Sims Learning Connections

First, if you aren’t familiar with Twitter, have a look at this great introduction from Common Craft:

I joined the Twitter bandwagon in late November, but it wasn’t until a few weeks ago that I really started to take it seriously. Now, the more I invest in it, the more addictive it becomes…I’m going to have admit I’m already pushing into a “3″ on David Armano’s Top 10 Signs You Might Need a “Twittervention”.

Twitter Use Cases:

Fortunately (in my view), many people choose to “color outside the lines” relative to the “What are you doing?” question. Here are a few of the emerging use cases I’ve noticed so far:

1. Micro-rants. For example, as I started this post I accidentally deleted some writing. I updated my Twitter with “wishing WordPress had an Undo button.” Who knows, perhaps someone will reply with something I am missing here as a way to recover? Or, at least I had self-indulgent satisfaction of have a five-second “vent.”
2. The inverse, shout-outs. Here I don’t mean intentional promotion (see Marketing use case below) but rather more the public thanks. For example, “Great tip on how to…”
   • I recently did this for a podcast I was listening to from a rather well-known author and to my surprise, I received a personal (direct) message of thanks…which then lead to a further conversation.
3. Pointers to resources without comment as to relative value. For example, “Reading ‘abc’ book”
4. Asking questions, or taking an informal poll, of your Twitter network. For example, “Is anyone using ‘xyz’ software application? What do you think?”
5. Replying to questions, commenting on updates, from other users.
6. Posting announcements. For example: “New blog post: blah blah blah”.
7. Increasing traffic to your blog or web site. Not only via the previous use case example, but from views from the link on your Twitter Profile.
8. Live-streaming conferences, either as a back-channel for others attending, or for those unable to attend.
9. Suggesting others to follow. For example, yesterday Jeremiah Owyang (@jowyang) posted: “If you follow me because I’m an analyst, get a balanced perspective by following @Gartenberg at Jupiter Research” Classy.
10. Marketing. So far I haven’t run into any outright spamming within Twitter; however, marketing is definitely creeping in. Personally, I don’t think this is a bad thing. For example, This morning I was pulled in by Xoost.com when they started to Follow me on Twitter. Of course, I’m sure the decision to Follow was all about my high-value tweets (laugh). Nope, I have to believe it is all about them given that their Bio reads: “Do you Search >100 times/day and you’d like to share your search skills? Xoost is the place for you! If you like join the BETA TEST PHASE!” and they are following over 6300 people in Twitter. Still, their Tweets looked valuable and so I am ending up Following them, and I feel fine about being marketed to for something that I am interested in. It is all good (so far). For future blog, my initial impressions of Xoost service.
11. (added shortly after first publishing) Sharing a thought fragment as potential conversation starter or for someone else to build upon. For example, I did this just now after I announced this post, when I Tweeted: “Thinking about if I should be contributing to wikis more and blogging less.” The thought was prompted by thinking about the following wiki page. Some of my thought fragments first shared in Twitter then evolve into entire blog posts later. There something about “saying it out loud” to get things rolling, again, potentially via attracting others into a conversation prior to writing a longer piece.

More at Nancy White’s Twitter Collaboration wiki page.

What I Like About Twitter:

• The value Twitter brings to me for monitoring weak or nonexistent ties (in the sense that Andrew McAfee wrote about in How to Hit the Enterprise 2.0 Bullseye, or David Armano in Twitter + Your “Far Outer Circle”.)
  • Unlike trying to keep up with the 400+ feeds in my Blogbridge feedreader (as much as I like the application), I can quickly scan Twitter updates and keep an eye out for things that interest me. I have already caught resources and news which I might otherwise have missed from either not being subscribed to a particular blog, being too far behind in my reader, or not having the topic adequately covered by one of my many search alerts. The 140 character limit is brilliant in this regard as it forces micro-abstracts.
  • Side note: I recently started using the via:Twitter tag in my del.icio.us to provide an ongoing sense of what resources I am first finding via Twitter.
• On the flip-side, the value that Twitter also brings in strengthening connections with closer friends and colleagues by following what is going on in their lives; without either of us incurring the overhead of daily one-to-one communication. This strengthening comes from both frequency and (as mentioned by Common Craft) the ability to see a fuller picture of an existing colleague’s live, assuming that the choose to reveal.
• As noted in the use cases above, pointers to good resources that I would otherwise miss.
• The Twitter culture of openness, fun, and community. I’d hate to think of the service turning total business and stuffy. As the service becomes more popular, I wonder if the predominant culture will maintain.

What I Don’t Like:

• Application instability. Fortunately, the past week has been good after some rockiness leading up to and following the latest update.
• Not knowing where a tinyURL is going. For example when it isn’t clear if this is self-promotion, a shout-out for someone else, or even a site I really don’t want to be visiting (although this has never happened and I can’t imagine that it would with those that I choose to Follow.)
• Play-by-play travel stories that go on for many updates; although, I see the benefit if using Twitter to keep family and work colleagues informed, so grace given if the person’s other updates provide value. And, back to what I like about the Service…I get to choose if the balance works for me, and can just stop Following the person if it isn’t working for me.
• Similarly, what you are eating, unless it is especially noteworthy. On the other-hand, although I don’t take advantage, I see the benefit in what music you are listening to — for another way to learn about your tastes, and also as potential recommendations for acquiring.

Tips:

Actually, this time, not so much detailed tips, but just a few items you’ll want to consider taking advantage of. Refer to the Twitter Help pages for more detail.

• Set-up your Instant Message with Twitter and then use ‘track’ to have alerts sent to you when particular words are used. Handy for following a topic; although, popular ones can quickly become overwhelming as I recently discovered with a ‘track wiki’.
• Use ‘d userID’ at the start of an update to send a private message to the userID. A means of back-channel.
• Use @ as prefix for another user’s ID. This is now handled automatically when using the recently added reply icon (the backward facing swoosh under updates)
• Use # as prefix for places, conferences and other events to facilitate Track-ing and searches. Refer to the Hashtags wiki for more on this.
• Twitter doesn’t support Search; however, Terraminds provides this service. For example, check out this search for mentions of “instructional design” in Twitter.
• Regarding picking who to Follow:
  • From Track, noticing who is talking about subjects you are tracking
  • Before following, from the person’s Profile page, I always check-out their web site and their last few pages of updates. At times I’ve chosen not to follow someone who I follow in blogs because their Twitter updates don’t interest me ; for example, more about food, music, and politics than the professional topic that attracted me to their blog writing. There choice, and mine.
  • Look at the profiles of who you are following for who they are following.
  • Thought leader = many times-over more Followers than Following, and high-value updates.
  • Bot = many times-over more Following than Followers, and useless updates.

Closing Notes:

• According to Compete, in February Twitter saw 629,531 visitors per month. This compares to Facebook’s 29 million and Myspace’s 66 million. I discovered this statistic via Steve Rubel (@steverubel) on, you guessed it, Twitter this morning.
  
• Regarding enterprise use. I am very favorable to the idea of a inside-the-firewall only “Twitter”. Others agree, for example: YNNO Research’s Can twitter support social structure in organizations
• Other services that may also cover the use cases above: Jaiku (now owned by Google), Pownce, and Tumblr. I haven’t used any of these yet. Comments or recommendations?

For Further Reading:

• (added 9 March) Sebastien Provencher’s Twitter is The New Facebook
• (added 9 March) Inc. magazine’s March 2008 article profiling Twitter founder Evan Williams: Anything Could Happen
• Howard Rheingold’s Why I’m hooked on Twitter
• Shawn Callahan’s Using Twitter to stay connected
• Robin Good’s Research, Promote And Monetize Your Online Writing: A Blogger’s Guide To Twitter
• Twitter company blog
• Twitter del.icio.us tag