jmacofearth’s posterous

[Tim Walker posted the following question. Can genius and social media go together? on his What I've Learned So Far. And in my infinite cheekiness I could not resist an answer. And in my own self-aggrandizement I could not stop at the mere comment, I have to turn the idea into an entire post. So much for 140 characters! So here is a crosspost that might grow beyond the initial discussion with Tim's blog.]

Is posting an answer a form of braggadocio? I am no genius. I am constantly working on patience.

That said, the social media system is inherently interruptive in nature. Twitter being the most insistent model, blink and you'll miss the entire conversation. But is that a bad thing?

So today a study revealed that 10% of Tweeters produce 90% of the Tweets. They can't all be geniuses, and they most certainly would be doing something other than tweeting if they were geniuses.

So... Social media is wonderful within limits. It is important for your sanity to put a bounding box around the influence and interruptions you are willing to tolerate from Twitter, email, IM, blog commenting and such.

Here's a pop quiz, gather up all of your 140 character messages for the last month and put them in a document. Delete all RT's and conversational @ messages and ask: Now, what is the percentage of genius on the page of what YOU created? Original wisdom? Wit? Or shite?

It is increasingly important to turn off the social media interruptions when you are trying to create something of value. Unless your value is in the form of 90 second sound bites, I would suggest you focus your genius on the longer form. How about the genius of Blog commenting, or actually writing the full blog post?

Still genius is everywhere among us. Some geniuses focus their intelligence more effectively than others. And even us sub-geniuses can learn to be more efficient and effective by putting what mental resources we have on the task of posing or answering questions. And that activity leads to a better possibility of creating something of value in the dialogue between us.

[end of blog comment]

Okay Mr. Mac, good idea. So do it. First I used Tweetake to download my last 1,002 tweets into a csv.

And then pulling them into Excel I deleted all blip.fms, RTs, and conversation specific @s to come up with my original content, for better or worse, it's all I got.

And so, from 1002 total tweets I have 347 tweets where I actually created original content. (35% content) The other types of content break down like this:

• RT: 243 (24%)
• @s: 158 (16%)
• Blips: 223 (22%) "listening to" (I disconnected my blip.fm from my twitter stream a week ago, thinking these were not really high-value tweets, fun being a Tweet-Jay, but not really what I'm about)
• Liked/Fav'd: 31 (0.03%)

And let’s see, any genius in there… uh… Well, here are my top 6, self-selected.

1. Can we all just quit calling it SOCIAL MEDIA already. And let's not talk about TWITTER either... Gosh, we're boring ourselves. #gosh
2. DEAR TWITTER, Please oh please oh please let me follow ONE MORE PERSON! Seriously if I forget them I'll never find them again. Thank You. (responding to hitting the "you can follow no more people at this time" error)
3. So, putting some dumb character before the @ now let's other peeps see my @s to folks they don't know. UG! #TwitterFail
4. So... What if someone really were readin all this stuff we're tweeting, I mean, really, like in the DB forever! Would I be more quiet? Nah!
5. blip killed my browser - damn I was almost finished with a GTD post (heh heh - that's ironic) Damn, must focus on task at hand. #gtd
6. Amazing how some tweeps you follow, who have been silent for months, suddenly begin to Tweet their heads off. Welcome to the PARTAAAY!

Nope. But not ONE ADVERTISEMENT and NOT ONE GHOST TWEET. That's right, NOT ONE!

@jmacofearth
permalink to uber.la: http://bit.ly/my-tweet-makup

What I Believe:

• Friends, Tweeps, Links and Groups: Placing Value On Community and Friendship
• Fire Everything! - Twitter Facebook LinkedIN Convergence - What’s Okay What’s Not
• OPEN LETTER TO Guy Kawasakisan - Return to the Way Mr. Kawasaki, Before It’s Too Late For Us All!
• Uber.la’s 1-2-3 Guide To Twitter: GETTING REAL with TWITTER

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Twitter is a wonderful beast. All changing, scamming, Oprahing millions of us trying to figure out how to use it to... What? What are YOU using Twitter for?

• To Learn.
• To Sell.
• To Discover Something New.
• To Connect with New People.
• As a Broadcast IM.
• As a Sales Channel.
• As a Business Opportunity.
• To Have Fun and Joke Around.
• Just Because It's New.

Does "microblogging" mean anything to you? In the year (s) of tweeting behind me, I have developed some strategies for engaging my tweetstream that I hope might be helpful to you. The illumination/discovery path for today is going to be the dreaded and most valuable tweet technique the RT, or ReTweet. So here's how it works.

Part 1: Discovery - Someone tweets something you find helpful, amuzing or dumb.

Part 2: Use the RT feature in your Twitter app du jour. (if your not using a Twitter app to manage Twitter, well... That's another post: Putting a Dashboard Around Twitter.)

Part 3: Be Additive and Subtractive.

Part 4: ReTweet.

So let's look at Part 3 more closely. Additive: Adding your comment or twist on someones tweet to add value/humor/meaning/dialogue to the twittersphere. I'll pull one off the stream right now and give an example:

So I will hit the RT button in Tweetdeck (my Twitter app of choice, you can see that Alex is using Tweetie -- probably on a trendy iPhone!) and being my additive process.

[Here's the RT without any work from me] RT @BaldMan RT @BaldMan: Long line at Genuine Joe, but I wait as I need my caffeine.

But I am interested in adding to Alex's tweet in some way, usually to join or josh with Alex himself. And also, by ReTweeting Alex at all, to introduce my followers to BaldMan as a cool person to follow. Since I am following him and clearly ReTweeting with some joy his somewhat mundaine "gettin coffee" tweet. (no offense Alex) Some folks are happy to RT without modification, and I will do this occasionally if I am in a hurry and I REALLY DON'T WANT YOU TO MISS SOMETHING. But if I am connecting with BaldMan/Alex in any significant way, then I am will do my part to Twist or Comment on his Tweet via my ReTweet. (Have I lost you yet?)

[Here's my Additive RT of Alex's "gettin coffee" Tweet] RT @BaldMan: Long line at Genuine Joe, but I wait as I need my caffeine. >> Oh, boy Alex, mine's gone cold. Could'ya bring a warm up and pastry for me? Dang, I'm at 151 characters. (Tweetdeck shows -11 in RED, so I know what I have to cut] So I have several choices. I can shorten my response.

Since Alex and I no longer work together, my plea for a warm up is ficticious. And inside joke for us and a "connector."

Or... I can get subtractive of Alex's part, and fit my ADD by shortening his original Tweet.

So now for the Subtractive:

[Here's my Additive and Subtractive RT of Alex's "gettin coffee" Tweet] RT @BaldMan: Long line at Genuine Joe, but I wait as I need my caffeine. >> Oh, boy Alex, mine's gone cold. Could'ya bring a warm up and pastry for me? (Okay -1 still to go.)

RT @BaldMan: Long line at Genuine Joe, but I wait as I need my caffeine. >> Oh, boy Alex, mine's gone cold. Could'ya bring a warm up and pastry for me? (Okay +1 let's do it.)

Now I will often use different "offsets" to separate my comment from the original Tweet. Here are a couple examples.

Double Carat: >> RT @BaldMan: Long line at Genuine Joe, but I need my caffeine. >> Oh, boy Alex, mine's gone cold. Could'ya bring warm up and pastry for me?

Brackets: [ ] RT @BaldMan: Long line at Genuine Joe, but I need my caffeine. [Oh, boy Alex, mine's gone cold. Could'ya bring warm up and pastry for me?]

Slash: / RT @BaldMan: Long line at Genuine Joe, but I need my caffeine. / Oh, boy Alex, mine's gone cold. Could'ya bring warm up and pastry for me?

I'd love to hear your retweeting strategies and "offsets."

It's a bit like English grammar and poetry. It's part of the ART of Twitter. And by being creative we can make people smile. It's not about business, it's about spirit!

@jmacofearth
permalink on uber.la: http://bit.ly/ReTweeting

Related Links:

• Fire Everything! - Twitter Facebook LinkedIN Convergence - What’s Okay What’s Not
  
• The 1-2-3 Guide to Getting Real with Twitter
  
• Visualizing Twitter (Twitter Venn) Venn Diagrams from Twitter Data
  
• Twitter’s Global Influence Grows: Innovate, Communicate or Be Left Behind
  

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The tag cloud is dead.

Cloud computing is merely a new marketing term for web services and support.

How can we simplify our web experience so that what we are paying attention to is what is important in our lives. And how do we filter out the tags (blow away the dark clouds and fog) are obscuring our goals. What exactly should we be paying attention to? It is a question we need to ask ourselves much more often these days. Or we find ourselves looking back on the day and into the night with a lot of work still to get done before we can sleep.

So one of my objectives for 2009 is to Simplify my Tag Cloud. I mean this both physically, mentally and spiritually. Because where the brain and mind are foggy so is our self, so is our core person. And by eliminating the noisy distractions of tweets, tags, feeds and emails, tv shows and advertisements for the better life, news and propaganda about global wars and warming, the better we are at eliminating the clutter of our online data stream, the more effective we will be an accomplishing our tasks and goals.

And in the long run, accomplishing more of your goals is a big deal.

So let me share my uber-tags first. These are not often written down, but in a drawing I did the other day, trying to explain what I am doing to simplify my priorities, I came up with a pretty good short list; TOP TAGS if you will.

1. work
2. family
3. play/creativity
4. health/exercise
5. spiritual practice

Now let me compare that with my current "category nav" from this website.

I think I have them all pretty well slotted with my TOP TAGS. I might need to add a "husband" category of some sort, or a better title than "ho-dad parenting" to cover the entire "family" spectrum. But I pretty much leave my personal work, relationship work, out of my writing. On the blog any way. ;-) And I might add tennis as it is my main "fun" and "exercise" activity. But it is actually caught in my "about" and "contact" pages. So I need to add my top-of-the-page nav as well.

And so with these added in as cross-tag meta categories I do cover all of my TOP TAGS. But now, for comparison, let me show you some of the tag cloud structures that I have elsewhere.

And here is the larger list from delicious. The bolder tags have more pages associated with them.

And one more from delicious that I really like. On this one, you get to see my entire 560 tags (as of 3-25-09) in order of priority. And as the number of links decreases the type is not only smaller but lighter in color as well.

And of course I could not fit all 560 tags onto a single screen shot, but you get the idea. And the image links to my delicious pages so you can go see for yourself, if you are interested. Okay, so here is a cloud of my Twitter tags.

Oh boy, I need to get something to talk about besides ME! Gosh!

And last example, a random cloud from a blog I frequent.

[Okay, so now I need a big wrap.]

Clouds are dead except for specific uses. But most clouds just do not work in the business space. Because someone would need to go back and clean up the tags on a regular basis. Cause what I call "web 2.0" you call "web2" and the next guy calls "social media." And most sites, business and friendship, do not do any tag cleanup.

In our personal lives tag clean up, and refocus on the BIG TAGS is essential.

Here is something David Foster Wallace said about his writing. "I received 500,000 discrete bits of information today," he once said, "of which maybe 25 are important. My job is to make some sense of it."

And that is our task, dear reader, to filter down the noise from our lives and pay attention to the TOP TAGS. Or as Covey put it in his matrix, the Not-Urgent but Important quadrant.

@jmacofearth
permalink on uber.la: http://bit.ly/big-tags

See Also: Rolling Stone's bio of David Foster Wallace

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Do you leave an out-of-office reply on your email account when you are gone for more than a few days? And what about when you are in the office? Do you leave your auto-reply emails turned on?

Okay so how do you feel when you call the bank on the phone and they say, "Your call is important to us." Do you believe them? Do you believe them AFTER you've had to call back to the voice-navigation system three times because you keep getting routed down the rabbit hole?

How about direct mail? Do those credit card apps offering you some "guilt free" money make you feel any more confident in the economy? Do they make you feel like the banks are finally ready to start bringing the economy back on line? Do you feel like they are trying to make contact with you, or sell you? Or even worse, scam you?

So here's the connection: On twitter when you decide for whatever reason (cool picture, cool name, random click, recommended by a friend) to follow someone, it is a pretty simple and trivial event. "Click." Okay, so far so good. In some people's Twitter etiquette the next thing you get is a DM from the new "friend" with some happy words of greeting. Or worse, a sales pitch for how you can increase your twitter audience by a 1,000 followers a day. WTH?

Is there any good case for Auto-DMing followers? Is there any good reason to leave your auto-responder ON when you are in the offie. Well, perhaps if you are trying to fake a friendly "Howdy, friend, let's have lots of great chats now that we're friend." I find it more likely that you are faking that intimate connection that comes from an actual response and re-follow.

Imagine these two responses I got after following someone who looked interesting.

Response 1: "@jmacofearth if you like that, you might enjoy also in absentia (blackest eyes) and fear of a black planet (way out of herefear of...)" fr: Tapatia

Response 2: "Thanks for the follow. I hope we get to tweet a lot and rule the world." fr: name redacted.

So I asked Mr. 50k what the heck he was doing training businesses to do this Auto-Bot responder. I guess to him it was like an answering machine. But I think he missed the point and of course now he's blocked me from harassing him any more. When confronted, Mr. 50k responded that he auto-followed and auto-DM'd so he could invite the new "friends" to connect with him on Facebook or his website. Oh boy!

But wait a minute. What are you doing when you ping me back with a sales pitch? A sales pitch of any kind? Like, "Hey, John McElhenney, thanks for the follow. Be sure and check out my Facebook page HERE and get a copy of my free ebook "Winning Twitter and Influencing Tweeps," HERE." So Mr. 50k says it's only because he wants to be able to DM you and for you to be able to DM him. And I asked him, "So what if you took the 30 seconds to look at the persons page and made a determination if you were interested in having a conversation with them?" "When you get 1,000 followers a day come talk to me about that 30 seconds." So Mr. 50k was at about 32k followers when we had this exchange. Let's check in on him and see how he's doing in his mega-twitt quest.

Yep, he's gained 16,000+ new followers so far in the 21 days of March, so he's well on track for becoming a regular Guy Kawasaki or perhaps even an Obama. But wait, let's see what Mr. 50k has to say in those, perhaps he has an important message. Uh, nope.

There is this awesome blurb in his bio, "He believes that education is important, but not essential to becoming a successful entrepreneur." Okay, but don't quit your dayjob. The good news is that Mr. 50k is using his new found popularity and has launched "a social media marketing company, which specializes in training large companies how to engage their customers by using social media." I'm not sure he knows what the meaning of the word "contrived" is, but so be it. (adjective, obviously planned or forced; artificial; strained: a contrived story)

So maybe he can help you. Maybe I'm getting all riled up about nothing. But if I left my out-of-office email reply on (also called an auto-responder) with a pithy welcome statement, my guess is you would feel less welcome and more like a customer.

Main advice. Don't join the Borg, don't be an Auto-Bot. Be REAL and in REAL TIME.

@jmacofearth permalink: http://bit.ly/mr-50k

Related Post
Getting Real with Twitter: http://bit.ly/twitter-1-2-3

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