Egypt Engaged

Bridging the divide.

We’re seeing Twitter’s force in political unrest again this week. Following the events in Tunisia, people around the Middle East are coming together, in online forums and in city plazas, to bring change to the regimes they have been enduring for decades.

This afternoon, The Poynter Institute will be hosting a live chat with NPR Senior Strategist Andy Carvin about the role social media has been playing in Egypt, and presumably Tunisia. The chat starts in a few minutes, so head over there now, and I’ll see you on the ‘morrow, on the Web.

Following Distinctions

Connecting to Twitter Communications.

Did you notice a change on your favorite Twitterer’s home page today? Initially, I didn’t (because I use Brizzly, most of the time), but I did get a heads-up from The Next Web.

The new feature helps put any user into greater context for you. By adding a little insight into common connections, you get a better perspective of any interests you may share. But Connections doesn’t yet go far enough. Maybe this is the first step to a followers recommendation engine?

Before we go on, let’s clarify one important thing: Connections does not show you users who are following you both. That notification only comes when you get the e-mail from Twitter alerting you to a new follower. Let’s look at an example:

Because I want to work on his team, I am following Sean Garret. When I visit his Twitter profile page, I know he has 6,747 followers (and counting), and is following 818. But the only way for me to know which accounts he follows who are following me is in the notification I get when Mr. Garrett follows me. Which he doesn’t. So I don’t know.

As I understand the new system, “Also followed by” is a list of the people who show up on both of your “Following” lists. Continuing with the Sean Garrett profile, of the 818 accounts he follows, I’m only following 15. Those 15 show up in the “Also followed by” list. I follow Twitter Comms. He follows Twitter Comms. Twitter Comms is not following me. But they are on the “Also followed by” list because I follow Twitter Comms and he follows Twitter Comms.

Also followed by.

“You both follow” is a list of people in their “Followers” list who you are following. As I mentioned, Sean Garrett has 6,747 followers. But of those 6,747 followers, I’m only following 15. Again, Twitter Comms is following him. I am following him. Twitter Comms is not following me. But they are on the “You both follow” list because I follow Twitter Comms and Twitter Comms follows him.

You both follow.

It’s a delicate distinction, I know, but an important one. Twitter’s site does not yet have a way of showing me that Mr. Garret is following someone who is following me but who I am not following back.

I’m missing something.
(Image thanks to @teleject.)

At this point, the information provided is only a little enlightening. Sure, you can see which accounts you are both following, and which accounts you follow that are also following them. But I want to know more. I want to learn about another user who is already vetted by someone I trust. What we need is a way to discover a user who is following us, but we’re not following back yet, even though someone we trust is following us both. If Twitter wants to help us find interesting, informative new accounts to follow, we need an easier way to find out from our curated sources who trusts us, and rely on those connections to expand our own trusted authorities.

This update comes at a great time for me, however. I think I’m building an application that will use this new addition to put Twitter’s information engine to greater use for finding out what’s important to you. I’m making steady progress in learning the Twitter API, and have a few ideas on how to build my first application. With this new addition, I might not have to create as much of this code on my own—which is good, because I still have a lot to learn when it comes to coding. But I can tell you more about that when I see you on the ‘morrow, on the Web.

Twinner, Twinner, Chicken Dinner

The fine art of winning.

Last night, Twitter won “Best Overall Startup or Product of 2010” at the fourth annual Crunchies Awards here in San Francisco.

Accepting the award was Twitter CEO Dick Costolo, who was also a nominee in the “CEO of the Year” category. In a brief conversation with TechCrunch Founder Michael Arrington, Mr. Costolo shared some insight into Twitter’s future, and what he believes is their greatest challenge: international growth.

TechCrunch has compiled all the nominees and winners, and collected some video highlights for you—it’s almost like being there, without the Uber ride home. I hope you get more of the inside jokes than I did. If you do, please explain them to me when I see you on the ‘morrow, on the Web.

Governor’s Gaffe?

How do you spell #oops?

Yesterday, I mentioned that the new governor of Florida, Rick Scott, was holding a Twitter Town Hall. Since I had some free time, and was interested in what he would use his 140 characters to say, I tuned in. A lot of people did.

As the more than 30-minute session drew to a close, reports estimated that questions were coming in at a rate of two per second. Now, nobody could answer that many queries in one half-hour sitting, but the deluge gave the governor a great excuse to avoid some of the more pointed interrogations.

I’ll leave the political punditry about which he addressed, which he avoided, and which he ignored to others; I just want to highlight a couple of updates that Florida’s new governor decided were poignant enough to share with all of his followers.

The moment getting most of the press was towards the end of the Twitter Town Hall where Mr. Scott—apparently accidentally—Retweeted a question calling him, “jackass.” Now, I assume it was an accident, because moments later, the update had been deleted from the governor’s stream.

One of these things is not like the other.

You can also see it in this shot from the site that Ron Sachs Communications put together to view all submitted questions next to Governor Scott’s feed.

Executive error.

But the Retweet I think everyone missed was the one which originated from a parody Rick Scott account. I don’t think Florida’s new head of the executive branch really wants Floridians to move to Canada for better health care, do you?

Reverse snowbirds?

Mistake? Probably. Entertaining? Definitely. The ease for errors during something like this is pretty high. Especially when you don’t bother updating more than 24 hours later. But we can talk about correcting Twitter mistakes on the ‘morrow, on the Web.

Tweeting a More Perfect Union

Elected to Twitter.

By now you know that I have an affinity for using Twitter as a platform for a more open democracy. There are two events today that I want to point you to which use Twitter to bridge the gap between the people and our government.

First, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs again took questions from followers for about an hour today. An interesting answer Mr. Gibbs gave concerned the Twitter account he‘s currently using: François Larouche asked about the status of the account after Mr. Gibbs leaves his post in early February. In his reply, Mr. Gibbs said that he’s leaving the account to his successor, and hoped that the next Press Secretary would continue using it in a similar manner.

Next, Florida’s new governor, Rick Scott, is hosting what he’s calling a “Twitter Town Hall.” Now, I’m no fan of Governor Scott, but I applaud his attempts at open government. We’ll see how many probing questions actually get answered. But for now, all we can do is put hope in the power of Twitter, and Florida’s Sunshine Law.

If you want to follow the conversation later, take a look at the site Ron Sachs Communications has set up (especially since the Twitter link on the governor’s home page connects you to the wrong account). You’ll be able to see all the questions posted, in addition to the answers Governor Scott chooses to answer.

I’ll be watching, and I hope you will be, too. We can talk about the results when I see you on the ‘morrow, on the Web.

Making Facebook Make News

Facebook Media and the message.

Facebook is playing catchup. At least that’s what it feels like.

After visiting them last night for the “ONA SF - Facebook Strategies for Online Journalists Meetup,” I get the impression that Facebook wants desperately to be a part of journalists’ lives. But, unlike Twitter, Facebook has yet to be integrated into most news organizations’ daily operation for anything more than promotion. One exception to that rule is NPR.

During his portion of the evening, NPR Senior Strategist Andy Carvin shared some of the many ways they are using Facebook, as well as other social tools, to create, evaluate, and circulate stories to their audience. Additionally, he shared some recent survey results and metrics about audience usage, engagement, and page views.

What I found most important about NPR’s social tools use is that every effort is made to support their broader mission: to create a more informed public. But what I find lacking in their Facebook efforts is not NPR’s fault; it’s Facebook’s.

In the evening’s introduction, Facebook Director of Media Partnerships Justin Osofsky highlighted the resources available on the Facebook + Media page. Sure, there are success stories and best practices, but most point to story distribution and audience engagement. While these are very important for creating and keeping consumers of content, they don’t provide any tools for creating content itself. The next shift for media organizations has to be building social tools for making great content quickly.

Another interesting observation from my trip to Palo Alto was that not one person in the room, during any presentation or subsequent Q&A, said the the word “monetize.” Although I was thankful that the discussion didn’t get hijacked by a debate on how media organizations can make money using Facebook, I was surprised that there was no pragmatic advice on how to effectively and efficiently use limited resources on efforts which yielded no increased income for a struggling industry.

I understand that Facebook is good at letting media brands interact with their users, if they choose to invest the time to do so. What’s more important to me right now, however, is how Facebook, and any other social or online tool, can help news people more easily create good journalism. Twitter is great for breaking news. Facebook is great at sharing news. Who will make it easy to create news? A question that will go unanswered until I see you on the ‘morrow, on the Web.