Archive for the ‘Social Media’ Category
Is Twitter the Answer to Al Gore’s Prayers?
Ok, look…I am not a social media fanatic. I never had a MySpace page, I only have a passing interest in FaceBook and LinkedIn, and the first time I tried Twitter over a year ago, I hated it and promptly disengaged. I’ve only been using it again for about 6 weeks but I’m beginning to catch glimpses of how this might be a truly powerful force for change in the world.
I’m only making this connection because I read Al Gore’s fantastic book, The Assault on Reason. It was published in 2007 and already, thankfully, the return to reason that he so convincingly outlines is needed, is coming to pass. The book is, I think, one of the most important so far this decade and well worth the read. The 30-second summary is that our democracy is in serious trouble because reasoned national debate is impossible with only one-way communication. On the cover flap, Gore writes, “We live in an age when the 30-second television spot is the most powerful force shaping the electorate’s thinking…”
It’s almost as though he is chronicling the change in real time as he writes in Chapter 5:
“Without printed words — and the knowledge conveyed by them to the masses who became literate — there would have been no Bill of Rights in America to protect the freedom and dignity of individuals…As soon as complex thoughts could be easily conveyed from one individual to the mass of others — and as soon as others could easily receive them and potentially agree with them — every individual suddenly had the potential for leveraging mass political power.”
Turns out that translating complex thoughts into 140 characters or less is just as powerful, and the combination of Twitter and the simple transfer of information allowed by the internet, is exponentially so. The beginning of this transformation back to two-way communication started of course, with the internet, and gained real traction with bloggers. Most media pundits admit that the 2006 election was the first in which the bloggers, real people with no particular fame or influence up to that point, suddenly DID have influence. The blogosphere became the public response to the corporate news and the campaign spin.
Now we have corporations forced to listen and participate in the dialogue when an unfairly treated employee or customer with a Twitter account has the power to spread their experience like wildfire, even faster and broader than email. How about Twestival, the “festival on Twitter,” which raised over $250,000 and brought worldwide public awareness to the global water crisis? Even great news stories, like the plane in the Hudson River, is breaking first on Twitter. If you’re not yet convinced, read Mashable’s list of Top 10 Extraordinary Twitter Moments. It’s like we’ve entered the age where people, ordinary individuals who take an interest in a cause, issue, or event, have the ability to shape global news. This is true democracy, where people have the power to influence the decisions of those who represent them. And I mean democracy in every sense of the word, not just politically. If we combine the reasoned decisions and ideas of individuals, with the instant global transmission allowed by technology like Twitter, the result is so far looking a lot more like Al Gore’s prediction from his book that two-way communication plus national (even global) debate equals better-functioning democracy.
As The Assault on Reason went to press, Biz Stone and Evan Williams were just figuring out how to send their first “tweets.” But I think Al Gore, and perhaps someone else, saw it coming. You may not agree with his politics, but it doesn’t take away from the fact that Gore is an eloquent and inspirational speaker and writer. So in summary, I’d like to leave you with a final passage from his book, which contains a quote from another eloquent speaker:
“Today, reason is under assault by forces using more sophisticated techniques: propaganda, psychology, electronic mass media. Yet democracy’s advocates are beginning to use their own sophisticated techniques: the Internet, online organizing, blogs, and wikis. I feel more confident than ever before that democracy will prevail and that the American people are rising to the challenge of reinvigorating self-government…Dr. Martin Luther King once said, ‘Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movements and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us.’”
I believe it is democracy’s advocates who represent the new spirit. But Twitter may be the first of the new vehicles we’ve needed for it to really get traction.
How Twitter SAVES Time?!
Ok, so file that under “things I never thought I’d say.” And don’t get me wrong. Twitter can be a huge time vortex. But I have discovered that I am not alone in giving Twitter another chance (see Kathy Sierra’s blog post. I saw her @SXSW this week and she is now among the Twitterati). I live in Austin where if you don’t know about a new technology 5 minutes after it debuts, you’re way behind. So I gave Twitter a shot more than a year ago. I hated it. And even now, too many people still think “trying to decide what to have for lunch” is an acceptable post. It’s not. But what I realized about the first time I tried Twitter, is that I was doing it wrong. Here’s what I learned.
Twitter can be a great way to stay in touch with your friends. I heard someone discussing “start-up costs” as being a barrier to lasting connections with people. I think this is a great analogy. If you meet someone, or even if it’s an old friend, but you don’t talk with them for a while, that time lag can be a barrier to reconnecting with them. What if something tragic happened in their life lately? Or even without tragedy, you know if you call them, if will probably have to be a long conversation while you catch up. And while you may really want to do it, finding time for that long conversation is hard to do. Which makes it less likely to happen. If you were following each other on Twitter, you’d know what was going on in each others’ lives, and so now there is no barrier to connecting in “3D Twitter,” aka real life. =) And here’s a bonus time saver for using Twitter rather than email: Tweets almost never require a response. Chris Sacca said @SXSW that your [email] inbox is a to-do list, to which anybody can add an action item (and BTW, I wasn’t in his talk – I heard it on Twitter.)
Tweets can actually be a quick and easy way to stay connected to a lot of people. It can help you find connection points with people (my friend Steve Harper, the Ripple Guy, has been raving about this to me for months), perhaps give you the opportunity to help someone out if you have the time or the inclination, and can give you fodder for conversation the next time you see them. I also love when people have a picture of themselves in their profile, specifically their face, because it gives me that extra feeling of connection: I see your face, I read what you’re up to. All the better if it’s something interesting. But even if it’s not, it doesn’t take me more than a couple of seconds to scan through 140 characters.
But definitely the lesson I learned from the last time I tried Twitter is to be selective about who you follow. Follow friends, follow people you admire, and people you find interesting or smart. But don’t hesitate to un-follow. If their tweets are nothing but interruptions, with things you don’t care about, ax ‘em. I’ve heard many smart entrepreneurs this month, first at RISE Austin and then at SXSW. Many of them said that a mistake they made in their business was being too quick to hire and too slow to fire. I think that’s a great principle to apply to Twitter.
Ok, so enough about following friends. Here’s another reason why Twitter saves time. There is a lot to learn in this world, about the things I’m interested in. Reading blogs, reading books, surfing the net…it all takes time. A shortcut is to follow the people I think are the smartest about the things I’m interested in. It gives me quick snippets of information, and if I’m directed to a link, I’m reasonably certain it’s going to be pretty good. I don’t have to sort through all the data myself, looking for the interesting stuff. For example, I’m into productivity and politics. There is more information on just these two topics than I can consume in 100 lifetimes. But by following a few people, I can get caught up in about one page of tweets, at only 140 characters each. Takes me about 60 seconds to scan.
The next thing I learned I was doing wrong the first time I tried Twitter was that I set it up to receive tweets on my cell phone. BIG mistake. This will drive you batty, immediately. This time around I know that you should use a Twitter client on your iPhone or on your computer desktop. Personally I’m enjoying Twitter as a desktop app using Fluid. (UPDATE: Fluid inexplicably stopped working. I’m now experimenting with both PeopleBrowsr and TweetDeck). And I saw many, many people using Tweetdeck at SXSW. If you are following a lot of people, that’s the way to go, because it allows you to sort and group. And I like Twitterific on my iPhone. (UPDATE: I’ve switched to Tweetie but Twitterific is free so I’d suggest you try that first.)
So just like any tool, especially technology, once you decide to use it, you need to learn how to CONTROL it, rather than let IT control YOU. This is true for email, your Blackberry, your iPhone, FaceBook, Linked In…and it’s no different for Twitter. Don’t leave the clients open all the time, check them only when YOU decide it’s a good time to receive them. Still, it’s tempting to check them all the time, just like email. But if you allow these technologies to control your life like that, pretty soon it’s like you’re being carried away by the rapids, without a boat or a paddle. The key to productivity is staying in control. Just like in the “old days,” my grandmother would say, “just because the phone rings, doesn’t mean you have to answer it!”
BTW, if you’re interested, you can follow me on Twitter @mnthomas.