What if Twitter was no more? What would happen to your network? In this post Sarah Evans from PR Sarah Evans (follow her at @PRsarahevans) gives some tips on how to make sure your Twitter network never dies.
“Strange, isn’t it? Each man’s life touches so many other lives. When he isn’t around he leaves an awful hole, doesn’t he?” This is Clarence the angel in It’s a Wonderful Life referring to the impact George Bailey had on the others around him.
The holidays are approaching and, for me, it is a sentimental time. As I reflect on this past year I think about my family, friends, coworkers and a newer addition to my life, my social media pals.
I began to reflect…
Even if I don’t see my family, friends, co-workers on a daily basis, I’m connected to them in a way that makes it easy to reach them. Our relationships are connected in a way which ensures we wouldn’t lose one another, even if my outlook contacts list crashed tomorrow.
Which leads me to the point of this post:
If you’re reading TwiTip, you are most likely building many relationships and connections via Twitter.
- What if Twitter went away tomorrow or the next day?
- How many of those relationships are sustainable or viable?
- If Twitter went away tomorrow, how many of your connections are “cross-medium?”
My gift to you—a few, simple tips here to ensure you never leave a hole in your network:
Give out your email address OR set up a Twitter specific email account
- Encourage people you tweet with to form an email group.
- Use the email group sparingly or set up “guidelines” as to when people will send communication.
- This becomes a backup plan should your normal networks “fail.”
Friend one another on multiple social mediums
- If you don’t currently use other networks, do it.
- Take this a step further. Set up a Facebook or LinkedIn group for your networks. This is another place you can connect and stay in touch.
- Grow your Twitter connections into your other established networks.
Set up an electronic business card to make contact information exchange easy
- Develop an electronic business card with all of your social media contact information.
- When you exchange contact information with your Twitter friends, do so in one felt swoop.
Capture contact information and record it somewhere
- Grow your connections’ contact information out of your social world and into your address book. Tip: Don’t ask for contact information publicly. Use a DM to ask and/or exchange this information.
- Best practice: When I enter a Twitter friend’s contact information into my contact list I add in their Twitter ID next to their last name in parentheses. Since many people on Twitter do not use their real names in their ID, this makes my contact list easier to manage.
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{ 21 comments… read them below or add one }
No more Twitter? Bite your tongue! I have connections there that would be lost forever if Twitter were gone, so your suggestions here are ones I will take to heart.
I would politely add that you can always start your own Twitter if the real one goes offline tomorrow, wouldn’t you? And I’m quite sure you’ll have more users than you can imagine faster than you can count them. Joking, of course
Thanks for a great post! And I’m glad I’m already following you on THE REAL Twitter.
Great tips Sarah.
I’ve found the greatest benefit of my online network of friends are the relationships I’ve built with them offline. Of course this doesn’t happen overnight, but the tips you’ve listed are a good starting point to further building on these digital friendships and turning them into something so much more.
It’s akin to putting all of your eggs in one basket. Any time you go that route, you’re begging for trouble.
The experts advice working all of your social networks. True story
Yes, I use Twitter quite a bit these days but it’s not my entire world.
George
This is a great piece, but you are scaring me. Is all this talk about life without twitter because it has yet to turn a profit? Is there talk about twitter closing its doors?
I’m pretty confident Twitter won’t die, just look at AIM. That’s still going and prodigy… wait ok just AIM, but that’s still pretty good though
She gives good consul, i was thinking will ei reading this pots what it would actully be if i dont have twitter and i would louse all dose contacts, at the time i would really louse them but one question, there its any app that help you recollect the mail and the the real suer name form twitter users?
It would be good so we could have the mail of doze that we fallow, but at the same time good for all dose SPAM people.
Than you for the ports really great,
I don’t see Twitter dieing any time soon. The more likly out come be when it’s replaced with something better.
But all the same, some really great tips here.
I’ve been thinking about this alot lately - twitter is, by far, the best vehicle for connecting that I’ve seen in my 5 years of blogging.
In the last weeks, I’ve twitted my facebook, linked in and myspace info 3 times, hoping that I’ll pick up some of my contacts on the other networks.
I’m also planning on doing a lot more irl communication this year - I’m going to attend @lizstrauss SOBCON09 and blogher and blogworldexpo - and when I travel I’m going to try and tweetup
Spooky! I quoted the very same quote from It’s a Wonderful Life in an online network posting this very morning. What’s the chances of that happening?
Some great ideas too for something I’d not thought of, but will start working on straight away.
Regards
Graham
I read this early this morning with some interest, but just jumped back to it after reading about the end of Pownce. At least it’s not happening overnight, but still a really big pain for those users. I wish Twitter would let me do a dump that captures first/last name, twitter ID, website, and bio. I know that doesn’t give me everything I need, but it’s a start.
All tools will eventually out live their usefullness and be replaced by something else. Twitter should continue to evolve and grow if it wishes to survive long term. I hope it does. Still - I need a back-up plan for when it goes down. I’ve grown very fond of this site.
Why not just have a strong alternative like identi.ca? Rich features & high and reliable performance.
Why not having a strong alternative like ideni.ca?
We developed a service for almost a year now that could solve most of your pains in case Twitter would be gone. It´s called cellity Addressbook 2.0. You can easily import all your contacts from major email providers, outlook, your phone book and major social networks like Linkedin and Plaxo. Of course it also integrates with Twitter. It works on almost any mobile with your mobile browser or even as a Java client. And you get a web app also. Don´t believe it? Ask for your personal private beta invite code here: http://www.cellity.com/preview
We launch our open beta this month.
Sarik
there are times when i wish twitter would die! it’s a love/hate relationship. twitter is awfully US-centric and not very international.
Good post. And don’t think twitter couldn’t die. Pownce just did, or rather, they are shutting down by dec 15 after being taken over by sixapart. Also, this seems to be some sort of trend these days, apps being closed after takeover…..
Note that some time ago there were rumours about a takeover of twitter by facebook….
I think that after the initial panic by the death of Twitter, some to look back on advice like this and wonder why they didn’t heed the warning.
Maybe using the detailed information the contact/address book of your email client can come in handy for keeping things organized too.
~Eric
This is something I have been talking about on Twitter last several weeks, also on the SocialMedian site.
The simple solution, if you have a core group of contacts IS to set up on a platform like Identi.ca. Ask all your friends, contacts to do the same. I have been trying to suggest to people to do this, there are many I know who do rely on Twitter so much yet have no back-up should Twitter go down for more than the usual period.
If Twitter die, you simply move over to Identi.ca and carry off with you left off. No big deal, you just loose the people who did not heed the warning. To say Identi.ca is only good for a back-up is totally not what Im saying, I actually use where possible side by side, I use it more, the more people I know sign up.
The discussion on SocialMedian about Twitter and Identi.ca is here : SocialMedian about Twitter and Identi.ca
But the post is well timed, people do need to think about the worst case when relying on something so much, I know I do rely on it.
Graham
I prefer to take a regular backup of my twitter profile using http://tweetake.com
Can’t imagine world without twitter.
Let’s just hope Twitter never dies. If it does, someone can always develop a new one