Why do you tweet?

I saw a tweet from @Robin2go which had a hashtag, #psutlt. I looked up the hashtag, trying to find what she was talking about, and I found another tweet by @jeffswain talking about “Why do you tweet?” with the same hashtag. Jeff also has a blog, five-4-six,where he posted the same video. Here is my response.

Why do you tweet?

This is such a simple question but everyone finds it impossible to simply answer. It’s like asking why do you talk to people or why do you listen to people.

I tweet to and talk with and listen to people – like you Jeff – that I’ve never met but with whom I have something in common. I think of tweeting like a constant conversation taking place on the internet and twitter users can choose to join or listen. I think there is a little more transparency with twitter than with instant messages. So, I, like a lot of people, have more personal conversations on twitter.

I started my twitter account in October 2008. I didn’t really commit to tweeting until March 2009 at SXSW. It seemed like everyone there had an iPhone and was on twitter. I was actually blogging my notes from the conference and I found a nice API that would tweet my blog posts. So that why I started tweeting.

In October 2009, I went to HighEdWeb, and again everyone had an iPhone or a laptop, and it seemed like everyone was tweeting – constantly. I started reading the hashtags in tweets from the conference and putting a face with the presenters I was hearing. I realized then that they are people like me and twitter is another tool – like instant messengers – that we can use to have conversations. I also realized the difference from AIM is that twitter is a many-to-many conversation. The only limitation on how many people you can talk to is how many people follow you. Since HighEdWeb I’ve followed lots of people from the conference and we have shared several ideas about higher education.

High School Reunions Via Social Media

If it wasn’t for the Internet and the explosion of social media I probably would not know about my high school reunion. We started finding each other through email before the last reunion in 2000, but facebook, myspace and twitter make finding and communicating a lot easier and cheaper than some places (ClassMates.com). Although the other sites may have served a purpose in the past, social media sites are king today. They’re free and more and more people are using them for way more than class reunions.

Clearwater High School Class of 1990 (on Facebook)

The Shorty Awards

This is what the social media is for: an award show for people that are online writing about being online.

The second annual Shorty Awards nomination process has begun! In January 2010, the community is invited to nominate Twitter users for excellence over the past year. The awards recognize each content creators entire body of work, not just an individual tweet. Nominations are made by sending a tweet, whether its through this site or on Twitter. In February, the nominees will be narrowed down to five finalists in each category. Winners will be determined by a combination of popular vote and by the members of the new Real-Time Academy of Short Form Arts & Sciences. An awards ceremony, complete with 140-character acceptance speeches, will be held in March in New York City. Source: About the Process, shortyawards.com.

2009 A year in the life of Twitter

I think 2009 will go down as the year Twitter became a household name. I know I’ve used Twitter a lot this year, and I’ve written several blog posts about Twitter and the influence of social media. It will be connected with significant events and insignificant Internet chatter. People will say, “I remember reading a tweet about that,” or “I tweeted about that.” When asked about significant events of 2009 – Iran election, Michael Jackson’s death, “balloon boy” – I’ll bet Twitter will be mentioned in the conversation.

Many people have assumed that Twitter is just another social network, some kind of micro-blogging service, or both. It can be these things but primarily Twitter serves as a real-time information network powered by people around the world discovering what’s happening and sharing the news. The Iranian election was the most discussed issue on Twitter in the final year of a decade defined by advancements in information access.

In the new year, Twitter will begin supporting a billion search queries a day. We will be delivering several billion tweets per hour to users around the world. These are figures we did not anticipate when we founded the company in 2007. Source: Why we can never rest: a year in the life of Twitter | Times Online

In much the same way that instant messaging became a household term 12 years ago when AOL Instant Messenger arrived, Twitter, and a true social media network, will spread news (and propaganda) at the speed of light around the globe; perhaps even to the ISS.

One thing I’ve come to realize is that Twitter holds immense power. Just think about it for a minute. If your product was used by more than 1 billion people everyday to talk about anything from “I’m now online” to “I survived the plane crash into the Hudson.” The potential to spread news is endless. But, I still say that a “town crier” ranting on Twitter without corroborating information is dangerous. They can influence millions of people to take action especially if the rest of the world was ignorant of the truth and the ruse continues long enough for it to grow legs and become sustained. I look forward to the time when conspiracy theorists use Twitter to actually persuade us that something happened or didn’t happen.

You can “@ me” on Twitter in 2010.

Twitter in the news again and not in a good way

Is it just me or is it a slow news day? When the top trend on Twitter is about a dispelled rumor it’s time to take the day off. The top trend has been ‘RIP Kanye West’ for the past 24 hours. It was disputed more than 12 hours ago, but it has a life of it’s own now. Worst of all it (the Twitter trending topic) made national news.

Would a dead man have time to haunt the world by posting pictures of supermodel Gabriela Barros online? Rapper Kanye West, of course, is not dead, although “RIP Kanye West” is still the hottest-trending topic on Twitter (Pop & Hiss advises against clicking on it, unless you’re ready for a stream of baiting links to random sites).
Source: Amber Rose debunks ‘RIP Kanye West’ Twitter topic | Pop & Hiss | Los Angeles Times | October 21, 2009 | Los Angeles Times.

Actually, there is something significant about trending topics – not just RIP Kanye West – because they invoke reactions. Twitter users that continue the trend are either curious or opinionated. If a user clicks on a trending topic it receives more hits or has more weight in the trend. If a user comments (or retweets) on the topic it receives more weight. Both actions keep the momentum going – the snowball effect. More importantly than the whole world talking about you (publicity) the whole world is making its own news; trivial as it may be.

The Twitter effect is included in my soon-to-be-released review of the book, Socialnomics: How social media transforms our lives and the way we do business.)

Balloon lands in Colorado, boy not inside

By Keith Coffman

DENVER (Reuters) – A 6-year-old boy, [Falcon Heene,] said to have climbed into a homemade helium balloon that took off and flew across Colorado on Thursday, was not inside when the contraption landed and authorities launched a search for him.

Source: Reuters.

The response on twitter was even faster. The hastag #balloonboy shot to top trend in a matter of hours. A website was created, and of course there was a t-shirt, “Go Falcon, Go.”

The back story is that the 6-year old was a member of the family that was on the “Wife Swap” show. You can see Falcon in this youtube video.

Twitter Backchannel, Sarah Lacy, Tony Hsieh

Sarah Lacy blows-up after SXSW 2008 interview.

I couldn’t resist posting this little piece of twitter meltdown irony. At SXSW 2008, Sarah Lacy, interviewed Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, a keynote speaker. The interview went so badly that the twitter backchannel took over the show and those in attendance were making scathing comments. Eventually, Sarah lost control of the interview and was relegated to moderator of questions from the crowd. When it was all over Sarah had this tweet of her own.

Tony Hsieh visual thought map at SXSW 2009

Fast forward one year, during SXSW 2009, Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh gave a keynote (by himself) with this visual thinking aid. Four months later, July 2009, he sold Zappos for $850 Million. Guess who reported the sale on techcrunch.com? That’s right, Sarah Lacy. Her headline was “Amazon Buys Zappos; The Price is $928m., not $847m.” Now that’s ironic.

Twitter’s influence on writing style

I was googling (yes it’s a word now) this topic and found very few items. I know it’s real so I decided to write something about it.

Twitter’s influence on communication, specifically writing, is already huge and it will only continue to change the way we communicate. In fairness the influence should not be limited to twitter. Anywhere we communicate in short, choppy bits, changes the way we communicate. The whole social media paradigm is based on terse, quick-to-publish bits of information. As a result we write in “leetspeak“, write with shorter words, use contractions, use micro-URL services (e.g. bit.ly), and use “hash tags”.

In addition to writing on twitter.com or the myriad of third-party plug-ins, we craft blogs or other online writing to fit the 140-character space of twitter. News headlines have always been terse – even cryptic – but now the lead paragraph is getting twitterized. And don’t get me started on twitterspeak: all the cute phrases like “tweeple” that resulted from this cultural phenomenon.

Politics in twitter

I was checking the followers list on twitter and look who’s following me now, @GovPerry2010. It seems Governor Rick Perry – or his campaign manager – started a new twitter account for the 2010 elections. I started following @GovernorPerry and @TeamKay a few weeks ago just to keep tabs on Rick and Kay. So, apparently, twitter is the new battle ground for politics. Can they get votes from twitterers? Will we ever use twitter polls to cast our votes? Probably not – not after the dangling chad incident and alleged Texas voting machine tampering*.

* Texas used Austin-based vendor Hart InterCivic model eSlate. A report commissioned by the State of Ohio in 2007 stated that Hart machines were vulnerable to attack (tampering).

When twitter doesn’t tweet

The biggest source of news/rumor – twitter – went TU this morning because it is a website like any other, and it is vulnerable to DOS attack like any other. What’s funny, is everyone scrambled to find news of why twitter was dead. Rather than be content that it’s quiet for a while we want news of why news isn’t getting to us.

A few hours after the attack CNET wrote an article about what happened. They referenced twitter’s own status blog which doesn’t detail much.

I told you so, Twitter is bigger than you think

See what I mean, Twitter is the new news network. But notice, everyone went to the web to confirm. We still don’t believe what one person (or 100,000 people) says. We want confirmation. Michael Jackson’s death crashing Google is an event few (if any) have ever done. Source: Michael Jackson Invented Pop, Beat the Rap, Crashed Google | Fast Company

Ashton Kutcher challenges CNN to Twitter popularity contest

From CNN.com | By John D. Sutter | April 17, 2009
Ashton Kutcher has challenged CNN to a popularity contest on the social media site Twitter.

“The celebrity and the news network are racing to get 1 million followers on the micro-blogging site, where users post 140-character messages. Kutcher challenged CNN to the race with a Web video posted on Tuesday. If he wins, Kutcher says he will ‘ding-dong ditch’ CNN founder Ted Turner’s house.

‘I found it astonishing that one person can actually have as big of a voice online as what an entire media company can on Twitter,’ Kutcher says in a video, which was shot from inside a car and was posted on Qik.com.”

At this time (2:20 PM CDT) Ashton is loosing.

Ashton outmaneuvers CNN to 1 million on Twitter

From CNET | April 17, 2009
Well I say congrats to Ashton, but now what? Now that you’ve shown how easy it is to empower web users to “follow” you, what will to tell them? What will you do with your power?

Are Oprah, Ashton Kutcher taking the geek out of Twitter?

For those that where under the proverbial rock:

Twitter became a scene for a junior high school-style popularity competition this week. Kutcher, host of MTV’s Punk’d television show, was in a head-to-head battle for followers with media giant CNN.

I like this quote:

‘The attention that the competition for followers is getting is not a great thing,’ said Ezra Gottheil, an analyst at Technology Business Research Inc. ‘Anyone thinking of Twitter as something useful in business or in journalism is going to be kind of put off by this.’

And this is sooo true:

“It seems you can’t get through a typical newscast anymore without some mention of Twitter,” said Andrew Lipsman, a comScore analyst, in a blog post this week. “It just goes to show you how much social media, and specifically a site like Twitter, has become woven into the fabric of our daily media lives.”

All-in-all I don’t think celebs are de-geeking twitter. I think if twitter can stay like it is – people saying what they want in 140-characters – that twitter will stay cool – big – but cool and it won’t go the way of the myspace or facebook or Dodo bird.

Twitter Haters

The conversational Web site, which lets users post 140-character microblogs, saw a 1,374 percent jump in unique visitors between February 2008 and February this year, up to 7 million from only 475,000, according to Nielsen NetView.
By comparison, Facebook grew 228 percent, to 65.7 million users, during the same period.
Source: Is Twitter’s breakneck growth causing a backlash? | John D. Sutter| CNN

Some users say Twitter has outgrown its core audience and is irrelevant to the technophiles who made it popular in the first place. Others are annoyed by the flood of spammers and profiteers who now use the site’s popularity to make a buck.

It is inevitable that a Web site seeing Twitter-style growth would face some glitches and a backlash from early adopters, said Laura Fitton, a consultant and co-author of the book “Twitter for Dummies.”

“There’s going to be all kinds of people using it all kinds of different ways,” she said. “The purists can go pound rocks.”

Major news such as the Mumbai terrorist attacks and the Hudson River plane landing has broken over Twitter, and that’s added to the site’s popularity, she said.

Twitter is the new facebook. I don’t see what all the uproar is about, growth of popular services/products is inevitable: look at Google, Yahoo, Yahoo Messenger, AOL, AOL Instant Messenger, Netscape, Netscape Messenger. Things come and things go. If the twitter elite (l33t) thought they could keep this little product to themselves forever then they should pull their heads out of the sand and look around. The social media world is changing – hell it’s all about change.