The following is a quick overview of Twitter basics. If you have questions, fire away.

Here are mine:

1. NPR – I’m a loyal listener to the end (even through fund raiser week.)
2. Plants – the more the merrier.
3. Socks – for years, like my children, I was a barefooter. Then one day (I think it was the day of the birth of my aforementioned first born,) socks = security. They don’t have to be fancy or cute socks, just plain old white crews. Happy feet!
4. Cargo pants – the epicenter of geeky organization.
5. A car – I know a lot of folks who don’t have one and they seem quite content but to me automobile = independence.
6. Books – Confession, I haven’t read all the books I own. I’m looking for that magic device that will allow the contents of each unread book in my library to instantly drain into my brain upon contact with the top of my head.
7. The Black Hills – It matters not the time of year, the Black Hills have an undeniable magnetism not just for me but for many.
8. A mini arsenal of tech toys (not to be confused with the gargantuan collection of ‘glee’ in Dylan’s possession.)
9. Laughter – wit and humor is very close in value to the ability to breathe.
10. Football – I watched SuperBowl I with my dad, need I say more?

How about you? What’s on your ‘must have’ list?

Live conference streaming isn’t anything new. Neither are the concerns that showing sessions online for free will ultimately lead to the end of conferences as we know them. Why would a company pay $1500/attendee plus travel costs to send its employees to a far away place to attend an event they could watch from the office, especially in such dark economic times? Simple answer – networking. Yes, the sessions are educational but oh those greasy elbows, that’s where the return on investment really happens.

So for now, I think it is safe to say the internet won’t kill the conference industry. Proof in point? The LA Twitter Conference was sold out.

I’m sure there a more reasons for this acquisition than meets the eye but the most stated reason is Zappos’ CEO’s philosophy of “karmic capitalism”. What goes around comes around couldn’t be truer in this case.

Tony Hsieh is Zappos’ CEO. He is a Harvard graduate with a degree in computer science. He made a bunch of money back in 1998 when he co-founded and sold LinkExchange to Microsoft. He joined the Zappos team in 2000 and has taken the company’s gross sales from $1.6 million to $1 billion in his tenure there.

What is remarkable about this young man is what how he accomplished this feet. He and his team created a Zappos ‘culture’ that is completely customer-centric. You can read Zappos 10 Core Values here. http://about.zappos.com/our-unique-culture/zappos-core-values They included their employees and customers in this ‘culture’ and they tweeted – a lot. Not just a little bit of alot, they tweeted a lot of alot.

Search Engine Watch’s Sage Lewis wrote Zappos + Twitter = Innovative Success http://searchenginewatch.com/3631269 back in October of 2008. It is worth the read.

One thing that caught my eye was Sage Lewis’ point that dedicated Twitter activity garners links from other sites. At the time the article was written, Zappos had 2467 pages linking to their site. I did a link check when I read the article. Now they have 7116. Wow!

For those not obsessed with search engine optimization, incoming links from other sites is a significant factor (some say less so now) in who’s site show up where in a searched listing. They also bring very valuable, targeted direct traffic. In other words, incoming links add value to your company’s bottom line.

So does being a Twitter rockstar. And in the case of rock star, Zappos, it brings about 1 billion tidbits of value.