FriendFeed vs. Twitter - Is That Really The Point?

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Man what a day!!! Over the past 12 hours i’ve read a dozen posts on “Twitter vs Friendfeed” and “Everyone is leaving Twitter” blah blah blah.

FriendFeed enables you to keep up-to-date on the web pages, photos, videos and music that your friends and family are sharing. It offers a unique way to discover and discuss information among friends.

It’s interesting cause a lot of people have been chatting about Friendfeed over the last week. Michael Arrington from Techcrunch wrote about it, iJustine who is the Internet wrote about it, TechTicker wrote about it, & several other posts & “influencers” in the Social Media world have talked about it. Jeremiah Owyang who is a Sr. Analyst at Forrester Research also wrote about that actually inspired me to write this post & do the Video below (more about his post below).

Techcrunch talks about how much more interesting the conversations are on FriendFeed vs Twitter (which to me are a HUGE part of Social Media), iJustine is talking about “who will go mainstream first - Twitter or Friendfeed” and “asks does it really matter”, and a few others are chiming in.

Check out my thoughts on this 8 Minute video on FriendFeed:

Its very interesting because with Social Media, things change so fast so you can’t focus on the “Social Technologies” but focus on the “Social Touch” side of things, the people, the conversations, the relationships, then figure out which technologies would best fit you.

There’s so many technologies out there and guess what, you don’t have to be on all of them to succeed in Social Media Marketing. I promise.

Listen, I LOVE Twitter, it’s really helped my business & I’ve made some tremendous advancements in my business just become of the little tool. This is NOT about who’s better. Twitter sure has been having some issues over the last few weeks & some of the functionality has been taken away for periods of time, etc. That’s inconvenient for the folks that spend 8 hours a day on Twitter. LOL

Not only is FriendFeed a GREAT solution for when Twitter is down, I think the concept and what FriendFeed is up to is pretty outstanding. They just “get it.”

So back to Jeremiah’s post about the “Herding Behavior on FriendFeed.” A couple more folks who are at Forrester (Charlene Lie & Josh Bernoff) wrote a book called “Groundswell - Winning in a transformed by social technologies” that talks about what Jeremiah referred today in his post. He talked about the Social “Technographics” which is a tool to allow people in business to examine and then create strategies based on the groundswell tendencies of any group of people.

The Social Technographics ladder represents a group of consumers more involved in the groundswell than the previous steps. Take a look at the image below:

Jeremiah says that…“aaside from aggregating content (you can see all my tweets, flickr, digg, upcoming, blogs on one stream) you yourself can be a creator, critic, collector, joiner, or spectator.”

It’s too soon to see who will go mainstream first, and if FriendFeed will do what Facebook did to Myspace, or predict any of those type of things, the one thing that is for sure is that FriendFeed’s concept is RIGHT ON. I think this is where social media is going as having all these tools, sites, etc in one place makes it easier to:

• be more productive (not having to login to 20 different sites)
• monitor you or your brand
• research & staying ahead of the pulse

Who’s to say that Twitter or FriendFeed won’t go under tomorrow, that’s irrelevant, the point is that FriendFeed is onto something with their concept and if the influencers are attracted to it, there’s definitely something to say about it.

Over the next week or so I’m going to be playing with it & will write about my thoughts about it.

What are YOUR thoughts about FriendFeed so far?

Please make sure to also leave your FriendFeed URL.

I’ll start http://FriendFeed.com/successfool

You’ll also wanna make sure to add my good buddy Maria Reyes-McDavis the WebSuccessDiva here: http://friendfeed.com/websuccessdiva

Stay Hungry - Stay Foolish

Alejandro Reyes

Image source, Forrester and FriendFeed, screenshot taken by me

Are You Ahead Of The Pulse?

Gary Vaynerchuk Lesson 2: “Getting Ahead of the Pulse”

Last week we talked about the “Hoopla Factor” and how you’ve gotta find that thing that separates you from the rest of the world. That God-given talent that makes YOU who you are.

The 2nd thing that Gary talked about is “Getting Ahead of the Pulse.”

“Reading trends is Death City, USA”

In Internet Business, if you just focus on reading trends, searching for the next best keyword, you’re going to have the same results you currently have. Some of you might get lucky, but the true key to making things happen is to get ahead of the curve & be innovative.

Bill Gates calls it the “First Movers Advantage.” Whoever is first wins. Take a look at him and “Windows.” Take a look at what Steve Jobs did in the Music industry AND in the Cell Phone industry. They were the first to put something out that was extremely innovative and ahead of its time.

Gary was one of the first if not the first Wine retail company to have a website back in 1997. When everyone was enjoying the “fruity” California wine’s, and saw an obvious “segue in pallets” as he calls it, and moved to where wine was more fruiy…Australia & Spain.

He understood these things and was able to get ahead of the pulse because he talked to every customer, he read all the emails that he received every day and was literally in the trenches. If you’re able to get ahead of the pulse in your industry or your niche, you’re able to know what’s coming next. If you know what’s coming next and people see that, it will be only a matter of time before you start to rise up in your community as the leader & authority on the subject.

So what next how do you get ahead of the pluse? Here’s a few places you can start:

1. Twitter: Start connecting with people and becoming aware of what the “conversation” is & you’ll start to see things

2. Facebook: Find out what people are talking about most? Find how who’s on the “Top Friends” section of people’s profile.

3. Forums: Don’t waste too much time here, maybe once a week. Find out what people are selling, what the issues & problems are within your industry

4. Turn the TV On: Watch the Hills…just kidding. What are people talking about in the world today? What are Baby Boomers up to? How’s people handling the current state of America.

Interact with people, be engaging, provide value to them, listen to them, be very aware, and soon you’ll find yourself picking up on things.

I’m working on something that NO ONE is really talking about yet. You got a glimpse of it when I was interviewed by Social Marketing Expert Michelle Macphearson last thursday night when I talked about “Influencing the Social Networking Sites”

Get out there and start touching people, kissing babies, mingling and just have crazy awareness of what’s going on. Good luck!

Influencing Social Networking Sites

Alright check it. I’m about to give you the HOTTEST interview that I’ve ever given out so far. Michelle Macphearson who is one of the top if not THE top Social Marketing experts on the planets. I’ve been following Michelle for some time now but we’ve built a really great friendship in the last month or so because of social networking sites.

Check this out, she asked me a few days ago to do an interview on what I’ve been doing and how I’ve used social media and networking sites to connect with influencer’s, gain tons of traffic to my sites, build strong relationships with top entrepreneurs & make money online.

So I figured there would be anywhere from 30-40 people on this call but I was completely wrong. I started to advertise it on Twitter and because of my connections and relationships, my friends started talking about it and it started to grow virally. Before I know it, over 400 people were registered on the call and over 200 people stayed on the hour long call that we did. I’ve been on a lot of conference calls and for a 20 hour notice, those numbers are unheard off.

Here’s the recording to show you how I dominate the social networking sites using simple yet highly effect strategies!!! This audio runs 81 minutes.

I’d be very interested to what you liked best about the interview and any questions you still might have? Also make sure to follow Michelle @michellem on Twitter. Leave YOUR Twitter ID here as well so we can all connect!

Comment & Enjoy

BIG BIG Things Coming - Interview with Michelle Macphearrson

So check it - I’m going to resume the Gary Vaynerchuk lessons either tomorrow or Monday as I’m working on 2 REALLY exciting things.

The first one one is something that you can actually benefit from TONIGHT!! You see I’ll be interviewed by one of my good friends and MAJOR players in the Social Marketing niche, Michelle Macphaerson! This is the FIRST time that I’ve actually processed my thoughts on how “Alejandro” uses Social Media to make buzz, make friends, & make money. Check it out here. Make sure you register!

http://www.michellemacphearson.com/big-flippin-deal-thurs-8pm-est/

The second thing is I’m working on the hottest powerpoints showing the “How-To’s” of everything I’m up to online…Pretty crazy hott stuff!

Keep an eye out very soon!

First 30 Days of Successfool - Successfool Stats

Here’s a quick video about my thoughts on the first 30 days of Successfool.com. In this video, I’m to be giving 3 Tips that you can apply today to start driving more traffic to your business that I’m not going to be sharing in this post.

Here’s a some interesting stats for month 1:

Unique Visitors:
4,014 - Averaged 133 uniques a day

Alexa Rank:
330,807
(before April 1st was over 800k)

Top Referring Sites:
1. Stumble Upon
2. Twitter (only started using Twitter in the 2nd week of April)
3. Wikpedia

Top Referring Friend Site:
Alice Seba (thanks Alice!!)

Most Popular Post:
1. What is Twitter?
2. The Most Important Day of My Life

Most Popular Interview:
David Wilkinson (we really found out that he’s REAL )

Top Commentators:
Jason Stanley Marshall
Tony Smith

Most Commented Post:
The Most Important Day of My Life

Favorite Tweets:
http://twitter.com/JPmicek/statuses/790455632
http://twitter.com/Ed_Dale/statuses/793751483

Most Diggs:
http://digg.com/business_finance/The_Most_Important_Day_Of_My_Life

I wanna thank those that help me out in month one of Successfool, you know who you are, and you ROCK!!

Will YOU be on next month’s stats?