Disruptive Conversations

The Snarky Tweet That Derailed Yesterday's SOPA Hearing

Yesterday during the marathon US House Judiciary Committee hearings on the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) (which is an insanely bad idea), there came a point where the entire hearings ground to a halt...

... because of a tweet!

I had just tuned back in to the hearing and it took me a bit to figure out the kerfuffle (via Twitter, naturally), but Iowa Congressman Steve King was bored listening to Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee and tweeted that sentiment:

As Declan McCullagh recounts over on CNET once Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee learned of the tweet she termed it "offensive" in the open conversation of the hearing... and the hearing then went into the type of parliamentary rathole that can occur in such places as the U.S. Congress.

While people can debate whether this was this was offensive and disrespectful of Rep. King or whether it is all being overblown, the more interesting aspect to me was the intersection between Twitter and hearings such as this one.

Any of us who are used to speaking publicly in 2011 are very well aware that there is inevitably a "Twitter backchannel" going on, for better or worse.

And the SOPA hearings were no different... the #SOPA hashtag had way too much traffic yesterday for any sane person to handle... and representatives who were in the hearings were participating in that stream, too. Rep. Zoe Lofgren had a couple of tweets go out during the hearings - and Rep. Darrell Issa had a constant stream going, although in his case he has made it clear that his staff is tweeting during the actual hearing.

In this case of Rep. King, though, it was a more snarky message about another committee member... made on a public stage. Which, of course, got back to people within the room.

I'm sure this won't be the last time... we're in this brave new world where comments and opinions people might have kept private in the past are now made in public forums. Interesting times ahead, for sure...

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5 Years of Using Twitter - Some Thoughts on That Anniversary...

It was five years ago today that I started using Twitter as what would come to be known as "@danyork". October 24, 2006. I remember the date purely because "10/24" in the US way of writing dates is an über-geeky number (1 Kilobyte or 2¹⁰). Yes, I remember things like this.

My recollection is that Chris Brogan sent out invites to a whole bunch of us bright-shiny-object-chasers and we all joined this new service called Twitter. This was before Chris became the rock star that he is today[1] and in a much simpler time when all of us who were exploring this new world of "social media" were reading each other's blogs, listening to each other's podcasts, commenting on each other's content and generally interacting in a community of people seeking to understand where we could take all these technologies and tools. Anyway, Chris invited a bunch of us... my Mac Twitter client tells me Chris was Twitter user #10,202, I was #10,312, Doug Haslam was #10,396 and Jim Long (newmediajim) was #10,496. (Just some of the names I remember from that time.) It was a playground where all of us were trying to figure it all out.

The explosion was to come shortly thereafter.

After all these years, though, I still stand by what I wrote in some posts way back in 2007 and 2008:

• The 10 ways I learned to use Twitter in 2007... (aka Why and How I use Twitter)
• Revisiting "the 10 ways I learned to use Twitter"... and adding "Attention Lens" and "Presence"
• Business Week's "CEO's Guide to Microblogging" - and my part of the Debate Room piece (and my contribution)

A friend asked me on Twitter today: "Is Twitter really worth it, or a distraction?"

I still say that I find value in Twitter pretty much every day.

It has become part and parcel of my daily routine and how I interact with people on the Internet. It has become how I distribute info about content I write. It's how I learn of new things to pay attention to.

I still follow my general policy I laid out back in 2008 about whether or not I follow someone... and I'm still finding new and interesting people that I follow pretty regularly.

I do not though read the main feed very diligently... I may dip in from time to time... but most of my focused reading comes from various searches that I run on keywords of interest. I also use FlipBoard now and then on my iPad to browse when I just want to see what's going on.

It's been fascinating as the boundaries of our lives continue to blur to see who we use Twitter and all of these tools.

We're all collectively engaged in a grand experiment in openness. And brevity. What becomes of it none of us know.

All I can say is that I'm very much looking forward to seeing where Twitter and all of these services go over the next five years!

P.S. And yes, Twitter remains my daily practice with "brevity". Certainly a challenge for a writer like me ;-)

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[1] And I mean this in a good way. Chris is a great guy and I'm glad we got to become friends over the years. His path has taken him to some pretty great heights and it's been great to see!

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WordTwit Pro Gives You Excellent Controls for Auto-Tweeting of Posts

I've long been a fan of the WordTwit plugin from BraveNewCode and used it on both Voxeo's blogs as well as my own to auto-tweet out new blog posts. Given that I write 99% of my blog posts offline (using MarsEdit) and send them to the blog site for posting, the fact that I couldn't configure the resulting auto-tweet in WordTwit was never really a big deal to me. Some of my Voxeo colleagues who used the WordPress editor, though, really wanted to be able to modify the auto-tweet.

Primarily they wanted to add hashtags, although sometimes they wanted to change the tweet to be different from the title of the post.

The BraveNewCode folks came out with WordTwit Pro back in June and with my chaotic summer I'd never really taken a look at it... but now that I have I admit to being quite impressed! This video gives a great tour:

I admit that what I personally find most interesting is the ability to automatically schedule multiple tweets. I know from my own reading of my Twitter stream that there is no way I can even remotely keep up with the stream... and so I only see things that happen to come by at any given time. I've often thought about auto-tweeting a blog post... and then tweeting it again maybe 8 or 12 hours later when a different group of people may be monitoring Twitter. This plugin now helps automate that.

I haven't installed it yet on my own site... but I'm definitely thinking of doing so...

Fascinating Chart of Growth of Google+ Relative to Facebook and Twitter

Fascinating chart on the growth of Google+ relative to Facebook and Twitter, courtesy of Leon Håland:

Now, of course, being the newcomer Google+ benefits from already having Facebook and Twitter out there to spread the news about Google+ ... and to spread the links to Google+ material.

Google also has the massive directory of users of Google services... from Gmail to Google Docs and everything in between.

So on one level it's no surprise to see the phenomenal growth... still, it's quite impressive by any measure.

P.S. And of course I am on Google+...

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Video: Rocketboom Provides A Great Explanation of Google+ vs Facebook and Twitter

With all the hype about Google+ lately, a lot of people have been seeking to understand how it is different - or not - from Twitter and Facebook. The folks over at Rocketboom came out with this video that does a nice job of explaining the differences - kudos to the team!

And yes, I'm naturally on Google+ these days...

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Great Photo of President Obama Tweeting Out of The Twitter Town Hall

Sure, you can argue that Wednesday's "Twitter Town Hall" was a clever publicity stunt for Twitter, Inc., but I think you do have to admit this photo from Geoff Livingston is pretty cool!

I mean... here is the President of the United States getting involved with interacting with people over Twitter.

Fun to see...

And, gee, it turns out that the first tweet answered in the town hall was from someone here in New Hampshire. Now... why would that be? I mean, N.H. doesn't play any real role in politics, does it? ;-)

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My FIR Report - June 13, 2010 - How Apple's WWDC News Impacts Communicators

In my report into today's For Immediate Release (FIR) podcast, I spoke about why communicators should care about the news coming out of Apple's WorldWide Developer Conference (WWDC) last week. In particular, I spoke about the deep integration of Twitter into iOS 5, the next version of the operating system for iPhones, iPads and iPod Touches. I also spoke briefly about iMessage, the new IM service that Apple is introducing in iOS 5.

I also discussed iCloud and how Apple is truly moving to viewing Mac laptops and servers as "just another device" connected to the cloud... and how this is another sign of our true migration to a "post-PC era" (using "PC" generically for desktop computers) where functionality moves into the cloud.

I also explained why I thought communicators ought to care about all of this, even if they don't use Macs or Apple devices... but for that, you'll need to listen to the episode ;-)

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It's Official - Tweetdeck Is Now Part of Twitter

The rumors were right... it's official...

Here's hoping that they don't screw it up ... and that our fears turn out to be unfounded...

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More Tweetdeck Acquisition Rumors - Now Led by a CNN Money Report

More rumors out today that Twitter has acquired Tweetdeck for $40 million USD, this time led not by TechCrunch (although TechCrunch naturally commented) but by CNN Money, followed by a whole host of other sites reporting on the CNN story.

Yet to be seen, of course, is whether or not the deal actually happens. As I wrote back in early May, I'm not thrilled by the idea of a Twitter acquisition of Tweetdeck, primarily because I like the fact that I can use Tweetdeck with NON-Twitter platforms like Facebook... and worry that this might be removed in a Twitter-owned platform.

We shall see, eh?

Meanwhile, I did enjoy this tweet from Twitter's PR team...

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Why I Am NOT Thrilled About Twitter Buying TweetDeck...

Oh, Tweetdeck, say it isn't so... rumors have been swirling for months and now appear to be confirmed by TechCrunch that Twitter will be acquiring TweetDeck for $40-50 million USD. A zillion other sites have written about this in the 21 hours since TechCrunch posted their piece (well, all the ones that weren't engaging in the feeding frenzy about Osama Bin Laden), but here's my view:

I fear for my TweetDeck!

You see, TweetDeck has become far more for me than simply a "Twitter client". It is more my "social media command console". When I'm in my home office I have it running on a large iMac screen, complete with all my various Twitter lists, Twitter searches, Facebook updates and so much more:

As you can perhaps see at the very bottom of that screenshot, I have a ton of columns in TweetDeck, lining up with various searches, lists, for different accounts. I've arranged the columns so I can easily move back and forth to scan what is going on with various areas of interest or for different accounts. It works great. Sure, it's an Adobe AIR client, so it naturally sucks up more CPU and memory than I'd like... but the convenience and power of the app make it such that I'll live with the drain on my system and hope that maybe some day AIR will suck less.

When I'm on the road, TweetDeck is fired up on my laptop providing me a mobile command center. I was even using it for a while on my iPad... although there were too many crashes and I actually tried out the "official" Twitter client for the iPad... and have admittedly come to like that client on the iPad.

Part of TweetDeck's strength is its support for multiple accounts. I'm currently using it to manage:

• 5 Twitter accounts
• 1 Facebook account (my own)
• 1 Facebook page

The beauty of TweetDeck is that you can so easily post out to multiple accounts... or retweet from multiple accounts. If I post something to one account and then want to retweet it from other accounts, it is a simple matter of clicking the "retweet" icon for a tweet and then clicking the buttons associated with the accounts I want to retweet from. I've yet to find a Twitter client that rocks the multiple account feature better than TweetDeck.

Ditto the support for the "classic" retweet (that you could edit) and the "new" retweet (that is a pointer to the tweet). TweetDeck gives you the option to choose between the two approaches and, if you don't set the choice in your options, you get this box each time you retweet, giving you the flexibility to choose right then what kind of retweet you want to do:

I love it! It works perfectly for me.

Add to this the ease at spawning new searches... viewing profiles... launching new columns on hashtags.... and on and on...

It is, indeed, my social media command center.

So Why The Fear of Twitter?

So why my fear? I mean, on one level this is great for the TweetDeck gang... kudos to them for making a product strong enough to be acquired! (And I mean that, seriously... they are great folks there!)

But that strength is my concern... I worry that:

1. TWITTER WILL KILL TWEETDECK - Twitter already has an "official" Twitter client, at least on Mac OS X. Why does it need a second? If, as the TechCrunch article suggests, this is a purely defensive move by Twitter, will they truly invest in keeping TweetDeck alive and improving?

2. TWITTER WILL STRIP THE NON-TWITTER FEATURES FROM TWEETDECK - Note that I said above that TweetDeck is my "social media command center", not my "Twitter command center". One of the great aspects of TweetDeck is that it also lets me bring in my Facebook status updates, my LinkedIn updates, my FourSquare updates and, if I cared, updates from MySpace and Google Buzz. I've come to really only use the Facebook updates... but it's excellent to have both together in the same client. Particularly in that I can post to both using the single client.

Why should Twitter keep all this non-Twitter functionality in the client when all they really care about is.. well... Twitter?

Sure, they might not immediately remove it, but will engineers really spend time improving or fixing the non-Twitter features? When they have so many Twitter-related improvements to fix? I have to question how long the answer would be "yes".

3. THE THREAT TO THE LARGER TWITTER ECOSYSTEM - On a more macro level, I worry about the acquisition of TweetDeck putting even more of a chill on third-party development than is already there. Twitter is at a point where they really have to choose between being an "open" platform or being an entire solution or service. They certainly seem to want to be more of the entire solution... and further client consolidation is only going to drive that.

And we, as users very definitely lose if there is not a broader ecosystem.

In the end...

Ultimately it may be that TweetDeck needs this acquisition. I don't know their finances or what they are trying to do. It may be that this is their best path to growth.

And maybe my fears will be unfounded and Twitter will let TweetDeck thrive and grow as the multi-service command center that it is.

And maybe the rumors of the acquisition may be completely unfounded...

It just does cause me to be concerned.

What about you? Do the rumors concern you? What concerns you most about a potential acquisition of TweetDeck by Twitter?

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