Fan, tweet and eat for a cause

A campaign launched by the Rudy's "Country Store" and Bar-B-Q chain will benefit victims of the mass shooting at Fort Hood and their families.

The chain and other businesses have partnered with Solders' Angels, a nonprofit that helps veterans and their families, in an effort to give holiday gift packages to each of 43 families affected by the shootings.

Thirteen died and 30 were wounded in the Fort Hood shootings.

The packages will consist of toys, Christmas cards and pre-paid Visa/Mastercard cards that can be used to purchase essential items and for holiday shopping, according to information from Rudy's.

Rudy's has a store at the Western Crossing shopping center at Interstate 40 and Western Street.

Rudy's has said it will donate 50 cents for every new verifiable follower for the chain's Twitter account and fan of its Facebook page through Dec. 7.

Then, on Dec. 5, Rudy's will donate a portion of its revenues from online and store sales to Solders' Angels.

Established in 2003, Soldiers' Angels is a volunteer-based non-profit that provides aid and comfort to the men and women of the United States Army, Marines, Navy, Air Force and Coast Guard, as well as veterans and military families.

Information about the organization is available by visiting its Web site or calling (626)529-5114.

'World of Mouth'

That headline is a thought-provoker quote from a video shown at the National Retail Federation's recent Shop.org summit and on the NRF blog. (Reblogged by Retail Traffic Court blogger David Bodamer)

And it's only one of many of the data bits provided by socialnomics.com that highlight the exponential power of social media.

"If facebook were a country, it would be the world's fourth largest."

"80 percent of Twitter usage is on mobile devices. People update anywhere, anytime. Imagine what that means for bad customer experiences?"

"Generation X and Y believe e-mail is passe. In 2009 Boston College stopped distributing e-mail addresses to incoming freshman."

Watch the video. Makes you believe if you're not on the social media bullet train, you'll be left behind.

Why 140?

I caught an Austin American Statesman reprint of a Los Angeles Times story that finally explains why you can only Twitter messages of 140 characters or less.

The number defied any kind of readily identifiable reason behind it, to me. But this explanation by LA Times writer Mark Milian shows how researchers landed at 160 characters for cell phone texts.

Twitter creators took it one step further, Milian reports, by limiting messages to 140 characters and reserving the last 20 for the twitterer's address.

Read the story. It's interesting.

Like an abandoned online shopping cart?

Nielsen Online released a survey it says shows 60 percent of the people who sign up for Twitter leave it behind after a month.

Users are signing up in droves. But, as Mediaweek's Brad Shields writes, the retention rate is just 40 percent "indicating an 'I don't get it factor' among new users that is reminiscent of the similarly overhyped Second Life from a few years ago."

The research leads Nielsen primary research VP David Martin speculating the serivce won't last long "since there are a finite number of potential new users."

Could Twitter's tweet life be running out?