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Part 1

Part 2

Part 3 – How does twitter fit in with web site, blogging, facebook, linkedin, other social networks?

I see my website as my anchor on the internet. My website says I am who I am, sets out my stall, explains how to contact me. I want my website to be found – by people looking for solutions which I can provide. Periodically I will update my website to describe additional solutions, new partnerships, new references/ endorsements.

My blog is where I provide my thoughts – hopefully my insights to emerging social, business, technical issues – as they occur to me and and I develop/ refine my thinking. I expect the blog to incorporate feedback from readers. Over a period of time my blog accumulates an amount of my thinking re the issues of the day.

So there does twitter fit in with all of this – and with the other networks in which I participate?

Twitter is the medium through which I develop interactive dialog with people of mutual interest (I am interested in their thoughts, they follow me – so presumably are interested in my thoughts). Through those contacts I am also looking to expand my network – attracting attention to my competencies and learning from other experts.

With this in mind I automatically notify twitter of any new blog postings. I post questions to twitter, I respond to queries from others on twitter. I use twitter to draw people’s attention to information which I think may be of interest to them.

Both linkedin and facebook are also important to my social and business networking. Initially I focused facebook on the social side and linkedin on the business side. Facebook now has a much broader role – and has an important business element to it. For now I have a range of contacts who may/may not use all of the solutions e.g. may be a member of facebook but not using twitter or linkedin, only use linkedin, etc.

All of these are being brought together. Many people are members of all of these (and many more) social networks. Initiatives such as SIOC are working to faciliate interoperability. Using tools such as Yoono with Firefox it has become very easy to update your presence/ status across mutiple environments. I cross post to facebook from twitter and using ‘company buzz’ on linkedin twitter references to me are published to linkedin.

So what’s twitter, at the end of the day? As one of my twitter friends (@rbconsulting) says, flippantly – ‘hard to belive it took them that long to get SMS working on the PC’. And that captures the essence of the microblogging limits. Twitter is that and more. Most importantly it’s a platform which makes it very easy to establish relationships with people all over the internet – for business, social, educational, recreational, whatever purpose. The value of the relationships flows from the level of interaction, quality of contributions, responsiveness.

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While the uptake has been huge, it’s clear from this that the content is driven by/ dominated by a relatively small/ select group.  However as an early user of linkedin I would have had the same types of reservations – mainly seemed to be used by technology people and/or recruiters.  However I think this speaks to an awareness/ understandng of the power of the medium and the available functionality.  Now we are beginning to see Linkedin used more generally by people right across the business spectrum.   I would expect to see twitter adoption move the same way – notwithstanding that there will always be people/ professionals who target/ exploit a platform.

Thanks to twitter.com/mike_stelzner for bringing this to my attention.

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In the first article I referenced twitter as a community – perhaps more accurately as providing a platform to support an infinite number of communities. However these are communities without regulation – there is no sign up fee and there are no rules. There is no membership per se – you voluntarily contribute and voluntarily receive (by following). People are using the platform to share and exchange information – in a form of online collaboration.

As an entrepreneur and consultant working in the areas of KM, Collaboration, semantic web – twitter facilitates my networking effectively with people all around the world who have a say in, or an interest in, these areas. I will establish my credibility with this changing and evolving group based on my contributions e.g. through responding to general queries, commenting on developments, posting my own throughts and approaches. If my contributions are not worthwhile the market looks after that – I will simply not be followed.

The personal element of twitter is important. Search engines such as google and bing are well capable of returning a great deal of information in response to refined queries. Placing questions in specific fora often delivers answers to specific technical questions. However as a twitter user I am being prompted by people who are active in my areas of interest – to look at new material, to participate in debate, to respond to queries. The personalisation of the information is a key element in the attractiveness of twitter.

Working out of a base in Ireland twitter provides a very easy way for me to stay in touch with people working in the same area across the globe. For actual projects I use wikis and various collaboration tools. But for day to day staying in touch on relevant research topics twitter fits the bill.

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As the twitter phenomenon has become mainstream I have found myself being asked on a regular basis to explain its value to business people who have not yet engaged. In three postings I hope to explain what it is, why I use and how I use it.

The basics of twitter

Twitter enables me to stay in touch with a group of people who, for the most part, share common interests with me. Effectively I participate in a community where people – including me – contribute information. The contributed information may or may not be of interest to me. However I have a number of options open to me to focus the information which is being brought to my attention.

I choose whom I follow in twitter. All of the information contributed by those whom I follow is brought to my attention. I can of course choose to ignore any or all of this information. However I have chosen to follow these individuals because I expect some or all of the information contributed by them to be of interest to me. Over a period of time I will cease to follow individuals whose contributions are generally of no interest to me.

I contribute to twitter. My expectation is that my contributions will be of value to some of my current or future followers. My contributions may range from: drawing attention to one of my own blog postings, drawing attention to someone else’s contribution (twitter, blog, web site, youtuve video, etc), responding to a request for information or asking a question – seeking support/ advice from one of my followers. In general my following will grow in proportion to the quality and frequency of my contributions.

I also use an application, tweetdeck, to assist me in reviewing tweats which my be of interest to me. Using tweetdeck I have organised the people I follow into groups e.g. those who contribute in relation to ‘links golf in Ireland’, those who contribute in relation to ‘semantic web’. This way I can focus my review on one specific subject matter of interest. I also use tweetdeck to run a number of continuous searches e.g. all tweets re ‘sharepoint for knowledge management’. This searches across all tweets. It may also cause me to add specific individuals to my follow list – because of the quality/ relevance of their contribution.

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