Exploring Social Media (or how I met some great people through twitter!)
I was tweeting in bed the other day…
Tweeting: (verb) To tweet. Post a message composed of 140 characters or less to the Twitter service on the internet.
Ok, so I was sending this message that was composed of 140 characters or less to the Twitter service while I was in bed the other day…
Twitter?
It’s true. I tweet. I’m a twitterer. A twitizen of the twitterverse. Tweetsville population +1.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Twitter, Inc. Type Private Founded 2006 Headquarters San Francisco, California, USA Key people Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams, Biz Stone Industry mobile social network service, micro-blogging Revenue none (2008) Employees 25 Website http://twitter.com/ Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users’ updates (otherwise known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length.
Updates are displayed on the user’s profile page and delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them. The sender can restrict delivery to those in his circle of friends (delivery to everyone being the default). Users can receive updates via the Twitter website, SMS, RSS, or email, or through an application such as Tweetie, TwitterFon, Twitterrific, Feedalizr, and Facebook. Four gateway numbers are currently available for SMS: short codes for the United States, Canada, and India, and a United Kingdom-based number for international use. Several third parties offer posting and receiving updates via email. Twitter had by one measure over 3 million accounts and, by another, well over 5 million visitors in September 2008, a fivefold increase in a month.
Some of the amazing people that I follow on Twitter are from St. Louis or St. Charles and tweet about things relevant to the area around me. Some of them tweet about information security, or homeschooling, or operating systems; things that are interesting. Some of them are just interesting people tweeting about their daily lives.
In a strange sort of way, its a sharing of community information. Sometimes about the traffic around me, sometimes about news from around the world (a significant amount of the information that flowed out to the world regarding the Mumbai bombings came from people using Twitter) and it happens in real-time. It’s faster than news agencies, it’s faster than blogs. It’s broader than instant messaging. Imagine being able to instant message 200 of your friends, each of whom was interconnected to 200 other friends, who in turn were connected to… well, you get the point.
Click for larger view
It’s like a great big party on the internet, and you’re invited! Just go to http://www.twitter.com and sign up! Then go to http://search.twitter.com and search for things you like, or the city you live in and find people that you can “follow” Then start tweeting! Tweet what you’re doing, or something cool or funny you found on the internet. Read what others have tweeted and respond! Just like a party in real life, the more you interact, the more fun you’ll have. (or the more value you will get from the experience) Check out the lists over at http://twitter.grader.com for a list of highly rated people using twitter. Here’s a list of St. Louis folk that you can take a look at and follow those that look interesting: http://bit.ly/Axcm
I can get a message out to a vast number of people almost instantaneously, and receive feedback nearly as fast. I can ask a question, or post a link, or make a statement.
Today I met a handful of these folks at a Tweetup. That’s a meeting in meatspace (i.e. the real world, not on the computer – great frame rates, graphics are awesome; game play can get tedious at times) of a group of local folk who use the Twitter service.
The St. Charles, MO Tweetup was held on Dec 20th, 2008 at the TrailHead Brewing Co. and was attended by:
St. Charles, MO Tweetup at Trailhead Brewing Co
@jpickell <-that’s me!
Pictures from the Tweetup courtesy of Tojosan: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tojosan/tags/trailheadbrewery/
The conversation was always fast and diverse! We talked about Real Estate, Blackberrys, passwords, the amount of personal information that may or may not be available on the internet. We talked about our kids, and our jobs, we talked about html formatting in a blog! We talked about intersting ways of combining social media streams (Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed, etc) We really covered so much ground and everyone had so many great ideas and suggestions or experiences to share! I really wish that I had a notebook with me to be able to write down all of the great ideas that were bouncing around! I’ve tried to capture some of the websites that were discussed and I’ve listed them at the end of this article.
If you haven’t participated in a local tweetup, you really don’t know what you’re missing. In addition to all of the great conversation and socializing, it’s added a new dimension to my twitter experience that has been probably the most amazing thing of all: I now know these folks in a way that’s just not possible from just being online with them. The fact that we’ve tweeted together made it very easy and comfortable to meet them in real life. Now when I tweet to these folks, there’s a deeper, more personal connection that didn’t exist before. Do I truly know these people? Probably not, but I can tell you this: some great friendships got off to a great start because of that tweetup!
You can follow me at twitter here: http://www.twitter.com/jpickell
Here’s a partial list of just some of the really cool websites/technologies that were discussed:
Great post! Love the depth you’ve brought to this simple get together. Really find I get a lot out of these types of events. There’s learning, friendship, and food all in the same place. For me the part I enjoy most is building real world relationships.
It’s not a big scene thing yet in St. Louis but we are the town where getting together over food and drinks is the thing to do. Can’t wait to get the next one together.
Thanks for putting this post together with names, links and enjoyable write up.
Jeff,
I second Todd’s (@tojosan) opinion. Great post that isn’t too basic for people that are familiar with Twitter, but I think would help those hearing about it for the first time understand what it is all about.
I’m planning to do a story on Twitter in my next newsletter, and will be linking to this post. Figure on a bunch of hits in a few weeks.
Karen
@karenstl