Host of GeekBeat.TV
My passion is technology. I host GeekBeat.TV, a show all about technology, gadgets and exciting research that's shaping our future.
I speak a lot about social media, technology and the future of tech at corporate events and conferences around the country. For more information on having me speak at your event, click here.
I interrupt my 12 Days of Twitter posts with this brief rant (even though this is also about Twitter).
Ah….
Being a geek is such a wonderful thing because we early adopt and there is nothing quite as special as when it’s just us. I’ve seen it with usenet, blogging. I’ve seen it with podcasting and now I’m seeing it with Twitter. When it’s just us, we may not agree on everything, but we tend to like each other anyway. Geeks have no expectation that the world work according to our rules because most of us didn’t grow up with the world working that way.
When a communications breaks through to popular culture that’s a great thing and I root for that to happen, but as soon as I start hearing all the nonsense about the dangers that this new technology is bringing to our culture, I roll my eyes and start regretting the fact that we didn’t keep this to ourselves. A couple of years ago, The Ad Counsel released an audio spot for radio warning parents about Podcasting and how it promotes marijuana use. Well, that was just silly and today MediaPost.com brings us a new round of noob silliness.
The piece is titled, “Marketers Call For Twitter To Filter Content For Pornography, Spam,” and you can begin snickering with me now. The premise of the piece is that marketers are calling on Twitter to filter out pornography and spam because those two things make marketers uncomfortable. Marketers want to take advantage of Twitter to promote their goods and services, but they fear that if they do, they’ll be associated with the cesspool of porn and spam that is the Twitterverse. Give me a break! Here’s a quote:
“Paul Verna, senior analyst at eMarketer, believes Twitter will need to find a way to filter out adult content because marketers will feel uncomfortable having their products and services, or advertising and marketing materials, serving up alongside — or anywhere near — it.”
The solution to spam and porn on Twitter is super simple and it’s user controlled. I you get spammed with porn or unwanted marketing material, UNFOLLOW. If that doesn’t work, BLOCK the sender. It’s that simple. Let’s finally have a service that lets adults be adults and parents be parents. I don’t need Twitter to protect me with filters because they’ve given me the tools I need to protect myself.
Sarah Perez responded to the MediaPost.com piece on ReadWriteWeb by suggesting that Twitter filter out marketers. She says, “if anyone’s to blame for spamming our Twitter timelines, it’s the marketers themselves. They’ve managed to trick our friends into spamming us with their messages instead.” She then goes on to illustrate how marketers ARE responsible for spam through their use of Tweet to Win campaigns.
@sarahintampa, you’ve got an amen from me.
12 Days of Twitter :: Day 1
(learn more about the 12 days of Twitter)
Twitter can be overwhelming to understand. When you get past the question Why would I want to use Twitter, there are still a lot of Twitter-specific abbreviations (some borrowed from the web, chat and SMS) that confuse people when they jump into the world of Twitter.
Twitter Terms
tweet = A single message on Twitter, up to 140 characters
@reply = a response to a specific person – If you want to send a message that you know I’ll see, you put @calilewis anywhere in your 140 character message and I’ll see it. It’s a public message, just like your regular tweets that anyone following you will see, but it addresses a specific person. I can then reply back by @replying you or sending you a DM.
DM = Direct Message – This is how you talk to specific people privately. Unlike an @reply, no one will see a DM but you and the person you send it to. To avoid spam, you are only able to send a Direct Message to someone who is already following you. To send someone a DM, you can type D username (remember the space) at the beginning of your message. There is a Direct Messages link on the right side of the Twitter pages. If you don’t click that link, you won’t see when people have DM’d you.
RT = Retweet – It’s a way of quoting someone else of Twitter. You like what they said, and you want to pass it on.
On the Web, you’ll need to manually copy and paste someone’s tweet and put “RT username” in front
On a Desktop Application, usually you can hover over a user’s picture and find a symbol, like the straight arrow in this screenshot:
# = Hashtag – A hastag is a single keyword with the # sign in front. It tells the world that this tweet is about a particular subject or event. It allows people to follow a subject easily.
Borrowed from Chat/SMS
Here are some common abbreviations borrowed from SMS, Chat and the Web that I see on Twitter quite often. This is just a short list of possible abbreviations. For a more exhaustive list, click here.
L8R = Later
<3 = Love (it’s a sideways heart…just stare at it for a moment!)
BRB = Be Right Back
FWIW = For What It’s Worth
IDK = I Don’t Know
PPL = People
TTYL = Talk To You Later
WDYK = What Do You Know
Borrowed from the Web
NSFW = Not Safe For Work
IMHO = In My Humble Opinion
WYSIWYG = What You See Is What You Get
WTF = What The *beep*
TMI = Too Much Information
ROTFL = Roll On The Floor Laughing
I’ll be talking about TweetDeck on the next post.
Read More
Introduction to the 12 Days of Twitter
Day 2: Use TweetDeck to Manage Conversations
Day 3: Share Your Funny Anecdotes While They’re Still Funny
Day 4: Follow Responsibly
Day 5: 3 Newbie Mistakes Made by New Tweeters
Day 6: Use Twitter Search to Connect and Find
Day 7: Twitter Mobile
Day 8: Five Awesome Things You Can Do with Twitter
Day 9: Mix it Up!
Day 10: If You’re Not a TweetDeck, You Might Be a Seesmic
Day 11: Twitter for Prizes and Profit
Day 12: Schedule Tweets in Advance
If you haven’t noticed already, I’m a huge Twitter advocate. However, I was one of the folks who just didn’t get it. I struggled to understand how a little post about my life would be worth anyone’s time. I skipped jumping on board as an early adopter.
Twitter’s homepage says “What are you doing?”. This is the question you’re supposed to answer. I kept asking “why the heck would I want to tell the world what I’m doing right this very minute?” I hear it again and again directly from people who watch GeekBrief.TV and from people talking about Twitter on TV and radio. Why would I want to tell everyone that I’m about to jump in the shower, or eating macaroni and cheese, or putting on my shoes in the morning? Even if I wanted to tell the world these things, why would anyone even care? What good could possibly come out of tweeting?
It was friends of Geek Brief that converted me. Viewers would email me and ask me to sign up, and I kept replying “No way! I don’t want the responsibility of having to come up with something clever every day. I know I won’t use it very much, so what’s the point?”. Then, someone said they’d like to know via Twitter when I’ve posted a new episode of the show. That sounded reasonable. I could understand using Twitter to do that. I slowly began to see the value of Twitter, and one day soon after beginning to use it, I fell in love.
My best advice? Ignore the question. Twitter isn’t about describing your lunch (unless it’s funny or interesting enough to share). It’s about participating in a community that could be good for either your business or your social life.
How?
If you use Twitter with your heart in the right place (i.e. no spamming), it can be an extremely valuable resource for you and/or your business. I get asked all the time about how to get the most out of Twitter, so I decided to do a series of blog posts to answer all the questions I get, and share what I’ve learned. I’m calling the series 12 Days of Twitter, and I’ll start tomorrow. The series will include tips, tricks, rules and tools. I hope it helps to fill in some of the gaps about why there is all this fuss about Twitter!
Read More
Day 1: The Secret Twitter Code
Day 2: Use TweetDeck to Manage Conversations
Day 3: Share Your Funny Anecdotes While They’re Still Funny
Day 4: Follow Responsibly
Day 5: 3 Newbie Mistakes Made by New Tweeters
Day 6: Use Twitter Search to Connect and Find
Day 7: Twitter Mobile
Day 8: Five Awesome Things You Can Do with Twitter
Day 9: Mix it Up!
Day 10: If You’re Not a TweetDeck, You Might Be a Seesmic
Day 11: Twitter for Prizes and Profit
Day 12: Schedule Tweets in Advance
