Marshall Kirkpatrick

@marshallk · founder, Little Bird

@eriktorenberg I think anonymous comments are really, really important. I also think community moderation is important. Heather Champ, from Flickr's earliest days, is the best example of this. http://readwrite.com/2010/04/02/... I also think that everybody should consider doing it like NYTimes does it, with "Editors picks" comments called out. Anonymity = freedom, though. Freedom requires responsibility but both are important and one shouldn't come at the expense of the other, IMHO

Allison Park

@allisonkpark · Customer Success Guide, Little Bird

@marshallk @eriktorenberg Do you think banning anonymous comments discourages people to voice their true opinions? I wonder if allowing anonymous comments only encourages people to become trolls since accountability is so limited.

@marshallk · founder, Little Bird

@allisonkpark @eriktorenberg Personally, I think burying abusive comments and highlighting good ones can help capture a mix of accountability and freedom.

Harry Stebbings

@harrystebbings · Podcast Host @ The Twenty Minute VC

@marshallk how was the fundraising process for you with Little Bird? Also, who in the realm of social media do you feel has done particularly well in terms of contribution and engagement and why?

2 share tweet・2 years ago

@marshallk · founder, Little Bird

@harrystebbings Hey Harry, fundraising for Little Bird has been a wild ride. On the positive end, we've got great brand customers, a really strong team and good social connections. On the hard side, we struggle with calculating straightforward ROI for our users and the product category is crowded. Our tech is uniquely intelligent but intelligence only takes you so far. ;) Early adopter power users in enterprise marketing organizations love Little Bird, that's been really important and helpful! I'll answer your second question asap.

💖

Ryan Hoover

@rrhoover · Founder, Product Hunt

Marshall! Welcome and good to see a fellow Oregonian here. What's on your homescreen? BONUS QUESTION: What's the most embarrassing app or site you regularly use?

@marshallk · founder, Little Bird

@rrhoover hey Ryan! Oregon FTW. Maybe you should move home, if you're not busy ;) On my home screen are Gmail, Evernote, GCal and Safari in the tray, then from top left, Twitter, Quantified Self apps, Business apps, reading apps, SimpleMind mindmapping, SMS, Instagram, Chegg flashcards (for reviewing the things I"m learning), Voxer, LinkedIn, Swarm, Forecast.io, PRODUCT HUNT!, Pomodoro, Trello, and Google+ to try to make it a habit

Sam Whitmore

@samwhitmore

@marshallk Marshall, what is the most powerful "discovery" feature in Little Bird?

@marshallk · founder, Little Bird

@samwhitmore well Sam, I like to say Little Bird discovers People, Connections, Content and Communities. All of those are opportunities to learn and engage, to grow your business. Today I use the content discovery most - like "find me the world's most influential influencers & experts in this field and tell me what they're most excited about today" and in 5 mins boom, there you go. Content to engage with, learn from, and build your own business's visibility with. But I also love being able to discover Connections that people have, both long-running connections and new fresh connections. Before I get on the phone with someone I'll often use our Discover Connections tool to compare someone with a network of our competitors. That way I can find out if they've long been connected to someone competitive, who they've been connecting with recently etc. Those are all cool, but we've got something even more powerful regarding discovery coming soon. Something no one else surfaces... but that's for another time.

@marshallk · founder, Little Bird

@samwhitmore A more succinct way to put it is: Little Bird discovers the most influential people in a field and then puts them in context. That context is really important - because being relevant is really important in an increasingly noisy world.

⭐️

Ben Tossell

@bentossell · Community Lead, Product Hunt

@marshallk Hey! How do you think VR will affect social media marketing in the future?

@marshallk · founder, Little Bird

@bentossell imagine how much fun it would be to be doing this AMA in VR ;) I bet ProductHunt does it first.

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Andrew Ettinger

@andrewett · Product Marketing, Twitter (ex-PH)

What has been the most radical "disruption" to social media? Bonus: how do you pronounce GIF?

@marshallk · founder, Little Bird

@andrewmettinger I'd say the most positive disruption in social media was the rise of the API. The most negative has been the decline of the URL or the privacy backlash due to overzealous government surveillance. And bonus: http://howtoreallypronouncegif.com/

@marshallk · founder, Little Bird

@andrewmettinger framed another way, I'd say the most radical disruption to social media has been the influx of marketing attention it's received. It's a mixed bag, because people don't like being marketed to, but the opportunity for authentic engagement is transformative. Every time a marketer gets on social and has an experience both doing business and genuinely connecting with other human beings at the same time, an angel gets its wings!

Theoharis Dimarhos

@theo_dimarhos · Marketing+Biz Dev at AngelouEconomics

Thanks for doing this! What stories/messages do you find compelling online and is there a common thread between them?

@marshallk · founder, Little Bird

@theo_dimarhos I always found stories about platforms with potential to be the most interesting. There's nothing as exciting to me as a doorway to new opportunities. A new data set, a new API, things like that are a big win for freedom and discovery. Those are the kinds of things I wrote about. I was probably unusual in that though, and I'm not sure if there are other tech bloggers active today who approach things in the same ways I did. Some overlap, but unfortunately I don't think you can really use me as an example of what typically works in reaching out to tech bloggers. Sorry!

Emily Hodgins

@ems_hodge · Community and Marketing, Product Hunt

@marshallk What has been the single biggest surprise for you in the social media space across your ten years working in it? Do you have any predictions for the next 1, 5, 10 years in social?

@marshallk · founder, Little Bird

@ems_hodge I was pretty surprised by Facebook's plan to fly solar powered drones over remote parts of the world beaming down wifi. That probably shouldn't be too much of a surprise, though. It's totally Zuckerberg's vision to bring connection to as many people as possible. On some level, I'm surprised there haven't been more surprises. Things have been moving along pretty steadily: more publishers (human and non human), more data, more technology to analyze the data. I'm disappointed there hasn't been more innovation built on top of that, faster. Why are we still so stuck on the basics? I love that Wikipedia announced today, for example, that they are using Machine Learning to augment the judgement of human editors. I expect things will move more in that direction.

@marshallk · founder, Little Bird

@ems_hodge here's another way to look at it: the solution to every problem contains the seeds of the next problem. (Don't hold it against me that I read that from Ken Wilbur). So the centralization of information was overcome by the democratization of publishing (social media) but that led to information overload. Now we're awash in information overload and I believe there's a big competitive advantage and opportunity to slice through it, discover, create and engage with the very best content and conversations. We're building technology to help with that at Little Bird, as are others. So I expect that problem to be solved and then some other problem to arise from the solution.

Emily Hodgins

@ems_hodge · Community and Marketing, Product Hunt

Hi Marshall! Thanks for joining us today. During your career to date, what is the best piece of advice you've ever been given? Flip side - what's the worst?

upvote share tweet・2 years ago

@marshallk · founder, Little Bird

@ems_hodge some of the best piece of advice I ever got was not so much as advice as an attitude, which was from Michael Arrington, who always left me with the feeling "what have you done for me lately?" Like, every day almost. I love how Michael has said "when TechCrunch breaks a news story, that's one point for TechCrunch. When someone else breaks a news story, that's one point against TechCrunch." :)