Today I stumbled on a terrific bit of TV featuring Russell Brand promoting his live show on MSNBC’s Morning Joe show. (If you’ve got 8 minutes, I highly recommend viewing it!)

To share it I copied the link and flicked it on through Messages. In doing so I realised the URL does a great job of peaking curiosity.

http://gawker.com/russell-brand-destroys-msnbc-talk-show-host-for-treatin-513992493

“Russell Brand Destroys MSNBC Talk Show Host…” says it all.

This is a smart move by Gawker. It instantly simplifies what I need to do to share this content.

Youtube, who actually host the video, use http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ADJhErmJuoQ.

If I were to share this URL, I’d have to do an intro to friends to get them to click and view it. Not really hard, but avoidable.

With the Gawker link I can just say “Read this  <insert link>” to my friends and they will be able to see precisely what the article is about and, if they’re like me, kind of want to see how Brand destroys a US talk show host.

These little details make all the difference when you’re trying to up page impressions and should be something the likes of the NZ Herald have on their to do list.

Now this is not new thinking. In fact it is very old. But doing this well, is still something too many corporate and gevernment sites seem to ignore. They invest in remarketing their websites once people have left their website, but have ignored the user just as they’re about to leave their site.This is surely a lost opportunity.

That particular moment of cross-promotion must be the best possible behavioural marketing offer websites can deliver. People are already on your site, they’ve shown you what they like, it’s up to you to now present additional content that they’ll like.

We’ve seen Facebook float and turn its community into a product. We’ve seen Instagram’s owners profit, stuff up and recover.

Google’s continued its march into behavioural marketing and is slowly using its various verticals to build Google+ into a colossal tool.

Apple, sans Steve Jobs, has continued to own the smartphone and tablet device space, although their app centric OS is starting to wear down its appeal as Windows (yes Windows!) launches a more useful mobile product and Samsung and Nokia find the right size and features for their hardware.

We’ve watched local player Trade me slow as people start buying goods directly overseas or simply dismiss the need for buying and selling books, DVDs or CDs.

Groupon and its various pretenders have seen the light and we watched them burn out as fast as they came.

We’ve watched the newspaper industry whittle down its profits as advertisers place their dollars where the eyeballs can be measured and better understood.

We’ve seen Pacific Fibre slide underwater and take with it a potential windfall of benefits for Kiwis.

We’ve seen NZ be a pawn in Hollywood’s attempts to remain in the past with their business models.

We’ve seen NZ journalists really start to understand twitter and its potential. If only they stopped exclusively talking with each other on it and started using it to connect with new audiences.

And we’ve seen the rise and rise of Pinterest. As of yesterday the company has a market valuation of $2.5 billion. Well played.

Heaps of other things happened too. But if I list them all, it’ll be another year before I actually post some opinion here. And who knows what will happen in a year…

Pinterest is an online pinboard where you can ‘pin’ images on any site you like and add them to your own personalised Pinterest page. Your pinboards are self-titled and other Pinterest users can follow them – just like you can follow any other member’s pinboards.

And oh, is it addictive. At the moment it’s really succeeding with design, fashion, architecture and the like but I think, when people start to really understand how it can be personalised to every individual’s taste, it’s going to take off.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. I tend to agree.

Register now and start working it out for yourselves.

As well as Google and Facebook’s algorithms, I think there’s also a natural pattern evolving with twitter whereby we’ve started building our own silos of self-confirming opinion. During the 2011 Election I’ve seen this quite clearly.

I’ve followed people on twitter over the years because I found their insights interesting. But what I also found in the Election was that most people I follow are left-leaning liberals who had little time for John Key and his approach to media. Kind of like me looking in the mirror.

I found that a little boring and ended up ignoring a number of people and looking for some new folks to follow to give my view on the Election a bit of balance.

As Eli Pariser points out in his presentation, news editors of TV, radio and print media may have had particular left/right leanings, but at the end of the day their position has only been sustainable if they offered a bit of professional balance. Just look at Fox News in the US. Widely viewed, but only by a limited audience.

To really create or write a good news article it’s important that the “other side’s” view is articulated, read or viewed and understood. Then people can make up their own opinion based on both sides’ arguments. That’s a democracy.

If we all just see the same old information from a select few with similar views, how will we grow?

RT – Retweet. Used to share another person’s tweet with your followers. Can be done with a simple click of the ‘retweet’ link under each tweet.

Reply – Under each tweet you have the option to respond to a person’s tweet. To identify the person a “@” sign and the person’s address will appear at the beginning of your response.

Favourite – If you like a tweet you can ‘favourite’ that tweet. It won’t be shared directly with your followers but the person who posted the initial tweet will be advised of your action.

HT – Heard through. Requires the user to copy and paste another person’s tweet. Often used when additional context or opinion is required.

MT – Modified tweet. Used if someone has adjusted a person’s tweet but still needs the person’s twitter address included to provide context.

Via – Similar to HT. Again context or additional comment from the sender may be added.

@ – At. The prefix to a twitter address.

Twitpic – A comment photo sharing add-on for people wishing to share photos.

# – By placing a hashtag in front of a term eg #zumwohl people can create an indexable term that others can repeat to form a ‘trend’.

Trend – For various countries across the globe twitter categorises ‘top trends’. These vary with common terms eg John Key or Richie McCaw and various irreverent hashtag terms eg #ifyouwanttodateme

#lazyweb – If you are looking for a solution to a problem, by adding #lazyweb to a tweet, you are effectively asking the twittersphere for a solution. You may be surprised at how many people are happy to help.

bit.ly/ow.ly – These are URL shortening services that help you share news of the web with your followers. They also let you track the number of people who click on your tweeted message.

This list is evolving and I would offer folks the chance to comment on more twictionary definitions but my comment spam is out of control. If you do have more, why not put them on twitter with #twictionary so others can find them.

The campaign encourages people to tweet amusing insights on the real election with the hashtag #zumwohl attached. Each day the funniest/cleverest tweet wins a bottle of said product (which is wicked btw).

The campaign was greatly assisted by using prominent tweeter and blogger Russell Brown at Publicaddress.net who hosted some simple display ads that we updated each week.

Russell also helped by being completely open about the commercial offer and advocating participation amongst his followers and readers. This subtle element made all the difference when it came to commercial businesses levering twitter as a promotional vehicle.

By being honest that this was nothing more than a promotion that “…earns Public Address a little money before Christmas…” the foundation was set for a new brand to build some exposure.

That’s a useful lesson for a new brand entering social media and one I guess Qantas wish they’d considered before today’s “hashjack”…

The website uses Google Analytics – which is a big tick – but their gap was using modal pop-up boxes for their key conversion goals. This approach meant tracking conversion goals would not work by matching the URLs. Instead, each action in the journey to goal conversion had to be tagged as ‘onClick events’.

In the past this would have meant the conversion metrics would not be deemed a ‘goal’ – thankfully, version 5 of Google Analytics has finally allowed this function. However, what my friend can’t do with the new site is create goal funnels using the events. I see this a real gap in analysis.

Being able to quickly create the goal conversion funnels and present them to clients and site managers is terrific. You can all see where people are coming from and where they’re dropping out. That knowledge is particularly valuable as it serves as the centre-point of the ‘tweak, measure, tweak, measure’ approach that makes online promotion so simple.

Good site design is important. But if you don’t have a clear, simple metric reporting platform underneath, you’re limiting your website’s potential.

Now I’ve got no problem with them doing this…except that I find it rather boring and just a bit forced. It feels like there’s a trend building that people are expected to use their personal twitter accounts to tweet or retweet their employer’s or client’s messages.

If this continues, will the number and quality of your twitter followers become an important asset to include in your CV?