Twitter Rules | uber.la

Mar 08 2010

Rockin the Tweets: Twitter Tools, Twitter Lists, Stats, Discovery #Twitter

Category: code is poetry, community building, connections, how do i?, lifestreaming, social media, tools — jmacofearth @ 8:13 am

So all the BUZZ around Google Buzz seems to be around simplicity and not having too many followers or having too much noise due to those followers. Here's something I want to let you know. It's not the tool (twitter vs buzz vs facebook) it's how you manage it. So here's a few ideas I'd like to share around managing your social media status-sphere. It really doesn't matter if you are trending towards Buzz over Twitter. What matters is how you use it.

First up: Twitter Lists.

What are they? Why you need 'm. And why your Tweetdeck or Hootsuite lists are different.

Here is my page of Twitter list links: http://uber.la/tools/twitter-lists

So what I would like to ask you, as you are starting to re-frame your social media accounts is this, "If I can't add you to one of my Twitter lists I probably shouldn't be following you in the first place."

There is a 500 tweep limit for Twitter lists. So beyond that you will have to create 2nd and 3rd lists to keep your "austin friends" together in your lists. You will notice I have an "austin friends" and an "austin friends 2" lists. This is not an indication of favoratism, but merely a reaching of the Twitter List 500 tweep maximum. I suspect I will be giving up my "tennis" list or my "cats and dogs" list in the future to build an "austin friends 3" list. But not today. (grin)

RULE of TWITTER ADDITION: before you click "follow" figure out what list you are going to add someone to and then do both. 1. Follow; 2. Add To List.

RULE of TWITTER SUBTRACTION: if you are following someone and you can't put them on a list, perhaps you should consider unfollowing them. 1. Examine who you follow; 2. Add all "friends" to a list; 3. UF, unfollow everyone you cannot place on one of your lists. (Why were you following them in the first place?)

Next: Twitter Tools

Fact: You can't manage Twitter on Twitter.com. You need tools. Aside from the Twitter Tools Matrix, here is the shortlist for Twitter clients I recomend.

1. Tweetdeck; 2. Seesmic; 3. Hootsuite. And more recently, a Mac-only favorite is Nambu.

Next: Twitter Stats and Analytics

While following and being followed in Twitterville is interesting, almost as interesting and potentially more valuable is the tools that allow you to see what people are tweeting about. Example: during the SuperBowl 2010 the hashtags #nfl and #superbowl and #superbowlads were quite popular with tweeters who were rating the advertisements that were paying over a million dollars per 30 sec. slot. So if your ad didn't "trend" within these hashtags you can bet the audience mostly ignored it, or forgot about it. And there were a number of unremarkable ads.

TERM: "Trending." When something is trending on Twitter it means the Tweet volume is so large that it is showing up as one of the top twenty most frequent words being tweeted.

So what tools are my most used when looking at Twitter trends? Here are my top Twitter stats and analytics tools.

1. TwitterVenn (making Venn diagrams out of trends is fun and easy); 2. TwitterFall (a visual browser for seeing hashtags and searches) ; 3. Twitter Trends Map (see the topics that are trending worldwide);

Finally: Twitter Discovery Tools

Finding new people to follow, new trends to track and new hashtags to search for is all part of the beauty of Twitter.

1. Mr. Tweet (who you follow and who they recommend); 2. FriendorFollow (are they following you back?); 3. NearbyTweets (how's close to you and tweeting?); 4. Twittoria (information about your flock)

Take the time to add value to your Tweets. Don't just follow to gain followers. If you can't put them on a Twitter List, don't follow them. Lists will become the new marker of Twitter Authority.

No, you can't ask me to add you to a list. I must discover you and add you manually. Yes, you can ask me, but I'm likely to… consider it first.

@jmacofearth
permalink: http://bit.ly/rule-twitter

You Are My Filter One of My Filters Thank You for Not Wasting My Time

Category: about me, just click it (links), lifestreaming, social media, speed the web, tech opinion, trust & reputation — jmacofearth @ 4:08 pm

I started the Just Click It series of posts a week ago because I wanted to share my wanderings in a more coherent way. Here's what I mean.

Most days I spend a few hours (could be many) on the computer, much of that time is spent moving around the web in random ways to find useful nuggets for my brain. Now my meandering is not necessarily random if you know a little bit about me.

I work in (and try not to obsess about) social media, so many of the things I write about or tweet about have to do with social media
I love music, so I will often throw in a music video or playlist as my thematic background
When something strikes me as laugh-out-loud funny I do my best to share it
I wax philosophic about the web, my participation in it or avoidance of it
The wonders of the world never cease to amaze, and if I find something outrageously scientific or odd that will often find a way into my stream

So what am I doing? What I call my lifestream is a collection of outputs of my wanderings, rantings, tweets, muses and entertainments. If you are connected to me via social media, and you have similar interests you will likely find something pre-approved and annotated by yours truly. Now if you don't care for my tastes the "stream" may come off as random and useless. This is how most people experience Twitter for the first time.

I often hear, "Why do I care what your having for lunch or when you are going to the bathroom?"And for that I don't have a great answer. "You don't and you shouldn't." But I am not the ruler of Twitter or how people use it. But I can unfollow at any time. And I might just put out an original thought or two about how people "should" use Twitter. Of course, that is according to ME.

Other things I say to new Tweeters:

Find someone you are interested in and follow them.
Follow just a few people and listen.
And for goodness sake don't start tweeting about things you hate others tweeting about just to join in.

My rule of thumb is taken from the Talking Heads song, Psycho Killer, "When I have nothing to say, my lips are sealed/ say something once, why say it again?"

And so, for the purposes of this metaphor I am filtering the universe of the web and serving up only the bits that I find important, funny, or amazing. That's MY directive. If it doesn't fit that criteria you won't hear me or read me chatting, blogging or tweeting about it.

And in my quest to get better at focusing, I am unfollowing people at a rapid rate for several Twitter uber-violations. *These are my rules, so if you don't agree, let me know what you think in the comments, that's why they're OPEN.*

I'm going to get a Diet Coke. I'm going to bed. I'm going to eat.
Get a 1,000 followers in 10 minutes.
The dentist isn't telling you all about Teeth Whiteners because they are evil.
I can show you how to make more money than you can dream about using Twitter.
Come see my sexy pics, I'm lonely.
The best deal on Flat Panel TVs just got better, click here for our lowest price yet!
Anything you can quote I can quote better. (Again if you don't have anything to say, it's best to be quiet. Even if I like the quote I'm likely to unfollow you. No big loss. But I don't need you to become my Famous Quotes researcher.)
And yes even FollowFridays can piss me off at times. Better known as #FF or #FollowFridays, these are usually a long list of Twitter promoters pimping their friends and family to get more followers. There was this "lion guy" Tweeter that #ff'd me week after week. At first I was like, "Gee dude, thanks." Later when I went to look at his Tweetstream… Guess what? … It was ALL #FF. That's all this person did. Talk about working the follower network.

And that's it. If you try and Tweet things of value, what ever that value is to you, then we're golden. If you start to hammer me with coupon-type stuff, or what you're having for lunch, I might UF. (I'm not a foodie.) Worse, if I think you're WAY off, I'll probabaly let you know.

I've been accused of being harsh at times. *I apologize.* But what I hate is people wasting other people's time. So I will do my best to keep it clean, and to Value the Tweet. And I'm working towards making my emails only 140 characters too. Think about how efficient that would be. "Here's why I'm writing, here's what I need." I'll save the love letters for my wife.

@jmacofearth
permalink: http://bit.ly/i-am-a-filter

Tags: 140 character emails, good twitter habits, i am a filter, just click it, love letters for my wife, new to twitter, newbies, not a foodie, twitter rules, twitterrules, value the tweet, why i tweet

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Jun 25 2009

Blocking and Tackling On Twitter: I Guess It Could Be Worse

Category: tech opinion, tech reviews, tools — jmacofearth @ 7:01 am

So it's easy as pie to follow or unfollow someone. One click on the old tweet page will do it. (I would argue Twitter needs to give us more than 20 tweeps per page, but for what we have now, it's not too bad.)

But then we have BLOCKING.

Here are three cuties, that I'm sure have nothing but the best intentions in following me… BUT. In an effort to provide value to my followers I have been checking downstream in those that follow me as well as who I follow to make sure I am deleting the scammers and pornsters.

So this trio of goodness arrived yesterday and instead of the nice big follow button, I have the "block" link. And when I click it, I get an intermediary screen like this:

Which is not a terrible thing, but it makes the process of BLOCKING require two to three times as many steps.

I can click to follow. CLICK. I can click to UNFOLLOW. CLICK. But in order to get rid of my hangers-on, I have to

1st CLICK > Block.

2nd Click "Okay, I still want to block this person"

and sometimes it doesn't take, and I have to do the whole thing again.

Why all this seriousness about BLOCKING?

So I propose that TWITTER make BLOCK as simple as FOLLOW or UNFOLLOW. Cause the riff raff out there is only going to get more intense and the value of the tweet is going to be that much harder to explain.

@jmacofearth
permalink: http://uber.la/archives/3673

Some related Twitter Postings and Position Statements:

Tags: block, block followers, follow, getting real with twitter, not one more flap out of you, twitter, twitter criticism, twitter critique, twitter fail, twitter must die, twitter rules, twitter ui, twitter ux, twitterfail, unfollow

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May 20 2009

Good 2 Great Content – How Do You Cross Post and Promote Your Best Writing?

Category: about me, community building, executive learnings, just for fun, lifestreaming, social media, speed the web, tech opinion, trust & reputation — jmacofearth @ 6:17 pm

So we write and we write and we write. And if we work it really hard we get a hundred or so folks to visit our blog (people other than friends and family) and that's it. Done?

What are the additional options for your content? You can Tweet it. You can cross post it. You can try to get a guess writing gig on Mashable or RWW. You can chat, IM and email about it. But over the course of the last six months I have found the following alternate strategies work for me. Now there is always too much of a good thing, so with any cross posting or excerpting strategy it is best to reserve these ideas for your BEST content and not everything. Cause we all know, everything is NOT wonderful, it's miscellaneous!

inSocialMedia (a professional NING network with almost 3k members focused on Social Media for business)

Having been invited to be an Admin of inSocialMedia I can promote good posts on the front page. This week it happens to be one of mine. (grin)

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Posterous (a free blogging platform, easily updated via email and SMS)

One of the great features of posterous is the ability to create posts from SMS and Emails. And then there's a little "Post to elsewhere" link, seen above, that can repost to Facebook, Tumblr, Google Pages and Twitter. I often repost stuff to Posterous and use their tool to put the post on my Facebook page, my legacy Google blog and Tumblr. I usually don't use Posterous to do my Tweeting. I try to keep my Tweets under tight control.

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LinkedIN (posting in your status update is one technique, but the action is in the Groups)

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Facebook (again the wall is good, and high visibility, but the discussions in the groups, if you find a lively one, are much more interactive.

The OpenAustin facebook page started by Whurley has some active discussions about the City of Austin website controversy. If you have content that addresses an issue, you might find a group that is aligned with that issue.

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Specific commenting on high-value blogs

This post by Patrick Morehead of AMD has gotten thousands of views. And my comment is number one right at the bottom of the first page. Engaging with the tech community via commenting has some great advantages. The company may even take notice of you at some point. Patrick and I have become friends first via blogging and comments and at SXSWi we met face to face. I count him as a mentor and visionary. And when I see that he has posted one an important topic I will go give it a read. Sometimes I have something to add. And when I do, I may pick up a hand-full of the viewers of his original post.

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Best-of Tweets

Occasionally I will broadcast a Tweet with a "best of" Uber.la tag. For example I will occasionally RT my Twitter Rules AND the 1-2-3 Guide to Twitter.

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Collective Pages on your site. This is one of the most powerful concepts. If you look at my site, I have tried to organize it more like a web site than a blog. That's because I hope that the content I am writing is more like a book and less like a newspaper. So I have collected some of the concepts on pages that are tabs across the top of my site. One example is the InfoStreams. I am working on a series of posts on the top InfoFeed tools that I use and how I use them.

If I do my work well, the posts become chapters of that "book" or tab. And the Infostream Strategies tab becomes a reference site for people looking to get a handle on various concepts of social media. If these "posts" were burried in my "archives by date" or even tags like "twitter" or "friendfeed" it would be easy to imagine them vanishing into the blog stream and no longer being found or referenced.

That's it for now. Please add any good ideas you have and I will approve your comments here and share them with a broader audience.

@jmacofearth
permalink: http://bit.ly/good2great

Associated Posts:

Tags: 1-2-3 guide to twitter, alternate strategies, amd, best-of, blog commenting, conversations, crosspost, excerpt, facebook, fire everything, followers, following, friends and family, google, google pages, high value blogs, high visibility, infostream, Infostream Strategies, inSM, insocialmedia, lifestream, linkedin, lively one, mashable, patrick morehead, posterous, retweet, rss feeds, rss of life, social media strategies, tight control, tweets, twitter rules, twitter tools

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May 04 2009

Doin Social Media – WIIFM – Whuffie – Creating Beauty Online and WIIFY

Category: about me, code is poetry, community building, teaming & leadership, tech opinion, trust & reputation — jmacofearth @ 9:55 am

I am not a target!

When you are doing "social media" what exactly are you spending your time on?

My current "social" make up.

Research and Data Mining (20%)
Writing (40%)
Connecting – Personal (15%)
Discovery and Exploration (15%)
Connecting – Business (10%)

The question is response to most requests for participation is WIIFM? (Or What's In It For Me?) And what this usually means, is "what's the business proposition for this particular interaction and how will it benefit me, cause I'm busy and I've got to make a living and there's a lot of stuff out here to pay attention to, so get to the point, and quickly."

But there are certain connection points in social media that have ZERO WIIFM value. ZERO.

Examples: gaming online, facebook groups, facebook causes, open social projects (wikipedia et. al), tagging photos of others, poetry, inviting FB friends to music events, blip.fm, 80% of twitter content (and I'd argue that about 50% of the WIIFM Twitter traffic is really about the ME who is tweeting the info rather than What's In It For You.

But that's where I am moving my own participation a little bit to the left of the WIIFM scale.

So I propose, WIIFY (What's In It For You) as the new standard by witch to judge your own "SOCIAL" media participation.

How do I provide YOU-centered content? What do I create that might make you SMILE. Not buy something from me, or promote me, but merely a smile on YOUR FACE. That gives me energy and ideas for 1000 more WIIFY engagements. And personally here's how I have been implementing it (not consciously until just now) on Twitter.

My Tweets fall in two main categories.

1. Links and Information that YOU can use. (Because I am into social media I try and make my learnings available to everyone I come in contact with. In fact I would guess I am overly enthusiastic about social media and I want to share EVERYTHING rather than miss that one little spark that might light you up.)

2. Links or thoughts that might make you smile. Beautiful images, random thoughts, Twitter Joker stuff, jokes (but not really the kind you forward around in emails to folks), songs that have struck me a certain way (and I try to add how the moment or music resonates with me – blip.fm), poetry (see haiku 2 twitter, songwriting (ways that I express myself both positive and negative sides of life experience), RTing stuff that resonates with me, promoting other's ideas, and finally just simple serendipitous joy! (and no I did not spell that correctly the first time, but WordPress didn't know the word either… so there! AND if I can't spell it I'd better do a good job of explaining what I mean. Oh heck, let's let the social mob do that for us, Wikipedia says "Serendipity is the effect by which one accidentally discovers something fortunate, especially while looking for something else entirely."

And here is my serendipitous add to your information today. The wikipedia goes on to say, "The word has been voted as one of the ten English words that were hardest to translate in June 2004 by a British translation company.^[1] However, due to its sociological use, the word has been imported into many other languages (Portuguese serendipicidade or serendipidade; French sérendipicité or sérendipité but also heureux hasard, "fortunate chance"; Italian serendipità; Dutch serendipiteit; German Serendipität; Swedish, Danish and Norwegian serendipitet; Romanian serendipitate)."

Now if that isn't of value to YOU today, we might be on different planets. And that's okay too. Cause if our circles connect, even in a few places, we will find value in the "relationship" a some point. And that value, in my mind is more about hearts and sparks and inspiration than making sale.

That's it. I don't sell myself on Twitter. I don't ask you to RETWEET or FOLLOW me. I have not get 50k followers by the weekend strategies and I earn my followers by providing something of value to THEM. If you are just going for the numbers, have fun. If you are acutally participating in the "social" web you will find that there realy is NOT ENOUGH TIME FOR BS! So if my Whuffie is too low and you feel my tweets are boring, then by all means, follow me no more. But if I provide enough WIIFY juice, then I hope you have the prowess to RT or comment or DM me somewhere on some platform about something.

@jmacofearth
permalink: http://bit.ly/WIIFY