Microsoft Vine – Review

Recently i have noticed lot of people getting their Vine invitation on Twitter, so today was my day.  Installed it without any problems on Windows 7 and so far runs pretty well.  So here’s my review of this new tool.

1)  First of all even before i got the invitation, i checked the videos they have on Vine.net and videos made no sense to me.

2)  Installation was quick.

3)  After logging in, i selected my place and radius

4)  I think best part was local news by zip code – but again am i going to log into Vine to see what’s happening in my neighborhood or turn on TV and check local news?

5)  To stay in touch with people you care about, you need to invite them and you can create groups:  family, friends, etc.

6)  To send an alert you simply need to click on “Alert” and you can type in your message and select your group. 

 

My question is:  In case of emergency, will i go online or send a text (to special personalized number provided by Vine) or call my family to tell them everything is ok?

Call me old style but i prefer calling people than to send text – it just takes too long.  I don’t even have unlimited text on my phone :)  Getting back to Vine, only advantage i see is sending a message/text to a GROUP on Vine – well you can also create a group on phone and send them all same text message.

7)  You can also post a report to your family/friends about what you are up to etc – like status updates.

That’s all i have discovered about Vine so far.

I think this just another tool – nothing extraordinary in my opinion.  I kind of understand what they are planning to do, overall purpose is to help people and keep family/friends updated in case of emergencies – just need to make videos lot better on the website saying what the clear purpose of the product is.

Things Mavs needs to do to win Game 5

I’m no basketball expert.  But here are the top 8 things Dallas needs to do to win game 5:

1) STOP the turnovers – this is giving Denver momentum

2)  Play more defense

3)  Be more aggressive

4)  Stop the 3-pointers

5)  Stop the inside game.  Way too many dunks

6)  Dirk needs to continue playing hard – though he needs some help

7)  JJ needs to step up, play like he did against SA

8)  Stop the fast break points

How to use Twitter to your advantage?

A month ago i finally decided to jump on the bandwagon and started “Twittering”.  When Twitter was first introduced it didn’t make any sense to me whatsoever.  Someone told me, Twitter is like Facebook’s status updates.  Now i know better.  To me, Facebook is to connect with your family/friends and share pictures/notes.  Twitter is more about finding and following people/businesses that i find interesting.  People i follow include, WSJ, ComScore, Hitwise, Silicon Valley Insider to name a few.  I follow these people for most update to news – ok i’ll admit it i’m a news junkie :) 

So how do you use twitter to your advantage?

Well first by not twitting about things that people do no care about.  Twitts like this

makes me want to say: And i care because?  So i categorize these kind of twitts and people as social – that’s what facebook is for. 

Twitter and also Facebook are more about taking advantage of people power.  Do you know what is the #1 influencer when someone is trying to purchase something?  Family and friends.  Consumers value opinions of family and friends more than any ads or articles.  That’s where Twitter comes into play.  If you are looking for good thai restaurant in Brooklyn, NY – ask other Twitties.  Twitter is useful if you want information about ongoing sale or want an opinion about which camera to buy.

If you are a business owner, twitter is a great way to get consumer’s opinion about upcoming product release or to keep track of what people are saying about your product in real time.  The best example is, couple of weekends ago i visited this great vegetarian restaurant in union square called Maoz.  After having a great falafal, i twitted from my phone about how great the food was.  Before i got home, Maoz already re-twitted my comment and started following me.  I have never seen anything like this.  Maoz is using social media/twitter to it’s advantage and keeping track of what’s being said about it’s food and restaurant.  For website owners/bloggers, it’s a great way to drive traffic to your site/blog (just like what i am going to do to this blog post :)) and have a loyal followers.

To summarize, you can use twitter to get opinions about things you are consider buying, get real-time restaurant reviews, opinions.  For businesses, it’s a great way to keep track of what customers are saying about your product and drive traffic to your business.

Tejas