Social media focus groups

People have told me over the past year that I’m obsessed with Twitter and that my obsession should be on Mahalo. Of course, I see Twitter as akin to breathing and talking for business–essential. What’s the point of having over 20,000 followers on Twitter folks have asked me. Why have 5,000 friends on Facebook, or over 1,000 people on Pownce.

Why waste your time doing ustream videos? Why be a “community CEO” was the refrain from the peanut gallery. Well, here’s one of dozens of amazing reasons: social media focus groups.

Today one of our designers sent me a mockup of a new “guide” page on Mahalo. The concept was simple, what if we put the search result on the right and the guide note (a mini, scanable wikipedia style article) on the left. Currently it’s links on the left, content on the right for our “guides” (don’t go callin’ them search results now!).

So, I took total of 30 seconds to upload the photo to Flickr and twitter and Pownce the URL of the photo asking for feedback. The result? 2,755 views, 48 notes on the image (see above), and 202 comments.

In order to organize something like professionally–the old way– you would need three weeks, five people, and would spend at least $5,000 to $25,000 depending on if you did it inhouse or with a consulting firm.

You can comment on the photo yourself here.

In words of Kanye: take this, haters!