Posts tagged Twitter

I wanted to point out some interesting behavior by one of my friends, Alex Bain. He has been twittering his wedding and his honeymoon. This is extreme lead-user behavior and it won’t be for everyone, but when I see the lead-users pushing things even this far, I know the service is a winner.
Great quote from a post by my buddy, Orn.
He’s right. This is surprisingly hard to do. His separated-at-birth joke wasn’t funny though, so don’t waste your time with the link.

He’s right. This is surprisingly hard to do.

His separated-at-birth joke wasn’t funny though, so don’t waste your time with the link.

My buddy, Steve, is also married to a resident, and knows how rough their can be schedules can be sometimes… on spouses.

My buddy, Steve, is also married to a resident, and knows how rough their can be schedules can be sometimes… on spouses.

What makes two friends feel “close” to one another? I’d argue that a big part of it is the small details that you know about each other. The funny comment your friend made about a billboard they saw while driving down the road, what they had for dinner, a person they ran into on the street, their comments about the movie they saw two nights before. Closeness often comes from knowing the small things, not just the big things

I don’t remember who recommended this article to me, but I finally got around to reading it (after it had sat dormant in my Instapaper account for a month), and loved it. I almost wanted to post the full text, b/c it’s not that long and there’s a bunch of gems, but I thought that’d be stealing.

It’s also amazing to me that the author never mentioned Twitter. I know it’s written from Google’s perspective, but it’s practically a love letter to Twitter.

List of top graded Twitter users following Alex Bain

This is an exercise in ego, but it’s funny to see the “highest rated” users following me. I don’t know 90% of this list, and I’m not even sure that they really are following me.

TwitterKeys: Enhance your Twitter conversations

Anyone that’s got a Twitter account might be interested to know that there’s an easy way to insert pictures into your posts (I can’t get used to calling them “tweets”). You click this bookmarklet that you can get from the above link, and up pops a list of most of the available compatible pics. You just copy and paste the one you want into your post.

Obviously, this only work from a computer. You still need to use normal, descriptive prose when you’re texting in your goodies.

Passing along two recommendations in one here: A favorite blog of mine, Unclutterer, now has put Twitter to excellent use. They’re passing along bite sized tips & helpful links. A link that I found both thought provoking and inspiring was the first one they posted, to this HBR article on a new psychographic for marketers: The Simplifier.

Passing along two recommendations in one here:

  1. A favorite blog of mine, Unclutterer, now has put Twitter to excellent use. They’re passing along bite sized tips & helpful links.
  2. A link that I found both thought provoking and inspiring was the first one they posted, to this HBR article on a new psychographic for marketers: The Simplifier.

Daring Fireball: Twitter Hires Rael Dornfest; Stikkit and I Want Sandy to Close December 8

This is great news for Twitter, but catastrophic news for Alex Bain. I use “I Want Sandy” religiously. It was a terrific, free, and lightning fast way to fire off a reminder to myself that would both show up in my calendar and send me a text message in the future at a time of my choosing.

Imagine being out to dinner and thinking, “I really need to call Roger in the morning.” I could send a note through Twitter that said “d s r Call Roger at 10AM tomorrow” and when I woke up in the morning, I’d see the call scheduled on my calendar, and I’d get a reminder text a few minutes before I was supposed to make the call… and this was all free.

I’m going to really miss this service, and it may take a while to find a suitable replacement.

Tell Lisa to reset her twitter-getter to let her get her twitter-chatter better.

My brother joking about Lisa’s protected account on Twitter.

My family’s all signing up for Twitter, since I was raving about the service over the holiday. It’s been a blast to see how our normally-seasonal banter and teasing is spilling into the off-season.

A User's Guide to Twittering

Great article in the WSJ explaining Twitter for people unfamiliar with the service. I’d probably still prefer to show someone this video, though, because it captures the essence of the site better.

Lisa recently jokingly suggested that her Christmas present to me could be that she’d agree to use Twitter more actively in 2009, and the funny thing was: I actually thought it would make a great gift.

Lisa recently jokingly suggested that her Christmas present to me could be that she’d agree to use Twitter more actively in 2009, and the funny thing was: I actually thought it would make a great gift.

Twistory

I’ve been wanting something like this for a while. A year ago, I even went on oDesk.com and bid to have someone code something like this for me (for ~$20), but what I got didn’t work reliably.

This just puts your Twitter account into an iCal format, which isn’t meaningful to most people, but considering how much time I spend in my calendar, it’s extremely useful to me.

If you spend a lot of time in iCal or Google Calendar, and use Twitter, give it a shot.

If you have a Twitter account, and you’re at all introspective, I highly recommend following Weekday Zen. Twitter is, obviously, free, but you if you think of your time as having a value, than there’s a cost associated with following anyone on the site. When I decide to follow someone or not, I look at how often they post, and how interesting they are. If someone posts infrequently, they don’t have to be very interesting, because they’re “cheap”. Also, I multiply an account’s value by quite a bit if I know the author personally, and their posts will provide fodder for future in-person conversations. This is why I receive SMS updates for all of my family members and close friends. Weekday Zen is the wonderful kind of account that’s both cheap and valuable. The author is a b-school buddy of mine named Steve.

If you have a Twitter account, and you’re at all introspective, I highly recommend following Weekday Zen.

Twitter is, obviously, free, but you if you think of your time as having a value, than there’s a cost associated with following anyone on the site. When I decide to follow someone or not, I look at how often they post, and how interesting they are. If someone posts infrequently, they don’t have to be very interesting, because they’re “cheap”.

Also, I multiply an account’s value by quite a bit if I know the author personally, and their posts will provide fodder for future in-person conversations. This is why I receive SMS updates for all of my family members and close friends.

Weekday Zen is the wonderful kind of account that’s both cheap and valuable. The author is a b-school buddy of mine named Steve.

This author consistently cracks me up. I don’t know the guy at all, and I don’t know many of the people I follow, but I highly recommend that any Twitter users checkout a site called “Favrd”, where some of the funniest micro-authors review each other’s work and push good content to the top (Digg style).

This author consistently cracks me up. I don’t know the guy at all, and I don’t know many of the people I follow, but I highly recommend that any Twitter users checkout a site called “Favrd”, where some of the funniest micro-authors review each other’s work and push good content to the top (Digg style).

This post by my buddy, Hegarty, had me laughing out loud. I’d love to have seen this moment.

This post by my buddy, Hegarty, had me laughing out loud. I’d love to have seen this moment.