Do Your Social Media Habits Change on Holiday?

Me & Ms 5 goofing around on holiday

Here in New Zealand, we are in the midst of our summer holiday season. A gloriously wet and rainy one (!!)  but still for most of us it's time away from the office and a chance to spend some time relaxing with friends and family.

So what happens to all that Twittering and Facebooking when you are with your Real Life chums?

Some people abandon their social networks entirely and then return after a period of deathly silence to upload 100 or so holiday snaps to their Facebook profile, only 5 of which anyone is ever going to scroll through (apart from your mum). On Twitter they pick up wherever they left off as if nothing has happened and secretly wonder if anyone missed them (which the answer is probably no. And you know it).

Of course, some of it depends on whether you have internet access wherever you are holidaying. I was amazed (shocked?) at how much mobile data I chewed through with only 3G access available to me. And one bar of 3G at that! But that's another story.

When I'm not on holiday I'd estimate I spend 70% of my social networking time on Twitter, 25% on Facebook and the last 5% scattered aimlessly around the other random networks that are left. But when on holiday, I found that I spent the biggest slice of my time on Facebook which is where the majority of my real life friends are. Since I was mainly sharing photos or tales of the holiday I was having with my own family, it made sense to do this on Facebook. On Twitter I don't share much of this as its probably quite boring to people I don't know and also for privacy reasons (but mainly the first reason if the truth be known. Sorry Mum). Also I don't like broadcasting to the whole world that I am away and then come home to a burglary. Telling my Facebook mates is not such a concern as most of them know me, so they are fully aware that there is nothing worth stealing my house anyway. True story.

This does imply that none of my mates on Twitter really know me - which is completely untrue. Plenty of people on Twitter know more about me than ... well.. me (probably). It also implies that I trust Facebook privacy settings which no-one in their right mind should do but as the same time if you don't want anyone to know stuff, then don't put it on the internet.

I have seen some talk lately about people abandoning Facebook after getting a shock at seeing their own new Facebook Timeline saying things like 'OMG Facebook knows too much about me!' Yes that is completely true - Faceboook knows all that stuff that you told them and has helpfully collated it together and put it (prettily) all in one place - and you are shocked by that? I mean - really? REALLY? If you don't want Facebook to know, then don't put it on Facebook. Simple as that really. I bet these are the same people who think nothing of sending to the NZ Herald photos of their kids running nude round the beach in the hope it will be printed on the back page.

So it is fair to say that being on holiday changes your habits in more ways than one, but when the holiday is over, normal transmission resumes.

<end of transmission>

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The Twitter Wall

I was greeted by this Twitter Wall when I arrived at the office today.

Hilarious tweets crafted by the amazing Bhavika Rambhai.....who knows me better than I know myself.

Such an amazing wall.

Thanks so much doll xx

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Where Is The Social Media Mute Button?

Photo: http://rayhigdon.com/what-numis-network-reps-dont-want-you-to-ask/

Sometimes you just want to pick up the social media remote and press the mute button so that you can filter out some of the posts or tweets littering your feed. Maybe you are totally over hearing about Double Down burgers. Or maybe your feed is full of tweets or posts about an event thats running or a rugger game thats playing. Or perhaps your fav TV show is screening and you don't want a spoiler on it yet. Or you've just had an argument with someone and you just want to filter them out of your life for a while.

On Facebook its easy. On any post, just click the x on the right hand side and choose if you want to hide just that one post or all posts from that person. If you change your mind (and lets face, don't we all from time to time?) just go to the drop down settings beside Most Recent at the top of your feed, and the list of your hidden pages and friends are all shown there.

This means you don't have to unfriend your friend and then refriend them if you have a bit of tiff. In fact, they wont know at all that you've hidden them - perfect.

Likewise LinkedIn has a similar feature. Bless. Although you can only hide all updates from a connection, not a single update.

Over on Twitter though, things are not so easy. You can unfollow someone which will stop their tweets from appearing in your stream, however they can still mention you (but not DM you). They may also notice that you have unfollowed them, so be prepared for that conversation. Or you can block them but that may be too extreme. You also can't filter out a hashtag or tweets with specific words - so you are forced to endure it in exasperation or abandon Twitter completely for a while.

An alternative is to use the Global Filter setting in the Tweetdeck app (thank you to the person who told me about this - you know who you are). You can select words, hashtags, a source or a specific user. No more mentions, DMs, or tweets in your stream. In fact, its like they didn't exist - blissful silence.

And you can clear the filter when you want to.

So easy! Try it and enjoy the peace that it brings.

   

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My Review of Storify And How I Used It For The Royal Wedding

Last week Storify opened up for public beta. I had an account beforehand but had not really used it, so I was prompted by the public beta to give it a go -so (drum roll) here's my Royal Wedding Story. And now I've used it, I'm in luuurve!

What is Storify? Its a mashup tool that is 'a way to tell stories using social media such as Tweets, photos and videos. You search multiple social networks from one place, and then drag individual elements into your story. You can re-order the elements and also add text to give context to your readers.'


Perfect for journalism or content curation, its a great way to grab the best tweets, pics and videos from an event or topic before they are filed away in the archives of history somewhere. Also useful for case studies or for bloggers.


The drag and drop interface makes it super easy to select and format the snippets you want to grab. You can create a Storify account by using your Twitter login, and then whoopee you are away.


During the royal wedding the tweets on the hashtag #RW2011 were spinning down the screen like a poker machine. I had Tweetdeck, Twitter, YouTube and Twitpic all open. Using Storify I grabbed the tweets and pictures as I saw them, dragged them into a story and sorted them from there. You can also get Chrome extensions for Storify so you can tag content from within any Chrome tab and import into your selected Story (or create a new one).


You can also drag Facebook posts, Flickr photos, YouTube videos, Google searches, RSS feeds, Slideshare presentations and URLs. Adding your own text is easy, as is reordering the content, deleting or adding more later on as I did when the official portraits were released.

One nice feature is that the data is preserved in its original format so that readers can still interact with it eg reply, retweet or comment on the original element - unlike a screen grab which might have been used as an alternative. Here is the Storify demo which explains the features further.



There are a few features that would be useful - such as being able to search for @mentions in tweets,  or have the option for selecting images only in my timeline not just Twitter searches. It also doesn't offer easy embedding of the finished product into Blogger, but does for Tumblr, Posterous and WordPress. It also won't work in some older browsers 'from the last century' so download an update now if you are committing that sin!


Storify provides a Notify feature after publishing allowing you to notify the original authors via Twitter that you have used their content in your story. Its optional, and while there is debate about whether its spam or not, it also allows you to spread your story virally. 


My verdict is that Storify is a fabulously easy tool for blogging, journalism and recording events that happen in social media as the royal wedding did. Here's my final Story of the tweet, photo and video highlights from the day.


And while we are chatting about the royal wedding, wasn't it great to see the royal family embracing the use of social media just as a modern wedding should? We were able to see Clarence House chatting to Westminster Abbey via Twitter on the morning of the wedding, receive announcements on what the Queen was wearing at the same time as the media via the official blog, keep up to date with the events as they happened, even watch the official videos on the royal wedding channel just hours after the ceremony. And watching it live with all your friends on Twitter or Facebook made it very social and adds another a dimension to such a special occasion. 


All the best Will and Kate, thanks for sharing so much of your special day with us.


    

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What Happens to Social Media When The Cloud #Fails? Here's How Delta, Citi, McDonalds Responded when CoTweet was down.

Photo: http://www.clarkedailynews.com

Yesterday Amazon Web Services suffered a prolonged outage which also brought down social media websites CoTweet, Hootsuite, Quora, Foursquare among others.

For Twitter accounts with multiple users (such as large brands with a social media team), Hootsuite and CoTweet (both standard and enterprise versions) are popular choices as they allow you to respond to tweets, assign them, follow up, schedule posts on the Twitter account, and are accessible from anywhere. Or almost - except when the cloud fails.

So what was the reaction within the social media community?

Hundreds of tweets from annoyed users rippled round the world. Scheduled tweets in Hootsuite and CoTweet weren't sent (my thoughts on scheduling tweets are here).

One vendor took advantage of the situation and sponsored a tweet promoting their own product. Hmmm.

Some brands switched to using other apps or #newtwitter (such as Citi), reverting back to CoTweet when services were eventually restored.


Some brands who use CoTweet went into the cone of silence (such as McDonalds, CocaCola) and did not tweet at all during the outage.


Others such as @DeltaAssist, advised customers (via #newtwitter) that they were unable to respond to tweets due to technical difficulties. And then were silent. For 7 hours.

Delta monitors and responds to tweets 7 days per week, 24 hours a day, so a 7 hour outage would surely have been significant for them. Having a team of 9 people on their Twitter account would mean that managing their high volume of incoming tweets through another readily available tool such as Tweetdeck or #newtwitter would have been clumsy and inefficient, and likely open to delays and errors.

Luckily for brands in NZ using CoTweet or Hootsuite (and there are a number of them), the outage happened after the close of business on the Thursday before Easter weekend, so the volume of tweets at this time were reduced as people hit the road to 'get away from it all' - with everyone else.

But what if this had happened mid morning on a busy Monday? Is the cloud reliable, or should we have alternatives available as we would for locally housed services? Where was the redundancy Amazon?

Last Sunday afternoon, some Kiwis experienced issues accessing international websites or data housed internationally, which raises similar questions. What do we do when the internet access we rely on is  not there?

I'm sure this will give a number of people something to mull over during the Easter break.

  

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Are Your Twitter DMs Private? Or Not.

 

Photo: http://eclas.tumblr.com/ 

I've noticed lately that there are a number of Twitter DMs (Direct Messages) which should be private between two people, but have somehow found their way into the public timeline.

These tweets stand out a mile because they are not addressed to anyone and typically say something like "That's perfect, can't wait to see you... x" or "OMG OMG! She is such a b@#tch!" - you get the picture.

So how does this happen? Other than potentially being an issue with Twitter (which I am not aware of) its more likely to be user error, particularly when using SMS to tweet.

So.... here's a reminder that when you send an SMS to the Twitter shortcode, it will appear in your public timeline unless you use the correct commands. It's very easy to mess this up when you receive an SMS to notify you of a Twitter DM and you just SMS back to reply! Oopsie.

How to send a DM using SMS
D username + message

Direct Message: sends a person a private message that goes to their device, and saves in their web archive. 

Example: d Support Hey support! Thanks for your help

Also if you are using SMS to send Twitter DMs, and your message is longer than 140 characters, Twitter will split it into two messages, but the second part will be in the public stream as it is not prefixed with D username!

Other command examples for using Twitter via SMS are here. they're useful to know if you are ever somewhere with poor cellphone reception and can't get your app to work.

A few other tips:

You can only send a DM to some who is following you.  On #newtwitter this is easily signified by the appearance of the Message button on a users profile.

There is a Twitter limit of 250 DMs per day, and #newtwitter only shows the 50 most recent DMs.

If someone deletes a DM they have sent you, it will be removed from your DMs on Twitter. But if you have SMS alerting set up for DMs then you will still receive the SMS when the DM is sent. Clever huh?

Lastly, if you see someone's rogue DM pop up in your stream and they follow you, send them a quick message to let them know (especially if it is potentially embarrassing or damaging for them). Thanks to @rgoodchild for this tip!
  
  

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Should Brands Be Available On Twitter Afterhours?

Over the weekend I noticed that Mercury Energy was merrily tweeting away, and this caught my attention because (a) I hadn't noticed this account before and (b) it was the weekend when everyone has brunch and reads newspapers (unless they have small children in which case they get busy with Special Agent Oso). Not just prescheduled content either - engaging with others and retweeting tweets.

Also over the weekend there was a large earthquake aftershock in Christchurch. Some brands were quickly tweeting their concern and support for the Christchurch community, despite that it occurred 'afterhours' (on Saturday evening).  The main telcos were also quick to provide infrastructure updates which are vital services particularly in a crisis situation as we saw with the February earthquake.

Photo: http://weheartit.com/entry/4766557

This raises the question, should brands be active on Twitter and in social media outside of normal business hours? Does the community expect to receive responses in the evenings, weekends and public holidays?

For some organisations, its an important part of their customer engagement. Its also increasingly becoming a point of competitive advantage.

Take for example the conversation below between Vaughn Davis and Telecom NZ (start at the bottom). Vaughn was overseas and having trouble with his email on his heritage edition iPad connected via Vodafone. Not a particularly unusual conversation for a telco and a customer - except that it was taking place at 10:15pm on a Tuesday night. 

Vodafone did not respond to Vaughn's request for help until the following day, and in the meantime the Telecom team jumped in to see what they could do to help (note there was a lot of techo g33k tweets back and forth that went on to diagnose the issue which are not shown here). Had that been a customer looking to switch telcos, this could potentially have been a strong case for customer acquisition. It was also observed by the Twitter community following both @vaughndavis and @TelecomNZ, all of whom are avid consumers of telco services and data. Hmmmmm.

Some brands will state quite clearly on their social media profiles that their accounts are only monitored during normal business hours. Which is fine - but many people don't ever go to the Twitter page of the account due to the proliferation of apps used for Twitter, so its questionable how many people will actually see this attempted disclaimer. Customers (or potential customers!) may have their tweet go unanswered til the next business day by which time they may well have forgotten what it was about. Or have ranted about it on their blog.

I've seen other brands 'sign out' each evening with a farewell tweet to signal they are going off duty. This creates a pattern of activity but if you miss the tweet then you won't know whether they are on duty or off duty until your tweet is meet with deafening silence.

But do we even need or want it - other than in times of crisis? I've observed brands posting content and/or responding to tweets/Facebook posts during evenings or over the weekends, and generally speaking the community seems to be non plussed whether it happens within an hour of posting or the next day (unless you are @vaughndavis). If it is urgent, then can't you call an 0800 number and speak to an actual human at the call centre? Maybe thats part of the attraction of social media - you'll be able to ask your question and chat with a human who is in all likelihood a decent Kiwi, all in real time. No cut offs, no hold music, no language barriers, and maybe even your mates can chip in and help you too. Unfortunately many organisations (particularly in NZ) are not yet fully resourced to be able to monitor and respond to social media requests after normal business hours, although this will change as the size of the local community grows as we have seen overseas, and social business is accepted.

We are coming up to one of the longest holiday weekends of the year (whoop!).  Over the Christmas/New Year period the drop in activity from brands was quite noticeable, so it will be interesting to see if the same happens over Easter. I also observed comments from the community that any 'marketing' or 'sales' content (no matter how cleverly disguised) was not appropriate during the holidays - its a holiday for Gods sake!

What about you - do you expect brands to be available on Twitter and Facebook after hours or during public holidays to engage with you?    
        
    

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10 Tips To Keep Yourself Safe On The Interweb

Photo: http://weheartit.com/entry/7159746

Some people live their lives very openly on social networks choosing to share all sorts of details with the world. Others take a more conservative approach and keep their private lives private. Most people are somewhere in between, but no matter where you are on the spectrum there are a few things everyone should be aware of, especially if you are a big user of social networking sites.

Here are 10 tips to make sure you are keeping yourself safe on the web:

1. Check how your profile is displayed to others who are not your Facebook friends, even if you lock down your Facebook profile. Some 3rd party applications used to upload photos or post your Facebook status make these visible to everyone and you may find your Facebook privacy settings have not been applied.

To see how your profile currently appears to one of your friends, take the following steps:

• Navigate to the Privacy Settings page.
• Select the "Customize settings" link towards the bottom of the "Sharing on Facebook" section.
• Click the "Preview My Profile" button that is located in top right side of the page.

When you have reached this preview mode, you will automatically see how your profile looks to most people on Facebook. To view how your profile looks to a specific friend, just type his or her name in the field.

2. Be notified of Facebook logins from other locations.  Facebook has a notification to alert you if your profile has been accessed from a different location (full instructions are here). Go to the Account Settings page and click on the link next to "Account Security" at the bottom of the page. If you select the option to receive notifications for logins from new devices, when you log in, you'll be asked to name and save the various devices you use to access Facebook. 

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Find Out Who Has Been Favouriting Your Tweets

There is a cool feature in Twitter called Favourites. Its like a bookmarking tool that lets you favourite any tweets you see for reading or saving for later on.

As Twitter search only holds data for a couple of days, it can be hard finding tweets from far into your distant past. If you favourite them then they are bookmarked for later on. Easy!

How do you favourite tweets? There is usually an option within the website or app you are using - here is an example from Twitter web.

You can access all your favourites later on via Twitter web - click on Your Profile > Favourites and they are all listed there.


Often during the day - while standing in line for the barista - I see tweets with links to blogs or articles I want to read. Being time poor, I just favourite these tweets so that I can read them later on at my my leisure, and can unfavourite them as I read them. Its kind of like a reading list.

This is a fantastic feature.... but quite naturally leads me to wonder - is anyone favouriting my tweets? Anyone? Anyone at all?

Favouriting is another great measure of engagement, just as retweets, click throughs or mentions are - and shows you who in your community is interested in your content. This can also allow you to tailor your tweets so they appeal to those who you know retweet or favourite you. Try engaging more with these people -  they share interests with you!

Favstar is a great (free) tool to help you track which of your tweets have been favourited and retweeted.

Just enter your Twitter username and you can see your most favourited tweets, which of your most recent tweets have been favourited, a list of all the tweeps who have favourited your tweets (ever) and the number of times they have favourited you.

This might also be a useful way to check out the most favourited tweets of other people which can potentially be a good source for retweeting content.

Want to receive notifications of when you tweets have been favourited? You can add Favstar into your RSS feeder so you get a notification of who favourites your tweets. Just add the following url into your reader http://favstar.fm/users/username/rss

How do you use the Twitter favourite feature?

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Is It Rude To Unfollow/Unfriend? What Are The Rules?

Photo: NZexporter

If you are following a lot of people on Twitter or Facebook then your news feed tends to get quite noisy. And busy. And to be honest, full of quite a lot of stuff that really you aren't all that interested in.

But the problem is, these people followed you, so you were polite and followed them back (or on Facebook you accepted their friend request) so if you Unfollow or Unfriend them isn't that just a bit rude? Just a teeny weeny bit?

Here's a question for you. If you bump into someone at the supermarket who you haven't seen for years - you might stop and have a good old natter, maybe swap phone numbers and say 'we must catchup'. But after that chance meeting, you don't really have much to say to each other. Will you actually call them? Probably not. And why? Because your life has changed and you are into different things now. Doesn't mean you don't like them, just means you have a lot of other stuff crammed into your life already which takes priority.

Same with Twitter or Facebook. If there is someone there that you used to engage with when you first connected, but not so much anymore.... well maybe its just that you are into different things? And if you aren't engaging with someone and you have different interests then really whats the point in being connected?

I do periodic culls of Twitter and Facebook. On Twitter I also use lists - you don't need to be following someone to list them - so that's one way of grouping them off to one side and taking them out of my main feed. On Facebook, I restrict it to keeping in touch with friends and family (sorry to those people whose friend requests I have never accepted - now you know why). Doesn't mean I don't like these people - just that we don't have common interests right now.

Everyone changes - if we all stayed the same then we'd be boring.

Its not rude. Its not the end of the world. Its just life.

And you will probably enjoy checking your Facebook and Twitter feeds a lot more when its not cluttered up with stuff you don't want to hear about.          

    

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Tips On How To Get The Most Out Of TweetDeck

There are a plethora of apps available for managing your Twitter life, and I've used a few but keep coming back to TweetDeck.

Why?

Well, a few reasons. It depends a lot on how you use Twitter, but I find TweetDeck suits me.

Here are my top 5 reasons for using TweetDeck:

1. It has an autocomplete/lookup function for Twitter names of all the people you are following. No need to guess someone's Twitter handle and have your tweet go off into a black hole because of a mis-spelling (on Twitter, there is no bounce back to tell you that you got the address wrong!). And really, who can be bothered to go and lookup the correct name somewhere else? That's one of the drawbacks of Twitter web (which only shows 500 names - and its never the 500 you want) or Twitter for Mac (which shows absolutely none thank you very much).

2. There is an automatic url shortener which can use your bit.ly account (or tiny.url and a few others). Makes it super easy to copy and paste a url, have it shortened and still be able to access the analytics. If you share a lot of links to content (as I do) then this is important. You can also use your Twitpic, Yfrog or Posterous accounts for uploading images.

3. Its got a built in spell check. Admittedly it is American spelling, but its better than none. Might save your bacon one day.

4. You can use the old and new style retweets - you can choose each time you RT. Love that flexibility -  sometimes you want to add a comment onto the RT (if there is sufficient room) and being able to choose how you RT is excellent.

5. TweetDeck shows your RTs. Twitter web doesn't do this very obviously - you need you go to Retweets > Your Tweets, Retweeted to see them - but Tweetdeck will show them in your Mentions column.

Extra Tweetdeck Features
There are also a lot of extra features in TweetDeck that you may not be aware of, even if you are a long time TweetDeck user. Here are my favs:


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TwitFight: Why Isn't There More Biffo On Twitter?

Recently I observed an argument on Twitter happening between two of the people I follow. What struck me about it was not the content of their disagreement, but that it is rare to see public arguments on Twitter.

Sure from time to time you see examples of a fleeting spat. And there are loads of gibes and digs going on all the time. But on the whole we are a sociable bunch who get along even though there are many here with strong opinions (you know who you are).

The people you choose to follow and engage with are likely to have similar interests, opinions and values as you. If you discover that this isn't actually true then you probably will unfollow them. If they really get your goat, you might even block them. And you may instead choose to follow others who engage with the people you follow.  Before you know it you are in the midst of a circle of people who all chat to each other, share common interests, and run off into the sunset and get married. (Well that last bit doesn't happen very often but it does happen!).

Those people who hold strong views that aren't the same as yours just fade into the background, never to be seen again.

Are we lulling ourselves into a false sense of warm fluffiness where we happily use Twitter to chat to our pals and block out anything bad and wrong? Or is it an insular view of the world where you aren't forced to endure the boyfriend of your BFF - just because you have to - and instead can just cull out all those not like you with one click so they are out-of-sight-out-of-mind?

In real life, you don't get much say over who your family, workmates or neighbours are, so you are forced to learn how to deal with those people you don't see eye to eye with. However online, you just unfollow, block, ignore and they can't do much about it - thats if they even know that its happening.

Is it an easy way out, or just an advanced evolution of natural selection?                                                          
      
 

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The Danger with Scheduling Twitter Posts

Social media is all about being authentic and transparent, right? So why do some people schedule their tweets to a time when they may not even be online?

Well there are a number of reasons why you might do this:

1. To repeat a post at various times in the day to reach a different audience (for example morning, afternoon, evening) - this maximises your exposure.
2. It happens to be the middle of the night when you are on Twitter and actually no-one will see your tweet at all (a bit like if a tree falls over in a forest... ????) so you schedule it for the morning 
3. You know you will be busy at the time you want to post on Twitter so you schedule a post
4. You are nuts

These may all be valid reasons, but there is a danger with scheduling posts - you just never know what will happen.

Over the past few months there have been several tragic events which have unfolded in realtime on Twitter. During the Pike River explosions, the Christchurch earthquake and the Japan tsumani, the Twitter stream was scrolling out of control with latest updates and retweets on the disasters. Then suddenly a random tweet about something completely different pops up. Whaaaaat??? Why would anyone post a tweet about the latest hot fashions when there has been an explosion in a coal mine in the South Island?

This was tweeted a few minutes after the Pike River explosion that killed 29 miners.

The danger with scheduled tweets:

1. It looks like you are not listening to your community - at all
2. They might be inappropriate comments for the situation
3. Everyone knows you are not online and are faking it
4. Your community disengages from you
5. You can't respond to any tweets or mentions as you aren't online
6. Its not authentic
7. Its not transparent
8. Its not relevant
9. Its not useful
10. You look like a real dork

Don't second guess mother nature. She doesn't give warnings of upcoming events. 

Just tweet when you are online and be true to yourself and your community.

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Tweeting and Followers: More Twitter Tips.

Tweeting

Its surprising how many articulate, well educated and confident people suddenly feel quite self conscious when composing their first tweet. “But what should I tweet??” they cry, wringing their fingers over the keyboard, anxiety etched on their poor wee faces. Stage fright. Big time.

Not wanting to burst your bubble but when you do finally send your first tweet, its highly likely that no-one is listening so no-one will even see your cleverly crafted 140 character debut flit through the virtual world. This is actually a good thing. Think of it as a dummy run, a trial. No pressure whatsoever. (I should point out that once tweeted, your tweet is captured in Twitter history forever and one day when you are more famous than Gaga someone will dredge up your first tweet for all to see. But seriously, don’t over think it. Just do it!). 

There are a few types of tweeting styles on Twitter:

• Some Twitter accounts have tweet counts in the single digits but following huge numbers of accounts - they are either spam orstalkers. Neither is desirable. Avoid being mistaken for one.
• Some people are conversationalists on Twitter - they spend most of their time chatting to other people and may have a lot of tweets. They probably use foursquare a lot and could be accused of over sharing. If you want to be one of those people you will probably already own at least one iPhone and will need chargers stashed in every corner of your house, car, or workplace. 
• Some people share content on Twitter - links to blogs, news articles, websites - if you are someone who scours the web and consumes a lot of information, you may be one of these people.
• Some people provide content - they may be bloggers, thought leaders or respected in their industry and they will provide original posts and tweets to be shared with the community.
• And some people are just damn famous. You know who I mean.

Decide which one of these (or a mix) you would like to be on Twitter and then get tweeting!

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Twitter Overload. More Tips for Newbies

If you read my previous post, you’ll now be happily following loads of Twitter accounts and watching the wave of tweets scroll through your Twitter timeline. Until you become overwhelmed. The common cry at this stage is ‘How do you keep up with all these tweets? I don’t have time to read them all!! This is so stressful!”  

Don’t panic. After all, you are probably following 100 or 200 Twitter accounts. Some people follow thousands, and are still alive to tweet about it the following day along with their breakfast details.

I once read a post (sorry, can’t remember who wrote it. If it was you then thank you!) that described Twitter as ’ a river not a lake’. These are very wise words to remember. Think of Twitter as a river and just dip in and out of the stream as it flows past. Don’t treat it like a lake where all the tweets are pooled and you must read them all. Anything meant specially for you will be in your Mentions tab. Anything else is just meant for everyone. There is not a test at the end.

Of course you will find there are a few people whose tweets you would like to see (or most of them anyway). Its an awkward moment when they say ‘did you see my tweet?’ and then all they can hear are crickets. My tip here is to make a few Twitter lists of your own.

Twitter lists are great. You can choose whether they are private (hidden) or public (allowing other people to see them and follow them).  You might create a list for all your friends and family. Or for competitors in your industry. Or for funny accounts that make you laugh. Some applications likeTweetdeck(my fav) or Hootsuite (my not-so-fav) allow you to view multiple lists in columns across the dashboard screen so you feel like you have your own mini Gatorade Command Centre. Oh the power!

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New to Twitter. What now?

Lately there has been a spurt of activity in the office with lots of new people joining Twitter (after a LOT of encouragement). After grumbling for a while, they sign up, follow Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber and then inevitably the question is asked 'Soooo...what now? Who do I follow?'.  So for those of you who are new to Twitter, here's a few tips on finding interesting people to follow.

1. First off, stand up and ask loudly "Is anyone else here on Twitter'. This works best if you are in an office or surrounded by people you know. It works not so well when in the middle of the supermarket or at the doctors. (believe me).  Twitter is rapidly gaining in popularity (over 190m users) so chances are there are a few people who you know who are already very familiar with the ins and outs of this micro blogging platform. Ask them who they enjoy following then check these people out for yourself. Ask your Facebook friends too.

2. Import all your email contacts and let Twitter see if the people who you email are also on Twitter. Instant party. Same with your LinkedIn connections (different kind of party).

3. Go to search.twitter.com and search for topics that interest you. Maybe 'iPhones' or 'photography'. Or 'UX'. Whatever is your passion. Take a look at some of the people who come up in the search and follow them.

4. Go to www.klout.com. Take a look at some of the people who you know of on Twitter by entering their name in the search box. Have a look at who these people are influenced by (klout displays these) and follow them. For example @mashable is influenced by @benparr (one of the editors of the Mashable blog).

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Online and Offline: Should Your Worlds Collide?

Ever met anyone IRL (In Real Life) who you only knew in the online world? Or should you keep online friends separate from your real world ones?

Its a common complaint that people new to Twitter don't know anyone in the Twitterverse as all their friends are hanging out in the Facebook mall, or worse, on email! But it doesn't take long before you find you have shared experiences and know lots of info about some of the people you interact with, and since its all in real time you may even find you know more about them that your real world friends and family. But how can that be - you haven't met some of these people!

What to do, what to do.

There are basically 3 options:

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Is Social Media A Race? Or A Journey?

I overheard a conversation recently where 2 people were talking about how long they have been using social media and whether they were ‘ahead’ of others who had yet to join, or who had only just joined.

It struck me that they were treating social media participation like a race. Or an Amway pyramid. Just because you are an early adopter doesn’t necessarily mean that you will be The King Pin. There are plenty of people who I know that have been using social media for years, but might have a small group of people who they engage with. There are others who have burst onto the social media scene quite recently, but have embraced it like a long lost lover and never let it go. They have a huge enthusiastic audience who they actively engage with.

The exception are those personas who have a large following in the offline world as well. Like Charlie Sheen who joined Twitter today, and already has over 600,000 followers after just 11 tweets.  But lets face it, he makes Mel Gibson look normal and boring.

So really, its not a race and it doesn’t matter when you started or if you joined in at Mission Bay like most of Auckland does doing Round The Bays. Its whether you’ve embraced it, and how you use it that really counts.

Enjoy the journey and I’ll see you at the end for a refreshing drink. And a few plasters if you need them.

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