Posts Tagged: twitter

follow-through

On 21 June 2012 by matthew With 7 Comments - culture, lifestyle, social media, technology

I orig­i­nally stated in my opt-out post that I was going to delete my social media pro­files on July 1. The point for leav­ing my accounts active for a cou­ple of weeks was to allow friends to cap­ture my con­tact infor­ma­tion. The more I thought about it, though, most of my friends have my con­tact info. I shot mes­sages to a few peo­ple I wanted to make sure had my con­tact info. I fig­ure every­one who don’t can find me online. I am not that hard to find.

With that out of the way, I got down to the busi­ness of clos­ing accounts. I started yes­ter­day with Last.fm, Spo­tify, Rdio, Google+ on my Google Apps email. Today, I fol­lowed through with the biggies.


 

 

Inter­est­ingly, when I did my social media sab­bat­i­cal in 2010, only Face­book would allow you to deac­ti­vate, but not fully delete your account. Twit­ter has now jumped on board with the deactivation-before-deletion wait­ing period. My Face­book will offi­cially be deleted in 14 days. Twit­ter makes you wait 30 days before your account is deleted. I under­stand why there’s a delay. Some­times peo­ple make rash deci­sions, and the wait­ing period is a safety net. As for me…I just feel lighter hav­ing ini­ti­ated the process.

As dis­cussed in the opt-out post, I plan to keep my Google+ account active on my Gmail address. I have, how­ever, going to take every­one out of my Cir­cles except fam­ily mem­bers. I will no longer post any­thing publicly.

On a nerdy aside — It’s kind of cool to watch the ani­ma­tion when you delete a Cir­cle. It drops down and rolls out of sight. Bye Bye.

, , , , ,

returning to social media

On 30 December 2010 by matthew With 11 Comments - social media, technology

After three months, my social media sab­bat­i­cal is offi­cially over.

Inter­est­ingly enough, when I unplugged at the begin­ning of Sep­tem­ber, I was cer­tain that I would be sit­ting in a cor­ner like a crack addict, itch­ing to post a sta­tus update. While I can­not say that I didn’t have some­thing akin to with­drawal symp­toms at first, the obsessive/compulsive urge to check in fell off rather quickly. To tell the truth, being away from social media was quite lib­er­at­ing. With­out the ben­e­fit of Face­book or Twit­ter, I was forced to actu­ally pick up the phone and call peo­ple if I wanted, or needed, to have a sub­stan­tive con­ver­sa­tion. Email is pretty much still my default method of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, but it was nice to hear people’s voices — par­tic­u­larly the laugh­ter. There is absolutely no com­par­ing “LOL” to hear­ing the heart-felt laugh of a fam­ily mem­ber or friend. In fact, just last week my buddy Dotch and I shared some­thing that, in the scheme of things, was rather mun­dane, but we must have laughed for five min­utes straight. Had I made the joke in an email, text mes­sage, IM chat, or on Face­book, it just wouldn’t have been the same.

This exchange led me to ques­tion just why I was jump­ing back into the fray. It’s as sim­ple as this: there are just as many peo­ple that I don’t get a chance to talk to dur­ing my time off and I miss them. Social media is a good way to keep up with more peo­ple than I have time to call. I think what I’ve learned from my sab­bat­i­cal is not to lean to heav­ily on Face­book and Twit­ter for inter­ac­tion with friends. It can­not serve as a sub­sti­tute for a phone call, an email, or, more impor­tantly, face-to-face time. The con­ve­nience of social media, at least for me, lends itself to the dis­con­nect. I don’t think this issue is lim­ited to me, but I won’t project.

As I sus­pected, the things that I did miss were dif­fer­ent for each mode of social media. Face­book pro­vided the more per­sonal updates about friends, their kids, and fam­ily that I appre­ci­ate. Twit­ter had become my news ticker. With­out Twit­ter, I found that I merely spent more time online scan­ning news sites and blogs. Google Buzz served as my out­let for engag­ing in sub­stan­tive dis­cus­sions and debates. This void was filled with forums and blogs.

As I men­tioned in my piece when I signed off, I real­ized that social media was really the symp­tom — not the dis­ease. I am eas­ily dis­tracted, and it was prob­a­bly too con­ve­nient to blame social media for my per­sis­tent habit of check­ing in.

With that said, the time off was a great breather. If you log into Face­book and/or Twit­ter mul­ti­ple times a day, I sug­gest that you try tak­ing a break. For me, it helped put things into per­spec­tive. As I return to the social media sphere, I have an idea about how I plan to re-engage. Much like just about every­thing in our lives, there has to be bound­aries and lim­its. I think what friends will see is that my engage­ment will now be much more pre­dictable. No longer will I be drop­ping into Face­book through­out the day. Twit­ter is a lit­tle dif­fer­ent, because I still see it as akin to peek­ing in on the news. The key is to peek in, do a quick scan and then move on. Google Buzz, which tends to require more of my atten­tion, is some­thing that will have be reeval­u­ated. Even when I logged off, there was some dis­cus­sion about its longevity. Per­haps time has resolved that debate. Google Buzz is either going strong or inter­est and par­tic­i­pa­tion is waning.

As I sit here typ­ing, it occurs to me that I don’t really have any­thing too pro­found to share. I’m sure many of you have thought about, if not acted on, these this issue. I reached a burn out point with social media, and though I’m return­ing, it’s def­i­nitely with a cau­tious approach. I may, in the end, decide that the return only con­firmed that my time off was the right thing to do, and I’ll just shut the whole thing down and return to call­ing and email­ing my friends. That’s actu­ally my pref­er­ence any­way. (I never under­stood why peo­ple sent me mes­sages through Face­book when they knew my phone num­ber and/or email address.)

I’m happy to answer ques­tions, if you have them. Oth­er­wise, that’s it. No great fan­fare. Just a quiet reen­try into the fold. So, with­out fur­ther ado, here’s where to find me in the social media space.

If you fol­lowed me on Twit­ter before my exit, you’ll need to find me again. Unlike Face­book, I couldn’t deac­ti­vate my Twit­ter account. It’s pretty much an all or noth­ing propo­si­tion. Google Buzz appears to have retained who I fol­lowed, and those who fol­lowed me.

, , , , ,

seesmic for android update

On 6 December 2010 by matthew With 0 Comments - social media, technology

Even though I am in the midst of a social media sab­bat­i­cal, I still keep up with what’s hap­pen­ing in the tech side of social media. When it comes to Twit­ter, I think that Seesmic is one of the bet­ter clients out there. (desk­top, web-based and mobile)

In the mobile space, Seesmic for Android just got a lot bet­ter with some recent updates, includ­ing an improved user inter­face. Check out the video to see the improvements.

If you’re on Twit­ter, what is your pre­ferred way to access Twit­ter on your com­puter? Native Twit­ter? Tweet­Deck? Seesmic? Hoot­Suite? Briz­zly?  What Twit­ter app do you use on your smartphone?

, , ,

growing with twitter and social media

On 23 May 2009 by matthew With 3 Comments - social media, technology

There have been occa­sions lately when I have ques­tioned whether I was born in the wrong gen­er­a­tion. Unlike many of my peers, I am quite com­fort­able with Twit­ter, Tum­blr, Face­book, Digg, Stum­ble­Upon, Deli­cious, and many other  social media sites. Now, hav­ing time to keep up with it all is another thing. But, what I have found is that I don’t have the inher­ent dis­trust or con­cern about these sites as do some of my 40-something friends, or 60– to 70-something parents.

One thing that has actu­ally made me quite pas­sion­ate about using Twit­ter is the com­mu­nity of pho­tog­ra­phers that I have befriended. The great thing is that many of the pho­tog­ra­phers are at dif­fer­ent stages of their careers. I’ve met begin­ners, hob­by­ists, new pro­fes­sion­als and sea­soned vet­er­ans. Each has a dif­fer­ent and/or unique per­spec­tive of pho­tog­ra­phy.  I’ve come across peo­ple who pho­to­graph babies, seniors (I keep think­ing I’m going to see pic­tures of AARP mem­bers), wed­dings, food, architecture…you name it.

What’s inter­est­ing is that I have only met a cou­ple of the peo­ple I’ve “befriended or fol­low online. Most of my inter­ac­tion is done online — by way of tweets, @___ replies, direct mes­sages and pro­file posts. Back in Feb­ru­ary, Gary Vayn­er­chuk admon­ished my wife to “get in the trenches,” as it related to social media and online mar­ket­ing. Though the advice was not directed to me at the time, it has stuck with me. My goal, at this point, is less about mar­ket­ing, and more about learn­ing, grow­ing and con­nect­ing. Being at the nascent stage of my pho­tog­ra­phy career, I’m hum­ble enough to know that I’ve got a lot to learn.

I admit that I got on a Twit­ter as a lark. It was really an exten­sion of my Face­book activ­i­ties. One of the ini­tial perks of Twit­ter was that I could update my Face­book page with my sta­tus updates. Sweet, I thought. I could kill two birds with one stone. Lit­tle did I know the power of net­work­ing and com­mu­nity lurk­ing right beneath the sur­face. I am fre­quently online look­ing at the work of many pho­tog­ra­phers. I noticed that an increas­ing num­ber of pho­tog­ra­phers had a Twit­ter icon on their site. Not soon after fol­low­ing two or three pho­tog­ra­phers, I started to see tweets with links to the works of other pho­tog­ra­phers, arti­cles on pho­tog­ra­phy, events and exhibits, etc. The beauty of the 140-word updates is that you can quickly scan them, and extract use­ful information.

Just as with forums, it does take some work to be active on Twit­ter. If you have more than hand­ful of peo­ple you fol­low, it can take good amount of time to read through updates that trick in through­out the day. In fact, I’m amazed when I see some­one fol­low­ing thou­sands of peo­ple. I don’t know how it’s done. At the time of this post, I fol­low about 160 peo­ple. A good num­ber of these peo­ple do not update their sta­tus with any par­tic­u­lar fre­quency. There are some high-volume tweet­ers on my list, and I can count on see­ing their face eas­ily fill­ing up a page. As the say­ing goes, you have to sep­a­rate the wheat from the chafe. Most of the tweets I get are from peo­ple shar­ing incred­i­bly use­ful infor­ma­tion. Many of the peo­ple I fol­low have returned the favor by becom­ing a fol­lower. It’s like a lit­tle gift when I receive a response or direct mes­sage with com­ments, feed­back or links to information.

Because of sites like Twit­ter and Face­book, the par­a­digm is shift­ing. Now don’t get me wrong. I am the same per­son who, sev­eral threads back, talked about the ret­i­cence to use post-processing soft­ware. I also stated that I am not a full-fledged Lud­dite. It’s selec­tive. I am incred­i­bly excited about the prospect of hav­ing my pho­tog­ra­phy career blos­som with the assis­tance of Twit­ter and Face­book. Clearly, my suc­cess or fail­ure will be defined on the qual­ity of my work and the recep­tiv­ity of peo­ple to that work. The net­work­ing through Twit­ter (and other sites) is already pay­ing div­i­dends by expand­ing my com­mu­nity of friends and col­leagues. I’d like to think that I am approach­ing Twit­ter with the right spirit. Meet, join and become active in a larger com­mu­nity.  That’s what it’s all about—to me. If I had to guess, those who are on Twit­ter with rather trans­par­ent mar­ket­ing goals, will wear on peo­ple and are really miss­ing the point and power of Twit­ter and the exponentially-growing com­mu­nity of Twits.

, , , , , , ,