Drowning in Twitter yet? We're here for you

As news of last week’s Republican National Convention tapers off and chatter over this week’s Democratic National Convention begins, a tidal wave of Tweets will likely flood your feed. 

To help sift through the clutter, we’ll compile some of our favorite accounts and hashtags – from the informative to the humorous. Keep checking this @charlotte blog for updates on this front.

With the Twitter action just starting, here’s what we’re liking so far:

(Warning: shameless plug coming.) For hard news on the local level, our @DNC2012clt account has plenty of DNC coverage -- but we won’t drown you in Tweets. It’s all carefully combed through, to give you a full but intelligent report. (You can get great stuff like this photo, from our own Ann Helms prowling DNC gifts sold at the Westin:)

If you’re looking for a national source, follow our news partner @politico.

Straight convention news can be found at the official 2012 Democratic National Convention Committee account @DemConvention.

Interested in the Republican reaction? We suggest the hashtag #WeCanChangeIt – a theme used throughout the RNC -- and #tcot, Top Conservatives on Twitter. The GOP has also emphasized the #WeBuiltIt theme.

Want to hear from the Democrats? @Obama2012 has increased activity as the DNC nears. And @InvisibleObama, a parody account, has gained more than 60,000 followers since it was created in reaction to Clint Eastwood’s speech.

Protest news can be found @wallstsouth and from our very own @DougObserver. #ResistDNC seems to be a commonly used hashtag among the protestors.

Already overwhelmed? Don’t fret. Throughout the week, trends will emerge, accounts will shine, and we will be there to help you follow the news that you want and need. 

See something we don’t? Let us know @DNC2012clt or here on our blog.

-- Kelley Sousa

Charlotte's Top 10 Google searches for 2011

Well, we hate to blow our own company's horn, but Google's annual year-end list of most searched-for terms is out and the Charlotte-specific Top Ten shows "Charlotte Observer" is the most searched-for term for 2011. After several brutal years filled with budget and staffing cuts, unpaid furloughs and the like, it's nice news to get. Just a little nugget of validation that, even though we've got a long haul ahead in transitioning from the old paper-only business model, our online platform is not only keeping us relevant, it's got a little digital swagger going on.

Hats off to all the reporters, editors, photographers and producers who make the magic happen every day!

P.S.: This blog has been dark for a while as I transitioned from reporting on social media to becoming an assistant city editor in charge of crime news and coverage of philanthropy and the environment. It's a lot of work, and leaves little time for writing (and none for reporting), but I'll keep trying to update this blog with interesting social media tidbits that cross my desk from time to time.

Note to Google: Here's what I think about you

For the past couple of days, phone researchers from Ipsos have been calling me. They want to know if I'll do a 20-minute phone survey in which they'll gather my thoughts and impressions about Google. Something about them wanting to survey "leading opinion formers." Calls the accuracy of their research into question, since I've been pretty busy in the past month or so writing more about Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools than online and digital stuff. I was so busy that, both times the Ipsos researchers called, I had to put them off because I was busy with a story. I've probably missed my chance to tell Google honchos what I think of them. So, I'll just tell you what I would have told them.

• I'm liking Google+, but who has time for another social network? Keep integrating it with Gmail and search, and you might worm your way deeper into my digital life.


• Yes, your search rocks. (But you already know that). A colleague cleaning up her desk the other day went, "Hey, I still have a phone book." I actually laughed. Now I look over at the least-used corner of my desk and see I still have one too -- from 2002.


• The +1 button, your answer to Facebook's "like" button, isn't necessarily wowing me, especially when it comes to search. I'm so used to typing a search out and expecting the magic Google algorithm to produce the best results that I don't look to see if any of my friends are agreeing with the algorithm by +1-ing pages. Maybe +1 will gain more clout as Google+ pulls more socialization throughout Google's digital ecology.


• Whatever happened with Google Hotpot, the Yelp-style business review project that was supposed to target some 40,000 Charlotte small businesses? Several business owners called me after this story saying they hadn't been able to get in touch with Google for follow-up. I've seen few Hotpot stickers in the windows of local businesses. Was this a success and you guys are just keeping it low-key, or did it flop?


• And lastly, don't forget your own motto: "Don't Be Evil." It's hard for people not to fear the ambitions of a company whose market capitalization of nearly $200 billion dwarfs the gross domestic product of your average third-world nation. No matter how kind or humanitarian or noble you guys think you are, the rest of us will always have one eyebrow cocked, suspecting you secretly lust for world domination. (Might this sudden interest in what we think have anything to do with the growing interest of government regulators in your dominance of the search market?). Accept the fact that you don't get to be the quirky "good guys" anymore. Overcompensate. Give tons to charity. Launch a massive college scholarship program to train the next generation of digital engineers. Steer clear of anything that even remotely hints at privacy violations or unfairly stomping smaller competitors. And just realize even all that still won't be enough to ward off every attack. As Wilt Chamberlain so aptly put it: "Nobody roots for Goliath."

That's what I think, for what it's worth. What are you thinking of Google these days?

Google+ or Facebook?

So I've been on Google+ for a little bit now. I'm liking it. I definitely concur with the folks who say it looks like Google might have finally found a firm toehold in the social space. The Google+ circles are much easily to navigate and make much more sense for organizing the people you socialize with than Facebook's clunky friend lists. I've seen some savvy figures in social media saying they're going to dump Facebook for Google+. Might be too early for that, I think.

In any event, local marketing types and other folks who make it their business to stay on top of social media are organizing panel discussions and informal get-togethers to discuss the relative merits of the new social network. They've seen how challenging Facebook marketing can be. They figure they'd better start scouting Google+ now, before it goes from testing to general release. "To be at the forefront of the evolution of a platform gives you a real advantage when it comes time to use that platform for business," says Lyell Petersen, an internet marketing director and familiar face around local social media circles.

He's helping organize a get-together next Thursday at 6 p.m. where people wanting to know more about Google+ can explore and experiment with it together. They're calling it a "Google+ Hack Night" -- not the illegal variety, of course, but hacking in the sense of digging into the features to see what they can do. He's got questions of his own: how does Google+ integrate with the rest of the Google universe? How does your data and information, your Picasa pictures and Gmail contacts, get shared with Google+?

I also see a challenge for the new network: the simple matter of time. We don't have enough of it. How will we squeeze another social task on to-do piles already overflowing with Facebook statuses and Twitter updates and blog posts? That alone gives Google a higher bar to clear than perhaps Facebook confronted in its infancy, when teens and college students were about the only ones on social networks.

I hope Google+ sticks. Competition's a good thing. Maybe it'll even rescue the much-abused and totally degraded word "friend" from the ravages of Facebook.

Anthony verdict sparking jokes on Twitter

We hear all the time about all the good social networks have done. They've been credited with everything from helping overturn repressive dictatorships to reconnecting long-lost friends to changing forever the way information gets shared. When people talk about any negatives, criticism tends to focus on privacy risks inherent in sharing personal information across a public medium.

What we hear less criticism about is the vile behavior this newfound communicative freedom brings out in some of us. You can see a good example right now in a popular hashtag that has been trending this afternoon among Charlotte's Twitter users: #caseyanthonyplaylist. People are making jokes about what songs would be on Anthony's hypothetical iPod playlist now that she's been acquitted of murdering her young daughter. Some of the songs the internet jokesters have suggested: "You Be Killing 'Em," "All I Do is Win" and "Smooth Criminal." Someone suggested "Have You Seen Her" by the Chi-Lites and quickly added: "I'm goin' to hell for that one."

Social networks -- correction, people on social networks -- have a tendency to turn public tragedies into public spectacles, public sport. Everybody wants to join in the "fun" and show how clever they can be and maybe even get retweeted to their own 15 seconds of Twitter fame. (To be fair, the word "speechless" was also trending in Charlotte this afternoon, ostensibly from all the people tweeting about their disbelief over the not guilty verdict. That much you might expect, given the wall-to-wall coverage the case has received in the media).

Nevertheless, I suspect the Casey Anthony playlist meme is the one people will be talking about at the water cooler. "Some of y'all have me dying (no pun)," someone tweeted. "I feel terrible for laughing."

You should. We're better than that, people. At least I hope we are.

Verizon's 4G network fastest in Charlotte, study says

Verizon's 4G wireless network is the fastest in Charlotte, according to a new study out today from PCMag.com. The survey, the second in an annual series from the respected tech magazine and website, includes road-testing of eight networks from six wireless carriers across 21 cities and four rural regions.

Verizon's 4G LTE won in 20 of the 21 cities, making it king of the digital hill in the PCMag.com test. It logged average download speeds topping 12 Mbps in Charlotte. That, the magazine notes, is faster than most people's home internet connection. All four of the major carriers' 4G networks did well in Charlotte, the study found.

The magazine did the research by driving around and making phone calls on Android 2.2-powered phones. The fastest Verizon spot the researchers located in Charlotte was just "east of Midtown" (meaning the old Midtown mall?), where they got 31 Mbps download speeds. T-Mobile came in second in Charlotte.

The results will perhaps confirm what my friends on AT&T have long suspected. But the AT&T guys, no longer blessed by their long monopoly on the iPhone, are running hard to build up their network in Charlotte. We'll see what happens in the long haul.

I say it's just good to have head-to-head numbers being published openly. Most of the network performance data nationally either comes from the carriers themselves or from researchers who sell the data to the carriers. In both cases, consumers rarely, if ever, get to see city-by-city performance data, and thus have no sure way of knowing which network is better. Given how intensely competitive the wireless industry is today, I'm sure the carriers who didn't come out on top here will say they still don't.

Facebook is turning into serious business

It used to be that businesses, especially small businesses, just scratched their heads when it came to Facebook. Sure a lot of people were on it, but companies were used to thinking about one main channel for reaching customers: advertising. And Facebook's advertising wasn't exactly the magic bullet -- people were so busy looking at cute kid pics that they barely noticed the lonely paid ads floating over there on the far right.

Consultants have been telling companies for years they can't afford not to be present on social networks. Now, it seems they believe them. It's not just about advertising, they've realized. It's about customer engagement, and building customer and brand loyalty. As former Observerite and social media consultant Jeff Elder says, companies can use Facebook as their own personal media "channel" to play their greatest corporate hits for their followers. He's playing host to a meetup on Monday where he'll be talking more about how companies can harness social media to connect with customers. Social media strategists Jason Keath and Corey Creed are plowing the same territory with a series of Web videos from their Social Fresh Academy training center.

All of life, it seems, is on Facebook now, for good or ill. (Even guys in the middle of causing a 16-hour police standoff). It was only a matter of time before corporations got serious about their presence there -- with or without a scientific way to measure the all-important ROI (return on investment). There's been some talk about Facebook's meteoric membership growth perhaps finally peaking. That's probably coming. But will Facebook shrivel up and go the way of MySpace? I wouldn't bet on it.