Entries in Twitter (10)

Friday
Apr182008

Ego Surfin'

It's pretty unseemly to make a big deal of how many Twitter followers (or Facebook friends, or Tesla cars) one has, but I have to confess that lately I've been spending a lot of time refreshing the Top 100 list on Twitdir, especially as I started to pull ahead of Scoble and Calacanis in the race for the most followers on Twitter. It's a stupid thing to care about, I know, but I have an ego (really? no kidding), and knowing that over 21,000 people are following me is kind of cool. Knowing I'm second only to Barack Obama is humbling. Trying to come up with a way to keep all those people entertained is terrifying. Thanks to @jbulava who made me this graph on Trendrr:
I now know that I will never catch up with Barack (I'm fine with that), that Calacanis can't overtake me no matter how much stuff he gives away (ha ha), and that Scoble will probably drink both our milkshakes sooner or later (sigh). I wonder if I could get more followers if I wore a flag pin? I'd love to pretend that the numbers don't matter to me. It seems crass to worry about how many people follow me on Twitter, but in my business numbers are all that matter. Shows survive or get cancelled depending on the numbers. Advertisers pay by the numbers. Most importantly for me, I need an audience. It's what motivates me. It's much more fun preaching to a full house than a bunch of empty pews. My wife says I'm not fully awake unless there are thousands of people watching or listening. I'm afraid she's right. So while I know I'm not supposed to care how many people are following me on Twitter, I'm actually glowing inside. Especially since Twitter is the flavor of the month. Twitter LogoA lot of ink has been spilled trying to explain Twitter. If you're in the dark about why this odd little service has captured the attention of the digerati, CommonCraft's video explanation, Twitter in Plain English, or Zappo's CEO Tony Hsieh's Quick Start Guide are good places to start. Part of the difficulty in explaining Twitter is that it can be used in many different ways. Some use it as a sort of IM service. This is, I think, the least interesting spin and I generally don't follow those folks. Others, like Scoble, Calacanis, and even Obama, I guess, use it mostly to promote what they're up to. I call it personality spam, and it's not terribly offensive as long as the personality is doing interesting things. A talented few, like Merlin Mann, use Twitter to entertain the troops, bless 'em. I, like most folks, use Twitter as a mini-blog with an admittedly funky commenting system. It's easier to write four or five 140 character blog posts throughout the day, than to actually think through a larger post. That's how I write to Twitter, but I also read Twitter to keep up with what's going on. I follow about 300 folks, mostly web mavens, not for social reasons, but to stay on top of fast breaking ideas in tech, politics, and society. Twitter has become my primary source of information about these trends. That's one of the interesting things about Twitter - you can read it for different reasons than you write to it. And everyone who subscribes to Twitter can customize the service to make it what they want it to be. I realize that many people don't care about Twitter. That's why I segregate my Tweets from the rest of the blog, but because it's my most common form of posting I also preserve those Tweets here. There's also a group, like Steve Gillmor, who believe that Twitter is the most important social network out there. More important, even, than Facebook. I agree. But I'll try not to spam you with my opinions on that score. Unless you'd like to help me stay ahead of Scoble and Calacanis. In which case, join Twitter and follow me at:

http://twitter.com/leolaporte

To keep from spamming people on that account, I've also set up a TWiT Live account where I'll be posting information about upcoming video feeds for the new TWiT TV channel:

http://twitter.com/twitlive

I won't offer you a Macbook Air, but I do promise to do my best to post interesting, useful stuff. Other Twittering TWiTs worth following: Anyone I've left out?
Tuesday
Mar042008

Love It Or Hate It? - TWiT 134

There have been numerous comments about TWiT 134: Pave The Cowpaths on our private donors forum, most of them critical of the subject matter, one of our guests, an irrelevant discussion about audio issues in the middle, and my recommendation of a book by Orson Scott Card. Here's the response I posted on the forum. I wanted to post it here, too, to give you all a chance to comment.
I knew some of you would hate the show - and some of you would love it (far more lovers on Twitter and Pownce than here, not surprisingly). Unlike mainstream media, I don't make programming decisions based on what "most people" will like. That's the strength of this new medium - it's not ratings driven, it's idea driven. Sometimes TWiT isn't going to match your expectations. There are people who want it to be a TechTV Alumni fest, others who want it to be a tech news roundtable. It will be those sometimes, but I program TWiT as a show that reflects the most interesting and important issues in tech, as I see them. I don't mean to sound defensive here - I just want you to understand what I'm aiming for. The beauty of the new Internet media is that there's something for everybody. My shows are always going to reflect my interests. That's why I make 'em! If you share my interests, you'll enjoy (or at least appreciate) what I'm creating. If not, there are lots of other people doing really great programming, too. You have so many choices these days - let a million flowers bloom! I thought Winer was great - very, very insightful. If you can't get past his voice, listen to his ideas. Twitter et al. are new net memes that are as interesting, and I think, as significant, as RSS, but like RSS I don't expect everyone to get it right away. Dave is one of the few people I know who understand this stuff at a very deep level. As for the praise for Orson Scott Card - I love his work; I hate his politics. But that's no reason not to read or recommend him. I read many, many authors whose politics I abhor. If Card's homophobia or neanderthal agenda crept into his novels I'd not recommend him, but I can't think of a single incident where they have. If you can, please let me know and I'll stop recommending him. I do apologize for not editing out the audio issues talk - that was just an oversight. I certainly didn't mean to leave it in. I agree it wastes your time - very sorry.
Let's use the ratings system for this post to reflect your rating for the show. Thanks!
Monday
Nov122007

Top 10 Reasons Why I'm Twittering Again

bird.gif10. I'm not hip enough for Pownce. 9. I've finally trained myself to write Twitter instead of TWiTter. 8. Alex King's Twitter Tools for Wordpress mean my Tweets become part of my blog and no longer evaporate. 7. I miss my San Francisco digerati A-list friends. 6. Jaiku is now Gooku and invite only. 5. How else am I going to find out what Merlin is up to? 4. It's not about functionality, it's about family. 3. iJustine said she would follow me. 2. All the cool kids are doing it. and the number 1 reason why I'm Twittering again... Scoble must be stopped!
Friday
Apr062007

Goodbye Twitter. Hello Jaiku.

JaikuWhen I talk about Twitter people think I'm crazy. Who would want to be bugged by hundreds of messages a day from your friends telling you what they're up to. Well, as it turns out, lots of us would. Twitter is positively addictive and everyone, including Mike Arrington at Techcrunch, seems to think it's going to be the next big thing. I'm really happy for Ev and the gang at Obvious. Ev jumpstarted the blogging revolution and tried to do the same with podcasting until Apple jumped into the ring and squashed all the competition. Twitter is his well deserved second home run.

But I'm leaving it.

The problem is the name. I wish to heck he'd named it Tweeter, or Tooter, or anything but Twitter. Twitter is so close to TWiT that I'm afraid it's really confusing. And it hasn't helped the confusion that I've been such a fan of Twitter. I'm sure half the people there think we have some sort of relationship. But we don't. And the proliferation of programs like Twitbox and sites like Twit This are not helping things much. So let me repeat...

Twitter has nothing to do with TWiT.

And, I'm afraid, I can't have anything to do with Twitter, either. It's just fueling the confusion. Fortunately, there are several similar services including Groovr, Dodgeball, and Jaiku. After a cursory glance at all three Jaiku seems to have the best mix of features for me (I'm too old to be groovy, or hooking up) so I'm moving to Jaiku. (In truth, it offers a much richer set of features than Twitter.) My handle is ChiefTWiT. Hope to see some of you there.

And I hope my Twitter friends will consider creating a Jaiku account and adding your Twitter feeds to it so I can still see what you're up to. If you do, please make sure to let me know!

(Of course the Jaiku server crashed the minute I mentioned that on Twitter. Twitter's powerful stuff. I'm gonna miss the mojo.)

Read and post comments on Vox.

Sunday
Feb252007

Tumbléo

Tumblelogs made easy
Dvorak calls me a "joiner." Someone who signs up for every new site he sees. True dat. But sometimes they're really worth signing up for, and how do you know until you do? I'll give you an example.

I've always wanted to do a Tumblelog, somewhere - not quite as formal as a blog - to stick all the random cool stuff I come across day to day. The coolest example out there is project.ioni.st (don't click that link just yet because you'll never return - it's that engaging), but there are several others like the original, Anarchaia.

The canonical way to do this is to install Ruby on Rails and Ozimodo. It's very easy unless you're using Apache. Then it gets a little harder. I just don't have the nerve to mess with either of my production servers (TWiT.tv or techguylabs.com), so my dream of creating a TWiT tumblelog has been thwarted. Until now.

tumblr.com makes it trivial to create a tumblelog. Merlin Mann did it first. He inspired me (in more ways than one) to use tumblr to create tumbléo.com. I'm not cheating on you Vox, honest. I can love two blogging engines at once. Hey, I've got six sites running on three different CMS systems and two different forum engines right now.

So now between Vox, Twitter, and Tumblr, there are no limits to my self-expression.

Ideally all this stuff would be collected into a single site. And someday I hope to do just that.

The first step is to move the the radio show site and my home page, both now in PMWiki, to Vox's sister platform, Moveable Type. Once that's done (hello Apperceptive, where are you?) I will merge all my old blog postings (now in Expression Engine format) into Vox and crosspost into MT.

Phase two will be to find a Tumblelog template for MT (got one?) and incorporate tumbléo into the site.

Twitter will just have to stay a widget on the site.

That's three sites reduced into one. What about the other three sites? I don't anticipate moving TWiT in at this point; Drupal is working so well for it. And the message boards for TWiT and Leoville will stay where they are, twit.tv/forums (running Vanilla) and leovilletownsquare.com (running FusionBB), respectively.

Meanwhile enough voxing around, I've got some cool stuff to post on tumbléo.

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