In the pantheon of social media, Frank Eliason is certainly something of a celebrity.
He was the start of a social media craze from Comcast, chasing down and responding to online complaints from customers. In the history book of social media, Eliason, who popularized Twitter handle @ComcastCares, will be among the forefathers of the movement.
After beginning in September 2007, his role was buffeted with a team of Comcast tweeters and blog readers and outreach specialists.
Nearly as well known as complaints about Comcast service were the signs of that Eliason’s team was listening. It was a strange juxtaposition, an attempt to move a mountain of negative perception with a relatively small team of persistent web-based professionals.
And Eliason was at the start of what has become accepted as the norm.
Introducing Technically Philly’s Startup Roundup. Here, we’ll parse out the small pieces that make our greater Startup ecosystem thrive. We want to keep you in touch with the innovations that we can’t quite get to covering, but that deserve highlight. Follow along with the Startup Roundup’s dedicated RSS feed. If you’ve got news to share, get in touch.
DEFINITE READS
LTL Prints has been racking up partners weekly, according to the deluge of press releases we get, but that’s why not why we’re playing this one. The Old City-based wall graphics company has an interview with Twitter’s Fail Whale creator — and LTL featured artist — Yiying Lu. It’s not about failure at all:”I wanted to create a visual greeting – a visual ‘comfort’ for my friends back home for all the events that I was missing,” Lu says. Check it out if not for the story, for the original sketches.
Some people count how many friends they have, and some people count the value of their friendships. On social media — and the web generally — we have the same kind of experience.
We can count just about everything online, and so it should surprise no one that as social media has boomed, so too have the comparisons between Facebook friend counts and Twitter followers.
But there’s so often a nuance that raw numbers can’t show.
It’s easy enough to track who are the most followed Twitter users in Philadelphia, but everyone is trying to figure out how those figures measure in influence — or ‘resonance.’ Suppose we want to see who are the biggest Philadelphia voices in the Twitter conversation — not spam accounts with big follower numbers, but those people who you should be following, whose opinions matter and are being heard.
Simply, what Philadelphia Twitter users matter most?
It was only a matter of time until Philadelphia’s graffiti scene was given a digital upgrade.
At least, that was the thinking behind Drexel University’s Social Graffiti project, which projected digital animations and interactive messages on the side of the university’s Nesbitt Hall early this month.
Team leader Matthew Morton, who just graduated last week with a bachelor’s in digital media from Drexel, worked with five other members of the media school to develop the project. Inspired by Comcast Center’s video wall, the team used 3D animation and videography techniques to creatively—and temporarily—alter the building’s facade.
Optical illusions, like one scene where it appears as if the walls of the building are being pulled back, revealing its inside, were used throughout the projections.
Most notably, folks could “paint” the building with custom messages, the heart of the graffiti project. Anyone could tweet text to the project’s twitter account, which would be displayed on the side of the building at 33rd and Market.
“The Twitter messages were the next step in finding out how the piece could be interactive,” Morton says. In order to display the tweets, the production team used Twitter’s API to automatically broadcast 140-character messages directed at the Social Graffiti account.
Launched on first of June, the team was only able to run the event for a week. After all, the projector, a Christie Roadster HD 18,000 lumen monstrosity, cost about $11,000 per week to rent.
The project needed an extremely capable rig, since the projector shot from across the street in the Pearlstein building, 180 feet away. In order to fit the tall, thin facade of Nesbitt, the team turned the projector on its side to cover a greater portion of the wall.
Funding for the project was raised within the university and the team also tapped local tech companies to fill gaps. On three displays installed for the occasion above the entrance of the building, sponsors were given credit for their donations, Morton says.
It wasn’t a hard sell to university administrators. The team has even been trying to find funding to permanently install a similar projection system on campus.
It could be a valuable addition, Morton says. The project is a unique way of combining digital arts with the natural urban environment. “You engage an unsuspecting audience that way. No one coming down Market Street would have heard about it unless they came across it,” Morton says.
It’s cool people. Don’t fret. We’re bringing the Flyers back home for the next one. Chill, dog.
And hell if it isn’t a good time to be in town. Philly Beer week is already raging (if the PBC truck at Liberty Lands park on Saturday was any indication), and there’s some great technology events around town, too. Grab a beer. Head on over to one of the community happenings. And do a night cap from your favorite local brewery.
This week, Twitter’s in town, there’s fun to be had at Agile Philly’s hack night and there’s an evening dedicated to process improvement. We’d make fun of that, but geez, we love productivity as much as the next guy. Read more
If Twitter was around in 1787, maybe we’d have a little more insight into the secret proceedings of the Constitutional Convention where our forefathers signed that all-important ancient document.
But at least we can pretend and be enlightened with a little history while we’re at it.
Tom Corbett for election coverage 2008. Christine Baker, The Patriot-News
Pennsylvania Attorney General Tom Corbett, who won Tuesday’s primary to become the Commonwealth’s Republican candidate for governor, has subpoenaed Twitter for a Grand Jury, in which the company will be compelled to “testify and give evidence regarding alleged violations of the laws of Pennsylvania, ” reports Tech Crunch.
The subpoena calls for Twitter to release “any and all subscriber information” of those managing two accounts – @bfbarbie and @CasaBlancaPA – who Tech Crunch reports “have been anonymously criticizing the man on the popular micro-sharing service.
A few weeks after a disastrous 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck Haiti, killing more than 150,000 people, Peter Groverman was organizing.
By the end of his planning, Groverman—a Villanova law student and CEO of local advertising startup Tapinko—had brought together 126 people from around the world and 40,000 pounds of cargo, including $1 million in medical supplies, which all travelled on an airplane chartered to fly to Haiti last month.
It was another drill for Groverman, who first began organizing relief efforts when Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast in 2005 and he gathered 40 students to head to New Orleans. But Groverman says another Philadelphia entity was helping drive his recent mission: Rittenhouse-based mobile payment startup Venmo.
Using the text message-based payment system, Groverman was able to raise $50,000 immediately—when that immediacy was vital. “Venmo [was] the whole backbone of our fundraising effort,” he says. “I cant imagine any nonprofit not using text message-based donation systems. There’s no need for a check, no need to go to a bank to deposit. I didn’t have time for checks to come.” Read more
Union fans cheer at the MLS SupeDraft, which was held at the Pennsylvania Convention Center.
Those trying to bring Google Fiber to Philadelphia ought to learn a lesson from the Sons of Ben, the supporerts club of the Philadelphia Union.
Before the soccer team was even announced, the “Sons of Ben” invented chants and songs and happily sung them at Washington’s and New York’s MLS games. Their passion helped to convince Major League Soccer to award the city a new franchise, beating St. Louis, among other cities.
After a rough start in week one, the team is preparing to play its first ever home game tomorrow at Lincoln Financial Field before eventually moving in to its new stadium, PPL Park, in Chester.
Since the team’s name and logos were announced in May 2009, the organization has made a priority to nurture its already vibrant fan base, taking an active role in using social media tools like Twitter and Facebook. Between the two platforms, the team has over 30,000 followers, more than enough to fill its new stadium in Chester.
We exchanged emails with Judah Levine, the man behind the team’s social media outreach to ask what tools he uses, who he admires in the social media space and why we should go to tomorrow’s home game.
Roots drummer Questlove is Philadelphia's most followed Twitter user as of March 2010. Graph courtesy of TwitterCounter.com.
It’s tough to say just what it all means, but there’s some fascination with Twitter follower counts.
It’s a metric of some kind. Not quite popularity or power or purpose. Influence, yes, though many a spam account accrues tens of thousands of followers. So, take that as our warning. Twitter follower counts don’t necessarily mean jack, but it’s interesting nonetheless.
So we took a quick spin to meet who was out there representing Philadelphia in Twitter conversations. Who are the 10 most followed Twitter users listing Philadelphia as their home?
It’s cool people. Don’t fret. We’re bringing the Flyers back home for the next one. Chill, dog.
