You probably already heard about the fake @BPGlobalPR Twitter account that was created to criticize the tragic BP oil spill. The account pretends to be an official BP handle, and with a mere 138 tweets, it already has aproximately 85K followers (and it has been listed by 2095 users!) in just a few days.

Of course, the AdAge article and other media have helped spread awareness of the account, but the reason for its speedy rise in followers is mostly due to the severity of BP’s oil spill combined with the the cleverness and relevance of the tweets.

Humor goes a long way when it comes to Twitter. Fake accounts like this one are created all the time, but they rarely make much of an impact. We’ve seen fake Twitter accounts for everything from presidents dictators (ie. @ChavezCandanga_) to Star Wars characters (ie. @DarthVader), but the most effective ”fake” Twitter accounts are often parodies (ie. @BogusBogusky, @ChuckNorris_ @Nick_Nolte) or created by actual fans (ie. @PeggyOlson and maybe @BadPeggyOlson). However, @BPGlobalPR is going against BP with intelligence, and dare I say it.. strategy? (more…)

Some videos from 140Conf NYC in April 2010, including Best Buy’s Twelforce team, Tim Ferriss, Ivanka Trump, Donnie Deutsch, Gary Vee and more.  Use the arrows to scroll or check out the YouTube playlist.

Sometimes, to gain perspective about how big the world is, and how small I am in it, I take my glasses off.. just to realize how blind I really am.

Let me back up a bit. I can’t see 20/20. When I take my glasses off, everything goes awfully blurry and it makes me feel lost and confused. The sensation of not being in control, of not being being able to do simple things like reading a sign that’s only a few feet away, can be really frustrating and intimidating.

When I was about 16 years old I started sitting in the front of the classroom to “see better.” Eventually a teacher told me to just get some glasses already (as if it was obvious to everyone but me). After going to the optometrist and actually getting my first pair of glasses, I realized that I had been needing them for a very long time. I just thought that everyone saw things the way I did, blurry and cloudy and dull. I remember wearing glasses late at night, and the billboards looking so much brighter, so much more colorful and alive than ever. For the first time, I was seeing the way I was supposed to.

Taking my glasses off today really made me think about a lot of the things that are happenning in the social web. Two things in particular concern me, especially because we bypass them with all the excitement about “social this” and “social that.”

The first is that people are becoming more and more self-centered. While we talk about a cultural shift towards sharing, openness, authenticity, and transparency, the shift sometimes has more to do with our egos. This shift should worry us a bit because if we keep calling “social” what is often anything but, we might end up with a bunch of anti-social narcissistic human beings who crave micro-celebritism and their own utopian so-called personal brands.

My second concern kind of ties in with the whole ego thing. For those of us working in online marketing and social media, the ego dillema translates into a mindset of “no one else gets it” and “we are ahead of the curve,” as if we had discovered America or something. (more…)

“My whole approach to making this film is similar to open source web development,” said Tan Siok Siok when I asked her about Twittamentary. On the most recent The Social Nerdia Show!, I had a conversation with her to talk about this unique documentary, which she referred to as a “project about Twitter using Twitter to make it happen, and the power of the real-time web.”

Listen to the entire conversation with Siok Siok on the Flash player below. You can also subscribe on iTunes, stream from mobile phones on Stitcher, and listen to upcoming LIVE shows on blogtalkradio.

Siok Siok explained that traditional filmmaking is “very secretive” because it is important to keep the idea away from anyone who could steal it. “What’s unusual about this project is that we crowdsourced it,” she told me. From ideas like a “meetup road trip” to mobilizing people to “generating leades for the shoot,” the Twitter community has made it possible for many to get personally involved. One such example happened in Denver, CO, where Siok Siok’s team was stranded at a bus station at midnight. Someone read her tweets and soonafter picked them up and let them stay with him for the night. “The film shows that Twitter works.” (more…)