I think we could all list out thousands of reasons why we love twitter.
I live where I live because of twitter.
I have the job I have because of twitter.
I have the friends I have because of twitter. I date the girl I date because of twitter
You get the point.
But there is one side of twitter that we see everyday but don’t necessarily like to talk about. It is the side that allows us to see into others lives.
You might be wondering, isn’t that the point of twitter? Yes, it is, but to a certain limit. You see, 5 years ago I did not call up 80 of my closest friends and tell them that I got a new job. I didn’t call everyone in motorola razor address book and tell them who I was hanging out. My network was not at my fingertips. The only thing I could control was myself.
That changes things. It changes things because now a days you can be anyone you want through social media. You can give people access to your life, create a persona, or put the best you forward. Before, you couldn’t control what others saw. You had to have dignity, honor, respect and integrity. That wasn’t earned through a ReTweet and it wasn’t earned through having blog readers. It was simple earned by your actions.
Twitter is great, but when it turns into a broadcasting tool for yourself it turns bad.
Many have claimed that the death of Osama Bin Laden has ushered in the death of modern news media. I definitely cannot argue with this point. If you so happened to tune into twitter on Sunday night you found yourself in a whirlwind of conversation, discovery, and a bit of chaos. Twitter and television have shifted roles. Where as Twitter use to be the background noise, television has provided the background noise to the conversations that are taking place online.
I think we can all agree that Twitter is changing the way we get our news, but what I do not hear people talking about is how we discuss the news. Twitter has changed the way that we not only get our news but it has changed the way we think and discuss the news.
Let me illustrate with the way my Sunday night and Monday went down.
After hearing about the breaking news I immediately fired up Twitter for iPhone and started to read what my friends were saying about what was taking place. As I followed the conversation for the next two hours I engaged in conversation, started and then deleted tweets, took part in a blog conversation, and sent out several retweets. It made that night even more memorable and engaging. But the interesting thing is that after about two hours of discussing a historical moment I didn’t speak of it again.
See I think twitter has changed the way we discuss news. Previously, we had to wait to discuss events that happened on the weekend. We had to wait to ask friends where they were on Septemeber 11th or what they were doing when they found out Kennedy was shot. That was the way traditional media worked. We got it from the television or print and then had to wait until we could discuss it with friends or family. But twitter has changed it all. Now we have immediate access to friends and family. And not only do we have access we have immediate opinion.
I quickly realized this to be true when I talked to my dad on Monday. Neither of us mentioned the news. In fact my day was void of this news. It wasn’t discussed in a later conversation that day with Brewster, nor with my friend Matt or myfriends at the coffee shop. It took me until 7pm that night when I met up for dinner with Jeremy and Derrian to have the conversation on the historic news.
We definitely live in a time where we receive noise I mean news at the speed of light. But I wonder what the instant gratification of news has done to us?
It seems that in some ways it has caused us to want more. It has caused us to move on quicker, to process less, and to find that next fix. I love the information highway that is twitter. It is my place to find inspiration, conversation, and reaction, but sometimes I wonder if we would do better to turn off the noise and spend more time with what we are reading, thinking, and hearing? I wonder that in a time with thousands of resources we have come become dumber? that even with everything at our fingertips we are worse off then before?
I wanted to provide you a list of twitter resources that I think are worth your time. These tools will benefit you in getting the most out of twitter.
They range from link shortners to analytic tools.
I hope you find these tools useful.
1. Klout
Kloutidentifies influencers on select topics across the social interwebs. It allows you to examine different areas of influence and also see other users of the profile you are looking at.
2. Proxlet
Proxlet is a tool that allows you to block apps, mute users, and filter tags on twitter. It cuts the “noise” that sometimes drives you mad.
Doesn’t really have a catchy ring to it, but do not underestimate the value of people seeing your face. In a fast paced society, news happens every second of everyday. And for that news to remain relevant it has to fight hard to stay at the top. In the twitter world, information travels at the speed of a refresh and often has a shelf life of about 2 minutes.
So how does your content become King of the world? It has to have a face behind it.
Let’s talk a little bit more about twitter avatars:
Gary Vee is my boy. I do not know him (but will someday), but I feel like he is a mentor to me. I love everything he says, does, and tweets. Well I say everything, except for one little minor detail. I do not understand his love for search.twitter.com.
Check out this video of what he has to say about it all:
I get it, we need to be engaging and listening to what people have to say. But if you take a quick jump over to search.twitter.com you will find more spam, pointless crap, and languages you cannot read then a 54 year old grandmas email inbox. There is so much clutter going on it is impossible to listen, react, and then respond.
I think Gary is on to something, we definitely need to be engaging in conversation, but “businesses” (I use that term loosly, more like spammers) are starting to catch on to this as well. Understanding that people are looking for conversation on blogging, twitter, and social media the amount of link bait and resources are more about getting click throughs for money instead of helping others grow their brand and platform. Search.twitter.com is broken, we need another way to engage in conversation.
Is it possibly to “go viral”? Yes.
Is it possibly to plan on going viral? Maybe.
Going viral (means becoming extremely popular in a very short amount of time) is a much desired thing but few can predict its ways. The power is great, you don’t have to look very far to realize that. Take Mr Bieber for example. He starts making youtube videos, people realize his talent and start requesting more. The link to the youtube video of Justin Bieber was shot in 2008. He was just a kid singing songs in his moms apartment. Now he is selling out Madison Square garden. He is the poster child (pun or no pun) of going viral.
The power is there, but how do you capture that power? Is it even possible? I think it is.
Let us look at a company that went viral and was strategic about it all.
Say hello to Grasshoper.com. A virtual phone system for entrepreneurs. When launching their newest app they decided to do something that most set out to do, set the internets a blazing with talk about your product. Check out their strategy below:
That is right, they took a popular song, changed some wording, got creative, and had some fun. But it does not stop there with the video. They decided to step it up further and get some influencers talking about it. Picking 200 influencers across the Country, they sent each a chocolate bar and a copy of the video. No request for them to blog about it, only a simple thank you and enjoy. They believed that they created something creative and fun and it would be only natural for people to talk about it (like we are doing right here).
Something interesting about this all is they didn’t pay anyone to talk about their video. The popular belief is to get influencers to blog about your stuff or tweet about it you have to give them some money. This could be true, but doesn’t mean that it has to be the only way to do things. In fact, I would go as far to say that if you pay for marketing of this kind you are missing out on 50% of the power that it could be. People can snuff that stuff out from miles away.
How do you go viral? You take an idea, put some creativity into it, share it with others, and let the dust settle. But the biggest thing is you have to be strategic. You have to pay attention, you have to care. Let’s look at Bieber again, he was one of the few that “got lucky”. The reason he put those videos on youtube was to share them with families who couldn’t make it to his talent shows. He wasn’t trying to get signed, he wasn’t trying to be one of the hottest things out there. Instead he was just using a tool to showcase his talents. But, looking back at the New Dork video, there was planning, strategic thinking, and a lot of work that went into them going viral. They took a good idea and ran with it. And now they have well over a million views on youtube.
