Twitterfall

Byrichard

If you love watching trends on twitter then twitterfall is for you. It takes into account the top ten trends or so and automatically updates with the latest tweets from the whole of twitter. It’s great becaues you can see the trends in real time without following six thousand people. A mere 340 should be enough 😉

On a more serious note it’s a very useful tool. You wake up in the morning and see what are the top twitter stories of the day within a very short amount of time. It’s global of course, so depending on the timezones you may see a different emphasis.

There is a local view too. If you choose keywords, for example Tuttle you can seleect the geographic region, London for example, and you will see all tweets from that geographic location.

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Don’t rely on twitter in case of Emergency.

Byrichard

Snowboarding is a fun and safe sport as long as you know what you’re doing. Occasionally of course we push the limits. A few years ago whilst snowboarding with someone around La Dole we decided that rather than go back down via St Cerque we would snowboard home by passing over the ridge and down the other side. For decades both us had hiked those slopes so we knew them well.

I took one step and felt myself falling. I was face down in the snow and I called to the person I was with to know whether he could see me. He could, so I knew there was no problem. We both strapped our snowboards on and from that point we snowboarded down the slope.

In Verbier a 29 year old Entrepreneur lost his life after falling from a cliff into a rive below, from a few articles I’ve read. The conditions are unclear at the moment. What is clear though is that the people did not have a proper contingency plan or experience of the mountains. If the conditions are adverse the last thing you want to do is go off piste, especially when you’re not with a local guide who knows the mountains.

The reason I’m speaking about this particular story is that these people had some of the latest technology at their disposal. GPS enabled iphones and twitter, as is written in this article. If you’re lost in the mountains with this type of device you can get a geo loc within twenty meters of where you are. You can see a satellite view of where you are and you can see which way would be the best to get home. You can also stay put and let rescuers find you rather than attempt to make it back down. If your GPS location is within 20 meters it’s not that complicated to find two people.

The other reason I’m speaking about this is that some of those who were part of the group were tweeting the adventure. One tweet speaks about the great time they were having and how they “finished the ski day due to complete whiteout”. The next is about the 2 people missing. Screen grabs of the tweets are here.

This demonstrates the weakness of the iphone and the GPS functionality. With my phone whenever I go outdoors the GPS tracks my exact location within 20-60 meters. What this means is that if I go missing within a minute you’ll see exactly where I am if you’ve added me on Google latitude. On that note I’ve invited a few more people to follow me on google latitude. If you have an S60 Symbian phone maybe you could do the same, just as a backup.

It’s a shame it had to happen to anyone, especially since that type of accident is easy to avoid. It’s even more of a shame that Hermioneway, whom I met at LeWeb in Paris is one of those that had to go through the experience. Switzerland is a beautiful country for all those that enjoy outdoors sports and beautiful landscapes so it’s a shame that it’s overshadowed by that event.

Whether Friends count more than followers

Byrichard

As you know I’ve been working on unfollowing more and more people over the past few weeks because I felt I was missing the tweets by those who want to participate actively with me. The consequence is that I’ve found twitter to be more sociable once more.

According to a recent article what I felt was the case has been demonstrated through research.

the number of total posts eventually saturates as a function of the number of followers. This implies that users with a large number of followers are not necessarily those with very large number of total posts.

Hence, the number of people a user actually communicates with eventually stops increasing while the number of followees can continue to grow indefinitely.

1. Twitter users have a very small number of friends compared to the number of followers and followees they declare. This implies the existence of two different networks: a very dense one made up of followers and followees, and a sparser and simpler network of actual friends. The latter proves to be a more influential network in driving Twitter usage since users with many actual friends tend to post more updates than users with few actual friends.

As this article implies and demonstrates there is no reason to follow thousands of people. What you should concentrate on instead is a small network of friends because by knowing that you can find them on the site it remains relevant. The more people you follow, and the more filtering you use the more you lose.

If you follow six thousand people on twitter but use tweetdeck to keep an eye on things those following you are going to realise you’re never seeing their output. As a result of this they will unfollow you. If you’re not social with them then why bother following you anymore?

How to Make Friends and Get The Most Out Of Twitter.

Byrichard

Twitter is a multiplatform social chatroom that allows you to converse with people around the world from anywhere in near to real time. It is knowing a rapid growth and so here are a few guidelines to getting started.

140 Characters

If you thought 160 characters for SMS were limited then this limit will be even more of a challenge. That’s nothing to worry about yet, for now all you need to do is create an account and tell us what you’re doing. Don’t make it to personal.

Character building

You can’t tell us everything about you in 140 characters so please don’t try, there’s no point. Instead tell us about something you’re enjoying right now. If it’s a nice sunny tell us something you like doing. A walk is enough. In a few hours time come back and tell us something else you’ve been doing. If you met someone interesting tell us broadly why you enjoyed meeting this person. This will help us establish whether we’re interested in following someone with your character traits. Don’t worry though, you won’t give that much away anyway.

Who to follow

Do you know any bloggers or personalities that you enjoy reading about? If so then add them but not too many. It’s fun to know what they’re doing but you won’t get much of a conversation out of them.

Take a look at the timeline. Who is talking now. Who is having fun, who is doing something that you find interesting? If you find three or four people that you think may be interesting click on their name and look at their twitter timeline. Are there a lot of @ messages or a lot of links. If there are a lot of @ messages then this may be a good sign. It may mean this person is open for conversation with someone like you.

If all they do is link to content then I would think twice about following them. There’s a good chance they are not passionate twitter users. They are simply feeding links without paying much attention to what is being said. For that you might as well use an rss aggregator and get their information that way.

Are any of your friends adopting technology that you enjoy. See whether you can get them to join twitter with you. If you exchange messages with real life friends there are two benefits. The first is that you may be able to trust them. The second reason is that you can plan events with them, see what they’re doing without having to call them to find out.

Another effect is that if groups other than just your friends do this there’s a chance several communities can emerge, and occasionly get together for meetups.

Of course this means that you can plan on meeting certain people during events. If you know you’re going to a conference then see whether there’s a twitter stream, see if you can find out who’s answering to the stream. You may find some more interesting people.

Applications to use

There are three methods I would recommend using for accessing information on twitter. These are the web interface for when you’re on any computer other than your own, simply because it’s a fast and efficient way of getting to see what’s happening. When you’re not following that many people it also means you can watch the public view, scouting for new friends.The drawback is that this takes a lot of time. That’s where certain desktop apps come into play.

One of those I recommend is Twhirl, and it’s not just because I’m a seesmic user whose met Loic several times by now. It’s because it fits in well when you’ve got a laptop. You can go about all your work whilst twhirl checks every three minutes whether there are new messages. It only tells you when there’s a new @reply. There are two benefits to this.

The first of these benefits is that your mind is at ease, you’re not worrying about missing who wants to reach you because the software will fetch that automatically. The second reason is that you can quickly skim through the conversations that are taking place in real time. It’s not per keyword but don’t worry about this.

Some people like to use tweetdeck but I do not recommend this solution. When you’re new to twitter you may only be following three or four people who are active at a time. As a result it’s very easy for you to keep track of conversations, even if six hours have elapsed. For more frequent users though they’ll get confused. Confused people are lazy. They won’t bother asking you what you were refering to. They will simply not answer.

At first you’ll tell me that doesn’t matter, that you don’t care about not getting answers. Don’t worry though, after a while, and through personal connections being formed you will be dissapointed when friends don’t answer. Trust me, a lot of people feel that.

Dabr.co.uk is my favourite mobile application and it works on all 3g phones. it’s a quick and easy way to keep up with all conversations and replies. I’ve already sent thousands of messages with it, still happy 🙂

Spring cleaning

People’s tweeting styles change with time, and so do your expectations on what to get out of twitter. As a result you may be following twenty people who are local to you. When you move though your associations with them decay and after a while it may do you some good to unfollow them on twitter. you’ve still got facebook and their blog to keep up to date. Find new people that are active.

As I said earlier if you see that some people are too self promotional then unfollow them, especially when they don’t respond to your replies. It makes a lot of noise on twitter if we have three hundred replies sent without conversations actually taking place. It’s frustrating for those that follow you.

No automation

On twitter automation is your enemy, never let anything be automatic. Remember that there are real people giving their time and attention to read your stream. If all you do is send links then they will lose their desire to interact with you. This includes Last.fm lists, google likes and dislikes and more. If you write a blog post a day then rather than send a link tell people you’ve just written a post because you were inspired by that topic. If they’re active at the same time as you they go to your profile and find the link. If they’ve been following you for a few months they type three letters and your blog will appear quickly.

Conclusion

Twitter is a conversational tool. The more time you put into being conversational with fellow users the more friendships you will establish. With these friendships you may gain from professional and personal relationships. When you trave you may find people to meet without being in solitude. You’re free to do what you want with twitter but the more of your personality you put forward the more you should gain.

Why it’s a waste of time to follow certain people

Byrichard

In this article there are recommendations about who you should follow on twitter and I must admit I followed almost every one of them. I have unfollowed everyone of them except one. Chris Brogan. He’s the person whom I feel is most likely to answer a tweet directed at him.

If you’re following someone for their ideas don’t follow them on twitter if they’re not going to converse with you. It’s a waste of time and you’re missing the gems from the smaller time twitter users. Twitter is not about reaching a mass audience, it’s about reaching a focus group.

Twitter’s strenght is the way in which a cluster of people can discuss an idea and bring it to fruition. I’ve seen how tuttle went from being the Social media cafe to being called Tuttle. I watched as people talked online and wanted to meet and collaborate. Thanks to Lloyd Davis and others that idea became a reality.

As a result of this idea whenever I would drop by the Tuttle Mornings (every single Friday I was in London) I would watch as people spoke about their ideas and projects and how they wanted to keep in touch. Twitter gave them the initial contact before the meeting, as well as the follow up once they had met in person. It created a great network of people for getting things done.

If you think twitter is about following a thousand people you’re an idiot. If you think it’s about being followed by a thousand people you’re an idiot. That’s not what it’s there for. It’s there for real time conversations across a number of platforms. It’s there so that when I’m waiting for a train I check what people are doing, for when I travel to meet with friends in other cities and more.

If you’re not on twitter to converse you’re wasting my time, that’s why I’ve unfollowed over a hundred people rcently. If you’ve got something interesting to say people will mention you in their conversations, I will find your blog and I will subscribe to it. That’s the best place for ideas, they’re presented, shared and debated, all activities that take a lot more than a hundred and fourty characters, and threading for that is essential.

Now stop following those who talk, and start interacting with those that listen.

Counting follower mass by absolute tweet number

Byrichard

Dear developers,

As the number of people on twitter increases and as people get into the thousands of followers I would like to demonstrate that those thousands of followers does not amount to much. Instead I would like to count follower mass by the absolute number of each follower, added to the number of followers.

In other words if you have ten followers with ten tweets the number would be 100. If you have 1 follower with a thousand tweets then the value would be a thousand. If you have five followers each with five thousand tweets then that would give 25,000 as a value.

The point of this application would be to demonstrate that your follower mass may not be as great as you excepcted it to be. The more active your followers the higher your value on this scale.

If you develop this application let me know 🙂 I’d love to use it.

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Re-tweeting demonstrates that twitter is broken, here’s why

Byrichard

Having used Friendfeed intensly for the last two days and through reading this post I believe that twitter is on it’s way out for early adopters for one fundamental reason. The re-tweet.

Twitter is over simplified for anything but IRC like conversation and as a result of this for passionate users such as myself we bounce from the walls of twitter without an opportunity to escape it. We see links but know nothing about them. We see retweets but don’t understand them. We get replies of which conversation they were part of and in general twitter is a two message medium.

The two message medium is the way I think best illustrates how people use twitter most of the time. Too many people worry about productivity and wasting time and because they feel guilty for having a conversation on twitter they cut it off after two messages on average. As a result the twitter user often feels that they have wasted time.

In Friendfeed however you write a message, link to an article and if people like it you see how many people, including you liked the article and you can see the comments. As an effect of seeing their comments you may exchange more messages with them. It doesn’t matter when you join the conversation because the flow is still there.

This saves so much time and technology that I am really thinking of moving away from twitter to Friendfeed because it has finally come of age and is more reflective of the way people disseminate and share information for at least a few more weeks.

Anyone else feel the same? Let me know.

Geneva Tweetup during the LIFT09 Conference – Who’s Interested?

Byrichard

One of my biggest frustrations at the moment as a user of twitter is that I can’t meet with the people I chat with on a regular basis. As a result of this I am trying to find as many Geneva based twitter users as possible to organise a tweetup.

There are two options, the first is to do it at the same time as twestival but that is one event that I personally want to have nothing to do with. I was disappointed by the lack of enthusiasm that people at that event had for twitter. As a result I would prefer not to repeat that experience.

What has been suggested by Sandrine is a tweetup at the same time as the LIFT09 conference is taking place in Geneva.

For those that are not familiar with LIFT09:

Lift09 (Geneva, 25-27 Feb. 09) will look back to look ahead, exploring topics like change, solidarity, love, or design, during three days of intense networking and inspiration themed around a simple question: “Where did the future go?”

This means that quite a number of the social media scene, innovators and more should be present. As a result it will be more practical for those living in other cities.

At the same time Geneva is an international city. From the airport down to the Palais Wilson on one side and the UN plage on the other you have a multitude of International organisations. It would be an interesting opportunity to see how the International community could use and take advantage of such a simple yet ubiquitous form of communication.

Geneva based twitter users.

If you’re interested in this event just leave a comment below with your twitter username and let’s see what we can organise. You may also want to join the Switzerland tweetup group on facebook

The Forbes Intern is not wrong about twitter in Europe

Byrichard

Saw this post on techcrunch and the intern is not wrong. I left a comment on the blog. I also decided to leave that comment here.

Get out of London, get out of Paris. Get to the provinces and the small towns. get into the french speaking, Lithuanian speaking, portuguese portions of twitter and the social media. Let’s see whether people really are interested in twitter.

As an english person of course you’d be led to believe that twitter is popular. You have over 10,000 people in London alone using twitter. Now step out to Portland, Dorset and see how many twitter users are active there.

Twitter is not popular outside of the microcosm yet. Just because big names like ross, branson and others are on twittter doesn’t mean you’ve got an active group of users. It just means people heard about twitter, created an account but then not followed it up with actual tweeting, especially not in sufficient quantity for it to be considered anything more than a fad yet.

I say this as a former London twitter user now living in Switzerland where people are still rather pessimistic about twitter and it’s value.

Of course people have heard about it but it fails to have any relevance until the time when their friends in the physical world come and participate.

The intern isn’t wrong in what he/she says.

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Zurich twitter dinner and the Inauguration in Geneva

Byrichard

For the moment I am planning on going to Zurich for the twitter dinner. It’s the first Zurich twitter event I go to and it will be interesting whether I need to speak swiss german or whether my English and French will help make conversation a little simpler.

I don’t exchange messages with many Zurich twitter users so it will be quite different from the London events where I had exchanged so many messages. There’s another one in a month’s time in Paris although with the label I don’t enjoy much. I like the word tweetup because you have to smile to say it.

Video of the event may arrive online.

As a side note I should be going to one of the Geneva Inauguration event to get some footage of how the international community/facebook users of Geneva react to the event.