In 09 we have made 2 very cool updates to Social Media for Firefox. In Feb we added Twitter, Sphinn and Mixx. This lets you hit the manual button on any URL you are on and see how many Tweets it has had. In other words it lets you see how many people have posted your link on Twitter. (There are a million short url services and we are working frantically to add the most prominent in so numbers might be a little off until then)

Today I’m announcing that we have added Bit.ly the Short URL service and I am really excited about the time it is going to save you. Here is how it works.

After installing the new version, Right Click on the manual button and follow the steps to configure Bit.ly by adding in your info and api key.

Then go to any URL and click on the Bit.ly Icon

Then a box will pop up that shows the new Shortened Bit.ly url in it, hit ok that closes the box and saves the link to your clipboard at the same time.

Then go to Twitter or where ever you want to post the URL and hit paste and done the link has been shortened and added into your Bit.ly account stats automatically.

Now after you have posted the link, you can go back to the url you shortened at anytime and hit the manual button. This will load two sets of stats one showing how many hits you have sent to that url and the second showing how many stats in total have been sent to the url from all Bit.ly users. Gives you your influence numbers without always having to login or go to your Bit.ly page and also gives you an idea on how viral or how well that bit of content is doing.

Example

I tweeted a link from Mashable a little while back, and I sent it 897 hits and it got a total of 9,955 hits from Bit.ly. The post got much more traffic than that I am sure but it is pretty cool to at least get some kind of idea as to how popular it was and see your influence in that at the same time.

Remember if you don’t use all the services that are a part of SMFF you can remove them by Right Clicking on manual and configuring your settings to save more real estate in your status bar.

You can download the new version here. If you want more info on Social Media for Firefox see the video below.

***Please add reviews at the Firefox Addons page, I have been lazy and need to get it out of the sandbox there so I can have more freedom with it.

This week 5ones launched a very cool project that we have been working on for a very long time (initial idea Jul 08). It is called, “5ones Earth” and it is an interactive Google Maps mashup that organizes all of the worlds Surf Spots, Skate Spots, Ski/Snowboard Resorts, Pro Shops and Company Headquarters. The idea is if you are in Hawaii on vacation and you are not familiar with the local surf spots you can do a search and the application will bring back all the relevant results to your search and give you specific information on the break as well as directions. Or if you are in need of some gear you can search for a shop. Maybe you want to find a place to skate while you are visiting friends in a different state? Whatever it is we hope to organize it and share it with everyone.

Check it out and if you are into action sports and have some spots to add then please do so to help it grow and also so you can enter into the contest which has over $1,000 worth of free gear.

Original Post on It

With social media reaching near its peak, more and more people and businesses are realizing its importance. Unfortunately for most, they get their ideas from a “bag-and-tag” blog post that claims it has the end-all result to reaching viral success. There’s especially been a lot of chatter on Twitter about people being so called “social media experts/gurus” and, in turn, there have been a bunch of blog posts to ridicule those type of people. One of my favorites on the subject was You’re Not a Social Media Expert, You Idiot (funny read w/ some good insight).

One thing I think I’ve personally seen is the overuse and abuse of the “Top 10″ lists. It’s crazy…it’s like some people think they can turn their crappy content into a less-crappy viral piece by chopping it up into 10 pieces. Don’t get me wrong, I love lists and do believe they work fabulously if you put the right amount of effort into it and complement it with great content and supporting images/videos. I definitely think some people have it down to a “T” when it comes to lists (just take a look at Wired - many of those articles get great social love from all over). That’s what I want to get into with this article is placing more emphasis on your content and not taking the easy way out by going straight for a list of some type.

Prepare Your Content Well

I remember reading a great post on DoshDosh a while back (sorry, can’t remember the post) where he went into getting better content into your posts. One thing that stood out most to me was the tip to jot down some of the first things that come to mind (in regards to the article you’re prepping) and then throw that piece of paper (or document) away. THIS is your starting point! Don’t include the obvious info for your viral piece, this will help you go beyond peoples’ expectations and you’ll have a better article because of it.

Sometimes You Don’t Need to Say Anything

I’ve already said how much I like the posts made by Wired, but here’s a great example of an excellent viral piece with ALMOST no content: Top 10 Time-Lapse Videos Show Nature at Work. What an awesome concept! Videos and images are an essential ingredient to your viral souffle (duh). Never underestimate the power of content mixed in with your videos though. One place that does this well is Mixergy. They create great videos of interviews with power-players and then summarize their video with content below (great to watch + Google gets new content = everybody’s happy).

Another great example is: 34 Amazing Tumblr Themes (Twitter Never Looked So Good). If you need to rely on your images/videos, make sure they speak for themselves!

Graphics, Charts & Stats

I’ve got to say, above all, one place that I highly admire for their social efforts is Mint! Not only can they produce insanely killer content like “8 Things You Should Never Buy New” (nearly image-less), but their new wave of “information graphics” are so well put together! In case you haven’t seen any of them, here are a couple I really liked:

• Visualizing One Trillion Dollars (in-depth research of what you could buy w/ $1 Trillion)
• The Fall of GM: A Visual Guide (several factors that point out many of the negatives that brought GM to it’s currently low standing point)

Now, I realize many of you are probably like me who couldn’t draw to save their lives. But outsourcing a simple task like this and turning your research into visual points creates a much greater impact on the people who read them. A quick visit to Elance could easily help you find someone who could put your thoughts into graphs for a reasonable price.

Work Backwards

One thing that can force you to be unique is to work backwards. I think a lot of people think “this would be a great top 10 list” and then start thinking of 10 things that they can come up with. Instead, do the opposite; work on your content and research and THEN find if you can segregate that information in 10 (or 8 or 6…whatever) main concepts for a list. This way, you put more emphasis on what people read and you don’t need to pull out 10 things from your ass to make your list.

Think of List-Alternatives

Lists do great, if you get them right, but there are other ways to look at your article before you immediately think of tearing it up into 10 pieces. Here are a couple of my favorites:

Go Back in Time

You don’t need to reach 88 MPH to get there, just grab some images from Flickr and/or Google Images (be sure to reference your source!). No matter what industry you are in, you can show what it used to be like 20, 30 or 100 years ago and how people did the same things. One great ideas was 25 Years of Mac: Classic Macs Still at Work (a great article about a business owner who still uses her old school Macintosh).

Another funny one is What lifestyle gaming pics looked like in the 70’s. It’s always fun to go back and see how stupid or inefficient we were back then.

Just about any industry can do this; Automotive, Marketing, Underwater Basket-Weaving, even Skateboarding: A Radical Collection of Vintage Skateboard Advertisements

Comparisons

These can be a lot of fun to put together. Whether it be a “Pros vs. Cons” type article or like this Battlestar Galactica comparison, you can easily put together a little data that would show the ups and downs to a product, service or style. Apple hit a homerun in their Apple vs. Windows commercials because they detailed out many of the features that people loved and showed how Apple did them better.

Examples

• Atheism and Christianity Timelines Compared
• iPhone’s size when compared to other devices
• PayPal vs Google Checkout

Find What People Like

Everyone’s pre-prepping research should involve a few simple steps to make sure you’re going to be heading in the right direction. Twitter Search can be a great way to find information about what’s happening right now and what peoples’ reactions are. Chris did a really good article here about Twitter becoming the most important website since Google (a great read if you haven’t already).

Another quick search on many of the popular aggregates (Reddit, Mixx, Digg, etc) will quickly give you ideas on what to do and what’s been done. If your idea has recently been taken, read through some of those relevant posts and find how you can evolve your idea into something further. Just because it’s been said before doesn’t mean it can’t be built upon by another perspective.

Be sure to put your piece together for YOUR audience of readers, it differs amongst industries and throughout the different social sites (depending on which one you’re targeting). Jane Copeland put together a massively resourceful article on How to Leverage Web 2.0 & Social Media Sites to Market Your Brand & Control Your Message. I highly recommend reading this simply for the knowledge of how each site works and what they’re after.

Another must-read is a collaboration of must-reads over at Traffik’d: 35 Must-Read Articles for Social Media Marketers.

I was going to put together a list of websites that never made the front page of some social websites and tear them apart to find why they didn’t and what they could’ve done to improve, but I think I’ll leave that for another post. Here are a few to look at, feel free to critique/talk about them in the comments below:

• Top 10 Reasons I’ll Never Use Ubuntu
• Top 10 Indian Actoresses (besides their obvious misspelling)
• Top 10 Gadgets (a “sexy wallpapers” site talking about gadgets? really?)
• 5 Essential Car Loan Refinancing Tips

Enjoy!

I think it is safe to say most everyone believes Google is currently the most important website on the internet. When I say important I mean the one that has effected how we use the internet the most thus far. Before it came out we were all satisfied with Yahoo, DogPile and other engines and then Google came a long and it got some grass roots buzz, it was the cool new minimalistic search engine that had surprisingly good results with a clean interface. Soon everyone that was savvy enough to know they could choose the search engine they retrieved info from, chose Google. Google didn’t enhance search, Google popularized search. Yes search was around before Google but people didn’t stop using the Yellow Pages and the Phone book and every other method of finding information until Google.

Enter Twitter -
Even among Google, Google Blog Search, RSS Readers, Blogs, Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon, FaceBook etc. there is still room in our already thin attention span for a site like Twitter. Like Google, Twitter is simple, straight forward and extremely easy to use. I don’t look at Twitter as a micro-blogging service I look at as a literal representation (both through information and networking) as to how small this planet really is. Short 140 character messages isn’t what Twitter is but how it is carried out. Twitter is becoming a behemoth of instant information with the ability to follow up with and talk to the person providing that information. Sure you could say that is the same thing as blogs, but most of what is said in blogs can and is starting to be said through 140 characters and you can digest more info from more people that way. I replaced my RSS reader with Twitter in fall of last year, I have seriously logged in to my Reader less then 10 times since September to read blogs when it used to be a daily occurrence. If someone asked, “what is Google not doing well on the web?” Twitter would be at the top of my list. Twitter is a Real Time engine with personal and live feedback.

#Twitter #Search -
Part of the long term stability I see with Twitter is from search.twitter.com. Anything I need to know about something that is happening right now or has happened in the last 12 hours I use Twitter search for. I used to search through Google Blogsearch, Digg, Delicious, Youtube to get breaking news but now I am alerted to it so quick through someones update, and I can go to Twitter search and get hundreds if not thousands of snippets of info and links seconds/minutes after it is happening. Everyone knows about Twitter and the Hudson River, Mumbai attacks etc. You can’t get that from Google. What takes Google minutes or hours to show you takes Twitter seconds. Google Organizes others content, Twitter creates and organizes its own content. When Jon Stewart ripped Jim Cramer a “new one” I found out about it live from people watching in Eastern time and I was able to go set my TIVO for MST and watch it that night. Before Twitter it would of been a Youtube clip submitted to Digg, Reddit or SU the next day. Danny Sullivan mentioned a similar experience during his keynotes at Omniture Summit and SMX West 09 about an earth quake that hit SoCal, he had tweeted about it and started to get replies and see results with information within minutes. There is no other site on the web that has this capability, and I don’t mean as in software but in software powered by a large and growing organic user base.

Sandwich Tweets -
Tweeting about the homemade panini you made or about the Audi test drive you just took is just as vital to Twitter as live excerpts from members of Congress during the State of the Union. If I wanted a new recipe to make for my wife I would use Twitter in that quest. I am in the market right now for a new car and I have used Twitter to find and reach out to those driving what I am interested in to get real live feedback. You can go to CitySearch or Amazon to see reviews on a product or company, but you can go to Twitter to see less biased reviews and you can talk to the person making those reviews and ask specific questions.

No More Red tape -
Twitter will replace a lot of media outlets or at least steal a lot of share from them. The way companies can communicate and react to customers via Twitter is Gods great gift to customer communication and loyalty. Before Twitter and partly due to sites like Digg Comcast was the Cable provider ran by Lucifer himself, now because of the outreach that Comcast has utilized via Twitter it is on its way to Saint Hood. Dell has similar experiences. Twitter is finally helping companies be agile who without it were stiff and slow. Social media and blogging in the large corporate space has always been hindered by Red Tape, Twitter forces companies to break that Red Tape. Large companies put review and approval processes before publishing blogs, can you imagine if tweets had to go through legal first? Not going to happen, Twitter forces companies to put someone capable and trusted at the helm as it cannot be regulated it like other mediums.

Twitter Tipping point -
Twitter is mainstream, the nature of Twitter allows every user to utilize its power in their own way, if you are a stay at home mom, CNN, Ashton Kutcher, Jimmy Fallon, small business owner, or the President of the United States you can use Twitter to better your objectives no matter what they may be. This is why it is Mainstream and why it isn’t going to stop, and you think there are a lot of people on there now? I guarantee you that in less than 6 months the user base will nearly double, and instead of people with 400k followers we will have people with over 1M followers. Before Twitter where else would you be able to talk to Shaq or get a late night link to a live streamed jam session by Shawn Ptwitty Combs. People that have influence on Twitter will have influence on the world especially in media. If I was hiring in any kind of business that needed media/marketing presence and I had two nearly identical resumes on my desk and one applicant had no twitter account and the other had 15,000 followers who do you think I am going to hire?

Embrace or be Replaced -
Every company needs to embrace and leverage Twitter before Twitter replaces them. Twitter is already been said to take a chunk out of Job sitesit could do the same to Social Sites, classifieds, dating sites, search engines, aggregators, and so on. FaceBook knows that Twitter is their biggest threat, and it is carving out a strong hold as the most powerful Real Time Search Engine that Google cannot Duplicate.

Conclusion -
There will be a new media darling in a year just as Digg was before Twitter, but Twitter will take on its own role and it isn’t going anywhere. Soon pretty much anyone with an internet connection will be using Twitter if not to tweet but to find Real Time information. In my opinion it is the most influential and important site since Google.

@chrisbennett

We finally finished a new version that is awesome, we added some sites and functionality and do some stuff with Twitter that I am super excited about.

New Sites:
It now includes Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon (review and thumbs up counts), Del.icio.us, Mixx, Tip’d, Sphinn and Twitter.

New Functionality:
The functionality is the same as before you can use it on the actual url you are on to see all the vote counts or you can go to sites like Digg and see a list of all the stories on the page and their vote counts at all the supported social sites.

However cause the list of supported sites is getting longer, you can right click on the manual button and choose which sites you want to display enabling you to shrink it down or to block data from sites you don’t frequent.

Twitter:
Go to any url hit the manual button or set it to auto and you will see a number count next to the twitter logo. This is how many people have posted that URL on twitter. We go through the Twitter and various Url Shortening services to grab the actual url so you can get a pretty accurate account for how many tweets shared that url.

Next click on the twitter portion and it will open up a new window that shows the search results in twitter to all those tweets. So you can see all the actual tweets directly pointing to the url in question.

So for all you twitter fanatics that don’t use Digg and other social sites, you can shut down all of them through the config mentioned above in the tool bar and just have twitter running to track tweets to any url.

For those of you that already have it, it should update automatically and the actual version is 3.0.5
If you need to download it you can here

Please share it and Tweet it with your friends, these tools are free and we are passionate about making cool tools that help marketers on a day to day basis and the more exposure and feedback we can get the better.

If you are considering going to SMX West I would highly recommend that you do. The weather is good the content is great and Danny and Chris put on killer shows. SMX West is one of my favorites cause of being in California and there are a lot of companies and reps there from Silicon Valley and you will make really good contacts with some really cool innovative companies.

It is worth the money, and if you hurry and register before tomorrow night Feb 9th you will save some dough.

To any readers that have enjoyed our take and twist to all things viral and social media please let me know in the comments if you have any specific things you think I should cover or mention, and do the same for Mat on his Image Panel.

I am in the process of finishing up my landscaping and everything around my pool, so I have been looking at design after design and trying to come up with something amazing. While doing all that - I have come across some pretty amazing pools, and have found my self day dreaming and doing a little more surfing for pictures then I think I needed to. I am amazed at what some people do with their pools these days. I also found some funny (and very dangerous) things that people do in their pools that I know would be a huge success and hit with social networks - especially YouTube.

Based on my research - here are some of the titles that I think would do pretty well in the swimming pool industry -

1. Top 10 Celebrity Pools.
2. The Worlds 10 Largest Pools.
3. The Top 5 Most Exotic Pools in Las Vegas.
4. The Top 5 Most Luxurious Backyard in Arizona. (local based idea)

You could include 10 pictures of amazing pools like the one above, and give details where they are (like this on in Tahiti) and why you feel they deserve to be in the top 10. It could be a vote, or based on cost, or location? It really is up to you - this is your post and idea. I think anything you would do would be amazing and make people want to keep reading on (staying on your site longer).

Some video ideas would be:

1. 10 Of The Most Dangerous Things Ever Done In Pools
2. 10 Things Dumb Kids Do In Pools
3. The Top 10 Things Your Kids Do That Will Void Your Kids Warranty

Then you could share some videos like this one I found: You would find 10 other videos similar to this one, and I would title it “10 Diving Board Jumps That Hurt To Watch”

If you are in the swimming pool industry you are lucky when it comes to viral content. There are enough stupid people out there, that there is a never ending supply. If you do some research and really dig into some of the examples I have given you even here - I think you will do well! As always - let me know if you have any other viral marketing questions in the form of comments here!

Hi Matt,
I’m opening a new company with a friend of mine, and I am pretty sure its the oldest and most boring business ever, plus its advertising is abused all the way… Limo services. Its based in Stamford CT, and I’m putting some ideas together along with a web site. Do you think this business deserves a post? Thanks

I am not sure about the abuse you are talking about (I have not seen any abuse in this industry in regards to viral marketing or social media). I have a good feeling that there is some huge viral marketing potential with the limo industry. My title should tell it all, and where I feel this industry would do very well.

Most people don’t get the opportunity to ride around in a limo many times in their life, but when we get that opportunity - watch out! People rent limos to feel rich, have a good time and feel a little bit powerful. All of this makes for good potential material for a viral campaign.

A quick search for “limo fun” on Google images brought back almost every image with people with their mouths as wide open as possible, and tongues sticking out. I instantly think of a fun link baited post title like this - “What Is It About Limos That Make People Act Like This? [10 Pics]” Then I would share 10 (of what I felt where the funniest pictures of people with their mouths wide open, or doing something silly inside limos) like this picture below:

I also have some other ideas that would take a little more time and research to come up with, but I think would be amazing. If you go back to the title of this post, my first idea for a viral post would be “Drivers Tell All - 10 Unbelievable Things That Happen In Limos” or “The 10 Most Luxurious Limos On The Market” and find pictures or video, and detail some of the amazing features that limos nowadays have. One final one I think would do really well - “10 of the most unique limos ever built” and you could include pictures like the general lee limo.

I think that would be awesome to read a post like that, and see all those images. I really think these three ideas alone should give you hundreds of other ideas that you could run with.

I really don’t want to get into it on this blog, but you could go down a more risky route with this one, and come up with some amazing stories, images, videos and content based on the dirtier or darker side of limos.

I also just saw a video of two limos racing on YouTube and that would be awesome to compile a list of the coolest limo races ever. Again - so much potential in this industry, so to the person that asked this question I think you have some options. Thanks for asking the question, and as always please feel free to send us in your viral marketing idea questions?

I started to talk to her about what are some of the grossest things she has ever had to clean, or has seen inside someones house and her responses were pretty amazing. She listed things like poop on the floor (and they had no pets) - SERIOUSLY? WHO DOES THAT? She also mentioned finding “toys” in bed when she has gone to pull the sheets off to wash. Again - WHO DOES THAT? Who freaking leaves their toys around for just anyone to find? Especially the maid? In one house she went to for the very first time (to give a quote for a cleaning) she walked in and saw piles of trash bags that lined the floor leaving only a small path for walking. You could not even get into the kitchen, and every single pot and pan was dirty in the house. So what she later found out was that she was going to the dollar store and buying disposable plates and dinnerware, and cooking food in her living room on a camping stove because she could not get into the kitchen! I can’t make this stuff up! One last thing before I get on with it - Cat poop was found on a mini-blind towards the top - how does cat poop even get there? I am serious, the way she described it was there was no way the cat could of, and she is still stumped to this day. I would have loved to have seen how the cat managed to pull that off! I guess that would be a pretty cool viral marketing video and idea for a cat website huh?

All the above got me thinking of how a business like this that is promoting house cleaning services could ever do something that could go viral. I started to think about You Tube, and Google Videos, Flickr and some of the many videos and pictures I have seen in the past where houses were trashed, or kids were doing un-speakable things as pranks on other peoples houses, and I just kept thinking to myself - someone is going to have to clean that up. I just never thought it past that point. But someone eventually does have to clean up the messes made.

The story I told you about the trashed house above, she did not take the job and basically told the person to go to hell. I don’t blame her. I would not want to clean the toilet of a clean persons house, but that’s just me. I also think you could get some pretty good footage if you were lucky enough to be called to clean a foreclosed home. I have seen some pretty amazingly trashed ones, where they have been stripped of everything, and I mean everything - including dry way (so they could get the copper wire I guess and sell it)

If you did a post on trashed foreclosed homes, and titled it “You Will Never See Another Home As Trashed As These 5 I Found” or “The Number One Most Trashed House In America” or “You Will Never Believe How Trashed This Foreclosed Home Was”. Some other ideas would be: “Seriously, How Can You Live In That House?” [PICS] or “The 10 Dirtiest Houses In America” or “10 Houses You’re Glad You Don’t Live In” I think that gives you enough ideas, but you see how you can take this idea and run with it so many different ways. I think the best shot you have of making it go popular somewhere would be to share stories that are your own, and images and experiences that are your own. If you can even come up with something close to the examples I have given you above, then I think it will do ok!