HOW TO: Help New Users Stay Engaged on Twitter

One of Twitter’s most disappointing trends is its lack of solid user retention.

If you’re a Twitter evangelist, the scenario is probably familiar. You explain to friends and family how much value and fun can be had in 140 characters. They sign up, test the waters for a few days, derive no use value, and promptly abandon their accounts.

To remedy this, we’ve outlined the common missteps of new users and some ways you can help prevent them from becoming part of the Twitter quitter trend.

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They Only Follow People They Know

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This is probably the most common reason why new users lose interest, and it stems from a division in social web culture.

At this moment, the standard bearer for social networking is Facebook, and it’s generally a culture of in-person acquaintances: Classmates, personal friends, family, co-workers, and the like. We friend on Facebook with a level of trust, and usually reject requests from strangers as “spam” or “stalking.”

Socializers jumping into Twitter for the first time may be wary of following or engaging with people they don’t know. Consequently, they end up with a feed of 10-15 in-person friends who are likely facing the same issue, and tweet infrequently, if at all. A “dead” feed like this won’t bring new users back.

New User Advice: Start by following people you know, and build your feed by following people that theyconverse with regularly. Ask your more established friends on Twitter to “introduce” you to new people. There’s no better way to become part of a Twitter community. Following people at random, for the most part, useless and unreciprocated.

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They Only Follow Brands and Celebrities

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Yes, Oprah and Starbucks are on Twitter. But that doesn’t mean their feeds will be interesting to you. Mostaccounts with thousands (and even millions) of followers cannot carry on real conversations with every fan. So while a feed full of celebs and retailers may provide some entertainment and the occasional discount code, it doesn’t tap the real value of Twitter. Without conversation, Twitter is boring, and thus highly quittable.

New User Advice: Follow a few high profile accounts that provide real value to you in the form of news and entertainment. If you’d still like to keep tabs on a laundry list of celebrities and brands, try organizing them inTwitter Lists. Reserve the rest of your follows for “real people.”

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They’re Not Having Conversations

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Interacting with people on Twitter are not the same as interactions on other social networks, like Facebook. If you post a photo on Facebook, the people who already know you will likely comment, tag, and share it.

It’s a different story with Twitter, because when you start out on Twitter, nobody knows you. Expecting that people will follow, reply, and retweet your updates simply because you exist will set you on the path straight to Quitsville. Twitter is not just a broadcast channel. Real relationships must be earned.

New User Advice: Think of Twitter as a cocktail party where you know a few attendees, but most are strangers. You wouldn’t stand in the corner and shout, “I’m very interesting!” You’d start with your existing friends, and gradually work the room through conversation. On the plus side, small talk is minimal at 140 characters.

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They Think They Have Nothing Interesting to Say

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Some of the most interesting people on Twitter are those who aren’t shilling a blog or product, or aren’t striving to be “web famous.” They simply converse with real people about everyday topics.

New User Advice: Be yourself. If you have nothing interesting to say in real life, then you have more to worry about than deciding what to tweet.

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They’re Not Mobile

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If you’re not using Twitter on your mobile device (via app, mobile web, text message, or any combination), it may be difficult to really make it part of your lifestyle.

With rare exceptions, nothing really interesting happens at your desk. It’s when you’re out with friends, exploring, commuting, shopping, and dining that tweet-worthy experiences happen.

New User Advice: If you use an iPhone, Android device, or BlackBerry, there are plenty of Twitter apps to choose from. If you’re not on a smartphone, you can still tweet via text message.

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Conclusion

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At the end of the day, Twitter is not for everyone. Many have no interest in connecting and sharing with new people, and that’s perfectly fine. Communities based on existing connections (like LinkedIn and Facebook) are extremely valuable and continue to thrive.

Twitter must be experienced to be understood. And a bad experience can easily lead to misunderstanding. If you know someone who would really enjoy Twitter, help them overcome that initial hurdle of adoption. 200 followers later, they’ll thank you for it.

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HOW TO: Use QR Codes for Small Business Marketing

A Quick Response (QR) code is a two-dimensional code that can be scanned by smartphone cameras to automatically pull up text, photos, videos, music and URLs.

These codes have become mobile-friendly ways to point people in the offline space to online resources.

While already popular in Japan, consumers in the United States are just now becoming more familiar with QR codes and what to do with them. If you’re unfamiliar with the business potential of QR codes, use this post as a crash course in how to get started.

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QR Code Generators and Scanners

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A quick Google search for “QR code generator” is all it takes to find a plethora of places you can go to generate your own barcodes. Consider starting first with Kaywa, iCandy or Stickybits.

Kaywa’s QR code generator is the simplest way to generate a QR code for a URL, text, phone number or SMS. Simply select your preference, enter the content, specify size and click “Generate.” Then, save the code to use elsewhere or grab the HTML to embed it online.

iCandy is a bit more robust and helps you track scans and look at analytics around generated QR codes. You can also print codes through partner services.

Stickybits is slightly different in purpose, but the service also makes it simple to create stickers for your codes, as well as inspire collective content creation from people who scan your codes.

On the scanner side of things, apps that can scan codes are available for most smartphones. Simply search your app store for “barcode reader,” or “QR code scanner,” and you’ll find several to choose from.

On the iPhone, options include QuickMark and Optiscan. On Android, Barcode Scanner is a popular QR code reader.

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Put QR Codes to Work

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Here are a few ways that you can use QR codes to spruce up your small business marketing strategies.

• On business cards: A fast and simple way to use QR codes for your own professional purposes is to place them on business cards. Generate a barcode that directs scanners to your online resume, small business Facebook Page or your website to help new contacts find you or your business faster.
• On marketing materials: You’ve got fliers, brochures, programs, handouts, whitepapers and a myriad of other materials in your media kit. Add QR codes to direct viewers to a particular how-to video, send them to a Flickr photo set, get them to follow you on Twitter, or point them to a mobile-friendly landing page that promotes a new campaign. For inspiration, check out what the Detroid Red Wings did with QR codes in their arena programs.
• In storefront windows: Google is sending out QR code window decals to top local businesses with Google Place Pages. If they don’t send you one, steal the idea and generate your own QR code to place in your window. You can use this code to encourage Fousquare checkins, point scanners to your Yelp profile, or simply invite customers to share memories in photo, video or text form via Stickybits.
• For freebies: If you really want people to pay attention to your QR codes, make them good for something fun. Say you’ve placed a QR code decal in your storefront window, why not reward those who scan it with 10% off their purchase or a free pastry? Give them something small to thank them for their patronage. Simply create a custom QR code for the freebie you want to offer. You could even get creative and hide the QR code offers online, like on your Facebook page or website, or somewhere inside your store.

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Things to Remember

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If you’re going to use QR codes for small business marketing, you’ll want to keep in mind that QR codes — and the apps that scan them — are still foreign to most people.

Yes, more and more people are starting to associate the codes with action, but never assume your customers will know what to do. Make it a point to spell out how to scan the QR code, and help instruct customers on where they can grab scanner apps.

Also, remember that QR codes should provide some kind of value to the scanner. It may be easiest to direct QR code scanners to your website, but that’s likely not the most engaging place to send people.

Does your small business use QR codes? If so, how are you using them? And if not, which types of uses might fit your marketing efforts?

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Newspapers Are Still Dying, But the News Is Not Going Anywhere

Despite newspaper share prices seeing a 380% increasein the last year, don’t be swayed by the perceived recovery. The only way for newspapers to survive is by investing resources into innovation online.

Experiments are needed that not only challenge and test the behaviors of news consumption with digital and interactive forms of storytelling, but perhaps more importantly, business models are needed that are not limited to a silver-bullet hope that building a wall around their content will save them. With the exception of the few, the chances of pay walls generating revenue from readers who have grown accustomed to free content online are grim. Newspaper companies that continue to treat their websites as a dumping ground for news from their print product will meet their eventual demise.

While many in the industry were hoping the decline in ads was cyclical, the ad rebound has skipped newspapers. As Alan Mutter reported last week, ad spending on newspapers was down 9.7% (magazines were down as well), while Internet ad spending had increased 7.5%, as did TV (up 10.5%) and radio ads (up 6%). The future doesn’t look any better for print, with Internet ad revenue set to overtake newspapers by 2014 or possibly sooner.

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A Failure to Innovate and Reach A New Audience

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The Economist recently featured a story that highlights the newspaper industry’s ability to adapt and survive. That ability has unfortunately not been borne from innovation, but rather from cutbacks and trimming — American daily newspapers have lost 13,500 journalists since 2007, reports the American Society of News Editors. Though the decline slowed in recent years, online staff haven’t been spared either, and the result is fewer resources to cover the news.

And when it isn’t the bodies that are being cut, then it certainly is their pay. Print and online advertising has dropped for newspapers by 35% since the first quarter of 2008, according to the Newspaper Association of America. On top of the pay cuts, survival has come from slashing the number of words in the paper or printing fewer pages or slimming down the size of the paper itself — all to reduce costs. This trimming will eventually result in the extinction of these papers, forcing publishers to pay more attention to the web. Instead of being on the defensive, newspapers need to take strategic risks; getting comfortable every time print ad revenue makes slight recoveries isn’t exactly strategic.

The problem lies not in a stubbornness to evolve and recognize value in digital media, but a lack of resources. As a result of cutting, newspapers now have fewer resources to take advantage of new opportunities, such as that of mobile distribution on smartphones and their content walled-off from the web, and some are concluding that the best application on the iPad is the browser itself.

Admittedly, things do appear to be gaining traction for some newspaper companies who are experimenting with these tools, such as The New York Times’ recent release of The Scoop iPhone application, which integrates location-based features to provide a guide and service beyond content distribution for New York City residents (Disclosure: I previously worked at The New York Times). But smaller, local newspapers don’t have the resources that the Times does to create such applications. For them, experimenting with new distribution channels is difficult or infeasible.

There’s also the issue of a shrinking audience, which doesn’t help the grim advertising numbers. Of course, it doesn’t apply to all markets — in Japan the newspaper is still the main game in town when it comes to news, for example — but in most places, the average audience age is 50 and older and already declining. Youngerpeople are still reading, but they’re consuming information in new ways, sometimes through social media sites.

The New York Times’s David Carr’s words on the subject are perhaps the most telling, “Newspapers executives generally speak about a lack of visibility going forward, but as the picture becomes clearer, it also seems to be becoming darker.”

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Impending Death of “Blogger vs. Journalist”

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With a combination of downsized newsrooms and the new-found value in curation, newspapers are starting to curate more news to account for losses in resources. This brings up the question of how the gap of reduced news coverage will be filled. Poynter’s Rick Edmonds said in October that newspapers have created a $1.6 billion deficit in news coverage versus just three years ago. But that is assuming that only traditional/print journalists can fill that gap, and that the great divide and distinction between journalist and blogger is as clear as ever. But it’s not.

The two roles and distinctions are merging and eventually we may no longer see the shallow and stereotypical references of bloggers who sit in their basements and write about what they had for breakfast. The truth is more bloggers are going out and doing original reporting, while traditional journalists are beginning to see the value in curation and are blogging themselves, though probably not from their mother’s basements.

Michele McLellan, a fellow at the Reynolds Journalism Institute and an expert on trends in community journalism, said that journalists displaced from newspapers are often starting their own blogs to cover news in their community through reporting and curation, while more bloggers at news startups are starting to integrate professional reporting standards in their work. She recently wrote about Oakland Local as one such example that mixes community building and professional reporting.

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Content Creation From ‘Sprouts’

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Of course, to truly fill the gaps of lost coverage, it will take time. It isn’t going to happen overnight. Perhaps a good analogy is to think of it like a forest, McLellan said. The tall trees are old journalism (newspapers), which will eventually wither and die. But slowly all around us, we’re beginning to see “sprouts” that are quickly growing and starting to get more light (as the tall trees wither around them). That light is coming from recognition that the work they are doing is important and valuable.

Some of this is at the local level from civic groups who want to figure out how to support news coverage, McLellan said. It also doesn’t hurt to point out that they are also being recognized by journalists, such as the Pulitzer Prize being awarded to an online-only publication for the first time, and Edward R. Murrow Awards being given out to recognize excellence in online journalism. Many efforts won’t be impressive at first, and some may not even survive. But some will, McLellan said. She’s keeping track of some of these initiatives with a list of local news startups. And of course, in many ways success is less dependent on trained journalists who break great stories, and more on finding a business model that can support the work.

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Learning From News Startups

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Despite new media companies and technologies filling some of the gaps created by downsized newspapers, the problem of funding innovation and the work of journalists is persistent. We’ve seen many great examples of innovative ways of producing and displaying content, or calls to enlist the audience more deeply into the process. But what about innovative ideas in producing revenue? Perhaps there are creative ideas that traditional newspapers can gather from online news startups, such as the Real Time Ads model from nonprofit news startup Minnpost.com and recent Knight News Challenge Winner NowSpots, but it is difficult to know whether such ventures will scale and whether advertisers will be interested.

“I think it’s scalable,” said Karl Pearson-Cater, director of operations at Minnpost.com, a nonprofit news startup in Minnesota.

He told me that businesses have responded well, specifically to buying real-time ads on targeted, niche portions of the site. The idea is simple, Pearson-Cater said, small businesses in the community were already marketing themselves using social media, and so this was meeting them halfway. They could buy ad space in the form of widgets that pull an RSS feed from their Twitter, Facebook or blog.

The site launched Real Time Ads a year ago as a side project and sells the widgets for a flat weekly fee, a method popular with blogs for years, rather than the traditional standard of charging per one thousand impressions served to readers. On their Book Club Club blog, it was sold for $3,000 a year for the top spot and $1,000 a year for the one below it, for example. Pearson-Cater eventually wants to enable other publishers to use the platform, but needs to make sure it actually makes money.

“No one’s gonna use it if it doesn’t make money,” Pearson-Cater said. “With anything, the goal is always to create a sustainable model that supports journalism.”

It certainly will be an interesting experiment to watch, but may result as simply a small piece of a big pie that is quickly becoming depleted.

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Funding Innovation and Journalism

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Some worry that there simply needs to be more funding to support innovative ideas in journalism and for newspapers that are struggling, which then have the potential to eventually solve the looming revenue problem. Josh Stearns, the program manager at Free Press, a media reform nonprofit, is one of those people. He said the Knight Foundation’s funding of innovation is great, but that journalism needs a bigger fund, something like the NSF. People have great ideas for journalism, but aren’t able to fund them, he said.

“There needs to be more federal funding or a combination of multiple foundations supporting a bigger fund. We’re not fostering innovation by talking about it.”

Journalism is a profession that is a service to society, and most that decide to fulfill that service are not doing it to get rich. Perhaps in the golden age of newspapers they were, but with the changes to technology and social media, the barrier to entry to being a writer is almost non-existent and the former audience is now contributing to that service as well, and without complaint.

The reality is that newspapers are still a valuable resource to communities that do not have access to the Internet, a reason that prompted the San Francisco Public Press to publish a print edition. But sooner or later, the costs of printing a paper will outweigh the tangible benefit and more newspapers will take the plunge into online, exploring the murky waters that news startups are getting their feet wet in now. Whatever the result, news will and is being produced, it just may look and feel different while this revolution takes place.

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3 Things Facebook Does Very Well

In recent months, Facebook and its young CEO have received a bevy of criticism from users and press following the company’s decision to automatically opt all users into its Open Graph initiative. In spite of all the ruckus however, Facebook continues to thrive.

Web denizens may be financing the next Facebook alternative, but right now the majority of the Facebook population has yet to abandon ship.

We stay because it’s hard to leave. It’s hard to leave because Facebook has become a digital repository of everything that matters to us. Our friends and family use Facebook, preferred brands give us freebies through Facebook, our favorite games make us come back for more, and whenever we’re passionate about something, Facebook helps our message reach the world.

We stay because at the end of the day, Facebook gets right a few core components that separate the service from its competitors. These components are engaging features, the agility to make quick changes and handle enormous traffic, and the resoluteness to stay true to the original vision for the site with each new feature release.

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Engaging Features

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Facebook is a time suck. According to Nielsen data from April 2010, the average person spends six hours on Facebook per month.

There is a simple reason people spend so much on Facebook — engaging, borderline hypnotic features. Login to Facebook to add a friend and suddenly you’re sucked in by notifications of friends commenting or “Liking” your posts, photos of friends and family members and news flowing in from your favorite Pages.

Facebook — moreso than any other social network — has mastered the art of building features that demand attention and speak an emotional language that extends beyond a single country or demographic.

The News Feed, a controversial feature when initially released, is perhaps the most engaging of all, as it draws the user’s attention to the flow of content from his or her friends. It eliminates the “what now?” moment that online users face when logging into any site. Even with just a handful of friends and a few “Liked” Pages, the average Facebook user is presented with a myriad of things to do, most of which have a feel-good quality about them.

On the features front, Facebook has also managed to build the world’s largest social platform, extending users’ social graphs to their favorite games, applications and websites both inside and outside of Facebook. Whether you use an iPhone or iPad app to check the feed, or fire up a new round of Farmville, your Facebook friends are right there with you. It’s this relationship-oriented context that makes everything — even the most bleeding edge ideas — seem familiar, if not fun.

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Agility

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Facebook is fast to act, making it one of the most agile companies online, especially considering its massive size.

This agility is most often seen in reactionary circumstances. It has become a somewhat predictable pattern for Facebook to release a huge update — whether it be a feature or change to the terms of service — that passionate users react to with vocal cries of outrage. Facebook then swiftly responds with blog posts from executives and a few changes that help to pacify members.

Most recently we saw this agility in Facebook’s quick reaction to growing privacy concerns. In a matter of weeks, the company managed to drastically simplify site privacy settings that had become impossible to manage after years of modification. While the company’s speedy privacy control overhaul may not have addressed the primary concern behind the upheaval, it was an aggressive change that did quiet much of the anti-Facebook rhetoric.

For a site with nearly 500 million members, Facebook does a remarkable job at listening to user feedback and implementing changes when it deems them appropriate.

Of course, the company should be credited for more than its reactionary maneuvers. Over the years, Facebook’s user base has ballooned to astronomical proportions, and along the way the site’s done an impressive job keeping the lights on, firing off new features, experimenting, supporting businesses with Pages and releasing international versions.

This agility is all the more obvious now as Facebook remains constant while Twitter continues to buckleunder traffic pressure.

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Vision

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Like it or not, Facebook has a vision of making the world more open. This vision reportedly dates back to Facebook’s 2004 origins at Harvard.

In the book, The Facebook Effect, David Kirkpatrick writes that just a short time after “Thefacebook” launched in February 2004, Zuckerberg had already explained his vision to Tricia Black with Y2M, an early advertising partner.

The excerpt reads:

“Even then he had his own vision for the potential of Thefacebook, and it didn’t have a lot to do with money. “We’re going to change the world,” Black remembers him saying. “I think we can make the world a more open place.”

This vision is one that we’ve been hearing more and more about in recent weeks. Zuckerberg has taken to public forums to express his steadfast commitment to this vision, especially when coming to the defense of Instant Personalization. Zuckerberg also proudly dons the now famous company hoodie that is branded with the Facebook insignia, as depicted above. The insignia captures the company’s vision of making the world more open and connected through [Open] Graph, Platform and Stream.

In hindsight, it’s easy to tie Zuckerberg’s grandiose vision to the evolution of the site. Just look at the News Feed, Facebook Platform, the “Everyone” option, and now the “Like” buttons. The News Feed made content from friends more accessible, Platform introduced third-party application integration, the “Everyone” option began to acclimate users to the idea of publishing content publicly (to the Stream) and the “Like” buttons serve as digital rewards for those who engage with third-party content.

Clearly, Facebook has stayed true to its vision over the years, and while everyone may not agree with it, it’s this consistency that’s led to focused innovation on the feature front.

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Shopping Faceoff: Amazon vs. eBay vs. Craigslist

Wow, check out the Mashable Polls for the past 33weeks, with amazing results, very indicative! You can join the poll for the next week as well: Amazon, eBay or Craiglist.

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Last week, as part of our Web Faceoff series, we asked which you preferred:Google TV or Boxee?

Google TV trounced Boxee with 600 votes, or 51%. Boxee garnered 395 votes to take 33% of the poll, while neither votes made up 16% of last week’s poll (188 votes).

It’s a new week, so it’s time for a new faceoff. This week, we turn to a new topic: shopping.

While there are many websites for buying or trading your things, three stand out with completely different models: Amazon,eBay, and Craigslist.

Which do you prefer the most: the straightforwardness of Amazon, the auctions of eBay, or the classifieds of Craigslist? Cast your vote in the poll below by Thursday, June 24 at 12:00 PT and let us know your rationale in the comments.

Which do you prefer: Amazon, eBay, or Craigslist?

Amazon
eBay
Craigslist
Tie: I don't have a preference out of the three

View Results
Share ThisPolldaddy.com

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Faceoff Series: Overall Results

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Week 1:
- Mozilla Firefox vs. Google Chrome
- WINNER: Firefox, 4600 votes (Chrome: 3310 votes, Tie: 911 votes)

Week 2:
- Tumblr vs. Posterous
- WINNER: Tumblr, 1809 votes (Posterous: 1496 votes, Tie: 256 votes)

Week 3:
- Pandora vs. Last.fm
- WINNER: Last.fm, 1187 votes (Pandora: 1156 votes, Tie: 122 votes)

Week 4:
- Twitter vs. Facebook
- WINNER: Facebook, 2484 votes (Twitter: 2061 votes, Tie: 588 votes)

Week 5:
- WordPress vs. Typepad
- WINNER: WordPress, 2714 votes (Typepad: 267 votes, Tie: 357 votes)

Week 6:
- Windows 7 vs. Snow Leopard
- WINNER: Windows 7, 3632 votes (Snow Leopard: 3278 votes, Tie: 121 votes)

Week 7:
- TweetDeck vs. Seesmic Desktop
- WINNER: TweetDeck, 3294 votes (Seesmic Desktop: 1055 votes, Tie: 260 votes)

Week 8:
- Microsoft Office vs. Google Docs
- WINNER: Microsoft Office, 1365 votes (Google Docs: 994 votes, Tie: 315 votes)

Week 9:
- Apple iPhone vs. Google Android
- WINNER: Google Android, 3323 votes (Apple iPhone: 1494 votes, Tie: 228 votes)

Week 10:
- AT&T vs. Verizon
- WINNER: Verizon, 1161 votes (AT&T: 538 votes, Tie: 118 votes)

Week 11:
- Google vs. Bing
- WINNER: Google, 2180 votes (Bing: 519 votes, Tie: 97 votes)

Week 12:
- iPod Touch/iPhone vs. Nintendo DS vs. Sony PSP
- WINNER: iPod Touch/iPhone, 704 votes (Sony PSP: 639 votes, Nintendo DS: 482 votes, Tie: 108 votes)

Week 13:
- Digg vs. Reddit vs. StumbleUpon
- WINNER: Digg, 14,762 votes (Reddit: 11,466 votes, StumbleUpon: 2507 votes, Tie: 1032 votes)

Week 14:
- Old versus new Twitter retweets
- WINNER: Old style retweets, 1625 votes (New style retweets: 699 votes, Tie: 227 votes)

Week 15:
- Gmail vs. Outlook
- WINNER: Gmail, 3684 votes (Outlook: 980 votes, Tie: 590 votes)

Week 16:
- Boxee vs. Hulu
- WINNER: Hulu, 626 votes (Boxee: 591 votes, Tie: 106 votes)

Week 17:
- Nexus One vs. iPhone 3GS
- WINNER: Nexus One, 6743 votes (iPhone 3GS: 2818 votes, Tie: 592 votes)

Week 18:
- Foursquare vs. Yelp vs. Gowalla
- WINNER: Foursquare, 1182 votes, (Yelp: 661 votes, Gowalla: 509 votes, Tie: 143 votes)

Week 19:
- AIM vs. GTalk vs. FbChat
- WINNER: GTalk, 2189 votes, (AIM: 1257 votes, FbChat: 511 votes, Tie: 203 votes)

Week 20:
- Music Ownership vs. Music Subscription
- WINNER: Ownership, 533 votes (Subscription: 299 votes, Tie: 237)

Week 21:
- Match.com vs. PlentyofFish
- WINNER: Plenty of Fish, 430 votes (Match.com: 334 votes, Tie: 187 votes)

Week 21:
- Google Buzz vs. Facebook Vs. Twitter
- WINNER: Facebook, 3353 votes (Twitter: 1828 votes, Google Buzz: 1298 votes, Tie: 651 votes)

Week 22:
- HTML5 vs. Adobe Flash
- WINNER: HTML5, 3892 votes (Adobe Flash: 1779 votes, Tie: 660 votes)

Week 23:
- Project Natal vs. PlayStation Move
- WINNER: Project Natal, 1268 votes (PlayStation Move: 668 votes, None: I don’t like motion controllers: 170 votes, None: I prefer the Wii: 150 votes)

Week 24:
- Chatroulette vs. Hot or Not
- WINNER: Chatroulette, 742 votes (Hot or Not: 281 votes, Tie: 99 votes)

Week 25:
- iPad vs. Netbooks
- WINNER: iPad, 3098 votes (Netbook: 1969 votes, Tie: 605 votes)

Week 26:
- Amazon Kindle vs. Apple iBooks
- WINNER: Apple iBooks, 1227 votes (Amazon Kindle: 928 votes, Tie: 118 votes, Neither: 276 votes)

Week 27:
- Next-gen iPhone vs. Droid Incredible
- WINNER: iPhone 4G, 9765 votes (Droid Incredible: 8175 votes, Tie: 1318 votes)

Week 28:
- Facebook “Like” vs. “Become a Fan”
- WINNER: “Become a Fan”, 3161 votes (“Like:” 1634 votes, Indifferent: 719 votes)

Week 29:
- Physical keyboards vs. Virtual keyboards
- WINNER: Physical QWERTY keyboard, 2563 votes (Virtual keyboard: 2010 votes, Prefer T9 typing: 176 votes, Tie: 346 votes)

Week 30:
- Google TV vs. Apple TV
- WINNER: Google TV, 1674 votes (Apple TV: 617 votes, Neither: 341 votes, Both: 242 votes)

Week 31:
- Twitter vs. Newspapers
- WINNER: Twitter, 1005 votes (Newspapers: 418 votes, Neither: 282, Equal: 211)

Week 32:
- HTC EVO 4G vs. iPhone 4
- WINNER: HTC EVO 4G, 5091 votes (iPhone 4: 3,680 votes, Tie: 556)

Week 33:
- Google TV vs. Boxee
- WINNER: Google TV, 600 votes (Boxee: 395 votes, Neither: 188)

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