UberNoggin

I’m giving a talk this morning from 8am EST to 11am EST about developing strategies for using Social Networking Sites. If you’d like to watch follow this link.

I’ll post the slides and notes a bit later. Hope to see some of you there!

I’m a devoted Twitter user. I Twitter from my desktop, from inside Second Life, from my iPhone. I use Twitter to ask questions, keep in touch, find news stories and tech updates, and even to make dinner plans when I’m on the road. Of the technologies to cross my desk in the last year, Twitter is the most useful I’ve added to my media habits.

Lately, as it approaches a million users, there’s been some exciting conversations going on about Twitter. They’re worth a look.

• Dell employees crazy about Twitter
• Howard Rheingold explains why he’s hooked on Twitter
• Kevin Makice, a local Bloomington tech brain extraordinare, created Twitosphere to follow local Twits
• The Tweeterboard logs the top 100 Twitter users by reputation
• A plant that Twitters when it needs to be watered
• The UK Guardian on how Twitter is a symptom of the blogosphere
• Laid off Yahoo employees Twitter their experiences
• Stolen iPhones phone home using Twitter
• NYT story mother using Twitter

If you’re reading this you probably Twitter. If you don’t, well go sign up. I’ll warn you that you might not see the value at first. Give it time. It will grow on you as sure as that Twittering houseplant.

The Intellacast is back! I don’t podcast as often as I’d like but when I do I try to make it worth it. So here’s a doozy. It’s a challenge to three of the best social media evangelists out there: CC Chapman, Joseph Jaffe, and Mitch Joel. All three deliver great insight into the ways social media is changing how businesses and organizations communicate and market. All three create consistently powerful content about how the new media revolution is changing us all. But all three deliver their messages via media forms that only reach the “converted”: podcasts, blogs, Twitter (except Jaffe who writes books as well).

So, in addition to giving my three rules of social media, I’ve also issued a challenge to these guys: How do the social media evangelists stop “preaching to the converted” through social media forms, and start engaging and exciting the huge population of folks who don’t even know what they’re missing? In the podcast I give my answer the question to get the conversation started.

I hope you all enjoy the podcast. And CC, Joseph, Mitch: I hope you’ll respond to the challenge!

Note: The podcast is at the bottom of the post in m4a format. I tried to get it up on iTunes but didn’t have the oompf to wrestle with it and this headcold at the same time. Enjoy! 

Oh I love data! One of the most important things we Digirati geeks can do is encourage ourselves to stop and reflect on what we do and how we use the applications available to us. Being able to look back over patterns of usage not only informs our own use but helps us to understand how to help others be more participatory as well as informing us all about how these new technologies change how we all live.

This morning I found TweetStats. It should be called “Sweetstats!”  I couldn’t help but start digging in and comparing the usage patterns of folks I know. My friend, MalBurns, is the most prolific Twitterer I know. I just had to compare his Twitter use to mine to see what I could learn.

For example…

This is my Twitter week

I was surprised to see that I Twitter about the same amount every day. There’s only a 20 or so post difference between a week day and a weekend.

Here is Mal’s chart

As you can see, Mal posts, oh about TEN TIMES more often than I do but the difference between week day posts and weekend posts is proportionate to mine.  What does this tell me? Well, I think it says that we information workers might not differentiate between a “work day” and a “day off.” When you work at home and online there’s little difference between your work and your social life. The same applications serve both purposes.

Here’s another look. This is my Twitter use on an average day:

Looks like I Twitter most in the afternoon. Perhaps this is the mid-afternoon-I-don’t-want-to-work time killing or perhaps this is when I’m most entrenched in big ideas and most eager to share.

Here is Mal’s day:

Mal posts more consistently all day long. Is this a difference in work patterns? A difference in use of Twitter.

The data is anecdotal and not supported by an analysis of the content and purpose of the messages but the big picture is interesting to look at. Twitstats also shows up the potential future of research and data gathering. Using an API from a Web 2.0 tool allows us to gather tons of information but how ethical is it? How meaningful is the information?

What do you think? About Twitter? About Web 2.0 communication tools? About usage patterns? About conducting research using Web 2.0 APIs?

When I wake up the morning I grab coffee and stumble to my desk. Twitter and Gmail are already open with updates and messages. My community is up, awake, and posting info vital to the start of my day. It’s more than just the need to know what’s going on in the world. My Twitter connections are my friends and I care what they’re reading, doing, and voicing opinions about.

However, this morning was a little different. My friend Chris Hambly (SL Audio Zenith) posted a link to his live UStream feed. Chris sitting at his desk with his cam talking to the world about whatever came up in the chat stream.

**Sorry for the awful screenshot Chris**

So there I was, watching Chris in the UK, first thing in the morning. Chatting with MalBurns (who posts the best media coverage of Second Life as anyone on Twitter), also in the UK. We talked about the Web 2.0 tools we use, how the net has changed the ways we communicate. It was a great conversation for the start of the day. It got my wheels spinning and got me thinking about the tools I use to connect and how those tools fit together. After all, I was on Ustream talking to Chris because he Twittered that he was streaming. One media, a microblog, had already lead to another and I hadn’t even finished my first cup of coffee.

So this got me thinking about how I move from one form of Web 2.0 media to another throughout the day. It seems I have a sort of desktop ecosystem of media and community that feeds my interests and my need to connect. It’s an amazing thing but now I’m stuck with the idea of trying to track it all. How to do this? I’ve decided to try out just keeping a Word doc open on my desktop today and tracking what I use and how.

What tools do you use? How do they feed into one another? Stay tuned for the results of my experiment.

Does this happen to you? You need to schedule a meeting with a few people, none of who share a calendar with you, and ten emails later you still don’t have a time slot that works for everyone? Perhaps you find a time but now you have to decide where to meet?

Here comes Doodle to the rescue! Doodle isn’t a new service but it’s handy. Recently, my friend, Aaron Houssian (IU Informatics) turned me on to the site and it’s already saved me tons of time going back and forth with folks to find suitable times to meet.

Doodle is pretty easy to use. You set up a “poll” with the available times, send the poll link to folks via email, and wait for Doodle to let you know that everyone has filled in their times. Voila!

A poll looks like this. Apparently Giuseppe doesn’t have a life but if you do, you might find Doodle handy.