Twitip

I have a love/hate relationship with TweetDeck. While TweetDeck is a great tool that does so many things so well (the Love), it doesn’t do everything I want and need it to do and it still suffers from some pretty annoying technical issues (the Hate).

To be sure, some of those issues involve Twitter itself earning Team TweetDeck kudos for dealing with the limitations of the Twitter platform. After all, it isn’t easy coming up with the next earth-shattering, must have, whiz-bang feature when the platform you’re dependent upon not always reliable. It’s also no small challenge when your primary competitor, Seesmic, is aggressively introducing new features (listen to Seesmic Founder Loic Le Meur give me Exclusive Seesmic News during my podcast interview last week on Addicted to Social Media). (more…)

Back in October, my wife’s Grandfather, Lou Roth, passed away at the age of 97. During funeral preparations, someone rather clueless and ignorant asked if I was going to tweet during the funeral. By the way, did I mention this was my wife’s grandfather? I knew Lou for twenty years. He was a great guy and I loved him a lot. So, I looked the offender in the eye and said, “Of course, I’ll tweet; wouldn’t miss it for the world. Which one should I start with…?”

“Damn, they’re burying him with that watch we got him for his birthday.”

Or…

“They’re lowering him into the ground now, I hope the winches don’t jam.”

Or, maybe…

“Cousin Jan looks HOT in black.”

How about…

“You’re a %#@&$ idiot for asking if I’m going to tweet during Lou’s funeral.”

Certainly there are times when it’s not only proper to tweet, but also encouraged. For example; tweeting during your child’s school play is not cool (well, maybe just one tweet for friends if you attach a picture of your kid on stage). On the other hand, tweeting during a TweetUp at NASA Headquarters is cool.

Regardless of the circumstance, one would hope that common sense would prevail. However, for those of you who are uncertain, I offer the following guide of common circumstances when it would not be appropriate to tweet.
(more…)

By Neal Wiser. Follow him @nealwiser

Yesterday, What’s a TweetUp, and Should I Wear My Spacesuit? Twitip told you what it was like to attend a TweetUp at NASA Headquarters. Today, learn more about how NASA uses Twitter.

Why and when did NASA decide to use Twitter?

NASA always is looking for new ways to engage the public and spread the word about what we’re doing, so it was natural that we would look into using Twitter. The @NASA account really began its use in January 2009. (more…)

By Neal Wiser. Follow him @nealwiser

NASA gets “Twitter Fever” and invites the public to a TweetUp at NASA Headquarters to honor the crew of STS-127.

I want to be an astronaut. Not “wanted,” as in it was my childhood dream. I want to be one. Ever since I was a kid I knew the difference between “LOX” and “lox” (LOX is liquid oxygen, a key ingredient of space shuttle fuel and is carried in the orange external fuel tank during a shuttle launch. Lox is smoked salmon and tastes great on a bagel with cream cheese).

I was not a normal kid.

But as badly as I want to be an astronaut, as much as I studied science and technical manuals of the shuttle’s flight controls, I chose another path, one that would ultimately bring me full circle to NASA Headquarters in Washington DC on September 24, 2009. On that date, NASA held a TweetUp. (more…)

Welcome back from a US Bank Holiday, Labor Day! TwiTip took the 4-day weekend off, and we’re proud to present today’s post. It takes a closeup look at a really great thing happening on Twitter surrounding one man’s idea to blame his cancer for all the problems in his life. Read about how the story’s unfolded to mean so much more for many others fighting the battle.

By Neal Wiser (follow him @nealwiser) and Peter Marinari (follow him @krisis)(http://twitter.com/krisis).

First in a series of brief case studies about using Twitter for social good.

Sure, you can use Twitter to tell people about your literal and metaphorical dirty laundry (you really shouldn’t), or you can use Twitter to try to overthrow governments such as Iran and Moldavia (please be careful), but personally, I believe that one of the best uses for Twitter is to rally people around good causes.

And despite the annoyances that can sometimes result when people misuse and abuse Twitter, except for television there has probably never been a technology that can spread the news about events faster than Twitter. As a result, Twitter may just be the perfect platform for charitable causes and institutions.

Getting the Word Out

While some may argue that anything you do to raise awareness of your cause is a good thing, what you really want is to have people take a desired action and actively participate. Otherwise, your cause is just an idea, not a movement, and it’s movements that drive change. (more…)

by Neal Wiser. Follow him @nealwiser

Could a solution to the FollowFriday conundrum finally be at hand? I’m not sure, but @PhilBaumann has a great idea.

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you may have read my April post, Follow Friday, too Much of a Good Thing? In that post, I discussed some of the many Pros and Cons of #FollowFriday, especially why so many people are becoming disenchanted with the meme, and offered some recommendations that I feel would improve the FollowFriday experience. Unfortunately, while many people do seem to be making better recommendations recently, my personal FollowFriday experience still leaves me frustrated. (more…)

by Neal Wiser (@nealwiser)

Back in the mid 1990s, I worked at Paramount Pictures and their emergent television network, the now defunct United Paramount Network. It was a great time to be at Paramount if you were a Star Trek fan. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was in the middle of its run and Star Trek: Voyager had just premiered to ratings that rivaled some super bowls. In addition, Star Trek: First Contact was in production and when I wasn’t constantly running into people like Jonathan Frakes, Avery Brooks, and Colm Meaney, I was running into Klingons, Borg and Ferengi. (more…)

by Neal Wiser (@nealwiser)

Sometimes in life (and Twitter), you just got to cut your losses and start over. Here’s how to do it right.

Let me tell you the story of Ari Herzog (@ariherzog). Some of you may follow Ari (whose blog, AriWriter I highly recommend) and may have seen his recent announcement that he was declaring Twitter Bankruptcy.

Twitter Bankruptcy is basically the Twitter version of Email Bankruptcy where someone is so inundated with emails that they cannot realistically process them all. In Twitter Bankruptcy, instead of emails, the problem is having to process too many people (decide to follow, organize in groups, etc.) and unfollowing everyone in order to start over.

Although this may seem like an antisocial thing for a social media evangelist like Ari to do, for Ari this was an act born out of necessity.

What Happened Was…

Ari recently reinstalled his OS (including Tweetdeck) and quickly realized that rebuilding all his Tweetdeck groups was going to be extremely time consuming (he was following about 500 people). As a solution, Ari decided to follow everyone.  But instead of following groups of individuals, Ari’s strategy was to follow conversations where the people whom he wanted to pay attention to could be found, along with other new voices. Ari also felt that following everyone would be the best way to, “grow my network, gain potential value from more people and… pass that value on to you (the follower).”

(more…)

by Neal Wiser. Follow him @nealwiser

While researching my post FollowFriday; Too Much of a Good Thing? I had the pleasure to interview Micah Baldwin (@micah), VP and Lead Evangelist for Lijit Networks, a Boulder, CO startup and the “father” of FollowFridays (check out Micah’s blog, Learn to Duck).

I was originally hoping just to get some insights and maybe a few quick “sound bites” about FollowFridays for the post, but Micah was so open and accommodating that I decided to include the entire content of the interview which offers some nice insight into FollowFriday.

Thank You, Micah.

The Interview

Neal Wiser: How do you feel about the response to FollowFriday?

Micah Baldwin: I think the response is great. More than I, personally ever expected. After all, no hash tag on twitter has ever lasted as long (It started January 16, and we are now into the fourth month!). Plus, I am not a big influencer on Twitter, nor do I have tons and tons of followers. All of that adds up to something that would have been funny for a couple of hours.

(more…)

by Neal Wiser. Follow him @nealwiser

FollowFriday is a wonderful way to get introduced to new people. Unfortunately, its benefits are being undermined. If you’ve experienced problems on FollowFridays, read on…

Follow Friday (#followfriday) was started by Micah Baldwin (@micah) in January 2009 as a way for Twitter users to recommend people who they enjoy following to their own followers. As is typical of good Social Media memes, FollowFriday immediately went “viral” and became a global phenomenon.

I personally love the idea of FollowFriday. It is a testament to the true spirit of Social Media; people using its various tools to connect with (or in this case, to recommend) other people. Unfortunately, through naiveté, simple ignorance and/or intentional abuse, FollowFriday may be on the verge of becoming more of a nuisance then a benefit.

“The best-laid Tweets of mice and men often go awry”*

From humble beginnings in a single tweet by Micah, FollowFriday has become a surprising phenomenon. “All I did was send the first tweet,” said Micah in an interview with this author, “It was from there that things took on a life of their own.”
(more…)