8 Twitter tips from a n00b

Those of you wondering about whether to start using Twitter might want to read friend David Murray's new article "How to use Twitter & whether to bother" on Ragan.com.

Murray, who is a technology skeptic, approaches Twitter as a gonzo reporter. While I'm sure this seemed like a good way to go, theMurr ended up getting a mash-note from the überbitch cartoon character of social media and flamed by one of the nicest people around. All in his first day. Probably not an auspicious start.

I'm quoted here and there in the article. Accurately and completely, of course. But reading the article makes me want to offer a few (entirely personal) tips based on my n00bish experience of a year or so on Twitter.

1. Twitter is not a social network. Twitter is micro-blogging.
2. Twitter becomes a social network.
3. "What are you doing?" is not a question you should answer.
4. "What are you doing?" becomes a question you are allowed to answer.
5. The shelf life of any "tweet" is about 20 minutes. But tweets are carved in stone.
6. Replies to your "tweets" are far more important than comments to your blog.
7. Twitter is a river you live beside. You don't have to see every passing boat or catch every fish to live beside it.
8. If your peer group is on Twitter, you miss a lot if you are not there, too.

More to come on each tip in the next few days!

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 11:09pm in Social Media | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (6) | TrackBack (0)

Hopkins & Cook publish revised Social Media white paper

Lee Hopkins and Trevor Cook, two of Australia's the world's quick-witted thinkers about social media, have published the 3rd edition of their white paper Social Media (or how we stopped worrying and learnt to love communication).

In 46 pages of crisp writing, they cover the basics -- more, actually -- of blogging, podcasting, social networks (Facebook, Twitter) and virtual worlds (Second Life). Lot's of input from other social media users, and lots of links to best practice sites.

And it's free. So if you are new to social media, this is the place to go.

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 07:14pm in Communication, Social Media, Writing I Enjoy | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (1) | TrackBack (0)

Would anyone like to explain the point of the IABC eXchange?

I stumbled into the IABC eXchange (that's how they spell it) today. Had a look around, came out and walked around some, then went back in. Wasn't any better.

Is there a point I am missing?

Here's the gush from the first page (which features a really tacky blue background and weird fonts):

IABC eXchange is an online tool for networking and collaboration. Developed based on member feedback, the IABC eXchange allows you to create member-only discussion groups, private working groups, and blogs that the whole world can view and comment on.

You have the power to designate who can join your conversation: Grant co-author access to fellow members, allow others to submit entries that require your approval to be posted, or make it a personal platform for sharing your ideas and opinions. The IABC eXchange also lets you create a personal profile, including a photo and information about your areas of interest to help you connect with your fellow members.

Stripped up of the really bad copywriting, I think it says "You can create an open, moderated or closed blog. You can put your photo and personal information on it, too."

Yeah, and I can do that in Facebook, Twitter and the blog you are reading, too.

But since I like playing with social media and trust IABC to guide me to communication nirvana, I jumped straight to the next page (which reverts to the standard IABC layout and fonts), where I was told:

The IABC eXchange is an online tool for networking and collaboration created exclusively for IABC members. Create your own blog, form private work groups or special interest groups with other members and share best practices. Make your pages visible to the world or only to selected members. Whether it's work related, IABC-related or purely personal, the IABC eXchange gives you the power to express yourself. Be Heard®

What the fuck? They just said that. But let's push on... The next page flips to stripped down, Times NewRoman font, in black and white. My choices are: 1) start a public blog or 2) start an IABC only blog. Since I already have a public blog, it would seem pointless to start a new one. On the other hand, creating a private blog for 13000 people in 70 countries seems even more pointless. So let's go with public.

A few steps later, I had an official, certified, IABC blog. How far IABC has come!

Technorati : iabc, iabc exchange, international association of business communicators

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 11:31pm in IABC, Social Media, Social Tools | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (16) | TrackBack (0)

Modernista! vs Wikipedia. When smart-ass upstart takes on stuffy upstart

As I am increasingly tired of Wikipedian onanists purists deletionists, I was amused to hear of Modernista!'s idea of creating their own Wikipedia entry, then using it as their website. Smart, funny and oh-so-totally against Wikipedia's rules about companies editing their own entries. For good measure, the rest of Modernista!'s "site" is their newz link to Google News and their Facebook entry.

Update: the Wikipedians pulled it down.

Technorati : modernista!, rule-breaking, wikipedia
Del.icio.us : modernista, rule-breaking, wikipedia

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 12:21am in Advertising, Advertising & PR, Humor, Social Media | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (7) | TrackBack (0)

Digg, Wikipedia and the myth of Web 2.0 democracy

Digg and Wikipedia are often described as good examples of how the wisdom of crowds can be applied to information.

But, deep down, I think we all know Digg is controlled by 34 sedative-deprived teenagers, while Wikipedia is (thank the sky-god of your choice) watched over by a small army of grammarians and fact-checkers.

Chris Wilson, in Slate, brings confirmation:

Social-media sites like Wikipedia and Digg are celebrated as shining examples of Web democracy, places built by millions of Web users who all act as writers, editors, and voters. In reality, a small number of people are running the show. According to researchers in Palo Alto, 1 percent of Wikipedia users are responsible for about half of the site's edits. The site also deploys bots-supervised by a special caste of devoted users-that help standardize format, prevent vandalism, and root out folks who flood the site with obscenities. This is not the wisdom of the crowd. This is the wisdom of the chaperones.

Wilson says Helium and Slashdot are good examples of a loose-tight approach to crowd editing, concluding:

Every model has its drawbacks. Unlike Wikipedia, Helium doesn't lend itself to comprehensive articles drawing on many sources. Nor is Slashdot free of moron commenters, though its quotient is significantly lower than on any unmoderated message board. It's refreshing, though, that these sites acknowledge that Web 2.0 isn't a fairy-tale democracy without letting themselves become dictatorships. Digg and Wikipedia would do well to stop pretending they're operated by the many and start thinking of ways to rein in the power of the few.

Nice, too, to see an accessible assessment of social media in a mainstream journal.

Technorati : democracy, digg, helium.com, web 2.0, wikipedia

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 07:43pm in Social Media | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (12) | TrackBack (0)

Why measure social media?

Simon Collister recently asked Why measure social media at all?

He argues that the quick answers usually given ("If you can't measure it, you can't manage it" and "We have to show ROI to client/management") may not apply to social media.

"1. the opportunities offered by social media are born of the fact that as a (social) medium it resists management and control, so why try to measure it in order to manage it?

2. is commidifying or monetizing members of on-line communities and their networks and interactions the best way to measure and judge ROI?"

I started my career in direct marketing, so my first impulse is to insist on measurement. But I find the "quick answers" as unsatisfying as Simon seems to. While I can measure the return on a split-run DM campaign, I cannot "measure" the effect of the conversation my customer has with her neighbor. Hell, I can't even measure the effect of the conversation I have with my customer. But there's the rub... while I cannot measure the effect of my conversation with my customer, or the customer's conversation with the neighbor, I sure want to make sure the conversation happens -- constantly.

Chris Brogan posted about measuring social media efforts a few months ago. Chris believes, I think, that social media can be measured, he made the point that we should be mapping our social media efforts (or those of our clients). He concluded:

"...it's great to measure results... but it might also be useful to discuss the larger map of what could/should be accomplished by a social media strategy. For a map, I might create something like this:

• List of the most likely places a human will encounter the media I produce.

• Methods for listening to conversations off-blog and outside my media.

• Touchpoints along the value chain and how my media reaches each one.

• Path back to a central data capture for reporting and strategy monitoring.

• Pinpoints to corrective measures taken from initial strategy path to current efforts.

The more I consider what I've written, the more I can see the value in offering both the measurements and the map. The map might not be enough to convince an organization of the value of your efforts, and yet, the measurements won't truly be valuable without the map of your larger intentions and the strategy you've considered. "

Good point! But I believe the map is far more important for most organizations, and that mapping alone has great value for the organization that understands the lubricative value of lots and lots of conversation about it and its products. I'm not sure we will ever come up with good metrics for social media efforts -- but should we even care?

Update: I hadn't seen Stuart's take on this... if I had, I would have included it here. But go read.

Technorati : chris brogran, communication measurement, simon collister, social media, social media ROI

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 01:00pm in Social Media | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (3) | TrackBack (0)

However, his other 169 MySpace friends did NOT link to porn

As one commenter noted, this is just one more reason Florida should be kicked out of the Union.

From Wired:

"School Cop Investigated for Porn Link on Friend's MySpace Profile

"In the goofiest waste of law enforcement time we've seen in weeks, an on-campus police officer for a Florida middle school is facing a criminal investigation over his MySpace account. Why? It turns out one of the people on his friends list had a link on his or her profile to an internet porn site.

"Or, as the St. Peterburg Times puts it, "kids could navigate from Officer John's page on the social networking site to 'Amateur Match Free Sex' in just three clicks.""

Via Doc Searls

    Technorati : gulf middle school, john nohejl, new port richey

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 02:02pm in Bizarre but Expected, Civil Liberty, Law, Social Media | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (2) | TrackBack (0)

Why Web 2.0 is a godsend to poltical activists

Ethan Zuckerman describes why "banal" social media tools used mainly for entertainment are proving a boon to political activists, especially in repressive countries:

...while Web 1.0 was invented so that theoretical physicists could publish research online, Web 2.0 was created so that people could publish cute photos of their cats. But this same cat dissemination technology has proved extremely helpful for activists, who've turned these tools to their own purposes.

So while Flickr should be used for displaying pictures of cute cats, it's also proved an effective tool for avoiding keyword filtering. Activists in China are using Flickr to disseminate images that contain words that get blocked by keyword filters - a simple tool built by Zhang Erning allows a photo of Einstein at a blackboard to be annotated with arbitrary text that won't be blocked by the Chinese firewall....

Technorati : advocacy, censorship, ethan zuckerman, political activism, web 2.0 tools

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 04:36pm in Politics, Regulation, Social Media, Social Tools, Society | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (0) | TrackBack (0)

Food hacking, why not?

Food hacking -- it is what the name implies -- has its own wiki. Food hacking is the other end of the spectrum from ordered-in pizza.

Hat tip to Mike Love.

Technorati : food, food hacking, marc powell

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 07:32pm in Food, Food and Drink, Social Media, Taxonomy of Cyberspace | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (1)

12 important US laws every blogger should know

Aviva Directory has published a list of 12 important US laws every blogger should know. Some topics include: "Is deep linking legal?," "Laws that protect you from stolen content," and "the duty to monitor your blog comments, and liability."

Really good stuff. Plus links to additional resources.

I snip one part:

Who Owns User-Developed Content and Can You Delete It:

For those of you who have opened your sites up to user-driven content, be it comments, reviews, or a bulletin board, the question of who legally owns the content is an important one for deciding what you can and cannot do with it. Thankfully, the answer is pretty straightforward, and so are the solutions for dealing with it.

What is the law?

it may come as a surprise to many bloggers, but you do not actually own the user-driven content on your site. Instead, it is actually the copyrighted property of the author. The analysis is pretty straightforward; copyright law only requires that an author create an original work and write it out in order to grant that person a copyright. The fact that you do not own the user-driven content on your site can create a number of headaches for bloggers, such as an obligation to remove a comment whenever the author requests.

But by including a terms of service which spells out that you will have a license in all content posted in the site and more specifically that you will not have a duty to modify or withdraw posts but you may do so if you choose, you can ensure that you have effective control over the user-driven content on your site even if you do not have actual ownership of the content.

How to stay out of trouble:

NEVER treat comments as though you own them by manipulating them or deleting them without having included a terms of service which gives you permission to do so.

ALWAYS include an extensive terms of service that explains all of your rights with respect to user-driven content.

CONSIDER that if you are allowing anonymous posts you will have no way of verifying the true owner of a comment when someone emails you asking for you to take a comment down. Consequently, you should make sure to at least collect basic identifying information before allowing someone to comment or post on your site.

Hat tip to Amy Gahran.

Technorati : avivadirectory, bloggers, comment policies, copyright, domain name law, law, trademarks

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 11:50pm in Law, Social Media | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (0)

Ragan Communication launches social media site -- I like it

Ragan Communication has launched MyRagan, a social media/community/watering hole for communicators, yesterday, and it's no slouch of a place. When I went to bed late last night, there were about 30 members; now there are over 200. Message boards, customizable rich profiles, IM -- I like it.

Technorati : myragan, ragan

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 02:15am in Communication, Corporate Communication, Social Media | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (10)

Ike Pigott on social media: the whales win

Fellow nobody Ike Pigott tells us why this social media stuff works:

"Social Media is simply the realization that sharks grow big only when constantly swimming after meaty fish, and whales grow huge by amassing a diet of plankton."

I'd say that pretty much nails it.

Dave Pollard shows us one way we plankton can wrestle with the sharks in his proposal for an open source legislative process. Here's a snip:

"I can appreciate that, a hundred years ago, it may have been necessary for elected politicians to hammer out legislation in smoke-filled back rooms. Communications and travel were slow and law-making is an iterative process, requiring not only consensus-building but also multiple redrafts to incorporate matters that the original draft forgot to consider.

But today there is no reason why the legislative (law-making) process cannot be completely transparent and draw on the collective wisdom of many citizens. In order for that to happen, I would propose a radical change to the way in which that legislative process occurs:

1. Each jurisdiction would have a wiki where any citizen or group of citizens..."

All sorts of good stuff on the feedreader this morning.

    Technorati : dave pollard, how to save the world, ike pigott, international association of nobodies, occam's razr, open source legislative process, social media

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 08:49am in Politics, Social Media | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (1)

Dina Mehta weighs in on Twitter (and no more Twitter posts for a while, I promise)

Thinker Dina Mehta posts insightfully on Twitter.

Snippets:

"I find myself hesitating to put up too much there, and I began asking myself the question, should I? Like danah, I feel perhaps it takes a certain type of personality to use it. While I enjoy reading updates from some of my closer friends, I find myself wondering whether people would really be interested in what I am eating or doing or feeling at different points in time during the day. My close friends may be, and its making me re-evaluate and 'select' and 'choose' friends more carefully than I do with other social networking sites."

That's a good point, one I find myself pondering. Who are my friends in this context? Who is interested in what I am reallly doing?

All of my Twitter followers and followees are professional colleagues, whose blogs I read & who read mine. We have an active conversation already in the blogosphere. And while I hope I could become friends with them all, it's only a handful who truly fit the term. And even they are unlikely to be interested in what I am having for dinner tonight, just as I am not particularly interested in what they are having. If one of them is having an excellent bourek tonight, at a restaurant he or she just happened upon on a trip, I want to know. If he or she ordered burgers into the offiice.... You get the picture.

Dina writes:

"I'd love to have layered messaging at Twitter .. where my messages can be sent out to a few folks, likewise, I receive messages from a few too. I couldn't be bothered to set up private groups for this .. I'd like that control with me."

That, too, rings home here. And speaks to the friend question. I suppose one could, though I haven't investigated how, set up Twitter rings for family, personal friends, professional colleagues. I would like to be tweeted by my dad, to hear how my grandmother is doing, and I think the Organic Goddess would accept highly trivial tweets about my cat's antics. But that's subject matter that has a) short shelf life and b) narrow audience.

Of course, leave it Dina to think about some truly useful ways to use Twitter:

"I also see it as having lots of potential as a research tool. Set up a private group, get real-time voices on a subject or topic. In fact, I'm currently launching into a qualitative research study with a client where we are experimenting with an SMS-Blog gateway to collect real-time updates and answers to research questions among a segment of youth ... and a private group on Twitter would have been just ideal, except the participants would be unwilling to pay for international outbound messages. I'd much rather get responses from participants in real-time, and within the framework of where they are and what they are doing than a cold questionnaire or a forced group situation. Add MMS to it, and you get much richer data. More agile and much cheaper than doing ground ethnography. With the potential to get large numbers in too for statistical validation for a quantitative research exercise."

Now we are going places!

Technorati : dina mehta, twitter

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 06:48pm in Social Media | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (0)