My Twitter Formula is Twitter satisfaction = following smart folks to learn + looking at who's following who to discover + unfollowing low-value twitts.
The other night my sweet wife asked if I had seen her update on FB? Probably in response to me asking her, sounding like a doughy-eyed elementary-aged poet, "So did you read my new post, honey?"
"You didn't you see my response?"
"On twitter? Or what…" I was backtracking in my mind… "Nope must've missed it. Where did you respond?"
"On Facebook."
That one threw me. I clicked over to FB and checked out her profile… Didn't say anything about my witty repartee.
"You used FB to respond to my post?"
So I gets to thinking… And I've had these thoughts before. [see also: From Whither I Tweet] About why I have been keeping my IM clients off recently. And I almost never turn on my FB chat "show you are online" function. So, what's it all about Alfee?
[one day later I continue the story]
So I read the above post so my wife and she clarified for me, "It wasn't an update, I commented on your feed that comes to my page."
"I don't understand. There's a feed page?"
And there you have it, a self-proclaimed social media student is stumped and already imagines the crashing of his post idea.
So, I still haven't gone looking for what she was talking about. I think I know, but I don't KNOW. I will know in a bit after I go look it up. See, Facebook to me is fun and games. I'll add just about anyone who asks, unless they are a freak. But I don't really know what to DO with FB. I play Knighthood, I start groups that no one ever comments on, I join groups that no one ever comments on, I un-join groups that no longer fit my image of myself, I play Little Green Patch, I update my status, I update my band(s) info. BUT I don't really use FB to have dialogues or comments. I love FB. I see how FB and FB APPs and APIs and extensions and integrated marketing campaigns that include FB. But what is FB for? MySpace was (for me) musically oriented. LinkedIN is contacts and professional networking. Twitter is… well, twitter is another story all together. But FB is just a big blob of mashups and content and anything else you want to bolt on. I guess you can hack FB to the point of it becoming a CMS for your business. But why would I want to?
But here's my point. [Yes, I have one. More of an observation really.] More and more I am inclined to not use IM. And FB in particular I RARELY put myself "Online" so folks and "friends" can reach out and chat with me. An interesting phenominon, but it's something about circles of intimacy for me. So communties are about circles of passion. But in my circle of intimacy I am really quiet private. [Hard to believe?] My ENFP becomes an INFP when I am "off" or stressed. And as the sources of information and the demands for my attention get louder and more fierce, I am NOT socializing on some of my social networks.
IM is a huge part of the culture and communication at DELL [where I work until tomorrow, Jan 30] and has been a huge part of most of the companies I've worked at in the last 6 years. BUT IM is a fairly intimate and demanding form of communication. With comfortable friends IM can be fairly non-linear and without pressure for immediate responses. But as a I-don't-really-know-you-here's-my-IM type of thing, IM has been replaced for me by Twitter.
Observing my own logic, trying to understand what has changed I will try to explain this.
Twitter – has replaced my frequent, and some find, annoying broadcast emails. "Here's this Amazing new site where you'll never need a phone again." So now it's a tweet, "Phones are becoming obsolete, here's how… LINK." And I only have 140 characters. That's not a limit, that's a godsend. A get-to-the-point efficiency that is so lacking in many emails, and many that I write are on the wordy side. But twitter the tweets and chirps go wizzing by so fast that only the "shiney object" gets noticed. And if the tweet is like this [sorry corporate auto-tweeters who think you are adding to the conversation and wonder why I un-follow] "Great site here LINK." or worse, "My Links for August 9,2008." Then my reflexive and quikening mind just flits right over it on to the next branch of the infostream.
And that's a good filter for me. My Twitter Formula is Twitter satisfaction = following smart folks to learn + looking at who's following who to discover + unfollowing low-value twitts. And in many ways the smart people that I follow become a wide-ranging and broad filter for the storm of info raging on the web. Here's my rationale, if I take the time to type out why you should check out a link, and then post it to twitter, I am not doing it to be cute, or community-ish. I am doing it because I sincerely think it is valuable information for some reason, which hopefully I have expressed and rationalized in my tweet. So I am distilling why it's important to me and i'm taking the time to share it. For me that's a process that I don't enter into lightly, or just for fun. I play tennis and RockBand just for fun. And while Twitter is fun, I am using it to learn and listen to the somewhat coherent intelligence of the people I follow. The better the quality of my tweeters, the better quality of my tweets, the better MY overall experience and hopefully yours.
Whew!
So, a recap.
Twitter = broadcast sharing and filtering of information via your followers and following network (better network, better filter)
IM = intimate real-time and potentially asyncronous conversation where I am giving a few people access to the RAM of my working conscious brain
Email = longer sharing, connecting, reflecting and networking with my either my personal or professional networks.
and now
Blog = where I get to explore and expound on ideas that have been driving me for months or seconds, depending on the post.
Website = where the best of the infostream I am writing via the other "channels" gets distilled into pages, wikis or books, depending on the need.
Search = w w encyclopedia-wiki of truth and lies that I can dip into and probe with google and various other tools
Online Community = places on the web where I maintain and update my profile, content, comments and links, and where I meet and connect with others depending on the nature of the community.
Wow, that was a big GTD braindump for me. I think I am building a taxonomy of my own social media map by writing about the experience. That's the idea anyway.
@jmacofearth
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