Twitter Saves Lives! The Backlash Must be Due

The front page of yesterday’s Technology Guardian (which I still normally refer to as the Online Guardian) had a very positive article on Making The Most Of Twitter which opened with:

An American student is arrested in Egypt, and manages to send a brief text with a single word - “ARRESTED” - which is picked up around the world, and leads quickly to his release, helped by a lawyer hired by his university back in the US. In Britain, the prime minister’s office decides people should be able to find out what their premier is doing; as of today, more than 2,000 people do. …People fleeing from fires in California say where they are’ that proves more useful and timely than official government information.

The common factor? Twitter, the free (at present) service which lets you send a 140-character message, or “tweet”, to a site where anyone can read it

Such views reflect those of Martin Weller who, in a post on Turning to Twitter in a crisis related a story on Jim Groom’s blog which described:

how a group of people at a presentation at the University of Richmond were suddenly told to turn off the lights and be quiet as a suspicious character with a gun had been spotted on campus. After the initial moment of fright, he relates how a number of them turned to Twitter, and how this turned out to be both soothing and useful

And I’ve remembered that last week a tweet from Josie Fraser pointed to a CNN article which was featured in the opening sentence of the Guardian article (where Josie leads, the Guardian follows!).

A great time for those early adopters of Twitter, with our commitment to initially puzzled colleagues now being vindicated in the mass media one might thing. It’s perhaps reminiscent of the excitement we felt in May 1997, perhaps the last time we felt the people were, at last, being empowered. But why do I feel that the dreaded Boris moment is lurking around the corner?

But what can we expect in the backlash. I suspect journalist have already been asked to dig for a story on the negative side of Twitter. I think we can expect the CEO of a large company (other head of the CBI would be even better) to provide figures on the amount of productivty lost due to Twitter. And, on a personal level, expect the tabloids to cover stories of the teenager who tweeted that their parents were away, and found a large horde descending on the place and vandalising the home (and I know that story was first used with MySpace as the guilty service - but we should expect such stories to be endlessly recycled).

Has anyone spotted the backlash in the press yet? And what other stories can we expect?

A Wonderful Discovery

I’ve come across a great idea for improving the efficiency of businesses. The idea is based on the notion of what in the UK has been called ‘tea breaks’ - and it seems that businesses in the US are using a similar idea but call it a ‘coffee break’.

The idea is that the workplace pays people to have informal chats. ‘That’s crazy’ I hear the sceptics say. ‘There’s no sustainable business model’. But the research suggests that during the ‘tea breaks’ employees not only discuss the televison programmes they watched the previous night and their plans for the weekend, but also work-related topics. And the informal nature of tea breaks allows people from different parts of the workplace to engage in the discussions. This provides the justification to managers who wish to ensure that any new ideas provide a return on investment. And the latest research (which is still being evaluated) suggests that staff who are particularly active keen in tea breaks have also started to participate in social activities outside office hours. Typically a social networking environment is used, which are sometimes referred to as ‘pubs’, although ‘wine bars’ are sometimes used in metropolitan areas. And managers will be pleased to learn that the discussions which take place in these social environments sometimes relates to work activities - in these cases the organisation gains benefits for zero investment! What a brilliant idea!!

OK, so we don’t quite see tea breaks and out-of-hours meetings quite in these terms. But people do ask what benefits social networks tools such as Twitter can provide. In my case, Twitter provides a similar function to the coffee break - but rather than providing a forum for a mixture of informal and work-related chats with work colleagues, it enables me to have such discussions with a wider group. This typically starts off with people I work closely with, but then extends to people I’ve met at conferences and sometimes people I may not have met but have some connection with.

A good example of this is Bryan Kennedy. I met Brian at the Museums and the Web 2007 conference a year ago. We discovered a shared interest in Twitter and have been following each other since then. This has enabled me to have a low-key insight into what Brian was doing at the Science Museum of Minnesota. And when Brian started twittering about this year’s Museums and the Web conference our informal connections through Twitter enabled us to restablish contact at the conference more easily than people I’d met a year ago and hadn’t had the opportunity to follow what they were doing,

What’s the business case for Twitter? Look at your organisation’s business case for tea breaks, and that may help you to understand. Now I wonder if, in ther future, staff will have a legal entitlement to a social network break?

Twitter? It’s An Interactive Business Card

The Background

I was talking to Gwen van der Velden, head of the Director of Learning and Teaching Enhancement at the University of Bath recently. We spoke about the evaluation of Twitter that Andy Ramsden is currently engaged in with his colleagues in the e-learning unit. Gwen asked me for my views of how Twitter could be used and, in light of my recent trips to conferences, I described it as an ‘interactive business card’.  When you go to a conference you’ll often exchange business cards with people you meet. But when you get back to work you’ll probably find (well I do anyway!) that you can’t remember whose card it was or what you have intended to get back to them about - and if this has happened to you before, you might have decided to scribble a note on the card; so now you have the additional task of decyphering the scrawl written late at night in the bar after the conference reception!

Exploring The Analogy

Exchanging Twitter IDs enables you to receive an informal stream of information which can help you to develop a better context for any follow-up activities.  And if you decide you are not interested, you can remove the Twittier address from the people you follow - the equivalent, perhaps, of tearing up a business card.

I noticed a good example of this when I returned home after my chat with Gwen and read a tweet from ‘homebrewer’ which said:

@briankelly It’s free for reuse, but I haven’t put a license on it yet: http://tinyurl.com/5b7fbf

This was in response to a tweet from me after I spotted this tweet from homebrewer:

Dusting off my Google Analytics talk for this afternoon - should have kept my presentation notes from last time… about 6 hours ago from web

I had asked:

@homebrewer is your Google ANl;ytics talk avilable online? And is there a CC licence for reuse :-)

This to me provided a good example of the benefits of swapping Twitter IDs at conferences and the benefits of micro-blogging your work activities. Now the business card analogy is meant to refer to just one use case for twittering which works for me. Does it for you? And how might you apply this use case?

Applying The Analogy

How about creating a Twitter account before you go to a conference which you pass on to people you connect with? Then use the account during the conference to summarise your thoughts on the talks and provide some brief reflections when you return to work. This can then provide an ‘in’ for the contacts you’ve made - and there’s no need to sustain the micro-blogging or to worry about micro-blogging the minutae of your daily activities.

Why not give it a try - what’s there to lose?

Facebook Or Twitter - Or Facebook And Twitter

In the opening planary talk on Hands On The Internet at the Museums and the Web 2008 conference Michael Geist mentioned the popularity of Facebook in Canada - apparently Canada has the highigest per capita Facebook usage in the world. And, as described in a blog post on the talk by arkrausehardie Michael described the “enormous pressure a sort of flash-mob FaceBook group can bring to bare (sic!) on public policy such as the recent group started by Geist on copyright issues in Canada, now with more than 40,000 members“.

The interest in the potential of Facebook for engaging with a museum’s user community was described in a number of papers at the conference. For example Shelley Bernstein’s paper on “Where Do We Go From Here? Continuting with Web 2.0 at Brooklyn Museum” dscribed the ArtShare Facebook application they had developed to “share works of art from Museums around the world“. And a paper by Brian Kelly and colleagues at the Canada Science and Technology Museum on “Social Presence: New Value For Museums And Networked Audiences“  described “specific experiments with social media, including a detailed analysis of a Facebook group used by the Canada Science and Technology Museum Corporation’s Membership Program“. In addition the paper described “two theoretical models – the “Innovation Radar” and genre analysis – to help analyze the nature of the opportunities for innovation, and to develop a better understanding of the distinctive characteristics of alternate communication channels“.

And yet in some circle such use of Facebook is being derided with comments such as “It’s a closed garden“, “Its popularity is on the wane” or “Twitter is a better development environment” being made. I have to say that I foind that such comments tend to miss the point.  A recent post on “The Becoming Uninteresting Complex - Facebook versus Twitter” commented on the “pretty irrational questionings like “is Twitter replacing Facebook?“, Twitter doesn’t allow socialization. It simply allow instant interactions“.

And as can be seen from a SIteanalytics snapshot which compares usage of Facebook and Twitter,  it you want to make inappropriate comparisons, it’s Twitter which fares badly.

Making these points, I should add that we shouldn’t explore the potential of Facebook uncritically. But the early adopters do acknowledge some of the concerns which need to be recogonised. Dawson et al have commented that “There are, however, a variety of potential pitfalls with social networking sites. One concern is whether such sites are a fad or flash in the pan“. The paper goes on to add “Issues of privacy are another important factor. Users of social networking sites appear to be willing to live with great compromises in their privacy. However, even these broad boundaries have been tested a number of times. Facebook, for example, has risked alienating its users in controversies such as the introduction of the news feed in 2006 (boyd, 2006a), and the more recent introduction of the “Beacon” in 2007 (Hirsh, 2007).“

So let’s be realistic and continue the experoimentation and debate. But let’s also be critical of our preferred environments.  And although I’m a happy user of Twitter and participated in its use at MW2008, looking at the hashtag data for the mw2008 tag I would acknolwsdge that it was used primarily by a small group who knew each other - and indeed went out drinking together.  Twitter can be useful for some - but it’s not neccessarily the killer application for everybody.

Is Pownce The Answer?

In the recent discussion about Twitter there was a feeling, from some, that it wasn’t well-suited for discussions. Indeed Andy Powell commented:

i think you are right to question whether using Twitter for one-to-one or few-to-few conversations is the right approach. i (eventually) stopped Twittering on Friday cos it felt like we were mis-using it.

And yet a few minutes ago I smiled at the following comments from Andy, Paul Miller and Pete Johnston:

andypowe11 The moment i wake up / before i put on my makeup / i tweet a little tweet for you … about 1 hour agofrom im

paulmiller @andypowe11 - makeup? about 1 hour ago from iTweet in reply to andypowe11

PeteJ @paulmiller: Company dress code about 1 hour agofrom im in reply to PaulMiller

PeteJ @paulmiller: (senior staff) about 1 hour agofrom im in reply to PaulMiller

Brilliant! I have to admit, I enjoy Pete’s witticisms. But if on Twitter you follow Pete or Paul but not Andy, you’ll miss the context and just get the two of them talking about make-up with the reference ot the Aretha Franklin song.

The pithy one-liners are useful, I feel, but I’m not convinced that Twitter is the best tool for this.

But also on today’s Twitter feed I received an announcement from TechCrunch saying that Pownce is now open to subscription, after a closed testing period. The Pownce About me page states that:

Pownce is a way to send stuff to your friends. What kind of stuff? You can send just about anything: music, photos, messages, links, events, and more. You can do it all on our web site, or install our lightweight desktop software that lets you get out of the browser.

Now isn’t our requirement to send stuff (witticisms, jokes and useful snippets of information)? Time for experimentation, I think. And it might be useful to subscribe quickly - before your preferred user id is taken.

Twitter Friday

The Background

Friday turned out to be a day of experimentation with Twitter for myself and some of my Twitter friends including Andy Powell, Pete Johnston, Paul Miller, Owen Stephens and Josie Fraser.

Friday actually began with an email discussion with fellow members of the Internet Librarian International advisory group over the theme for the conference. I expressed some reservations that the suggestions, which focussed on tangible benefits and return on investment, although important, could detract from the needs for experimentation and intangible benefits. I feel these points were accepted, and the conference organisers will shortly be announcing details of this year’s conference.

In contrast, the discussions held on the Twitter micro-blogging service appeared to cast me in an alternative role in which I argued the need for guidelines on best practices to support use of Twitter. In response I received tweets (Twitter posts) along the lines of “The day we have best practice for Twitter will be the day I stop using it!” and “Global order is …boring. And massively unhelpful, sometimes“. So is it time to start developing guidelines or is it too early and will such attempts stifle innovation?

I feel that there are some areas in which mistakes can easily be made and everyone would benefit from understanding the problems and solutions. One good example comes from Owen Stephens’ recent experiences in trying to integrate his Facebook statuses with his Tweeter posts. As Owen describes on his blog “What I actually wanted was to allow Twitter to update Facebook AND Facebook to update Twitter“. As can be seen from the image, this had an unfortunate side-effect - if you try and do this in both direction, you get a loop.

Architectural Issues

That was a simple and easily understood and easily resolved problem. But on Friday the Twitter discussions led to aspects of the Twitter architecture which may be more difficult to resolve. Although a tweet may be a very simple resource, based on up to 140 characters, possibly including a hyperlink, tweets may have dependencies now only on the Twitter service, but also on the service used to provide the short force of URLs which are often needed to keep to the 140 character limit. So an individual tweet may have a dependency on two services, and if the TinyURL service is not as sustainable as Twitter in the long run, it may not be possible to resolve the hyperlinks. A problem, then, if future generations feel that Twitter records provide useful information on the topics we are talking about today. This is an area of concern which has already been identified in the blogging community, with one blogger having posted on URL Shorteners List and Why It’s a Mistake for Twitter.

And as we look at the different ways in which Twitter can be used, we can spot other limitations in its architecture. Most tweets I have encountered use the Tinyurl.com service but the client I use, Twitteroo, uses the Rurl service: multiple dependencies on URL resolutions, then.

Such concerns may be legitimate, but they are not specific to Twitter: these issues simply reflect the complexities of a Web 2.0 environment. Perhaps of greater interest to the majority of Twitter users and potential users are the ways in which Twitter is being used.

Twitter Usage

Andy Powell recently drew attention to his Twitter followers in a tweet which pointed out that the emerging usage pattern amongst his Twitter friendswas infringing the Twitter Ten Commandments. In particular I think it’s fair to say that we were using Twitter like a private chat room. As I have 80 followers and follow 38 others (Andy has 92 followers and is following 120, Pete has 21 followers and is following 24, Paul has 186 followers and is following 182, Josie has 227 followers and is following 128 and Twitter newcomer Owen Stephens has 9 followers and is following 10 others) I would question the value of our use of Twitter for public messaging especially when most of the followers are likely to see only half of the conversation or when the messages are based on in-jokes.

I do feel that we need to start to discuss the patterns of usage, why Twitter fans find it so useful and to be able to identify potential problem which may lead to Twitter failing to be sustainable in the long term. But I also realise that it is very early days for Twitter and attempting to mandate particular ways of working may stifle innovation. And there’s a denager that focussing on Twitter’s potential in a work capacity could lead to missing out on the informal banter, jokes and discussions which can improve the quality of the work place - for example, the tweet I’ve just received from my colleague Paul Walk “off to Nottingham. No.1 Son is concerned that I don’t run into that old Sheriff….” made me smile.

I feel that the compromise position is to document experiences and encourage debate - as this post aims to do.  I also feel that it would be useful to explore ways in which Twitter can support our professional activities.

One area  in which Twitter experimentation is taking place is to support conferences. Indeed Robert HC has blogged about JISC’s plans to use Twitter to support their conference. As he describes “so that we don’t all feel mega stupid about it, the Comms team is slowly turning into Twitterers (sigh) - with the fabulous results of us now knowing if we’re sitting on trains, waiting for offspring or having slugs creep under our kitchen doors - no doubt this will all be a prelude to something more useful and productive and we are just getting used to how it works…“

I think encouraging members of the organisation to use Twitter in this way is useful. It can help to gain an understanding of the issues and also of the things that can go wrong, prior to more formal use. From my experimentation, for example, I know that delivery of tweets via SMS can cause problems if there’s a lively Twitter discussion. On Friday evening, for example, I received an influx of 35 text messages - too many!

But perhaps delivery of tweets to conference delegates via SMS can be a useful  application for Twitter. In previous IWMW events we have invited delegates to provide their mobile phone numbers on the booking form, for use in case of emergencies (this decision was made after the London bombings on 7/7, which took place midway through the IWMW 2005 event). Might Twitter have a role to play as the delivery channel, I wonder?  And could this be used for other purposes (e.g. notification of changes to the programme). And I think it would be fun, after the welcoming talk which asked everyone to set their mobile phones to silent mode, to send a tweet to check that everyone has done so :-)

Your Thoughts

I’ve given some suggestions for use of Twitter in one particular context. And I’ve suggested that Twitter users need to reflect on the strengths and weakness of Twitter, but that we need to have an open debate before rolling out rules for use of Twitter - and, like others, I would be worried if organisations required editorial approval before tweets could be sent.

But we need to have the discussions.  What are your thoughts?

Will Twitter Be Big In 2008?

Something IS Going On With Facebook! I said back in May 2007, in response to a comment made by John Kirriemuir, after he received a sudden influx of Facebook befriending messages. That was my first inkling that what had previously been a rather dull academic network might become the major talking point of 2007.

The post came back to me yesterday after I received a similar influx of people who have have chosen to follow me on the Twitter microblogging tool. And a Techcrunch article published on 2^nd January 2007 suggested that “Twitter has the potential of breaking into the mainstream this year“.

The Techcrunch article described the Twitter Stats service which provides graphs showing an individual’s use of Twitter. This is likely to be only of interest to regular Twitter users. Of more interest are the range of other Twitter applications which have been developed over the past year and the excitement which Twitter seems to be generating.

I normally use the Twitter Web site, but I have also used the Twitteroo client (illustrated) and have configured Facebook so that my Facebook status is updated by Twitter posts.

But what’s new with Twitter? Looking at Techcrunch articles about Twitter it seems that the review of 2008: Web 2.0 Companies I Couldn’t Live Without includes Twitter as one of the new indispensable tools released in 2007. Another review of the year suggests that “Omnipresence was another big theme in 2007 with Twitter brining (sic) always on, always available communication to the masses … perhaps overall we’re all the richer for the networking Twitter delivers“.

The uncertainties regarding the benefits of Twitter were acknowledged in a post on Can You Spare The Odd Pea For A Good Cause? “The benefits of Twitter may still be subject to heated debate amongst TechCrunch commenter’s, but very few would doubt that Twitter has created new relationships and taken social networking to new (and perhaps different) levels.” The post refers to a cause that’s hot on Twitter (Frozen Pea Friday): a Breast Cancer Awareness and fundraising day in support of well regarded blogger Susan Reynolds. Although in this case Twitter is being used by someone with a clear interest in use of Web 2.0, the way in which microblogging can be used hints at its potential for a wider audience.

A Wikipedia article provides further background information about Twitter but the Twitter-fan wiki provides a more comprehensive list of Twitter applications and ideas for how Twitter could be used. I have started to think about the potential for Hashtags to aggregate microblog posts at an (amplified) event. I was also interested to see how Brooklyn Museum is making its blog available via Twitter. And software developers might be interested in use of Twitter by non-humans.

Now what other interesting applications for Twitter might there be?  And do you feel that it will take off in 2008?

Predicting The Twitter Backlash

I recently described Twitter and my initial experiments with it. I then, via a Technorati Twitter tag, I came across a post about Twitku, which integrates the Twitter and Jaiku micro-blogging tools. And I also discovered a mobile version of Twitter which can run on smartphones.

All very interesting, and an example of the benefits of providing data in open formats which can be reused and providing open APIs, many would point out.

But why do I feel that there will be a backlash against Twitter and other micro-blogging applications? We seem to find that after the early adopters and enthusiasts of a technology start to spread the word across a wider community that doubts are expressed. Some will be perfectly legitimate, but others may be based on personal preferences and concerns (”I don’t have time to learn something new”, “Why should I describe every detail of what I’m doing?”, etc.) , beliefs (”It’s not open source”) or perhaps organisational concerns (”But this undermines the software we’ve been developing”) . And other doubts may reflect one’s cultural background - we Brits, after all, tend to be sceptical of over-enthusiasm, perhaps restricting ourselves to grudging praise if something is demonstrably successful, but secretly preferring to grumble about our failures (in the sporting arena, many people, who have no memories of England’s World Cup success in 1966, expect a regular 4-yearly cycle of over-hyped expectations followed by the despondency).

So what attacks might we expect to see on Twitter? We may have stories in the tabloid press about homes being burgled after the owner had twittered about going on holiday or how a house was wrecked when children organised a party when their parents were away (and this later example did hit the national press after an announcement was made on MySpace).

And in response, if the take-up of micro-blogging has demonstrated that there is a significant demand for such services, we might see the development of managed micro-blogging environments (the KidsTwit or JISC-Twit services, perhaps).

But isn’t this what the Facebook status field has sought to provide (although, as Paul Walk described recently, access to an RSS feed for the status field is freely available, so perhaps Facebook isn’t quite as closed as people have suggested). We do need, I feel, to be very careful and precise when we talk about open and closed services.

And, returning to the specifics of Twitter, there’s a need to make it clear that just because some may find benefits (both professional and personal) in its use, this doesn’t imply an expectation that everybody should be using it - there may be need to inform others about its potential but this should not imply that it must be used.

Now has anybody spotted any Twitter backlash?

Technorati Tags: twitter,
twitku

Tweet Twerp

Some time ago I heard that there were two types of Twitter users: those who had used it, didn’t get it and had given up and those who used it, didn’t get it, but were still trying.

I’m now beginning to get it, I think, as I’ll describe. For those who haven’t come across Twitter, it is described in Wikipedia as “a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send “updates” (text-based posts, up to 140 characters long) via SMS, instant messaging, email, the Twitter website, or an application such as Twitterrific“.

Unlike conventional blogs (which can be used in isolation), I feel the important aspect aspect of Twitter is its social aspect: you write a short summary (which is beginning to be referred to as a tweet) of what you’re doing or thinking, and that is integrated in a Web page with the tweets from the twitterers (the term which is being used to refer to Twitter users) you have chosen to follow.

I met some fellow twitters at the IWMW 2007 event (Paul Boag and Phil Wilson) and in the pub on a rainy night before the event started Paul and Phil described some of the advantages they have found in twittering what they are doing. Paul described how useful it was when working in a distributed organisation: it provides a virtual water-cooler, which enables people to say what they’re doing, their plans for the weekend, etc. Phil then described how it has enabled him to receive help and support from his fellow twitters: his tweet might say how frustrated he is getting an application installed, and a fellow twitters might read this and provide advice.

This discussion convinced me that I should make greater use of twitter myself, to see if I found any benefits. So after returning from IWMW 2007, then going to a conference at Cardiff I was about to head off to Newcastle, on the day after the floods had arrived. And a minute after writing this, Pete Johnston responded, warning me that it was not possible [added this in response to Pete's comment which pointed out I'd omitted this] to go by train to Birmingham. Fortunately I was flying, but this demonstrated to me the potentially usefulness of Twitter.

One advantage, I feel, is that it is not as intrusive as email or instant messaging.

These thoughts came back to me as last night I was reading a post by Andy Powell on the eFoundations blog and I think respond to Andy’s post (and Pete Johnston’s confession) by paraphrasing Middle of the Road’s lyrics:

Last night I heard Andy Powell singing this song
Ooh wee chirpy chirpy tweep tweep
Chirpy chirpy tweet tweet
Tweet twerp

Are there any fellow twitterers reading this blog? Have you found any useful benefit?

Technorati Tags: twitter