My sister is writing a paper about social media. I have been one of her sources and have even done a couple of interviews for her.

Here is an interview about blogging communities.

Do you agree or disagree?

*kyle

Today I am changing the name of this blog to Umbrella of Grace, because today I need you to lend me that umbrella and have it cover this post.
First off you have to understand that I am not married, and for that matter am very single (dangit) and so I do not claim to have any of this figured out. You will see why this is important in a minute. Mainly I just like to ask questions, prime the pump a little bit, and then stoke the fire.

Let me muse with you a little bit here…Twitter is powerful, there are some really cool people that I have met, that you have met, and that we will continue to meet. I mean pretty much everyone that is reading this now has come to find out about this blog through twitter. You literally can have friends in every state and even out of the country.

There are some downsides of twitter. One of the biggest is spam. Porn spam, Phishing spams, and even tuna spam (that stuff is nasty tasting) have all hit us at one time or another through DM’s and followers. This is an obvious flaw of twitter, but there is also another thing that I find interesting/concerning about twitter: Inappropriate Relationships.

This is not coming from personal experience, more through observation. I can see twitter being used as a new tool of relationships that move to far. Maybe it is through DM’s or how others are perceiving these relationships on twitter. This seems to be a big gray area and I have not heard a lot of people talk about it. You do hear the discussion about the dangers of inappropriate emails or even facebook messages, but twitter seems to fly under the radar (pun intended).

For me I do not think twice about who I am talking with. But the more I started to think about this the more I realized that if I was married would my wife have a problem with me caring on a conversation through DM’s or through @ replies with a lady, and for that matter a lady that she does not know. I let the situation run even further and thought about how easy it would be for me to hide this. Knowing that I have my own account and have my own little world on twitter things could get out of control pretty quickly, and yet everything started out so innocent.

Couple of things that I would like to hear from you on:

Have you noticed this as an issue?

Is this a big deal?

What is the line of appropriate Twitter Relations?

*kyle

At the beginning of the month I decided that I wanted to add 100 twitter “followers” to my twitter account (@kylelreed, you could help me out). I can report today that I have reached my goal. This may seem a little silly, seeing how it is pretty easy to get a lot of “friends” or “followers” on twitter. But I wanted to add 100 meaningful twitter followers.

Now 25 of those followers are spam or people who just want to have more followers and so they add everyone. But a good majority of those followers are people that I have been interacting with or have a reason for following me. This is the reason why I have set 100 new followers a month as my goal. Not to have a ton of followers, but to have more followers that I can interact with and have a dialogue about life with.

This is my follow strategy, to get 100 new followers each month.

What is your Twitter Follow Strategy?
Do You have one?

*kyle

Here she is…Episode 1
I hope you enjoy and call in to comment:
707.733.3189 or (707) reed189

If you missed anything as always you can check the show notes for links and resources.
Also, I promise that the sound quality will get better. Sorry

Enjoy
*Kyle

[podcast]ftp://kyle%40thoughtsaboutnothing.com:klrklr189@www.thoughtsaboutnothing.com/wp-content/Thoughts about Something Episode 1 2 copy.mp3[/podcast]

Show Notes

Reason for the podcast:
I want to create some kind of dialogue and a community based place where we can share thoughts, music, resources, and other great things.
The podcast consist of community. This can only be done by you getting involved.
One way to do this is through interviews. If you want to be interviewed let me know here.
Another way is by you calling in and letting me know of what you are finding out there. Give me a call and tell me what you have found: 707.733.3189 or (70) reed189

Resource
Google Voice
Get your invite here

Music
Your Love Never Fails
Get it here

Throughout the week we have discussed the benefits or twitter, how simplicity has changed the way we look at things, and how we are all separated by six tweeters or less.

In Part 5 of Tweet or Die we discuss the change and impact that twitter has had on my life.

The rule of 140 characters or less.
One of the first things I noticed about twitter was that it was very restrictive. It would only let you post so much stuff at a time. I remember trying to figure out what the point of responding to someone on twitter if I could just text message them a lot longer answer. But really, this is the beauty of twitter. Realizing that we can say a lot of fluff, twitter makes it a rule that you cut all that stuff out and get to the point. This has changed the way people blog, how they market, and communicate.

In churches, volunteers and ministers are trying to figure out the most effective way to share a story with the world. One that is life changing. There has been many different strategies on getting this story “out” to the world. One thing that is shaping the way churches communicate is the presence of twitter. Not only are churches signing up for twitter to keep others up-to-date as to what is going on at church that week, but some churches are using twitter in their services. Other churches are realizing that cutting out all the fluff and getting to the heart of the message is most important. They are not preaching their sermons in 140 characters or less, but they are realizing that they have to better prepare and communicate.

Twitter is effecting the way that other people are communicating as well. I have heard several people say that if you send them an email they probably will not respond. But, if you direct message them on twitter they will respond immediately.
This could be frustrating to you,  funny to you, or something that you actually do yourself. Whatever it may be, twitter is changing the way that we communicate and get are info. I sent out a tweet about a week ago saying “man I wish I could listen to the new @derekwebb CD, but I still haven’t got mine.” I had ordered his CD about three weeks before that and something got screwed up with paypal and the shipping and they never sent me my copy. I sent them a couple of emails asking about what was going on and they never responded. I guess I was using the wrong way of communication. After ten minutes of sending out that tweet I got an email from derekwebb.com saying sorry and here is your link for you download and other great stuff. Amazing!
I was blown away by the fact that I was really just complaining/lamenting that I was missing out. It turned out to be the best tweet I have had in a long time.

Another great way that twitter is changing me is the opportunity to follow leaders and communicators that I respect and follow. This has provided me the opportunity to discover their blogs, read links that they give out, and have a chance to get a peek into their lives and watch the way they communicate over twitter.
Twitter has also helped me grow as a graphic artist and all around “sharer” of things. I like to help people find what they are looking for, if you didn’t know that, go and check out my resource page and you can see what I am talking about. Twitter has helped me learn about a lot of cool things through links provided by other really smart people. Having the opportunity to follow someone who is working five states over and have the feeling that you get to see a glimpse of their life is  pretty cool. In the age of wanting to express who you are and what you are about, twitter is the ultimate tool of expression.

Twitter has changed my life, maybe not the way you might think life change happens. But it has changed my life in the fact that I am able to learn, grow, communicate, and stay connected with people who I do not get to see everyday.

There is no ceiling on the future of twitter. I was looking at some stats of the amount of people that use twitter. One of the stats that was most intriguing was that 5% of Twitter users account for 75% of all activity.
This shows the future and the amount of growth that twitter can have in the near future. I stand by my word that facebook is a thing of the past. As soon as you start to copy your competition you are slipping in power. The potential of twitter is infinite and we who use twitter have a front row seat.

What has twitter changed for you?
*Kyle

Check the graph below for a better understanding of the stats

Have you ever heard of the idea called 6 degrees of separation?
It is the idea that one person is 1 step away from everyone they know and two steps away from each person that is known by one of the people they know, then everyone is at most six steps away from any other person on Earth. It was popularised by a play written by John Guare.

I have heard this idea presented in books like Tipping Point and watched the movie called six degrees of seperation, but I never really believed this idea to be true. That was until I started to use twitter.

In Part 4 of Tweet or Die we examine how connected people become through twitter and the law of six degrees, twitter style.

Have you ever gotten off the phone with somebody and realized that you wasted 30 minutes of your conversation trying to catch up on life? It is nice to find out what is happening and what they are doing, but often times I am rather annoyed. With twitter, this “waste” of time is no more. How? Why? you might ask. Well let me tell you.
The beauty of twitter is that it lets you keep up with what is going on with friends.
For example….
I knew that Jordan Lalama was in Arkansas this week teaching students at band camp. But that is not the normal place for lama to be, he is on his internship in Indiana at Northside. How did I know all of this stuff? Twitter. Me and Lama know each other from College, but we don’t have each others cell phone numbers. We probably have never spoken on the phone, it was always a face to face conversation, but once I moved away from Lincoln we lost touch. But now that he has twitter, I can keep up with my buddy.

The same can be said about all of my friends on twitter, it is a beautiful tool to help stay connected. A lot of people say that it is narcissism wrapped up in a little tweedy bird. I say NA, you can choose to view it that way, but if you can see it for what it really is, a way to stay connected, the narcissism quickly disappears.

Another great feature that holds true inside of the 6 degrees of separation in twitter is that I can connect with people that I have heard of but have never had the chance to meet. Some would call these people celebrities, I don’t view them that way. If I was talking about following Shaq or Ashton Kutcher maybe you could call them celebrities, but I am not talking about them. I am talking about the guys in Christian sub-culture. That can be a dirty word, but really these are the guys that Christians know who they are. Authors, musicians, graphic designers, guys that I admire their work from afar and get to take a 140 character sneak peek into their life. Through twitter I have been able to make friends with some guys that I would have never gotten to connect with if not for the ability to follow them on twitter.

This is the beauty of twitter. Connecting people that need to connect, helping friends stay connected, and connecting the world one tweet at a time (can I use the word connect one more time).

Stay tuned for the last part of Tweet or Die on Friday…How twitter changed my life

*Kyle

Guest post from my buddy Brennan…Check it out
And of Course if you haven’t checked out tweet or die pt 1 and 2 do that first.

Simplicity.

Just reading that word after I type it brings a certain clarity to my mind.

For most of us, any form of the word simple brings about a weird sense of confusion.
“How can IT really be that simple?”

We are all creatures of habit, and I would venture a guess to say most of us at one time were attracted by something of a complex nature like a high school girl is attracted to drama and gossip. We like trying to understand something that only a small clique of people can understand or relate to in order to feel unique in our own microcosm of life. To feel some sort of identity in something that only a handful of people can relate to.

Take a moment and go look at the home page of myspace.

Pretty complex huh?
Did you even know what to look at when you looked at that page? Or did you feel a little sensory overload? “Click to see this hot new band, click on this to see the trailer for this movie…click on this link to find a promiscuous person to live chat with…” IT goes on and on and round and round to compete for your attention on websites like myspace and facebook in the hope that they will make money off of something that is so popular with the culture.

BUT(!) there is something to say about simple. There is a feeling that can be related to breathing a sigh of relief when you find something simple. Something that is easy to do. Easy to relate to. Something that is so simple everyone does it, even if for a moment. Everyone lives a life. Everyone lives and breathes…or they die.

Simple huh?
Actors do it, musicians do it, politicians do it, sport celebrities do it, your friends do it. They live.

They tweet. Or, they die.

You may laugh and say, “Okay, this guy is an idiot, Kyle why did you let him guest author a post on your blog? He just said everyone tweets or dies.”

Before you stop reading though, indulge yourself in a little abstract thinking.

Fact 1:
You live or you die. ‘nuff said.

You stop breathing, you stop living. Some may say that it is possible to exist without living, and that is true. My response to that is, while those people are (in my opinion) still alive and breathing, they are wasting their lives by not sharing it with someone or someones who care about and love them. Everyone should belong to a community. Some have found that in an online (and somewhat unrealistic) community such as: Facebook, Myspace, and SecondLife.com; places where they find not only their friends but people who they wish they knew…long to know. A place where they can find a way to escape from reality.

Fact 2:
Identity doesn’t mean what you think it does.

Most of us are under the assumption that the word identity means unique, set apart, different, etc… If you actually look the word up it’s origin comes from the latin word meaning “having the qualities of the same, the quality of being identical.” “root: idem, the same.”

So you’re probably thinking, where is this guy going. How is this about twitter?
Well, it’s simple really.
We all have some in common. In one huge way we are all identical…the same. We have a life that has been given to us. What we do with that life is where we can miss the mark…that is, how we can live or die while still breathing.

For that reason I tweet. I follow others. My friends. Musicians like Joel Houston or John Mayer. Pastors that I respect. People from Starbucks or Apple. They live. And they invite me to be a part of their lives by sharing ideas, personal thoughts, funny anecdotes, links, news, sad stories, pictures, videos.

They tweet.

They don’t die.

They live on in my life and I invite them to be a part of mine if I want to share a picture of the beautiful sunset I’m watching on my deck or of my friend making me go to the Hallmark store with him to get a thank you card though I’d rather poke my eyes out. I can share my life with you. My breaths. My thoughts.

Some may say that’s horribly needy and maybe egotistical to ask that of people who may not care at the moment, but I choose to think of it in another way. I want to be a part of a community of people who share their lives with one another, constantly encouraging each other to enjoy the breaths that God has given them by telling them to breathe. To love life. To love tears. To love beauty. To love the fact that we all live, even if for a brief moment. We share an identity with one another.

It’s simple.

Tweet or die.

(follow me: @brennanloveless…check out other breaths at http://brennanloveless.wordpress.com)

Last night I prayed with Loswhit @ ragamuffinsoul.com It was a really cool way to use twitter, ustream video, chat, and other social tools that allow you to take prayer request and then pray for them online. This is the longest I have prayed in a long time. We spent two hours online praying.Here is a video i put together of my night.

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