Disruptive Conversations

Simple explanation to Dennis Howlett's avatar in SAP video.... he did it!

There turns out to be a VERY simple explanation to why Dennis Howlett's avatar was in the SAP video.. DENNIS IS THE VOICE you hear on the video! Simple... easy...

Why is SAP's "ESME" video using Dennis Howlett's Twitter avatar image?

UPDATE: Okay, so the answer is simple... the ESME video is using Dennis' avatar....... because Dennis is the voice in the video!

Nothing wrong here... move along now... ;-)

---

Why is SAP's video for their "ESME" Twitter-for-the-enterprise product using the avatar picture commonly used by Dennis Howlett?

Being a fan of microblogging, I was intrigued to see the ZDNet story about SAP's "Enterprise Social Messaging Experiment" (ESME) and, still stuck at the airport, I figured I'd watch the 6-minute video. It looks quite cool... but I was struck by another fact: why was the video using Dennis Howlett's Twitter avatar image?

Take a look yourself - here's the video:

Now notice when they are showing the "ESME" interface as they tell their story. One of the characters ("Jim?") has this picture (displayed multiple times):

Now look at Dennis Howlett's Twitter page (or see the large version of his picture):

Am I just way too tired or aren't they the identical image?

Since I use Twhirl for reading Twitter, I see Dennis' avatar all the time (since I follow him) and so that picture is one I recognize right away. For instance, here's a bunch of Dennis' posts all seen in Twhirl:

Dennis twitters quite frequently and also blogs at ZDNet... so his picture is certainly seen around.

So why is it in a video from SAP?

Was someone involved with creating the video just looking for an avatar image to use and grabbed Dennis'?

Very strange...

Twhirl (and a whack of other Twitter clients) add identi.ca support

Yesterday, the big news in the microblogging world was the release of Twhirl version 0.84 with support for identi.ca. (If you don't understand the significance of identi.ca, I would point you to my earlier post.) The wonderful aspect of this is that I now have a window on my screen that automagically updates with my latest "dents"[1] and those of the people who I follow.

Just like working with my Twitter stream, I can easily reply to people (as you can see in the screenshot). I can lookup users and subscribe to them. I can see my own posts and also replies to me. Twhirl also has a very cool feature where you can easily see in the client who you are following and who is following you. (You can't do this for Twitter in Twhirl.)

For me this makes identi.ca infinitely easier to use. There's also a XMPP integration that allows for real-time receiving of identi.ca notices... which sort of turns Twhirl into almost an instant messaging program. I've not tried this yet, but the tutorial shows how easy it is to set up. Nice feature (and something you can't do with Twitter).

Separately from Twhirl, there have also been updates to other Twitter clients Posty and Spaz and a new IndentiFox client (a spinoff of TwitterFox). Additionally, a Twitterific user figured out how to hack it to work with identi.ca. Naturally there was a good amount of blogosphere coverage. Here are some worth reading:

• Read/Write Web: "Twhirl Adds Identi.ca, Becomes Killer App (Yes, Really)"
• The Inquisitr: "Identi.ca Latest: Indentifox, Posty, new features"
• sarahintampa: "Identi.ca Adds Features, Gets into Twhirl" (Good commentary on why people use identi.ca, too.)
• Louis Gray: "Posty's Single-Window Microblogging AIR App Adds Identi.ca Support"
• lmorchard: "Using Twitterific with identi.ca"

It's great to see... and let's see the support for identi.ca continue to grow! Good times...

P.S. If you are experimenting with identi.ca, feel free to follow me at identica.com/danyork

[1] I'm not sure I'm thrilled with the word "dents", but: a) it's getting common usage; and b) I don't have an alternative.

Technorati Tags: microblogging, identi.ca, twitter, twhirl, xmpp, posty, spaz, identifox, twitterific

The real meaning - and power - of identi.ca (a.k.a. open source Twitter)

Is identi.ca the savior of microblogging? Or is it simply Yet Another Twitter Clone destined for doom?

THE GREAT HOPE

As those of us of the Twitterati watched the FailWhale appear multiple times today and wrote posts like mine wondering if we should just give up on Twitter, there was this afternoon a moment when the clouds parted, the trumpets sounded and a bright beacon of hope appeared before us all... here came the launch of identi.ca, an... (gasp)... open source version of Twitter!

Dave Winer declared "Oh happy day!?" and Marshall Kirkpatrick was out with the first longer writeup: "Identi.ca: May A Million Twitters Bloom" (which is definitely worth a read). Those links were twittered and re-twittered...

What happened next was of course entirely predictable... about 1,000 people jumped over to identi.ca to set up accounts (myself included, I'm identi.ca/danyork)... and swamped the server. There was no way that any brand-new service could measure up to the repressed frustration of the Twitterati, and so there was the inevitable backlash...

...the user interface sucks... this doesn't look like a Twitter-killer... I'm not getting all the updates... the Jabber integration doesn't work for me... ugh, this isn't good!... where's the API?... what do you mean there's no SMS interface?... why are the RSS feeds broken?... how can I see replies?... do I REALLY need yet another <expletive> service?

Beyond showing that people need to chill out a bit and give a new service time to develop, the comments somewhat miss the point:

The success or failure of the site, identi.ca, really doesn't matter.

What matters most was very nicely summarized in a post (what do we call them? they aren't "tweets"!) by Edd Dunbill:

THE REAL POWER

The real power resides in the actual software being used, called Laconica, that is used by identi.ca. It is open source/free software and licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License. As stated in the FAQ:

How is Identi.ca different from Twitter, Jaiku, Pownce, Plurk, others?

Identi.ca is an Open Network Service. Our main goal is to provide a fair and transparent service that preserves users' autonomy. In particular, all the software used for Identi.ca is Free Software, and all the data is available under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license, making it Open Data.

The software also implements the OpenMicroBlogging protocol, meaning that you can have friends on other microblogging services that can receive your notices.

The goal here is autonomy -- you deserve the right to manage your own on-line presence. If you don't like how Identi.ca works, you can take your data and the source code and set up your own server (or move your account to another one).

That last line is key... "If you don't like how Identi.ca works, you can take your data and the source code and set up your own server (or move your account to another one)." As Aswath said:

THE PROVERBIAL GENIE IS OUT OF THE BOTTLE

Anyone can now start up their own Twitter-equivalent. In fact, Russ Beattie already has... http://foozik.com/ is up and running with the Laconica code.

More will follow. Someone will throw it up on Amazon's EC2 and put a cloud computing infrastructure behind it. Once Google's AppEngine supports PHP (which the Laconica code uses), someone will throw it up there. Someone will make it work on the evolving P2P network clouds. Someone will add code for an SMS gateway... someone will add a solid API. Someone will add the Replies tab and improve the UI.

Many implementations will suck. Some will suck badly. But others will excel... and somewhere in all of that something resembling the next Apache or Wordpress may emerge. Will it be Laconica? Maybe... or maybe some fork or derivative work. Or maybe some other version written in another language but inspired by the Laconica work.

Of course, just because anyone can "run their own Twitter" doesn't mean they will. Most folks won't. But some will. Other users will join those services. Maybe the identi.ca site will lead the pack... maybe some other implementation will eclipse its lead. The individual sites don't really matter as much as the software that powers them.

WEAVING THE TAPESTRY

Of course, to make such a distributed / decentralized system work, the individual servers need to understand how to connect to other users. As Marshall writes:

Ultimately, this means federation. I put a customized version of the foundation software (called Laconi.ca) on my server, you put one to your liking on yours, we both get friends on our local copy and any other versions around the web - and everyone can communicate with each other just like we were using the same service from the same provider. Whoever comes up with the best alternative to the garbled name Identi.ca wins!

That's the hard part. Coming up with a way to easily and securely pass information between the servers... and to uniquely identify users running on the different servers. The good news is that there are some folks already looking at this through the OpenMicroBlogging initiative (that, like Marshall, I had not heard of before today).

The other good news is that we have multiple precedents for doing this before. Think of Jabber and XMPP. I have a Jabber ID (JID) of "dyork@jabber.org" (or "danyorklpg@gmail.com"). I can do XMPP-based IM with anyone else who has a JID. Our servers can resolve the JIDs and communicate with the servers. Each of us can be running our own Jabber server - yet we can all find and communicate with each other.

Or think of email. Each of us has the option of running many different kinds of email servers. Yet we can all communicate through an open standard, SMTP, and we can be uniquely identified with our address.

BUT WILL IT KILL TWITTER?

Probably not. Let's be real... Twitter has hundreds of thousands of active users these days (maybe more?). At some point, they'll fix their stability problems. People will stay there because their "community" is there. Let's face it, simply the existence of an open source IM solution (Jabber/XMPP) hasn't killed off the walled gardens of AIM, MSN/WLM and Yahoo!Messenger.

But Laconica and it's impending derivatives gives us all a "Plan B"... it gives us choice and "control"... when we finally hit that pain threshold and decide to move on... there's another choice out there.

More than that, the release of Laconica unleashes the "power of play"... developers can now tinker with the code... change it... improve it... do wacky things with it that Evan at identi.ca had never even remotely dreamed of. Every developer who gets pissed off at yet more Twitter downtime now has a building block to launch off in pursuit of "building a better Twitter".

Sure, the code needs work... maybe lots of work... that's okay. It's a building block.

At the very least there is the potential of competition for Twitter... competition is good. It keeps the leaders on their toes... and fosters innovation.

THE MISSING MEDIUM

The phenomenal success of Twitter has shown us that we were missing a communication medium.

Somewhere in the midst of email, IM, web sites, blog sites, IRC, video, RSS feeds, Facebook, MySpace, VoIP, cell phones, snail mail and everything else... we wanted yet another way to communicate. The one-to-many mode of Twitter... mixed in with a one-to-one mode... and accessible through a wide range of devices and a simple API.

Twitter's very simple question of "What are you doing?" showed that there was desire out there to provide "status updates"... which evolved into everything else we do now with Twitter. And now pretty much every "social networking" site out there along with IM services and many other apps have added "status updates".

IT'S ALL ABOUT CONTROL

As early adopters and users, our frustration, though, has been that the services allowing us to publish those updates have been out of our control. Whether it's been Twitter, Jaiku, Pownce, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Plaxo Pulse, Skype... or... pick your service... we are locked into their infrastructure. We can't experiment with it. We can't tinker with it. We can't hack on it. We can't fix it. All we can do is pound our head against walls...

With identi.ca and Laconica, we see the hope to regain that control. Some of us want that, while others admittedly don't care - they just want a service that works. There are many barriers to such a service reaching the level of usability that we probably want. It may never get there. Twitter may mystically fix all its issues and we'll just stay over there and this whole thing will fade into the background of other available-but-not-widely-used open source and free software.

We'll see.

Meanwhile, the code is out there for those who want to play with it. As Marshall said "May A Million Twitters Bloom"... let the hacking away on the code begin... it will be fun to see what evolves...

---

P.S. You can find me at identi.ca/danyork as well as twitter.com/danyork

Technorati Tags: twitter, identi.ca, laconica, microblogging, opensource, freesoftware, status

At what point do we simply give up on Twitter?

At what point do we finally call a spade a spade and just give up on Twitter?

This morning the Twhirl client I use started acting really flaky. Tweets wouldn't post... or they would post but then would lock up Twhirl. Sure enough, the folks at Seesmic/Twhirl used their new ability to send out status updates to give us this:

I tried sending an update, but I have no way to find out if it got there because Twitter's main page currently has the wonderful "fail whale":

There's been no end of commentary in the blogosphere on Twitter's instability in recent days... a quick Techmeme search will show some of the flow of articles, in particular Dave Winer's "State of the Twitter" and Michael Arrington's TechCrunch post about the conversation moving to FriendFeed.

The question remains... how much longer will we all put up with Twitter's downtime?

It's almost like a digital version of "crack"... we keep returning to feed our addiction to the conversation. Surely it will get better now, we think. They must have fixed it after this update. With all that investment money, they must be able to fix this, right?

Why don't we go to FriendFeed? Or Plurk? Or, heck, even Facebook with it's status messages? Some people definitely have moved... but most of us remain. Why?

I don't have a solid answer. A blogger named Corvida outlined many of the issues in her post "The Problem With Leaving Twitter". It is all about the community... about the many people you connect with who have, in many cases, become actual "friends".

I think it's also about the APIs... for all of its faults, Twitter stands above so many others with the many different ways you can send updates to it... via the API from a ton of different clients... from the web interface... from the mobile interface... from IM (if they ever fix the IM interface)... via voice from Jott or Twitterfone... from your blog site... from other services. The absolute simplicity of the Twitter API has created a whole ecosystem of integration around the service.

It's also where - at this moment - much of the "conversation" is among the emerging tech / new media / chasers-of-bright-shiny-objects. It's our virtual water cooler. It's our "Cheers"... it's where we hang out.

How much of that conversation will remain, though, is a good question. Each day Twitter seems to try our patience a bit more. At some point we may all reach that pain threshold where we finally say "enough is enough" and move on to somewhere else...

When do we hit that point? I don't know, exactly, but it's increasingly seeming like the answer is... SOON!

P.S. You are welcome, of course, to follow me on Twitter when the service is up... as well as on Friendfeed for when it isn't. :-)

Technorati Tags: twitter

The Sad State Of Twitter...

As I posted a couple of updates to my Twitter stream this morning, I noticed that I hadn't received any updates for most of two hours in my Twhirl client. I tried going to my Twitter page and when I couldn't I naturally tried to go to http://www.istwitterdown.com... today the answer was not "Yes", but rather:

It's really very sad when "Yes" becomes "of course". When the expectation is that the service will be down, you really have to wonder about the long-term viability of the service. At some point Twitter will cross the proverbial "threshold of pain" that will indeed cause users to flock to other services. Judging from past history, that threshold is very high... but with Twitter's frequent outages lately, you have to wonder if we aren't rapidly approaching that point.

I see from Twitter's new status blog that they were making database changes last night. Will the changes be enough to keep people using the service? Will they be enough to bring the pain level back down?

We'll see.

Technorati Tags: twitter

When Twitter Goes Down... oh, how we have come to rely on it

If you are a Twitter user, you are no doubt by now aware that there is a serious problem. Annoyingly, it's not a catastrophic failure... it's far more subtle than that. The site looks like it is fully operational. You can post tweets. You even get some tweets from people you follow.

But that's the issue... you get some of the tweets in your twitter stream, but very definitely NOT all. As now noted on the Twitter site, some maintenance they did this weekend to improve caching obviously didn't work:

Oops.

The problem, of course, is that for those of us who have integrated Twitter into our regular workflow, it has become part and parcel of how we communicate. I liked what the folks at Mashable said:

Why the hysteria? Well, Twitter seems to have become more than a service. It’s a new way of communication. You simply cannot replace it with anything; what are you gonna do, get all your Twitter friends to become your friends on ICQ? That steady stream of freshly baked, human-created (well, some of it is bots) info is the information junkie’s bread and butter.

Indeed it is more than simply a service. Here's hoping that they get it working again soon.

P.S. Several writers have pointed out that we might actually be more productive today without Twitter around to potentially distract us. On one level that might be true... but on the other level Twitter users might be distracted in checking to see if the service is back up! :-)

Technorati Tags: twitter

Local TV station using Twitter to solicit stories

I was amused to see in my Twitter stream a tweet from local (Burlington, VT) TV station WCAX asking if anyone had story ideas. The page the link takes you to does indeed have contact info. I do wonder if they actually did receive any story ideas.

It's been interesting to watch WCAX's use of twitter. When they started off back in October, they were providing very regular updates on news in Vermont. So much so that I did follow their Twitter stream. I found this a bit ironic since we don't have a TV and so I never actually watch WCAX, but yet here was a way that I wound up interacting with them. At least once this winter their Twitter stream was very useful in that when I saw that there was a major accident on the local highway (I-89) I was able to call my wife to let her know (turned out she was going a different way anyway, but it could have been otherwise).

However, over the last few months there's been a definite fading of the tweets. Instead of many times a day, the tweets came a few times a day, then once or twice... and now, as noted, their last tweet was 2 days ago. (And yes, we do have news going on here in Vermont!) There have also been some big gaps (like from February 21 to March 4 and March 14 to April 9th) that make me wonder if perhaps this is just a side project for someone who isn't always available (or goes away on assignment).

Perhaps I should contact them to actually do a local interview (or maybe suggest a story about their use (or not) of Twitter? :-).

Regardless, it just thought it was fun to see a local TV station here: a) using Twitter; and b) asking for stories through Twitter.

Technorati Tags: twitter, wcax, tv, burlington, vermont, media

Isn't TweetLater missing the point of Twitter?

I have to admit that I don't quite get TweetLater:

"Now YOU Can Schedule Future Tweets For All Your Twitter Accounts"

And this:

"Stuck on an aircraft? Back to back meetings? Taking vacation? Running errands? Playing with the kids?

Have peace of mind and more free time. Keep your Twitter feed ticking over with new tweets even when you're not in front of your computer."

Now, don't get me wrong... I fully understand and appreciate the value in scheduling blog posts. Some time back when I was more interested in growing my readership, I did exactly that. I would write up a series of posts and have them set to publish on certain days at certain times. Do a flurry of writing and then let the posts just stream out there over the next days or weeks. Every now and then I consider doing that again. It makes sense to me if you are trying to maintain/grow readership and want to maintain consistency in posting.

But those are blog posts... usually larger blocks of text. And usually pieces that I really need to write on my laptop or other computer. They are took long to really type on a Blackberry or other portable device. (or at least longer than *I* want to type on a Blackberry!)

Do we really need this for Twitter?

Isn't the point of Twitter really to talk about what you are doing now... or what has your attention now? Isn't it really a tool for your life stream? Or for pointing to your blog posts? Or querying your network of people? Or hanging out at the virtual water cooler?

Now maybe those are just ways that I use it and maybe others have other uses where TweetLater might be useful. But given that you only type 140 characters or less and that you can do this from a zillion different interfaces (cell phones via SMS, cell phones via web, Internet cafes, any web access, other sites, etc.), it seems to me that it is easy enough to update Twitter from most places.

More to the point, if you are stuck on an aircraft or playing with your kids, why should you be twittering? In my book it's perfectly okay to be offline sometimes.

Are we finding people who feel they MUST twitter all the time?

Are there people who feel that they need to twitter on a consistent basis in order to grow/maintain their followers? Will people really have more "peace of mind" if they queue up a bunch of tweets?

Are we just creating another rat race where Twitters feel they have constantly keep producing? (And isn't that just a hamster wheel?)

That's certainly not how I use Twitter, and it seems to me to be the polar opposite of the whole Twitter "What are you doing" mindset... but maybe there are some folks out there of feel "they have to twitter" in order to keep on going. (I would suggest that perhaps such folks need to "chill out", but hey, that's just my view.)

Where I could see it working

Now where I can see something like TweetLater being used is for Twitter accounts tied to an event where you tweet out parts of the schedule. For instance, let's take a tech conference that has keynotes, breakout sessions, breaks, etc. The organizers could publicize that people could stay up-to-date on what is going on at the conference by following the conference twitter ID. The organizers could then use a service like TweetLater to queue up tweets to go out at certain times:

• 8:55 - "Keynote with XXX, CEO of YYY, starting in 5 minutes in Grand Ballroom I"
• 10:30 - "Morning refreshment break in Foyer II sponsored by XXXXX"
• 10:55 - "Concurrent sessions starting: XXXX in Panama 1, YYYY in Panama 2.."
• 11:00 - "Exhibit Hall now open. Visit booth 1234 to win an iPod."

Etc, etc. You get the idea. The conference staff could queue up these scheduled tweets to go out but then also send out unscheduled tweets as the need arose ("Session A in Panama 2 has been cancelled as the speaker's flights were cancelled."). Attendees who followed the conference name could get those updates on whatever device they found useful. All in all I could see that being useful at a conference.

So there I could see it being useful. But for individual twitter users? I don't see it... but maybe I also don't see all of how twitter has evolved.

What do you think? Would you use a service like TweetLater? Do you know of people you think might?

Technorati Tags: twitter, tweetlater, blogging, microblogging

Revisiting "the 10 ways I learned to use Twitter"... and adding "Attention Lens" and "Presence"

Why do you use Twitter? After the folks at Twitter added a "Share Your Story" link yesterday where they are asking people why they use Twitter, this has prompted a number of folks to blog about why they use Twitter. One nice piece was from Paul Colligan: "Why I Twitter - And Why It Just Might Make Business Sense" - and then there was Stowe Boyd's that I'll mention later.

All of this prompted me to take a look back at the post I wrote in late December 2007: "The 10 ways I learned to use Twitter in 2007... (aka Why and How I use Twitter)

Three-and-a-half months later the article is still pretty accurate. I would, though, make a few changes, such as adding:

1.5 Twitter as an "Attention Lens": I mention this in my #1, "Twitter as a News Source", but I've come to appreciate that it is different from "news". I find that Twitter suggests where I should focus my (limited) attention. By scanning down the list of tweets, I can rapidly see what people I trust think I should look at. My Twitter stream helps guide what I look at on the web on any given day. Sometimes it is "news", such as the Benezir Bhutto assassination I mentioned in my original article. Many other times it might be older articles or other information that someone found useful and tweeted about. Or it might be blog posts they or someone else have recently written.

11. Twitter as a source of presence information: Until Chris Brogan blogged about this, it hadn't really occurred to me that this is a very real way that I use Twitter. If I have emailed, IM'd or called someone who I know uses Twitter and haven't heard from them - and the matter is important - I will look at their Twitter stream to see what they are up to. Sometimes I've found that someone is on vacation or is many timezones away on the other side of the world. Or that a laptop crashed. Or other information that explains why I can't reach them. In fact I've found that sometimes I now go to Twitter before contacting someone to learn what they are doing before I try to contact them. Obviously, this only really works for people who use Twitter relatively frequently, but for those folks it works well.

I would also note that the way in with I interact with Twitter has changed dramatically since I wrote that piece in December. At the time, I was reading my Twitter stream in a Skype chat window (or alternatively a Jabber chat window). While that worked great, since that time I discovered Twhirl, and now there is no going back! In fact, I've now turned off the notifications in both the Skype and Jabber chat windows. I find Twhirl useful for a number of reasons:

• It runs outside the browser and updates automatically.
• It allows me to very easily reply or direct-message someone in my stream.
• It cross-posts to Jaiku and Pownce, letting me at least have a one-way flow of information to those services.
• It easily lets me see the various types of messages I can receive in Twitter (replies, direct messages, my own messages, the timeline)
• It provides easy access to the list of my friends and followers.
• It has two search capabilities: "Search" for terms in tweets, and "Lookup" to search for Twitter users

All in all, it's a nicely done client and has greatly helped fit Twitter into my daily workflow to a deeper degree. The one thing Twhirl does not have that I had with the Skype chat is a basically endless history (which is then searchable). However, I find that this is less required as I can also just use good old Google to find older tweets.

I should also note that as a result of my last post, I'm now using Twitterberry on my Blackberry 8830 for mobile usage of Twitter. It has its challenges at times, but it does work for what I need. (I do like very much that it has a "Get Replies" to see your replies.)

I do have to say that all my various statements about how and why I use Twitter, both here and in my previous piece, pale in the face of the simple, eloquent and inspiring "Why I Use Twitter" by Stowe Boyd, copied here simply because it's so good:

Being connected is becoming the best way to be effective in the brave new webified world. By tapping into and supporting the passions and drivers of a swirling, ever-changing network of people, I am made better. I am made stronger, smarter, and deeper, and more together in a way that I could not be, on my own.

There is an African saying that says it is through other people that we become people.

Twitter helps us become more human, in a time when it is more important than ever before to see us as connected on this Earth, not separate; linked together, not divided; to see ourselves as elements of a whole that is greater than any, and all, of the individual parts.

Twitter is about hope and love, although the casual observer might miss that completely.

Well said!

Technorati Tags: twitter

A 2.5 minute video explaining Twitter - great for those who don't understand!

How many people do you know who don't "get" Twitter and can't understand why those of us who do use it find value in it?

Well the folks over at Common Craft have done it again with a great short video that explains much of the allure of Twitter in 2.5 minutes:

Definitely worth sharing in my opinion. (Digg users can also give the video a Digg!) I love see great short explanations like this! Kudos yet again to the Common Craft team!

Technorati Tags: twitter, microblogging, commoncraft, common craft

Want to learn about Twitter? Here's a 4-part series and a screencast

As readers know, I'm a fan of Twitter and continue to use it on a daily basis (if you use it, you can follow me if you like). Lately there seem to be quite a large number of articles coming out in the same vein as my own, i.e. "here's how Twitter is useful." I thought, though, I would highlight a couple of those articles that I found particularly useful. First, Jennifer Laycock over at Search Engine Guide has written a four part (so far) series titled "From Twits to Tweeple, Why I Embraced Twitter and You Should Too":

• Part One steps you through creating an account, editing your profile and getting started. She's done a nice job with screenshots to illustrate the steps.
• Part Two covers adding friends, twitter commands and lingo and what all the "@" messages are all about.
• Part Three talks about engaging in conversations on Twitter and also the fun aspect of how Twitter can help you meet up with people in real life.
• Part Four explains tinyurls, talks about how tweets can drive traffic to your website and also about "retweets".

All in all a nicely done series. She concludes part 4 with an indication that further installments will be forthcoming. Nice to see these kind of tutorials out there.

Second, Dave Delaney published today a screencast tutorial about Twitter (using Jing to record it). Dave covers some of the same kind of introductory material but in a screencast/video form. Again, a nice introduction.

If you're wondering what all this Twitter fuss is about, these resources may help you get started. (And if you do join, feel free to follow me.)

Technorati Tags: twitter, dave delaney, jennifer laycock

More on the business benefits of using Twitter...

Back in December, I outlined some of the ways in which I found Twitter to be useful in my post "The 10 ways I learned to use Twitter in 2007" and in recent days a few more people have posted their own insight into how it has been helpful to them:

• Paull Young: "Examples of Twitter Providing Business Benefit" (complete with showing actual Twitter exchanges to prove his points)
• Doug Haslam: "Twitter: Where's it @ for Business?"

Both are excellent posts that I would highly recommend.

Do you find value in Twitter?

Technorati Tags: paull young, twitter, business, doug haslam

And my 600th Twitter follower is...

Yesterday I noticed that my Twitter account was at 599 followers and I got to wondering... who would be the 600th? Would it be someone I knew? Some random stranger? Some "service"?

So I was both surprised and delighted to see an email notification come in today that my latest follower was none other than... Betsy Weber! Betsy's the chief evangelist over at TechSmith and maintains their excellent "Visual Lounge" blog where she writes about TechSmith's products like Camtasia, SnagIT, Jing, etc. and, of course, shows how to use them in videos and screencasts.

The funny thing is that Betsy and I have come to know each fairly well. She contacted me back in July 2007 after I wrote about screen capture tools and I pointed to a SnagIT plugin for Windows Live Writer (she later blogged about that). Subsequently we both wound up in Robert Sanzalone's "pacific IT" Skype groupchat where a whole bunch of us "emerging technology" types chat about whatever bright shiny objects we happen to be chasing. She connected a bunch of us with Jing, which we were glad to write about. (And I still use often.) We're both Northerners (she in Michigan, me in Vermont) so we had that commonality to talk about. We also both travel a good bit and could share our joys and frustrations. We've become "friends" in that odd kind of social media way.

Unlike a lot of people I know online, Betsy and I have also actually met in person, which seems like an increasing rarity these days. She does the trade show/conference circuit for TechSmith and I wind up going to (or speaking at) those kind of shows, so we got to meet out at the Podcast/New Media Expo last fall in Ontario, California.

I was "surprised" by the notification because I thought I was already following Betsy on Twitter. (I wasn't, but am now.) I thought I was before... if I was, I'm not sure how I got disconnected, but I've had strange things like that happen a couple of times with Twitter.

Anyway... welcome, Betsy, to my twitterstream! (And for those of you reading this blog, you can check out Betsy on Twitter as well.)

P.S. And welcome to all the others who have joined recently as well... I'm seriously not entirely sure why you all are following me but welcome to the conversation! Let's see what happens with this grand experiment that we're all in...

Technorati Tags: twitter, dan york, betsy weber

Don't Make Me Go To Your Website! - The 5 Ways I Consume Information In The Web 2.0 World

Do you ever go to a website on a frequent basis to see if it has been updated? Do you go to a bookmark you have or click on a toolbar icon or even just type in the URL into your browser address bar?

Do you do that for this website? Do you NOT subscribe to the feed but rather just come here from time to time to see if anything new is here?

If not this site, do you do this for another site? How often do you go and visit the site? Daily? Weekly? Monthly? Randomly?

I had an exchange today with someone I greatly respect and in the course of the conversation I realized that the reality is:

I don't really go to any websites these days on a regular basis.

I don't go to friends' websites. (Sorry!) I don't go to my employer's website. I don't go to any organization's websites. I don't go to my city's website. Every once in a while I might hit CNN's web page or a weather site, but that's about it. I do go to Facebook's page and Google Apps pages, but I think of those more as applications and communications services.

I don't have time in my daily work or home schedule... even though going up to my Bookmarks menu, choosing a link and then waiting for the page to load isn't a whole lot of time, it is some time... and if I get there and nothing has changed, it is wasted time. So I don't do it.

The only reason I visit a web site these days is generally if either:
1. The website turns up in a search result.
2. I get notified that there's something interesting there that I should look at.
3. Random times when for some reason I decide to go there, perhaps remembering a URL for a site I wanted to check out.

That's it. (Note that I do get the content of many websites through the ways I mention below, but I don't actually go to those websites and see their page.)

As I think about it, my consumption of information online really comes down to five ways:

1. E-mail, although I get too much of it read it all.
2. Twitter, where I see links from people or services that I follow.
3. RSS feeds where my reader pulls it in and I quickly scan through the posts.
4. Skype persistent group chats where I'm connected to several different groups of people on various topics.
5. Searching for data, typically using Google.

The key thing is that, with the exception of search:

All the data comes to me!

Email is in my inbox, either on my laptop or my Blackberry. Feeds end up in my newsreader. Twitter I usually read in an IM chat window where I can scan it and search it. Skype groupchats I obviously read in Skype. I whip through and scan the info fast, clicking links if I want to see them and potentially firing off replies. I visit web pages only because I've seen an email with info and a link, or someone's twittered the link or posted it in a Skype groupchat... or because of a link in some item in my RSS feeds.

For better or worse (and I can argue philosophically that it might be worse), that's how I consume data. Funny thing is, I know I'm not alone. This is the "Web 2.0" way. Let me pull your data in some way and I'll consume it.

Don't make me go to your website to get updates. I won't.

So if a website has an RSS feed (or a Twitter feed), I'll subscribe and see when there are updates. Otherwise, I'll probably just only go there on random times when I think of it. Which, unfortunately, won't be often. I'm living in the blur.

Are you?

Technorati Tags: twitter, attention, tools, web, web2.0, RSS, feeds, communication, collaboration

Is Twitter staggering under the weight of its own success? (Seems to be down right now...)

Is Twitter staggering and falling down under the weight of its own success? As I write this post, the Twitter service, which has been sluggish all morning, seems to have stopped responding entirely. Twitter4Skype is having failures updating. I can't get to either the regular or mobile web sites. The Jabber IM interface still seems to be giving me updates. I tried updating it that way, too, but of course I have no way to see if the update successfully got there. :-)

The bummer is that I have been working this afternoon to connect the WordPress plugin "twitter_updater" to the newly created "voxeo" account on Twitter so that we could provide another way to receive notifications of new blog posts. Now I have no way to test that out until Twitter comes back up.

And yes, I could have simply used Twitterfeed to connect the RSS feed for all our blog entries to the Twitter account, but: a) the Twitterfeed.com site has been down most of the day; b) using this plugin gives me finer granularity of which blogs will update the Twitter site; and c) this plugin will post to Twitter when there is a new entry versus with Twitterfeed where it polls every so often.

I've heard from folks that Twitter is getting multiple mentions on NPR here in the US today, so that may be driving more attention to the site. If that is the issue, are we seeing more signs of the scalability issues with Twitter? (that have bitten us before?)

Technorati Tags: twitter

The 10 ways I learned to use Twitter in 2007... (aka Why and How I use Twitter)

UPDATE - April 9, 2008: Four months later, I revisited the ways I've learned to use Twitter and added a few more.

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How have I learned to use Twitter in my online communication?  Let me count the ways...

After Chris Brogan posted his "Twitter Revisited" piece last week and on the same day Jeremiah Owyang talked about popularity and Twitter, I put some thought into how Twitter has substantially changed the ways in which I communicate online.  Some of this I talked about in my segment into Mitch Joel's Yuletide podcast, and some of it listeners to For Immediate Release will hear in my report into today's FIR.

In this post, I want to lay out in a longer form (< 140 characters!) both why and how I use Twitter.  Comments are definitely welcome - I'd love to hear your experience: how do you use Twitter?  So here goes...

1. Twitter as a News Source

This morning (US Eastern time) former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was assassinated.  How did I find out?  When I sat down at my laptop to start my day and did a quick scan of the recent "flow" of my Twitterstream, I saw tweets from Steve Rubel and Jim Long referencing something going on in Pakistan and then there was a tweet from Nik Butler with a URL.  Ta da. Subsequently I watched other URLs being passed around and watched the tweets from Jim indicating that he was enroute to get video of President Bush's statement (Jim Long, aka newmediajim, is a cameraman for NBC and is currently in the press pool covering the President in Crawford, Texas.) I also learned of the existence of "BreakingNewsOn", which aims to be "your most credible Twitter news source".

Most days are certainly not (thankfully!) so dramatic, but yet this is a very valuable role Twitter plays for me.  I learn of new events going on, new services, new sites.  How?  I follow a wide range of people... many of them are people I do actually know and trust.  Others are people I've stumbled upon, often by way of those people I trust.  Many of them are leaders in their particular fields and are generous enough to share information and links.

In fact, there are many days when I don't read RSS feeds at all, but instead find myself relying on information passed along through the Twitterstream.  Where do these people I follow think I should spend some of that extremely rare thing: attention?  Mitch Joel just yesterday referred to Twitter as "the Social Pulse" and it is indeed that.

[TANGENT: Over at ZDNet, Dennis Howlett has an interesting piece about Twitter and the coverage of the Bhutto assassination: "What I have seen today is the convergence of new media forms like Twitter and its add-ons, Seesmic, blogs and traditional TV media providing a powerful example of how important events are going to be reported, dissected, analyzed and ultimately acted upon from here on. Not some time in the future - but now."]

2. Twitter as a Knowledge Network

Another huge use I have found for Twitter is as a "knowledge network".  A "network" of people to whom I can pose questions and - usually extremely rapidly - get back responses.  Sometimes the questions have been a bit dramatic, such as "Uh oh, left my boots at home. Where can I get cowboy boots in Ottawa?", which, interestingly, took place entirely through using Twitter (and Facebook) while mobile on my Blackberry. Most times it is something more mundane like "what's a good basic graphic editor for the Mac?" In almost all cases I have had a relatively rapid reply.  This works in part because I follow a good number of people (150+ right now), some percentage of whom are checking their twitterfeed at any given time.  It also works because people are willing to answer questions - something I do as well in return.

3. Twitter as a Virtual Water Cooler

If you work in an office environment, both #1 and #2 above happen just as a matter of course.  I'm sure that this morning in offices across the globe, the word was being passed among the cubicles and offices "Hey, did you hear that Benazir Bhutto was just assassinated?"  Perhaps some people stood up and shouted it out.  Odds are that if you are a cube/office-dweller you have more than once gone over to someone in a nearby cube/office and asked something like "Hey, what graphic editor do you use on a Mac?" At least when I worked in a cube world, that was very common.

Beyond news and questions, though, there is all the other information you learn just from being in the physical presence of others.  When you leave your cube/office to get a drink of water or go to the bathroom... when you walk through the corridors to a meeting... when you go down to the cafeteria for lunch, or out to the smoking area if you are a smoker (I'm not)... when you have all those random encounters with people you learn about other parts of their lives.  I learned a bit about building treehouses from a cube neighbor who was building one.  I learned about trips to new locations... new foods... new restaurants... new websites or services.  I learned about wives and husbands and sons and daughters and family. I learned about sports and hockey (I was in Canada at the time) and politics and religion and all those other things. (And yes, on the negative side these conversations also included "gossip", which was not always helpful.)

From this minutiae of daily life we learn the fabric that binds together the stories of our colleague's/friend's lives.  We learn their "backstory".  We learn what is important to them.  Their passion.  Their hunger.  We are exposed to new topics and new ideas that we might never have discovered on our own.  We develop a richer and fuller understanding of who they are as individual people (which isn't always a good thing, mind you).

If you are a cube/office-dweller, perhaps you never thought about all those trivial conversations in that way, but unless you are unfriendly these conversations are part and parcel of your daily life.

On the other hand, I work in a home office.  Alone.  For much of the day it is me and these four walls.  Two cats are off somewhere in the house but they don't come into my office. There are many aspects to working in a home office that I absolutely love, such as the fact that almost every day I get to have lunch with my wife and 5-year-old daughter.  Or that I can take a break and go chase the ice-cream truck down the street with my daughter... or see her latest creation.  I can "timeshift" my work day around to go to events or appointments. I get to participate at a richer and deeper level in her life and that is a wonderful thing to me.

But a downside of working in a home office, to me, at least, is that you don't get that random social interaction with other people.  Certainly IM and video have made it very easy to work remotely.  I've done a ton of video conferencing (largely because I have a built-in webcam) and it's all great.  But you don't get the "Hey, did you hear about... " kind of "hallway conversations" that are, for better or worse, part of office life.

Twitter, for me, has wound up providing that role to a degree.  From time to time I can take a look at the flow of Twitter messages and see what people are saying.  I learn about things.  I learn about people.  Even from the proverbial "Just had ____ for lunch" you learn about the people and what their story is.  I actually don't mind those mundane posts (well, as long as they are not all I see!) because they do give a sense of the people behind them.  I wind up hearing "hallway conversations" with people all over the world.  (And yes, the negative "gossip" unfortunately propagates as well... at the rapid lightspeed of Twitter.) Overall, it is to me a valuable role that it fills.

[TANGENT: It would be an interesting research exercise to look and see how many of the top "twitterers" work out of home offices (or work alone in office). Is there any correlation?]

4. Twitter as a way to stay up-to-date with friends

Among the people I follow are certainly some that I have been "friends" with (in the traditional sense before the word became overloaded by social networks) for some time and Twitter has provided a way to stay up-to-date with what they are doing.  Yes, I could equally read their blog or website, but Twitter provides an easy - and convenient - way to do this.

5. Twitter as a Travelogue

I travel typically 1-2 weeks each month.  Speaking at various conferences.  Attending different events.  My schedule has been that way for several years.  In the past, when I was traveling to places, I would often update my dyork.livejournal.com blog with information about my travels.  Where I was going. What flights I was on.  If flights were delayed, etc.  While I am definitely aware that there is a dark side to doing this, overall it's been extremely useful over the years. 

Today I do this with Twitter.  In large part because it's so incredibly simple to do.  Just use the web browser on my Blackberry... or use SMS if the data side isn't working.  Simple. Easy.

The effect of doing this has been quite interesting and useful.  I've wound up discovering that other people are in the same city I am or attending the same conference (something I'm also using Dopplr for these days).  I've had recommendations for sites to see or restaurants to check out.  I've queried the network (#2) for tips or recommendations.  I also have to admit I've enjoyed the messages of sympathy when I've groaned about cancelled or delayed flights.  Undoubtedly I've turned off some followers who really don't care that my plane was delayed yet again in JFK... but others have been very helpful.

6. Twitter to Track Conferences

I've found Twitter to be immensely valuable to stay up on what is going on at some of the various conferences out there.  If I can't attend one that I thought sounded very interesting, odds are that someone (or several people) may be tweeting about it, often "live blogging" the conference and providing companion URLs.  It's been a great way to stay up... pseudo real-time... on what is going on.  It's also something that I can ignore if I have other events and then just check in on sometime later in the day or at night.

7. Twitter as a PR/marketing Tool

Yes, I admittedly use Twitter as a tool to drive traffic to blog entries I write or web sites with which I am involved.  I don't tweet about every blog post I write.  I tweet about the ones that I think might be of interest to those who follow me on Twitter.  I'll obviously tweet about this post (which is way more than 140 characters!).  I tweet about the posts where I'm looking for comments.  I tweet about those I think might help people.

I know that it has certainly worked, as I've seen the traffic come in that way.  As I've thought about why it works, I refer back to my point #1 above.  For those who dive deep into Twitter usage, it can become even more of a news source than RSS feeds and other mechanisms.

8. Twitter as a Learning Tool

Perhaps this really an offshoot of the others, but a distinct use I have found for Twitter is to learn about new topics or new areas to think about.  From random tweets from people, I've wound up learning about whole new areas of information that I had no previous exposure to. I separate this out in part because it is something of value that Twitter brings to me.  Expansion of knowledge for the pure sake of knowledge.  A large part of what I do in my work now at Voxeo is to analyze emerging technology... to look at technology from a holistic point-of-view.  Being exposed to other areas of knowledge help greatly in that assimilation and evaluation and analysis.

9. Twitter as Fun

Sometimes, you just want to have a little bit of fun.  Telling jokes around the water cooler. Sharing that incredibly stupid thing you just did. ("Oops... didn't mean to do XXXX and wipe out all my work!")  Twitter can be that.  (Of course, you have to keep in mind that everything you write is (unless you choose for it NOT to be) globally readable and archived by the mammoth Google disk caches... so you do have to be careful what you say.)

10. Twitter as a Daily Lesson in Humility (and Brevity)

As this post should show, when they had the class on "brevity", I must have been out sick that day.  I am a writer who loves to write.  And I tend to write long.  Part of that is my training background.  I have this innate desire to ensure that readers completely understand what I am trying to say.  So in typical training style ("Tell 'em once, tell 'em again, and then tell 'em a third time"), I may go on too long at times.

This, however, doesn't translate well into the modern world of the Blackberry.  Long, explanatory email messages are out.  Short, bullet items are in.  If you can't get your points onto the first screen in a Blackberry, your reader may or may not choose to scroll down.  Brief. Concise. To the point.  Another day I'll write my lament about what this is doing to our language... but the net of it is that this is the reality of the corporate world today.  We are going too fast with too many messages being thrown at us.  We must distill all those complex thoughts into sound bites... bullet items.  Distill them down to their very "essence".

Twitter, with its enforced 140-character limit (115-ish if you are going to include a tinyurl!) forces you to think that way.  To distill your message down into something short and sweet.  Or, admittedly, to cheat and spew out several tweets (or write a blog post and link to it).

Twitter becomes my daily exercise in practicing... brevity.

Uses I did NOT list

You'll note that I did NOT list "Twitter as a Conversation".  Unlike Jeremiah Owyang (see "Some Conversations have shifted to Twitter") or Chris Brogan or Jeff Pulver, I find that I do not really use Twitter as a conversation tool.  I don't expect that I'll ever be listed highly on Tweeterboard.  Yes, I do participate in some "conversations". Yes, I do think of Twitter as a "global conversation".  There are, however, a good number of Twitter users who do use Twitter as a kind of giant, asynchronous IRC chat room.  In fact, Chris Brogan and Clarence just wrote about this - and the challenges - yesterday in their excellent piece: "Keys to the Gates (of Social Media)".  I can see the value in that... and do participate directly in that conversation from time-to-time, but I just don't find myself doing it all that often.  (which, I know, does seem a bit in contrast with some of the uses I listed above)

Another use I did not list that I think is rather cool, but not one I do, is "Twitter as Fiction".  Scott Sigler did this wonderfully with his "iPhone War" series of tweets.  Eric Rice has done something similar a time or two, if I recall correctly.  I think it's a fascinating use of the medium and I look forward to seeing more people trying such things.

A final note - HOW I *technically* interact with Twitter

If you have actually read this far along (thank you, if you have! ;-), you might have come to the conclusion that I spend a lot of time using Twitter.  The truth is that I really don't, but I have found a way that works very well for me to fit occasional glances at the twitterstream into my regular daily workflow.  The secret of what works for me?  Simple... I read and post to Twitter using IM programs.  My primary way of interacting with Twitter is through the Twitter4Skype program which connects my Twitter stream to a Skype chat window.  So all the posts in my Twitter stream simply wind up as yet another Skype chat window.  Posting to Twitter is as simple as flipping to that chat window, typing in a message as you would any other IM message. This has several distinct advantages:

1. It is searchable. In the Skype chat window I can search on a person or term and find related tweets.
2. You can easily scroll through the history.  You don't have to go back a page at a time... you just keep scrolling back through it.
3. The length of the history is open-ended.  Skype's chat windows will preserve all the messages that are received in the window (they are stored locally on your computer) so you can always go back and find messages. (You also can ignore the window for quite a long period of time and then go and scan through it when you finally have the time to do so.)
4. When you post, URLs are automagically turned into tinyurls.  The window on the Twitter home page used to do this, but now does not seem to do so.  Posting via Twitter4Skype does this.

Now, Twitter4Skype does have its issues.  Sometimes the server goes offline for a while or seems to need a kick to start sending you messages again, but it works great for me because I use Skype on a daily basis.

As a backup, I also have a Jabber IM window running that provides the similar functionality. (I just added "twitter@twitter.com" as a contact.)  Again, it's searchable, maintains a longer history and auto-shortens URLs.

That is how I am personally able to integrate Twitter into my daily workflow without it becoming a major time-suck.  When I am traveling, I generally use the mobile interface, m.twitter.com, on my Blackberry.  Very seldom do I find a need to actually use SMS, although I am set up to do so.  This works for me.  Obviously, it may or may not work for you.

Wrapping This Up

So there you have my list of how I have learned to use Twitter in 2007.  I think there is another topic to discuss at some point about how Twitter and the whole "microblogging" movement, including Jaiku, Pownce and even Facebook status messages, have changed the way in which we write online.

For the moment, though, I'll end this here.  I've gone way past 140 characters, 140 words... and probably past 140 lines!

What do you think?  Do you use Twitter in similar ways to the ways that I do?  Do you use it as a virtual water cooler?  How do you interact with Twitter?  Do you use the IM interface?  web? mobile?  Did you, too, miss the class on brevity when it was being given?

Technorati Tags: blogging, twitter

Twittering the *production* of live TV... the fascinating intersection of new and old media (Newmediajim and the Today show)

This morning on Twitter I was just struck by the fascinating intersection of new and old media. Jim Long, aka "newmediajim", is a cameraman for NBC based in Washington, DC, who twitters what he is doing and takes us along on often fascinating trips behind the curtains of production of NBC programs and footage. Being in DC, he is often shooting interviews/footage of various political figures and now and then he takes us along virtually as he travels to places like, oh, Iraq! (as part of the camera pool)

Anyway, this morning Jim was twittering about doing live shots of Tom Costello for the Today Show. As you can see in the screenshot I've included here (click on it for a larger version), Steve Lubetkin, meanwhile, was watching the Today show and at one point asked Jim a question about what he was seeing in realtime. Now, Jim didn't immediately reply (I mean, come on, the man does have to be doing his job!) and for all I know may not even follow Steve, but I thought it was an interesting sign of what could be happening through media such as Twitter. It was even more entertaining later to see Jim's tweet about his shadow being on Tom's coat.

Jim is telling us a story in small 140-character or less bites... and here we do have the opportunity to weave our own comments into that story.

Fascinating space we're in right now...

Technorati Tags: newmediajim, twitter

Twitter is Terrific for Thieves - The Dark Side of Status Updates

Consider these posts from a fictional Twitterer:

Man, this 60-inch plasma display looks totally awesome on our living room wall!
@<user>, what's even better is the incredible sound coming through our Bose home theater system - it so totally rocks!

And some time later, this partial exchange:

@<user2> - take <highway> to <city>. Get off at exit 9 for Main Street.
@<user2> - coming down Main St take the 2nd left onto North St. 3rd house on right. Blue with yellow shutters. Can't miss it.

And some more time later, this on a Friday:

Goodbye fellow twitterers! We are all going away to <city far away> for the long weekend. See you on Tuesday!

Could it get any better for a thief?

They have been given a juicy target... they have been given precise location (which often is also included in the user's profile- or enough is there that a thief could use other public information such as phone directories to get an address)... and they have been given a window of opportunity in which they know no one will be home. What more do they need? Well, maybe a tweet like this:

Darn. Alarm system is offline and company says they can't repair it until next week.

And I've seen people tweet things along those lines - and I've had to wonder what people are thinking.

Or perhaps they aren't really "thinking"... caught up in the fun that Twitter, Jaiku, Pownce and Facebook status updates can provide, it's easy to just post whatever random thoughts come into your brain. Without thinking of whether or not there are ramifications for the safety of themselves or their property.

Now the same can be said for blogging. I've certainly seen people blog all sorts of details about their activities that, in my opinion, they probably shouldn't. But "status updates" are so immediate... more like IM messages, except for this wee minor detail that they are potentially searchable via Google and easy to find publicly (depending upon the service).

How great is this for thieves? If I'm a smart thief all I need to do is do some searching for Twitterers (or users of another service) in a given area, aggregate their RSS feeds and just keep watching and reading for a while. Sooner or later I'll be able to identify some targets and then I really just need to wait for some window of opportunity to appear. If I'm a smarter thief I probably aggregate blog feeds and other information as well.

Of course, the reality is that if a thief is this smart, he or she is probably involved in much more potentially lucrative endeavors such as identity theft, phishing or other online criminal activities. Still, there is some potential for thieves and others to read your status updates and gain information that can help them know when they can target you or your property and what value might be there. I suppose I can summarize it as the pithy:

Think before you tweet!

Seriously, though, there are undoubtedly some "Status Safety Tips" or "Tips for Safe Twittering" that we can come up with. I'll offer some suggestions here:

• Do you really want the world to see all your updates? Twitter allows you to make it so that updates are only seen to those following you and that you have to request to receive updates. If I recall correctly, the default in Pownce is that a new post is only visible to your friends. Facebook keeps all of the status updates inside of its walled garden... unless, of course, you've done what I've done and put your Facebook status on your web page and/or had it go out to Twitter. You have the choice. Now the downside of keeping your updates private is that you lose out on the all the potential Googlejuice and other SEO/SEM goodness that comes with having your updates out there. You lose out on people finding you. On the other hand, it's probably a whole lot safer.
  
  It's a choice you have to make. My choice has been, for now anyway, to be very public with it all. I'm very deliberately using all these media as part of my own experimentation in online PR, personal branding, marketing, etc. But I've gone into it with my eyes wide open realizing that you need to be careful.
  
  
• Do you really want to post that your home is empty? I often use my twitter feed as an ongoing travelogue when I'm traveling to conferences, but readers may or may not have noticed that I typically don't post about travel when I'm NOT on business travel. I may post AFTER a trip "Just had a wonderful weekend in New Hampshire!, but I tend not to post about it before leaving. I do worry to a degree about my posts about travel in that it clearly states when I am not at home but my family is. However, I've made the personal decision that the benefit I gain through that communication about my travel far outweighs whatever small risk there might be to my family. Still, it is something to think about.
  
  
• Do you really want to post about that big expensive new toy you got? Sure, don't we all? That's half the fun of status updates. Posting about what we are passionate about and the cool things that intersect with our lives. Some of those may be expensive toys and we know that our geeky friends will love to hear about it. I do it. But the warning is to remember that if you are running with public status updates anyone can see them, including those who might not be friendly.

What other suggestions would you have?

At the end of the day, security is balancing act. Odds are that there probably isn't (yet) a ring of thieves in your neighborhood sitting there monitoring Twitter/Jaiku/Pownce, etc. Odds are that you can post about whatever you want very publicly and there will be no issue. The benefit you gain from engaging with your community... for developing those relationships... may far outweigh any safety risks.

But I do think it is something we need to think about. The amount of information we choose to share publicly is our choice. With every post, we make that choice whether we realize that we are doing so or not. I choose to be very public, but also do think about what I post. I know others who are more private with their information. It's a choice.

What is your choice?

Technorati Tags: facebook, jaiku, pownce, privacy, security, status, twitter

A truly *useful* example of using Twitter for local alerts...

I was somewhat amused when local TV station WCAX started using Twitter... I first learned of it when they started following my twitter feed. At first I didn't follow them in return (purely because I am getting a lot of Twitter followers and I like to check them out before just following them), but yesterday I decided to start following them purely to have another source of local news.

Today, I saw a great example of how Twitter could be used for local alerts:

Now, working in a home office, this doesn't really impact me, but I did call my wife who was out doing errands and let her know to avoid the highway. Tomorrow, I'll be heading up to FacebookCamp Montreal and this type of message could help me decide which of the exits I would use to get on the highway.

Nice to see... and now a good reason for me to continue following WCAX's feed.

There's also an irony here, in that I don't watch TV, so this Twitter feed is really my only exposure to WCAX and their brand. (Outside of obviously knowing that they are around.)

Technorati Tags: twitter

Follow preparations for PodCamp Boston via twitter.com/podcamp

In the "cool uses of Twitter" category, you can now follow the stream of conversation about this weekend's PodCamp Boston 2 via Twitter. Just go to http://twitter.com/podcamp to see the posts. If you are a Twitter user, follow the podcamp account and those posts will appear right in your normal Twitter feed.

The cool thing is that to contribute to the "podcamp" stream, you simply need to start following the 'podcamp' Twitter user and then type "pod" followed by a space and a message as a Twitter update. Your post will appear in the podcamp feed after a minute or two. This was apparently set up by kosso and uses the Twitter API. Neat to see this kind of "group" functionality...

Technorati Tags: podcampboston, twitter

The fractured conversations of Twitter, part one: You don't know if your conversation partner is following you!

Despite many views that Twitter is about conversations, it's an imperfect conversation tool at best.  Consider two recent exchanges, first via IM with a friend:

Them: dude, can you add me in Twitter?  <URL>
Me: Huh?
Them: Can you follow me in Twitter so we can communicate that way?
Me: Sure, but why given that we can already communicate this way?
Them: Because I've replied to several of your tweets but you don't see them because you don't follow me. I prefer to reply in the medium in which the question is asked.

(I added him.) And then an exchange with someone asking them why I should add them as a Facebook "friend" when I didn't think I knew them:

Yes good question . simple Answer . We twitter mostly ( I am <twittername> ) . Also as a subscriber to your blog ...<snip>

Well, no, WE don't "twitter" because I wasn't following the person.  (I am now.)  And in fact when I looked at their Twitter pages there were indeed several different "@danyork" posts that I have simply never seen.

This is the problem inherent with Twitter "conversations"... you don't easily know if the other person is seeing your tweets. 

There's the disparity between people you are following and people who are followers of your twitter stream.  When I look at my twitter page, I can see these stats:

So updates/tweets from 78 people show up in the Twitter stream that I view.  However, feeds for at least 115 people that read my Twitter feed are not being seen by me.  I say "at least" because I know of at least one person I follow who does not follow me.   There may be others.  For those 115+ people, if they put a "@danyork" at the beginning of their tweet... I won't see it!  And so their contribution to the conversation is ignored.

Now there's a separate discussion about why I haven't necessarily added all those followers to the list of those I follow (and I'll blog about that another time - suffice it to say that it's mostly an issue of just not having the time yet to check out all the Twitter invites I receive), but for the moment let's think about the impacts to the conversation.  The person that starts following my feed may feel compelled to answer a question I pose... or to send along a URL they think might be of interest.  Or to pose a question to me. So they do "@danyork" and type away.  I never see it and never reply.

Does the person think I am ignoring them?  Do they think I'm arrogant and don't view their posts as worthy of responding to?

And how would the Twitter user know?  Unless he/she kept track of all the Twitter notices they received about who was following them... or went to my twitter page and looked to see if they were listed there (I'm suddenly imaging some blog readers and twitterers doing exactly that!)... they have no way to know that I am or am not following them.

So yes, Twitter is about conversations... but many of those conversations may be fractured or disjointed - or disconnected.

Technorati tags: twitter

Twitter error messages - at least they brought back the cats!

I was amused today to have an error connecting to Twitter and see the error message shown on the right.  Now, it wasn't an LOLcat, but it was, indeed, a cat.

If the service isn't going to be available, I at least like a site that attempts to put some humor into a bad situation.

Technorati tags: twitter