It is a great primer for those at the starting level in Social Media - businesses that just want to hear that it’s real. There are case studies, exceptional Q&A, and a really strong fundamental explanation of Social Networks, Online Authority, and more. The panel discussion includes Nick Huhn, Jason Falls, and Scott Clark and is moderated by Bill Dotson and was sponsored by the Lexington Advertising Club.

Audio Playback (or, download the MP3 file here to import into iTunes or your MP3 player)

Full Length Video (audio is a bit quiet.  The audio on the MP3 file above is far clearer.)

Want to import it into iTunes? Download MP3 file here (right click and save)

Printer Friendly Version of Handouts also here (PDF file)

Scott: Matthew thanks for taking a few minutes with me today!

Matthew: Glad to do it!

Scott: First, what new ways of slicing and dicing do you guys plan (e.g. follower/follow ratio, tweet frequency)… do you think you’ll come up with an “authority” rank of any kind?

Matthew: We’ve discussed a ranking system that would get deeper into a user’s actual activity within each category. Our future plans are to analyze what each user is talking about, and create a “Twellow Rank” based on the user’s overall activity and validity to the system. The future holds additional services beyond Twitter, so we’ll have a much broader view of each person which will help to provide a truer image of their overall social-media presence. We’re also going to be looking into geographic data to allow an even more refined drilling-down into niche data.

Scott: Any chances of creating user-created sub-communities (e.g. like linkedin or facebook) where people identify themselves as a part of conferences, etc., or perhaps enter into discussion sub-groups or Q&As?

Matthew: The sky’s the limit on these kinds of options. The ability for users to create and have deeper control over individual accounts is on our todo list. Allowing more intricate inter-personal connections, however, is not currently our focus. Twellow is a people directory, so our focus right now is to help people connect. These types of additional interactions are currently provided by other services such as Twitter, Pownce, Plurk, and FriendFeed, so right now we’re just trying to help people connect within the various spaces to people the otherwise might have no access to.

Scott: Can we get RSS feeds from certain groups (per category, user-created community, etc.) for monitoring?

Matthew: Twellow does have an RSS feed for each category in the system. It’s currently updated based on Twitter updates we receive, which is currently a vastly-reduced capacity, but will have more validity once we get more consistent updates. This will continue on any future listings we might provide.

Scott: How have the tech challenges at Twitter affected you - and how much of a concern are those for Twellow?

Matthew: Twitter’s technical problems have led to a lot of bumps on the journey to getting the service functioning as we’d like, but we feel this will not be as big of an issue as the popularity of Twellow grows and other services are included in our indexing. Once we get the system to where people can add and edit their own information, then the current latency in user updates will become less of an issue.
Obviously Twitter has helped make Twellow what it is, but we don’t think it wise to put all our eggs in the proverbial basket. Twitter has been a great starting point, and we will continue to grow from here.

Scott: Any chance you’ll be tying in other microformats such as friendfeed and plurk? What special concerns (e.g. duplicate posts) do you see?

Matthew: As mentioned before, we want to get a broader snapshot of each user, so Plurk and FriendFeed are definietely possibilities. There are some issues with a lack of biographical info from systems other than Twitter, but once user self-editing is in place this won’t be a major issue. Duplicate entries into the system are a concern we are looking into, but this is something that has been addressed at other services, and we’re confident it won’t be a big problem.

Scott: Last Question: Where’d the name “Twellow” come from?

Matthew: The name Twellow was something Rich and I came up with together. We were discussing the whole concept in it’s early stages, and when I grasped Rich’s vision for a people directory, I made the connection to the yellow pages. While I was looking at the various “tw” apps associated with Twitter, the combination of Twitter and Yellow came together. The first name that came up was twellowpages.com, and we were going to go with that, but as I started looking more into it I thought a shorter name would be better. Twellow.com was available, so Rich jumped on it.

Scott: Matthew I’m sure you are slammed so I appreciate your time on this with me, and we will all be watching Twellow with great anticipation. Good luck!

Matthew: No problem and thanks.

Make sure and follow iematthew on Twitter to stay in touch with all things Twellow!

He also talks about the proximity effect and the potential business benefits of a page on Squidoo, as well as what makes a Squidoo Lens Popular.

Many Businesses seem to know little about the issue, and few seem to think it affects them. What would you say to these folks?

Unless they are huge, or partners with one of the large cable or telephone companies, their website’s performance may degrade. Their cost of doing business can be raised long term by a lack of competitive pressures on telecommunications companies.

For companies that are not using a lot of bandwidth now, the issue might seem distant. Should they be concerned?

Think back to the days of dial-up access. If you’d have asked them about legislation that might affect broadband, they might have not taken much interest. But think how it would affect them now if there were restrictions.

Some say the Senate are going to just let the telecommunications firms have their way and hope that the FCC will just watch for infractions – sort of a shoot them all and let the FCC sort them out approach. What do you think about that?

The legislation being written prevents Congress from establishing clear rules for the FCC, and forces them to handle complaints on a case-by-case basis. This can take years, and many smaller firms affected by infractions will already be out of business by the time their cases are heard. Consistent, enforceable rules are needed for the FCC so that everyone knows what the rules are, and this legislation prevents that.

Doesn’t Google and others already have a huge influence over the success and failure of a business by virtue of their search engine positions?

This is a smokescreen that the opposition are putting up. Google does not allow anyone to buy better rankings in their regular search results. You can buy ads, but it’s clear they are ads. If they started altering that policy of no payment for top position, consumers would go elsewhere and the market would correct it.

This is not true in the case of the telecommunications companies controlling the last mile of cable. The telcos lobbied to get out from under 70 years of policies that ensured open access and somehow convinced the FCC that two were enough for broadband (98% of the US can get DSL or cable only.) Now they have no competition for access, and they can take advantage of that position.

How can we build out the technology while still protecting the democratic nature of the web?

I think the Telcos are crying wolf to make more money. They could make it the old fashioned way. They could invent now and innovative services that people want. We could also have a good broadband policy that allowed competition for access like Japan or South Korea. There’s no need to undercut small business. There is plenty of money available.

Thanks to Craig Aaron, a very busy man, for his time.
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