Zappos Tony on the importance of happiness and culture

Tony Hsieh is a legend among the twitterati. He's built a legendary human-sized business in Zappos - designed very much on platform principles.
This video previews his forthcoming book. He's interviewed by Loic 'Le Web' Lemuer.
A great double whammy.

Twitter makes it easier to be human

Twitter has announced it is trialling a new business tool. It should mean an end to faceless accounts such as @brandX.

Instead the same account can share multiple users. Multiple human users.
And when a different human being 'takes the helm' you'll know so, and what they tweet will be individually ascribed against that particular human.

So where @btcare currently has to update their profile to tell you which human you are connecting with, now the metadata with each tweet reflect its use by each individual human.

Now, not every business is going to go for this. Can't imagine the multiple heavy users at Zappos or Dell turning in their IDs, for example.

But a lot will. And what I think is truly wonderful here is that with this tool Twitter says loudly and unequivically that Twitter is a human, person-to-person environment where broadcasting your brand = fail.

It's a breadcrumb trail for those orgs who would otherwise default to voice-of-the-brand blandness.

They are led by the nose toward finding out what Twitter is all about. And in doing so they just may discover the principles of this human way, this better way of being part of the lives of their communities of users.

"It's up to business to accomodate itself to (the human shape) of twitter, not for twitter to accomodate itself to business," as @stephenfry put it at #140conf

One small experimental step. A giant leap for businesskind.

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Where did those 5000 people come from?

Somewhat surprised to find the follower number on my twitter account has leaped by around 5000 over night.
I asked around to see if it's a general 'glitch'. Those who responded, reported no big leap for themselves.
And there isn't a huge dump of notification emails in my inbox.
So, I'm a little confused. Has to be a glitch doesn't it?
Anyone seen the same?
In the mean time, a screen-shot just to prove it did actually happen... (count was on 2600ish last night...)

UPDATE NOON: Normal service resumed, the 5000 odd have disappeared just as rapidly as they appeared.

While I'm on: The 'other' big over-night news, for me, was Amazon acquiring Zappos. Congrats Tony @Zappos
Open as ever, Tony has shared the letter he sent to all employees about the news.

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10 people to learn about social media from

I got asked yesterday for people who it would be good to follow if you wanted to learn about social media.

This is a list that could be 1000s long for me. Everyone I follow, am a friend of, read, link to, talk to... everyone teaches me about social media.

But I was asked for a list of 10. Not wishing to disappoint, here they are, completely as they fall from my fingers and onto the keyboard). I'd love to see yours shared as a list in the comments below. More people we can learn from.

Seems appropriate for a #FollowFriday on twitter... (Picture shows Euan and Stowe in London last week...)

1. Clay Shirky (@Cshirky on twitter) - Doesn't blog and tweet often, but when he does...
2. David Armano (@armano) - Brilliant for those of us who need diagrams.
   
3. Hugh McLeod (@gapingvoid) - Social marketing with menaces. Built on Purpose.
4. Stowe Boyd (@stoweboyd) - Operating manual for the social revolution. With a beard.
5. JP Rangaswami (@jobsworth) - Warm, open and real.
6. Mark Earls (@herdmeister) - Anti-brandist, Purpose personified.
7. Euan Semple (@euan) - Clue-ridden and blessed with the gift of KISS
8. Neil Perkin (@neilperkin) - Marketing strategy with chickens.
   
9. Tony (@Zappos) CEO of Zappos - A case study in the value of being human on a moment by moment basis.
10. Alan and Tomi (@alansmlxl @tomiahonen) Seminal communitarians.
    

Just realised the only people on that list I haven't met are Hugh and Tony. Must fix that.

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The value of a brand is in its conversations

It didn't take long. Twitter accounts are now going up for sale. Via Jonathan Macdonald and David Armano.
AndrewBaron is up for sale on eBay. Last time I looked bidding had reached $1125! @andrewbaron has just 1400 followers.
This phenomenom isn't particularly new - but it is new to twitter. MySpace accounts have sold on eBay before.
This essentially treats user accounts as media properties. Think about that for a moment. A user creating an account on someone else's platform is creating value (in real live dollars) simply from using themselves as a media property.
The fact that bidding has risen so high so fast for AndrewBaron indicates there are those who see the value of highly focused niche communities of interest.
However, the risk is that they are also seeing this as a way of purchasing some eyeballs. And eyeballs, no matter how focused and dedicated, are of less value than ears and mouths. In other words, by purchasing someone else's account you have access to audience, not access to conversation. The dynamic changes. Have you bought the conversation? Do you own it now?
That's contrary to the distributed micro-blogging nature of twitter. The conversation can and does start from anywhere within your self-formed group.
Note, it is a self-formed group. It isn't owned by AndrewBaron, he has no control over it.
All you have bought is access to audience - an audience who, by the way, are more like a community and may disappear if you broadcast at it.
Of course there are plenty of companies and commercial concerns moving into twitter in the hope of extending reach by broadcasting into a niche. Most fail to understand that the value derives from the conversations - not from the broadcast of the message.

And this I believe reveals a truth about how brand values and the value in a brand are now created. The value of a brand comes from conversation about it and with it.

Shoe firm zappo have understood this. @zappos is active in twitter, at least its CEO Tony is (ie a human being rather than 'a brand'.
Tony doesn't just use it to create a buzz (with regular prizes for random followers) he is careful to follow everyone who follows him - enabling the conversation (you have to be matched to see eachothers tweets in twitter).

Tony doesn't just tweet about zappo promotions, he reveals his life and his personality to you in every tweet. He presents a very human face of a company - and he does it in a way that is open to real live human conversation. Marketing without the fog.

I'd never heard of zappo before I found the fuzzy edge of their self-forming group on twitter. Now I have and so have you. And I for one have a warm feeling about it. The value of the brand and the brand's values are being created right before your very eyes - and shaped by your interactions with it.