Lunch at OnlyBurger
The OnlyBurger Hamburger Truck travels around Durham, North Carolina and serves burgers and fries. Read more
Twitter Alert: Your Lunch is on the Move
Thanks to this post from Dave Delaney, I was pointed to this article from Serious Eats about street vendors using Twitter to announce their locations, specials and other information important to their mobile customers. The South is not generally known for their proliferation of street vendors, so the only listing is for OnlyBurger in Durham, and it was added when suggested in the comments. They are a perfect example of the kind of mobile business that can thrive using Twitter. Their mobile kitchen tweets their location as they drive around Durham.
I have read many reviews of their burgers on various Durham food blogs, but haven’t sampled them yet. I will take this opportunity to seek them out over the next couple of weeks and try their burgers.
Today’s Rant about Twitter @Replies
Last night Twitter changed their functionality in the way they served tweets from one’s followers. Before you could choose whether or not you wanted to see the @replies from your followers to people you did not follow. Read more
Trouble with Twitter
We are now just over three weeks past the great Twitter race to 1 million followers, and six of the top ten Twitterers have over 1 million followers, according to Twitterholic. When you add up the followers of the top ten, you get 11.6 million. And how many friends do they have? 1.1 million. It is even more dramatic when you remove Barack and Britney, leaving 8 of the top ten Twitterers with just about 1000 followers.
This is not engagement. This is not conversation. This is broadcasting. Yes, these people or organizations have the opportunity to respond to @ replies, or mentions, without following people. Some are only listening to tweets about themselves and responding. And certainly Shaq does that, as the most engaged top user. But this is a list of celebrities telling the masses what they are doing, what they are thinking and promoting their other, primarily offline, content. And people are listening.
And do you think the top 50 Twitterers look any different? Nope. The only difference is they only have 500,000 to 800,000 followers, but still just a handful of friends. Lots more celebrities, mainstream media organizations and some major tech blogs start showing up here. Twitter founders and a sprinkling of internet celebrities too.
So as Twitter is edging toward mainstream, and it is a very long way from being mainstream, the nature of the service is changing. While many people continue to build a Twitter network for information, interaction and conversation, as the early adopters did, the great influx of Twitter users are bringing the cult of celebrity to the fastest growing social network and overrunning the conversations.
Of course you can ignore those conversations and not follow the celebrities, but that’s not the point. This revolutionary service is turning into a broadcast network. The revolution is about engagement with others, but the one way opt-in nature of Twitter allows fans to eavesdrop on their favorite stars. Am I being a bit of a Twitter snob because I am not interested in the minutia of Britney’s life? No, and I will continue to use Twitter for the ways it works for me. The broadcast of celebrity promotion just increases the noise level.
Please let me know what you think about the change in Twitter below in the comments.
Helping Associations Learn Social Media
Lisa Sullivan helps associations and non-profits understand social media, so they can growth and strengthen their communities. She talks about some of her challenges and successes. Read more
Social Media and Six Plates
Six Plates Wine Bar in Durham NC has been successfully using Twitter to increase business in their establishment. I chatted with Matthew Beason, one of the owners, about Social Media and connecting with their local patrons. Read more
Fail Post
I was on a Skype call with @waynesutton tonight and we started talking about Fail, a common social media term when something doesn’t quick go right. The best example is the Twitter Fail Whale. When the popular social network goes down, a graphic appears on screen showing a whale carried by birds. Anyway, I suggested to Wayne that he hold up his Fail sign.
Why does he have a Fail sign? He does a video podcast with Kipp Bodnar called Talk Social News, and Wayne holds up various signs throughout the show. I suggested that they get sponsors for their signs, but no one has bitten yet. If you want to sponsor the Fail sign, or any other sign on the Talk Social News podcast, send an email to contact@talksocialnews.com. Do I get a kickback if they sell a sponsorship based on this post? We will certainly talk about it.
101 Uses for Twitter
The following list was created by Jeff Cohen, who blogs at DigitalPapercuts.com, and Kipp Bodnar, who blogs at DigitalCapitalism.com, and yes, it is completely coincidental that both blogs have digital as the first word. Since Twitter is still on the top of everyone’s mind, we thought it would be a good time to document 101 uses for Twitter. Since this list was meant to be both fun and educational, we want you to share it with your readers and indicate how you have used Twitter. There are certainly many other uses for Twitter, but we wanted to compile a list that could be created in under one hour. Please feel free to add your own uses in the comments.
The rules for this post are the following:
1. Please post this on your blog in its entirety
2. Bold or underline your uses for Twitter
3. Add the tag twitter101 to the post
4. Make sure you link back to both of the originating posts: Kipp’s and Jeff’s
5. Add a comment to this post if you like
6. Tweet your post with the hashtag #twitter101
101 Uses for Twitter
1. Answer the Question “What are you doing?”
2. Tell Your Friends Your Going To Jail
3. Alert Your Family That your Plane Has Crash Landed in The Husdon
4. Explain To The World What You’re Eating
5. Announce You’re Currently Peeing
6. Your Chair Can Tell The World You’re Farting
7. Plants Can Tweet You For More Water
8. Say Something That Gets You Fired
9. Gather A Group Of Friends For Drinks
10. Say Something That Gets A Job Offer Pulled
11. Say Something That Angers a Client
12. Complain about a Product or Service
13. Ask for Free Stuff
14. Obsess about Bacon
15. Tweet for Your Dog or Cat
16. Showcase an Endless Array of Self-Portraits
17. Meet People at a Concert
18. Share News
19. Report from a Natural Disaster
20. Pimp Your Blog Links
21. Pimp Your Mom
22. Ask for 1,000,000 Followers
23. Announce the Song You are Listening To
24. Tell People How Awesome Your Macbook Is
25. Wonder How This Twitter Thing Works
26. Gratuitous Cursing
27. Comment That You Are Sitting At Your Desk
28. Make Fun of People Who Use PCs
29. Complain about How Facebook is Ripping Off Twitter
30. Wondering if Anyone Uses MySpace Anymore
31. Ask Someone to Marry You
32. Report on Your Blind Date
33. Tell Everyone What You Thought About the Latest Blockbuster Movie
34. Spoil The Ending of a TV Show
35. Thank Someone for Great Customer Service
36. Complain About Bad Customer Service
37. Bemoan The Fact That Traditional Media Doesn’t Get It
38. Share Speaker’s Speech from Conference
39. Make Fun of People Who Are Not at SXSW
40. Revel That You are Not at SXSW
41. Tell People How Wasted You Are
42. Talk about the Weather
43. Share Heartwarming Stories About Your Kids
44. Link to Photos of Your Vacation
45. Use a Location-Based Service to Tell Everyone about Your Latte, including a photo and a map
46. Post Cute Pictures of Your Pets
47. Meet Members of Your Local Community
48. Sell Stuff
49. Buy Stuff
50. Promote Events
51. Crowdsource Ideas for Things You Get Paid to Know
52. Hire A Freelancer
53. Report on Terrorist Activity
54. Name Drop People You’ve Only Met Online
55. Name Drop People You Are Having Lunch With
56. Send A Message To The President
57. Talk About Which Twitter Desktop App You’re Using
58. Talk About Snuggies
59. Use Stupid Shorthand such as: nom nom, lol, FTW, WTF, etc…
60. Try to Make Others Jealous of How Awesome your City is
61. Pimp The Latest Sci-Fi Trailer
62. Tracking Trends
63. Announce Your Plane has Landed: Wheels Down
64. Review Movies
65. Tell A Story
66. Make a Public Apology
67. Admit You Did Something Stupid
68. Ask for Computer Help
69. Complain about Battery Life
70. Pitch Your Startup to Scoble and Techcrunch
71. Make New Friends
72. Exclaim the Guy/Girl Across the Room is Hot!
73. Argue Politics
74. Wish Twitterville Good Morning
75. Tell your Followers to Have a Good Day
76. Tell the Twitterverse Goodnight
77. Share Quotes
78. Express Your Belief in a Higher Power
79. Avoid Sending E-mail
80. Learn
81. Listen
82. Ask for Help
83. Raise Money for a Charity
84. Share Stats of Social Media’s Growth
85. Auto-Pimp your New Twitter App
86. Auto-DM Welcome New Followers
87. Get a Date
88. Ask for Travel Recommendations
89. Share What You’re Reading Offline
90. Provide Traffic Updates
91. Talks Sports and Update Scores
92. Share Recipes
93. Tell Someone You’re Running Late
94. Find and Share Funny Videos
95. Talk to Your Boss
96. Train Surgeons
97. Make Yourself Look Smart
98. Change the World
99. Bash Microsoft
100. Express your Undying Love for Twitter
101. Retweet
So after a quick count it seems I have done 50 of the #Twitter101. How many have you done?
Twitter for your Mom: Explaining the Value of this Social Network
I spend a lot of time explaining Twitter to people and the value they can get out of this one social network. And this relates to personal use of Twitter and business use of Twitter. Everyone can get something out of Twitter, they just need to have an approach that works for them. So today Oprah joined Twitter in a highly publicized event that celebrated Ashton Kutcher reaching 1 million followers before CNN. That has no bearing on this post other than that it was the cause of Oprah starting her Twitter account.
With the explosive growth of Twitter in the past six months the only thing that has changed is that more people have heard of Twitter. But most people still have not heard of Twitter. If they don’t listen to NPR or watch cable news, this is not surprising. To those in the know, Twitter seems to be everywhere. But TV sitcoms stars do not highlight their Twitter addresses in the credits. Neither do Jay Leno or David Letterman. Jimmy Fallon does, but his viewers are probably already on Twitter. Many who have heard of Twitter don’t know what it is or why they should care. They might know it’s a way to share short messages about what you are eating for lunch or that you are stuck in traffic on the 405. But they don’t know how it relates to them.
All that changed today when Oprah sent her first tweet (in all caps). “HI TWITTERS . THANK YOU FOR A WARM WELCOME. FEELING REALLY 21st CENTURY .” Is this as revolutionary as the first telephone call? No, of course not. But the number of people who heard about Twitter today on Oprah (approximately 6 million based on an average of 5.4% rating) is two-thirds as many as US Twitter users (9.3 million according to comScore). That is huge. And if her book club endorsements are any indication, many of these viewers will want to follow Oprah to Twitter.
So this weekend expect a call from your mom asking you about Twitter. She’s knows you are on it, but never quite understood the social media space that you live in. Why tell people what you are doing? Do they really care? And you can tell her that yes, they do care, as I have, but Twitter is much more than that. The first thing you should tell her is that Twitter has moved way beyond the “what are you doing” question to a point where people share information over Twitter. Not just what they are doing, thinking, eating, but what they are reading and watching and sharing.
If you have are having this conversation with her over the phone you probably don’t want to go into the importance of real-time search. This is gathering information about what people are saying on the internet right now. What is on Oprah’s mind, right now. This is why rumors swirled around the internet last week that Google was interested in buying Twitter. They had talks, but people talk all the time. Knowledgeable people speculated that since Google’s search results are cached, meaning they are from a couple days ago, or even weeks ago, Twitter would bring real time search to the table for Google. They were just talks and Twitter will continue to do what it’s doing. And one day they will let us know how they are going to make their fortune, besides selling out to Google.
But you can tell your mom to set up a Twitter account. Walk her through it over the phone, but tell her not to worry about who to follow (other than you, of course). Tell he to go to search.twitter.com and put one of her interests in the search box and hit search. Whether her interest is gardening, photography or boxing, people on Twitter are talking about it. Right now. And the best part about search.twitter.com is that it updates live. It tells you that there are more tweets and you click refresh. Easy as pie. If you tell you mom to watch these twitter searches for 30 minutes a day for a week, she will understand the power of Twitter. Understanding what’s out there is the first step. And next week you can explain following to her.
Twitter Battle for the Most Followers: Ashton Kutcher vs CNN
There is a Battle Royale happening on Twitter to see who will reach 1 million followers on the fast-growing social network first. TV and film star, Ashton Kutcher, has challenged CNN that he will reach the milestone before they do. This challenge is filled with trash talking, videos, and even impersonations. Here’s a CNN article with details, and it continues to be updated. According to Marin Purgar, an information technology consultant in Croatia, Kutcher will beat CNN to the 1 million follower mark before 4pm ET on Thursday, while the network’s news feed won’t reach that point until 1pm ET on Friday.
Tally as of Wednesday, April 15, 2009 per Twitterholic:
CNN: 923,624
Ashton Kutcher: 921,871
Many on Twitter are talking about this, but yesterday it was not the most talked about topic on the service. It is number five now at 8am ET, and I am sure it will rise over the course of the day. Many in the Twittersphere don’t care about number of followers themselves, but are interested in the drama of the race. There is a big upside to Twitter, as the media hype surrounding it will only continue to expand over the next couple of days. This brings more users to the service everyday, and their explosive growth of the past few months will continue. What does it mean to users of the service? Does greater adoption of Twitter lead to better engagement, better conversations and stronger networks? Let me know you thoughts in the comments.
And one final note, the CNN story was updated since yesterday and now reveals that the CNN Breaking News feed on Twitter, the account currently with the most followers, was not even started by CNN, however, they just purchased it from the man who wanted CNN updates on his mobile phone.