Other hashtags can be just for entertainment/fun value.  Some of these allow people to share interesting thoughts and experiences under a common theme. For example, #ICanHonestlySay, #The LastTimeIChecked, #NationalKissDay and many others can bond/entertain us under one subject line.

While cats on the internet seem to make many people happy, I have a Twitter hashtag that I particularly enjoy — #PleasantSurprises. This isn’t a very popular hashtag but most entries make me smile, brightening up my day somewhat. Furthermore, I think taking the time to tweet a #PleasantSurprise has to have a therapeutic effect on people who are tweeting this hashtag.

I especially like to tweet #PleasantSurprises while traveling on business. It helps me to keep an appreciative perspective on all the wonderful things that happen to me on a daily basis even when I’m away from my family. I’ve been told verbalizing positive thoughts is good for the soul. Well, tweeting #PleasantSurprises is also effective in keeping an appreciative state of mind. Doing this might surprise you on how many great happenings in our lives that we usually take for granted.

Let me share some of my recent #PleasantSurprises:

• #PleasantSurpirses: When a childhood friend finds you on FB
• #PleasantSurprises: Given a free dessert with a smile at a Lebanese restaurant in Edgeware Road, London
• #PleasantSurprises: Invited to a 3-day sailing trip in the UK. Hope no rain gear will be necessary
• Walking through the front door & smelling dumplings (mandoo) being fried  #PleasantSurprises
• An unexpected late night call from friends who moved away saying they are visiting #PleasantSurprises

Since we were little kids, we learned to project different persona’s depending on the situation, environment or the company around us. I know I certainly projected myself differently in church than I did around my jock friends in a locker room — and still more differently around girls whom I liked. That’s part of being human. We project ourselves differently depending on the environment and one personal persona doesn’t have to be any more real than another.

Think about how that translates to the social media platforms. They allow us to have various persona’s. I tried once to consolidate my persona’s and have standard status updates. Failed. It bothered me to compromise one persona for another. I felt more unauthentic trying to standardize my persona’s than when I really had differing ones.

Here are my current standard social media persona’s:

Facebook (Friend) Persona: A friend. A family person. Share personal characteristic as a guy’s guy who is a bit of bully, fun-loving, thrash-talking but genuinely engaged with friends and family.

Twitter (Tribe) Persona: An entrepreneur. A social media enthusiast in Seattle. Want to give personality to my company and its work environment. Share thoughts and information about digital marketing, especially around social media. Share thoughts on company-building and leading people. Those interested are my tribesmen.

Blog (Kool Uncle) Persona: Meet John Song, your uncle, big brother or your boss. Mentor. Story teller. Like to give advice. Interpret my experiences. A discussion over coffee or a drink.

LinkedIn (Resume) Persona: An Executive Networking. Work history and recommendations. Updates relate to the progress of my company or insights around my work, or to recruit talented people.

Foursquare (Food Critic) Persona: An urbanite who loves getting together for happy hours and after hour hot spots. You should almost hear my laughter with friends. I must admit this is relatively new platform for me.

Xbox Live (12-year-old) Persona: PES2010. Madden2009. Thrash-talker who CANNOT back up all the talk with his game. Silly, but competitive.

What are your persona’s? You need more than one. When you are comfortable with that, you will enjoy social media (and yourself) much more.

Let me use my friend, Kendall Kunz, a well-known entrepreneur and executive in the Seattle area, as an example.

Recently, he tweeted:

Kendall is a Lexus owner, expressing a perspective that many would agree with. So, why would Ford not contact Kendall? He is most likely not a credit risk. His Lexus is being serviced for reasons unknown. Why not at least engage and build rapport?

Here’s another tweet:

I get Nordstorm emails, most of which are not even relevant to me because they consistently send me information about women’s apparel. I think both Nordstorm and Macy’s has a chance to step up and not just get Kendall’s business for the day (or a shopping trip), but to build a ongoing rapport with Kendall. Again, it’s an opportunity for getting involved in the conversation for the brand(s). What’s the lifetime value of a customer like Kendall?

Later, Kendall tweets:

Ok, Ford is now out of the conversation and Lexus gets a big kudo from Kendall, who by the way has a lot of friends with high-end cars. You can’t buy these types of advertisements.

Finally, here’s another tweet from Kendall:

Crimson C is a lounge in Pioneer Square trying to get more visibility. It actually has a promotion for drink vouchers if you introduce the lounge to 20 friends. Kendall wasn’t aware of the promotion, but really just wanted people to stop by.

These are authentic conversations on social media. Kendall is peddling brands without even thinking about it. One man, a few examples, imagine the possibilities that are out there  in social media for brands to be so much more engaging.

When thinking about best practices being developed for customer care on Twitter, Comcast, and perhaps Dell, come to mind.  These brands have taken a very proactive approach to embracing social media for extending world-class customer service.

As a customer of Comcast, I’ve recently had some issues with my broadband connectivity. I voiced my frustration on a tweet this morning. Within three minutes, @comcastbill asked if he could help. Hum, impressive. I replied, explaining my issues. Immediately, @comcastbill followed me so that we could DM (direct mail) each other. 

Eventually, @comcastbill passed me off to @comcastbonnie because he was on the move. Never heard back directly from @comcastbonnie, but when I got home, my internet connection was screaming fast. I don’t know if anyone at Comcast did anything to improve my connectivity, but I do know that I felt Comcast cared enough to listen to me. I ended up with very favorable sentiments toward my cable provider.

As a predominant brand, many people tweat about Comcast. The sentiments lean slightly toward the negative since people tend to voice opinions when frustrated. Yet, Comcast doesn’t get baited into trying to contradict the various opinions. Rather, they ask to help those who may be having issues. By doing so, Comcast is affecting the sentiment in a powerful way.

Best practices in customer service? Comcast is blazing a trail worth following.

 Meet Greg Grunberg, a trailblazer of sorts in integrating social media ever closer with a television show.  Oh yeah, he’s also an actor who play Matt Parkman in the popular television series Heroes.  He plays a policeman who can read and influence people’s thoughts.  One of the scarier powers, I think.

Greg tweets avidly on Twitter, with more than 5,000 followers (and quickly growing).  He tweeted today leading up to the show.  Here’s an example: “Yeah, so here’s the scoop… not spamming! @Heroes is really really good tonight. Don’t say that every week, ya know.”

I must admit having an actor from the show interacting on twitter increased my anticipation for today’s episode.  Brea Grant, who plays the speedster Daphne, also had reminded her some 4,000 followers to watch Heroes tonight.

Interestingly, during the six hours leading up to the show, Heroes was the sixth most popular topic on Twitter, with “Christmas” being the most popular.  According to Flaptor, “heroes” was the ninth hottest word on Twitter during the day behind (work, monday, snow, to work, school, december, obama).

So, I decided to follow #heroes while watching the show tonight.  The tweets came in fast and furious.  I had to refresh every couple of seconds.  I felt as if i had invited people over for a Heroes-watching party.  A lot of the tweets were just people updating their statuses.  However, some were giving continual comments, and I enjoyed several witty observations.  I felt like I was part of a crowd (or tribe, as Seth Godin would prefer).

This was interactive television in a different way.  It wasn’t just voting on reality TV.  It was also different than following a blog during a sports event.  The tweets were a democracy of many different people micro blogging. The crowd came up with its own voice without a moderator.  

Initially, many people were annoyed that the eclipse, which took away all the Heroes’ powers, was lasting too long on the show.  One tweet even explained, “According to NASA, an eclipse can never last longer than 7 minutes and 31 seconds. Eclipse STILL going on Heroes “.  Haha, that made me laugh.  

Then, young women started posting excited tweets with the guest appearances of Seth Green and Breckin Meyer as comic book store workers.  Green had what is bound to be a classic Heroes‘ quote, “Best day ever!” after seeing his comic heroes come alive (sorry, but you had to have seen it).

As the show concluded many tweets called out Hiro, the Japanese youthful Hero, as the reason they love the show.  

Throughout, some voiced their frustration over the show, but that is to be expected in an open forum like this.  Actually, i was surprised by the small ratio of negative-sentiment tweets.

Let me get back to my point.  These were the two most interesting tweets: First, “#Heroes FTW! Sylar Down, Syler Down!” after it appeared that a villainous hero turned good hero, Sylar, had died.  Then, “@greggrunberg You were right, #Heroes was great tonight. It’s also neat to see you on Twitter” a follower tweeted to Greg Grunberg, our “trailblazer”.

The first tweet represents the interactive element that can be refined so much more as people on twitter (a tribe) start watching shows together on the social media platform.  The second tweet shows the potential of the  conversation and buy-in that can be garnered by the stars with their followers — a modern, social media way of promoting shows.

This method of interactive television will only become better refined.  Stars will need to be accessible.  Sponsors will need to join in on the tweets about their shows.  And dare I say, do the stars eventually start promoting products on twitter as well?

As one tweet stated, “#Heroes kicked ass tonight!”… yeah, the episode wasn’t bad either despite the extended lunar eclipse.

P.S. While writing this blog post 161 more tweets were posted with “#heroes”.

Meet Vanessa Leong.  She is spearheading the social media fund-raising element for One Home Many Hopes.

This is an organization that working to improve the lives of orphaned girls in Mtwapa, Kenya.  ”Mudzini Kwetu” uses education and family support as ways to lift these children out of cyclical poverty.  Today, there are 35 parentless girls living as one family.  These girls who had spent their earliest years surviving on Mtwapa’s streets and trash piles now live as one family, attend school, and care for one another. Although their lives are so much better, there could be so much more. The vision of One Home Many Hopes is to build:

• A new three-story building with each floor serving as a distinct family unit headed by a “house mother.”
• A university education for the girls so they will be able to support themselves and be agents for ending poverty in their town, region, country and continent.
• An on-site kindergarten and school, free of the prohibitive private education fees that are common in Kenya.

In order to do this, One Home Many Hopes has started a campaign, Race to $20K which will get the building started. Vanessa Leong, an MBA student at George Washington University is spearheading the social media elements of the campaign. Vanessa is seeking to finish the race in 30 days! We are asking the Twitter community to donate towards their ambitious goal. If 1000 people (say each of my followers) gave just $20, they would get there. Please donate here. Be proud to tweet Vanessa that you support her using #ohmh. And please join me in getting the word out:

• Tweet it
• Blog it
• Digg it
• Stumble it
• Show it in your status.

I initially found this on Twittermaven.  i appreciate their effort as well.  Imagine using Social Media for Social Change.

First Presidential debate:  Obama (71%), McCain (29%)

Vice Presidential debate:  Biden (69%), Palin (31%)

Second Presidential debate: Obama (79%), McCain (21%)

Third Presidential debate:  Obama (80%), McCain (17%)

Although other polls also declared Obama the winner in each of the presidential debates, the margins were narrower than our polls.  The same was true with the vice presidential debate where our poll showed a wider margin for Biden than other polls.  One interesting point was that the Vice Presidential poll attracted far more voters (395) than the presidential debates polls (179 in the first and less in the following debates).  The vice presidential debate definitely had more of a “circus” feel to it with Sarah Palin being so unknown to the public.

The analysis is that completely web-based (unscientific) polls tended to disproportionally favor Barack Obama over John McCain.  Right now, Obama is followed by 99,922 people on twitter, by far the most of anyone.   John McCain (not sure if it is in fact the McCain campaign team running this twitter) has only 3,236.  I think this says a lot about the demographics of each candidate’s supporters.  Twitter is in the “early adoption” phase for online social media enthusiasts.

Thank you all for your participations.  These candidates are two extraordinary people, and one of them will soon  be the new leader of the world soon during extraordinary times.

Below are poll results from the final presidential debate.