Twitter is Broken for Me… Grrr
So apparently Twitter is working for everyone but me right now. I’m not thrilled. Twitter is being bad. I’d prefer it to be good. I guess my thing this week is making horrible little videos. See me grrr:
Do You Sound Like A Twitter Stream?
Me: Eww, it’s too hot out. I’m walking home and a bird is chirping so loud! Ugh, I’m so tired. My sleeves are kind of big today; they show I mean business.
G: OK…
Me: Oh my god. The way I talk in real life just turned into a Twitter stream. That’s not OK.
G: Baby, that’s sad.
Happiness
Everyone has bad days. Days when you question yourself and you feel like you just suck at life. I know I’ve been spending a lot of time blogging about communities on Twitter lately, but I have another example of this network coming together with kind words. I recently had an unhappy day and reached out to my community on Twitter, asking for inspiration and ideas about how to “happify” myself.
Susan Reynolds saw my happiness thread a couple weeks ago and requested that I write a post about the suggestions people had for me on how to feel happier each day. Here are my favorite responses:
@shonnoll says exercise
@thattalldude says listen to happy music
@mindchaotica and @linkedmn say to remember that things could always be worse
@cambeck says to become Joseph Jaffe
@iAlbert says to take a walk and be around nature
@geoffliving says happiness is an inside, spiritual job that external things can’t determine
@vanhoosear says learn to accept and let go
@podcastmama says to be kind to yourself, allow yourself to change your mind and get enough rest
@Paisano says to help people every day, engage in random acts of kindness and take naps
@jackvinson says to make a gratitude list
Building relationships and cultivating communities is central to our jobs as PR professionals and social media evangelists, and sometimes we get to see the strength of these social groups in ways that truly show how meaningful this stuff can be. Being a real person is SO important on the social Web. Asking, helping, advising, suggesting, being there for others. For me, I’m finding that being real and being happy go hand in hand.
If you have any suggestions of how to be happier, please post them in the comments section. Maybe we’ll all find some new ways to feel happier day-to-day.
Twitter, What Are You Doing?
Twitter has been a brat for the past couple days. I’m only getting a couple people’s updates, and I know I’m not the only one having problems. I feel so abandoned.
Boo, Twitter. You suck this weekend.
Today’s Honey: April 20, 2008
I came across this video on Yianni Garcia’s blog and thought it was absolutely fantastic. Alana Taylor is definitely a rockstar in my book.
Lyrics:
When I wake up in the morning,
The first thing I see,
Is an e-mail in my Gmail,
Sayin’ you’re followin’ me.
And next thing you know,
I’m followin’ you,
Not everybody does it,
But me and Scoble do.
Chorus:
Cuz Twitter beats Facebook any day,
140 characters is all you need to say.
Cool thing ’bout Twitter is you meet new people,
You even get to stalk the famous ones too,
We’ve got Veronica Belmont from Mahalo Daily,
Barack Obama and Hugh MacLeod, too.
Chorus
Twitter’s like a family,
As long as you’re not spamming me,
We keep in touch, we share too much,
And @garyvee meets up for lunch.
Chorus
But be careful with your iPhone…
Don’t DM the whole worldddddd!
Chorus
Because There Aren’t Enough Ways to Stalk What People Are Saying on Twitter…
There are about 47.3 billion Twitter apps to break down what people are saying, who they’re saying it to, where they’re saying it and how popular they are for saying what they say. But there’s always room for more, right?
I’ve seen some of my Twitter friends like Geoff Livingston, Greg Verdino and Matt Dickman talking about Tweet Clouds recently, so I checked the site out. It’s a cool way to visualize your most tweeted words.
What I find interesting as a PR person is that you can see the terms arguably most important to people as well as who they’re talking to most often. This gives us insight into who our influencers are and what things and people are central to their conversations. Tweet Clouds could end up being a visually interesting and useful way to get a better snapshot of who people are on Twitter.
Try this out. In the meantime, here’s my Tweet Cloud:
Twitter: Get Well Cards 2.0
So, I spent last night in the hospital, where I found out I have a UTI (don’t get any ideas, it isn’t from what you’re thinking) and a kidney infection in my left kidney.
When I tweeted this last night, I had no idea I would receive such an outpouring of kindness, concern and get-well wishes from my friends and followers. Waking up in the middle of the night and seeing your messages made me feel almost as good as the Percocet did. Really, it was heartwarming. There is no way I could ever properly thank you all.
Last night and today, Twitter was my mailbag of get well cards, minus the cheesy artwork and envelopes. And the best part about these “cards” is that they’ll never get lost or thrown out. I was really blown away by how many people reached out just to say they were thinking of me. Below is just a smattering of goodness (edited together very poorly) from some of the wonderful, caring people in my Twitter network:
To everyone who tweeted and sent DMs, you helped me so much when I was feeling terrible. I can’t thank you enough: @skalik, @caseysoftware, @britrock, @pamelump, @dmitrigunn, @jdeverter, @nathansnell, @whojaybe, @rondean, @beckymccray, @ariedana, @taxman45, @etesla, @bruno1378, @jentaro, @jpostman, @cechastain, @conniereece, @susanreynolds, @profr, @timcoyne, @davedelaney, @theburbblog, @dougmeacham, @nazgul, @lisaa123, @ikitty, @tibbon, @alexa, @sbspalding, @jackhodgson, @bigtc, @mattjmcd, @sarahwurrey, @robertcollins, @ialbert, @podcastmama, @vanhoosear, @repcor, @albertmaruggi, @jyarmis, @techpickles, @mobasoft, @bpolensky, @dartagnan373, @disruptive, @strutting, @amyyen, @gregverdino, @hooeyspewer, @travis9to5, @cspenn, @jaffejuice, @uberrob, @jayberkowitz, @chelpixie, @spiver and @tdefren.
If You Give Amanda a Tweetup…
Remember those children’s books If You Give a Mouse a Cookie and If You Give a Moose a Muffin? The little characters get all excited and keep wanting more, more, more. I’m like that with Tweetups. Taking my online friendships offline is always interesting, and with the crew who attended this weekend’s Blogstring Presents: Boston Pubcrawl Tweetup, there’s never a dull moment.
Seeing the lovely miss Julia Roy was a breath of fresh air–it had been far too long, sister. And I absolutely adore the time I spend with Pam Seiple, aka @pamelump. This was her very first Tweetup, so I’m glad she had a great time with us crazy kids. As always, seeing Sarah Wurrey and Nate Burke was A+ all around. Sarah did some sweet Pat Benatar karaoke and Nate wore the greatest shirt ever made. Denton and Paull were silly, of course. Love seeing those boys. Also in attendance: Dmitri Gunn, who I met last week at the SOURCE Boston Tweetup; Bryan Maleszyk, who I don’t think I’ve seen since October 2007; Abe Estrada, who I met on Australia Day in NYC; Sandy Kalik and her boyfriend Nate, who are two seriously awesome kids; Steve Garfield and his wife Carol, who are obviously amazing; and Josh Nichols, aka @techpickles, who I met for the first time last night.
Being part of this growing group of friends is so much fun. I get to have awesome conversations about social media, careers and life. We’re sharing and laughing for hours–we’re a comfy bunch. Like I said–never a dull moment. Some people are skeptical of relationships that form online, thinking that legitimate friends are only formed face-to-face. But I’ve made some really excellent friends from Twitter! Tweetups: quite possibly the key to my heart. Join us sometime.
If you haven’t been tempted by any of the links above, you can see all my photos from the night here, and Sarah Wurrey’s photos (along with a choice moment from Halloween 2007) here.
Coming soon: Blogger Social and Podcamp NYC!
Words from Mom, Part 1
In honor of tonight’s Tweetup, I’d like to share a short SMS exchange I had with my mother last night, out of nowhere:
Mom: Is a twit up like spit up?
Me: LOL no!
Mom: How is it diff
Me: It’s people meeting up in a social place. People who are active on Twitter. You’re ridiculous.
Mom: No suh
My mom is the cutest.
Social Media Vocab: Friend
The word “friend” is thrown around a lot in the socnet space. What is interesting to me is that the new definitions sites like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter are creating seem to be spilling over into everyday life (yes, outside of social networks). Variations like “de-friend” “friend me!” and “friend request” aren’t just buzzwords on social sites–I hear them spoken aloud all the time. It’s strange. I mean, since when do you meet someone and formally request her friendship? It’s not like a proposal or something. Oh yeah, before you request my friendship, maybe you should ask my dad for permission first… So, so weird. In my opinion, the definition of “friend” has undeniably and permanently changed.
Tonight I deleted 90 “friends” from my Facebook network. I was at 1,097 friends. In my opinion, that’s pretty absurd. I don’t have that many friends! A lot of the people in my Facebook network are acquaintances, friends of friends, classmates, teammates, colleagues, family members, exes… MOST of those 1,000-something people aren’t even my friends in the traditional sense of the word. But the meaning of the word “friend” has changed, so if we met once at a party or worked on a project in class sophomore year and are connected on Facebook, I guess we’re friends. Weird, huh?
Earlier this evening, I asked my Twitter network to define the word friend. Below is a screen shot of the results:
These are some pretty good definitions, I think. But I’m not sure what a friend REALLY is anymore–all I know is that the word “friend” has been distorted because of social networks and it is often used in ways that do not reflect what we all grew up believing friendship to mean. It’s not a bad thing, necessarily–just different meanings for an old word.
Are we friends?
Now it’s your turn to take a stab at it. Give me your definition.
