SocialStartups.com

I attended the "Real time! Search meets Social" event / panel last night hosted by SEMPO (as part of Social Media Week). It was a more enjoyable event than the super-crowded-bars-filled-with-media-girls events I attended earlier in the week (that's a personal bias: I hate crowded spaces where I have to shout to speak with the person right next to me).

One thought I had last night was, aren't brands overinvesting in Twitter? If you think about it, the most valuable tweets fall into two categories: breaking news and links to interesting content. And the former is only valuable right now — 2 week old breaking news isn't very "breaking" anymore. So the real value comes from giving people on Twitter content worth sharing: it's word-of-mouth and it's free! Furthermore, if you look at dollars spent as a result of search versus Twitter, search is larger by orders of magnitude, so shouldn't brands be focused on creating content (including blog posts) that gets indexed by search engines and passed around on Twitter / IM / email / Facebook?

I asked this question of the people on the panel, who represented StockTwits, HootSuite, Shorty Awards, Trendrr, and Collecta, a very Twitter focused bunch (other than Collecta). I didn't get a very clear answer from any of them, but generally it seemed like they agreed with me, which is ironic considering how Twitter-centric they are. 

When brands get back to questions of ROI and metrics when investing time and resources into social media, I think we will see a resurgence in blogging and multimedia, because at the end of the day, people need "something" to tweet about and share. Better to be talked about, than simply talk.

Tumblr recently redesigned their dashboard and added a spot that showcases one post from the Tumblr Radar, which is Tumblr's editorial selection of the most interesting / popular posts on Tumblr right now.

I suspect they are using the spot to collect data on how engaged Tumblr users are with the spot in order to entice advertisers. Let's say that on average, posts in that spot get 1 million unique views per day and 700 million impressions. Furthermore, you could say that posts in that spot get thousands of likes and reblogs and followers.

That would be a pretty compelling reason to convince a business to become a paying Tumblr user. Sure, you get the free blog (and Tumblr will help you design it all pretty), but you also get the super sekret analytics that will tell you how many people are reading your posts via the Tumblr dashboard. And, you'll get the opportunity to PAY to have your posts be featured in that spot. (Only genuine, value-added posts will be approved of course. You don't want to obviously be an ad. The Newsweek Tumblr is a positive example.)

I love it. I think it's a great idea, and I expect Tumblr will make a nice amount of money off of it. I don't know if they'll make enough millions though… but it might be enough to get them acquired by AOL or News Corp.

What do you think?

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C'mon, you know you want to.

My friend Kelly, who I worked with at Etsy and is my co-founder Chris’ girlfriend, has built the prototype of a social shopping site focusing on stylish items (unlike existing sites that focus on consumer electronics). It’s a pretty neat site and I like the idea. She’s pretty good on both the PHP hacking end and on the product end, but has realized that she is unable to do both well simultaneously.

So, she is looking for a co-founder. Either a product / UX person or a coder… whichever you are will allow her to do the other. If you are interested, email me at david.lifson@gmail.com and I’ll pass you along.

We're looking to hire a few interns to help us with marketing and sales. Your responsibilities would include blogger outreach, sales emails, various marketing activities, and community management. You must be well-versed in social media and have excellent written and verbal communication skills. This would be a 3 month unpaid internship with the opportunity to turn into full-time paid employment at the end of the internship.

If you are interested, send email to dave@postling.com with your resume and a link to your blog / twitter / LinkedIn or some other social media page that will let me learn more about you. You'll be working out of our office in Union Square, NYC, so local applicants only, please. Thanks!