Twitter is NOT a Micro-Blog

Sometimes a word or notion is fired in the kiln of conventional wisdom and becomes forever set. Unless, and until, A. Fine blogger takes up the charge and forces some rethinking!

Twitter is known as a micro-blog. I think that this is completely wrong. Twitter should be considered a social network.

Here’s why:

According to Wikipedia, micro-blogs operate just like blogs, only in smaller bursts. Twitter is included in the Wikipedia entry as a micro-blog. Someone, or a group of people, write blogs that audiences read. A blog is part of a broader, online conversation through links to other blogs or news articles and in the comments stream. Nonetheless, fundamentally, someone writes and others read.

An online social network like Facebook is a neighborhood where lots of people share news and photos, connect with one another, meet new friends, organize to do things together online or on land. No one is in charge, there is no beginning and end to conversations. Twitter is just such a neighborhood.

Here is an excerpt of a conversation on Twitter that I read the other day:

Jeff Jarvis: Wikipedia is wrong (GASP!). It is not my birthday. Thanks anyway.

Jeff Jarvis: Can somebody change my Wikipedia birthday to July 15? I don’t want to violate rules and do it myself (silly as that is).

Andy Carvin: @jeffjarvis actually it’s kosher if you do it to correct a factual error and leave a note on the discussion page for transparency sake.

I thought it was a neat, little exchange of information and knowledge, the kind one would hear in the hallway at a conference or at a water cooler in an office (although not my office, then I’d have to get dressed!) It was not a short blog post followed by a comment.

So, what’s the big deal, A. Fine, what does it matter if Twitter is misnomered? Here’s the deal, what we call a tool often dictates how people use it. That’s why it’s conventional wisdom, it is a settled discussion. Not everyone, certainly not people who are very facile with the social media toolkit will use a tool the way that Wikipedia determines, but, newcomers, people who are less certain may. If an organization, or person, is unsure of what to do on Twitter, I would rather than they think about is as a neighborhood and an ongoing conversation than a blog post.

In my experience, Twitter is best used as a mechanism for conversations among a lot of people. It’s a fantastic organizing tools for events like Twestival. Most of all, Twitter is a neighborhood where interesting ideas and exchanges are happening that we can participate in, or watch, just as we would at a neighborhood diner.

Or maybe it’s something entirely new that hasn’t been named yet. I’m open to suggestions!

Are You Ready to Tweet?

I like this post from Mikey Ames of TechHermit about his response to an inquiry about whether a University president should tweet. What I liked in particular was his rundown of which ones are tweeting and how well they’re doing. Too often, I think, we hear that so-and-so CEO or celebrity or muckety muck is tweeting.

Mikey answers the “so, what” about that statement. Anyone can create a Twitter account, but are they astroturfing, is their account simply a logo using by a communications staffer to basically send out press releases. Or is this person person and organization authentically engaged in a real conversations?

Here’s Mikey’s description of one particularly good University prez tweeter:

http://twitter.com/johnmaeda – Rhode Island School of Design, President Maeda is extremely engaging, uses the tool well. Intentionally follows others and has a huge following because of his obvious transparency and willing to use twitter as it was intended. Notice all the Retweets and questions and @replies. This user has actual clout and influence in the tool. He likely never has anyone else share his feed. He has completely embraced it as part of his daily rhythm.

If one thinks about Twitter as a conversation and not a tool than the question of if your organization should use it becomes clearer. Use it if you are ready and willing to engage in conversation. If it’s a new fangled fax machine for press releases than please don’t, the airwaves are crowded enough.

The bottom line is that no everyone needs to use every social media tool (although I hope that they’ll try them all!) But whichever ones you choose to use you need to follow the basic principles of social media use: be yourself (as Oscar Wilde said, “be yourself, everyone else is taken”), engage in two-way conversations, listen and learn.

Hillary Clinton and Twitter

According to the NY Times yesterday, the State Department asked Twitter not to perform their regularly scheduled maintenance Tuesday night in order to keep the site up for tweets from Iranian protestors. (It would have been nice if the story had included the fact that there were lots and lots of voices on Twitter asking the company to do the same thing.)

That’s HIllary’s State Department doing that and she has been out front recently talking about the impact that social media can have on diplomatic relations.

She also has a Twitter account of all things Hillary here.

But, then, yesterday, she says during a press conference, “I wouldn’t know a Twitter from a tweeter, but apparently, it is very important.”

Now, I love Hillary, really I do. I was an ardent supporter of hers during the primary campaign last year and think she will make a great president. But, this is a perfect example of the way that too many Boomers treat social media. It’s something other people, generally young people, do that isn’t infused in the way that they work.Knowing that Twitter is important, reading reports that Iranians are using it to share their stories this week isn’t enough. Hillary has to try it out. I’m not suggesting that she has to be a devoted tweeter, but she has to kick the tires and give it a whirl around the block to really see what the fuss is all about.

There is an opportunity here.  There are Boomers and even reluctant Gen Xers in your organizations who are either resisting the social media resolution mightly or hoping that it’s something other people do. This isn’t a sustainable way to work; social media isn’t a fad, it’s a fundamental way of reorganizing your work and your relationships with the rest of the world. My suggestion is setting up reverse mentoring brown bag lunches where the Millennials can walk them through some of the tools and let them test drive them. Think of opportunities for your Luddites to be guest bloggers and tweeters. Get them using the tools and they’ll see for themselves how powerful they are.

And while Hillary is recuperating (I had the same thing happen a few years ago – ouch!), I’m happy to have lunch at her house in Chappaqua and tweet together with her!

More Exciting Twitter News

Several exciting Twitter developments over the past few days as clearly the power of micro-messages continues to sweep the globe.

On the oft-dreary newspaper front, The Guardian in London has taken the bold and necessary step to close down it’s printing presses and shift to reporting the news entirely by Tweets.  According to the Guardian:

A mammoth project is also under way to rewrite the whole of the newspaper’s archive, stretching back to 1821, in the form of tweets. Major stories already completed include “1832 Reform Act gives voting rights to one in five adult males yay!!!”; “OMG Hitler invades Poland, allies declare war see tinyurl.com/b5x6e for more”; and “JFK assassin8d @ Dallas, def. heard second gunshot from grassy knoll WTF?”

This is a very exciting development in the race to find a new publishing model for newspapers.  Hopefully the Knight Foundation and Atlantic Philanthropies are taking note and finding ways to encourage their newspaper project grantees to go all Atwitter as well.

In related Twitter news, the Sunlight Foundation, always strategically perched at the cutting edge of technology and governance, has announced a new campaign to require all future government bills to be 140 characters and posted on Twitter. The legislation will be posted 72 hours in advance to ensure that all Americans have enough time to read the entire Tweet prior to any vote.  In the announcement of the campaign, Ellen Miller, Sunlight’s co-founder said, “Our Twitter Legislation Campaign will ensure that special interests are kept out of legislation; or at least kept to 12 or fewer characters. Every American deserves the right to read the Tweet before legislators vote on them.”  Sunlight is also organizing a campaign in partnership with Demos: A Network of Ideas and Action to change the voting system to enable all Americans to vote by Twitter.

Stay twuned for more Twitter news!

• *Happy April Fools Day everyone — hopefully we haven’t lost our sense of humor with our wallets this year!**

Sunlight’s Twitter Lobby Campaign

The Sunlight Foundation, always pushing the envelope on using social media tools to influence policy making in Washington, announced yesterday the launch of an effort to use Twitter to lobby individual Congress people to vote for

In an email received yesterday, Ellen Miller, co-founder and executive director of Sunlight, wrote:

Currently there are 17 senators tweeting and we intend to get our supporters to @lobby them to seek their support for S. 482. We believe that this will be the first organized direct lobbying of members of Congress over Twitter.

For those of you who don’t speak Washington, S. 482 is a bill introduced in the Senate to require the electronic disclosure of Senate campaign finance reports.

Not everyone thought this campaign was a great idea.  Ethan Zuckerman wrote a blog post that said, in part:

I realized that the “ask” of the campaign was to send 17 identical tweets to the congresscritters who’ve adopted Twitter. This means that all my twitter followers get to see me nagging Congress – including the roughly half of them that don’t live in the US – with seventeen messages. And it means that Congressfolk start seeing what amounts to Twitter spam, and start dismissing it much as they learned to dismiss email.
So, has Twitter jumped the shark and just become another tool for spamming politicians and decision makers?  Or is it, could it, be something fundamentally different? What if the focus of the campaign was to ask (a nicer word than insist, but perhaps the reality in is somewhere in between) that the 17 tweeting Senators engage in a discussion on Twitter about how we can help them to get this bill passed.  Twitter has so far been used by elected officials as a one-way communication tool, they tweet about what’s on their mind, and we get to listen in. We could ask/insist that they use Twitter to engage in a two-way conversation about legislation. Would it be possible to get Senators to stop talking for a minute and start listening?  Pretty high bar, I know, but perhaps worth reaching for.

Tweeting the Inauguration

A week from now the world will be descending on Washington, DC for the inaugural festivities.  The NPR Social Media desk staffed by Andy Carvin will be repurposing the guts of Twitter Vote Report for use on Election Day for attendees to share their travel and inauguration experiences.

So, if you’re in DC next week, or on your way, use use the hashtag  #dctrip09 to describe your roadtrip in and  #inaug09 on Inauguration Day to share your experiences. Tweet it or use the really cool iPhone app that will enables you to report and automatically map where you.

Also, for the latest help in planning for the big day you can follow twitter.com/inauguration for up to the minute details.  What are some other ways you’re using Twitter to share the Inaugural festivities more broadly? Who else should we be following?

What the NFL Can Teach Communities

My husband shared this fantastic op-ed from the Times with me the other day.  In short, the NFL is arming fans with a text number so that they can report unruly and vulgar fans to security quickly and privately.

This is certainly  a huge help to fans, particularly with children in tow, who want to enjoy a game and not hear beer-sloshed men spew obscenities nearby. But now imagine what else can be done with text messaging to make communities safer. What if your neighborhood in East Baltimore is being overridden by drug dealers, here’s a way to report it quickly, safely and securely to the police. And kids can report other students bringing weapons to school.

Of course, you’re saying to yourself, text messaging has been around for a while, what’s the big deal? The deal is this: old, slow moving institutions are finally waking up to the fact that social media can help them to engage their constituencies, whether it’s a fan or a resident or a student, in immediate and safe ways.  Tools like texting, Twitter, blogs and IM aren’t going away, they certainly shouldn’t, and at last they are becoming part of the toolkit of engagement and participation by all organizations.

Great GiftList Ideas on Twitter

It so amazing and heartening to see the stream of great ideas coming in via Twitter for the GiveList.  Marnie and I noticed that some are idea without a website home, so we wanted to make sure to capture them on our bogs as well.  Here are just a few:

• Donate your frequent flier miles to families of soldiers so they can visit them during the holidays (thanks
• Adopt a senior to shovel their walk this winter (Of course, you should make sure they want to be adopted!) (thanks Chuck Theis!)
• Send a note to someone who works for a nonprofit and thank them for what they do (thanks, Jane Hexter)
• Record a video about a cause that’s meaningful to you and post it on YouTube (thanks, Roger Carr!)

Thanks to everyone sharing and circulating their ideas!

Twitter Vote Report is Live!

Three weeks to the day ago Nancy Scola and I hatched the idea of using Twitter to report on election day experiences.  This morning Twitter Vote Report went live!

A volunteer network of software developers, designers, and other collaborators teamed up and spent hundreds of volunteer hours, no money was spent on this effort at all, to create the non-partisan Twitter Vote Report.  Individual voters will use their cell phones to report on their individual experiences – the good, bad and ugly. How long is the wait in Cleveland, Ohio? Are the new optical scan machines staying up and running in Palm Beach County, Florida? Is failure to bring ID to the polls thwarting first-time voters in Indianapolis? With Twitter Vote Report, we’ll know the answers to those questions straight from voters from all over the country.

A large number of groups working on voter outreach and protection efforts have joined this effort.  They include: the 866-OUR-VOTE (The Election Protection Coalition), Rock the Vote, Credo Mobile, Common Cause, Plodt.com, YouTube, twittervision.com, NPR’s Social Media Desk, Independence Year Foundation, Center for Community Change, Student PIRGs, PBS, Women Donors Network, and Demos.

And now we need everyone’s help to get the word out — this effort will only work if lots of people are using the system.  So, here’s how it works:

If you currently use Twitter, send a message after you vote that begins with #votereport (this is critically important for ensuring that your message gets to the right place.)  Then write some or all of the following:

#[zip code] to indicate where you’re voting; ex., “#12345″
#machine for machine problems; ex., “#machine broken, using prov. ballot”
#reg for registration troubles; ex., “#reg I wasn’t on the rolls”
#wait:minutes for long lines; ex., “#wait:120 and I’m coming back later”
#good or #bad to give a quick sense of your overall experience
#EP+your state if you have a serious problem and need help from the Election Protection coalition; ex., #EPOH
If you don’t use Twitter and want to go to http://www.twitter.com, sign up then follow the directions above.

If you want to participate by cellphone but don’t want to use Twitter, you can:

Send a text message to 66937 that begins with “#votereport”
Key in a report by calling (567) 258-VOTE/8683
Download and use the iPhone app (coming soon)
Please participate — we need lots and lots of voices heard on Election Day!

That’s it — let’s go and “tweet” this election!

Twitter Partner Update

The response to the Twitter campaign continues to be amazing.  Our newest partners are Common Cause, Women Donors Network and Video the Vote.  And best news of the day was that my mom signed up on Twitter to get in the swing of the campaign!

PS  I’m on the plane home from LA using wifi supplied by GoGo Inflight – kinda freaky, kinda cool, kinda hope the plane doesn’t go down!