Twitter, FaceBook, et al

[Midpack]

Most of us are probably old fogies with no interest in social media, though we're clearly PC/Net savvy. It doesn't look attractive to me from a social interaction POV (like kids use them), but I keep reading about people using the sites very effectively as:

• a sort of Buyers Guide, getting candid reviews on products & services before buying - instead of ads or establishment buyers guides,
  • yes I can ask friends, or here and other forums, but FaceBook has 500 million members, that could be an amazing resource (or headache). And like everything on the internet, a healthy dose of skepticism is required.
• business using them for marketing to consumers (best example I've found seems to be Ford's use of Twitter throughout the rollout of their new Fiesta model - a fascinating and evidently effective effort). I just read an article online stating 43% of companies used social media for business use (my MegaCorp is just starting to talk about it).
• Other?

At any rate, I'm tempted to jump in to explore some of these up and coming uses. Anyone else ventured in?

 

[Rich_by_the_Bay]

It strikes me that using this forum (or any other) is a form of social networking.

 

[Onward]

I use both sites heavily. There are too many benefits to list.

 

[jimday1982]

I use both sites heavily. There are too many benefits to list.

Couldn't agree more.

Of course, like anything else in life, you have the over-the-top fanatics as well as the naysayers, but I've had nothing but positive experiences using social media to stay in touch and keep tabs on friends and family members that I'd probably never get around to calling.

In addition, I use it to discover otherwise unadvertised discounts and specials and perhaps most of all, to stay on top of bleeding-edge news and trends in my industry.

 

[TromboneAl]

When you have a kid at home, you hear things like "I'm going to such and such movie." or "We had fun water skiing," or "What a great turkey dinner I had."

When he or she leaves, twitter restores those comments about what's happening.

 

[Nords]

Most of us are probably old fogies with no interest in social media, though we're clearly PC/Net savvy. It doesn't look attractive to me from a social interaction POV (like kids use them), but I keep reading about people using the sites very effectively as:

• business using them for marketing to consumers
• Other?

At any rate, I'm tempted to jump in to explore some of these up and coming uses. Anyone else ventured in?

http://www.early-retirement.org/for...ing-wordpress-facebook-and-twitter-52854.html

I'm starting to get into blogging. OTOH the revenue is pretty much directly proportional to the effort... only with a significant time lag before critical mass is achieved. I'm glad I'm doing this as a non-profit, because if I was a "starving author" then the first would have happened way before the second.

I've watched non-profit organizations use Facebook & Twitter very effectively for publicity and for coordinating their volunteers. Before those networks this could only have been done with extensive phone trees, e-mail, or even public-relations firms. One of spouse's non-profits uses Facebook almost exclusively for deckplate volunteer coordination because they'll see it there before they think to check their e-mail.

Another most excellent use of Facebook has been vicariously enjoying our kid's college experience. She's friended us on the condition that we never, ever, ever post to her wall, not even to "like" anything she puts up. In exchange she's promised that we won't see any pictures of her wearing a beer hat... and just a beer hat. It really helps us keep up with her life without intrusive phone calls & e-mails.

She even admits that she's read my Facebook posts and my blog.

 

[Nodak]

I use Facebook quite a lot. The search function has allowed me to re-connect with people I'd lost contact with years ago.

 

[ERD50]

• a sort of Buyers Guide, getting candid reviews on products & services before buying - instead of ads or establishment buyers guides,
  • yes I can ask friends, or here and other forums, but FaceBook has 500 million members, that could be an amazing resource (or headache). And like everything on the internet, a healthy dose of skepticism is required.

• 
  
  ? How do you find these buyer's guides? - ERD50

 

[Midpack]

? How do you find these buyer's guides? - ERD50

Poor choice of words on my part probably. From what I've read, people can just look for a specific product they're interested in an get tons of feedback from actual buyers. And maybe even discount ideas, etc.

But only based on what I've read...though I'm like to join FaceBook or Twitter pretty soon. Is one better than the other?

 

[walkinwood]

I love FB & use it to keep in touch with my friends. We even have a private group on the street where we live for stuff we want to share just between ourselves.

I don't get Twitter & wish I did! For example, I've read that you can use it to help you when you're traveling. It can provide tips on restaurants etc. But I don't know how to use it for that purpose. Anyone care to elaborate?

 

[zinger1457]

I don't use Facebook myself but did find the movie "The Social Network" to be quite good. It went through the history of how FB was first started by a couple Harvard students to the $23B company it is today.

 

[gromit]

I use Twitter as a news feed instead of as a two way social media. I follow MSNBC_Breaking, CNNbrk, CNBC, WSJpersfinance, WSJ_Econ, etc for breaking news items and links to new articles. Also, you can do a keyword search for tweets on breaking topics. The first day of election protests in Iran, searching on the keyword #Iran would return 300 or more new tweets every second coming in, many from students in the protests, and many with links to their uploaded cell phone video from the streets there.

 

[Rambler]

I use Facebook to keep up with DS and DD, who are away at college. I'll admit i have searched for and found a few old HS friends. But, while we have re-connected, we haven't really stayed connected.

Twitter on the other hand seems like such a waste of time to me. I don't get anything out of it. Acquaintances who use it type in things like "arrived in Singapore, time for dinner now"...or "Boarding now, back in 3 hours", or, "had ramen for lunch today". I just want to shout "who cares?!?!" when I see stuff like that. Doubt I will ever find it useful for me, even though I'm sure it is meaningful for some.

R

 

[flyfishnevada]

DW and I have been going to Jamaica for 3 years. We met some great people and go back with them every year and it seems a few more join the group every year. We us FB to keep in touch. Works so much better than chat rooms and such. I also keep in touch with a few old coworkers, the few I actually liked anyway. Good way to keep up with family too.

 

[BigMoneyJim]

Twitter on the other hand seems like such a waste of time to me. I don't get anything out of it. Acquaintances who use it type in things like "arrived in Singapore, time for dinner now"...or "Boarding now, back in 3 hours", or, "had ramen for lunch today". I just want to shout "who cares?!?!" when I see stuff like that. Doubt I will ever find it useful for me, even though I'm sure it is meaningful for some.

It took me quite a while to "get" Twitter. And really it's a different tool for different people. For "kids" I see it as texting on steroids. For the critical reader, however, I see two big advantages to Twitter over, say, a forum. First, since each "post" is limited to 140 characters your author must be brief or use a link, and you quickly figure out whether you want to read that author and/or follow his/her link. Second is the broad reach. Or perhaps the tunability. You follow people whose tweets you like and can unfollow or put on a list people you don't want in your face. But through retweets and hash tags you have access to an expanded universe of readership or reading material. I'm sure I'm not explaining this well, but through a retweet you might find someone new and interesting to read, and through hash lists you might find yourself in a topic of interest to you and many others.

Yeah, I'm sure I'm not making any sense. But it's cool. Trust me.

 

[deserat]

Just joined Facebook - mainly to find old friends. It's OK - some people are addicted to it and share TMI. However, it is an quick way to send a message to someone without having to know their email. I'm very low key and mind my own business for the most part.

Haven't done twitter - I can tell I'm getting old as I cringe at all of the new applications one has to learn---perhaps its the combination of the fast pace of the changes as well. Whatever comes out has bugs and it seems you barely get used to that or fix the bugs before you are encouraged to move onto something else new....

And I agree with R_i_T - this board is a form of social networking as well.

Sort of on topic - I also just purchased an iPod Touch - yet another interface and applications to learn. To me the sign of a well made human interface for an application is one that is more intuitive - like Angry Birds or Ragdoll Cannons - it makes sense when you play it or use it. Awful waste of time, thought..... And not why I originally bought the Touch - sigh.

 

[RonBoyd]

 

[Nords]

Second is the broad reach. Or perhaps the tunability. You follow people whose tweets you like and can unfollow or put on a list people you don't want in your face. But through retweets and hash tags you have access to an expanded universe of readership or reading material.
Yeah, I'm sure I'm not making any sense. But it's cool. Trust me.

I liked your story of how you figured why a host's server was down by searching for hashtags and then monitoring all the real-time tweets about the actual reason the host hadn't brought it back up yet. Twitter is the best network I've ever seen for that sort of issue, and the closest thing to it would be IRC. There's no way that reporting could have kept up over a discussion board or even FB. Even IRC wouldn't be able to handle the traffic.

That host probably had their own Twitter feed, but if they'd used it to tell the truth from the start then they wouldn't have been so badly busted by all their followers. Not the kind of reputation you want associated with your own hashtag...

I add hashtags to the tweets from my blog posts in the hope that other readers of those hashtags will find the blog and other military ER topics. But hashtags right now are about where Usenet was in 1998.

 

[W2R]

It took me quite a while to "get" Twitter. And really it's a different tool for different people. For "kids" I see it as texting on steroids. For the critical reader, however, I see two big advantages to Twitter over, say, a forum. First, since each "post" is limited to 140 characters your author must be brief or use a link, and you quickly figure out whether you want to read that author and/or follow his/her link. Second is the broad reach. Or perhaps the tunability. You follow people whose tweets you like and can unfollow or put on a list people you don't want in your face. But through retweets and hash tags you have access to an expanded universe of readership or reading material. I'm sure I'm not explaining this well, but through a retweet you might find someone new and interesting to read, and through hash lists you might find yourself in a topic of interest to you and many others.

Yeah, I'm sure I'm not making any sense. But it's cool. Trust me.

Thanks for the description. I really don't "get" Twitter yet at all (but then I don't text at all, either). Your description of Twitter sounds the most appealing of any that I have read.

It sounds like the ultimate "ignore list", in a sense, since you only follow those whose posts you want to read.

 

[scrabbler1]

I have no interest in FB or Twitter. I tried FB for a week last year and thought it was a waste of time, the same sentiment Betty White had in her SNL monologue earlier this year.

EMail, IM, some message boards, and the good old-fashioned telephone (not a cell phone, I hate those, too) are plenty fine for me.

 

[vicente solano]

Couldn´t get interested in Facebook, either. I, too prefer mailing, IMing etc.

 

[BigMoneyJim]

It sounds like the ultimate "ignore list", in a sense, since you only follow those whose posts you want to read.

That's a good way of putting it, but it also allows and encourages finding new people and/or topics.

I liked your story of how you figured why a host's server was down by searching for hashtags and then monitoring all the real-time tweets about the actual reason the host hadn't brought it back up yet. Twitter is the best network I've ever seen for that sort of issue, and the closest thing to it would be IRC. There's no way that reporting could have kept up over a discussion board or even FB. Even IRC wouldn't be able to handle the traffic.

That host probably had their own Twitter feed, but if they'd used it to tell the truth from the start then they wouldn't have been so badly busted by all their followers. Not the kind of reputation you want associated with your own hashtag...

Yeah, I posted that story elsewhere, so I'll rehash it here. I was making some carefully-tested changes to someone else's website when the whole website quit working...and two or three other websites on the same account. I couldn't get any response via web, FTP or ping. So I checked the host's website, and they had a status check for the server which reported it was fine, and even had a recent timestamp that updated through my troubleshooting over the next hour or two. The host's phone support and sales lines were constantly busy, and the support chat function failed. I start to suspect something bigger is happening, but that status page says the server is up. I continued with all the tricks in my book and determined on my own that a lot of web servers at that data center were unresponsive, but I had no idea why...is this a network outage, a data center issue, a denial-of-service attack...? It took over two hours for it to occur to me to try the new media, and I searched Twitter for the name of the web server host. Bingo. Many, many customers were tweeting that their websites were down and they couldn't reach support. They were using the #hostcompanyname hashtag to track the conversation. Someone learned that there were two power transformers that exploded near the data center and that the data center was without power. After finding that out I was able to go to that locale's news sites and verify the explosions.

So the moral is all my geeky tricks were nothing compared to the power of a network of diverse, previously unrelated people able to instantly congregate and discover the extent and cause of the problem. The host company who had been unable to cope with the support calls and also apparently unable to update their websites' status reports properly in the course of a mini-disaster signed up on Twitter, confirm the outage and explosions and posted [-]some BS about[/-] that the power company asked them not to run on battery backup while they completed repairs. They then tweeted regularly with updates and estimated times to repair. Their own support site was useless, and their support phones were slammed. Twitter allowed the customer to deduce much among themselves and then allowed the company to provide updates. Actually I doubt the company would have started their Twitter feed if it wasn't for dozens or hundreds of their customers finding each other and griping about their outage and lack of service.

And I didn't follow anybody new. The hashtag allowed me to follow the conversation while it was of interest to me.

I think I'll spam a few more posts about my Twitter usage. I don't get commissions for Twitter use, but i've made the transition from "don't get it" to "get it (at least partially)", so I'll try to explain it for the other "get off my lawn" and "those crazy kids" folks.

 

[BigMoneyJim]

I add hashtags to the tweets from my blog posts in the hope that other readers of those hashtags will find the blog and other military ER topics. But hashtags right now are about where Usenet was in 1998.

I have to disagree. Usenet (and this forum) are hierarchically structured topic categories. Hashtags are freeform labels. Usenet and this forum are like a TV or radio where you change channels, or perhaps a CD where you put the CD in and then pick the track you want to hear. Hashtags are searches for topic labels that update in real-time.

For example, on this forum there are several boards, but when I come by I usually just look at FIRE and Money, Young Dreamers and Other Topics. If I post something, it has to be in one of a few boards, and it can't be in more than one. And if I post in Young Dreamers about my favorite bacon recipe, someone reading about bacon in Other Topics might not see it. In Twitter you're just posting to those who are following you, those who might find you in a search, and if you add #bacon your post will show up under that hashtag while still going out to your followers and any other hashtags in the tweet.

And a hashtag is a freeform construct. There aren't predefined hashtags. Anybody can put #anyword in their tweet, and in the usenet/forum analogy create a new board. But a more apt analogy might be a saved search, although a search would find any use of "anyword" where the hashtag finds only tweets where the person has used the hash #anyword.

You might develop a conversation over the hashtag, find a new person to follow, perhaps just see tweets of a similar topic, or perhaps it's the latest popular meme. Today's trending Twitter memes seem to be #imsoglad and #ifsantawasblack . My twitter homepage shows trending memes, and sometimes one or more of the people I follow will participate in a meme.

You're using Twitter as an announce feed and using the hashtags to get the message out further. That is fine, and I am glad you got that far after your initial reluctance. But I think if you started tweeting some conversational tweets you would get more followers and interest and ultimately attention to the blog and book.

Examples:

Daughter says might forgo #SeaBees in favor of #CommandAtSea . #MilitaryLife #Navy http://bit.ly/gFi6Db

Um, okay, at first glance that looks like one of your announce posts, but it started off as "Daughter says might forgo SeaBees in favor of COMMAND AT SEA", then I added the #MilitaryLife and #Navy hashtags since they seemed appropriate topics that might have interest in such a tweet. Then I thought SeaBees might be a focused enough interest to deserve its own hashtag and found two existing tweets there already, so I made SeaBees a hashtag. Then I thought command at sea might be a starting point for further discussion, so I hashtagged that even though there are no preexisting tweets there. Then I decided since there is already a discussion in progress at this forum that I'd add the (shortened) link to that post. I've clearly overworked this tweet to highlight some Twitter features, but even "Daughter says might forgo SeaBees in favor of COMMAND AT SEA" without links or hashtags would have been worth tweeting as it could generate personal interest, possibly followers, possibly people looking at the profile and following it to your blog. And I think generally too many hashtags can be bad form, but on this particular tweet I think all the hashtags are justifiable.

Desk mapping real? Just read book where EAs remove-restore papers in exact place on desk for admiral. This true? #MilitaryLife #Navy

On this one I just had to compose to ask the question in under 140 characters, then added the military tags. I thought about hashtagging "desk mapping" to #DeskMapping, but I don't really see it becoming a conversation or particularly interesting topic. And if it does, I can always start using #DeskMapping later.

 

[BigMoneyJim]

On my real-name Twitter account I follow my sister and brother, some comedians, the Whitehouse, Barack Obama and some other miscellaneous people. My sister is semi-chatty and tweets about the kids' cuteness, but not too much and I only have one niece and two nephews, so I want to hear that stuff and see the kid pics, anyway.

@SteveMartinToGo goes through posting spurts where he drowns out my other tweets, but not too often and not too much. (@alyankovic is measured, concise and funny, though.) @ebertchicago, though, is a motormouth and floods my twitter feed if I follow him, but I like reading him, so I created a list and follow him in the list. Now my main twitter feed has the speed and content I am comfortable with, but I can switch over to my "chatty" list to read Ebert and a couple of other avid tweeters.

ESPN Dallas has several people who tweet, and while I don't want them on my feed all the time I like to check on them now and then, so I have a sports list that follows my favorite sports tweeters.

Lists can be public or private. My BigMoneyJim twitter account follows @TheMilitaryGuid (Nords), @bogleheads, @Vanguard_Group and @AssetBuilder (Scott Burns, former syndicated columnist). Vanguard and AssetBuilder post at least daily, and the other two are low-volume enough that they get flooded out, and while I'm semi-interested in Vanguard and AssetBuilder I don't keep up with them as much, so I put them in a list. I made the list public, so you can see my list at http://twitter.com/BigMoneyJim/money. Not that it's worth checking out, it's just a demonstration of being able to create a list that others might find useful and use.

For games it's sometimes fun to see what others are saying, so I'll occasionally check on #Cowboys, #DallasCowboys, #NFL or #TexasRangers. Um, holy crap, while checking that feed I'm seeing tweets that Cliff Lee is signing with Texas today. Got to go hit the news sites to verify that.... I was about done with this post, anyway. The point of this paragraph was that you can visit topics without following them. Could be handy for sports, politics, knitting, whatever.

EDIT: Oh, all the tweets were from the same guy claiming it's "official". Can't find any confirmation. Just one spastic nobody on Twitter. Nevermind. (Re: Cliff Lee / Texas Rangers)

 

[BigMoneyJim]

I tech produce a small live-broadcast web show, and most of the audience is on Twitter, so we use a #showname hashtag for audience feedback during the show. I also monitor people tweeting to or mentioning the show stars ( @twittername ) before and during the show. And of course we announce the show and show interesting happenings while providing the link to the broadcast and the show hashtag.