Andrew Douglas B2B journalist, turned PR man, specializing in new media.

I lived through a social media car crash

I lived through a social media car crash yesterday... and it has me jazzed.

My wife Anne (twitter.com/AnneDouglasComm) and I were presenting about social media at a conference for lawncare professionals and golf course superintendents yesterday afternoon. There were a lot of questions about Twitter so I fired up Tweetdeck on my Mac, which was projected on to a huge screen behind us. I wanted to show how you can see the most-discussed topics on Twitter in real-time.

At around 2:30 p.m., Gordon Lightfoot's name was huge on the cloud. He's a Canadian icon in the folk/rock world. I clicked on his name and saw a tweet that he'd died. With the whole audience watching, I clicked the URL that someone had posted and was directed to the National Post, a national newspaper in Canada, which was reporting that he died.

I turned to the audience and said something like, "you can't always trust what you read on Twitter but if the mainstream media confirms something, you know it's true."

HA!

Minutes later, a seminar attendee with a laptop piped up, "he's not dead!" People madly clicked around on their laptops and BlackBerry's. It turns out he can still wiggle his toes. The National Post bit on a wild rumour, possibly started after a media interview with old-time rocker Ronnie Hawkins.

A few things:

1. What a blow to the National Post brand. Twitter is buzzing and won't let the newspaper forget that it contributed to the story, even though it has taken it's original piece down off the website and is pretending it wasn't leading the "Lightfoot is Dead!" charge.
2. This shows the lightning-fast ability of Twitter and social media to wrestle with rumours and news and determine fact or fiction. It's the ultimate in crowd sourcing where you can have a swarm of people attack a piece of information and rip it apart and spread the truth.
3. Some are saying the Post should have left its original story up with a big mea culpa. I'm not so sure but I think they should have kept their part of the story in subsequent posts.
4. It was old-school journalism that cracked this open -- someone picked up a phone and called Lightfoot's publicist.

I couldn't have asked for a better real-time case study in the opportunities and challenges with social media. Thank you Gordon Lightfoot!

Windows Phone 7 Series – first impressions

First off, I had to basically cut and paste the name of Microsoft's new phone into the headline above to get it right. As the WSJ says, it sounds like the product of a typical Microsoft name-by-committee brainstorming.

Secondly, I need to be honest. I don't trust Microsoft. Being the overwhelming market share leader in PC software has allowed them to release inferior products. I can just see this phone saving its most horrific crashes for my most important phone calls.

That said, this new smarthphone OS looks interesting. I like how they've grouped applications into something like folders. The "desktop" space on my wife's iPhone or my son's iTouch is very busy. It's hard to find what you're looking for in the mess of applications. This OS looks more organized.

Other cool ideas:

• Every phone must have an FM radio and four points of touch on the screen
• There will be a special Bing (search) button which will allow one-touch access to one of the more common tasks, not to mention the fact that it will instantly boost the number of Bing users
• Real-time updates from Facebook, email, voicemail and, one would think, Twitter
• Most recent contacts stay at the top of the list
• Nice redesign of the typical user interface. I like the big, blocky type. It also looks like they've grouped like-applications.
• The People Hub where all my friends' feeds, from Facebook, Twitter, etc., will be grouped in one place

The wild card is the hardware. Microsoft says they're going to be careful which suppliers install Windows Phone 7 on which hardware. We'll have to wait and see.

iPad 2.0 – A reader comments

A smart reader, who prefers to remain anonymous, sent me an email after last night's post. Trust me, this guy is at the leading edge of new media marketing.

Nice blog. Well done. The more I learn about the Apple plan, the more I’ve come to understand that the devices are designed to do one thing – put a toll booth on the web.

There are experts out there that praise the Apple strategy and suggest all others will have to fall in line or get blown away. It does appear Apple has learned the downside to trying to be proprietary and keep user fees/their per-user revenue high – they now see the opposite as the way to go – get the devices out there, open the app and programming opps, make it cheap and easy for partners and the masses to jump onboard and micro-monetize out the ying-yang.

MP3 players and files were around long before iPod, but the device and software monetized it big time. Iphone inadvertantly discovered the micro-payment model via the world of apps (Apple thought they would own all of the app development and sales, but hit a bonanza when they opened it up). Now the iPad – it won’t do all that we were expecting, but I think it will monetize book, movie, tv and video consumption in a way the desktop, iPhone, iPod could not achieve. Do I have this right  - it seems so obvious.

Dear Steve: Here’s what I want in the iPad 2.0

I'm a Mac. I've been one for years. Between us, my family of five has three iPods, an iPod Touch, an iPhone, a MacBook, MacBook Pro, and two iMacs.

But we won't be buying an iPad. Why would we want a giant iPod Touch, which is all the iPad seems to be?

Steve Jobs and Apple missed an opportunity to invent a whole new category -- to take a bunch of my family's must-have tech appliances and smush them into one über tool.

Here are three ideas the bright minds at Apple can wrestle with before they release iPad 2.0.

1. A jot-and-jog deskmate

When an impromptu meeting gets called, I frequently grab a pad of paper in case I need to jot something down and my BlackBerry in case I need to check through old emails to jog my memory. Neither tool serves its purpose well. I lose the paper and my BB is an imperfect device. I have my emails sorted into folders on my laptop and I find it frustrating not being able to access my filing system without carting around my laptop. But it feels like overkill to unplug my MacBook Pro from my second screen and lug it into my boss' office for a five minute briefing.

It would be cool if I had an iPad that would sync automatically with my MacBook Pro via Bluetooth. My main files and email would be twinned just by setting it down on my desk near my laptop. I'd simply swipe my iPad off my desk and have a handy security blanket. The smaller screen and lack of keyboard would make it impractical as a regular work device but for meetings it could be dandy. Of course I'd need full versions of Word and Entourage. Don't give me cloud computing either -- I want loaded, fast software.

1. Solve my multiple phone problem

My wife and I are much more reachable on our mobiles. Nothing is more frustrating than grabbing our antiquated land-line phone and hearing the beep-beep-beep of voice mail and realizing people have been waiting for days for a call-back.

But I'm not ready to give up our land line yet. I want a home phone that is a multipurpose machine.Our kids are too young to have mobile phones and I still feel like we need a central, family number.

It seems like the iPad could somehow solve this problem. I could see myself carrying it around the house anyway, since it's loaded with apps that I'd want to plug into frequently.

The next generation iPad could have a wifi phone capability. When my wife's iPhone logs on to the same wifi network, it could transfer her calls to the iPad automatically. Same with my BlackBerry. It could forward the calls from my mobile number to our home number so we wouldn't chew up cell phone minutes.

I see holes in my idea already but I bet a day-long brainstorming session between some smart Apple designers could spit out some wild ideas that could change voice communication in the home forever.

3. One-handed QWERTY keyboard

In one promotional picture from Apple, I saw a guy holding an iPad with his left hand while he typed on a QWERTY keyboard with his right. It seemed awkward.

Apple should invent a one-handed QWERTY keyboard. I'd make it a circle, like an old rotary phone. Maybe they could put the most-used letters at the top, outer edge and less-used letters in the inside of the circle or at the bottom. It would take up less screen real estate and would probably be faster for typing. You could toggle between the new one-handed keyboard and a standard QWERTY one.

I was waiting for something big out of Steve Jobs. I remember the gasps and cheers when Jobs unlocked the iPhone for the first time. There was no reason to gasp at the new iPad. But there's always 2.0.