David John Mead

So Ricky Gervais gave up on Twitter…

…and more power to him.  You could tell from his first tweet that this wasn’t his idea, and his last one put paid to the idea that he’d be using twitter anytime soon. Floated as a way to promote his hosting of the upcoming Golden Globes he just didn’t seem to see the point and said so on his blog (you may have to scroll to week 100 as I can’t link to individual posts).

If I want to tell a friend, famous or otherwise what I had to eat this morning, I’ll text them.

And that’s why I say more power to him. He gets online media. He’s been podcasting, blogging, and vlogging for sometime.  All with a specific project or purpose in mind. He’s found the methods that work for him and work very well too. Why distill the message for the sake of using the “fad-du-jour”?

Technorati tags: goldenglobes, tweet, rickygervais, twitter

Strangers in my Twitter feed

Twitter has been going into overdrive recently, updating their online experience to (I assume) catch up with the plethora of apps that make use of the service.

Since the site has become my only way to interact with the service I’ve liked a lot of the subtle improvements. Having the site update with new tweets has been meant I don’t have to continually hit F5. Lists offer a way to organize and share, similar to Facebook’s feeds.

The latest is re-tweeting on the site, something apps like twirl and tweetdeck have offered for sometime.  Even on those apps I prefer to pass the tweet along with a little tinkering instead of just hitting the re-tweet button – that’s just me.  But the way Twitter is implementing it on the site doesn’t sit great with me (see screenshot). It feels like strangers are popping up in my feed. Names and faces that I don’t know and my initial reaction is “I’m getting SPAM” until I’ve looked a little closer.

I applaud the efforts that developers are doing, and maybe I’ll get used to it, but for now I’d like a way to turn it off.

Twitter’s big announcement?

There’s been quite the buzz around Twitter for the past couple of weeks and apparently tomorrow (well, today as I type this very late) is going to be a “very big day“. Now that could mean anything from Oprah is now using it to they’ve sold out to Google or Facebook and its being closed down.

My hunch is going to be about funding or the unveiling of a revenue/advertising model.

One things for sure. Since the announcement the Doug Bowman was leaving Google and joining Twitter there’s been a ramp up on the look and feel of the site. Subtle changes depending on users and even where you are logging in from.

I first started noticing a small box giving tips and insights about Twitter and the culture of “tweeting”.  Is this a foreshadowing of where we can expect to see advertising go?

As I don’t visit the site much (I use tweetdeck) I’ve been making a point to login from time to time to see if anything else was being changed.

First the pagination at the bottom of the page was replaced by a “more” bottom which expand the list of tweets. Another little bit of Javascript goodness I noticed is the post notification that appears at the top of the screen.

All the other major tweaks have been happening in the right side bar.  Look at the differences between my page and @jules23’s, taken seconds apart. She has a little indicator on what section she is looking at as well as a search box and trending topics.

Today I noticed that the information in the sidebar has been condensed even further. Updates, Favorites, and Following are the only three options there.

Hopefully the announcement will clear up some of the rumors and we’ll able to see where all this current iterations will take us.

Technorati tags: twitter, announcement, changes, ui, design

Observations for those new to Twitter…

I just want to say up-front that this isn’t a “score big” on Twitter list.  Following these observations won’t get you automatically in the same league as Robert Scoble or Guy Kawasaki.  I just wanted to capture these and share.
Take them as you will.

Businesses

If own or work for a business think and plan about going on to Twitter.  It can be a big win for you in regards to customer reach and transparency, but, it can also big a huge headache internally.  Depending how big a company you are, various departments including legal, sales, and customer service may all be touch points.

• Secure a Twitter profile for your company name
• Think about how employees are going to use it (@FirstnameCompany perhaps?)
• Answer, in public. Even if it’s just to say someone will contact them – Then follow through, because if you don’t they’ll be twice as vocal
• Listen. Listen. Then listen some more. Get a feeling of which of your customers are on Twitter and what they are saying.  Then start joining in
• If you’ve set up an account just for customer service make sure the link in the profile points to your customer service page.
• You did fill in your profile didn’t you?
• Check your replies and direct messages as often as possible
• Use the company logo as your profile picture
• Set up an auto follow

Individuals

If you are taking those tentative first steps don’t feel you have to follow everyone who follows you.  Some are people are just automated MLM’s, some, some are just boring.

• It’s okay to un-follow someone
• It’s okay to block someone (especially if they are automated marketing bots)
• Post whenever and whatever – its not a blog, its a thought
• Use the reply and direct message links more often
• Check your replies tab. Someone may be there you aren’t following or is in a different time zone
• Have fun
• Set up your mobile phone on Twitter so you text message

Tools

• Tweetscan – set up alerts on your name/company/product/interests
• Use Hashtags (#sxsw) for events or things
• Play with desktop apps such as Snitter, Twhirl, Tweetdeck or online versions like HelloTxt
• Use a URL shortner (most apps do this automatically)
• TwitterKeys add a little life into tweets and save space
• TwitPic for posting photos

Lingo

• tweet = a post to Twitter
• RT = re-tweet, passing along someone else’s tweet
• FTW = For The Win (very good)

I’m sure there’s other stuff but it’s late (early).  One last thing I’ve noticed is people adding a background graphic with their photo and a lot of URLs, such as blogs, email addresses etc. to their Twitter pages and I’m wondering why?  Its a serious question.  I just don’t get it.

• No one can click on any of those links
• You can’t copy & paste any of it
• The background slides under the main timeline and obscures it
• It won’t be indexed by Google, or anything else for that matter
• Anyone using a desktop app or third-party aggregator to read tweets will never see it

See you on Twitter

Technorati tags: twitter, tips

Response time is a factor…

Your ability to respond online is a vital factor today. Especially if your site and reputation could be at risk. Case in point Twitter and direct messages.

Twitter lets you send a private message directly to someone else that is following you by placing a “D” in front of their user ID.
D davidmead this is private, shh!
But quite a few people were under the assumption that if you placed “DM” in front it would work the same – not so.

Someone found these not-so-private private messages floating around and created a site called DMfail which listed them for all to see. It was covered on TechCrunch and there were plenty of tweets about it.

Twitter was quick to implement a change and now if you did place a “DM” instead of a “D” your message was private once more, rendering DMfail without content. All this in a matter of hours.

It’s great that they can be quick enough to remedy this as promptly as they did, but I still find it funny that Twitter has not implemented OAuth if their users security was utmost in their minds.

Whatever type of website you run you must have this thought in the back of your mind at all times – As soon as it’s live, it’s not mine anymore. Search engines, scrapers, and browsers all enable whomever to do virtually whatever they want with your content. You have to be listening and have the ability to respond at all times.

Dangers for celebrities on Twitter

As we’ve seen technology such as blogging, social networks, and micro-blogging become a real option for marketers to “spread the word”, the celebrity has started appearing online.

This instantaneous delivery can work wonders to promote a product or person but more and more I’m starting to hear rumblings of discontent from the “early adopters”.  This doesn’t seem to stem from the fact that advertising is creeping into Twitter streams (we all knew it was just a matter of time) as most people who’ve been online for some time can sniff out the fake blogs or hyped tweets.

What’s happening is some of the real celebrities are writing and putting their own thoughts out into the electronic ether – and “fans” are finding them dull or overbearing.

One celeb on Twitter I follow is Stephen Fry.  To me he get’s it, sending photos from his iPhone and following everyone who follows him. He fits in.

But my wife has recently stopped following someone she really liked (acting wise) because they turned out to be very “full-of-themselves” online. I too tried to follow someone I liked on-screen but found it was just too much.  They just weren’t interesting at all.

Now I’m not saying that every celeb is dull as dishwater, far from it.  Just that they (and their marketing folks) should think twice about stepping out from behind the curtain.  Dropping followers, or worse being blocked, could go to losing points both online and in “the real world”.

Technorati tags: celebrities, twitter, damage, marketing, social networks

Is this the end of Twitter as we know it?

As a reader of Simon Willison’s blog, I came across this tool that he created with Natalie Downe – Tweetersation.

Now this tool lets you combine peoples conversations on Twitter in one time line.  Pretty cool.  So I can now just enter a few peoples names or id’s and I can see the whole conversation I caught the tail end of.

How does this fit with the title? Well, more and more I’m seeing Twitter being absorbed into or used by other tools/applications.  Most Web2.0 social sites let you post to or display from Twitter.  Other people are building tools to show the mood, locale, to search and monitor, and general pull or push whatever they can through the API.

So is that what Titter should resolve itself to be – Just an API to hang communication on?  Maybe that could be it’s business model.  How many people are actually logging in to the Twitter website as opposed to using it through something like HelloTxt or their phone, Snitter, Flock or Twhirl.

As netizens shift from shiny object to shiny object I believe Twitter will still be there.  I just don’t think we’ll be as aware of it’s presence as we are now.  It’ll just be that thing we use to communicate.

Technorati tags: twitter, api, future

TweetFeed in beta

So there’s a new little site called TweetFeed (beta) that’s been pulling time away from my other online pursuits.

TweetFeed lets you build pages to display the latest Twitter activity around any topic or keyword. This means with a set of advanced search commands and a little tweaking to the HTML & CSS you can build pages like this one about power outages on September 14th (we are experiencing the after-effects of Hurricane Ike).

TweetFeed gives you a real nice set of operators, though it does take a little finagling to get some of my pages to show results.  I think a big part of this isn’t TweetFeed but more how people construct their tweets.

This might be a good tool to see how and why people are talking about you or your product or an event (if Twitter sorts out their XMPP service).

Why not sign up and give it a go.

PS – This would’ve posted last night but guess what. Our power went out at 10.30pm.

Technorati tags: twitter, feeds, tweetfeed, power, outage, tracker, conversation