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A lot of people love the re-tweet because they believe that it is a fast and effective way to tell both their followers on twitter as well as the person being retweeted that they are listening or that they thought this was a interesting point. This is true in a number of situations but this was not always the case. There was a time on twitter when people who liked what you linked to would comment on the topic and converstions would grow. It would take time, and involvment, and it would create noise, but it did provide one thing. Indications of friendship. You see friendship on twitter is a feature that you see less and less on twitter as the emphasis is on following, rather than conversing with people. Many of those I used t follow now follow thousands of people as a result of which they lose track of what they sad to who. Answering every tweet takes a lot of time, and time is a commodity people are rarely willing to give to others. I wasn’t willing to watch five minute videos on seesmic because I felt there were more effective ways of conversing. People feel the same way about conversation on twitter. They’ve given up on it and this is a shame. Twitter is all about the short form. The more short messages you send the more people will know about your likes and dislikes. If you retweet the short form loses some of that value. You are more succinct about why one point is more interesting than another by discussing the topic with the person. Every message contributes to the grand picture. If you want to show that you like a tweet, or like a link, don’t retweet it. Go to friendfeed and mark it as liked, share it. Write a little comment at the bottom. This provides so much more information to those that decided that what you have to say is of interest. No single network can do everything, so experiment and see which is best for which purpose. Your experience will be enriched by such a process.

One of the biggest ironies of the social media is that those whose profession it is to get brands and companies to set up a presence within the social media environment themselves see it as a waste of time, and no substitute for what most people would refer to as real life, real life being the life that you live in the physical world rather than sat behind a computer, or online. Almost everyone you ever talk to will tell you that communicating with people online is a waste of time, that everything is superficial and there is no gain to be had, on a personal and emotional level. Of course they’re right but not for the reasons they believe in. I was transcribing an interview of a 19 year old Belge girl speaking about how important her mobile phone was and how it helped her stay in contact with the world. In particular she was talking about the role of sms. When asked about facebook though she didn’t think that much of it. A lot of people think this way. They are happy with the SMS, a technology that is about twenty years old by now. As a result of this interview and many I have listened to in the past what I find most interesting is the tertiary role that computers and full social media websites have, as a role in how people interact socially with each other. Have you ever noticed how many pictures and videos are made available through facebook and youtube. Every time you go to a conference hundreds of pictures are uploaded, dozens of videos are shared but then there is one part that is never carried on. That part is the conversation. Where is the modern day pen writing? Where is the passion of communicating with friends you’ve met at an event but won’t meet again for months? Where is the ongoing dialogue? It’s as if once you’ve met someone in the real world you believe that to talk online is a sign of how pathetic your social life is. There must be something lacking if you need twitter to converse. There must be something lacking if you spend too much time on online forums. Facebook is a waste of time for so many people. How many people will take the time to read the comments you leave on a facebook item? How many of them feel that to respond is not a waste of time? Hundreds of thousands of people are on twitter, and hundreds of thousands of them are following strangers they will never take the time to converse with. Why are people on the web so passive? By being passive users of a technology like twitter you devalue it for those that take it seriously. Just yesterday one person said they saw no value in friendfeed because they received no answer to what they said. Of course they got no response. You’ve got to show that your active for people to know that there is a point in reacting to what has been said. You can’t expect people to respond to every new member of a community for everything they say. It just doesn’t work that way. It doesn’t work the other way either. To spend hundreds of hours online and commenting thousands of times does help build your profile and for people to notice you, but for how long. In the same way that I complain about how people no longer feel any passion for twitter so I see some of the earlier friendfeed users saying the same thing about that site. It seems to be a staple of many online communities that they grow and shrink. How many of your university friends do you have on facebook and how many of them do you find taking the time to keep in touch. The number is low. The only reason it was high as a student is that you were living a common experience as a result of which the bonds are stronger. That’s why I live with hope for how important the social media will one day become, once we see a shift in how people view the online lifestyle in relation to the social media. Film students don’t mind watching the same film five times in one week, series watchers don’t mind watching fiction on television. For them this is not a waste of time. So why are the social media not fashionable. Why are people so retiscent to create friendships on the web. Why do local communities spend so little time online. Why does the web work to organise events but not for actual conversations between relatively normal people. And don’t tell me it’s narcisism. The same thing happens offline but you’ve grown up with it so you don’t notice.

Something I would love to see on Seesmic, and which would encourage me to use it more is a “transcribe this” button for when I record certain videos. The logic is simple. Sometimes we discuss things that we would like to see discussed but not everyone wants to listen to us explain our idea. That’s why it would be a nice feature. As an add on you could then add that video to your blog, with a transcript for quick and practical reference.

Mark Douglass - 23rd Mar, 2009

I thought it was a joke at first as well, but I did see this coming.

Sounds like you’ve been pretty frustrated with Twitter lately. I followed your secondary account, but won’t be offended if you don’t follow back ;)

Best wishes,
Mark

warzabidul - 23rd of Mar, 2009

It’s no joke, I did delete that account. I have a backup of my last 3800 tweets on that account and thousands more are backed up on various portions of the web, either through tweetbackup, greader or others.

Dear twitter friends I have deleted my main account due to tired I am with twitter and it’s poor performance. I am in other places. I’ll catch you there.

Whilst I listened to MrTweet speaking on the Net@Nite podcast from several month ago I found it interesting that he spoke of the re-tweet as giving credit to those you follow who share some interesting links. If you spend a lot of time on twitter though after seeing the same retweet too many times you may not follow them anymore. What I propose is to use MrTweet’s recommendation instead. The process is simple. Go to a profile page and you can see two things. You can see who has recommended you (me) or who you have recommended. If you’re a twitter Veteran like those I follow and I then you don’t need MrTweet but if you like my blogging and tweet style then by seeing who I recommend you can find more relevant people to your twitter stream. As a result you will be following a group of friends rather than random strangers. As a result that sense of community will remain strong.

[caption id=“attachment_1066” align=“aligncenter” width=“740” caption=“Some results from earlier today”][/caption] Generated by Twitalyzer If you were thinking of following me on twitter then this may help change your mind, or on the contrary encourage you. You may notice my generosity is zero. That’s because I don’t like RT as I think they pollute the timeline. By the same opportunity I have stopped following over 150 people on twitter.

Bernard Goldbach - Feb 3, 2009

I am waiting for the upgrade that lets me mark myself as a point of interest, then let the POI become a contact in my address book that can be texted to someone’s GPS unit and appear as a valid navigation destination.

Couldn’t you send a kml with that data?

Yesterday I met a friend in geneva. The one that uses Google Latitude. I used my mobile phone to see where he was and just using cell towers I got a pretty good fix on where he was, within just a few hundred meters. When I called him to get a more accurate fix, i.e. for him to input the address as his latitude position using the power of Google maps, latitude and 3g it took just a minute to find the actual address. For this reason I love google latitude. When you’ve got technologically savvy users it makes being geo-loced twenty four hours a day extremely useful.

International World Water Day is held annually on 22 March as a means of focusing attention on the importance of freshwater and advocating for the sustainable management of freshwater resources.

“After the Twestival hangover, how much money was raised for charity:water?” Source There are some events I don’t feel are really as chartable as they sound and twestival is one such event. I have absoluetely nothing against the charity they are raising funds for but I do question the ethics behind the events. Can you spot the word that I find is unfortunate? Hangover, that’s the word I think should never be used in this context. Here you are stating that you want to help a charity to raise funds for a charity but you do so through music and other events. Problem is you’ve got people drinking alcohol at the event.If they woke up the next day with a hangover then what value and what message did they get from the event? If I were to organise such an event, especially in London, then I would go to the Frontline club and see whether they know of any documentaries on the topic. I would attempt to get some people whose job it is to study the problem of water and get them to speak. In particulr I’m thinking of a session like the one concentrating on water at the World Economic Forum in Davos. They are specialists in relation to this topic. As a result they know what figures are important. How many litres of water does it take to produce one litre of biofuel for example. I don’t have the numbers on hand but they are impressive. For More information