For all those that thought twitter was finally a reliable service with a crappy api there is some sad news. Due to a massive increase in the number of users (according to a number of sources) twitter is once again providing a truly rubbish service. We’ll see how long they’re going to be unreliable this time.
Birthdays, until recently were about being with friends, birthday presents and good meals. Today however they have moved into the digital era, as a result of our ever more international lifestyle. Many of us travel between countries at least once a month whilst some of do so more often. Others of us have friends that have moved away and so we miss their company.
That’s where the social media come in. The social media are media created by those with which you converse whether in person or via online communities.
Here are a few ways in which people wished me Happy Birthday
Seesmic, recorded video messages
Twitter: Direct messages and public @ messages.
Facebook: many many wall posts, at least twenty to thirty. Also on status message
SMS
Instant messenger.
Various websites sent a generic one.
In other words whilst you’re in the wrong country to celebrate with everyone, actually I was at 33,000 feet with three seats in the second row, on the right side of the aircraft with an aisle seat for take off and landing and a window seat to serve as an office window for the proofreading work I was doing. Anyway the point is it was a nice and easy way for friends of mine to show that they thought of me on my birthday.
I was disappointed by the physical world reaction as I arrived in London, part of which was due to an early morning start and some work to finish that evening.
I love technology, especially in the form of online communities. I’ve been part of so many online communities I have some degree of expertise. I’ve seen the birth of the chatroom and it’s evolution, the popularisation of instant messaging and through flipside and nochicktrix I’ve seen the forming of virtual communities.
More recently I’ve seen the increase from virtual communities to real communities. Over the past two years, almost everyone I know has created a myspace account and for a while, this was the best place for people to be. More recently though people have moved to Facebook. Having more than 140 friends, of which only three I do not know, is a sign of how times have changed. It’s actually fashionable to be part of an online/offline community.
All the parties I’ve recently been to have been advertised on Facebook among other places and it’s become the social networking site of choice. If you’re not there you don’t know what’s going on anymore. It’s a great shift. It’s also replacing e-mail.
Why e-mail people when all your friends are on Facebook. Why not take advantage of unlimited photo uploads to Facebook to add all those past nights for everyone to enjoy.
I love the way technology is going. It’s sociable.
Gravity is a twitter client for the s60 and I recently installed it on my N95 and so far I’m very happy with it. With an intuitive interface it makes being logged in to two twitter accounts and one identica account very easy. What is especially nice is that you select which account you want to look at and by scrolling left and right you see the friend’s timeline, the replies, your tweets, your DM and finally searches if you want. That’s automatic and for every account.
It’s far better than the other twitter clients for s60 that I’ve tried so for the moment that is one twitter client I would recommend you use.
I know what I’m talking about. I tweet from anywhere without it slowing down my social life.
Also if you pay for this app after the ten day trial period you’re helping demonstrate that it’s not just the iphone which has people willing to pay for the applications
This afternoon Nik Butler, Loudmouthman sent me a text message asking whether I was free to go to the London Geek Dinner where Robert Scoble would appear. Of course I was free so I decided to go to the event and met a number of people. The first person I met was Robert Scoble for this particular event. He was standing at the door and as I came up he welcomed me into the room, we shook hands and I got his business card.
That was quite unexpected, so approachable. I spent some time talking with Loudmouthman, Michael Beddows, Liz Strauss and Giles Thomas.
The London Photowalk itself saw us walk from The Geekdinner venue down towards Southbank and the film cafe. It’s the first time I went to the bar and I’ve been living in London for over three years now. It’s amusing to see how many photographs were taken and videos recorded. It was the photographer photographing the photographer. Scoble interviewed people as we were walking down the street and others were filming the filming.
I enjoyed the evening and meeting Scoble. For a while I nicked his video camera and filmed some shots of London for him. One of those shots was the Midnight ring of Big Ben. That’s about it for tonight.
As I left the University halls for the last time so it signalled the beginning of a new era in my life. No longer would I go to the student bar or the editing suites to chat with friends and see what they were doing. Now it was time to move to another part of London where new friendships would be made. Some of these friendships would be helped along by twitter. It’s like a chat room you can take with you anywhere.
At first this is a daunting chatroom. You see updates from thousands of people telling you of their latest thoughts and what they’re doing. It’s a blur and it’s hard to stick out. Over time, as you grow more familiar with the twitterverse so it becomes easier to understand. You see people living in your area so you add them and start following what they do. They add you and they know what you’re doing. Over time you get to know their daily habits, when they tend to start their day, how they organise their time and more. As a result of this it creates a feeling of communal living. That’s when you take it to the next step.
For me that next step was the twitter meetup. My experience was the following. Two people I had previously met, and many I had never met, met up in a restaurant for food and drinks and to talk about subjects they enjoy. As they did so it created a new sense of what twitter was about. It’s a technology that lets you get to know those on the other screen better than you would through traditional postings, comments and more. It’s alive and current rather than static and passive.
Twitter went even further to being an interesting technology at the Podcamp UK because at this event I got to know at least five or six more twitter users and added them to those I am following. As a result twitter is a link between a group of people interested in related industries and conversations. As a result of this there is a new level of community that forms via the medium of text. In effect conversations are taking place between people who are not in the same part of the world.
Funnily enough we are in the same part of the world, as you’d see from my “following” list on twitter. It’s a tool, an enhancement like many others that enables communities which are spread out, in nature, to communicate instantly as if across a garden fence or on their daily walk. It’s a great tool which, in this age, is essential to make people feel more involved. We’ll see how it progresses from here.
Twitter is one of those things that’s really hard to explain due to it’s sheer simplicity. It’s a website that allows you to answer the “what are you doing question”. That is the initial phase. When you’re new to twitter you’ll be confused because you know no one therefore the codes and conventions are blurred. You may tweet once or twice a day and that’s enough. Over time you will look at what other people are doing and that’s when you move to phase two of twitter use.
When I first started using twitter I had no idea how to use it. i thought that it was a storm of 140 character postings that are completely unrelated. Some refer to it as microblogging but it’s not a blog. instead it’s a great tool for entrepreneur for two key reasons. The first is brevity. Anything you say must be summarised to 140 characters. As a result you’re efficient. The second factor is the interaction between twitter users.
If you take a look at my profile and my twitter block then you’ll see the ten most recent tweets in my public feed and what everyone within my circle are talking about. As a result of this you’re entering a communal environment. Out of those I’m following on twitter I know from ten to twenty of them, occasionaly meeting a few of them two or more times. As a result I know what they’re doing and they know what I’m doing as well.
Each one of us is in charge of a number of projects we find of interest. I’m a recent graduate therefore I tweet about one set of things. Loudmouthman and Documentally both tweet about other things that are related to their activities. Links help to get all of this information and work distributed to the right people. Most of those on twitter have at least one website and quite a few profiles on a variety of other websites. We’re embracing what’s called web 2.0 by many people.
It seems to be the tool of choice for entrepreneur to keep up to date with what everyone else is doing at the time. Just take a look and you’ll see this for yourself.
Twitter is a great tool for it’s brevity and it brings together a great number of content creators who are having a conversation across borders and timezones. It’s boundless in that it can be viewed from the mobile phone to the Itouch to the computer. It’s versatile and quick and I’m going to continue using it for many months to come.