Posted: January 2nd, 2012 | Author: Erica | Filed under: Social Media Platforms | Tags: microblogging, tweeting, Twitter | Comments Off
At the end of 2011, I hit 10,000 tweets. 10,000 times I musta decided I had something to say or share with the world.
If it took 10 seconds to write each tweet—and many take longer while I dig around for a special character, edit a photo, or head down the street to report breaking news, for Pete’s sake—then I spent a good 27 hours, 46 minutes & 40 seconds tweeting.
I saw the big 10k coming for a few days and planned to use it for something great, but my phone updates differently than the web & I missed it. My 10,000th tweet was this book cover. Perhaps a 2012 fortune cookie?
To make up for missing the big tweet, I used 10,001 to mark the occasion.
To celebrate my 10,000th tweet, I donated $10 to Care Canada (@) for their work in the Congo. Peace on earth. ☮ Is spending more than a day of my life microblogging worth it?
Sure. Twitter feels critical. Twitter answers questions. Twitter serves news faster than any other channel.
Twitter lets me talk to everyone when I need to get my message to the most people, and to anyone when I want to share a thought with people I can’t reach any other way.
Twitter is media. It’s a global consciousness. It taught me to write short (not because you have to, but because it respects your audience & forces you to clarify your point) and to bastardize English forever with ampersands & emdashes.
It shows me different dimensions of the same friends & what it means to live in public.
Posted: December 15th, 2011 | Author: Erica | Filed under: Social Media Platforms | Tags: mobile, road rage, Twitter, untargeted advertising, wrong-piping | 1 Comment »
Among all the nitpicking & general confusion around the new Twitter UI, it’s comforting to see our old friend, the ‘Twitter Go Mobile’ ad still greeting us inanely upon signout.
This drives me nuts because I access Twitter about 150,000 times/day from mobile. How can they not know that?
I have a better idea for this space: “Hey, we noticed you’ve signed out more than once today. Got several accounts? Here’s how to easily switch between them* without enduring the godforsaken clusterdance that is Twitter’s password autofill.”
And then present me with that helpful ability instead of the ultimate in rage-inducing untargeted advertising.
*Just realized this may be a feature & not a bug. Wrong-piping would surely spike if I was merrily flipping between accounts all day. Wouldn’t want to end up on next year’s 21 Most Horrific Social Media Facepalms.
Posted: December 8th, 2011 | Author: Erica | Filed under: Social Media for Nonprofits, Winnipeg | Tags: breaking news, Twitter | 1 Comment »
This is why I read Twitter in the morning. Well, it wasn’t why, but now it is!
Premier @ attending United Way presser this morning to give update on their Koats for Kids Campaign. #Winnipeg Great. Now I have to wash my hair. rt @ Premier Greg Selinger attending @ presser this morning
Posted: November 16th, 2011 | Author: Erica | Filed under: Winnipeg | Tags: f-bomb, hilarious, MP, Pat Martin, Twitter | 2 Comments »
My friend Alyson already wrote about this, but there are just so many great Twitter things going on here at once (frank politicians showing their usual grasp of social media, you-never-know-who’s-listening conversations with a good friend‘s boyfriend who is either deadpan hilarious or actually related to my Member of Parliament…) I had to record it for posterity.
[He even hashtags the f-bomb tweet so no one following Canadian politics will miss it. Bwahaha.]
@ You should hear our family dinners... If this was an American politician, he’d be fired before he even figured out the rest of us could see his tweet. Here in Canada, I don’t think we mind. We’ll see tomorrow 
Posted: November 12th, 2011 | Author: Erica | Filed under: Social Media Personalities, Sociology of Social Networks | Tags: Ashton Kutcher, marketing, PR disaster, Twitter | Comments Off
Backstory: Ashton Kutcher bumbles into a PR disaster via ill-informed tweet & subsequent perceived overreaction (said something dumb, decided to kinda quit social media for a bit til he recovers).
Why did Ashton temporarily drop out? 3 reasons why a very famous social tech investor would decide to stop expressing himself himself on Twitter:
1. Earnest Ashton feels the weight of his 8.3 million reach on Twitter & sincerely doesn’t want to spread misinformation.
2. Petulant Ashton has had enough self-inflicted humility and wants to stop getting yelled at by people less good looking and rich than he is.
3. Businessman Ashton recognizes that he’s damaging his brand when this kind of thing happens, and doesn’t want to risk getting fired from tv.
Turns out social media is hard. Opportunities to get eaten by crocodiles abound.
I'm just trying to be a good person.
Posted: August 9th, 2011 | Author: Erica | Filed under: Social Media Platforms | Tags: competition, Facebook, Google, images, Twitter | Comments Off
[edit 1] Yesterday Facebook’s news feed got all circley. Today, Twitter launches an in-stream image. G+ competition is making everyone step up their game!
[edit 2] Boo, the image appears as a link, not instream. Too little…
[edit 3] Well, it kinda appears instream. If you click on the tweet it shows like any media in the right-hand column, and if you link directly to a tweet it shows there too (I’m talking Twitter web interface here). This is the anticipated photosharing feature announced/leaked in May.
Posted: July 28th, 2011 | Author: Erica | Filed under: Social Media Platforms, Sociology of Social Networks | Tags: Google, Google Buzz, Mashable, reality check, sharing, Twitter | Comments Off
With the social media shakeup of recent weeks (G+ is great! LinkedIn is stupid! Klout is for a$$holes!) it’s time we all regroup, take a deep breath, and look at the data.
Mashable’s leaked iPhone 5 pics—sure to be a supertopic among techy, trendy, early-adopting social media peeps, our test audience—have garnered many a share since they came out 1 hour ago. And where are the socialites sharing said hardware porn?
On Twitter, friends. By a dramatic margin—a full 3/4 of shares. Despite Mashable’s sharing bias of highlighting G+.
Here’s that info restated as a hippocampus-friendly pie chart. Most of the pie is blue bird flavoured, and I think this represents the network zeitgeist as to where sharing has the most perceived value/enjoyment.
[Mashable can probably kill Google Buzz now, eh?]
I saw the big 10k coming for a few days and planned to use it for something great, but my phone updates differently than the web & I missed it. My 10,000th tweet was this book cover. Perhaps a 2012 fortune cookie?
