Coffee on the Keyboard

A Twitterer’s Tipping Point

Explaining Twitter to non-tweeters is still a difficult process. “It’s like Facebook status without Facebook” doesn’t do it justice—or sound very appealing. “It’s a public, non-realtime messaging system” convinces no one to sign up.

All the Twitter users I know have learned about it through word of mouth and been very confused initially. But everyone I know who joined has organically started to discover just how useful it is.

I typically see people go through three stages:

At first, users are tentative. They don’t know what to post, or why they should. They may discover some friends or family on Twitter and follow them, more out of friendly courtesy than genuine interest. Posting is slow, irregular, and primarily through the web site.

A small tipping point happens when the user starts following people they don’t know personally. Maybe a blogger or another content producer, but someone who is interesting, not just familiar. This person probably posts links, and the burgeoning tweeter may start sharing a few links of their own. They discover tools like TinyPic and s.hort.cc. Posting becomes a little more frequent and regular. They may start using a client like Twhirl, or may stick to the web.

Now they start following more and more people. Some go too fast and are flooded with noise. Most end up unfollowing at least a few users fairly quickly. I followed @nytimes for a few days before realizing they posted dozens of things I didn’t care about.

The real tipping point comes when new tweeters discover messaging. They might have used it but there is a moment when Twitter becomes more about multi-directional communication than about posting your own status. Now they’re posting frequently, having discussions, responding to questions and asking their own. They almost definitely use a client or IM (when it works).

There’s no common time frame, as far as I can see. It took me three months to hit the first tipping point, and another five to get to the next. You can see the shifts in my tweet history.

My father (@irasocol) seems to have jumped all the way stage three in less than two months.

How long did it take you? If you’ve watched people start tweeting, what kind of progression did they go through? What about you?

Tags: behavior, microblogging, tipping point, twitter
Posted in Social Networking, Web 2.0

Exploring the Web

Last week, as I was demonstrating Ning in my office, someone asked me how I find things like this. Honestly, I could not remember when or how I discovered Ning, which prompted me to pay attention over the past week, and to ask you.

(It was also a good excuse to write a short post since I’m still recovering from some wrist strain.)

So what did I find in the past week or so, and where did I find it? Twitter, unsurprisingly, has been the best source, though not always directly. Second best is what I’ll call “secondary finds,” when I visit one project and then follow to the author’s other projects. Blogs were a close third.

I should admit that I didn’t keep notes or stats, but I’m fairly good at keeping track of things like this, so I trust my own numbers.

CheckYesOrNo.info is a nifty, Twitter-friendly site for yes-or-no poll questions like “Will you participate in Mozilla’s FF3 Download Day June 17th?” (Yes.) Found it when @benrasmusen tweeted a question.

Issuu is a publishing social network. They have some kinks to work out but I see definite potential here. Found it when my cousin tweeted a link.

Twingly is like Technorati reborn, a new, more focused blog search tool. Chris Brogan blogged about it.

LaterLoop helps you store sites to read later. Very popular on Twitter.

TimeToMeet.info is from the same people as LaterLoop, and is a very slick multi-timezone meeting planner.

These are just some of the highlights of this week. I’ve perused quite a few little projects here and there, some good, some bad. I think there are three things that lead to discoveries like this:

Keep your eyes open. When people link something, check it out (or use LaterLoop and do it later).

If you see a link like http://checkyesorno.info/93, try getting rid of the “93″ and visit the site itself. Visit the site, not just the page.

If you like a site, scroll down and look at the footer. Most projects, particularly by independent developers and small companies, have links to the developer’s site, which probably has links to other projects. Look at their other projects. If someone had one good idea and put it together, odds are they’ve had others.

Any more ideas from out there in the blogosphere?

Tags: discover, exploring, find, links, search, twitter
Posted in Reading Material, Social Networking, Web 2.0

How do you find New Things?

In lieu of a guest post, I’m just going to ask a question:

What is your best source for finding new things on the web?

Do you rely on search engines and find what you need when you need it? Do you check out the sites linked by Twitter pals? Read 200 blogs?

And a follow-up: What’s the coolest thing (blog, app, service, whatever) you’ve found on the web this week?

I’ll post my answer as soon as my wrists heal.

Tags: discover, exploring, find, new, new things, search
Posted in Social Networking, Web 2.0

Your Internet Classroom

One person, some sort of authority, talks. Lots of people listen. Sometimes those people get to contribute something.

Sound familiar? It should, because I’m not just talking about a classroom, I’m talking about your blog.

Blogs and classrooms share the same basic social structure. And like classrooms, blogs and bloggers have a variety of moods or atmospheres.

Seth Godin’s blog is like a big lecture. You come, you listen, then you go play Ultimate Frisbee by the fieldhouse. If you want to talk about what Seth said, you’ll need to do it outside of class, please.

In some classrooms, when the teacher asks for comments, people respond to the teacher, not to the class. Chris Brogan’s blog is like this. His latest post about LinkedIn is a perfect example: lots of people talk to Chris, but they don’t talk much to each other.

(I’m not trying to judge here. I could listen to Seth lecture all day and I usually read all the comments to Chris, but the audience is definitely Chris, not me.)

Chris gets a lot of comments, and writes a lot, averaging more than a post a day, so it’s understandable that he doesn’t really join in his comment threads. But since people are talking to Chris, and Chris doesn’t often answer, his classroom doesn’t have a whole lot of discussion.

For a great example of someone who does get involved, check out Emil Stenström’s post about microformats. He’s the cool prof who likes to engage you in a discussion, will support his theories and honestly listen to yours, and may honestly change his opinion.

Can you do better?

Do you know of a blog that encourages discussion among the readers? Do you know of a classroom that encourages discussion among students?

On one of the more controversial posts on SpeEdChange, one commenter, Ettina, tries to respond directly to a previous comment. Not much came of it.

Should you do better?

What do you want from comments? Do you readers to pontificate to no one, just trying to drive traffic to their own site with some +5 insightful idea? Should they talk to you? Should they talk to each other?

Threaded comments do it can help, so why do so few blogs have them? Do you want your readers to talk to each other?

Tags: blogging, comments, discussion, interaction
Posted in Education, Social Networking, Web 2.0

Better Living through Memcached

I wanted to put something specific in the title, like “Speed up your service” or “Reduce server load” or “Limit database calls” or… You see why I chose “Better Living.”

Memcached is a memory caching system with an obvious name. It allows you to store basically any data that can be serialized into a giant, memory-resident hash, then retrieve it with its unique key.

Imagine not querying your database on every request, and you only begin to get a sense of how useful this is.

Let’s go through a simple, single-server setup. Read the rest of this article »

Tags: instructions, quality, server, service, software, useful
Posted in Code, How To, Projects, Web 2.0