From Whence the Tweet?

I just read this great tidbit on ReadWriteWeb that discusses how people use Twitter. Some base statistics from a report done by the "Consumer Internet Barometer" include these: "...the majority of Twitter users (42%) use the service to communicate with their friends. About 29% use Twitter to update their status, 26% to find news, and 21% for work-related reasons. Oddly, only 0.3% said that they use Twitter for fun."

So that got me to thinking about why I use Twitter? Before I answer, it's interesting to make the distinction between "why do I tweet" and "why do I use Twitter?"

To me, a tweet is a <=140 character push of information to followers. Therefore, I "tweet" because it is challenging to compress a piece of information into bite sized pieces. That challenge is what attracts me to the tweet. On the other hand, the overall "use" of Twitter encompasses not only tweeting, but the reading of, and interaction with, the tweets of others.

Now that we have that out of the way, why DO I tweet?

1. To Comment on Others Updates: Twitter is a social application, after all, so one must be social to use it. I find tidbits here and there that I want to comment on - conversations (sort of) that I want to be a part of. On Twitter, especially when you're at an event that attracts the Twitterati, it's easy to fall into a trending, topical "discussion" with others, more or less in real time, and irrespective of geographical locale.  Electronic socialization at its rawest.

2. To Disseminate Interesting Information: I do my best to read as much as I can throughout the day. Every once in a while I'll come across an article or blog post that I want to pass along to others. I'd like to think that, apart from the spammers, my followers have similar interests to my own. Therefore, if I find something interesting my hope is that others do as well. I cannot quickly or easily turn a phrase or spit out repeatable, 140 character parables or bits of advice, but I'm pretty good at passing along the wisdom of others.

3. To Disseminate Promotional Information: There is a certain amount of gentle push marketing one can do on Twitter. I loathe those who use the service solely as a pulpit for touting goods and services, but it's not a crime (at least in my neck of the electronic woods) to tout a new product or service once in awhile.

4. To Acknowledge Others: One could argue that this is related to disseminating promotional information, but I enjoy hearing what others say about me, about the company I work for, or even about industry-related topics like ASP.NET or ColdFusion. When someone says something I enjoy, respect, or even revile, I note it and pass it along. This, too, can be a bit tedious, especially if all you do is re-tweet compliments for yourself or your business. However, in moderation it's no great breach of etiquette.

So that's it, in a nutshell. I could probably write a dissertation on the benefits of brand monitoring and building authority via Twitter and related services, but I'll either leave that for a future post or for those far more intelligent than I.

So what about you? Do you Twitter? If so, why?

Lest we forget...

So I sat and watched the first 30 minutes or so of "Saving Private Ryan" last night. It was late, and as the movie is a bit long I wasn't able to stay up through the entire thing. The movie is spectacular, but the one part I seem to enjoy the most is the scene where General George C. Marshall reads the letter Abraham Lincoln wrote to Mrs. Lydia Bixby, a widow who was presumed to have had five sons killed during the Civil War (interestingly enough only two of Mrs. Bixby's sons were actually killed).

The letter is beautifully written and reminds us not only of the beauty of the written word, but its power as well. This is what writing is all about, so I wanted to re-print it here as a reminder of why we all write, regardless if we write in 140 character blocks or 140 pages.

Dear Madam,

I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle.

I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine that would attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save.

I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved, lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.

Yours, very sincerely and respectfully,

Abraham Lincoln

Updates and Texts and Tweets, Oh My

I spent some time at a family reunion this past week and was asked by one of my "uncles-in-law" about Facebook and Twitter. The reunion was basically organized through Facebook, and as this uncle had yet to take the plunge into Facebook (he is quite technically proficient, he just hasn't had the time) we got into a discussion about the differences between things like Facebook and Twitter and their relationship to text messaging. As this conversation is pretty fresh in my memory, I figured I'd get it down on paper...er...well on virtual paper at least.

SMS/Text Messaging - Very much a one-to-one conversation. You interact directly with someone else and communication is generally conversational in tone and content. Reports say that texting is the de facto method of communication for youths (or "utes" for you Joe Pesci fans), surpassing phone calls. A recent survey by Comscore shows teens text on average of 2000 messages a month, with some texting upwards of 15,000 or more.

Twitter and Tweets - Similar to texting as there is a character limit (in fact the 140 character limit is taken directly from the SMS limits of cell phone carries), but tweeting is more of a one-to-many dissemination of information. This is purely my opinion, but I don't consider tweets to be "conversational" so much as "informational" since a back-and-forth conversation via Twitter is fairly cumbersome. You can certainly tweet with the anticipation of a response, but rather than getting a response from a single, focused individual like you would with a text message the responses come from a number of disparate "followers". In addition, you generally need to subscribe to a hash tag search in order to participate in any real discussion (see #CmtyChat as an example). Regardless, a question about the "best place to eat in downtown Boston" takes on a life of its own when tweeted to thousands of followers versus texted to a friend living in Weston.

Facebook Updates -  [NOTE A quick glossary is in order: A Facebook "update" is just as the name implies, you updating your status or passing out some juicy tidbit to your friends, a "comment" is where someone replies to your update, and yoru "wall" is where information appears on your Facebook page - both your own info as well as updates from your friends] Updating your Facebook status is a bit outside the realm of services such as text messaging and microblogging (the term coined for things like Twitter), though there are similarities. For example, when you update your status on Facebook, that update is carried over to your friends' Facebook pages and just as your update shows up on their wall their updates show on your own. Therefore, updates are more interactive across a group of individuals (like Twitter, a one-to-many dissemination of info) but the ability to carry on a conversation with friends as a result of your updates is easier as you don't need to subscribe to a search or hashtag (like texting). One major difference is that you're conversing within and amongst a group - all of your friends can see, follow and participate in the conversation - even if only one other person is actually replying to your update and any subsequent comments. Of course the other obvious difference is that Facebook is a more full-featured social framework, allowing a user to not only update their status, but also post links to articles, videos, music, not to mention using any one of a number of different applications to perform things like personality tests, etc.

So there you have it. Hopefully that helps give some clarity to the various social communication methods out there. If not, feel free to leave a comment or question - I'd be happy to answer.

Web 2 dot Oh Crap, More Things For Me to be Self Conscious About

As I get more involved with Twitter, not to mention other social outlets like Facebook and FriendFeed, a few things keep coming back to haunt me:

1. Is there some sort of ethical code to following those who follow you?
2. If I follow more than I am followed, what does that say about me?
3. Am I the number of Friends and/or Followers I have?
4. Should I be anonymous in my travels (i.e., leave my various profiles - specifically on Twitter and FriendFeed - blank or, worse, filled with unintelligible garbage) or should I be open about who I am?

Twitter: Marketing Tool or Public Relations Godsend?

I've seen a few articles cropping up this afternoon about how a recent WebTrends survey shows that only 2% of companies use Twitter as a marketing tool. Personally, I'm surprised the number is that high.

When you look at it, Twitter is a social media application. By definition  the term "social media" generally refers to methods to "facilitate communication, [and to] influence interaction between peers and with public audiences."* Therefore, to paraphrase and expand a bit, Twitter as social media application is best used to open lines of communication with a public audience, regardless of whether that public audiences is friends and family, businesses, coworkers or even customers. To me, that's also a pretty decent definition of "Public Relations".

6 Tips to Ease Your Twension with Twitter

There’s been a lot of talk in the last several weeks about Twitter. Seems like everyone and their dog is on it now, and it has become a media darling with reports of celebrities such as Britney Spears and Shaquille O’Neal now joining the “Twitterati” (though the former is allegedly updating via a ghost writer and the latter has a tendency to "tweet" during basketball games).

For those of you just getting started with Twitter, and reports are that more and more people are signing up every day, here are a few suggestions on how to make Twitter your own, and how you can get more comfortable with the technology and ideology of Twitter.

31 Days to a Better Blog Lesson 1 - the Elevator Pitch

[caption id="attachment_84" align="alignleft" width="180" caption="Image courtesy of Hardly the Last Word"][/caption]

With this blog I am striving to be a Social Media Apologist, but in a good way. That means I will be writing about social media but not in the vein of Scoble or Jarvis who, at times, teeter on giddy adoration. Instead, I intend to discuss social media from the layman’s perspective – I’m just a guy who sees the importance in where our use of the web is headed. I see the usefulness and potential reward of staying very near the bleeding edge as we move forward in our use and understanding of the Internet. I am by no means an expert – I will most certainly make mistakes - but I’m an interested and expectant user of the internet and I hope to bring that perspective to my blog. Ideally, others out there, especially those new to the buzzwords (Web 2.0, Social Media, Twitter, blog, etc.) will find a place to visit and feel comfortable with the terminology, the technology, and the ideology of social media.

How to Tweet Like a Pro

I had an interesting discussion with a colleague earlier today (that's you @CT_Will). We were talking about Twitter and its uses and how it would factor into an evolving social media strategy the company I work for is fostering. The discussion took a bit of a turn when he mentioned how he, though using Twitter admirably for a few days while he attended a recent conference, invariably was having trouble getting back into the swing of things without the “in your face” subject matter that one finds at conferences.

Now, I’m no expert on Twitter or its uses and I will never claim to be. However, as we progressed through our conversation a interesting strategy emerged, one that I figured I’d toss out there to see what others thought.

It appears my hypocrisy knows no bounds…

 

A year or so ago I wrote a post about how I felt that Twitter = the Devil. In that post I briefly lamented how, if things kept going the way they were (these were the heady days of “Web 2.0” don’t forget), that my children would never get to experience an actual library – that all of their future learning would be antiseptic and…well, bland.

My intention was to elicit some response in the reader, some empathy, some “kindling” of emotion, some visceral reaction to the idea that my children – OUR children – wouldn’t be able to sit in hallowed halls and leaf through tomes of great import, taking in the intoxicating effluvia rising from parchment and leather. I feared they wouldn’t be able to sit in revered and imposed silence (never is a whispered “Shhhh” more imposing) reading, studying, reveling in centuries-old tradition and protocol.

Part of the reason I have this fear is because many of the more enjoyable memories I have from my many years of college involve some of the more widely regarded university libraries in the country. These memories include spending time in “Special Collections” paging through first editions of masters such as Faulkner and Thoreau; surreptitiously occupying “study rooms” where I could relax and read in compounded seclusion and silence; partaking of the tangible, almost corporeal atmosphere that one actually feels upon walking through the doors into a world of great expectation, understanding, knowledge and  influence; furtive dalliances with sprightly coeds while the likes of Keynes and Friedman or Hobbes and Kant looked down from lofty perches. All of these memories combined with the hundreds of others I’ve gathered in the last 40 years combined to what I perceived as one of the greatest slights and most tragic extinctions my children would ever experience: the loss of the library.

Then I got my Kindle 2.

Screw libraries - this device has ruined me forever. I can carry in my briefcase 1500 novels, philosophical treatises, historical references, magazines and more, while still referencing Wikipedia via a mobile browser and free-to-use 3G network (oh, yeah, and I can check hockey scores on The Hockey News as well) and listening to one of 500+ MP3s.

No more walking four flights of stairs with an armload of books, no more lugging a heavily-laden backpack through rain and sleet and snow, no more late fees, no more Mapplethorpe strewn restrooms, no more late night excursions to get that one quote from the one magazine that you need to find, again, in the Readers Guide to Periodical Literature but oh crap the periodical room is closed.

Libraries? I welcome their demise! Now my greatest fear is that my children won’t get to experience Amazon, and that it, too, walks Spanish, just as the library has.

It’s Not You….It’s ME

I think I used that excuse once when breaking up with a girl. However, when it comes to leaving an employer, that’s another story.

Over at Techcrunch Michael Arrington has an interesting post about a “group” created by Google HR for people to post about why they’re leaving Google for other employers. What’s interesting isn’t so much the reasons (e.g., low pay, cutting back of perks, “in the box” thinking – though that IS interesting) as the psychological effects of the decision. As one respondent stated:

“Those of us who failed to thrive at Google are faced with some pretty serious questions about ourselves. Just…Google is supposed to be some kind of Nirvana, so if you can’t be happy there how will you ever be happy? It’s supposed to be the ultimate font of technical resources, so if you can’t be productive there how will you ever be productive?”

That’s pretty intense, and I’m not sure I’m comfortable with building a corporate culture to the point where the decision to leave is followed by years of therapy, counseling and prescription drug dependency. It’s great to love where you work, but to do that to the detriment of your self esteem is a bit suspect.

Many people have left successful companies and been just as successful, if not more so. Look at Bret Taylor, Jim Norris, Paul Bucheit and Sanjeev Singh – they are the former Googlers who founded FriendFeed – the de facto standard for social networking aggregation. What about Mark Messier, who was traded by Edmonton Oilers to the New York Rangers – and in the process added to New York sports legend by guaranteeing a victory in Game 6 of the 1994 Stanley Cup. With the Rangers down 3-2 in the series, Messier then backed up his guarantee by scoring a natural hat trick in the game. The Rangers went on to win Game 7 and hoist Lord Stanley’s trophy.

Look, a job is just that, a job. It doesn’t define who you are, it’s just a means to an end. Sure, there is some “carte blanche” that goes with your “team” – whether that is a literal professional sports team or the company you’re working for – but leaving that team doesn’t mean you’re any less important, less skilled, or that you lack some inherent quality to be successful. As noted, in some cases, it means just the reverse.

Actually leaving a company can mean actual advancement of a career versus moving to just another job, especially when you’re leaving a company that has built a huge cult of personality, something commonplace in the tech industry. There’s no penalty for making a decision to move on – either personally or professionally.  Sometimes you need to “Just Do It”.

Don't "Resolutionize" - Rather REVOLUTIONIZE!

The new year is rife with pundits' expositions on their New Year's resolutions. Personally, there's only so many times I can tell myself (and anyone else interested enough to ask) that I'm going to exercise more and lose weight, or stop drinking "Mountain Dew", or that I'm going to finally take the dive and learn how to play that bass guitar. I"ve only ever been successful ONCE in living up to a New Year's Resolution: That was to quit smoking, and even then it took eight years to accomplish.

Therefore, rather than vow to follow some redundant "resolutions", I vow, instead, to engage in "revolutions" this year!

How will accomplish this Sisyphean task?

1. Step outside my comfort zone and do something that is a bit risque - at least for me. Take the meaning of this as you will, but for me it means being a little less calculating in things. A minor example would be in my blogging: Rather than plan out a post for a week or so, do more "stream-of-consciousness" stuff. Maybe add video or audio. Maybe offer my services to a third party and be a guest blogger on a site like the WHIR.

2. Be more opinionated. Believe it or not I've been criticized for having an opinion on things but not making that opinion heard. Therefore, I need to have more conversations with leadership, more calls or emails - don't sit on the "next great idea", actually discuss it with someone. And when I say "leadership", I'm talking Newtek leadership: Barry, C.J., et. al. That also means fix more broken windows in our forums :).

3. Don't wait - participate. Sort of hand-in-hand with the first two, but I need to get more involved outside of the NTS environment: post in forums, hit a local users group or four, maybe a dreaded Better Business Bureau monthly "technology leadership" meeting. Then again, maybe it's as simple as striking up a friendship with someone whose blog I read, or who I follow on Twitter.

4. Grow and improve - take a class or attend a seminar on something odd: origami, eastern religion (DISCLAIMER: I do not mean eastern religion itself is odd, but me taking a class on it would be), ballroom dancing. Again, trying to stick with a "revolutionary" theme, so why stop and learning more about writing, or technology, or anything else that surrounds me on a day-to-day basis? Expand horizons, self improve, carpe diem, that sort of thing.

5. Don't just live - actually exist! This goes for everything, both personally and professionally. In the immortal words of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson: "Some may never live, but the crazy never die."

Okay, so I'm no Che, but for me those are fairly lofty goals as we gently slide into a new year. Hey, this is the era of Change:  ¡VIVA LA REVOLUCION!