Jun 8, 2008 | blog
Awhile back, I’d started a list of "101 Uses for Twitter", but never seemed to get past 27 for some reason. Of course, it had been last autumn since I brainstormed on it. While I don’t think that I personally could come up with 101 uses, I’m sure there are many more than that.
So I thought about this again for awhile this morning and did think of 50 uses that I’ve seen or participated in. So here is a list of 50 uses for Twitter, I’m thinking of more as I write this, so maybe there is a chance at that "101" post sometime.
- Keep in touch with my
Twitter peeps friends - General news item links
- News & links on my industry or area of interest
- Fast answers to quick questions
- Professional networking
- Links to nearly everything
- Marketing
- Personal branding
- Corporate & product branding
- Haiku’s
- Making friends
- Feel "plugged into the web and it’s various personalities"
- Replacement for instant messaging applications
- Chat tool
- Promotional tool for my blog
- Providing new reading opportunities
- Fun stuff!
- Meeting new, interesting people to communicate with
- Collecting links
- Finding sites related to social networking
- "To listen in on my contacts rants"
- A web worker "water cooler"
- Micro-blogging
- A personal "techmeme"
- Lightweight text broadcasting tool
- Easy way to annoy your spouse
- Promotional tool for my brand
- Ranting
- Idea generator
- No-cost non-profit announcement system
- Bring a sense of community to your home office
- Tracking status of friends
- Status message generator for other social networks
- Frustration generator (at least when it is down)
- Thought publisher
- Promotional tool for my organization
- Following public discussions
- Travel guide
- Controlled discussion between friends
- Uncontrolled discussion between friends with viewers
- List generator
- Meeting agenda generator
- Coffee shop locator
- People search
- Promotional tool for my company
- Product reviews
- Trip planner
- Backchannel for events
- Feedback generator
- Authentication mechanism
So what are you uses for Twitter? I’m sure I didn’t capture them all, so add your ideas and things you use Twitter for below.
Sep 3, 2007 | blog
I’ve been on a crusade of sorts lately, looking for unique voices in the blogosphere, to find more interesting and relevant content. In the process, I’ve been finding better ways to absorb the information I find.  Many of these methods are a change from how I consumed information in the past and I cover five of them here today.
First, of course, I’ve gone through and gotten rid of all the “dead” or abandoned feeds that added unneeded bulk to my daily Google Reader adventures.
Second, I’ve identified my top 10 all stars, and started visiting their blogs directly to read what they’ve written. This has been a huge improvement for me in getting their point of view on a more personal level, one of the biggest things that I felt I was missing in a feed reader. By the way, that original list of 10 has expanded to 18 blogs that I visit every day (but hey, that’s another post). Yes, it takes much more time than a reader, but these people’s work is important to me and deserves more time than a quick scan in a feed reader.
Third, I’ve started to “speed read” in Google Reader. The difference has been a boon to my information consumption because I no longer try to build each sentence from it’s component words & letters. Instead, I have been scanning each paragraph, using a visual recognition technique that constructs the concepts the writer is presenting. This has allowed me to reduce the time it takes to read the feeds in my reader and continue to add more feeds as I come across new & interesting sites.
This has not been easy, as we’re programmed at an early age to read every word, and then practice this function for decades. Of course all those years of traditional reading builds up a visual library of words & phrases that are more quickly recognized than mechanically assembling each sentence a word at a time.
Fourth, I’ve used the tagging feature in Google Reader to separate out the news feeds from the rest of the blog feeds. These news feeds I literally scan for keywords and quickly move on it they aren’t new, informative, or otherwise don’t interest me. The remaining blog feeds, I’ve also tried to tag specific to different genres like blogging, mobile technology, social media and so on. This way, I can either read the “river of news” of all my feeds from top to bottom, or just focus on a specific genre if I’m limited on time and need to prioritize my reading.
Fifth, the last thing that has been helping me is to perform a “quick glance” at the post in the feed to see if it is visually appealing before starting to scan the text. This quick glance impression of the post along with looking for the “meat” of the post in the first sentence or two quickly indicates to me if it’s worth continuing to consuming it. While this has backfired in some instances, I usually find the post again by another blog pointing to it, and I give it more attention on the second pass because of this.
So these are my latest methods and techniques to consume content faster and give me back a few precious minutes each day to use for writing, working, or relaxing. I don’t know if any of this is of value to you, but it’s how I currently handle a growing number of feeds.
Oh, and one last thing – three of my latest “top bloggers” jumped from “oh, this is an interesting blog” to my top list in less than a week – and I have my original 10 bloggers to blame thank for linking to more quality bloggers! 😉
Photo credit, austinevan
Aug 21, 2007 | blog
Well, I can’t not post about this. Twitter has added an all-important search feature that has been requested for some time. Now, right from your own Twitter Home Page, you can search out others. It’s over there on the right-hand sidebar, directly under the “Send Notifications” options.
Thanks to Biz Stone and the rest of the team at Twitter for the new feature!
Technorati tags: Twitter, Twitter Search, Biz Stone
Aug 2, 2007 | blog
I just wanted to share with everyone my shock, worry and sorrow. This staple of the Twin Cities transportation system was last on my list of things to worry about. How many times have any of us in the Twin Cities driven across this stretch, on our way downtown or to a game or to the U?
My condolences go out to the families who have lost a loved one, and pray that his doesn’t happen to others. God bless.
I’m sure that we’ll all find out soon enough what happened, and that the NTSB will find the source of the collapse. One can’t even begin to guess at what might be at fault, this 40-year old bridge has been checked on a regular basis – it could be any number of things. One thing is for sure, I believe we’ll be surprised at the cause of this disaster.
Photo credit to Koldark
Technorati tags: I35 Bridge, Minneapolis Bridge Collapse
Jul 9, 2007 | blog
So Google has agreed to acquire Postini, the email security company. Pretty cool. Here is the Official Press Release.
Via: Official Google Blog – Welcome, Postini team
Technorati tags: Google, Postini