Why do YOU use Twitter?

After being on summer vacation for nearly 3 months (the lucky bastard), Spiral Scratch has returned to being an active blog. While it was sunning itself in the Bahamas, I decided to run another poll about Twitter. The poll initially arose from a disagreement between myself and Chris Abraham about whether there is a "right" use for Twitter.

The TwtPoll asked the question very simply: "I use Twitter for...."

The poll ran, roughly (because TwtPoll doesn't provide details) for about 10 days and closed on 9/4/09. 290 people participated and the poll info & link was ReTweeted 93 times (probably 10 times by me!) for which I am very, very grateful!

Multiple answers were possible because, frankly, I think most people use Twitter for a variety of purposes. And that assumption was born out by the results.

Of the 290 people who answered the poll, the percentage listed indicates the % of respondents who said they use Twitter for that particular activity:

• 76% To learn new information/knowledge
• 69% To meet new people I share common interests with
• 47% To check during the day for news updates
• 45% To share my expertise with others
• 43% As a form of expression
• 42% To remain connected to old & new friends or colleagues
• 36% To kill time when I'm bored
• 35% To generate business connections
• 31% To get people interested in reading my blog
• 29% To meet people or businesses in my local area
• 24% As a personal diary of moments in my life (meetings or places)
• 24% To promote my company (business use, not personal)
• 16% To connect with worthwhile nonprofits, cultural institutions or charities
• 14% Primarily to read other peoples' messages (I lurk a lot)
• 13% Others (listed below)
• 12% To keep track of celebrities and or VIPs in my field

Keeping in mind that this is not a scientific or random survey, one element that strikes me is the use of Twitter as a form of expression. I threw that option in because I thought some writers/artists might use the format of Twitter & its 140 character limitation as a creative outlet but I didn't expect it to rank so high.

It also seems like Twitter, at this stage, might be more a vehicle to meet NEW people than to stay in touch with old friends/colleagues although many people use it for both purposes. Despite what Twitter might say, it IS being used as a social network, both personally & professionally.

I also didn't anticipate that Twitter would be used to connect at a local level with new people & businesses since it is really a global network. I'd like to explore the use of Twitter as a way to connect with "neighbors" more at some point

My polling expectations were misplaced though in that I thought the business uses of Twitter would be the dominant use but that might be because of all of the "Twitter for Business" webinars I attend and because I follow a lot of consultants & entrepreneurs who use Twitter to raise their professional profile.

I also thought that the entertainment value from following famous singers or athletes would rank much higher but it was the lowest polling factor, even below the catchall "Other".

I came up with 15 possible uses for Twitter off the top of my head when I wrote up this poll. But, thankfully, many of you shared other ways you use it which had not occurred to me. "Other" reasons (both serious & humorous) that people shared included:

• To stay involved with the latest tech advancements
• To express anonymous frustrations and elations
• To see how early people around the world wake up
• To build community and serendipity
• To be social
• To have 'remote' shared experiences (e.g. viewing political debates, TV shows, sports events, etc.)
• To meet people or businesses in the areas I'm going to travel to
• To absorb company bandwidth
• To keep my finger on the Internet's pulse
• To participate in political discussions
• To stay connected with family
• I hope to do the same for those who follow me, as they either entertain or inform me
• [It's] both personal and professional
• To help others with inspiring tweets
• To waste time
• Develop links to educational sites for preservice teachers
• Procrastination
• To tie my shoes
• Because it's fun!
• To share/receive answers to questions
• To get interesting links to pages/posts
• To keep in touch with my customers
• I retweet quite a bit as show of support & to keep interesting info from being buried
• To publish my fiction writing
• I follow people who create value for me
• I work at home. It's my connection to the outside world

I greatly appreciate everyone who participated in this poll or who ReTweeted the link. I've learned a lot through reading over your responses & I thank you for taking the time.

Liz

Thoughts on #140Conference

I attended Tuesday's sessions of the #140Conference in NYC and had wanted to live-Tweet the event but my 2 hour battery life + iffy wi-fi connection led me to only Tweet for some morning sessions. So here, in no particular order, are some random opinion & thoughts on the day, divided into Pros & Cons.

Pros

• It was really great to have so many very visible Twitterers presenting, some people I had been following for over a year (like @NewMediaJim) along with relative newcomers (like @Wyclef). It was great to put people's presence, face & Tweets together.


• Because the speaking times were so short (10-20 minutes), when certain panels dragged or you were wondering why someone had been invited to talk, things quickly moved on to a new topic in a matter of minutes. There was very little down time!


• An extremely varied group of speakers, representing a wide range of points of view, much more so than most tech/media conferences which are primarily focused on business/enterprise.


• I heard Monday was very crowded but Tuesday had a very manageable number of people, even for a crowd-adverse person like myself.


• There was a long line for food but what was provided was absolutely delicious. When you are sitting in one place for a very long day (8 am-6 pm), mostly listening, the quality of the food should not be scrimped on or you get a very grouchy group of people!


• It was great to see some third party Twitter clients as vendors and they were such a cordial & enthusiastic group of people. The Twitter apps panel was one of the better discussions and it's clear that these folk are providing valuable services sometimes without a lot of help from Twitter HQ. I hope their voices & concerns can be heard more often.


• Because I was sick as a dog & unable to attend Monday's sessions, I was very excited to find out that the speakers & panels were being filmed and will be available for viewing online by the end of the week. Especially because the panels came into such small, bite-sized pieces, this means that the thoughts & ideas expressed will carry far beyond the walls of New World Stages & have a larger impact as people can view them online who'd never be able to attend the days' events.

Cons

• For a conference ABOUT Twitter, it played a background role during the conference. I realize this wasn't really a tech event (more like a media/communications one) but there should have been some way to integrate the use of Twitter into the conference itself whether that was a projected backchannel or conference updates to attendees being Tweeted. This might have not been done because of the wi-fi situation but the technology itself should not just be used for publicity but integrated into the conference days themselves (maybe this was done on Monday?). This would have helped with the next point.


• This conference was not at all interactive. Because the schedule was so full (sometimes 3 speakers/panels per hour), there was little time for questions. People who are power Twitter users are used to participating and expressing themselves and the frustration of sitting and listening for hours at a time led to some people shouting out comments or spending time in the lobby/foyer rather than the main room so they could talk & exchange thoughts with others. Panels ran long which cut down on break/lunch time, further reducing time to interact. Perhaps there should have been fewer panels/speakers and half of their time allotted to conversation with participants many of whom had traveled a great distance to be there and engage with others.


• Because of the lack of adequate time for participation, when a panel like the last one on Wednesday came around ("A look at twitter services, apps and what's next") where the moderator asked the audience what they wanted to see next in Twitter, there must have been 20 hands that shot up. It was like watching people on a game show waiting to hit the buzzer....finally, someone was asking for their opinion. And they had a lot of good ideas!


• Spotty wi-fi and few outlets to plug in or recharge. This is not unusual, it's pretty much a given in most locations but hopefully this will improve as conference facilities upgrade.

Question

Full disclosure: I submitted a presentation proposal on how Twitter users formed their own micro-communities but was told it didn't fit into the overall, original theme of the conference: "the effects of twitter on Celebrity, The Media and Advertising." That's fine, I understood, I am unabashedly noncommercial and while I have a degree in Economics, my research focus isn't on business applications.

So color me puzzled when speakers got up to talk about finding love on Twitter, Twitter & Chaos Theory, Twitter & Science, or Diplomacy and Fashion. Say what?? There's room to talk about Fashion Week & Twitter but no room for Sociology? I understand that the organizers were looking for big names but there should have been someone speaking on the social impact of technology, how changing technology influences the way people relate to each other & form networks of community online.

Where was the sociology of social media? An element of the very core of Twitter was missing, some explanation of why people are attracted to social media, why it is so powerful and why it is so effective in connecting people who live in different social worlds.

Thank You!

Many thanks to @Boris & @Zee from @TheNextWeb & @JeffPulver for awarding me a ticket that allowed me to attend this conference. I greatly appreciate the opportunity to attend and am in their debt!

High Flying Twitterers

I was going to "unveil" this tomorrow but let's give this experiment a practice run today. Trying to find new ways to use numbers, I thought I might find out which accounts were growing the fastest by follower numbers. You could call this Twitter Momentum or Twitter Velocity.

Here is highest growth rate among the most popular Twitter users:

Fastest growing Twitter accounts (4/19/09-4/26/09):

1. Gayle King (@KingGayle) 501%
2. Steve Agree (@SteveAgee) 490% SU
3. Lakers (@Lakers) 457% SU
4. Lenny Kravitz (@LennyKravitz) 339% SU
5. Joe Trippi (@JoeTrippi) 332% SU
6. Kevin Spacey (@KevinSpacey) 280% SU
7. Kimberly Cole (@KimberlyCole1) 219% SU
8. Joy Behar (@JoyVBehar) 218%
9. Larry King (@KingsThings) 174% SU
10. Sarah Silverman (@SarahKSilverman) 162%
11. Jerry Brown (@JerryBrown2010) 150% SU
12. Oprah Winfrey (@Oprah) 142% SU
13. Ashley Tisdale (@AshleyTisdale) 139% SU
14. Joe Sebok (@JoeSebok) 124% SU
15. Mariah Carey (@MariahCarey) 124% SU
16. Dick Costolo (@DickC) 108% SU
17. People Magazine (@PeopleMag) 101% SU
18. Matisyahu (@Matisyahu) 91% SU
19. EW Pop Watch (@EWPopWatch) 90% SU
20. John Legend (@JohnLegend) 82% SU

SU=Twitter's Suggested Users

To find a manageable amount of accounts with accurate figures, I limited myself to the Top 500 Twitterers in terms of follower numbers (over 30K followers) and used a combination of Twitter, TwitterCounter, TwitterHolic & WeFollow to both locate these names and trace follower numbers. I'm actually collecting records on the Top 1000 Twitterers (over 19K Followers) to have background data for the user group I'm focusing on.

Ideally, there would be one searchable database that contained distinct accounts for each follower over time but that only exists at Twitter HQ and, as I was told when I asked, @Twitter doesn't see any benefit to the user to share this information with researchers.

As you can see, because of the user group I was drawing from, this list mainly includes celebrities with a few exceptions. I'm going to wait until I post last week's list tomorrow to draw some initial conclusions except I'll say it's a shame other NBA teams didn't follow the @Lakers lead and galvanize their fans using Twitter...that account just exploded in terms of growth with the playoff series.

And for those who say I must have too much time on my hands and I'm not a statistics person, you're both right. But since I am currently unemployed, why not use part of my free time to experiment with the limited metrics that are available to see what they can reveal about the way people grow & develop their social networks over time?

Why I Block Followers

Hubspot is an Internet Marketing company that provides website analysis and other kinds of useful marketing data to internet businesses. I know it primarily for the webinars they hold plus their Twitter Grader which is Hubspot's own system of ranking people's authority and reach on the Twitter social network.

This past week, they had an interesting entry on their blog, The Best Way to Build a Twitter Account? Step by Step. The graphs & information, collected through people submitting their usernames to Twitter Grader, was fascinating to me as a sociologist. But I had problems with the underlying assumption which is bigger is always better and that people on Twitter want their social networks to grow as big as possible. It's an interesting blog post (and the comments are interesting, too) and here is my slightly rewritten response:

This is very interesting data but your argument assumes that most people want to have lots of followers which is not always the case.

I know a Twitterer who went from a small network of followers to over 1000 and she discovered that some earlier followers (considered "friends") unfollowed her once her account took off...a fact that no one ever mentions but which happens more often than you'd think.

Many people use Twitter to form their personal online social network and it is easier to maintain a close network of 150 or 200 people than 2,000 much less 20,000. Then it just becomes a collection of strangers.

I think as Twitter gets more and more popular, there will be those business people in the numbers race but the bulk of regular users might even downsize their accounts to have a smaller network of closer associates. A similar phenomena is happening on Facebook where I know some people who are reducing their number of "friends" to only people they actually encounter in the lives (family and new & old friends).

In the past month, I've done something I never thought I'd do...block followers who I don't want following me. I'd rather have a lower follower number than have some MLMs following my account. And I know I m not the only one who has started blocking not only spammers but people who are only trying to game the system to boost their social profile.

I never thought I'd be a blocking type of person but there are some people I'd just rather not have in my life. I realize that blocking only prevents them from following me or sending me messages, they can still read my Tweets although I don't think reading content is very important to them. But until Twitter creates a Do Not Follow list where users can opt-out of being followed by overly zealous entrepreneurs, salesmen, and marketers, blocking will have to do.

Quality or quantity? There is no contest in my mind which is more important in social networking nor the difficulty of having them both.

So, my questions for those on Twitter is has your account gotten too big? Could it reach a number that would be too high for you? What are disadvantages of having a large account? Do you ever block annoying followers or just ones you don't want in your life?

I'm also interested in whether readers would like more posts on Twitter. There are plenty of blog entries that have been written about Twitter but if people are interesting in discussing the network as it evolves, I think this blog could make the transition. Let me know!

Some Twitter Advice for Newbies, Pt. 3

So, to recap, I posted some Tweets on Sunday morning on Twitter use and was encouraged to compile them in a blog entry. Being an academic, of course, it got expanded into three blog posts. 

The first was Finding people to follow: It's who you follow, not who follows you; the second was How do I get followed? Share, care and be yourself. This last post will just wrap up with some extra thoughts.

Dos & Don'ts: Some tips on best usage of Twitter

• Do carefully select who you want to converse with.
  

Unless you are a business who is interested in contacting as many people as possible, carefully choose the people you want to follow. Although there is no right and wrong way to use Twitter, it's greatest use for an individual is to create lasting personal or professional relationships. 

To do that, you can't just Tweet, you need to read other people's Tweets as well. So, pick people who you find interesting! Think of it this way, if you were on Lost and you could pick 100, 500, or 1,000 other people to populate the island, who would they be? 

• Don't Auto-Follow for the wrong reasons
  

Auto-Following is a fine philosophy

1. if you are just starting out (say, 100 followers or less) and are trying to build your account so you have some people to talk to, or 
   
2. if you have a huge account (20,000+ followers) and do not have the time to individually check out your new followers. If your account is this big, you don't have time to read the Tweets in your Tweetstream anyway and you are probably just reading @Replies and Direct Messages sent specifically to you.
   

Mutual, reciprocal relationships are what social networking is all about. But automatically following everyone who follows you is like throwing open your front door and saying, "Anyone who is out on the street at this moment is welcome to come in!" 

You'll get some neighbors popping by but you are also likely to get the lady who picks up aluminum cans for recycling and the guy who wants you to change your account to Verizon. You can also find that person with Chinese restaurant menus coming into your home along with a guy trying to get you to refinance your house.

Being discriminating isn't elitist, your time and attention is limited and you should only follow people who you'd invite in to your Open House: people who you find interesting or entertaining, who you'd like to get to know better or who live in your neighborhood (for me, New Jersey), who are old friends or new friends, or with whom you share common interests (kids, work, hobbies).

• Do respond to people's messages
  

You should both respond to direct replies and direct messages as well as go out and comment on other people's Tweets. Otherwise, it's like you're at your Open House, standing in a corner and talking to yourself. This is also known as "broadcasting" which means you are just sending out messages about yourself ("I'm eating dinner", "I'm watching 'Heroes'", "I hate my job") as if you were a TV or radio broadcast. It's also been called being a bulletin board because you are only posting messages. You can use Twitter as a personal diary but why not just use a blog for that?

Social networks are about making connections which means that unless you are some mega celebrity, ignoring people's messages to you is rude. It's like someone putting out their hand to shake yours and you're holding your hand back at your side. Do it repeatedly and you'll probably be unfollowed.

• Don't pester famous people
  

It can be tempting to send messages to prominent people on Twitter. It would be flattering to get a response and be acknowledged and sometimes a mention by a celebrity can result in lots of new people checking out your account. But these people can get hundreds of Tweets an hour...there's a chance you might get a reply but if you send a lot of messages repeatedly to celebrity Twitterers the people who follow your account might view you as a little desperate for attention.

• Do find the best day and time to Tweet
  

Twitter is a 24/7 social network but the people who are online vary depending on how much time they have to Tweet, their life schedules, and where they live. The people you'll encounter on Twitter at 11 pm on a Friday night (U.S. East Coast time) will be different than the group of people sending messages at 8:30 am on Saturday morning. People also Tweet differently if they are posting from their job than after hours when they are at home in bed with their laptop or on a Blackberry at a restaurant. 

If you are primarily interested in business-oriented Tweets, you will most likely find themposted  during standard working hours. If you are trying to get to know the personal side of some high profile Twitterer, read what they're up to on the weekend.

You can also connect with people in different countries if you Tweet during the times when they are most likely to be active. Since I'm often up very early in the morning, I converse with a lot of Australians because it's evening there. If I only Tweeted in the afternoon, I'd miss them completely. Be aware of the fact that Twitter is a global social network and that different groups of people Tweet on different days and different times of the day/night.

• Don't Tweet drunk
  

This was a big issue in Summer 2008 but can also happen these days with people who Tweet from conferences, birthday parties, TweetUps, etc. Drunk Tweeting is very entertaining to those people who read your Tweets but you'll probably be embarassed by it the day after and it can haunt you. Even if you go and delete the Tweets, they are still available for people to see via Search.Twitter. 

If you want to announce to those following you that you are at a great party/bar/TweetUp and these cool people are there, either Tweet early in the evening (before you've had too much to drink) or just talk about it the day after. And while you're at it, you might be careful about camera phone photos that get posted via TwitPic. Once a photo of you is posted on the web, you have no control over where else it gets posted.

• Do give Twitter a rest
  

I am an admitted Twitter addict and it is easy to get sucked into constant connectivity. But I've discovered that most people do not appreciate a blizzard of Tweets coming at them, especially if they receive messages on their cell phones. I've seen people who send out 2 Tweets a minute and it easily overwhelms your Tweetstream. I've also noticed, surprisingly, that more people will follow me after I stopped Tweeting for a few hours. I don't quite understand this phenomenon but for your family's sake, your job productivity, your sanity and that of your followers, moderate your usage of Twitter.

• Don't overuse exclamation marks, smileys or obscenities
  

By overuse, I am talking multiple use in a single Tweet. Messages like, "Sunshine! I am SOOOO happy!!!!!!!!!" give the appearance that you are about 14 years old or on drugs. Even if you are an accomplished 50 year old publicist, over-the-top positivity ("giggle! giggle!") will result in people not taking you seriously. You don't sound like a professional, you sound like you're at a slumber party. Things that are cute for teenagers to say stop being cute after you've graduated from high school.

It's fine to show emotions, just remember that you are not sending out IMs to your BFF, you are sending out messages that are publicly accessible to anyone with a computer. The same could be share with swearing. An occasional "Shit! I just got a parking ticket!" is understandable. But Twitter's terms of service allow anyone who is 13 years old and older to have an account. It might not be a great idea for them and for any future employer who'll look at your account if it's just a long stream of "F-you!"s.

• Do explore all of the Twitter clients, applications and tools available to you
  

Even before Twitter became so popular this year, there were hundreds of different clients available to receive and post Tweets, applications that ranked Twitterers or provided you with trending topics, let you manage your following lists, or let you "Tweet Chat" and see a real-time flow of Tweets on a topic so you didn't need to refresh your screen. A lot of people swear by Tweetdeck and Twhirl but still about a quarter of people use the standard web interface at Twitter.com. 

I'm not going to list recommendations here but I encourage you to try out both old and new Twitter applications that inventive programmers are coming up with. You'll probably find a few that greatly enhance your experience and help you manage the large amounts of Tweets that will soon be flowing in your direction. It is all too easy to find Twitter overwhelming and creative people have come up with clever and FREE ways to deal with that large amount of information sent to you.

• Don't use an Auto-Follow bot or advertising on your Tweets
  

I don't know what else to say about this than if I see a message about Tweetergetter.com or Magpie in your Tweetstream, I will never follow you. It says to me that you are either trying to make money off of your Tweets (and I don't want to be a "customer") or you are trying to rapidly build up your follower list and you are basically following anyone with a pulse. The fact that you are following me is not because you've chosen to but because the auto-bot found my name on some following list. It just have easily been my cat's Twitter account.

If all I am is Follower #6285, I'm not interested in talking with you and if people take the time to look at your Tweets, many will come to the same conclusion.

I could come up with twice this many other pieces of advice but this Tweet is already three times longer than a standard blog entry. Please let me know if you found this information useful. Thans for taking the time to read it!

Some Twitter Advice for Newbies, Pt. 2

Yesterday, I wrote up a blog entry with some advice to new Twitterers that focused on how you might choose people to follow. Today, I'm going to say a few words on being followed.

How do I get followed? Share, care and be yourself
First, let's distinguish between types of users. There are those who will Auto-Follow, that is, have their account set to follow everyone who follows them. I use to think this was a good idea as it worked to create mutual, reciprocal relationships. But now Auto-Following is a conscious strategy designed to build up ones follower numbers rapidly. Tomorrow, I'll tell you why this might not be a good idea for you.

There are 3 types of people who won't automatically follow you back:

1. Users who have chosen to seek out, on their own, individuals to follow regardless of who is following them;
2. Users who will check out new followers and evaluate them on a individual basis;
3. Users who do a combination of #1 and #2.

You can't do much about first group of Twitterers. They are very selective about who they follow & frequently like to maintain a manageable number of followers (say, 500 or less). They may decide, for whatever reason, to follow you but, honestly, they probably won't! You just have to accept that. Repeatedly following and unfollowing them to get their attention will just annoy them.

The second & third types of Twitterers frequently will visit your profile page & make their decision on whether to follow you based on what they see & read. Here are some tips to help you get a favorable response:

Show Yourself!
Have a nice photo of yourself as a profile picture instead of the generic brown avatar. A few months ago, I did an informal Twitter poll asking people if an attractive photo induced them to follow someone. The response was no, attractiveness wasn't important but realness was. A candid or editorial/artistic photo reveals more of your personality than a professionally posed picture which looks like it was taken in a photo studio.

If you can't find a decent photo of yourself, try coming up with an interesting avatar, like a cartoon or Manga version of yourself. Or a baby photo. Or a picture of your dog. Anything that expresses your personality. People want to know they are talking with a person and it's nice if they can connect your words with a face. You don't have to be beautiful, honestly.

Another alternative is to have a logo but this implies you're Tweeting for your company, not as an individual. Unless you have a company that generates amazing customer loyalty (like Starbucks or Whole Foods), most people would rather follow a person than your marketing company.

Who Are You?
Now that you have shared yourself in a photo, tell the world a little bit about yourself. You have 160 characters so you can't say a lot. You can choose how personal you want your bio to be. Some people include their occupation or employer, others list foods they love, how many children they have or a political philosophy. It's your choice. But it will also help other people see you as a real and, most likely, interesting person they'd like to get to know.

Are You My Neighbor Or Do You Live Overseas?
Fill out your bio completely which means providing a location. Some people choose to name their home towns but unless you live in a large town like New York City or London or have a common last name, I wouldn't recommend this. It's safe to name your state and country but please do not use your GPS coordinates because they are meaningless to most people.

Why should you locate yourself? Three reasons. First, some Twitter services like Twitterholic or Twitter Grader group users together based on city or state. If you want to see how you "match up" against other users from your state, you'll want to have your location noted in your bio.

Secondly, some services like TwitterLocal can tell you about other Twitterers who live close by you say, within 5 miles. Personally, I haven't made any good connections through this service but it's been fun to see who else from my small town is Tweeting.

Finally, some people could choose to follow you based on your location. For example, I live in New Jersey, spend a lot of time in New York City and have family in Portland so I like to follow people from these locations even if we have little in common. For example, from the Portland people, I know about events that could impact my family and also about people who live there than I might be able to meet up with during the times of the year that I visit my family.

I also tend to follow people who live outside the U.S. if they Twitter in English because I want to learn about what is going on in Australia or Japan or India or Brazil. Twitter can be a small window into a much larger world.

Demonstrate Your Creativity
Avoid the dozen stock backgrounds that Twitter offers and choose one that reflects your personality and tastes. It could be a photo you've taken or one you've found on the web. It doesn't have to be pretty but avoiding having harsh images like the Twitterer I know who uses a photo of an injured child after a bomb blast. Be intriguing, not horrifying.

If you are really creative, design your own background with Photoshop or other graphic software. Or you could do what I did and rely on the talent and inspiration of people more talented than I. I have a custom background designed for me by TwitterImage.com. Designer @HughBriss worked with me to come up with a unique Twitter background that distinguishes my profile page from others. Although many designers will charge you a fee there are other sources of free Twitter backgrounds on the Internet if you search for them.

Link Me, Baby
The final element of your profile page which might induce people to follow you is the link you're able to provide on your bio. It should direct people to your website, a public Facebook page, your blog or maybe a LinkedIn profile. Providing a link to a site where people can find out more about you is important to some people. I really underestimated this in the past until someone told me that they checked out my blog and decided to follow me based on this blog. People who are looking for interesting conversation partners will go to the trouble of trying to find out who you are. Provide them with an easy way to do this.

Content, Content, Content
"Old-school" Twitterers (non-AutoFollowers) will follow you because your content is useful, interesting or you seem like a person they'd like to know more about. They are not following you so that you will follow them back and they can up their follower numbers. They follow you because in your profile page and in your recent Tweets, you've shown yourself to be a knowledgeable or entertaining person. Let these qualities be evident in your Tweets. As @joannejacobs says, "I keep saying twitter is about content, where Facebook is about friends." Personally, I think Twitter is about both.

However, It's Not All About You
My last point is that after you've filled out your bio, have an eye-catching background and profile photo, and Tweet clever or useful information, do not wait for people to discover how wonderful you are. This is like standing on the sidewalk waiting for people to slow down and talk to you. A person might eventually do that, out of curiosity, but a conversation is much more likely to happen if you reach out your hand and engage with the people walking past you.

What does this mean? It means you don't just post about what you are doing. Since you've learned how to find interesting people to follow, read their Tweets and respond to them! If they ask an interesting question, answer it. If they have a problem with something you know about, provide them with an answer. Hell, if they say "Good morning", say "Good morning!" back! Talk to people and most of them will wonder, Who is this person? and reply back. If it's a positive interaction, it'll most likely end up with them following you unless they are of the super-selective Type #1 mentioned above.

I don't want you to think that I've set an overly high bar. I follow one person who goes out a lot to eat because she tells me about interesting restaurants she goes to and another person who lets me know if it's snowing in Portland. Then there is the person I know very little about but who I follow because she always makes me laugh. Don't try too hard, just be real, reveal yourself, reach out, and trust the people you have something in common with will be attracted to you.

These ideas are not as quick-acting as signing up for an Auto-Follow bot but if you carefully and thoughtfully create relationships in an online network, you'll actually create a group of friends who will read your Tweets. And isn't conversation really the ultimate goal of a SOCIAL network?

Tomorrow: Final Dos and Don'ts

Some Twitter Advice for Newbies, Pt. 1

At the risk of throwing yet another blog article on Twitter into the overflowing Internet pile, I am--by a request, mind you!--compiling some Tweets I made on the subject of Twitter into two blog posts. I hope you might find some of the ideas useful.

First, these are pieces of advice intended for individuals who come to Twitter with the intention of forming social connections with other people. They will not be helpful to people who wish to quickly build up a high follower count so they can leverage their Twitter rank into some financial payoff (it still boggles my mind that this is seen as a viable "strategy"). There are plenty of Twitter for Business/Enterprise social media experts, the less ethical of whom will sell you the advice you seek.

This is "old-school" relationship-building advice, meaning it was valid until Twitter exploded in popularity around November of 2008. Hopefully, it will help you meet some like-minded people so you'll find yourself talking with individuals with whom you share common interests or goals or you'll be introduced to people who will educate you about things you know nothing about!

Finding people to follow: It's who you follow, not who follows you (really)
There are various services that will recommend popular people to follow like Twitterholic, HubSpot's TwitterGrader or Mr. Tweet. These websites can be useful in exposing you to the more prominent Twitter users, those with a lot of followers or who have a high profile.

But with the advent of the latest Auto-Following craze , you can now find people with 30,000 followers who've been on Twitter a month and who Tweet nothing but crap. Seriously. I mean, I read their Tweets and think, I follow 3,000 people who have more to say than you do. So, now more than ever, popularity (number of followers) is not a reliable indicator of quality.

Last spring, the method I used to find people to follow was I looked at the blogs I enjoyed reading and I followed the authors if they had a Twitter link. Not all of them were active on Twitter but they will lead you to the pot of gold: the list of people who they follow. This is most useful with people who are selective about who they follow (say, following less than 1,000 people). A selective person's Following list says more about who they think is worth following than any long list of #FollowFriday recommendations.

See which Twitterers the interesting people think are worth following! Unless they are relatives, drinking buddies, or business partners (a small minority of contacts), it's likely you might find these other people interesting, too. On the web interface, it is easy, almost too easy, to hit the follow button and unless their Tweets are protected, you will be receiving their Tweets in your Tweetstream.

Following another person's followers should not be considered "poaching" as long as you don't try to duplicate their entire list. This behavior is viewed by some to be a form of stalking. If you don't mass-follow and just picking several names at a time, this is entirely appropriate, this is how networking happens.

Some of these new people will open doors into entire new worlds...they could be musicians, authors, artists, scholars, marketers, media types, event planners, computer programmers. For example, I didn't know a single entrepreneur before I joined Twitter, that part of business was just a foreign world to me. As was the life of a parent homeschooling four children. Or that of globe-trotting media consultant. Or a mom starting a home-based business. Or an NBC cameraman.

I encourage you to not only find "useful" or famous contacts but also follow intelligent people who have something to say about the worlds they live in. It won't always be pearls of wisdom but you will learn a lot about life from people who have occupations and lives different from your own. This is part of the magic of online social communities.

You used to be able to search Twitter bios (say, if you wanted to follow just User Experience professionals) but Twitter disabled this feature because they said it was being misused (?). You can still use applications like Twitter Local to find people in your geographic area as long as they include that location information in their profile.

The last point is the touchiest. Should you follow people who have a radically different view of the world than yourself? This is most evident since the election regarding political views. I'm a liberal person and I've noticed that conservatives on Twitter are quite organized and even maintain their own website listing the most prominent conservatives on the network.

I encourage you to embrace different points of view and listen to other people's positions on issues but I'll admit there are some one-dimensional ranters on Twitter (on a number of different topics) who'll just pollute your Tweetstream. Some people find hysterical Tweeting entertaining but if you don't, shed them from your system.

Remember, unless you want to put a fence around yourself and protect your Tweets, you really have no direct control over who follows you. But you can control who you follow which means you control the quality of the conversation you are engaging in. Do you just want useful information and links to blog entries? Or are you interested in how Apple users feel about the latest upgrade? Would you rather talk with moms with kids the same age as yours? Trying to find a group of 20somethings in your city who like to go out on the weekends and do karaoke?

All of these things can be yours if you carefully choose who you follow. For example, there is a group of about a dozen people I talk with almost every day and the only thing we have in common is that we get up absurdedly early (~5 am EST). We have nothing else in common but they have become close friends on Twitter because I like to chat when I'm drinking coffee, listening to news and waking up in the morning and so do they! I hear about their plans for the day, the job that drives them crazy, where they are going on vacation, whether their kids are over the flu. Take some time, be patient, and find your people!

Tomorrow: How to get followed back

Is "Twitter for business" ruining it for the rest of us?

The obvious answer to this question is "No" since so many people blend their personal and professional lives in their participation in this social network.

But I'm talking about the relatively new movement to use Twitter not to connect with people you're interested in communicating with, in meeting or have met, but to build a huge public profile for personal branding purposes.

It makes me wonder what it now means to be "influential". It used to be judged, admittedly superficially, by number of Twitter followers but is that a reliable indicator any more? Or do we need to change what "influential" means in Social Media?

This morning, I sent an email to Twitter Grader asking them this question. Excerpts of it are below:

I don't know if you've noticed or not but since Oct/Nov 2008, newcomers to Twitter have grown exponentially due to TV and newspapers coverage of Twitter use by the media and celebrities and publicity of Twitter at business, tech & media conferences. Many people are using Twitter in a completely different way than before which might change (or not!) your grading system.

Past: People created Twitter accounts and began following other people...some followed them back, some didn't. But, for most people, who you followed was only roughly equal in number to those who followed you. Many people wanted to follow Twitter leaders in technology and social marketing like Kevin Rose, Mashable, Mediaphyer, Tim O'Reilly, Problogger, Ev, Fred Wilson, etc. Frequently, these popular users followed no or very few of their followers back. People accepted that not every relationship on Twitter was reciprocal and that their follower and following lists probably contained some different names.

Twitterers' follower numbers grew gradually the longer they were members on Twitter and active on it. Some people's accounts grew faster than others but unless one was a celebrity, your follower number roughly reflected your longevity and popularity on Twitter.

Now: Since Twitter has become more publicized, a new strategy of using it has emerged popularized by some people (I've seen conference notes detailing this strategy). The idea is to gain as many followers as possible in the shortest amount of time. To do this, you follow the maximum number of people Twitter initially allows (2000), drop all of the people who don't automatically follow you back, reach the maximum number again (2000), drop nonfollowers, repeat over and over again. As you gain more followers in this manner, your maximum number you can follow rises and you keep up this following/unfollowing pattern indefinitely.

The result? These new Twitterers can rack up 10,000 followers in less than a month and a dozen Tweets. But are they influential? I don't know. I'm sure if they get big enough (50K followers or more), people will pay attention to them purely because of their size. But there is no commonality linking the followed to the following because they weren't chosen because of shared interests or desire for connecting or for any reason other than they followed back. I'm not sure if any of them read the Tweets they receive other than Direct Messages or Replies to them.

I'm sure that the top 100 or 200 of the Twitter Elite list is radically different than it was 2 months ago if it is based on pure follower numbers. A lot of old timers have dropped off the list and have been replaced with people who I'm not sure can be considered "influential" as much as successful in racking up high follower numbers with a "I'll follow you if you follow me" policy.

You may or may not agree but I think this new strategic use of Twitter (to create a large personal profile rather than build a like-minded network), will test how you measure "influence". So many of these people with large accounts--5K, 10K, 20K+--came out of nowhere and have posted less than 100 Tweets in some cases.

My interest in this is the question of how we measure influence when people are gaming the old ways of building status within a community. A lot of people look to Twitter Grader as the definitive measure of influence so I wanted to just plant a seed of whether your algorithms should or can account for a new way of building social ties (influence? I think not so much).

What do you think? Am I observing a real and significant change on Twitter or just being sentimental for the old days when there were fewer users and a traditional system of building ones' social network?

And to answer your question, yes, I do think about Twitter, and social networking in general, a lot!

If you're unfollowed on Twitter, you probably shouldn't take it personally!

First, it's been 2 months since my last blog entry: Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!* I felt like I had to have something worthwhile to say or something I felt strong about and lately, I've been reading more and writing less.



Second, this post is about Twitter. Since you're reading this, I'm 99.9% certain that you got here through my Twitter bio. If not, well, welcome & I hope you'll get something out of this blog entry anyway.

I'm writing this morning because I am feeling disillusioned. I'm a heavy user of Twitter and thought I "got" it. You post updates & share links, you start following people who post interesting things or who are friends of your friends, some of them follow you back, some don't. No big deal.

There are those people who intentionally keep their circle of conversation small & intimate and don't actively seek to make it larger. But most people who use Twitter see a slow but steady growth in followers as the number of individuals who use the network increases over time.

Early on, I learned about spammers, those annoying people & bots that are trying to get you to buy things from them. They mass follow people, hoping you follow them back and they can then deluge you with pitches for their products or services. They really are no problem unless you automatically follow users back. If you add followers one by one, well, you can ignore them & never get their messages so I didn't see the harm in their presence.

Over the summer & fall, however, many users got annoyed at spammers so the Twitter powers that be started enforcing Following limits to discourage spammers from following tens of thousands of people. There is now a 2,000 person following limit and, as I've been told, over 2K, you can only add up to 110% of the number who follow you...so, for example, if you had 10,000 followers you could be following up to 11,000 people.

I didn't pay much attention to all of this because while my account has grown faster than I expected, its growth has been fairly organic. I keep finding interesting people to follow and, somehow, people find me. I thought this is how most users on Twitter approached their participation on this social network. Oh, but I so naive!

I recently was clued in that there were users with thousands, no tens of thousands of followers who've only been on Twitter for a couple of months. What's up? Do they have special wisdom & insight? Stock tips? A hotline to tech heaven? The address book of The_Real_Shaq? Reading over the content of what they've contributed to the larger conversation on the network, it's been baffling to me. Who are these people & why are they so popular?

Well, apparently, not only spammers but real, live, flesh & blood users are mass following fellow Twitterers, apparently randomly, often taking names from the public timeline and unfollowing users if they don't automatically follow them back so that they stay under the 110% limit.

This seems so purposeless--why just collect random followers?--that it never occurred to me that it would be to any one's advantage to do this. It was growing your connection purely for the sake of growth.

Apparently this is quite common behavior, people expending what I can only imagine is a great deal of time & energy to get on the "top" users lists not based on the value or entertainment they provide to others but instead based on their strategy of accumulating a lot of followers in a very short period of time.

So why do I feel moved to write about this? This behavior doesn't violate any rules, doesn't hurt anyone and only affects the status lists of who are the most followed people on Twitter. Most people might refer to "A-list celebrities" but they actually have very little day-to-day contact with this elite circle of users. So who cares who's on or off of these lists?

Well, I frequently see Twitterers posting a plaintive message about why something they said caused them to lose a follower or two. Most likely though, it was nothing you said, it was just someone unfollowing you because you didn't follow them back within 24 hours. They weren't after actually connecting with you but gaining a few new people to add to their follower lists. Truthfully, that is no real loss to you!

So, to put a twist on the words of George Costanza, "It's not you, it's them. It's really, REALLY them!"


*Latin: My fault, my own fault, my most grievous fault.

Oh, Twitter, Twitter, Twitter

You don't realize how much you depend on something or someone until it is gone. Twitter is down and instead of the old, familiar and friendly Fail Whale they've substituted a new graphic which is a bit too cutesy for me. What do you think?

Ms. Pop-u-lar

Two weeks ago, "PR professional and social media freak" Sarah Evans had a fun idea to run a survey on the polling site Survey Monkey to find out the most popular people posting on Twitter, or The Unofficial Top 50 Tweeples to Follow, as she called it.

Several measures of Twitter popularity already exist on websites like Twitterholic, a website that lists those people with the most individuals following them or the most people who they follow or the most updates/Tweets.

But Evans' poll required people—and one didn’t have to even be a Twitter user to vote—to type in the name of the person they wanted to nominate and assign them a category, not just to check a box on a predetermined list of candidates.

I’m not sure how I found out about the poll..I think someone I followed reposted Evan's original message. And when I went to the survey website to nominate those people I most devoutly follow, I found that some names came immediately to mind. They weren’t on the list of the most popular anything, they were just individuals whose Tweets I had found consistently entertaining, informative, or unique. With some categories (automotive? lawn?), I couldn’t come up with any appropriate nomination but I tried to list all of the people I regularly read, sometimes twisting the meaning of categories like “food” or “entertainment” to nominate people who talk about their dinner in mouth-watering detail or who are generally amusing.

Well, the list was released yesterday morning and I found myself ranked as #18 on a Top 50 list out of 2,500 people nominated. While flattering, it is an odd position for me to be in. I thank people who took the time to nominate me but I’m not used to being in a position of popularity (and recently I've definitely been UNpopular!). I have a mild-mannered exterior but I see myself as living on the margins, economically, politically, professionally, and intellectually.

Perhaps what caused people to like my posts was that I had absolutely nothing to gain by Tweeting, not personally, not professionally, so I was myself, for better or worse. I don’t even Tweet about my blog so I have not even been looking for new readers, I just talk about whatever is on mind at that moment.

I woke up this morning, 24 hours later, to find that I have 80 new people following me in the wake of the poll results and I’m in the odd position of not wanting to disappoint people who now might have expectations of me. I mean, if you get ranked on a poll like this, you must be at least “interesting”, right? So, do I continue to write about my cat, my insomnia, my obsession with the Olympics, my frustration with the Girls in Tech moniker, my surprise at Project Runway results, my furnace problems, or my wandering thoughts on sociological theory?

It seems like very mundane material to me. But when I look over the Tweetstreams of other people on the list, to tell you the truth, outside of a few Twitter celebrities (i.e. Guy Kawasaki, Robert Scoble, Mashable), they are also mostly personal and ordinary. Maybe it’s not glamor or power that cause someone to visit a survey website, remember, and type in someone’s name but a simple identification with the ups and downs in the life of another person, when they are honestly written and shared.

I know in the scheme of things, this list means little (except new followers) but it is always an interesting exercise to look outside yourself and consider how other people perceive you. I find I’m often wrong and surveys like this are a good reminder that we sometimes need to shake up the preconceived limitations we have placed on ourselves and reconsider who we think we are to other people.

Random thoughts on a Sunday afternoon

Man, it's been quite a while since I've blogged. I think the last entry was a hard one to follow up on. It's funny how confessional people have become in the last 10 years but I still feel uneasy sharing details about my family online. My interior musings are up for grabs but I'm shy about revealing the messiness of relationships. That act involves discussing & describing other people and I can't help but be biased about them. I never wanted this blog to be a place where I gushed about my latest infatuation or ranted about someone who was annoying. That's just life.

Now while I'm supposed to be finishing up my dissertation revisions, I've found myself immersed in events in the New York City tech scene. I'm kind of fuzzy on how it all started. I was looking at some statistics that said that 3 months ago I had 50 people "following" me on Twitter and today I have 577! I don't even know when the tipping point was that I went from being a casual newbie to a person with so many online connections.

It's been like a snowball rolling down a hill, gathering momentum and growing in size. I bought some domains in the spring which lead me to read some technology blogs and a few personal ones and some of the people who wrote these blogs suggested that I follow them on Twitter. I don't remember who these first people were or if I even still follow them! From there, I started following people I saw posting interesting or clever Tweets, saw who THEY thought was interesting and it just grew from there.

After a month or two, I noticed that some of the people I was following were getting together to meet in person. I asked if it was okay if I showed up, got an enthusiastic thumbs up and showed up to a couple of events. I enjoyed myself and got to meet some very interesting people I would never have otherwise crossed paths with. We worked in different professions, came from different generations, lived in different places but, truthfully, that's what made it so engaging to me.

Since then, the situation has gotten unnecessarily complicated as all human relationships get. People talk about "community" and Twitter events are presented as being open to anyone but the sociological fact is that people are born to form tightly-knit small groups, call them cliques, networks, tribes, or the "inner circle". Unless there is some shared characteristic (ethnicity, religion, nationality, a common interest, gender, etc.), it's unusual for a circle of unrelated people to have equally strong relationships with everyone else in a group.

The bonds between the people I've met in the NYC tech/media/startup world seem, in general, to be at once intense & strong and incredibly superficial & fragile which is typical of status-conscious groups. It's a business environment masquerading as a lifestyle. It reminds me a lot of when I worked in the music industry and I (and everyone else) judged everyone based on who they were listening to. Seriously, I remember thinking that I couldn't be in a romantic relationship with someone who had incompatible musical tastes, everything else was negotiable!

In the tech world, especially in social media, people seem to be judged by several criteria including their "personal brand", their current occupational position, and their knowledge of the industry & of the people in it.

I realize that this is passing judgment on a sector of society that has, by & large, welcomed me and to which I do not belong. But it would be a mistake to see it as a negative judgment. What I'm saying is typical for most social areas of our lives, from school to work to local civic involvement.

The difference is that a lot of users I see merge their professional lives with their personal lives and I think this can be psychologically claustrophobic. There should be some people in your life who don't care where you work or who you know, who accept & love you whether you have a high status or no professional status at all.

I know in the music industry that there was a revolving door on many positions at record companies & radio stations and it was only the most charismatic & talented who could survive being fired and remain in the business for long. There were a lot of casualties. Maybe things are truly different for the 2.0 generation, who all act like entrepreneurs in the making, but I think it is dangerous to attach all of your self-worth and self-identity to a job that you may not have for very long.

Now is where I confess to having done exactly the same thing when I was younger...which is absolutely the case. I didn't care much about balance but when the bottom falls out of your world, you're left with little to stand on but yourself and your closest friends and it helps if you've both been there for each other regardless of your personal fortunes & statuses. These friends are gold!

I see great potential in online social networking for making instant connections between people who were once strangers. I just hope that the bonds that are made can be lasting and generous and are not temporary or just a means to an end.

When those we like=those we are like

I've been reading a lot of blogs over the past month, probably too many blogs. In my Twitter escapades, I've been a hungry learner, clicking on links and following leads, trying to learn as much as I can about social media. I didn't wade into the shallow end, I dove off the high dive.

In many ways, I felt like Alice in Wonderland...I recognized the characters but it was a weird, upside down, cyberworld that seemed nonsensical to me almost all of the time. And, foolishly perhaps, I openly displayed my slack-jawed incomprehension, hoping to be pitied, tutored, and finally embraced by this colorful, dynamic world of buzzing social extroverts. Much of the time, I was positively dizzy by the pace of it all, as I watched lives being lived rush past me. Some days, I found it almost intoxicating.

In hindsight, I can see I was following an old pattern...when I get bored with my life or my work becomes too difficult or too tedious, I immerse myself in something new and feel the zest and excitement that one feels as a beginning student or as a traveler setting off on the first leg of a journey into an unfamiliar part of the world.

But while I am in in this world, I clearly am not of it. I don't work in technology, PR, marketing, or finance, I'm not a consultant, venture capitalist, or social media "guru", and I've felt this tension of being the outsider for as long as I been playing in this Twitter/Facebook land. I'm a terrible actor and so I've tried to embrace my outsider stance even during times where I was cast as a minor league pariah.

I clumsily stepped on toes, I questioned common wisdom, I scoffed at those higher up on the food chain than I am, partly out of ignorance but also because my values seem to differ so much from my online peers. I expressed bewilderment and sarcasm when I encountered statements, thoughts or feelings that made me incredulous: "Who ARE you? How can you claim THAT?? Isn't it dehumanizing to think of people as 'personal brands'?"

By and large, I was simply ignored, as a small child would be who interrupted their parents' dinner party. A few people welcomed me, if only for the novelty value of having a new face at the table, while others actively exiled me from their online family of friends and sent me to another room. And that's okay because, after all, we are really all strangers to one another online. No one "owes" me their friendship, it has to be freely given and I am sorry if I ever personally offended anyone.

I have only good feelings towards those I've interacted with in these social communities except the few who were confrontational, racist, sexist, or boorish. I've normally been treated with patient kindness even when I clearly didn't know a lot about what I was talking about and for that I am grateful.

But I'm also glad that I might have asked some uncomfortable questions or disturbed the clubhouse atmosphere of these cliquish communities. The majority of folks I met online were white, college educated, decently paid, spoke English as a first language, and were between the ages of 22 and 40 and, I have to say, many displayed a distinctly superior attitude, almost one of entitlement. I ran into very little social critique of the inequities of American society and our culture of leisure and consumption is positively reveled in. Even in my days working in the music industry, I never heard of people participating in this many parties! Even those people with families seem to travel and party a lot more than my offline friends and colleagues.

Of course, I'm a participant in all this activity even if I'm outside the dominant Twitter demographic. I brought up Iraq once, the indecent price of conference registrations several times, occasionally criticizing industries that think everything of worth can be measured, quantified, and ranked. And these comments feel FLAT so I got the message and kept my conversation personal (cats, weather, work, sleep, travel, family, etc.) instead of political.

In the end, a community is what it is and it is hard if not impossible for one individual to change the tenor of the discussion especially someone who is admittedly of very little influence. And I don't think it is my place to try to change something that is clearly so massively popular. But I do think it is my place to reflect upon my experience and see what was positive and what is lacking.

So while I might have fondness for the individuals I've encountered and I am completely in awe of their enthusiastic, almost mission-like ambition in their professions, I am unimpressed with the social networks that have emerged in this Web 2.0 world, at least the ones I have seen. In these circles, connections with like minds are made but isn't the point of all of this interdependent, global connectivity to interact with those who are different from ourselves, those who have different views on what's important in life, those from who we can learn something besides how to advance our career?

Instead, social networks seem to create niches where people who seem to have the same political and cultural values hang out together and empathize with each other's ups and downs. They are support groups more than change groups. There is a place for these types of friendships in all of our lives, lives where we are tired and bruised much of the time. I don't want to minimize this at all.

But at this point, I think that the excitement around social networks and the belief that they actually can lead to changes in our society is completely inaccurate and doesn't reflect their segregated nature. Maybe some time, down the road this could occur but not today and not tomorrow. The rule of like attracting like still remains a guiding principle of human behavior.

P.S. After rereading this I thought I should add that I hope to continue to Twitter away and participate on Facebook although maybe not at the same high, intense level as in recent weeks. And, if it still needs to be said, this post is meant to be a critique of the limitations of social networks, not of the individuals who compose them.