Tag Archives: Twitter

It’s 2010 and we’re still talking about Twitter

Really? REALLY? You might asking yourself. Are we really still talking about Twitter? Yes, we are, and I promise this is worth your time. Like you the daily influx of hundreds of blog posts yammering about social media makes me want to hurl, so you gotta trust me when I say these two articles about Twitter are good, interesting reads.

First up with Anil Dash writing about his experience being on Twitter’s controversial Suggested Users List (which also features the likes of John McCain, Bill Cosby, and Lenny Kravitz). [confession, I looked all that up because aside from Anil, I had no idea who was on the list]

What interesting about this post is that since getting on the list Dash is averaging something like 3,000+ new followers a day, and yet the number of re-tweets, replies, and clicks he’s gotten is the same as before his inclusion on the list.

Twitter followers who come from the suggested user list don’t form real relationships or respond to the suggested users like “normal” followers do. If I’d have continued gaining followers at the rate I had been before being on the list, I’d have about 10% as many followers, but I suspect I’d have exactly the same number of replies and retweets. Before being on the list, a typical link that I tweeted would get between 250 and 500 clicks; After being on the list that hasn’t changed at all.

And for me, that’s a little off-putting. I feel very much like I’ve earned the readers who subscribe to this blog. When I meet someone at an event and they tell me they’ve read a post of mine, or that they regularly read my blog, it’s still a thrill, even after a decade, because there is some core sincerity to the exchange, a real basis to the relationship. With Twitter, it’s hard for me to tell whether someone’s made a decision to follow me because they find my ideas interesting or entertaining, or if they just were too lazy to change the defaults when they signed up.

And this dovetails nicely into David Carr’s article in The New York Times, “Why Twitter will Endure.”

“The history of the Internet suggests that there have been cool Web sites that go in and out of fashion and then there have been open standards that become plumbing,” said Steven Johnson, the author and technology observer who wrote a seminal piece about Twitter for Time last June. “Twitter is looking more and more like plumbing, and plumbing is eternal.”

Really? What could anyone possibly find useful in this cacophony of short-burst communication?

Well, that depends on whom you ask, but more importantly whom you follow. On Twitter, anyone may follow anyone, but there is very little expectation of reciprocity. By carefully curating the people you follow, Twitter becomes an always-on data stream from really bright people in their respective fields, whose tweets are often full of links to incredibly vital, timely information.

Though Carr’s premise, about the value of Twitter being in rigorously maintaining who you follow, on its surface seems diametrically opposed to what Dash is writing about, I think both men make excellent points about the impact Twitter has on how we interact with each other and the Internet.

Friday Links: 50 things killed by the Internet plus Star Trek cologne

• 50 things that are being killed by the Internet. Includes: polite discourse, photo albums, our memories, and solitaire among others.
• Probably the most amazing collection of Star Wars junk you’ll ever see.
• The Tracy Awards are the cream of the crap of advertising.
• Facebook’s Twitter-like tagging, useful or tiring?
• Hack2Work: Essential Tips for the design professional
• Star Trek Cologne, for the nerd who doesn’t shower nearly enough?
• Negative space illustrations
• Cheese or font? Go ahead, click it, it’s just a game.
• 5 grammar mistakes that make you look like a chimp.

We know where you are, but what are you doing?

Photo: Dustin Diaz

What are you doing? It’s the question Twitter has been asking users to answer (in 140 characters or less) for the past 3.5 years. Starting in the near future, Twitter is going to be including more than what you type.

Twitter announced Thursday that tweets will be carrying location meta data automatically generated by the user’s device, assuming that user has opted-in. Uh, what? If I’m on my GPS-enabled smartphone, my Twitter client will be able to attach the current GPS location to my tweet.

Ok, but wait. There’s a considerable population in the “Twitter is absolutely useless” party, so adding location data is the metaphorical screen door on the solar powered submarine, right? Well, maybe. There’s been a noticeable increase in location-aware services, from Google Latitude to Brightkite to Foursquare to Acrossair’s “Nearest Subway.” Additionally, there’s a dramatic increase in the number of GSM/WCDMA (GPS-enabled) phones coming into the market (PDF), and we all know how iPhone users like using their data plan.

So where’s any of this headed? That’s a great question, and one someone far more creative (you, maybe?) will hopefully answer. Here’s what Biz @ Twitter had to say:

It’s easy to imagine how this might be interesting at an event like a concert or even something more dramatic like an earthquake. There will likely be many use cases we haven’t even thought of yet which is part of what makes this so exciting.

Now before we get all bleeding edge and leverage the open door, let’s look at the bottom line (buzzword bingo!). Twitter is a microcosm. Best guesses put the active user base anywhere between 2-8 million, +/- 95%. It’s not Facebook with their 250 million active users, but if you’ve been keeping score at home, you know that Facebook considers Twitter a formidable opponent. Said another way, if Twitter is adding location aware services, I’d be willing to bet a pack of Ramen noodles that Facebook will be soon, too.

So now, independent of Twitter, let’s start thinking about the ways we can create a better user experience with this new piece of  context-rich information. Build a unique and dynamic experience based on where that user is at that moment. It’s not just on the web, it’s not just at your desk, it’s going mobile, but apparently it’s starting with Twitter.

What compelling ways do you think your clients and their customers could interact and drive value for both parties? Here’s a freebie, here’s 5 more from Mashable, and for good measure, some other cool ways Twitter is being integrated (sans location aware) into marketing, communications, and of course, politics.

If you’re the creative marketing type and would ever like to bang heads and see what we can both strategerize for your clients (eg, you think it, we’ll build it, we all high 5 afterward), contact me. Via Twitter.

cheers,
@malbiniak

Top 20 Minnesota Social Media Innovators

Over at Communications Conversations, Arik Hanson took nominees and came up with a list of the Top 20 Minnesota Social Media Innovators. It’s a great list filled with some of our favorites, who I was going to name but thought better of it.

Anyway, we would like to say and, really mean it not in some sort of schmoozy just lost an Oscar kind of way, it really was an honor that @the_nerdery was nominated.

Speaking of Twitter and all that good stuff, you should check out The Guardian’s story about being inside Twitter HQ.

A company update in 11 tweets

Twitter and social responsibility

There probably isn’t a single person who actively uses Twitter who hasn’t had the “so what’s the big deal about Twitter” anyway conversation. It’s one of those things that’s hard to explain, either you get it or you don’t.

I always ask locals (since I mostly have this conversation with people who live in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area) if they remember when the 35W bridge collapsed. It’s one of those things that Minnesotans instantly remember where they were when it happened, plus they remember the worry and fear in those hours after the collapse wondering where their loved ones were. Then I tell them how with one simple tweet, I let a whole lot of people know I was okay. At the same time I learned a lot of my friends were okay in the same manner.

Now history has given us a bigger, better, more important example of why Twitter is important and a big deal. Violent protests have broken out in Iran in the wake of their disputed election. And as Andrew Sullivan has so succinctly reported, the revolution is being live-tweeted.

It seems Twitter is the only way to get news out of Iran as the government tries to limit Internet access and communications out of the country and threatens foreign media correspondents with arrest.

What’s so great, and where the social responsibility comes in, is that Twitter and their network partners had scheduled a critical network upgrade yesterday but they postponed it because they realize what a vital tool Twitter is for Iranians and reporters right now.

And that’s just another reason to point to when someone asks “what’s the big deal about Twitter?”

Where is my mind/smartphone?

Minnov8’s Steve Borsch buried the lead nicely in his article on the forthcoming iPhone 3GS – let’s skip on down to the last four paragraphs of his story,  “Smartphones — computers in your pocket — extend your mind and your reach”:

“I’ve been in conversations with educators about technology and social media — and about the current paradigm of cramming kids’ brains with facts — and my asking why we need to teach rote facts about the countries that surround, say, the Baltic Sea when it can be instantly looked up? Are there ways to focus on how to search, ways to seek and verify authentic material, and move toward an educational model that would assume an always-on, always-connected student population?

In our working world, enlightened companies are realizing that providing a solid and good experience to employees with access to information and work processes (and email, of course) allows the employee to access and deal with a task, communication or even an idea when they have a moment or when inspiration strikes, rather than hope that all that can be stored up and dealt with when they’re in the office.

Tapping into the streams of consciousness of people one follows on Twitter, reading blog posts and staying abreast of news and other information mean that all of us are more aware of the meaningful inputs of others in whom we find value.

Then there is just the simple utility of having movie showtimes, a dictionary, time zones, airfare lookups, stock tickers, and even games. This means that smartphones extend our minds, so that we’re no longer tethered to a desk for computer and Internet use in the same way that the mobile phone for voice made us free from a phone line.”

Read Borsch’s entire Minnov8 article reposted on MinnPost. 

Do you worry about your Twitter follower count?

While I am loathe to write a post about Twitter, here I am doing it. Yesterday I was kind of captivated and disgusted by Ad Age’s post Are We a Bunch of Twitter Snobs?

Captivating because it linked to the Harvard Business study which found that Twittering men have 15% more followers than women. The study also found:

that an average man is almost twice more likely to follow another man than a woman. Similarly, an average woman is 25% more likely to follow a man than a woman. Finally, an average man is 40% more likely to be followed by another man than by a woman.

What most shocking about the study is they use the words men and women when maybe they should be using boys and girls, which brings me back to the Ad Age piece. The fact that someone whined in a public forum like Ad Age about how some Twitter users are snobby is so ridiculous I can’t help but laugh and burn with shame for that person.

Snobby!

It makes me wonder if actual real people (like you or me) really worry about follower counts and if we base our self-esteem on that. Or is follower count anxiety something that only plagues celebrities (Hollywood, Web, or otherwise), reporters, and, the scourge of the Internet, social media gurus?

Do you worry about it? Or, are you like me, amazed that anyone outside of your immediate family wants to listen to you go on and on about Frank Lloyd Wright Legos?

Friday Links: Three stories you should be paying attention to

We’ve had so much going at The Nerdery we haven’t posted any Friday Links. We’re still pretty busy, but there have been a few stories popping up that really deserve your attention:

• If you have not been following the fall-out from Tropicana’s new packaging, you’re missing out. The new packaging is being blamed for 20% drop in Tropicana sales. It’s a study in consumer behavior and brand loyalty.
• Today’s Future Tense, talks about how the Internet has “shattered” advertising, by giving consumers a new way to gather information on goods and services. It’s a thought-provoking listen and well worth a couple of your minutes.
• And finally, it appears as though Google is in talks to buy Twitter. Wowee! There’s never a dull moment, is there?

Tech Tips: Display TwitPic Images in Flex & AIR

Problem:
The TwitPic API does not currently support outgoing requests and the image source from amazon aws contains an AWS AccessKeyId, expiration time stamp, and signature. This would normally require a regular expression to rip the source JPG path out of the HTML. Ripping the source out of the HTML is a bit of a pain and is not a long term solution. It is possible to use the following shortened url to gain access to the full image path using the TwitPic image id.
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