I’ve been to several PubCon conferences in the past, but this year something different happened. It wasn’t that there were more panels and the speakers were better than ever (which they were). Instead, it had more to do with the conversations going on in the background — something I call the Twitter effect.
1) Networking on Steroids
At past PubCons, I was greatly limited to meeting the people I already knew (very few people) or taking a chance meeting a new person. If I did meet new people, it would usually be at a well publicized event and I would often leave only getting to know a handful of people. In fact, it really came down to how much energy and effort I wanted to put into walking up to complete strangers to see if they would talk to me.
Twitter and the #pubcon hashtag changed everything I knew about conference networking this year. By simply tweeting, following and replying to other Twitter users using the #pubcon hashtag, I was able to discover and interact with a plethora of new people that I otherwise wouldn’t have met. Some people were social superstars, like Joanna Lord of The Online Beat, who was easily the friendliest and easiest person to meet. While others were comedians, like Brian Carter of Get More Faster, who could be found at just about every event. What they all had in common was a desire to meet new like-minded people and to have fun.
There were numerous times where I would find myself tweeting in a session, only to find out that someone else I knew (and in some cases didn’t know) was tweeting in the same session. That resulted in numerous tweets about where I was in the room and meeting up with them after the session. None of which would have occurred without Twitter.
2) Real-Time Criticism & Praise
Another new phenomenon for PubCon was real-time criticism and praise of speakers and sessions — something SXSW attendees and speakers know well. During each day, there was constant chatter about how good or awful certain sessions were. The significance of this was that it influenced attendees to sometimes abandon a session for another. A typical tweet that was echoed throughout the conference looked similar to this tweet about a podcast session.
I was hoping the podcast session at #pubcon would be more than 101 level. Considering moving to another session.
While many others were much more positive, like Kate Morris’ tweet about a linking session.
great session for linking information. If you’re not in here you’re missing it. 
#pubcon
One of the most interesting things I witnessed during the sessions were the speakers themselves. On many occasions speakers who were not currently speaking were very active on Twitter and were often times interacting with the audience.
3) Event Scheduling
Unlike previous years, PubCon either had sanctioned parties or you had to know someone to know where the cool kids were going. This year the barriers for get-togethers were torn down (mostly). People like Dan Perry helped organize events like the in-house drinks and dinner party. The impromtu method of using Twitter to announce and organize the party proved to be very successful. Dan had expected about twenty people to show up, but word spread via Twitter and Bruce Clay (and associates) and consultants from Market Motive showed up in force.
The entire week involved constant tweets that went into the early morning, publicly letting people know where they were going and where the action was. Twitter was even used to help remind people when and where events were, like the SearchBash hosted by Live and the Charity Poker Tournament hosted by Purpose, Inc., Planet Chiropratic.com, EasyTweets and others. Twitter was also used by PubCon’s evangelist, Joe Morin, to keep people in the loop about ongoing events.
Twitter also helped me find and connect with friends that I probably would have lost touch with during the night. For example, Twitter helped me hook up with Brian Chappell, Ben Cook, Taylor Pratt and several others for 5AM breakfasts and unnecessary continuous drinking at the Breeze.
Lastly, I was able to also take part in some publicity opportunities, like the interview I did with TechZulu about Raven. I then had the pleasure of buying Chris Darbro, Amanda Coolong and the rest of the TechZulu crew a round of drinks later that night.
Conclusion
Twitter + PubCon = Rocks!
The Facebook Vanity URL Fiasco
Wednesday, June 10th, 2009At the stroke of midnight on Friday, June 12 (technically Saturday at 12:01 AM EST), geeks all around the world will frantically login to Facebook with the attempt to land as many great vanity URLs as they can. Unsuspecting businesses around the world will think they have nothing to fear. Or do they?
There is an enormous flaw with the Facebook vanity URL registration. If you intend to register your company’s vanity URL, there is a very good chance you won’t be able to. Unless your company had a Facebook page setup prior to May 31, 2009 AND has at least 1,000 fans, you will not be eligible to claim your vanity URL during the first round of registration (the second round begins June 28, 2009).
On the flipside, if you are Joe Schmoe with a dummy profile account, you can grab that same company vanity URL, no questions asked. Unless a company has registered with Facebook to prevent the registration of their business name, the vanity URL is up for grabs. Facebook of course made it so you can’t fill out their prevention ticket, unless they provided you with a registration number to do so. I know what you’re thinking, “I’ll just have my company signup for a Facebook profile and grab it.” Wrong. Facebook does not allow companies to setup profiles, only pages. And that is where this horrible fiasco will begin.
Thousands of great brand names will be available for users to grab, because so few companies actually have over 1,000 fans. And what about the companies that have over a dozen Facebook pages setup by fans that have exceeded the 1,000 fan requirement? Take Audi, for example. There are 8 Audi Facebook pages eligible to register the vanity URL /audi/. What happens if it is a “hate” account? Twilight has a fan page called “Twilight Sucks” with over 3,000 fans. They are going to be eligible to grab the vanity URL for Twilight because they meet all of Facebook’s requirements.
Although Facebook says vanity URLs are permanent and can’t be transfered, they do reserve the right to remove the vanity URL from you. There are always loop holes, of course. Take a company like SAS for example. You could create a Facebook profile with the name Sarah Ann Stevens and claim the vanity URL /sas/. It would be hard for SAS to make a valid claim to Facebook when the person who registered it was only using their initials. And just like that a Fortune 500 company vanity URL is gone.
Your last line of defense is to fill out an Intellectual Property Infringement claim. We all know how big of a pain it is to reclaim Twitter accounts, do you really think Facebook will be any better?
Update: The registration number is your registered trademark number. My SAS example is invalid b/c the URL must be five characters long.
Taylor Pratt is a Search Marketing Specialist at nFusion. You can follow him on Twitter.
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