vibes weekly radio show focusing on women

Summary of Approach: Give People a Reason to Talk

1. Write entertaining, educational content
2. Take informal video and post widely
3. Make content easy to share by people and search engines
4. Sponsor conferences and give away promotional items

Content Tips

1. Shoot for remarkable Content
2. Define categories, tips for SEO
3. Add popular topics to your content mix
4. When it comes to videos, new tools make it easy… but a professional touch helps polish it

Tweet Highlights

prnewswire: Marcia, @Allstate , says she's not allowed to talk about insurance online (bc of dif laws in def states). Interesting! #bdi

FlightpathNY: #bdi @allstate: repackage same content in various mediums. Video, games, blogs, podcasts. Making it easier to access.

sparklingruby: Write remarkable content, but don't underestimate the amount of time it takes to get one piece of regular content published @allstate #bdi

theonswitch: Who knew insurance marketing could be so much fun? Thanks Marci Hansen @Allstate #BDI

sirmichael: Who knew?! RT @thenotoriousmeg: It is illegal to push a moose out of your car in Alaska, sez @Allstate (I Googled it #bdi peeps)

Spitting & Twitting – plus more on WineTwits in Social Media Insider

Originally published in MediaPost’s Social Media Insider

It's tempting to say the best thing about the wine-tasting event Spit & Twit was the name, and maybe it was, but what made an even bigger impression was how social media is changing the nature of real-world events. It also showed the limitations of being digitally and physically social at once.

At City Winery in Manhattan, WineTwits and others hosted Spit & Twit with a few dozen wineries and importers sharing over 100 wines. Attendees were encouraged to tweet, and a good number did, with the #sptw hashtag racking up about 275 tweets during the event, plus other tweets without the tag and many more before and ever. The printed program, which I neglected to read until Nelly Yusupova (@DigitalWoman) showed it to me, listed hashtags for each wine, and WineTwits created an iPhone-optimized site making it easy to tweet about and rate each wine.

The tweets during Spit & Twit included the usual shout-outs and snarkiness, with a healthy mix of wine snobbery. Here's a sampling:

• WasitRodge: Ok. WineBerry is the sexiest boxed wines ever. #sptw
• leighleighsf: fave red, #ESRIOPST01/@blameitonrioja. awesome! fave white, #WIEWC07VO (harvested during full moon) #sptw
• castlebuilder: #sptw Served French wine by Kentucky gal. Je t'aime #frbxscbb05y'all!
• sarahmcsimmons: Dear girl in the plaid shirt, you are in our way. Could you please spit, twit, and move? #sptw

It was also a great event for taking photos. When I captured the Jam Jar and Dead Arm shiraz, the wine importer thought I was being so smart to keep a record of the wines I had, when all I was trying to do was get a good picture to tweet. As for the image's flipped orientation, I'm still figuring out how to tweet photos from the new Motorola Droid phone.

Spit & Twit felt like one of those events that's a sign of the times today but will soon feel archaic. It's as if a restaurant opened called Order and Be Served, or a musician went on the Watch Me Play Live Music and You'll Pay Another $40 for a T-Shirt Tour. Wine drinkers of a certain generation at larger tasting events will soon expect that sharing these experiences through social media is part of the event.

Right now, the process is still a bit clunky. Most people weren't tweeting, and for good reason. Imagine tasting a dozen wines (for starters), then taking a picture, crafting a message, and using the appropriate hashtags, all while finding a place to put down your wine and getting out of the way of the people on line behind you. The tweets did add some value though: attendees could look at the screen for recommendations, wine lovers not there could get some dirt (or terroir) on good wines, and the wineries could benefit from the broader buzz. Another potential add-on for future events, which WineTwits could probably build in a matter of hours if they don't do it already, is a list of the ratings, showing  live rankings of the top-rated wines there.

I asked WineTwits founder Stephen Gilberg for his thoughts on the event. He said, "The level of interactivity I saw [there] was amazing and unprecedented.  People were following other people's notes in real time (both via their handheld devices and onscreen) and you could see traffic flow to certain tables as the wines at those tables were being talked about."

He then elaborated more on where social media fits in with the buildup and aftermath of the event. He said, "It's definitely a learning process, and it's going to change as the market develops, but utilizing Twitter and Facebook  [was] central to the event's success.  You still need to reach out to traditional media to attract consumers. Email blasts are important as well. The next day the event lives on as people are still tweeting about it, and it's now a resource on WineTwits.com that will continue to grow."

You can find more of the interview on my blog, and you'll find Gilberg at many other social media-infused happy hours to come. Should you attend one, though, I'd recommend against spitting and twitting at the same time. Better still, go with a group and name a designated tweeter who can keep churning out 140 characters even after you've sampled 140 wines.

McDonald’s Social Media Case Study Presented at BDI – Tweet Roundup

I didn’t get to blog the McDonald’s case study from today’s Business Development Institute (BDI) The Social Consumer: B2C Case Studies and Roundtables event. Instead, I’ve curated the best tweets (plus a few of my own, since it’s my blog, so there). The speaker here is Heather Oldani, Director, Communications, McDonald's U.S.A., L.L.C..

mpranikoff: Attending the #BDI conference in NYC this morning. Lots of great peeps here - like @prnewswire ! Shld b good.

kaplowpr: Wow! Protestor takes the stage as @mcdonalds starts keynote case study - drama! #bdi

dberkowitz: At #bdi heckler takes stage and shouts at mcdonalds speaker and plugged mccruelty.com. heather from mcd was unfazed

mcdpartners: Attempted heckler here vs. McDonald's speaker was kind of pathetic - mumbling a paragraph makes you sound drunk. #bdi

KennethEd: I totally thought chicken girl was some sort of educational skit #bdi (I did too, but then the skit went on too long)

PR_ShopTalk: McDonald’s ranks 32 out of the top 100 “most social” brands according to McD's Social Media Guru, EATHER OLDANI #bdi

dberkowitz: Mcdonalds mentioned every 5 to 10 seconds online, every 10 to 20 seconds on twitter #bdi

RobLongert: #bdi Per @heather04 - Who owns social media? Customer owns comms channels and companies have the privilege to participate in them

wisepr: Not one dept owns SM says mcdonalds. Cust srvc, media, comm, etc. Don't see HR in there though. ? #bdi

SiobhanDullea: #bdi McD's has "conversation agents" to drive social media convos

RobLongert: Mickey Ds digital strategy per @heather04 - Go to them, be multidimensional, continue engagements, be transparent #bdi

chris_robison: Heather from mcdonalds. Go to your customers. Don't build microsites time and again and hope they come to you. #bdi

sandrafathi: McDonalds using Radian6 to monitor SM and using a scorecard to measure conversations. We do too! #bdi

SiobhanDullea: #bdi McDk's looking at bebo but outside US. US mainly FB and twitter

dberkowitz: marketing strategy for McDonald's includes Second Life... Grimace would get along SO well with the furries #bdi

prnewswire: #Twitter is a hub for conversation with customers, says @McDonalds#bdi

BrentLeary: @mcdonalds is uses localized twitter handles like @mcdonaldsatl for the folks in th atl. #bdi

megabucks11: wow- mcdonalds only has been on twitter for 5 months... Although trying to get localized content #bdi

thenotoriousmeg: wow even mcdonalds had to engage with customers on existing soc media, when they built their own, no one came. #bdi

jmp48: McDonalds says they have 6 to 8 Customer Service reps monitoring their Tweets around Customer Satisfaction. #bdi

BrentLeary: @Mcdonalds is also put this site together - StationM.comhttp://bit.ly/11Bgxa. #bdi (site is designed as a network and resource for employees – www.stationm.com )

sparklingruby: Ask yourself "how can we effectively engage" vs "should we engage" mcdonalds #bdi

dberkowitz: mcdonald's says myspace is important more as a "music portal" and ceded social networking to facebook #bdi (checking other tweets, it may have been “music entertainment portal” – I stand corrected)

PR_ShopTalk: Key takeaways from McDonald's Social Media strategy: Be flexible/nimble to new trends & open to feedback, be open and willing to listen #bdi

An aside: What I didn’t see in the tweets, oddly enough, was a mention of Voice of McDonald’s, the company’s American Idol-style competition with 12 finalists from 9 countries. http://vom.mcdonalds.com/ 

Your Egypt Reading List

Recently, I went on vacation throughout the Middle East, first in Egypt, then a quick stop in Jordan to see Petra, and ultimately spending the most time in Egypt. Gearing up for the trip, I read quite a bit to give me a taste of the history, culture, and people, and it was great exposure to some non-fiction and literature I may not have read otherwise.

If the subject interests you now or later, or you know someone going there, here are some recommendations from among my favorites that I read. I found them from a range of sources - Lonely Planet, friends, browsing bookstores, online recommendations. An authoritative list would include other works, like the Cairo trilogy by Naguib Mahfouz, but I tried reading the first (Palace Walk) and couldn't get into it. I also found modern fictional work Zaat's mixture of headlines and storyline creative but laborious, and Fight Club-esque Being Abbas El Abd way too weird while mercifully short.

Here are my favorite books that I read relating to Egypt and its environs. After adding so many - more than I anticipated - I broke them up into time periods.

Ancient Egypt

There are two great ancient history books by Barbara Mertz, a novelist and Egyptologist who has a knack for bringing mummies back to life (I'd have read more if only she had written others):

• Temples, Tombs, and Hieroglyphs: A Popular History of Ancient Egypt (Amazon, Borders)

• Red Land, Black Land: Daily Life in Ancient Egypt (Amazon, Borders)

It's hard to find a more fun read about Egypt than Agatha Christie's Death on the Nile. It is absolutely dated, but immensely entertaining, and it captures a lot of the beauty of the country. (Amazon, Borders)

Folklore

I have two recommendations for folklore, both of which written relatively recently but chronicling a history much older with stories that evolved over time, so they don't fit in neatly to one time period:

• A new translation and compilation of the tales of Kalila and Dimna by Ramsay Wood (introduced by Doris Lessing) is purely brilliant storytelling, as fables unfold within fables. I can't wait to read this one again. As Lessing introduces it, it's one of the great world classics that the Western world largely forgot about; you'll want to thank Wood for bringing it back. (Amazon, Borders)
• A more academic approach on the history of Arabian folklore comes from Hasan M. El-Shamy's Folktalkes of Egypt. He traveled the country recording a wide range of storytellers and captured some of the land's oral history, as well as its humor. (Amazon, BN.com)

Modern Egyptology and Anthropology (1800s-1950)

I read two books that focused on Howard Carter, the brash Egyptologist who discovered King Tut's tomb, but never could enjoy the glory he spent his life hoping to achieve:

• Daniel Meyerson's In the Valley of the Kings is a page-turning biography of Carter that also spends ample time bringing to life the partners and rivals he faced. For straight history, read this one.  (Amazon, Borders)
• The Murder of King Tut is a new work by novelist James Patterson, written with Martin Dugard. Patterson can't resist making himself a main character of the story, which is one weakness. The other is that he spends much of the book in a flashback to Tut's life with little material to go on, so much of it seems like fiction. My final gripe is that his conclusion on why Tut was murdered, which is why he said he wrote the book, unravels with no particular support, and no attempt to see how that theory compares with other possibilities, even if it is plausible. Despite all of that, if you can suspend disbelief, it's a good deal of fun, and it does paint a picture of both ancient Egypt and the time of Howard Carter. (Amazon, Borders)

While really about Saudi Arabia and not Egypt, I checked out Wilfred Thesiger's classic Arabian Sands about the five years he spent largely living with the Bedu (or Bedouins) in the late 1940s, exploring parts of the desert no Westerner had seen and meeting them largely before Western society impacted their lives. It's one of those travelogues that makes you wish you could see it firsthand, and simultaneously make you thankful for your comforts of home. (Amazon, Borders)

Pre- and Post-Revolutionary (1940s-50s)

Not surprisingly, Col. Nasser's coup that overthrew King Farouk in 1952 was a focal point both for literature and memoirs.

Beer in the Snooker Club is a decent look at Egyptian high society in the 1950s - not an amazing read, but an Egyptian classic from what I found, and memorable. Very quick read, and it does capture the period, both as perceived in Egypt and in England. (Amazon, Borders)

The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit is a wonderful, poignant memoir by Lucette Lagnado who grew up in Egypt in the mid 20th century. (Amazon, Borders)

Out of Egypt by Andre Aciman is also about a family's departure from Egypt, especially sad at times but full of great characters - though some of his best appear too sparingly. If you read just one memoir about growing up in and departing 20th century Egypt, read Sharkskin. (Amazon, Borders)

1990s-Present

If you're into politics and current events, read Dreams and Shadows: The Future of the Middle East by Robin Wright, covering Egypt and a number of other countries, reviewing how they fare with democratic institutions and a free press, and what obstacles are in their way. (Amazon, Borders)

The one must-read for modern fiction is The Yacoubian Building, a very progressive and risque look at a couple generations of Egyptians in a building in 1990s Cairo. It's just great storytelling. (Amazon, Borders)

To get a taste of modern Cairo, read Taxi by Khaled Al Khamissi. He interviewed dozens of cab drivers a few years ago, and it's great local color, covering everything from their personal lives to government gripes. (Amazon, Borders)

There you go. I welcome other suggestions in the comments and hope you'll come back to this list if the occasion strikes you.

Cover of Taxi

Exclusive Interview with WineTwits Founder Stephen Gilberg on Spit and Twit

I had the pleasure of attending the Spit & Twit wine tasting yesterday hosted by City Winery and WineTwits. A column on the event will be running in MediaPost's Social Media Insider, which includes a bit of the interview with WineTwits founder Stephen Gilberg. The full interview runs exclusively here:

David Berkowitz: What exactly makes Spit & Twit different from other wine & spirits events you’ve been a part of?

Stephen Gilberg: The level of interactivity I saw at the event was amazing and unprecedented.  People were following other people's notes in real time (both via their hand held devices and onscreen) and you could see traffic flow to certain tables as the wines at those tables were being talked about.

Now, searching through WineTwits.com after the event, all of this interaction and information lives on as a resource for both those attending and not attending. A typical event provides no means of openly sharing your notes both online and onscreen, in real time.  Check out all of these notes entered by @HDL: http://www.winetwits.com/tweets?user_id=34451

Here is the Spit & Twit page: http://www.winetwits.com/events/1311

Ultimately what made this event different, IMHO, was the tasting platform powered by both WineTwits LIVE and WineTwits MOBILE.

DB: Did you find the crowd there was more interested in spitting or twitting?

SG: Definitely a mix. I found that the crowd was very interactive and open to talking, chatting, twitting and tasting. The event logged nearly 400 tweets and growing!

DB: For these kinds of gatherings, do you find Twitter to be especially important during the initial promotion and buildup, during the event itself, or afterwards?

SG: It's definitely a learning process and its going to change as the market develops, but utilizing Twitter & Facebook are central to the event's success.  You still need to reach out to traditional media to attract consumers. Email blasts are important as well. The next day the event lives on as people are still tweeting about it, and it's now a resource on WineTwits.com that will continue to grow.

DB: Are these kinds of events just for active tweeters? Or do you find that they pull in new people to participate with Twitter or other social channels that might be involved?

SG: These events are definitely not just for active tweeters.  I do know the event definitely helped to drive home adoption of twitter use and really got people talking about Twitter and how they use it for business and personal.

Thanks Steve for the wine and event and social media insights. You can find him on Twitter at @winetwits.

First Thoughts on Motorola's Droid on Verizon

Droids attack! by Stéfan via Flickr

On Friday, I went to get a Droid, the new Motorola phone on Verizon running Google's Android operating system. Here are some initial reactions.

It's my first Android phone. It replaces the Samsung Omnia I had running Windows Mobile, a touchscreen-only phone with too many design flaws to name. I still have my iPhone for work, which I love as an email and gaming device but never used as a phone.

As for the Droid...

Google services: I'm an avid user of many things Google, from Gmail to Picasa to Maps. For me that's a huge plus to access these personal accounts. I easily went to Picasa, picked a recent photo from my trip to Egypt, and made it my phone's background.

Writing email: The option of a keyboard's great, though I found the touch screen easy to use, rivaling the iPhone, and perhaps even easier, though I'm not sure why as the keyboard's no bigger. It was very easy to set up.my work account too.

Interface: I really like the four default buttons of Back, Menu, Home, and Search. I had no clue how often I'd use the back button until I tried it here.

Screen: The size is similar to the iPhone, but the picture's especially beautiful. Transitions and animations add some X factor of elegance to the device.

Battery life: Nothing special here. But it is removable so you can get a spare or replacement if it totally fails you.

Maps: I haven't yet explored all of the features here, but the basic directions - for me, via public transport in NYC - are easy. I know there are major competitive advantages over the iPhone here, but I'll get to those later. 

Sound quality: Maybe there's some halo effect and this is imagined, but I'm convinced the sound is clearer on this device than any other I owned. When I called grandmom (and of course I call grandmom), it sounded like she was right next to me. Just great, I'll get Androidish guilt.

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Applications: A lot of my favorites from the iPhone app store seem to be available, and I'm learning (often via Twitter) about comparable ones, like Twidroid for Twitter. The app store's easy to use, but some of the paid apps are in foreign currency like British pounds and I wish it all defaulted to dollars (or your local currency of choice). Many apps, like Twitter and Google Talk, can run in the background without slowing down the phone. Payments are synced to Google Accounts; updating Google Checkout information can be done on the phone but is especially easy from the Web.

Room for Improvement:

• I haven't figured out copy and paste yet. I even watched a video demo (videos are easy to view on the phone), but it seemed to pull up different menus than my phone did.
• Multi-touch is missing. The zooming in is easy though.
• A longer lasting battery would be nice. But wouldn't it always?
• Is there even desktop software to manage my phone? Could come in handy.
• Can I take screenshots on the phone as easily as on the iPhone? That's been very helpful for client presentations for the iPhone. There are lots of things I just don't know if I can do yet.

I welcome hearing about your favorite features and apps as I learn what it can do.