My friends who are somewhere in the middle have Twitter accounts, but don’t use them like I do. (I.e., they don’t tweet via sms, or use it to ask questions of the cloud, etc.) They snicker when they see me tweet in public, but at home and work, they’re checking in regularly. I’m don’t want to discuss these Twitter-closet folks.

The people I want to discuss are those who don’t understand it at all. When I try to explain it to my co-workers, I’m a little timid. Most of the time, I don’t even bother even though I’ve found it very valuable for keeping my finger on the pulse of what’s happening in the Twin Cities. I try to explain how I’ve made friends IRL through Twitter, etc., but their eyes glaze over and I give up.

How do you explain Twitter (and services like it) to those who are unfamiliar or resistant to it?Similar Posts:

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It was really a good event for those of us in Minneapolis who are interested in current and emerging web technology. The interesting this to me is how much Twitter added to the experience for those of us participating.

If you weren’t monitoring things on Twitter, you really missed out on an ongoing conversation. The most obvious observation is that there was a general air of excitement about the event and a lot of people were merely expressing that sentiment in real time. That had one benefit: I was able to get a sense of what was happening in sessions that I was not attending. At least once it influenced my decision to bail out of one session in favor of another.

The second, perhaps more valuable thing about Twitter at the event was a stream of continuous feedback. We were not 30 seconds into the conference before someone was commenting on the @klayon‘s introduction. Tracking “#minnewebcon” from my cell phone was like having an ear to the wall. The best part about that? The organizers of the event responded directly to me about a couple of comments I made. They were paying attention and that’s important.

There will be more formal methods for providing feedback in the next few days, but if you want to troubleshoot the problems in real-time and address them, Twitter is your friend.Similar Posts:

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Do you see the value now?Similar Posts:

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Failings: There’s no compelling reason for most people to use it, and many existing services — ranging from AIM to FriendFeed to social networks — have overlapping functionality. And how is it supposed to make money?

That’s the $10,000 question isn’t it? (Pun intended.) Where’s the money in it?

When I was a senior in high school (in 1988), a teacher once told me that in the near future information would be the key factor in success and power. It sounded good, but I didn’t quite get what he was talking about at the time. Now look at us. Google is the case and point for what he was talking about.

The information contained in Twitter is not as voluminous as what Google has to offer, but it’s immediate. I know within seconds if someone is tweeting about something I’m tracking on Twitter. Seconds. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to figure out a potential use for that information. And the last I checked, Twitter was still the most popular of the micromedia sites out there. I think it could go somewhere. You?Similar Posts:

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Where I work, we’re doing a study where we monitor a group of participants for 4 years. They come to the clinic every 4 weeks to have their blood drawn and fill out a survey. We also monitor their symptoms. It’s a study on mononucleosis. None of these participants have been exposed yet. We’re waiting to see when they are exposed. We want to see how sick they get and what the risk factors are.

Now every 2 weeks I send them a reminder to log in to our website and report any symptoms they may be having at the time. (It’s a simple little homebrewed application I developed. Thank you very much.) The process is fairly painless and once you’ve done it once, you can generally complete it in under a minute.

What if we used Twitter (or a Twitter-like tool) to do the same thing? Study participants follow a department profile. Once every two weeks a tweet goes out that says, “Have a sore throat? Fatigue? Swollen or Tender glands? Reply ‘d @truetone yes’”. We’d reach participants wherever they are instantly. No waiting until they are tethered to a computer.

In this case, the immediacy is not all that necessary. But I’m sure there is research out there where it could be beneficial. Doing marketing research? What better way to instantaneously compile data? What better way to instantaneously disseminate data? See where I’m headed?

There’s a lot of talk in marketing about engaging consumers. What if we frame research in marketing terms? I know of at least one department at The Big U that already does mass mailings. Let’s bring that into the 21st century. I’m just saying, with a little imagination, we can take advantage of some really fun, cutting edge technology. It may be more than just novel. It may be important.Similar Posts:

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Sure, I didn’t jump into website development right away, but by 1999 I was working on websites. If anyone remembers the first iteration of mp3.com, they got social networking back in 1998. I was in a band at the time and bands could link to “friends”. How colloquial that all seems.

By 2003, I’d built my own PHP-based blog CMS. By 2005 I was podcasting. In 2007 I got hooked on Twitter.

What’s next? There are a lot of folks out there trying to be the next big thing. Personally, I find it all quite inspiring. I think in the next few years, some standards will emerge and all of these tools will be available to us.

Imagine using Twitter for research. All your followers get an update from you and they simply report on back with a direct message “d @truetone I’m doing this.” Blam! Instant feedback. Somehow that just seems incredibly exciting to me.

So I used to worry that I’d waited too long. No more. This is only the beginning. It’s only going to get better.Similar Posts:

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