[I have several main info streams that I pay attention to these days and they are probably not what you would think. Here is part 2 of 10.]

INFOSTREAM STRATEGY #2: Tweetdeck - Putting a Dashboard Around Twitter

Twitter is the new email. It's not so much micro-blogging as mass Instant Messaging. The great part about an application like Tweetdeck, is you don't miss anything. I am not tied to my computer watching Tweets and Hours go by. I log into my Tweetdeck several times a day and here is how I play it.

There are other grouping and organizing tools for Twitter, Seesmic Desktop and PeopleBrowsr being two notable competitors, but for my money the simplicity of Tweetdeck, and some say the ugliness, is what makes it work for me. So when I am looking for outside info or stimulation from the web, I go to iGoogle and Tweetdeck.

Above you can see how my Tweetdeck Dashboard is laid out. My attention (deficit) flows from left-to-right, being a right-hander. Far left I have my "close" group. These are folks that I have shared some face time or extended conversations. These are my "trusted advisers." Rarely do I miss A SINGLE TWEET from my "close" group. And the reason is, Tweetdeck threads and keeps the tweets organized for me.

So when I have been away all day, say Easter Sunday, I merely open Tha Deck and in the "close" column is all the tweets that have occurred while I was offline.

My next Tweetdeck columns are

2. "pro" for Social Media or Business professionals

3. "all friends." for the 2,000+ people I am "following" (you can see how this is a loose term, as I am not likely to scroll back through my "all friends" column unless I am digging deep for inspiration)

4. search "jmacofearth" this allows me to see any time my Twitter name is used, incase I don't follow someone, I will still see their message

5. "facebook status updates" this is NEW to Tweetdeck and how awesome to put FB in the same tool as Twitter

6. "direct messages" this column run off the page, but I can see when the avatar icons change and thus I need to scroll over and see what someone DM-d to me.

So with my Tweetdeck Dashboard, my attention flows from Left (full-attention) to Right in ever decreasing levels of attention for me. While Facebook updates are important, they don't move or change as quickly so I can browse them with less frequency. I know a number of people who don't like Twitter because the information seems overwhelming. And they say the Facebook updates feel just about manageable. Well, now, it's just another stream in my Tweetdeck Dashboard. It fits into the format perfectly. And with Tweetdeck I can post to Twitter and Facebook with a single message.

Twitter Rule #2 Get a Twitter Management Strategy and a Twitter App Works for You
The information on Twitter is amazing. You can slice it, dice it, search it, track it, measure it and graph it, but if you can't control it what it will do is blow your head off. I cannot imagine a process for using Twitter via twitter.com that would allow me to make any sense of the vast amount of valuable (and value-less) data coming through Twitter.

I have given an example of how my strategy has evolved using Tweetdeck. My advice is to pick something and the work it. See how it fits and how you can organize the stream-runneth-over of Twitter follows.

@jmacofearth
permalink to original post on uber.la: http://bit.ly/infostream-2

[NEXT] INFOSTREAM STRATEGY #3: FriendFeed

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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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The owner of inSocialMedia.com made me a guest admin on Friday night.

Why did I accept? What did it mean?

How would I participate, or ADMIN? Below is the first discussion thread I created as an admin, where I created a "leadership" group and proposed the following questions to the growing group of 4.

1. What is inSM to each of us?
2. Why are we part of it?
3. What do we get from being a member?
4. If we were a guiding leader of inSM what would we do to make it better?

And then it was my turn to answer my own questions as a conversation starter.

1. inSM to me is a collection of folks working in SM who want to communicate and build discussions around making our SocialMedia interactions better. To me it is not about business or making money or reputation at being a part of it. It might be for others, I don't pretend to know.

2. I want to be a part of things that are larger than myself. I am an avid community participant. I love Posterious and inSM as my 2 adjunct communities that add more conversation to my own rantings.

3. What I get as being part of inSM is the connection with other SM professionals. Notice I don't use the term experts, cause if I'm an expert today, I am certianly not an expert tomorrow. Too much is changing for any of us to be experts. We are students and teachers, leaders and followers.

4. Engage a group of people in leading the community. Add additional tools or groups as needed. Begin actual dialogues on inSM, unlike the vacant "groups" and "affinities" of Facebook. Where we all join and nothing happens.

So if inSM is more like LinkedIN than Facebook we have done a good job. If we use inSM as part of our reputation validation then we have done a good job. If we build relationships and a level of TRUST on inSM for the discussions to be honest and challenging, then we have begun to build something of value for all of us.

We have begun to build a community.

@jmacofearth
permalink to the uber.la post: http://bit.ly/inSM

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