Tag: Twitter

Twitter as Search Engine or Community Seed

Photo by choconancyThe folks over at BrandonHall, the learning folks who blog lots of interesting links, pointed out a value of Twitter that not all of us may have seen yet. Twitter as a search engine. This was interesting to me because I’m co-leading a short online workshop introducing social media in a global international development network. The question always comes up “why would we be interested in something like Twitter. One application I try to show is Twitter as social listening. But I never really conceptualized it as search.   So I thought I’d put it to the test.

First, I searched for something for me. Chocolate, of course. But you have to have a question in mind to make the search meaningful beyond curiosity. I wanted to get a sense of how many people were tweeting about chocolate, and if their tweets were about their obsession, or if there was valuable information about chocolate flying around the tweetosphere. (Is that a word?)

Well, the answer is yes and yes. The first page of results were from tweets that happened within a two minute time frame. LOTS of volume. For example, flamingo_punk Wrote: “Mmmm! Chocolate mini-wheats rock my socks.” There were lots of passionate chocolate tweets like this. On the information side I found:

  • SavingEveryday: Off to work! I leave you with this: An ounce of chocolate contains about 20 mg of caffeine…
  • recr: @MortgageChick They say it takes 21 days for a ‘change’ to become a habit. try subing coffee or lattes with hot chocolate. worked for me.
  • 2chaos: NYSE commentator: “If the last depression brought innovation, like thechocolate chip cookie, I hope this gives us more than the snuggie” Ha 
That last one bolstered my outlook of the current economic situation. Ha! is right! But chocolate is a wide ranging topic so using Twitter to search and listen would give you many results and you could aggregate that information to watch trends on a topic quickly. 
So what happens when I search for a narrower topic that might be of interest to my workshop colleagues, such as “climate change” or “agricultural research?”
Climate change gave me on the first page a lot of links and serious tweets about the issue. Clearly, climate change advocates have taken up tweeting. Note the twitter names — they are using their twitter IDs as a part of the communication issues strategy. It is like a breaking news ticker. The volume of tweets on this topic (the first page of returns were all posts within 15 minutes) indicates this may be a very useful “social listening” resource for organizations working on climate change. 
I thought agricultural research might be a bit thinner. I was wrong.  But the timing is much different. The links on the first search page were between 1 and 20 days ago, but they were far more focused than the wide ranging chocolate tag. Interestingly, I knew about 20% of the tweeters on the first two pages — it is a much smaller network. There were also tweet replies @ users within the first two pages, showing connections between those tweeters.  So I start to wonder, is there an audience for agricultural research tweets yet? Is it in the growth phase while chocolate may be overwhelming in the amount of ongoing tweets?
All in all, this 25 minute exercise told me a lot about Twitter as a social listening tool. For me, watching a twitter search stream over time is a form of scanning one subset of the world and what it is thinking about that topic. I am not quite as clear about how searching Twitter as a one-off search can pay off. The time frame is so short, or if you want to go longer, you have to awkwardly search back through page after page of tweets. It is not yet easy. If you captured the stream via an RSS feed and than analyzed it later as a search, that might be easier.
Still, I’m fascinated by the listening site. Watching tweets can tell me about both what people are tweeting, but more interesting to me from a work perspective, is who is tweeting about a topic and how connected tweeters are around a topic.  Is a Twitter topic a seed for a new community?   Can a community or a network emerge around a shared tweeting topic like it can around a social bookmarking tag? Is a trend of tweets a community  indicator? It certainly is when people use a hashtag to tweet event or topic related tweets. 
How would a community technology steward use Twitter? Would they want to encourage some sort of community usage of keywords or tags? Would they want to go more focused with a hashtag? Ah, but now I’m roaming far outside of my initial “twitter as search” question. See how tantalizing this is?
Do you use Twitter as a search engine? If yes, how is it working out for you?

P.S. Edited in later — some additional Twitter Search resources, thanks to all you fab commentors. I’ll keep coming back and editing them in. 

Twitter, being cool and a great video

If you haven’t already heard about Twitter, the microblogging tool, it is never too late. I’ve been focusing on it as a tool for collaboration, learning and social presence.

With a lot of self-effacing charm, James Clay brings us this delightful video: Are you on Twitter?. I’m not sure this will increase your comprehension of the tool if you are new, but if you are already on, you’ll probably appreciate the humor. But it brings up the issue of adopting a new technology because it is “cool.” Take a look at the video, then I’ll continue below…

There are early adopters who will try anything. The second wave come from people who learn about a tool from a friend who has recommended it or hear about it and sense it is the new cool thing. There is temptation to try because of the coolness factor. That can be a pro or a con. It can tip us off to something useful. Or it can lead to “yet another thing to attend to.”

How do YOU tell the difference?

WestPeter blows my mind

Flickr photo by stephend9If you are interested in knowledge management, knowledge sharing, collaboration and a passel of other topics, following WestPeter on Twitter is worth every second, every character, every bit and byte.

Why? Because Peter is a generous scanner and filterer. His tweets link to articles with a quick annotation. Look  at this bibliography on his website!

WestPeter is also known as Peter West at Continuous Innovation, which appears to be his consulting firm. I’d say if I were looking for a consultant, I’d sure look at his company because of the tremendous contribution he makes day in and day out via Twitter.

So Peter, thank you. I hope this little bit of link love will share your value even wider out in the world.

Photo credit on Flickr:

view photostream Uploaded on January 28, 2007
by stephend9

Reflecting Slowly on Slow Communities

Slow snailsI promised earlier this week that I would post a follow up about my offering Tuesday night on Thinking about “Slow Community” (particularly online). Before it all (slowly) leaks out of my brain, here are some notes, comments and pointers to the ongoing Twitter conversation about “slow community.”

First, the host of the evening, Ryan Turner, wrote:

Nancy,

You ROCKED it last night. I knew you would. Thanks so much for making the time.

I think your talk pretty much blew everyone’s mind. It certainly got mine spinning, and I really think you’re on to something with the slow community idea. I too question whether it’s really slower or actually less–and I also wonder whether there’s a combination of those that ends up making sense. Do we partition our relationships? Our conversations (across relationships)? How do we manage work, where project groups form, dissolve, and re-form, but relationships (personal, intellectual, thematic) persist? Doesn’t seem to me anybody’s yet invented the social router, which could manage our cross-channel traffic in meaningful ways … though I do have some ideas … not to say a prototype ….

It was great to reconnect with you, just a bit, and I hope we can continue.

Best,
Ryan

Phew. And here I thought I was babbling and incoherent. 🙂 Thank goodness the other folks were all interesting. I enjoyed the offerings from Brian Fling of Flingmedia – Brian, did you talk about slow community at FOO Camp?; Justin Marshall of ZAAZ, Samantha Starmer from REI – Samantha, I have added “metadata strategy” to my online interaction checklist!; and Wendy Chisholm, who has opened my eyes to accessibility – even on a little old blog post – in a way that I needed. Thanks, Wendy!,

After the talks, I had the chance to have conversation with a few folks – unfortunately I did not write down names. I should have. Oi. Here are the points that came up that I can remember.

  • If everything is so overwhelming and fragmented, what are the solutions? (The young guy who loved the chicken wings). I started to babble about a systems approach, but I need to actually understand better what that means. But I SENSE that this is important. True to my style, it usually takes me a while to figure out intellectually what I intuit.
  • What is the role of information FLOW in creating a useful community experience, rather than overwhelm (the guy from Boeing).
  • What is it we are really asking about – slowness, volume, simplicity?
  • What should businesses be thinking about if they are in this crushing phase of “must have community?”
  • What is the role of identity in all of this?
  • And of course, Ryan’s “social router” which has MY head spinning.

On the Twitter front, besides the tweets already posted on the wiki, here is the latest round… thank you my TweetFriends. Oops, can’t do a screen capture. Since Windows did its last update, some of my old programs aren’t working. I was wondering when this was going to happen. Grrr. I’ll come back and edit it in. In the meantime, you can see them on Summize. I’ll go download Snagit and be right back!

(Later… here are the screen captures of the Tweets)

Slow Community Tweets 1

Slow Community Tweets 2

Slow Community Tweets 3

The magic between communities and networks

Every time I re immerse myself in thinking about the space between communities and networks, my mind races. I should be doing April billing, prepping for travel, finishing editing, yet I keep jumping into conversations with my networks and communities about NETWORKS and COMMUNITIES! This morning we had a great one on Twitter and I wish I could drop everything, keep conversing and then reflecting. But I can’t. So here is the marker for the conversation, as best I could capture it by favoriting all the related Tweets –> Twitter Network – Community Conversation. If someone can continue to hold the space for this conversation as it wanders across media, please, I thank you in advance. There are some FABULOUS thoughts from aroberts, csessums, edmittance, band, budtheteacher, peterscampbell, stevebridger, melmcbride, CourtneySellers , injenuity
, nandito, coyenator, webb and MtnLaurel. THANKS!

For more of my obsession, tags…
Community
Networks