Yesterday I tweeted about an incident involving one of my favorite food establishment and an unfortunate outbreak of Hep A. It wasn’t a store in my local area. I had no immediate connection to the happenings and I’m honestly not at all concerned it can/will happen to me, though it certainly could. No, I tweeted it out because I wanted to bring the funny, and by accounts from others I was successful in my mission.
But it bugged me all day.
Food-born illness is a serious concern in our way life. I get that. But there isn’t a doubt in my mind that the incident mentioned was isolated and in no way linked to the food handling standards of the institution. Forgive the pun, but shit happens. It’s not an epidemic. It’s not a blatant violation of safety standards. It’s probably one lone (again pardon the pun) dipshit responsible — and likely not intentional. Mass-hysteria isn’t the best reaction. Calls for company-wide investigations and more strict regulations of the entire industry (yes, I read Fast Food Nation) probably aren’t going to help curb this in the future. As I said before, shit happens.
Yet I propagated the story via my tweet, lending fuel to the fire and my name to a growing list of pundits and activists demanding someone take action. I didn’t want to do that. I don’t feel that way. I just wanted to be funny. (And no, I’m not linking to the tweet. You can back up in my Twitter stream to find it if you must. It wasn’t that funny).
Here’s a dirty little secret of mine: I’m not a social person by nature. Ask my wife. She’ll tell you that I’d become a hermit if it wasn’t for her. Now while that might not be 100% accurate, it’s not terribly far from the truth.
But just like Jules from Pulp Fiction, I’m trying. I’m trying real hard.
Recently, I’ve been flexing my wings at this via what I and others refer to as the Phoenix Twitterati — an eclectic mix of people loosely organized by random “hey, let’s go here” posts to Twitter. We grab coffee, have dinner, crash other meetings… whatever. It’s totally organic.
In an effort to actually get to know these people better (140 characters and jokes about having no life can only teach you so much), I’ve decided to start subscribing to the RSS feeds created by these folks. I put them all into a special group, as I don’t plan on checking these every day. But I would like to get to know more about them (OK, some of them). Skimming their personal/professional blogs seems like a good way.
So the next time we meet, #Phx Twitterati, don’t be surprised if I ask how your vacation was.
I’m a big supporter of Twitter. It’s the first (only?) social media tool that I’ve embraced and stuck with for a serious amount of time.
We’ve moved well beyond the “what are you doing” days of Twitter. For me, I try and make my posts about things that I want to say that you (or at least someone) might want to hear.
Looking at my Tweet Cloud, I think that comes through.
Most shocking: ‘Listening’ is fairly prominent. I know it’s probably from me telling you what song I’m listening to, but it could be indicative of my desire to try and be a better listener.
First, happy Zombie Day. Don’t get offended. It’s not like I’m walking around town with a clapboard. And you chose to come here, so you should be used to it by now.
Major props go out to JC Hutchins, the man, the myth, the fucker that owes me a beer for his unsolicited praise of me and my brother from another mother Chris Miller (who I get to meet for the first time ever in person in a few hours!). More snark, wit, sarcasm on the way, with a healthy dose of “thought-provoking” commentary coming. ‘Cuz I’ve been growing more and more impatient as of late. Hell, could I be turning into Loren Feldman, a guy who is quickly becoming a personal hero of mine?
Discover some eggs for me, kids. That bunny ain’t got nothin’ on the Easter Chicken.
Several folks called for me to clarify a tweet I made today:
I think your Following list says a lot about you and your relationship with Twitter. That’s not a judgment call, just an observation.
My tweet was designed to cause you to look at your list and determine one thing: does the list of people you Follow meet with the way you want to use Twitter? The obvious question is “yes, that’s why I do it that way”, but I wonder. Personally, I can count at least three times that I’ve taken a hard look at how/why I use Twitter and made appropriate changes. And since the choice of who to follow is one of only three things1 you can change about Twitter, you should consider what your list of those you follow says about you.
To whom, you might ask? Well… to you. If you’re on Twitter or some other ’social’ site for another reason, then you’ve missed the point.
1. The other two are your “meta” data and the frequency/content of your tweets.
Jaiku, a Twitter-like service that caught the eye of Leo Leport earlier this year, is being purchased by the Daddy of Big Dogs, Google. I first told you about Jaiku some time ago. After that, I pretty much left it alone, though I did manage to feed in all of my various RSS feeds into it. Great as a “what is Evo doing on any given project right now” feed, but less a place for communications to develop.
So what does this mean to new media content producers and social media mavens? Well… nothing specific, really. Twitter, Jaiku… lots of services are being employed by many of us in the new media space as ways to distribute information to our audiences.
In practice, it means that I’ll spend the better part of tonight and the next several days adding lots more friend requests, as Twitter folks decide to create a Jaiku profile as well. If the balance shits — and the interface remains solid — I may start pushing that more and more.
But right now, I’m pushing 600 folks following me on Twitter. So I’m not going any where… yet.
It’s no surprise to many of you (especially those following me on Twitter) that I’m a fan of hockey. Strange for a guy in the desert, I know. But my son plays the sport and has for many years. He’s currently on three different teams and for the next 8 months or so, our schedule revolves around his schedule. Welcome to kids.
This weekend, I decided to play around with the idea of using Twitter as an update tool. For the last couple of years, I had been the announcer for his team, calling out goals, penalties and scores live at the game. It was a lot of fun for me, informative for the parents (the refs aren’t big on sharing information with the fans) and the kids seemed to enjoy it, too. But now we’re in the big-town, and I don’t have free reign on the microphone. And I miss it.
So I thought… how about Twitter? Well, you can take a look at my previous Tweets from this weekend. They are long. Really, really long. And that’s just calling out (mostly) goals, penalties and the score at the end of each period. It was a pain in the ass on my Treo, but much better on the lappy. Trouble is, not all rinks have wifi.
I enjoyed doing it and have decided to keep doing it. But I realize that the vast majority of the 500+ followers of my feed could probably care less about my kid’s high school hockey program. Fair enough. And I also realize that the majority of the parents and fans of the team probably care even less about the other things I have on my personal feed when I’m not tweeting about hockey. Again, fair enough.
So I’ve created a new Twitter account just for Hamilton Huskies High School Hockey updates. Find it at http://twitter.com/HuskiesHockey and follow it if you like. I have to figure out how to get my Treo to update that as well, as my phone is currently slaved to my personal Twitter account. Unsure how to do that. Better call Ev and ask.
Thanks for hanging out as I played around with this idea. Sorry for all the tweets, but such is the nature of experimentation, right? I’ll only post occasional hockey stuff now on my personal Twitter account. For as-it-happens info on Huskies Hockey, stay tuned to the new feed!
I hope you are all aware of Beatnik Turtle. Every day this year, this horn-powered rock band releases a brand new song with their Song of the Day project. When you try to crank out a new tune each and every day, you take your inspiration from a variety of sources. Some folks, like my friends Charlie the Beer Guy & Mur Lafferty, ask for songs to be written, and they group is happy to comply. Check out Speaking of Beer and Mason Rocket.
Sometimes the inspiration comes from sad moments, as happened when Joe Murphy passed. I can’t find the tune ‘For Joe’ on their site right now, but I’ll see if I can’t find it later and post a link.
Anyhow… Sometimes that inspiration comes from the strangest and most mundane places. Like a totally throw-away post I made on Twitter some weeks (months?) ago. The song is Just Getting Off The Call With Rob Safuto. I gotta start posting some high-value stuff if people are going to use it as inspiration.
I’m starting to question the value of having a daily recap of my Twitter updates (Tweets) posted to this blog. It just doesn’t look very good, and it goes against my idea of using Twitter as an “of the moment” toolset.
So I’ve turned off the updates. If you were enjoying them and want to keep getting the recap, add me as a Twitter friend. If you have no interest in joining Twitter but still want the updates, you can subscribe to my Twitter updates RSS feed.
And for those you you are happy to let Twitter pass them by, you now have to deal with less of this from me. I’ll still post about Twitter from time to time, as I’m a big supporter of the application.
- Detroit. Rock city. Very few pools. All of them round, square or oval. Hard to find any of those shapes in AZ. #
- Travel advisory: don’t travel with me. Delayed in Detroit a while. Poor beer choices. Probably should write. #
- @cc_chapman: you most certainly have not listened to all of the podiobooks. Post your list so others can make recommendations. #
- Wonder how many of these folks in the terminal are going to Balticon? I see at least two that I’d bet on. #
- Finally in the hotel at Balticon. I’m going to bed. Fun tomorrow! #
- I’ve been in Baltimore for 8 hours and have yet to see a Divine movie. #
- @mwsmedia We do! #
- Breakfast was fantastic, Codeshaman. #
- We’ve commandeered the patio and are calling it the Podcasters’ Garden. WE’RE IN UR BALTICON… #
- Sitting with M.A. from PA listening to a panel on self-publishing at Balticon #
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- Jumping on a plane headed for (eventually) Baltimore and Balticon. Let’s hope this travel day goes better than the last! #
- Tomorrow is Towel Day? Good thing I’ll be at a hotel. With a bunch of scifi geeks! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Towel_Day #
- Unfortunatly stuck with less-than-optimal seat mates for the next 3 hours. #
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- Ustream.tv now recording for me, but at Methadone speed. Would it kill them to have and FAQ or some sort of support area? #
- Booking a shuttle for the http://balticon.org trip. No reason to have two cars at PHX Int’l Airport. #
- @BadAstronomer Cold at times, mountainous and frequent visits by annoying aliens with a penchant for rainbow suspenders. #
- @KJToo Make time to visit the Red Dog. An OKC institution and not to be missed. #
- @chrisbrogan I’m using Plazes, but no way that it comes close to replacing Twitter. #
- Don’t drive in Cottwood AZ anytime soon. Kid just got his permit. (shudder) #
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- Sunday. The day of writing begins. #
- Quick post: Practice 26 of Expert Podcasting Practices for Dummies is in the can. Ice cream has been eaten in celebration. On to 27! #
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- At the studio. Think we need to get the feed live. http://twitter.com/farpointmedia #
- Recording Wingin’ It! begins. So ends any thoughts of productivity for the day… #
- Wingin’ It! over. Off to look at houses soon. #
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- PodCampAZ wiki needs your name on it if you are coming to the event. http://podcamp.pbwiki.com/Podcamp-AZ #
- Is anyone else using Plazes? http://beta.plazes.com/user/evoterra #
- Sick of my office. Going mobile. #
- @mwsmedia is officially forbidden from taking on any more things. Nothing to see here. Move along. #
- Notice anything missing from this page? http://tinyurl.com/2exkrt #
- MIke & Mike: Nothing gets past you guys… #
- @ccadenhead I’m not sure how to take that. Do I need extra moisturizer. #
- Chuck Cadenhead thinks I’m pretty. #
- @Leann of me? #
- Just getting off a call with Robert Safuto #
- Ah, vehicle registration. At least I have the PODCAST license plate. #
- Headed to Flagstaff for dinner. I’ll try out the Plazes feature when I’m there. #
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A reader of my blog who we’ll call Janice Oglethorp, even though that isn’t her real name (her real name is Dani Cutler), recently asked me this question:
I read your blog entry about re-organizing Twitter. What did you mean by that, if you don’t mind me asking?
I’ve been re-evaluating how I use it- or more accurately, how I want to use it, myself. So when I saw your entry I thought I would inquire and see what your thinking was about it.
Thanks for the question, Janice. I look forward to killing… wait. Sorry. Ninja moment. Twitter is a cool tool and I’m imminently fascinated by things which I think are cool, and I really dig on telling you people about them here. But coolness wears off after a while. Honestly, the same thing happened to Twitter.
But I think I fixed it.
Look, I’m a busy guy. We’re all busy people. One more thing to keep tabs on? I don’t need it. But one more potential communication device? Now there’s something I won’t shy away from. And if it’s a device that I can (and this is critical) choose to ignore when I don’t have the time, we’re into Groovy Land.
So that’s how I’ve re-organized Twitter. My contact list has been paired down to those whom I have a vested interest in hearing from. Some I know, some I don’t. But all of them post things that I may want to hear about — when I choose to look. I don’t feel the need to go back in time and see what I missed. I don’t feel the need to look up every time Twitterific chimes at me. And I don’t obsess over what I might be missing. Nope. It’s an on/off situation for me. And I’m comfortable with it. I’ll still communicate (still do communicate) out to all of you who have friended me — thanks for doing that, by the way. I’ll do my level best to make sure I only push out something when I have something worth saying.
- If I post in Twitter, can you comment on that Tweet in Jaiku? #
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- Massive hardon! Treo 755p just arrived! #
- Didn’t write at all today. Try again tomorrow. #
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