Two or three weeks ago I wrote that I hate Caribana but I also wrote that I have enjoyed the event the past. I also shared a walking route that I could use to get there and back, without using the car. For saying that I hate Caribana I was called a hater, and then that person tried to have a fight, in private via DMs. I said I’m not interested in an argument.
People on FB have pigeon holed me as negative, and don’t understand why I am this way. The reality is that I believe the algorithms highlight when I am negative, rather than positive. I also think that there is a certain amount of bias against me. I post plenty of positive things but I think algorithms hide them or the subconscious does.
Since women, who are mothers, and may never be alone for the rest of their lives think that I am too negative on FB I will take a network from that anti-social network, to experiment with threads.
I have had a meetup.com account since I was using yahoo as my primary e-mail provider. For years my account was dormant because activities that I were interested in were either in another country or at a time when I could not participate. Recently I have found that activities are at times when I can participate. As a result of this I am building a new network of people to climb with.
One of the reasons for which this film is so powerful is that it’s written in the way that Heinrich Harrer wrote about the Eiger. It’s documenting not just a single attempt but the entire process. In doing so we get to know the people well. It gives us some context about their early days and then it spends a big amount of time on the process that led to a succesful ascent of the Dawn Wall.
Yesterday I had the pleasure of someone deciding to spend a good portion of the day with me, something that is quite rare. It’s also something that is important to a topic that I have spent quite a bit of time thinking about. How much of your time do you give to others, and what would you like to receive in exchange for that time. I ask this because whilst Kutcher and CNN are turning followers into a commodity I value the dialogue that I have with those that I follow, and that follow me. Twitter i about just one thing, dialogue. Through dialogue we can discuss projects, we can establish friendships and we can acquire knowledge. All of these things can help up along in life. I’m interested in this topic because one friend, months ago, said that twitter and social media were chronophage, that is to say that they’re a waste of time. Of course that’s something all internet users worry about. It’s something we all struggle to justify and eventually there is just one reality we must accept. There is no point wasting time on the social media with those that don’t have or want to take the time to talk to us. Over the past few months I have seen friend after friend after friend run out of time, losing the ability to stay online and converse, as much through twitter as through skype, IM and other forms of electronic conversation. I’m sure you’ve experienced it too. Each of these people, as they have less time to be social, and as they leave messages unanswered devalue the time we spend online. Send twenty messages without getting an answer and you believe that you’re at fault, that you’re wasting your time. You can stop worrying about that. It’s the people that don’t have the time to answer that are wasting your time, not the other way around. By this I mean that you can always answer. You don’t need to answer the same morning, or the same day. You should still take the time to answer. It gives you value within the social media. It also keeps one more person interested in what you’re doing. A few people have seen the value that answering to everyone has, two examples are Vaynerchuck and Loic Lemeur. I don’t follow either of them but they live according to this ideology. I call it an ideology because in reality it’s as bad as not answering at all. For the novice, the inexperienced web user getting an answer is great, it’s confidence building and it’s flattering. To the social media veteran you eventually see through the smoke and mirrors. For a long time I followed certain big names and without giving names I stopped following them. I stopped because I could see they were giving generic answers, trying not to ignore too many people consistently. The point is the following. The social media are about dialogue so you should only follow as many people as you feel you can have a personal conversation with without losing site of individuals as a result. The social media are about friendship, rather than brand. The more you value the friendships you establish the more you will gain. The popularity contest between CNN and the other guy are devaluing the follower. It’s a good publicity stunt because it generates buzz but at the end of the day because you’re talking to a mass you’re unable to chat with individuals. Remember this. Friendships create community, not crowds.
When you first arrive on twitter it’s lots of strangers sending messages speaking about what they’re doing and it quickly becomes overwhelming, especially with the vast number of people. For the first few months many people send no more than a hundred posts a day as they get used to the twitter stream. Eventually with time they get into the swing of things and they begin to interact with the other users and this creates a sense of friendships. Those friendships grow and they flourish, from the occasional exchange initially until several weeks later they are full grown conversations. That’s when character begins to show, when we see who we would love to spend more time and who we would get to meet in person. That’s when the tweetup is about meeting old friends for the first time in person. For most of you this is a foreign concept. For you the web is a place to keep in touch with friends who have moved out of the town where you are living. That’s why facebook is popular with over one hundred and fifty million people worldwide. That’s why so many of you are friends of mine on facebook but not on twitter. There is another trend, which is stronger and stronger, online friendships becoming physical world friendships. I call them this way because as good as the conversation is online you can’t give the person a hug or share a meal with them. The tweetup was an occasion when you had the pleasure of meeting these people for the first time. i still remember meeting sizemore for the first time, Loudmouthman and a few others. I remember meeting Documentally too. What made these meetings so interesting is that we knew each other from weeks of tweeting in most cases, although in others it was spontaneous. There was no breaking the ice. You just go straight into the conversation an that’s what makes it such a great networking tool. That’s part of the reason I was invited by Seesmic to LeWeb. I really value these opportunities. Recently though there’s another trend. You meet people in person and learn they twitter, you chat to them in person for a day, two days or more and you feel you have a good connection. A few days later you’re online, using twitter and you’re interested in staying in touch with them, seeing what they’re doing and sharing that passion, whatever the project. There is that drift away though, you give them your time but they don’t reciprocate. Instead you get a deluge of self promotion and ignored comments to what they’re doing. That friendship which had seemed interesting is broken. People don’t have time for twitter. Thousands of people are joining twitter every day and thousands of people are finding new followers but none, or hardly any of them are working at what made twitter so great, the community aspect. The community feel has disappeared. It may have something to do with traveling away from London but I think it’s deeper than that. I feel that as twitter has grown in value and as it has become part of their daily lives they are less willing to devote as much time to communication online. Of course this may be a sign of how ubiquitous Twitter has become. If it’s a tool where everyone is spread around the world then everyone wants to be online to talk because that’s their only choice. Now though opportunities have blossomed and twitter has become a local affair, and the bigger the local population the more isolated you will feel if you’re living in the provinces. That’s what I feel now. I’m not saying it’s a negative thing. I really disliked the only twestival event I went to but I think that’s because I saw that twitter has finally become something local. The fact that the event is in over 100 cities proves this. Twitter has become local, and so the focus is on those that live within easy meeting distance of where you live. That’s why London twitter users ignore users in other cities. That’s why there’s a new form of community. I’m looking forward to when twitter becomes more popular in Switzerland, when I get more local friends to use the site. In the meantime though I have to accept that more traditional approaches to friendships may serve me better. I did leave forget my phone at home tonight, when I went to meet some friends and I didn’t turn back to get it. I went out. I was disconnected from the world and it didn’t matter. I was finally living locally once more. I’ve learned a lot from this twitter separation. I will be back to the service but if you don’t give me the time of day when I send you a message then you can forget about me following those hyperlinks to the work you’re so busy promoting. I want to feel I have a personal connection with those I follow, not that I’m part of an audience. I want you to be in my seminar group.
Interesting Posts Around the Web - Jan 11th | Interesting Observations - Jan 5, 2008
[…] Ten Thousand Tweets @ […]
[…] just read a fascinating post from Richard Azia, where he described some of his thoughts having recently Tweeted 10,000 times (in under a year!). […]
I left a comment here a few hours ago; I wonder if there was a technical hiccup, since it is now gone. Any idea what happened to it?
Yesterday afternoon I arrived at a milestone point, ten thousand tweets on twitter. That’s After less than a year of using the website. To me it’s replaced the university bar for two reasons. The first of these reasons is I’m now a graduate so there’s not much point in going to that bar anymore. The second reason is the organic way in which you create a network of contacts. When you first arrive in twitter it’s a scary place. You see thousands of 140 character messages arriving every few minutes and it’s a time consuming to find the people that you find interesting. There’s the notion that you “follow” people. It’s used to describe the way in which you listen to what they have to say. As you listen to this conversation you see that one person talks with another person and over a period of time as you follow the conversations so you get to see who the participants are. Over a period of days or weeks you’ve got several dozen people you’re following. That means that you’re now able to have many conversations a day. It’s just a question of how much time you’re willing to put. In this respect it’s like university. There are two ways you can treat student life. You can be an Honours student with very few but good friends or you can be a high achieving student who’s created a network of hundreds of friends. I chose the latter option. I could go into university any day of the week and it would take an hour to walk from one side of the building to the other because of all the friendships I had established there. It’s the same with twitter. The more time you put into twittr the more you get out of it. The fact that people like Robert Scoble, Chris Brogan and Chris Pirillo take the time to follow and listen to people on twitter tells you a lot about the types of conversations that are occuring. The first two individuals take a huge amount of time to talk with people on twitter and it’s a really great tool to see what’s going on, in fact so great that I no longer feel the need to read as many RSS feeds or listen to as many podcasts, simply because I’m participating in the conversations before they become even blog news. There is another aspect to twitter. When you’re on twitter you may be behind your computer, having never met any of these people in person and so it’s really strange to use twitter. It’s thanks to Sizemore organising the London twitter meetup a few months ago that I started to see Twitter in a very different light. It wasn’t just a website. It became a means by which for me to create friendships online before bringing them into the real world. Jeff Pulver, Chris Brogan, Robert Scoble and many others do the same. On the lighter side there’s the flirty side of Twitter. The social media make flirting fun. Quite a few times I’ve created nice friendships with girls and as a result had 2-3 hour conversations via IM, Video webcam and more. It’s a way of life for a new age in human interaction. A year ago I would meet people in person and when they moved to another country the friendship would go online. Now it’s the reverse and that’s what I enjoy so much. That’s why I don’t feel it’s an addiction. Does it sound like I’m an addict?