Distant echoes of "ch-ching" for Twitter?

I picked up an interesting link today from a post by @CMEGroup on Twitter, which was a blog post about the potential for algorithmic trading based on Twitter feeds.

The blogger highlights a new technology from StreamBase, who have developed a Twitter interface for their CEP engine, or in layman's language, their blackbox trading technology. Basically, they have built applications that look at real time events, analyse their impact and decide whether to act - eg decide whether to trade based on that event/information.

Their release sums it up best:
Mark Palmer, CEO of StreamBase (@mrkwpalmer). “We’re seeing business applications that ingest Twitter message content, frequency, patterns, hashtag use, and so on, and then transmit Twitter messages. For example, trading systems or operations support can use Twitter direct messaging to alert users of trading opportunities or system problems. Systems can also use Twitter messages to assess economic sentiment in real-time for trading systems, or marketing analytics, through monitoring news headlines and popular sentiment transmitted via Twitter. And we’ve even seen interest from the government and security industries for in-bound Twitter message processing.”

The most interesting point for me is how this shows that there is real business use for the "fuzzy" facts that Twitter offers. In one of the response posts, the blogger states:
"Streambase's ability to use Twitter as a source of "fuzzy" information would increase my edge on the rest of the market."

This is the key point for me - as he makes clear, trading is not an exact science, and traders use every source of material possible to spot trends, and make their trading decisions before that trend breaks. For example, the Iran election news that broke on Twitter could have impacted FX trading. In a more local example, the recent #etisalatfail stories about the Blackberry patch should impact Etisalat's business, if it weren't part of one of the most ridiculous duopolies ever dreamed up.

What this also underlines though, is the fact that Twitter appeals most to those in the news, media, and tech industries. These are the people that see the value and are out there busily forming communities and creating conversations, and it could be the case that the stellar rates of growth slow once those industries are online and Tweeting away. Yes, there are lots of people in those industries. Yes, there are celebrities and their followers (though I think this phenomenon has a shelf-life, personally). But when positioned against the likes of Facebook, which is designed to appeal to everyone with some semblance of a family or social life, I'm not sure that Twitter has the same ubiquitous appeal.

So, the trading industry has seen a potential business opportunity in Twitter, and is now busily making it work for them as a media alert service and trend spotting tool. It seems to me that this is where Twitter needs to start to get smart and actively start searching for ways to license fat feeds to companies such as StreamBase, answering the interminable question - how can Twitter make money? If I hear the echoes of "ch-ching" from over here in the sandpit, they should be deafening over there at T-HQ!

Form an orderly queue, please...

One thing that has always perplexed me about Twitter, and continues to do so, is the expectation of some Tweeters that if they randomly follow me, I'm going to follow them back.

I'm not. I don't care about you.

The beauty of Twitter, for me, is seeking out the crowd that interests you, looking for the conversations that add value, where you can contribute nuggets, or answer questions, and generally inveigle yourself in, and make some new friends. It's just heartwarming...

You know that there are millions of other conversations going on out there. Somewhere, Ashton just shared his thoughts on Demi's bum to thousands of rapt devotees. I'm not one of them. Stephen Fry quips 140 character anecdotes about swimming in an indonesian skirt. How nice. And then there are the industry chats.

Once I downloaded TweetDeck, I became a devotee of Twitter. Following #PR, #energy, #commodities, #dubai streams gave me an insight in to a number of valuable conversations. It is my favoured news monitor service, with articles pre-read and actively recommended by strangers whose opinions you grow to trust.

However, the minute you start contributing to these feeds, you become visible to millions of others also tracking that feed. Many of these seem to have the old fashioned view that the whole point of the app is building a massive follower base, by following masses of people. I don't get it. If you follow 2,000 people, how on earth do you hear what anyone is saying?

Even on reputable forums such as LinkedIn, where I'm a member of a Twitter forum (for discussion between PR professionals on how best to use the app in corporate comms), there are people advocating the use of auto-follow tools, to just link on to anyone you can, in the hope of building your numbers.

The point is, both in my own personal twittage, and the plan that I'm developing for the company, I'm not that bothered if we end up with 3m followers or 30, as long as we can have relevant and interesting conversations with the people active on the application who shape industry conversations on Twitter.

It's a waste of my energy going and blocking strange characters who decide to follow me, in the vain hope that I'll follow them back. I have blocked one person, who seemed to take issue with anything I tweeted, and send public, nasty, disparaging tweets in response, even when they didn't contain a #tag. To me, that kind of behaviour is just childish, in any forum, whether online or off.

I may be wrong though. I'm attending the MEPRA Twitter workshop on Sunday (held here at the DME - spot the plug!) to find out. We shall see what Spot On PR, the illustrious Twitter gurus, have to say on the matter of managing their own mah-u-sive fan base.

How Tea Fixes All Ills

I apologise for yesterday's rant. It was a bad day, designed to test me, and I failed. Lesson learnt - don't use public blog forums to vent. Use private blog instead. There is no point railing against the idiocies of corporate life, either you suck it up and stay a part of it (and keep getting paid) or you decide enough is enough, and head off to the beaches of Thailand to become a dive instructor. Whether or not the latter option is becoming increasingly attractive, is also not a matter for this forum.

However, yesterday's fury-storm did achieve one small thing. It reminded me of the restorative qualities of a cup of tea.

Tea rocks. It is both soothing and perking (is that a word? It should be.) It is terribly English (in my opinion) yet strangely appropriate for most cultures and settings around the world. It calms furies, and realigns the brain-planets, allowing for rational thought. It should be drip fed to world leaders 24/7.

End of sermon.

Petty frustrations

Why do people have to invent extra procedures where they just are not required? I've just been informed that in order to pay my suppliers, I can't just fill in the form that I used to fill in, I now have to type all of the same information in to an email, to someone who sits two desks away, so she can fill in the form for me.

Apparently the benefit is so that she can negotiate with suppliers on my behalf. So what's my job then? Just sitting back looking pretty? And secondly, no disrespect, but successful negotiation requires a knowledge of the services included in the contract, understanding which ones are of particular value, and why our particular set up means that the service provider should ask us for less cash. I'm afraid she just does-not-know this information about each and every department in the company.

Finding people jobs to do in a downturn is all very well, but we're going to head out of this downturn with lots of people who do hardly anything for a living and think that this is the way things should be. I don't want my role diminished, and I'm sorry, but if my role is redundant to the company, then I'd rather be made redundant than given some ridiculous timewasting crap to do in order to keep me on the pay-roll.

On second thoughts, I'd probably take that back if I was actually made redundant. But I'd like to think I'd say "sod it" and head off to Thailand to become a dive instructor, before regrouping and getting my career back on track.

Why we have to carry these people is beyond me.
Grrr.

Toasting with a glass half full

So - a spot of positivity to take us in to the long weekend (hallelujiah...!)

Couple of things making me smile today - one that involves drinking, and one that doesn't. Let's start with the latter...

MEPRA - the Middle East PR Association - has recently been resurrected from zombie status by the indomitable Rebecca, who has been doing a sterling job rousing all of us in the industry out of a collective grumpy stupor. I'm a member for the first time in about 6yrs (I was a member when I first arrived, and quickly decided to save my cash), and am actually getting involved...

Yesterday saw the first Twitter workshop held by Spot On PR at the Hilton, and by all accounts it went down a storm. There were certainly interesting tweets about the event, with Dubai 92 DJ Catboy interacting with the participants thru Twitter in real time.

The next one is due to be held at the DME, on the trading floor (my gaff) on the 26th July, and seems to be coming together rather nicely. Rebecca sent the invite today at 10am and it was fully booked by 3pm. Not too shabby, especially as it's summer time and in theory everyone has fled the sandpit.

I'm looking forward to it, should be a good event. Will be good to see the SpotOn crowd in the flesh, rather than the Twitterverse, for a change!

In other news, a friend and meeja-type also recently decided that us birds in PR and the media don't get together nearly enough, and floated the idea of a networking event. She sent the invite to her network, and a good few of us were briefed to pass it on to our respected networks, and so far, she's had an excellent response.

It'll be good to have a chance to socialize with some of the people that you tend to just run in to at industry events, when one or the other usually has a particular agenda/manic client/deadline. It'll also be rather nice to meet some of the people who are currently just names in the ether. I'm looking forward to it.

The cultural band-aid

Firstly - a disclosure up front. I'm an expat brat. What this basically means is, I grew up in Saudi Aramco, in a camp that looked eerily like the Truman Show village, where most people were American, and the ones that weren't, wanted to be. Yes, it was in Saudi Arabia, yes, we learnt Arabic at school - did we assimilate? Did we hell. The company nationalized in '85 (I was 9) and suddenly moved all of the Saudis off camp, giving them free loans to build their own houses. Our daily use of Arabic dwindled, and we trotted out stock phrases to chat in local shops on weekend excusions to Khobar, and then headed off to boarding school at the age of 11. So, I'm wide open to the accusation of hypocrite here, but I'm going to stick my flag in the sand anyway.

In my time here, one of the things that has irritated me the most is a phenomenon that (for the sake of argument) we'll call the cultural band-aid. Intelligent people, who are here to embrace new experiences and cultures, occasionally have a lapse in to the old "us & them" mentality. And it really annoys me.

I was reminded of this recently when I watched a video posted on a news site, demonstrating the appaling standards of driving in the UAE. It wasn't the driving that put my teeth on edge. It was the dialogue - where the "GASP"s should have been in speech bubbles, as well as the fact that they were out there to judge, but the verdict was in long before they got in the car.

In my opinion - if you don't like being flashed, get out of the outside lane. Simple. Whether or not you're doing 10k over the speed limit. But that's not the point.

The point is, I think that expats have a tendency to believe, in the very hidden core of their psyche, that the locals are fortunate to have us around. I include all expats in this generalization, so yes, everyone who isn't an Emirati.

So, as much as many of us "embrace" local culture, practice our stumbling arabic, observe local customs and try and befriend Emiratis, we have a tendency to revert back to our cultural groups for comfort, familiarity and reassurance, and gloss over the cracks with a handy cultural band-aid - the patronising us&them comments that many or most of us have made at some point.

Driving standards, maids, labour in general, queues, government officials/offices, the police, gender equality... the list is long. Don't like it, don't get it, don't want to think about it, stick a band-aid on it ... "they're dreadful, they don't understand, it's so 3rd world, tchah, tsk, grumble.." Magic. You feel better having "explained" the behaviour, and thus the blemish is covered, and we can continue "assimilating" the bits we like and approve of.

It's a dangerous game, and seems to be leading to a backlash, with Emiratis forming groups on networking sites such as Facebook hitting back at the expat hoardes.

Our time here is limited kids, make the bloody most of it.

Get out your hatchets

There are things that PR people are never meant to do, or at least, be seen to do. One of the most important, is to avoid ever whingeing about the media.

I'm sorry, on this occasion, I just can't.

Before I start, I'd like to note that I have worked with very talented and insightful people from all sorts of cultures, and managed to communicate a company's story (with the help of bilingual colleagues) in many languages. It's one of the things I love about living abroad.

But too often, we hear yet another rant from regional journalists on the dire state of regional PR. By and large, I think they have a lot of valid points. There is too much release-spam being issued on a daily basis, there are too many clueless execs following up with pointless phone calls, I agree, I agree, I agree.

However, I would ask these journalists to take two minutes at the next pointless press conference that you attend (I promise, the spokespeople will be at least 30mins late, you have plenty of time) to look around and observe the activity of the average lesser-spotted-Dxb-journo.

Many of these people walk in, say "Where's the press release" and walk out again. Many interrupt your spokesperson to say "What does your business do?" Questions, if there are any, are rarely informed.

I have come to terms with all of these idiosyncrasies, and accepted this as my lot. Fine. I'll even accept the accusation that the PRs should have briefed these people better (though I'd argue that most of the time, we've tried, and given them as much info as possibly can.)

But the hatchet job, no, that pisses me off. Just as it is common courtesy for PR people to give journalists a story in good time to research, write, edit and file, it is common courtesy for journalists writing a story on a company to give the company a chance to comment. And if you don't, don't expect me to come running back and with exclusives and interviews - I've got enough of a battle on my hands trying to educate my execs on why they shouldn't go to your boss.

Rant over.