Create More Value Than You Capture

Create More Value
Than You Capture
Tim O’Reilly

O’Reilly Media, Inc.
www.oreilly.com

Twitter Boot Camp
June 15, 2009

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Do you think the author of this tweet was trying to just build his number of followers?

This person is telling his own story, but his “ambient intimacy” suddenly matters to the
world.

The secret of social media is that it's not
about you, your product, or your story. It's
about how you can add value to the
communities that happen to include you. If
you want to make a positive impact, forget
about what you can get out of social media,
and start thinking about what you can
contribute. Not surprisingly, the more value
you create for your community, the more
value they will create for you.


O’Reilly books are the expression of a
community and its interests

What I do on twitter is also what I do when I publish books. I pay attention to a
community, find interesting people and ideas, and use my platform to amplify them.

When I brought together the “open source summit” I was bringing together and
promoting my community. My conferences are a reﬂection and ampliﬁcation of
community.

We’re doing exactly the same thing with Make magazine and Maker Faire.

And with our Web 2.0
events.

The network as platform means that
competitive advantage goes to systems
that harness network effects to get
better the more people use them.

What Web 2.0 really means.

In each case, we’ve told a big story by
amplifying the voices of a community
of early adopters.

In each case, we’ve built our business
by creating even more value for others.


Questions you should ask yourself

• What assets do you have that increase in
value through participation?
– Knowledge about your customers?
– Knowledge from your customers?
– Your brand as it is spread by others?
– Your accumulated history?
• What assets do you have that benefit from
the real time nature of online information?
• How do you involve your customers in
increasing the value to them of what you do?

11
Implications of Web 2.0 for marketers

social network graph of
congressional twitterers

John Culberson became a central node in the congressional twitter network by becoming
the one engaging in the most conversations. He doesn’t just tweet about himself, he
responds.

my twitter input feed

Most of what I tweet is passing along great stuff from others.

retweetradar

Here’s a wordle visualization of my tweet stream. Note home prominent RT and via are -
the most common words in all my tweets.

Here’s a view of some of the RTs I do.

nivi and the @timoreilly bump


NyTimes twitter feed for contrast

Contrast this with the NYT: it’s just an RSS feed.

twitter search for @nytimes

How much more interesting is the conversation of people talking about their stories.

This is important!

• In social networks, you gain and bestow
status through those you associate with
• A key function of a publishing brand is the
bestowal of status by what you pay attention
to
• If you only pay attention to yourself, you
aren’t as valuable to your community
– You don’t learn as much from your readers
– You don’t bind them to you by amplifying their
voice

The rules of social engagement and how they apply to publishing.

Tweet Fatigue

You can only push so much through a single channel. How do you deal with this? You
use YOUR channel to build others. I build up the reputation and strength of those in my
network by showing off SOME of their work; you go to the source for more. Think of my
tweet stream as a sampler from an amazing community

A few tips and tricks


I see that you2gov’s link is just to an abstract, so I don’t pass it along directly.

I click through to the original, and use that link instead, to save everyone a link. I rewrite
to put my own voice into the story, giving credit using via.

I don’t want to overwhelm people, so I save this to my “queue” document, for passing
along later, so I don’t blast everyone with my reading all at once but can space out
through the day.

Jay Rosen’s great deﬁnition of how I use twitter.

http://www.digitalmediabuzz.com/
2009/05/mindcasting/
Digital Media Buzz, Mindcasting: the New Blue Ocean

The act of building an editorial presence in Twitter by filtering, processing and
structuring the flow of information that moves through the medium using one’s follow
list, journalistic sensibilities and individual right to publish updates.

* Account title to the discretion of the owner
* Follow list used as an editorial filter
* Three content layers: established, daily and one-off themes that interact
dialectically
* Posts, done 15-20 times per day at different intervals
* Professionally written tone
* Direct interaction with audience/readership
* Liberal, sensible use of hyperlinks
* Fully articulated thoughts
* No retweets (instead use the via @GrammarGirl convention for crediting the
source, then reword the post to sharpen, comment or otherwise add personal value.
— JR)

This blog post expands on Jay’s concept

A lot of times people @ me or d me to send me links, hoping I’ll retweet. Monkchips sent
me this link. It sounded too good to be true.

So I asked Saul Griffith, who is an expert on wind energy, if this was worthwhile. He
didn’t think so, so I didn’t tweet this. It’s important to do your research. Don’t
mindlessly retweet.

bit.ly as a twitter client
• How about offering this kind of thing from the NYT?

Bit.ly is an amazing way to track your tweets.

bit.ly and the power of instant
tracking

You get real time feedback on how many people click on your passed links.

Let people see who you are

Build an authentic voice that helps people see who you are.

Some tweet of mine that’s personal

When I share details of my personal life, I try to frame them in such a way as to make
them useful thoughts, as well as to show who I am and how I think. I learned this lesson
from @sacca, who is a master of turning the everyday into human insight.

@zappos uses twitter to express his philosophy, not sell his business

@WholeFoods has built an authentic voice providing customer service for their business.

A lot of people hold these guys up as heroes because they made a lot of money. I think
they are heroes because they created a lot of value.

These guys are even bigger heroes, because they created far more value for the rest of us
than they captured for themselves

Create more value than you capture


For More Information

• What is Web 2.0?
http://www.oreillynet.com/go/web2
• http://tim.oreilly.com
• http://radar.oreilly.com
• http://twitter.com/timoreilly

38

Create More Value Than You Capture

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