If you click an outbound link on Twitter.com and immediately hit stop, your browser’s address bar will display something something similar to:

http://twitter.com/link_click_count?url=http%3A%2F%2Fsu.pr%2F1VF3eU&linkType=web&tweetId=3822962256&userId=17594917&authenticity_token=fa92ae1a3b002f6051a9f8d304cef09e0095ee09

If you allow this link to continue loading, you will be redirected to the URL on which you clicked via a 0.1 second meta refresh.

Let’s take a look at what information Twitter is collecting.

http://twitter.com/link_click_count

It appears fairly obvious that Twitter’s aim is to count clicks on outbound links.

url=http%3A%2F%2Fsu.pr%2F1VF3eU

If you’re not familiar with URL encoding, don’t let the messy-looking characters scare you. This is the equivalent of http://su.pr/1VF3eU

linkType=web

Refers to where the link was clicked. At this time, it appears that Twitter is only tracking links on Twitter.com. The existence of this parameter seems to be evidence that they are considering expanding beyond that.

tweetId=3822962256

A unique number assigned to every Tweet. Combining this number with the username of its Tweeter will display the status update: http://twitter.com/seanwf/status/3822962256

userId=17594917

This number is used to uniquely identify each Twitter user; roughly equivalent to their username.

authenticity_token=fa92ae1a3b002f6051a9f8d304cef09e0095ee09

A unique random string value. This security measure was unfortunately exploited by the hacker behind the StalkDaily Worm fiasco.

What Does Twitter Know?

We can glean from this that Twitter now has access to a smorgasbord of information about links on Twitter.com. As it turns out, the “authenticity_token” mentioned above is actually a cookie-based string. What this means to us is that Twitter can track a user’s click-behavior over multiple accounts.

Twitter can correlate your click-behavior with all of the information related to your account including:

• Name
• Location
• Bio
• Homepage
• Following
• Followers
• Date Joined
• Time Zone
• Tweets

The same data is available about the user who shared the link with you and any users mentioned in the tweet. All data related to the Tweet containing the link is also tied to your click such as:

• Date Created
• Users Mentioned
• Application Used

Good for Twitter, Bad for Users

Personally, I have noticed that this redirection adds a noticeable lag when loading external pages. It appears that I am not the only one experiencing this unfortunate side-effect. Another negative consequence to users is that when Twitter experiences server issues, the outbound links on Twitter.com may stop working.

Twitter has yet to announce any plans to make this data available to developers. Could this be part of a larger strategy to make Twitter.com relevant despite less than 10% of the platform’s traffic passing through the website? One thing is certain. This new feature gives Twitter access to an enormous quantity of valuable information that can be used to generate revenue through their new commercial accounts.

Delving Deeper into the Data – Twitter Demographics

In my next post, we will be exploring the demographics of Twitter users through a meta-analysis of about a dozen data sets. What we learn may surprise you and challenge some assumptions about the types of people using the micro-blogging platform.

Notes

Photo curteosy of Flickr and:

Related Posts:

• Social Media for Small Business – Yoono Models Best Practices
• Researching the Validity of Online Competitive Intelligence Tools – Introduction
• 10 Reasons You MUST Attend IZEAfest 2009

Twitter’s “Link Click Count” Provides Analytics, Revenue, & 503 Errors

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For those of us experienced in Internet marketing, concision is not a novel concept. Over the past decade we have grown accustomed to creating ads with attention-grabbing 25-character titles and 70-character body text. By comparison, Twitter’s 140-character limit represents a canvas of possibility. However, most people have not learned how to effectively work within these constraints and feel much more comfortable writing without them. Unfortunately, as we have learned (often the hard way) through an unending cycle of A/B split tests, the battle for attention is quick, nuanced, and unforgiving.

Rethinking Flawed Paradigms

Whether we are selling our services, applying for a new job, or developing our professional network our objective is usually the same. We want to garner the attention of the best potential employers, partners, and clients. The problem is that we can become derailed before we begin because of some fundamental flaws in perception.

Differentiate Yourself from the Competition

A common first mistake is to focus on differentiating ourselves from our competition (other applicants, agencies, etc.). This approach relies on the assumption that we only need to be better than the alternatives to seize a given opportunity. There are some serious flaws with this paradigm.

Being the “best of the bunch” does not mean getting what we are seeking. Even if we far outshine our competitors, there is still a good chance that nobody is chosen and the opportunity simply fades away.

Deciding who is “most qualified” is subjective and often plagued with biases. We know that numerous additional (and often uncontrollable) factors such as sex and attractiveness are quite influential in the decision-making process.

Fortunately, the solution is relatively simple. Acknowledge reality. You do not have competition. More importantly, be clear about why. The truth is that there are really only two options if long-term job security is something you desire.

1. Be the best in the world at what you do.
2. Do something in a way that no one else can.

Life is competitive but your competitors are not “out there.” There is only one person who can push you beyond your limits towards greatness. Take a look in the mirror. Play in your own league and be proud of it.

Practice and Prepare for Anything

Being prepared is important. However, preparation does not mean having all of the answers ahead of time. Effective communication is not something one can “cram” for. In the long-run, our interactions with others respect the same rules governing all natural systems. Stephen R. Covey coined this “The Law of the Harvest” in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. How far would athletes get if they trained for triathlons like most of us prepare for interviews?

Memorizing responses to potential interview questions is a surefire way to guarantee mediocre results. Interviewers are inundated by carefully crafted canned responses rehearsed the night before. Do not fall prey to temptation and hold parts of yourself back. Be original, interesting, and bold. Be a breath of fresh air in a stuffy room. Aim for something between intriguing and outrageous. Most importantly, be true to yourself. Acknowledge your weaknesses and be proud that you are working hard to strengthen them.

So how should you prepare? Rather than getting ready for a specific situation, invest energy now in self-exploration. For those who truly know and trust themselves, the right words always come forth effortlessly. Being prepared means being adaptable and able to perform regardless of situational factors. You cannot always control the situation, but you can always keep the situation from controlling you.

Slow Fast and Steady Wins

The Twitter phenomenon has taught us that both speed and concision are essential to surviving in a Web 2.0 world. Cutting expenses and removing inefficiencies are now the top priorities in many industries. In this environment, waiting is simply not an option. The longer a position goes unfilled the more likely it will be written off as “unnecessary.”

The need for speed hammers home the necessity of maintaining a constant state of readiness. By the time we recognize an opportunity it is often already too late to seize it. It is impractical to waste time waiting and preparing for good things to come your way. Successful people know that the most valuable opportunities are created, not seized. The only practical choice is proactively forge our own life-changing moments.

Who Are You, What Do You Want, & Why Should I Care?

Creating opportunities on the fly requires that we always be ready to answer three important questions in an interesting but succinct blurb.

1. Who Are You?

The most obvious answers: your name, title, recognitions, experience, etc. are quite often the least important in the crucial early stages of attention-seeking. As we have learned through years of optimizing PPC ad text;

Using your company name or website domain in the first line of ad text does not typically attract more clicks unless you are advertising an established company with a compelling brand that can distinguish your ad from others.

In most cases, your credentials will not open doors for you. They are far more useful when it comes to closing a sale.

The only way to effectively answer this question is through truly knowing yourself. Drop the labels, titles, and keywords and what remains are your passions. Passion drives attention. Focusing on things that you do not care about is drudgery. When asked “Who are you?” you should answer as if asked “What is most important to you?” If you clearly understand your passions, just talking about them is enough to instantly raise the level of energy in a room. Doing so draws others to you like a magnet and sets the tone for an engaging dialogue.

2. What Do You Want?

The direct answer is usually some variation of “To work with/for you.” While logical, it is also the psychological equivalent of driving full-speed into a brick wall. One of the most common mistakes in search engine marketing is to exclusively focus on targeting keywords. The best in the SEM industry will attest that keywords are useless without understanding the intent behind them. In this context, intention can be thought of as the intersection of:

• A keyword (ie. employee)
• A modifying behavior (ie. hire)
• An underlying motivation (ie. I am overworked)

This second question becomes far easier to answer after effectively addressing the first. If you have transparently conveyed your passions, “what you want” is already fairly obvious. What you are really being asked is “what is your intention?” Fortunately, this is a quick and seamless transition from the question one. Begin by clearly connecting your motivation to your passions thus bridging your enthusiasm to the current situation. Then, state the very next action (behavior) you will take to meet their need for the object (keyword) of the discussion. Within 140 characters, this looks something like:

Marketing fascinates me. I will create a proposal for moving your campaigns online and estimate how much money it will save you. (128 characters)

3. Why Should I Care?

“Why” is by far the hardest question to answer in any situation. Determining the best answer is both an art and a science. Masters of “why” make the world’s greatest leaders and salesmen; able to instantly influence those around them. The challenge in a Web 2.0 world is that we often do not have enough information to know “why,” nor enough time to find out.

Fortunately, if you can excel at answering questions one and two, most of the time you will not have to immediately respond to the third. The reason for this approach is to get your “foot in the door” as quickly as possible. Once it is open, do not just barge in! The purpose of quickly building interest is to give yourself the opportunity to learn more. Do not feel rushed and go out on a limb by postulating. The best answer to “why” will always close the sale. Ask powerful questions and build the relationship. Take your time.

Going slow does not mean that brevity can go out the window. Eventually you need to be able to answer this question just as quickly as the other two. The only difference is the time that needs to be invested in preparation. Time is valuable! Use it wisely.

8 Key Concepts to Take Away

1. Use technology to speed up slow practices.
2. Your only real competitor is yourself.
3. Life is not something you can “cram” for.
4. You are interesting. Prove it.
5. Do not wait for opportunities. Create them.
6. Tie yourself to your passions.
7. Your intentions bridge motivation to behavior.
8. Learning “why” will seal the deal.

Feedback

What else comes up for you in these situations? How can they be overcome?

Notes

Photos curteosy of Flickr and:

• 1Happysnapper / CC BY 2.0
• royblumenthal / CC BY SA 2.0
• Mykl Roventine / CC BY 2.0

Related Posts:

• A New Study on Stephen R. Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
• Twitter’s “Link Click Count” Provides Analytics, Revenue, & 503 Errors
• Social Media for Small Business – Yoono Models Best Practices

Sell Yourself Short – Your Resume in 140 Characters

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Fortunately, engaging your stakeholders through social media doesn’t have to be an all-out corporate initiative. In fact, diving full-throttle into the social web can easily come off as “trying too hard,” making you look more desperate than interesting. The principles underlying social media are not novel. Conceptually, non-social medium are more audaciously contrary to natural communication fundamentals.

What Who is Yoono?

In their own words:

Yoono is an easy to use sidebar for your browser that allows you to connect to all your social networks and instant messaging services – in one place. Get all your friend updates, update your own status, and easily share stuff with your friends.

I’ve been a Yoono user for over a year and have always been happy with their service. However, it wasn’t until quite recently that I recognized their excellence in social media best practices. As is often the case, it all began with a simple tweet to a friend:

• @caitlinrain Yoono is an amazing Firefox addon. They just released a new version: http://bit.ly/oUFts

To my surprise, @Yoono retweeted me. While a nice gesture (albeit somewhat self-promotional), I didn’t think much of it at the time. When I recommended Yoono to my followers several months later, I received a personal thanks from their support team.

• IMHO, @Yoono is the best Firefox plugin for keeping afloat in the often turbulent social media sea. http://su.pr/2X6RdM

• @SeanWF well now. that’s an excellent reply. thank you very much for the support!

Not only was I given a very personable response but it was within five minutes of my tweet. I decided to take the opportunity to see what else Yoono was doing on Twitter. My experience was no outlier. @Yoono takes the time to retweet or thank everyone who mentions them. They address every question and concern with concision and care. They consistently link out to posts that review their extension. Far from robotic autoresponse, their tweets are obviously personally crafted.

A Narrow Focus, A Broad Reach

My interest piqued, I began to look further into Yoono’s use of social media. The foundation of Yoono’s efforts is their Community Support Forum powered by Get Satisfaction. Yoono team members are active (and quick!) in addressing every question, idea, and problem brought to their attention; often going above and beyond expectations.

Yoono is almost meticulously consistent as a quick glace at their Facebook page shows. The Yoono team often goes out of their way in responding to those who reach out to them. When I began writing this article, I requsted permission to use Yoono’s logo for this post. In less than 10 minutes, they replied.

• @Yoono I’m writing a blog post about you. Would you be ok with my using your logo or favicon (properly attributed)?

• @SeanWF Great, yes, you can use our logo/favicon, not a problem. Let us know if you need any additional info from us.

Lessons Learned

What can we learn from Yoono’s example that we can apply to our own business models? I think Yoono teaches us that in order to effectively engage social media we must:

Act Quickly

The internet moves faster than you can imagine. The cost of being left behind is high.

Always Respond

Never ignore someone who takes time to talk about you. That person could end up writing a blog post about you.

Be Personal

Social media is about being social (ie. human) even if the medium is technology-driven.

Stay Consistent

It takes just a few clicks to find out everything there is to know about you. Make them count.

Driving the Bottom Line

The Yoono Firefox Sidebar has been downloaded nearly 3 million times and reviewed 160 161 times with an average rating of 5/5 stars. The extension has been reviewed on numerous blogs and notably featured on TechCrunch. Yoono’s Twitter and Facebook profiles each have over 1,000 followers/fans.

*Images curteousy of Yoono.com

Related Posts:

• Twitter’s “Link Click Count” Provides Analytics, Revenue, & 503 Errors
• 10 Reasons You MUST Attend IZEAfest 2009
• Sell Yourself Short – Your Resume in 140 Characters

Social Media for Small Business – Yoono Models Best Practices

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StumbleUpon v. Digg – A Case Study

The purpose of this case study is to describe the predictions made by five free competitive analysis tools. We will do this by comparing estimates of unique visitors to two popular social bookmarking websites. At the end I’ll share a small but valuable secret that will allow us to test any hypotheses we form.

Quantcast

A cursory glance at Quantcast’s visitor estimates for StumbleUpon.com isn’t particularly interesting. According to Quantcast, StumbleUpon receives less than a million unique US visitors/month. Even worse, the website has shown a dramatic decline in traffic since March of this year. For a website with nearly 8 million members worldwide, StumbleUpon’s numbers are at best disappointing, especially compared to Digg’s 12.5 million unique US visitors/month.

Compete.com

Comparing StumbleUpon and Digg on Compete.com tells a slightly different story. In strong contrast to Quantcast’s directly measured data, Compete estimates Digg receives almost 39 million unique US visitors/month. Compete’s estimate is more than 3x the actual traffic volume. Compete also comparitively exaggerates StumbleUpon’s traffic at 5 million visitors; more than 6x Quantcast’s estimate.

Alexa

Adding another tool only makes things more confusing. Alexa estimates the global reach of Digg and StumbleUpon to be .53% and .19% respectively. It’s important to note that we cannot directly compare Alexa’s “daily reach” (even averaged over 30 days) with “unique monthly visitors.” The problem is that each measure two distinct (however related) variables. In order to properly compare the two, we need to account for how many visits unique visitors are responsible for. If that doesn’t make sense yet, don’t worry, I still have a hard time wrapping my head around it too. Leave a comment and I’ll make sure to follow up with a post explaining it.

For the purposes of this limited case study we’ll assume there are approximately 1.6 billion internet users worldwide, half of whom (800 million) are online on any given day. Digg should be receiving 4.2 million unique global visitors/day compared to StumbleUpon’s 1.5 million. We know that Alexa’s estimate for Digg is more than double the true number, but what about StumbleUpon?

Google Trends

At this point, it seems like we may as well just throw our hands up in the air and acknowledge that free competitive analysis estimates are largely worthless. Fortunately, at WoT, the words “giving” and “up” don’t hang out together. They’re much more fun by themselves anyway. Luckily for us we stumbled upon (punny) something spectacular in the process.

As usual, data-superhero Google comes flying to our rescue. Comparing Digg and StumbleUpon on Google Trends begins to clear up this mess. At the end of March, StumbleUpon has less than half the unique US visitors/month of Digg. The gap closes quite suddenly in mid-April in part due via a combination of three major events:

1. April 13^th – StumbleUpon is bought back from eBay by its founders
2. April 22^nd – Version 3.29 of the StumbleUpon Firefox toolbar is released
3. April 27^th – Web Stumbling (without the toolbar) receives major enhancements

Competitive Analysis Tools Compared

Not all of our competitive intelligence tools have data past May. To compensate we will only use the month of April, identified by the period immediately prior to StumbleUpon’s traffic spike.

Immediately we see the degree to which Compete has egregiously overestimated Digg’s traffic. Google Trends is almost certainly an underestimation. What about the data on global visitors?

Alexa and Google Trends both drastically underestimate Digg’s global traffic. While we don’t have any way to know for sure, I would posit that they also underestimate StumbleUpon’s data.

Interpreting Results

So what exactly can we take away from this case study? For one, we can be pretty confident that StumbleUpon received significantly fewer unique global visitors in the first few weeks of April than Digg. We can even take a stab at the difference. Assuming that StumbleUpon data is skewed in proportion to Digg data biases, our corrected global estimate for Google Trends is 8.4 million users. Applying the same methodology to Alexa gives a global visitor estimate of 7.3 million.

We know that about 50% of Digg’s unique users are from outside the US. Google Trends’ estimates can account for 84% of global traffic but only 53% of US traffic. To me this indicates a slight measurement bias in favor of international users. If StumbleUpon’s Google Trends data is similarly biased, our corrected US traffic estimate is 4.4 million users. When we apply the same technique Compete, the estimate falls from 5.9 million to 3.9 million users. Quantcast’s corrected estimate seems somewhat low at 2.2 million users.

Forming Hypotheses

It’s fairly surprising just how consistent our corrected data is. Based on the information gathered, I’m going to hypothesize that during the measured time period:

• StumbleUpon received between 7 to 9 million unique global visitors
• StumbleUpon received between 2 to 5 million unique US visitors
• Free competitive analysis tools can be useful if biases can be compensated for

A Special Bonus

In this case, I can test the first two hypotheses. I found a very valuable little snippet at the bottom of StumbleUpon’s source code. I’ll give you a hint: It begins with <!–Start Quantcast tag–>

Secret StumbleUpon Data on Quantcast!

Notes:

Some charts on this page have been modified. Links to the original sources have been included.

Photo: kevinzhengli on flickr.com

Related Posts:

• Website Traffic – Are Competitive Intelligence Tools Accurate? (Survey)
• A New Study on Stephen R. Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
• Researching the Validity of Online Competitive Intelligence Tools – Introduction

Competitive Intelligence Tools – Alexa, Compete, Google Trends & Quantcast

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