/Message

Twitpitch: Joblogs

[from @sireland]

CRM + Blogs keep agile service-based teams organized and important to their clients http://joblogs.cc said "Job-Blogs"

Twitpitch: Kindling

Saw an interesting twitpitch this morning:

Kindling (http://kindlingapp.com) is your org's democratic suggestion box. Ideas Collaboration Voting = Progress! #twitpitch

from ">arc90 about 16 hours ago from web in reply to stoweboyd

I hope it's not democratic really, but based on bottom-up, reputation-based decision making. We'll see.

Twitpitch: Chictopia

Via Twitpitch:

chictopia @stoweboyd[Chictopia hits 2 million page view run rate 8 weeks of public launch. Lands first advertising deal American Apparel.]#twitpitch

chictopia @stoweboyd[feedback? http://www.chictopia.com/deals/hot_deals]#twitpitch

stoweboyd @chictopia Its a legit #twitpitch, but I don't know how interesting to my readers. I like the Polyvore tools, though.

stoweboyd Any fashionista/social tools fanatic want to review the social aspect of @chictopia? I am still looking for more contributors at /Message.

Twitpitch: Slingpage

Slingpage: one-click instant web sharing http://tinyurl.com/49x2bu

about 16 hours ago by CMajor from web in reply to stoweboyd

Twitpitch: UpTake

UpTake helps u make better travel decisions, powered by 20 mm travel opinions/reviews of edglings from 1000+ sites.

Elliott Ng 01:38 PM May 07, 2008 from web in reply to stoweboyd

Twitpitch: Lefora

Vinnie Lauria:

Lefora.com is forums made easy - it's like blogger for forums.

about 4h ago via web in reply to stoweboyd

Twitpitch Is Pissing Some People Off

I am somewhat baffled by the response to today's post about twitpitching (see Twitpitch Is The Future).

My argument in a nutshell: I am getting a bazillion pitches a week, especially heading into conferences like the Web 2.0 Expo. I thought that I might exploit the explicit brevity of twitter, and the open discourse involved, to shift the communication with PR people out of my inbox, into something more social, and at the same time, more abbreviated.

Enter the Twitpitch, and I have to say PR folks have adopted amazingly quickly.

But Louis Gray and Steve Hodson have heartburn about it.

Louis Gray wonders, snarkily, if companies or their PR firms can remember how specific bloggers want to be contacted:

[from You Can Only Pitch Me In Reverse Polish Notation or Pig Latin]

But for any company looking to make a name for themselves, how can they possibly remember who wants to be communicated how?

Stowe Boyd of /Message writes Via Twitter, "The Only Approved Way To Pitch Me" is via TwitPitch.

On his blog, he writes, in Twitpitch Is The Future, "Companies will be directed to this page to get the idea, and those that try to stick with the bulging email approach will suffer a three-strikes-and-you're-out rule: After three times of being warned, they go into the spam category."

Upside to him: Less e-mail, more clarity on whether something is being sent his way to write about.

Downside to the company: Their pitch is visible to everyone, making it clear they are shilling, and exclusivity is eliminated.

But, Louis, perhaps the visibility of their pitch is a positive, since my 2700+ followers will see the pitch. Isn't that, in principle, what they are after? Sure, if the pitch sucks, and the product is dumb, that will be obvious, but it's not like they are generally trying to hide their positioning or messaging.

Oh, and PS: PR firms generally keep book on the people that they try to pitch, and they know how they want to be pitched. That's one of the services they offer their clients.

Several of the more percipient PR folks that I steered toward twitpitching me noted in emails that they were informing others in their firms to only twitpitch me in the future.

And when you filter out the implication that I am somehow being arrogant to tell these folks how to communicate with me, it's only sensible that I tell them what I want. It's my life after all: it's my inbox. I am *not* telling them to pitch me in Klingon or something. Just because I have an email address, doesn't mean I want it crammed with pitches.

Or is he suggesting that it's hard to use twitter? Too difficult for the dense PR folks to grok? Bullshit: it's easy, and most of them are using it already.

Steven Hodson read Louis Gray's post, and digs even deeper into the notion that I am arrogant:

[from Talk about getting too big for your britches]

When you start throwing roadblocks into the conversation; whether it just is PR or not, the only losers will be the bloggers and then our readers. You know them .. they’re the people who at some point might come to you with an idea or God forbid a pitch but now they might just think twice about it. As such the only feeling you leave with them is that bloggers are just getting too big for their britches.

Oh, yes. I am getting too uppity.

A haphazard estimate is that I got several hundred emails leading up to the conference. Even a conservative estimate of a minute or two for each would have had me fooling around with these pitches for at least three or more hours. And that's just to figure them out, not the ensuing mess of scheduling meetings.

Hodson may think I am obliged to spend that time on behalf of the /Message community, but I don't buy it. Most of that time is waste, plowing through old school PR mumble -- passive writing, third person voice, phony quotes from CEOs, piles of untruthful superlatives, and a torrent of unintelligible buzzwords -- and with the hard work involved in boiling it down to a single value proposition left to me.

So I am done with it, even if a few self-appointed arbiters of the greater good want to tell me I am doing something harmful, fattening, or sinful.

Twitpitch Is The Future

By Stowe Boyd

I am shifting permanently to twitpitching as the sole medium for companies to pitch me. I debuted the idea in the past few weeks, leading up to Web 2.0 Expo (see Web 2.0 Expo Meeting Scheduling: Twitpitch Me! and As Bad As It Gets: The Case For Twitpitches, Part II ). Basically, I want companies to get their story down to a one-liner 'escalator' pitch -- like 10 seconds long -- which is going to force them to drop the superlatives and buzzwords and get to the heart of the matter.

A twitpitch takes the following form:

1. A twitter message of the form "@stoweboyd [pitch goes here without the brackets] #twitpitch". (Note the #hashtag means that these will be accessible at www.hashtags.org/tag/twitpitch.)
2. A second, optional twitter of the form "@stoweboyd [single URL goes here without the brackets] #twitpitch". Just one URL, please.
3. A third, optional twitter of the form "@stoweboyd [proposed time(s) to meet or call go here without the brackets] #twitpitch".

That's it.

Twitpitches that work -- that interest me enough to warrant spending some time to find out more -- will be retwittered on my @stoweboyd account, and here on my blog.

And companies will be directed to this page to get the idea, and those that try to stick with the bulging email approach will suffer a three-strikes-and-you're-out rule: After three times of being warned, they go into the spam category. Obviously I am open to receiving emails for general communication, just not for pitches.

I have both @twitpitch and @twitcatch accounts at Twitter, but I am reserving them for a future, more complex and automated solution, downstream.

As Bad As It Gets: The Case For Twitpitches, Part II

My Twitpitch idea has caught some attention, especially Sarah Perez at ReadWriteWeb:

[from Twitpitch: The Elevator Pitch Hits Twitter]

Twitpitch. We love it. It's brilliant. It's social media put to work. We hope it catches on.

And just to show why it's a good idea, on a personal level, here's just one of the email pitches I got today, one of like 30:

As bad as it gets, originally uploaded by Stowe Boyd.

This is the worst sort of PR email. No text whatsoever, from someone that I don't know, with an attachment in Word. If I were to respond I'd have to click the link, wait for the download, wait for Word to open, then read whatever the heck was in there: probably a 10 minute exercise. All that without even a hint?

Yikes.

One of the features of twitpitches that most people haven't picked on is that its social and open: I want these PR types to do their business in the open, so that others can see their pitches. It's good for them and their clients if the pitches are short and sweet, suggest a real value to someone, and avoid buzzwords and fuzzy analogies. My 'followers' on Twitter can get the benefits of a discourse about these products, if there is any benefit to be had. And it's all done in the clear light of Twitter.

My thoughts about open PR are inspired by some ideas offered up by my friend JP Rangaswami regarding his ideas around open email. I plan to write something about that this weekend, once the craziness of Web 2.0 Expo -- and all these pitches -- has receded.

Twitpitch: ThoughtFarmer

Chris McGrath: ThoughtFarmer is a wikified intranet for intranet haters.

about 2d ago via web in reply to stoweboyd

Twitpitch: Elastra

kwatson49 @stoweboyd Elastra enables companies to launch clustered database applications on-demand (i.e. Amazon Web Services).

about 1d ago in reply to stoweboyd

Twitpitch: Suggestionbox.com

BJ @stoweboyd SuggestionBox.com - feedback management platform meets community collaboration with a business model ;)

about 2d ago in reply to stoweboyd

Twitpitch: Profy

Svetlana Gladkova Profy @stoweboyd Profy is a new blogging platform focused on social aspects of blogging and providing a blogger with all the tools in one place

about 2d ago in reply to stoweboyd

Twitpitch: OpenACircle

jkatt @stoweboyd See OpenACircle at W2X 10:30am Tue: Facebook + WebEx + Skype + free + killer video = Collabotool for the rest of us. Coming?

10:30 AM April 16, 2008 from web in reply to stoweboyd

Twitpitch: Zude

MKraft @stoweboyd #twitpitch: #zude is a social computing platform. Users drag&drop, build media-rich websites. Mashup whole web. Big News @ Expo

Matthew Kraft about 2d ago in reply to stoweboyd

Twitpitch: Evernote

LeonoraMS @stoweboyd Evernote is your external brain: http://13423.moorl.com/

10:37 AM April 15, 2008 from web in reply to stoweboyd

Web 2.0 Twitpitch Schedule - Updated 15 Apr 5pm ET

The Twitpitch experiment is going well. Since this morning, when I posted Web 2.0 Expo Meeting Scheduling: Twitpitch Me! I have received a barrage of twitpitches, and I have set up a few meetings already, with Zude, Profy, Evernote, and SuggestionBox.com:

iCal, originally uploaded by Stowe Boyd.

I have also lost a slot to a conflict with another non-Web 2.0 Expo telcon.

Kudos to Katie Watson at Voce, who not only is teeing up a Twitpitch for Elastra (which I have not seen yet), but has already informed the other folks at Voce that this is how I want to be pitched in the future. Smart!

One note: vendors it would be smart, although it takes a few of the precious characters away, to tag your twitpitches as such: include #twitpitch in the tweet. People might subscribe to the RSS as www.hastags.org, after all.

Here's the twitpitches, earliest at the top:

MKraft @stoweboyd #twitpitch: #zude is a social computing platform. Users drag&drop, build media-rich websites. Mashup whole web. Big News @ Expo

Matthew Kraft about 4h ago via web in reply to stoweboyd

[set up meeting]

Profy @stoweboyd Profy is a new blogging platform focused on social aspects of blogging and providing a blogger with all the tools in one place

Svetlana Gladkova about 4h ago via Snitter in reply to stoweboyd

[set up meeting]

ReedLyon @stoweboyd #twitpitch Awareness http://snurl.com/24ikt (founder Dave Carter) does enterprise social media communities http://snurl.com/24ijo

[considering. broke the rules, too.]

BJ @stoweboyd SuggestionBox.com - feedback management platform meets community collaboration with a business model ;)

BJ Cook about 3h ago via web in reply to stoweboyd

[set up, had to make three attempts to get it right!]

kwanlass @stoweboyd Bungee Connect dev & hosting platform-as-a-service wants to update, discuss comparison to other PaaS. www.bungeeconnect.com

kwanlass about 3h ago via web in reply to stoweboyd

[considering: I have already seen them many times]

ReedLyon @stoweboyd Awareness has a uniform content architecture so all forms of UGC can be easily repurposed. Provides admins accelerator and brake.

ReedLyon about 2h ago via twhirl in reply to stoweboyd

[considering. sounds scary. I don't like the term 'user generated content'.]

Jeremy_Frank @stoweboyd Static Flickr pic for scheduling?? Let us show you the light with TimeBridge. 2:20 or 4:40 Thursday in the press room?

Jeremy Frank about 1h ago via twhirl in reply to stoweboyd

[no. I have seen Timebridge many times before.]

Still have a few slots available!

I like the idea of forcing people down to the tiniest escalator pitch: if you had 10 seconds to pitch someone, passing each other -- one going up, one going down -- on escalators in the airport, what would you say? Twitpitch!

Web 2.0 Expo Meeting Scheduling: Twitpitch Me!

[update: 15 Apr 5pm -- see Web 2.0 Twitpitch Schedule - Updated 15 Apr 5pm ET for updated schedule and available slots.]

I can't believe what a pain in the ass it still is to do something as basic as trying to schedule meetings with startups at a conference. The solution is probably to hire a PR firm to do it, since they seem so incredibly avid in their relentless pursuit in getting meetings for the clients.

Of course, I am aware that many of the PT flacks that are chasing me -- and the companies that they represent -- do not necessarily get up and jump out of bed in order to see what I may have written overnight. I am possibly just another name on the press list.

But in order to make things simple for me, I am hereby posting a schedule of the times that I will make available for meetings with companies at the Web 2.0 Expo, and I am not going to accept email-based proposals to meet, only Twitpitches.

Schedule For Web 2.0 Expo Meetings, originally uploaded by Stowe Boyd.

Here's the rules for Twitpitching:

1. All companies who would like to have a meeting with me, need to send me a Twittered description of the product. Yes, please Twitter it to me at www.twitter.com/stoweboyd. Yes, one tweet, 140 characters less the eleven used for "@stoweboyd ".
2. Optionally, send a supporting twitpitch with one link, and no other text. Could be to anything: website, video, press release, Rick Astley, etc.
3. Then, twitter me one or more suggested times/place to meet at the event, using the times on the calendar, and a location in the conference building I won't have time to visit your nearby hotel or offices.

(In the future, I plan to use my www.twitter.com/twitpitch account for this, but I haven't set it up in a productive way, yet. More to follow on that.)

Alternatively, you can twitter me about trying to meet at one of the many parties. Note: I will be attending the South Park Crawl, and my office is on South Park, so I am open to being grabbed spontaneously at the party and maybe getting a ptich on the fly, but only by companies that have twitpitched me already. Of course, you could twitterpitch me in real time, right at the party, and then walk over. Could work.

Note also, in a twitterized style of business, I am only allotting 30 or 40 minutes for meetings. Let's get down to it people. Cut to the chase. If I fall in love with it, I will be the first to ask for a follow up.

I am not setting myself up as a tin-plated God, but I am getting an ungodly amount of email from PR folks, and it's extremely random: some have attachments, some have big, stupid, old fashioned press releases copied in their entirety. Gah.

I will post all the twitpitches I receive on my blog, here, so that should be an added enducement.

I don't guarantee that I will agree to the tweetup, but I am definitely not meeting with companies that send email, henceforth. I will send an email to all those that have emailed prior to this post, pointing then to this.

Let the twitpitches commence!