Twitter Guide Discussion – Leave Your Comments Here

I am afraid why aren’t people leaving comments here??..

that is soo great work dear..keep up the work. I am waiting for the article 7 to be published and than I will link back to you with a short summary of the awesome guide…

keep up the work…you have one more feed reader from now :)

@CompuWorld, I’m not sure why people aren’t leaving comments – I guess the extra click through to the discussion post is just too much effort :-)

Well, I’ll comment here. This is great work you’re doing, Caroline!

Personally, I’ve dismissed Twitter and all its web 2.0 relatives. The reason is that I felt stretched to my limit, what with MySpace, HubPage, three blogs…dialup, eh, never mind.

After reading your guide, I’ll probably reconsider. (It’s late, so I won’t start tonight.) I’m intrigued by the idea that there are folks that actually pay attention to anyone in this medium. I suppose it meshes with our short attention spans.

I think seeing the phrase “Comments Closed” is more chilling than separating the comments. It could kill the potential for getting some great interaction. Sometimes, real gems pop up as people comment on prior comments. :)
Also, people may want to recommend their favorite Twitter Tool, etc.

If you really want to keep them closed, perhaps you could edit the phrase in your Theme Manager.

“Comments Welcome at the Water Cooler!” with a link :)

Of course, you could only have one guide on your blog…
…and we all know that isn’t going to be the case!

I’ll check this out later!

Cheers,

Mitch

@Mitchell, true closing the comments may have not been the best move on my part. But with seven posts all on one topic it is easier for me to manage comments if they are in one place.

I had a look at the theme, but it’s side wide – I can’t change that comment text without changing any posts that use it which is bound to come back to bite me later!

Hi Caroline,

When squeezing lemons, add sugar.

One of the best things about making do is our ability to creatively solve what appear to be problems.

As you said, you can more easily manage comments from one place.

Here is an early morning, only one cup of coffee into it, idea:

Create a link button to replace “There is a discussion post”. It will stand out.

I have some other wacky ideas that depend on how deeply you plan to go into the Twitter Knowledge Base Project (That’s a hint :D )

Cheers,

Mitch

@Mitchell, I’m intrigued, what the Twitter Knowledge Base Project?

Caroline,

Imagine that your guide has become the definitive tutorial for all things related to Twitter.

People are flocking to it, asking questions and sharing experiences, frustrations and discoveries.

How would you capitalize on that?

The old, Web 1.x way was to put up a forum, stock it with categories and start conversations with yourself until your visitors took notice.

The new, Web 2.0 way is to erect a content management system, capture, collate and archive all relevant visitor interaction, then provide a way for your visitors to retrieve what they want. This could include search boxes, tag clouds, camtasia videos (much better than static screen shots) and webinars devoted to specific topics, such as Twitetiquette.

Since I haven’t had a chance to read through the guide, much less see what kind of support system is already in place on Twitter.com, I don’t know how much work it would take for your Project to become an Authority resource for Twitter.

Generally, people undertake these types of projects backwards: they never set out to become the authority.
Accidental authority success is rare online. (Notice how many of these sites were started by people who left large companies to do their own thing?)

Based on your profile, you seem to be perfect for the role of intentional authority success. You appear to be very organized, you have a programming background and you understand the product. These assets would allow you to focus your energy long enough to launch a pretty useful website.

In addition, your desire to earn a living online may give you an incentive to figure out how to make some money out of the project.

Cheers,

Mitch

I just had to comment on Part 3:

It appears to me that you have seriously researched and/or experienced the social ramification of Twitter. It made me think of something:

I recall taking introductory courses. The subject is not important and it really can be applied to any topic. When the instructor begins talking about general information, I am afforded an opportunity to dip a toe into the pool.

By the end of the term, I have a good working knowledge of the subject. Yet my education is not complete. Having just finished Topic 101, I am eager for more.

You get the picture.

Well, Part 3 reminds me of a graduate course on Twitter.
At this level, full understanding of the mechanisms of the topic is presumed (the “prerequisite” courses have been completed). Now, the course will focus on how this topic impacts our world in non-obvious ways.

Here is one excerpt that I like:

“If you have anything at all to market, Twitter helps you build your brand and promote yourself without direct email, without a sales letter, without any kind of sales pitch at all. If you don’t like the hard sell, then start using Twitter!”

What amazes me about your discourse in Part 3 is that you build upon the prerequisite knowledge quickly, but not so much so that we get lost trying to make sense of the impact.

In a rather garrulous way, I’m saying, “Wow! I get it!”

Cheers,

Mitch

@ Mitch, thanks for all your great input on this guide! You are right, I have not set out to become an authority on Twitter. That is not my intention. However this guide is not accidental, I have two specific purposes:

1) To bring traffic & links to this blog
2) To establish myself as somebody who can write & teach

I like to write in a tutorial style so this guide is a first step for me to see how this kind of material is received. It’s been warm so far but I haven’t started my marketing campaign yet :)

@Kim, I don’t know what to say, thanks! *blush*

Caroline,
Well, I started following you on Twitter. Don’t know if I’ll catch everything, but I can’t wait to see where you go with this.

(I’m the butterfly)

Cheers,

Mitch

@Mitchell, last part is coming today!

Caroline I decided to have a nose around your blog and came across this guide. It’s brilliant.

I have been a blogger just over a year now, you have been a blogger for a few months and you have got it. You get the business side of it, you get the social media side of it, you get the social interaction side of it. What a great blog

Caroline,
Part seven is an excellent conclusion to an awesome guide.
As Skellie wrote, you have provided a value blog!

Cheers,

Mitch

@Steven, thanks very much :)

@Mitchell, she did?

Caroline,

LOL! Yes, she did! Funny, I saw your comment was the first one up there and just assumed you’d remember the topic.

My bad…

http://www.problogger.net/archives/2007/10/31/value-blogging-a-new-model-for-success/

“Value-blogging emphasizes quality over quantity every time, and many of the world’s most respected value blogs update only a few times a week. This flexibility is invaluable to anyone who leads a busy life outside blogging.”

Of course, she didn’t mention you specifically, but she is talking about blogs like yours! :)

Cheers,

Mitch

@Mitchell, Ahh yes I do remember that post. I thought you meant that she’d mentioned by name. I’m sure I would have known about that :p

A great twitter mashup that you may not of heard about or forgot to add is twiddeo ( http://www.twiddeo.com ) it allows you to attach video to your tweeds. Pretty cool/easy to use.

@Mike, That’s in part 5, but thank you anyway :)

Very interesting concept…what do you think will be the next concept after the next concept that will outmode twitters??

I really enjoy Twitter amongst my friends.

However, I would never, ever, EVER follow someone who uses Twitter as an advertising medium. I do follow some blogs who post their updates to it, but that was just an experiment to compare it to RSS. I prefer RSS incidentally, and save Twitter for real people doing real things.

@Jim, no clue heh, I am always surprised at the new sites and services that come out.

@Edward, If people use Twitter to ‘advertise’ they are doing it wrong. Well, not necessarily. I mean there are some twitter accounts that are just for that, like Woot, but that’s different.

So, taking me as an example… I post about various rubbish and when I make a new blog post I’ll also tweet about that. Based on that information, does that mean you wouldn’t follow me because I advertise my blog?

Excellent post Caroline, thanks for making sense of Twitter and usefully describing its uses. I’ll definitely check it out.
And I’ll subscribe to you blog too. Thanks again, Steve

Nice Caroline – I’m getting my students to Twitter from the start of the course next year, and I’m sending them to this as a resource.
Martin

@Martin, excellent! Thank you.

So, a couple things:

1. A guide for Twitter, eh? Kind of like a guide for Exploring…kind of takes the exploratory nature of the whole thing and throws it out the window.

2. How do you assess one’s popularity on Twitter? Please copy, paste, and see: http://kenrodoff.blogspot.com/2007/09/twitterlarity.html

3. Can I lay claim to ‘twitterlarity’? Then what?

This guide would surely work with those teachers I work with, the ones who love handouts and post-its. But I tend to view Twitter as a playground, a sandbox. If too many signs are posted around the playground, well, let’s be honest, it’s not a playground anymore.

I’ve found great resources from people on Twitter. I’ve learned of personal success and triumph. I’ve made contacts with people I would otherwise have never met (even with the nings and blogs of the world). I’ve learned about the economy of language (with an obvious exception to this comment). And I’ve learned that people have moods. They post and post and post; a stream of consciousness that is open and transparent. In truth, I’ve gone on two Twants (Twitter rants…do I own this one, too?) or Twitch Sessions (I get that one also) and I’ve received emails, direct messages, and even cries to stop. But in the end, Twitter is something interesting and something quite nascent for just about everybody.

Read Will Richardson’s post about Twitter. In it, he describes it as a presence. Tah-dah!

The rules for Twitter Engagement seem to run counter to the site’s purpose.

We may have to limit our thoughts to 140 characters, but we surely are not limited to sporadic or well-timed participation.

@Ken, there’s a better way to assess popularity:

http://www.twitterholic.com/

The great thing about Twitter is that it can be used any way you want it. Some people use it for news tracking (look at all the California fire feeds floating around), some people use it to get cool deals (think Woot), others use it for marketing, some people just use it to hang out online.

There’s no real rules at all, well other than the 140 character limit.

What an amazing guide!

There is also a new Twitter app for Facebook called TwitterSync. Allows you to sync your Twitter status as your Facebook status.

Your guide is great!!! And twitter is awesome too!!

I just need some followers but all my friends think twitter is dumb.

can someone follow me please?

Adam marciniak

@Caroline I guess what I’m speaking towards is that its almost impossible to hide not being genuine in 140 characters. I’ve followed a number of people I no longer follow because their tweets were clearly working towards their interests, not mine. It kind of felt like an abusive relationship.

As for blog updates – I have found I dislike following people that just tweet their blog updates. Twitter is about delivering snippets of life 140 characters at a time, zapped immediately to Twitterrific or Twitterberry or SMS. If I’m interested in your blog I’ll be grabbing the RSS feed, and I check my feed aggregation when I have time to consume larger chunks of incoming information. That is the right technology for the medium. Twitter has a different purpose.

I’ve only just started following you Caroline but I’ll use this blog post about Twitter as an example. Its quite long and detailed, and if I got it via Twitter I’d probably not be in a place where I want to devote some time to it because, hey, I’m a busy guy. And when I DO have that time the Twitter interface has moved it away from my perception as Twitter is about what is happening right now, not stuff from before. Sure I could favorite it or bookmark it or do something else with it, but I’m speaking to the general principles.

I DO Twitter my blog updates but it is a small fraction of my tweets, and my blog is a personal blog frequently with small anecdotes that are easy to consume.

I guess it comes down to how people want to use Twitter. I just happen to think the way I use it is the cooler of the two. ;-)
But even

@Angela, Thanks for the tip, I hadn’t heard of that one, will update the guide accordingly.

@Edward, yes very true, those that just tweet plugs for their own stuff and nothing else soon get ‘un-followed’.

Caroline,

I love the guide and I twittered, and shared it as best I could for you .

I note with interest that theres the classic two step denials that are going on here.

The first is that for some reason people think you cant or shouldnt write a guide to something that is by its nature exploratory and subjective. To which I say .. phhwwwwttt it just smacks of sour grapes. Youve written the first tour guide to a web2.0 site. Good for you.

The second is how subjective people find their experiences. To which it surely cannot be more obvious that your subjective experience was to write the guide.

When I posted a question weeks ago about who to include in a “Social Network Startup Pack ” I got a lot of flack from people for exactly the same reasons.

Im going to noodle Steve Sherlock of Hhgttb to see if he can add another piece of the link loving into the site for you

my only request, is .. will you keep coming back each year and update it ?

Excellent . I must appreciate that this well articulated is worth a read.

@Nik, I’ve already updated it about three times since I published it – mainly the tools sections. I still have the Twitter alerts coming in and I subscribe to Twitter blogs so I’ll continue to give it loving.

Caroline, I just read every word of the entire guide, great job. I believe I pretty much understand it all. There is just one thing that’s holding me back.

I’ll obviously be using this for marketing purposes. No personal use at all. My target audience will be fellow marketers such as yourself. A good majority of these marketers will be using it for the same exact reason. With that in mind, even though I’m not going to be “twitting” (whatever you call that) sales pitches, are these marketers really going to read my tweets? I’ll be honest with you, I won’t be reading theirs simply because I have better things to do then to keep up with other marketers lives.

Does that make sense? What am I missing here?

@Josh, that’s an excellent point. I use TwitterFox which brings up notifications of new tweets. What I find is that over time I have got to know the avatars of people I like. When it’s somebody I like it just catches my attention and I am drawn to it. If there’s a link there, I’ll usually check it out.

Obviously I don’t read them all. Sometimes I’ll load up my Twitter home page and check what happened over night but generally I just catch them when I’m at the computer. So yeah people don’t read tweets like they do a blog post but it can still go amazingly viral.

I have literally had hundreds and hundreds of people come to my blog directly via Twitter since publishing this guide.

I gotcha. So pretty much, you need to stand out and give them a reason to read your tweets. That’s common sense really. I should have thought of that :) I think I can do that.

I’m all set up and I’ve wrote a few tweets.

Thanks again Caroline

Good work Carol. Love the guide. I whipped a quick app where you can watch the twits without touching a mouse at http://twitterarc.com/

It’s nothing earth shaking except it’s twitter public stream + Ajax!

Good guide.

One question though….

Is it worth it?

i.e. what is the return on the investment of hundreds (and hundreds) of hours of your time twittering when you could be working on other (possibly more productive) things?

@Jordan, I spend about 2 minutes a day on Twitter, and it’s sent me over 1500 visitors in the last 2 weeks! Okay that was mainly because I was promoting this guide, but still… I don’t know where you get the hundreds of hours from. How long does it take to type 140 characters?

OK, point taken..

But how many hours (honestly) have you spent researching it and implementing your strategy properly, and how much actual return on investment have you got out of it?

And do you honestly spend exactly 120 seconds a day twittering or do you find you may spend 10 minutes some days which would make an hour a week or 50 hours a year!

I am not saying it is not worth doing (I am not qualified to say this) – I just wanted to know the genuine figures..

Thanks (and apologies if this post sounds unjustly negative)..

@Jordan, I mentioned in another post recently that I estimate it took around 20 hours to produce the guide. Of course I don’t spend exactly 120 second a day twittering, but it *is* just seconds at a time, and it is not something I track as it is so miniscule. I already explained the RIO – hundreds of visitors, good enough for me.

OK – good luck…..

Caroline,

This is a great guide, thank you. As an interactive design & development collective, we’re looking at the business applications of Twitter and at how it seems to be a nascent cultural phenomena. Still very much the preserve of the tech and early adopter community (like Skype was, back in the day) but I think in 2008 we’ll see it go huge. I attended of the Future of Web Apps conference in London earlier in the Autumn and everyone was talking Twitter.

There’s real twitter and a lot of twaddle about Twitter, toot, toot

hi!

i just found out about your blog and i think you did a great job here. twitter is something new that i’ve never heard of before. i haven’t tried it yet but i’m sure it’s a cool way to promote our blog and speak our mind. your twitter tutorial is something comprehensive and well arranged that a newbie like can understand what it is.
now, i’m also learning to make a living from the internet. maybe i can learn something about it from you and everyone at this community.

thanks!
cahyo

Caroline, thank you so much for this guide. I just read it all and it has been SO helpful. i just was not understanding twitter and how it works, but i feel much more informed. i’m going to get on twitter right now and look at it with new eyes!

Love the guide –

You might want to consider adding TwitterBerry to the list of mobile tools. While I sometimes do my tweets via AIM, my wordpress blog, the twitter site or **shudder** SMS, I pretty much always use my blackberry. Without TwitterBerry I would not be a twitterhead. It’s a must-have for people with unlimited data plans as it does not use SMS to update, doesn’t take long to load up like some java tools, and has a great user interface. The only problem with it is that sometimes you have to view before you post.

Carolyn, Thanks-this is a wealth of invaluable information.
Take a look at Twitterlights, a new tool from i-Lighter. With Twitterlights, anyone can highlight and annotate on any web page and with one click, send their tweets- without leaving the page. And the best part is that the information highlighted and sent is simultaneously saved to the user’s i-Lighter account. Twitterlights marries the ease of i-Lighter with the usefulness of Twitter.

Caroline- You Rock!

I set up an account a couple months ago and was a bit overwhelmed by where to start and you have done a great deal of research and inspired me to get going again. Thank you Thank you Thank you

KristenJo’s last blog post..A Typical Day of a Work at Home Mom?

Caroline,

You have a great blog! Thanks for your efforts; the posts on Twitter have made me investigate the usefulness of this tool.

regards,

Jeroen

Jeroen de Miranda’s last blog post..Expertise Marketplace Blog – on marketing professional services

Caroline,

I am new to Twitter and your guide was incredible! I feel like an expert now. Here’s an idea for you: You ought to package it as a free report and use it as your lead generation for a “How To Make Money Using Social Media” product.

Continued success to you — keep swimming!

Craig

@Craig, I do have some ideas around that area but its a way off yet. This guide will remain as-is for the foreseable future.

[...] Extra twitter reading [...] Well organized Twitter Guide [...]

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new superb

————————————————

Dave Winer, father of RSS says “Twitter, as it was conceived, was never meant to live.”

“It’s very possible with better engineering its architecture might have gone on for a few more years, but eventually it would have hit this wall, where there were too many people posting too many twits to too many followers. The scale of the system as conceived rises exponentially.”

So is the end of Twitter getting near? I hope not. Twitter I hope that you are listening and you better start taking things more seriously.

———————————————–

Here’s my two cents.

For instance there are about 100m users of yahoo messenger and usually 2-3 of them talk at a time that means scalability of 300m conversations. On the other hand with 100m twitter users who usually send messages to 100-10,000 other users the scalability required is 10,000m to 10^6m I have never known any current architecture based on webservers to handle such a scale. So according to me Twitter was never meant to live. It is like a concept car that will never see production. Users of twitter don’t understand this and they don’t care.

They don’t know whats happening when the website is down. The sad part is that the best analysts claim that Twitter is a billion dollar company in one year of operations. There is an old saying before the days of when people understood permutation combinations. One peasant asked a king to give him rice equal to the total amount gotten by placing double the number of rice grains on a chess square than the previous square, starting with one rice grain. There are 8×8=64 squares. We seriously need to visit grade 7 mathematics.

I know of only one News/Messaging system that supports around 1 billion users sending messages to all 1 billion users each. Thats a scalability of 10^12m. It is not Web based but rather on a massively scalable serverless P2P architecture based. The team is soft spoken and when I last talked to them I was told that they don’t care about money or hype or fame but rather for just the passion of next generation global systems that will stand the test of worldwide use. Its called Mermaid News Mermaid

They have other softwares too but this post is about Twitter and Messaging. Once everyone comprehends basic mathematics that goes behind scalable algorithms they would go past the flashy screen and hype to actually want a system they can trust. To the analysts I would say it is easy to create a business plan, create a hype and raise $20m funding it is far more difficult to create something of use.

@Peter, well I know about as much as scalability problems as I do about math (not a lot) but what I do know is that great innovations are usually only discovered in the face of great problems. The recent rise of the Internet and of the social network side in particular has indeed created massive overload but I am confident that solutions will be discovered as a result. It may not be Twitter but perhaps another company will take over.

Great information! Thank You! I wish You new great ideas in your blog!

Caroline, this guide is extremely helpful. I’m groping my way into using social networking, and so far I’m the most comfortable with Twitter because it’s the simplest. Since that’s where I’m putting my time (what little I have) I’d like to make the most of it, and your guide has given me some good ideas there.

I’ve just downloaded twitterlicious and twitterloo to see which I like best and I’m thinking about changing my settings as you described. Thanks!

Lulu Barbarians last blog post..Vacation Report – Kid Friendly Green Beans

Hi Caroline, really love your blog and the twitter guide is really useful. I am just getting to grips with social networking and the benefits that it can have on your business. Thanks. David

As with any medium, Twitter is only as useful as the information provided through it.

I meant to say that I enjoy your blog about Twitter too.

:O)

Jennifer Summerss last blog post..Joico Hair Care Products

This is one of the BEST articles you have ever written, Caroline Middlebrook! I learned a ton about Twitter! Keep up all your great work!!

This looks like an absolutely amazing book for new as well as existing Twitter users! Twitter is an amazing tool and the more we understand its full potential, the better and stronger the community becomes.

Hi Caroline. Just got on Twitter the other day (@bjperry). Googled to find your guide … great help so far.

BTW jtwitter link in Part 3 doesn’t work. Should end in “.htm” not “.html”

If I tweet someone I’m following but they DON’T follow me can they see my message?

My word, you’ve put yer h@s into this one, girl ;)

What a top resource.

Diddled for time right now, but bookmarked the lot so you’ll see me lurking about here rather more.

One thing .. maybe a mention of Tweetdeck now, and Tweet Suite possibly has the edge over Alex’ Twitter Tools, maybe.

And a cracking site .. I for one am grateful, and look forward to pilfering all of your ideas and acting upon them.

Nice to meet you, Caroline.
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.. oh, and tx for that Bloggin Bible, looking forward to reading that. Better be good, mind – twittered it!
the_guv´s last blog ..Maintain Unmanaged VPS – Part 10: Copy Site Files between Linux/Linux Computers with the CLI

From reading your blog comments, and those of your readers, I think you might find it very interesting. ,