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Horizontal Conditioning of Social Behavior during a reboot

Data and Transactions are beautiful things. Twitter your health needs.

Start a web site called: Sponsor My Health Insurance. Pools of under-insured/high risk families who are unable to afford health insurance would form groups on Twitter. Say some company wants start a Twitter List called "Healthy Pals". They could be anyone, but the incentive would attract those who have health insurance cost issues.

The advertiser now has a specific demographic they can work with. Marketing programs would be built around this demographic through an on-going personal rapport between the sponsor and Sam's Gals. The health insurance company sponsor would randomly select Toni's account for a direct payment for a specific procedure that Health Insurance Company ABC covers but not Health Insurance Company XYZ.

The investment in the personal connection would go "biral" (bi plus viral), first, by word of mouth (re-tweets) on the network, then by the social network's element of anticipation, which would foster word-of-mouth about the anticipation of sponsorship/funding...which would become a brand in itself.

This branding builds upon the new era of transactional marketing, where all companies will participate on a more meaningful (and less expensive) method of advertising. This person to person method creates the illusion of a transaction; it modifies the expectation of advertising and cross-dresses currency as barter. Payment is exclusive to the network; receipt is monetized by the network.

What is the lifetime of these transactions? For as long as the Betty who tells the story about how So and So covered her drug coverage for XYZ that company ABC would not cover. If not, the story will be there on Twitter, search-engine indexed, about the story of a health insurance company that paid for Betty's procedure.

I'm not an expert in the health insurance business model, but social-networking sponsorship opportunities seems to be a better way to gain specific market share with more control and less overhead costs. Share your experience with me. Data and Transactions are beautiful things. The ongoing funding needs of health insurance makes complements Twitter perfectly.

How I use Twitter - Favorites

I "click" with Twitter, literally and figuratively speaking. Besides Twitter Liststhat I previous described in this blog, I use Favorites functionality, by checking a Star next to a tweet. Previously, one would have had to bookmark this offline or go through the function of saving it to an external web site.

 But starring the Tweet itself represents a convenient method of saving it like a Favorites item. Accumulate enough of these Favorites, and the hyperlinks themselves can be saved to an online bookmarking site. The 140-character entry makes it roomy enough so the information describes the truncated link the tweet points to. 

 The volume of interesting tweets I get sometimes makes me starring too many tweets as Favorites, and the flimsy attitude of Twitter makes me wonder if anything I Star will be around tomorrow. Then I backtrack on its usefulness. And I have another functionality I have to remember. 

Yet, simple functionality is a huge asset to any web site interaction. Its less important to me that Twitter offers real-time information flow and more important that its structure in a visually one-dimensional read, like a laundry list of story snippets. The Favorites functionality is Clickalious!

Do you have any online sites which tops the functionality of Twitter?

Jacked up on Energy Drink - My experience with Rockstar Sugar-Free

  
Over the summer of 2009, I used to load up on the non-carb version of Rockstar Sugar Free in the afternoons.

 My experience with it was similar to the buzz you would receive from a large iced coffee. Yet, it lasted longer, and obviously there was no sugar-crash because there were no carbohydrates(?).  So I assumed I was receiving the buzz from a variety of herbs: panax ginseng, gingko biloba, milk thistle extract, and guarana seed. I didn't do any blood test or anything to figure it out. But there was definitely some kind of high.

 But at almost $2.00 a can I was going broke drinking this stuff. I liked the convenience of having cold cans of this around in the refrigerator at work compared to the "work" of having to prepare an iced coffee. I justified the cost of drinking Rockstar based upon this fact for a while. But instead I just when back to drinking coffee.

If your addicted to soda in general, then would this be a better substitute? I don't have a problem buying an ice cold lesser-sized major-brand soda at a convenience store which comes to more than the price of a cold Rockstar. And less guilty about my choice.

If you combine a 5 mile run and then drink Rockstar afterward, you definitely get some energy. Jacking up your metabolism / energy from a physical workout and then drinking this stuff kicks my ass. 

How I use Twitter - Lists

 
Creating the above lists is an example of my initial attempt to harness the usefulness I found in Twitter content delivery. Apt metaphors for Twitter lists include email folders, rss feeds, email rules, Favorites Bar, or any other (technical) method which relies upon separating, segmenting or extracting content in which one can gain efficiency.

The way I labeled my Lists  reflects the way I label things are metaphors (and drink coffee). They have particular meanings, but only to me. I would not expect anyone to follow my Lists, but the ability exists. I created my lists for Inbound purposes; others have created lists as content providers --- outbound purposes, in the expectations others will follow their lists.

So, depending upon what "coffee" I want to have, or what "coffee" bar I feeling like hanging out in, will dictate my mood and what list I want to read. If I'm interested in some really good reading I'll goto my Kava list. If I wanted some conversational tone, I'll goto Panera, as the name indicates, reminds me of the conversations that take place there, or the people I used to hang out with.

I get a lot of Autobot followers because I mock a lot of popular/cultural products. I "file" these under "Decaf". Now, I read their profile to make sure its a genuine autobot that followed me before putting it under Decaf. However, once I made the mistake of putting a real person who actually liked what I wrote. He got offended that he was filed under Decaf, told me so on Twitter and unfollowed me. (But he was boring, after all)  

The real potential in Lists is capturing the promise of RSS feeds, those blog updates that are delivered in a twitter-like fashion to a central web site area rather than the user having to visit each site to get the updates. If a List has good content, its like a mini RSS feed. If the headline is good, then its more than likely the content will be good. (assuming the same person wrote it). Gawker.com has great headline content as well as abnormalreturns.com. So I would put these is certain lists.

 So, for example , my Financial Cup O'Joe Lists follows 58 users. I used to work a mutual fund company which had a Research Library of all the specialized financial publications . I used to browse all the newspapers and magazines in their library after work and was blown away by the brilliance of financial journalism. Now I can do this with a Twitter List at the speed of light compared to those off-line days.

However, due to the volume of and frequency of Tweets, Lists are thin on quality.  There is less quality in events that happen in short duration because -- in reality --- there is less momentum that exists in a short duration.

My experience with Twitter Lists is like bringing a surfboard to the beach ready to ride some waves. They're their, but you end up just waiting a long, long, LONG time for the one big wave. The QUANTITY of ripples is so great, it makes waiting for the wave tedious. One has to endure everyone repeating the same headlines over and over again without any imagination or thought of what the headline means.

I made my Lists in hopes of replicating the RSS feed experience, but a List is only as good as the content of the underlying providers to that List (oh, what a surprise, like everything else). Further, although Twitter as the 140-character maximum limit, no limit is imposed on the frequency of Tweets. Lists are vapors of content potential.