Monday, September 08, 2008
Thursday, September 04, 2008
Monday, September 01, 2008
5000 Tweets
Twitter. Yeah, I'm talking about it again today. Welcome to my 5000th tweet. I've been on Twitter for just over a year from what I can remember. Unfortunately I can't access my first tweet anymore. No one can right now. Twitter has limited access to everyone's archives to their last 200 tweets (found this out just before I started typing this). However, I'm sure my first tweet was very profound like, "hello world" or "is this thing on" or "whuddup, yo?" Actually it was probably something very ordinary.
Anyway, 5000 tweets. My mother asked me if I was tweeting every hour or something when I told her that today was my blog post of 5000. LOL! I actually didn't really start using Twitter on a regular basis until I got my iPhone last November. Before that I really didn't know what to use it for. None of my friends or people I knew seemed interested in it. The bane of being a geek, and early adopter. I finally got two friends to use it, Maggie and Don. Maggie really hasn't done much with it, but Don has become part of the Twitter community. He's dmynsynal there. There have been a couple others that I know that have found me, but no one else from my close circle of friends. And this is surprising as I have several geeky friends that should be on this. (While re-reading this, I found another friend who just started using this a few days ago).
So what do I use it for? Sometimes to spout a 140 character diatribe about the world. Other times to ask those that follow me, and anyone reading the public timeline, a question. I've also used it to describe the minutiae of my life to the chagrin of some of my Facebook friends. And I'll use it to announce blog posts and Viddler videos. Most times I use it to communicate to my internet friends.
My most recent 8 tweets were. 8. 7. 6. 5. 4. 3. 2. 1. To which Don replied "thats cheating bitch." I haven't posted since as it was my countdown to 5000. Needless to say I didn't reply via Twitter, but via text message. That old school way to communicate via a cell phone. So I've been somewhat uncharacteristically quiet on Twitter this weekend. Working at night and not sitting in front of my computer all day also helps keep my activity down.
It's a milestone of sorts though to get to 5000. Many people who sign up check it out for a couple weeks, make a couple posts, then stop. Why? Just like anything, you get as much from something as you put into it. I've put over a year into it, and really haven't seen any growth until that past month or so. I'm starting to get followers out of the blue. Many times people look at others' profiles to see whom they follow or communicate with. Then they follow those people. That's how I got my last rash of new followers.
Gary Vaynerchuk, the host of Wine Library recently posted, "people like @marz8 who have the wristband on their Twitter pic are in for a big surprise :) just saying...ok gone for the day! 12:20 PM August 25, 2008 from web." From that post alone, I got about 15 new followers. Here's the cool thing. He follows me too. He just happened to see a post of mine just before that and saw my profile picture. It has 3 WLTV wristbands. Now I haven't seen my big surprise yet, but I'm sure he has something up his sleeve.
But this is how you increase your followers. Start following them. Use the search feature to find friends that just might be on it. Enter keywords of your interests. I follow many internet personalities that talk about using Twitter. I also follow news organizations that have started using it. The NY Times, FOX News, CNN, MySA.com, the BBC, ESPN, and Chicago Tribune all have Twitter accounts. Politicians candidates also have gotten into the mix too. John Culberson, and Ron Paul are two that I follow. So, it's not just the geeks of the world, the mainstream has recognized it. By a happy bit of coincidence last night, my parents just happened to have CNN on at the same time I had glanced at one of the monitors at work where a reporter was talking about Twitter. And USA Today recently had an article about it.
The best thing about Twitter is the mass communication that it allows. There's no way I could as easily send out a mass text message. You can post something like, "who's out tonight?" or "I'm at XYZ who wants to meet up?" Mass e-mail on my computer is about as easy as Twitter since I have a couple distribution lists set up. But it's more difficult to do that while on the go.
The main thing to realize is the immediacy of it. Just because someone follows you or you follow someone, doesn't mean the tweet will be seen. You have to do a reply or direct message to help insure that. However if you have your account set up to receive text messages from people you follow (you can be selective so your phone doesn't blow up every second), you'll see every tweet just like you would if you were at your computer using one of the "clients" that allows you to use the service like IM.
So have I bored you to tears yet, or am I preaching to the choir so far? Either way, Twitter is very likely the next social networking hit. If that's something you gravitate to, then check it out if you haven't already and follow me. Here is my account marz8. I guarantee I'll probably bore you, make you laugh, or shake your head from following me.
On to 10,000.
l8r,
Marz
Anyway, 5000 tweets. My mother asked me if I was tweeting every hour or something when I told her that today was my blog post of 5000. LOL! I actually didn't really start using Twitter on a regular basis until I got my iPhone last November. Before that I really didn't know what to use it for. None of my friends or people I knew seemed interested in it. The bane of being a geek, and early adopter. I finally got two friends to use it, Maggie and Don. Maggie really hasn't done much with it, but Don has become part of the Twitter community. He's dmynsynal there. There have been a couple others that I know that have found me, but no one else from my close circle of friends. And this is surprising as I have several geeky friends that should be on this. (While re-reading this, I found another friend who just started using this a few days ago).
So what do I use it for? Sometimes to spout a 140 character diatribe about the world. Other times to ask those that follow me, and anyone reading the public timeline, a question. I've also used it to describe the minutiae of my life to the chagrin of some of my Facebook friends. And I'll use it to announce blog posts and Viddler videos. Most times I use it to communicate to my internet friends.
My most recent 8 tweets were. 8. 7. 6. 5. 4. 3. 2. 1. To which Don replied "thats cheating bitch." I haven't posted since as it was my countdown to 5000. Needless to say I didn't reply via Twitter, but via text message. That old school way to communicate via a cell phone. So I've been somewhat uncharacteristically quiet on Twitter this weekend. Working at night and not sitting in front of my computer all day also helps keep my activity down.
It's a milestone of sorts though to get to 5000. Many people who sign up check it out for a couple weeks, make a couple posts, then stop. Why? Just like anything, you get as much from something as you put into it. I've put over a year into it, and really haven't seen any growth until that past month or so. I'm starting to get followers out of the blue. Many times people look at others' profiles to see whom they follow or communicate with. Then they follow those people. That's how I got my last rash of new followers.
Gary Vaynerchuk, the host of Wine Library recently posted, "people like @marz8 who have the wristband on their Twitter pic are in for a big surprise :) just saying...ok gone for the day! 12:20 PM August 25, 2008 from web." From that post alone, I got about 15 new followers. Here's the cool thing. He follows me too. He just happened to see a post of mine just before that and saw my profile picture. It has 3 WLTV wristbands. Now I haven't seen my big surprise yet, but I'm sure he has something up his sleeve.
But this is how you increase your followers. Start following them. Use the search feature to find friends that just might be on it. Enter keywords of your interests. I follow many internet personalities that talk about using Twitter. I also follow news organizations that have started using it. The NY Times, FOX News, CNN, MySA.com, the BBC, ESPN, and Chicago Tribune all have Twitter accounts. Politicians candidates also have gotten into the mix too. John Culberson, and Ron Paul are two that I follow. So, it's not just the geeks of the world, the mainstream has recognized it. By a happy bit of coincidence last night, my parents just happened to have CNN on at the same time I had glanced at one of the monitors at work where a reporter was talking about Twitter. And USA Today recently had an article about it.
The best thing about Twitter is the mass communication that it allows. There's no way I could as easily send out a mass text message. You can post something like, "who's out tonight?" or "I'm at XYZ who wants to meet up?" Mass e-mail on my computer is about as easy as Twitter since I have a couple distribution lists set up. But it's more difficult to do that while on the go.
The main thing to realize is the immediacy of it. Just because someone follows you or you follow someone, doesn't mean the tweet will be seen. You have to do a reply or direct message to help insure that. However if you have your account set up to receive text messages from people you follow (you can be selective so your phone doesn't blow up every second), you'll see every tweet just like you would if you were at your computer using one of the "clients" that allows you to use the service like IM.
So have I bored you to tears yet, or am I preaching to the choir so far? Either way, Twitter is very likely the next social networking hit. If that's something you gravitate to, then check it out if you haven't already and follow me. Here is my account marz8. I guarantee I'll probably bore you, make you laugh, or shake your head from following me.
On to 10,000.
l8r,
Marz
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