Twitter + Google Street View = Stweet = Overly Creepy Mash-Up of Technology?

Thanks to Mashable, I discovered this new application called Stweet. It's the unholy mash-up of Twitter and Google Maps street view so that you can see the latest tweet in that city and a view of approximately where the person was tweeting from. It works by syncing up with such mobile applications as Twitterfon and locating an approximate address of where you just tweeted. For some, part of the appeal of Twitter is having people care about each and every move you make. But do you really want people to know exactly where you are when you do it?

Right now the site is a bit buggy, with the feed dropping out every few minutes. Certain cities work better than others. I'm not sure if this will ever have any practical use as is, but it's a cool mash-up nonetheless. For now, I'll go back to randomly stalking New York tweeters for no other reason than the fact that I can now.

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Tips to Control Your Personal Brand

The idea of personal branding is extremely important to me. I started this blog as one way to control my personal brand, so that there were other things to find out about me besides a fake Amazon review under my name. I also started Leaders of the New as a way for other future advertisers to control their personal brand.

Yesterday, Mashable (which is quickly becoming one of my favourite blogs) posted an article about 5 ways to control your personal brand right now. If you have any sort of interest in controlling your personal brand, it's a must-read.

Thanks to the article, I signed up for a Google Profile, which will help bring up direct information about you when people try and search for you. For current and potential Leaders of the New, it wouldn't be a bad idea to post the link to your interview on your Google Profile.

I'm not going to run through all 5 tips, because the article explains it a lot better than I could. The one other thing I wanted to mention is that the E-elevator pitch is real, and happening right now.



There is a service called twtjobs, that allows users to create and distribute a resume through Twitter in 140 characters or less. When I first came up with the e-elevator pitch, I half meant it as a joke. Now it's real. Should I brush up my current pitch?

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60% of Twitter Users Abandon Fail Whale After Only A Month?

According to a post on the Nielson blog (which I found through Mashable) over 60% of Twitter users quit the service after only one month. All of the staggering growth aside, it seems as though Twitter may have a hard time riding out this momentum long-term.

From the Nielson blog:

Currently, more than 60 percent of Twitter users fail to return the following month, or in other words, Twitter’s audience retention rate, or the percentage of a given month’s users who come back the following month, is currently about 40 percent. For most of the past 12 months, pre-Oprah, Twitter has languished below 30 percent retention.

image from Nielson

A 40% retention rate is not that great, especially compared to Facebook and MySpace, who years later still hover around 70%. Having people drop off the service that fast will not be good for growth or the future of Twitter.

Personally, I know a lot of people who signed up for the service, thought it was dumb and left. Part of that comes from the service being caught in the media hype-train. Part of it comes from the stigma of Twitter being the service to tell people what you just ate for lunch. Part of that comes from people who try it out and find out it's not for them.

I've become quite the Twitter fan, but having used the service for a couple of months now, I don't see it offering enough to ever catch up to something like Facebook or Myspace. Does it need to? Probably not. Right now, it's estimated to only have about 6 million users, which is still low, especially considering all the hype it's been getting. Do you think Twitter is going to make it through or is the high dropout rate proof that Twitter is the next social media fad?

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