Tag: twitter

Suggestions for getting started with Twitter

twitter As a fan of Twitter, I often find myself telling others about the service (you might argue that me being a fan is not as relevant as me being addicted). I do my best to explain that you can’t really explain Twitter. It’s one of those things that you have to experience before you get it. Michael Martine does a good job of describing this in his post Twitter is like sex.

I also try to offer some advice on how to get started. The most important thing I mention is actually #8 on this list, but I wanted to approach it from the perspective of just registering for the site.

Here are my top ten suggestions for getting started with Twitter:

  1. Pick a good username. If you already have a username you tend to use around the web, stick with that. If you’re coming up with something new, make it easy to type and to say verbally. Try to avoid names that might look “spammy”, such as “john351” or something like that.
  2. Keep your tweets public. I’m not really sure what the point of joining Twitter is if you’re just going to keep everything private. Besides, Twitter truly shines when it can aggregate everyone’s tweets together, and it can only do that with public tweets.
  3. Change the default background/theme. I see that there are a bunch of new defaults, but I still think it’s a good idea to personalize your profile a little. It makes a difference when others are looking at your page deciding whether or not to follow you. Don’t go overboard here though. Some services let you create a background full of text and other information, but I think those look messy.
  4. Enter your website URL if you have one. One of the first things I’ll do when looking at a new profile is click the web link. It’s a great way to learn more about the person. It won’t drive a ton of traffic to your site, but it doesn’t hurt either.
  5. Set your location correctly. It might seem funny to set your location to something random like “my room” but setting your location properly makes it easier for others to find you. I think the format “city, state/province, country” works best because then others can search by all three criteria.
  6. Post some tweets before you follow others. Shortly after you follow someone, they’ll likely be looking at your profile. If it is empty or contains only a tweet or two, chances are they won’t follow you back.
  7. Go easy on the following at first. If you try to follow hundreds of people all at once, you’ll likely be flagged as a spammer by Twitter. Even if you aren’t, it looks bad to be following 500 people without any followers of your own.
  8. Follow users who live where you do. This is my favorite suggestion, because I think it’s the quickest way to get value out of Twitter. People often complain that a tweet like “Calgary Trail is a parking lot” seems mundane, but to others in the area it can be really useful (that’s a busy road here in Edmonton). By following other locals, you’ll reduce the number of tweets that seem mundane.
  9. Learn the lingo and etiquette. It’s quite simple really. As I’m sure you’ve guessed by now, an update is called a tweet. If you start your tweet with @username, then it’s a reply and it’ll show up on the replies tab for that user. Something like #yeg is called a hashtag, and it’s basically a way of categorizing your tweets. If someone tweets something that you’d like to reshare, start your tweet with RT @username (or you can use “retweet” instead of “RT” if you like).
  10. Start using Twitter Search right away. I can’t stress this enough – Twitter Search is what really makes Twitter useful. I always have a tab open with a search for “mastermaq”, so that I can see any tweets that reference me. I also use it to find out what people think of the latest movie, or to find links on a topic I’m interested in. Make Twitter Search your best friend – you won’t regret it!

Those are my suggestions. The only other thing I would mention is to be interesting, but that’s harder to define. I think the most interesting users on Twitter post a combination of random tweets, replies, and links. As with anything else, you can learn a lot by simply paying attention and observing others.

Have I missed anything? What are your suggestions? Let me know!

Happy Tweeting 🙂

CanUX 2008 Attendees on Twitter

canux Even though we spent more time doing than tweeting at CanUX, Twitter was still there in the background. Those of you who couldn’t make it to the event could at least follow along remotely, and some of us at the event used it for informal discussions. You can find nearly all the related tweets at Twitter Search. There’s some value there, but I think following the people who attended is even more valuable, because you can learn from them over time. With that in mind, here’s a partial list of CanUX 2008 attendees on Twitter.

nForm

Presenters

Attendees (in no particular order)

If I’ve missed you, let me know and I’ll update the post!

UPDATE: Here’s my list of links and resources for CanUX 2008.

How do you define mainstream?

Lately I’ve been thinking about the word “mainstream” and what it means. Princeton’s WordNet defines mainstream as “the prevailing current of thought” while Merriam-Webster defines mainstream as “a prevailing current or direction of activity or influence”. I think many people have a different definition however, something more akin to the one at UrbanDictionary:

Mainstream is what’s the new trend. When one "style" gets old, a new one is reborn; a mainstream person is someone who jumps from trend to trend so that they fit in with the rest of the crowd.

That definition has 514 positive votes and only 51 negative votes. There are a few others there too, but that one is the most popular. The definition at Wiktionary is similar.

Two recent articles got me thinking about this. On October 27th, the Wall Street Journal said that Twitter is going mainstream:

When the service first appeared a couple of years ago, its appeal seemed largely limited to narcissists who wanted to let everybody know what they were doing in real time. But, like blogs and social-networking sites, Twitter is starting to cross into the mainstream, as a wide range of people find interesting uses for the brief notes.

Is the WSJ right? Has Twitter crossed into the mainstream? I think that depends on which definition you use. Based on the one in the dictionary, I’d say they’re wrong.

The second article was from The Economist. They say blogging is mainstream now too:

Blogging has entered the mainstream, which—as with every new medium in history—looks to its pioneers suspiciously like death.

Hold on a sec – blogging has only just entered the mainstream? If that’s true, how can Twitter possibly be considered mainstream? Seems the “mainstream” media have different definitions for the word too!

Maybe everyone has a different definition for the word? I think it all depends on what your litmus test is. For instance:

  • Has Twitter been mentioned on TV and in the newspaper? Yes, it’s mainstream.
  • Does anyone make money using Twitter? Yes, it’s mainstream.
  • Do my parents use Twitter regularly? No, it’s not mainstream.
  • Do all of my friends use Twitter? No, it’s not mainstream.
  • Will a random person on the street know what Twitter is? No, it’s not mainstream.

I think that’s pretty close to what my litmus test is. Replace “Twitter” with “Google” or “Facebook” and all of the answers are yes.

What’s your test? How do you define mainstream?

Recap: EdmontonTweetup3

edmontontweetup I had a great time tonight at EdmontonTweetup3 – our third meetup for Twitter users in the Edmonton area! We had just over 20 people come out to Devlin’s on Whyte Avenue, with a nice mixture of familiar and new faces! I thought the restaurant did a nice job of accommodating our group, and it was good to hear so many people say they’d never been there before. We might as well experience a bit more of the city at these events!

I only snapped a few simple shots tonight, but @bruceclarke, @tonyratcliffe, and @fusedlogic all took nice sets of photos: here and here and here. Thanks guys!

EdmontonTweetup3

As our community continues to grow, I think there will be increasing demand for these face-to-face meetups. It’s nice to be able to get away from the computer for a few minutes to meet the people you chat with on a daily basis!

Once again I’ve done my best to add all of tonight’s attendees to the wiki page, but please add yourself if I missed you. Feel free to add links to your photos, blog posts, and other bits of social media too.

Thanks again to everyone who came out tonight – see you at EdmontonTweetup4!

Edmonton Organizations on Twitter

edmontontweetup I’m not the only one who has noticed it – the number of Edmontonians using Twitter is steadily increasing. The EdmontonTweetup account is following just over 450 people, but I know there are probably many more. The vast majority of these accounts are individuals, but there are some businesses and other organizations also.

Here’s a list of organizations with official Twitter accounts (in no particular order):

A few of these are placeholders and aren’t very active. You might think that the Edmonton Oilers should be on that list too, but the Oilers don’t run the Twitter account – I do. A couple of others I’m sitting on include edmonton and ualberta.

Of course, there are also a number of organizations that don’t have an official account which are represented by their owners and/or employees. Some of these have the same name as the organization, but are used more like personal accounts so I am including them here instead of above (again, in no particular order):

Not surprisingly, most of these organizations are in tech, photography, or design. All very creative endeavors.

The problem with a list like this is that it’s easy to miss people (apologies if I missed you), and it’ll soon be out of date. That’s why I’ve created a page on the EdmontonTweetup wiki for it. I’m not sure how much value there is in having such a list, but it’s there anyway. Feel free to add your organization to it, or to ignore it completely! I’ll try to update it when I can.

Don’t forget – the third EdmontonTweetup is taking place this Thursday (October 30th) at 6pm at Devlin’s on Whyte Avenue. You can find all the details here. Hope to see you there!

UPDATE: Added MatrikonOPC, 350 Designs, and Urban Jungle.

Blogging killed by Twitter? I don’t think so

I’ll give Paul Boutin credit for writing some seriously good link bait, but that’s all his recent essay for Wired is worth. Paul argues that we don’t need blogs anymore thanks to Twitter (and for good measure he mentions Facebook and Flickr too). He advises anyone thinking about starting a blog to think twice, and anyone who already writes one to pull the plug:

The blogosphere, once a freshwater oasis of folksy self-expression and clever thought, has been flooded by a tsunami of paid bilge. Cut-rate journalists and underground marketing campaigns now drown out the authentic voices of amateur wordsmiths. It’s almost impossible to get noticed, except by hecklers. And why bother? The time it takes to craft sharp, witty blog prose is better spent expressing yourself on Flickr, Facebook, or Twitter.

I guess Paul is a “glass-half-empty” kind of guy.

Of course it’s difficult to get noticed in the blogosphere – there are so many blogs out there! Of course something you write is going to attract comment trolls – you can’t please everyone! Of course blogging takes more time and effort than Twitter – but that’s because you’re writing so much more!

But none of that is reason enough to give up on blogging.

Obviously I’m a big fan of Twitter, and I do spend quite a lot of time posting there, but I don’t think I could replace my blog with it. I find the two are complementary – quick comments and updates go on Twitter, longer thoughts go on my blog. That system seems to work well for me.

Same goes for the consumption side of things. Tweets are searchable instantly, true, but good luck following a thread. Short conversations between a couple of people are okay, but anything more and you’ve got problems. Blogs don’t have this problem of course, thanks to comments and trackbacks. And let’s be honest, Google indexes blogs fairly quickly anyway.

Paul says:

Twitter — which limits each text-only post to 140 characters — is to 2008 what the blogosphere was to 2004.

I’d agree with that. Twitter has lots of buzz right now, that’s undeniable. Just as the election in 2004 helped blogs increase in popularity, the current election is giving a boost to Twitter. What I don’t agree with is the notion that Twitter’s success sounds the death knell for blogs.

I think blogs remain incredibly valuable and will be with us for a long time to come.

Britney Spears is on Twitter!

twitter When I was younger, I thought Britney Spears was the most incredible thing in the world. Over time I’ve come to realize that she’s not, and that I can like her music without necessarily being a fan of her. Besides, she doesn’t need me – she’s got millions of fans around the world. And that’s exactly what makes the news of her official Twitter account so interesting:

I’ll say this, though. This is solid gold for Twitter. A few more of these and it will be hard to argue that it isn’t going mainstream.

There’s more discussion at Techmeme. If you’re on Twitter, you can follow Britney here.

The Twitter account is part of her newly relaunched website. It also includes links to her profiles on YouTube, MySpace, and Facebook. Obviously it’s not Britney herself spending the time to engage with fans on all of these sites, her people are doing that for her. To their credit, they’re up-front about that. Here’s the bio on Twitter:

Yes! This is the real Britney Spears! We’ve got updates from her team, her website and yes, even Britney herself!

Michael Arrington is right – if Twitter continues to sign up high profile celebrities, it’ll be hard to argue that Twitter is not going mainstream. I can’t confirm if this is legit or not, but I’m pretty sure that Kanye West is officially on Twitter too.

I wonder who will join Twitter next?

UPDATE: A few others I know about – David Usher and Matthew Good

UPDATE (11/24/2008): It seems Britney’s team has worked some magic, she is now simply @britneyspears. If you were following her old account, you’ve automatically be migrated.

EdmontonTweetup3 – October 30th

EdmontonTweetup

The Twitter community here in Edmonton continues to amaze me. New users sign up every day, and existing users do a good job of following one another. As a result, there are really interesting discussions taking place all the time. Quite a few people have adopted the #yeg hashtag too, making it even easier to find Edmonton-related items on Twitter.

A tweetup is an opportunity to strengthen those online relationships and perhaps forge new ones offline. Or if you’re new to Twitter, it’s a great way to come and find out what all the fuss is about. Some people will undoubtedly talk about tech at the event, but for the most part it’s a non-geeky get-together. Join us for some food, drinks, and good discussion. Here are the details on EdmontonTweetup3:

WHO: Twitterers and the Twitter-curious in Edmonton and area!
WHAT: An event to meet one another in person.
WHERE: Devlin’s Cocktail Lounge on Whyte Avenue (map)
WHEN: Thursday, October 30th, 2008 at 6:00pm
WHY: Because you need to get off the computer once in a while!

I hope you can make it out! If you’re planning to attend, please add your name to the wiki page so that we have an idea of how many people to expect. Follow edmontontweetup and/or myself on Twitter for updates.

See you there!

What's trending right now?

twitter It’s been nearly three months since Twitter purchased Summize and renamed it Twitter Search. They still haven’t integrated Twitter Search into the main site, but they have made a number of other improvements:

Those last two points are the most important, I think. When you visit the Twitter home page, it asks you a simple question: “What are you doing?” Until now, that question has been Twitter in a nutshell. Moving forward though, I think a new question becomes equally as important: “What’s trending right now?”

I’ve said for a long time (with regards to Twitter) that there’s value in noise. It might seem dumb or trivial for me to post a tweet that says I am sleeping, but what if everyone did? Heck, we don’t even need everyone, just a sizable percentage. Then we could ask the question “how many people are sleeping right now?” and have real numbers to answer it with.

Twitter seems to have two sides now – gathering the noise, and filtering it.

Lots of people already contribute to the noise on Twitter, and I think their user base will only continue to grow. So they’ve got that covered. Increasingly it seems that Twitter is working to extract value from that noise. That’s the area they need to focus on most. I’m not sure how they plan to monetize their creation, but I suspect this is a big part of it.

The Election 2008 site seems like an experiment. If it goes well, I’d expect them to launch a number of other mini-sites in the future. I wouldn’t be surprised if they somehow expanded on the trending entries on the blog too.

For me, Twitter Search is already the #1 stop for news. It’s where I learned that O.J. Simpson was found guilty, and that the bailout plan had passed. I think others will increasingly turn to Twitter Search first also.

You tell Twitter what you’re doing, and they’ll tell you what’s trending. I can’t wait to see where this leads!

Canadian Politicians on Twitter

twitter Canadians will be heading to the polls on October 14th to elect the 40th Canadian Parliament. That means it is officially election season here in Canada! For those of us fascinated with the American election however, it has been election season for months already. It kind of feels like Canada is playing catch-up to the US.

Similarly, our political leaders are playing catch-up to their counterparts south of the border – at least on Twitter. Barack Obama has amassed 75,000 followers on Twitter, and Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden also have accounts. John McCain doesn’t use a computer of course, so he doesn’t have an official Twitter account, though his followers have set this one up. There are dozens of members of Congress on Twitter.

Here in Canada, we now have two well-known politicians using Twitter:

  • Prime Minister Stephen Harper (English & French)
  • NDP Leader Jack Layton (English & French)
  • Bloc Quebecois Leader Gilles Duceppe (French) – official?
  • Green Party Leader Elizabeth May (English) – official?
  • National Director of the Liberal Party of Canada, Greg Fergus (English)

No sign of Stephane Dion, Gilles Duceppe, or Elizabeth May just yet (I’ll update the post if I find they have created accounts).

The Globe and Mail on Friday wrote about the Prime Minister getting his microblog on:

Like rats scurrying up the ropes before an ocean liner departs, politicians have sharp noses for knowing when to hop aboard a trend. It’s not just Harper. Barack Obama Twitters. All told, the Twitter population has passed the two-million mark.

So far @pmharper has 333 followers, while @jacklayton has 286. Though both probably have staff members updating for them, the style of posts on Jack Layton’s account make it seem as though it could be him.

Have you come across any other Canadian politicians on Twitter?

UPDATE: Track Canadian political conversations on Twitter using govtweets.
UPDATE2: Also check out electopinion.ca which tracks Twitter.
UPDATE (12/2/2008) The Liberals have launched a new account, @LiberalHQ.
UPDATE (12/12/2008) I should mention @M_Ignatieff, the new Liberal Party Leader.