Twitter Threads and Blogging
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Twitter Threads and Blogging

Byrichard

Twitter threads and blogging are both free but whereas with one you need to click to read the continuation and it’s hard to print the other is self contained and easily shareable.


I see twitter threads, that as twitter threads are a waste of time on a conversational channel but would be ideal for a blog post. Imagine that you combine two or three tweets. That length would justify a blog post.


Blog posts can be of any length but ideally they should be three hundred words or more. In the case where a twitter thread has three or more points it would perfectly justify a three or more paragraphs post.


With a blog post you can source and give examples of the point you are trying to make and you are not limited to a specific number of characters. You don’t need to run a sentence from one tweet to the other.


You can also add images, documents and more and add headings and more. If you often feel the desire to write threads you could even take up blogging again.


Your blog posts can be written with a mobile phone at any time of day or night and from anywhere. I mention this because with the unreliability of newer Mac book pros mobile phones become a more tempting proposition.


I deleted twitter from my mobile phone because the signal to noise ratio is so high that it is no longer a social tool. It is used like RSS and the conversation is uni-directional. Do you really want your train of thought to compete in such a noisy environment?


The blogosphere is just as noisy as twitter but with one key difference. People who read blog posts are looking to invest their time rather than scroll mindlessly. We might as well take advantage of that.


I saw an image on Facebook that said that we need to keep our social media appropriate for good mental health. I’m suggesting that we take it a further step and skip social networks like Facebook and twitter and start conversing via blog posts again. Let’s re-allocate the time that we devoted to social media to self owned blogs and platforms where we go to learn, share and be creative.


I still love blogging because the aim and the challenge is to find just one idea to write about daily. It’s easy to write 20 tweets and post twenty thoughts a day to Facebook. It’s much harder to write one blog post a day. The challenge is good. We gain in creativity, self discipline and focus.


Next time you’re tempted to write a twitter thread stop yourself and write a blog post. It will take the same amount of time but your audience will be more engaged, eventually. Give your ideas the treatment they deserve.

IFTTT – Instagram to Twitter
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IFTTT – Instagram to Twitter

Byrichard

Instagram is still a healthy social network. It still finds an engaged group of users who want to share their adventures, meals, friendships and more with other users. Some of them love sharing selfies and others share beautiful landscapes. This keeps the network vibrant and young.

Twitter on the other hand has neutralised peoples’ passion and engagement with the site. They wanted to become google reader, they wanted mass following of key accounts, they wanted to neutralise the social, conversational aspect and they have succeeded in their goal so effectively that now an IFTTT rule reduces the need to visit twitter.

When you share your instagram photos as native twitter photos you are hiding that you are disengaged from Twitter. By hiding this disengagement from the social network you are hiding that you may not respond to replies, mentions etc. By not responding to those interactions you are negating the purpose of your presence on the social network.

When you fail to interact directly with websites such as Twitter you perpetuate the notion that twitter is a place where bots interact with bots because humans are no longer present. When humans are gone, when interactions between users no longer take place then what remains of the “social network”?

Two hundred and ninety six thousand people have added this recipe to their IFTTT accounts. A quarter of a million people have chosen to spend time on Instagram rather than twitter. For this reason it makes sense to share pictures via Instagram. We will see your instagram account and we can start following it. In so doing we spend our time more effectively. Instagram still has a future. If you post to the networks that you want to use there is a good opportunity that others will want the same. Lets cut out twitter. 😉

 

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Reactions – What if Twitter died

Byrichard

You can tell when someone joins a social network by what they think the network is for. I joined twitter in 2006. No one knew what the network was best at, eventually everyone decided to use it as a conversation tool. When people understood how dynamic conversations could be the network grew. The author of “What if Twitter Died“wrote this:

“it can’t seem to stretch beyond its celebrity, celebrity follower and tech roots. If you aren’t into celebrities or the tech industry, Twitter just isn’t that appealing, especially given all the other options for online social interactions.”

It is clear from this writer’s post that he has not been with twitter since it’s earliest days. His twitter profile indicated that he arrived in 2010. That’s up to two years after the golden age of twitter ended. My previous posts have explored this topic in depth.

While social media focus on marketers and public relations professionals I will keep blogging. It allows me to express myself without providing content for platforms that have destroyed the social dimension.

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is twitter changing your blogging habits? – A 2008 response

Byrichard

Yes and no. Twitter is replacing instant messaging and chatrooms. It’s an open method by which for people to communicate instantly with others. It’s also about the overheard conversation although that term has disappeared.

What does “overheard” mean? Well simply that whenever two people discuss a topic hundreds of people are following this conversation and when they decide they have an opinion they can cut in. They do have that 140 character limit though, so they need to get to the point is efficiently as possible.

When that isn’t possible then they can do the next best thing. Write a comment in a blog post or even write a blog entry of their own where the conversation that took place on twitter is synthesised into a more digestible chunk of information.

As a result twitter is changing people’s blogging habits but the question is why people want to chat publicly rather than in an enclosed space. Today people like transparency.

Disclaimer: This is a post from the 28th of Octobre 2008. An unpublished post

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A little bit of twitter history from 21/07/2007

Byrichard

Hello Twitter-ers!

As you may already know, Obvious is the parent company of Twitter
and it’s never a dull day around here. Today our little building
is abuzz with activity surrounding an announcement that Odeo
(another Obvious product) is ready for a new home. We’re
entertaining offers from potential buyers because Odeo deserves
the same love and attention we’ve been heaping on Twitter these
days. Have you been by lately? http://twitter.com

More about Odeo: http://tinyurl.com/2yoy84

Defamer Brings The Oscars to Twitter

Popular Hollywood gossip blog Defamer.com is going to the Oscars
this Sunday and they’re bringing Twitter! Sorta. Follow Defamer on
Twitter and you’ll get live from-the-scene updates. Who won what?
What’s happening in the seats? What are the stars doing? Get the
updates on your phone while you watch on TV to make things more
interesting or if you can’t watch, just get the updates.

Text FOLLOW DEFAMER to 40404
or, Visit http://twitter.com/defamer
Oscars: http://oscar.com

If you haven’t set up your phone to work with Twitter yet, now is
a good time! You can do that here: http://twitter.com/devices. The
Oscars are broadcast live February 25 at 5pt/8et on ABC. Speaking
of coveted awards, you can still vote for Twitter and help us win
the SXSW People’s Choice awards. We will be so psyched if we win.
Vote Twitter! https://secure.sxsw.com/peoples_choice/

SXSW Update

There’s going to be lots of folks from three industries
represented at the SXSW Conference in Austin next month. We’ve
heard from people in the Interactive, Music, and Film industries
who are excited to get on Twitter during the week-long event.
We’ll have big screens set up in the hallways and we’re setting up
a special, easy way for folks to get their updates on the screens.
Once we set that up, we’ll tell you more. Even if you can’t make
it to SXSW, you’ll still be able to catch all the buzz.

Office Full of Great Folks

Obvious employs less than ten people but the building is filling up
fast since we’ve opened our doors to some other really cool
companies working on interesting projects. Two of the projects are
still top secret, there’s a couple Y Combinator startups sharing
space with us, and the other folks are 30boxes.com, Boso.com, and
the illustrious Niall Kennedy. (Hi Niall!) When the secret
projects launch, we’ll tell you about them–they’re cool!

http://30boxes.com
http://boso.com
http://www.niallkennedy.com/
http://ycombinator.com/

Okay, back to work. Lots to do this week!

Happy Twitter-ing,
Biz Stone and the Twitter Team
http://twitter.com/biz

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Threaded conversations and community

Byrichard

From the 1970s to 2007 we had threaded conversations through bulletin boards, forums, groups and other centralising discussion points. For a brief window of about two years conversations became so captivating that people wanted to meet in person as strong friendships were established. By 2009-2010 the threaded and personal conversations between web users was hijacked by “social media” marketers and so the speed of conversation and quality of interactions collapsed. In it’s place hashtags would replace user engagement with quick metrics.

The golden age of conversation has been replaced by the dark ages of indifference. Every day that we spend online we see how disengaged people have become. Look at twitter. Do you still see user to user conversations. Look at Facebook. Do you still see engaging content and passionate conversations? I see a waste of time. The conversations which were taking place have been replaced by dumbed down headlines and sensationalist content.

For several years we have heard about how corporations should not have access to our data because of what they will do with it. From where I am surfing the web and interacting with the online community I see a more serious problem. I see that as the chance of individual to individual conversations has decreased so the quality of shared articles, videos and other content has been dumbed down. This is evident on Facebook and Twitter. These networks are becoming ghost towns. They have millions of user profiles that are slowly going dormant.

That social media networks are going dormant is excellent. Instead of wasting time with Ello, Diaspora and other solutions I believe that going back to the blogging habit will benefit everyone. It is decentralised, it is interest based and it is long form. Through Worpdress.org tools, through Disqus and other solutions so our ability to connect and communicate is improved. It forces us to be positive and to be accountable. Everything that you share can contribute to your reputation and help share your passions. We should not be hidden behind silos and we should not be anonymous. We need to break the twitter and Facebook duopoly.

Glocals and twitter

Byrichard

Glocals is a local website to find out what events are going on where for the international community in Geneva. It regroups events in a number of cities making easier to meet like minded people.

The reason for which I mention this social network is the low input high yield results from the site. In brief you see an event, you turn up, you meet some strangers and through conversation they become acquaintances.

This is contrary to the way I have approached social interactions on the web. I have spent years now building trust, building relations with people in a virtual environment. As a result of this it requires constant attention, constant interest.

I am thinking of twitter when speaking about this topic. 70,000 tweets have given me very little return on the time I have invested. In effect twitter is not only a waste of time but just the wrong social network for Switzerland.

There are a wealth of people to be met through the Glocals site, some work in the UN system, others for global companies and yet more for other settings. People who have been in Geneva for just a few hours or days meet up with people who have been here for years.

There’s also the gender balance. Going to many twitter events you’re surrounded by men, by workaholics, by self proclaimed entrepreneurs. They are focused on work, and profit rather than friendship.

In contrast Glocals is a nice mix of men and woman, physically active people who go canyoning, sailing, running and more. It’s a well travelled international crowd.

The most interesting aspet of my experiences over the past two weeks is that just because a site is talked about extensively does not mean that this is the site you should give most of your time to. There is a good chance that there is a tiny site with only a few thousand users that will reward you by turning up to events. No need for all that virtual conversing. Turn up, chat face to face and you will have gained new opportunities. The result is a more satisfied end of weekend. I will continue particpating in these face to face meetups and twitter will be a secondary network.

Happy and slightly nervous – as would be expected.

Byrichard

Nouvo is a show I have enjoyed watching many times, aired on Swiss television and in podcast form until recently. They are changing format and appearing on the website and news programs from now on. What makes this particularly interesting is that they left a comment on this blog, asking to interview the person behind Warzabidul, my twitter name for the past two years.

I accepted and after two half hour phone calls we spent half a day. I was filmed at home tweeting at breakfast, walking through the countryside and in the old town of Geneva. Two other people were interviewed about twitter as well, to provide some balance.

That news item will be aired on Sunday 19th of April on the 1930 Téléjournal, as well as on the Nouvo site. They also have a new twitter account so once you’ve watched the two accounts make sure to create an account and let them know you’ve watched the program. Let’s show that Switzerland too uses the social media.

As an afterthought you should see the seesmic logo on my laptop, maybe seesmic desktop, nambu, dabr, twitterific and maybe one or two other applications.