Twitter: My Social Media Swiss Army Knife

 communication, social media  No Responses »
Feb 212012
 

My twitter account is @leodesousa and I am a huge fan of Twitter.  I started tweeting on March 20, 2008 after reading about Twitter on a blog that I was following.  In that time, I have tweeted over 8600 times and average about 6 tweets a day.  Almost one third of my tweets are part of a conversation with someone and one tenth of my tweets are retweets.  These are tweets from people that I follow that I found valuable and wanted to share. To see more about my Twitter profile look here: http://twanalyst.com/leodesousa. If you want to get more information about your Twitter profile and behavior try Twanalyst.com. Enter your Twitter name and see your results.

Here are a few reasons that Twitter is my Social Media Swiss Army Knife.

Connecting and Building a Global Community

Twitter has become an invaluable tool for me to build networks, to learn and to socialize.  I really value the connections I have on Twitter.  Essentially, I have a global support network with peers, colleagues and friends in:  

  • Auckland, New Zealand
  • Melbourne, Australia
  • London, England
  • Cardiff, Wales
  • Tampa Bay, Florida
  • Madison, Wisconsin
  • Rochester, Minnesota
  • Vancouver, BC

Looking at this fine group of people that I follow, I can ask a question or get advice or comment 24/7;  they are my global support network enabled by Twitter.  Now that is cool and powerful! This is something I would not have dreamed of and realistically was not viable with the asynchronous nature of email, posting to listservs or discussion forums.

A Source of Identity and Single Sign On

Have you ever connected to social media tools using your Twitter account?  Facebook has a similar authentication method called “Facebook Connect”.  Twitter uses something called OAuth – Open Authentication method.

“OAuth is an authentication protocol that allows users to approve application to act on their behalf without sharing their password. More information can be found at oauth.net or in the excellent Beginner’s Guide to OAuth from Hueniverse.”  -from Twitter FAQ

Many social media sources allow you to identify yourself using your Twitter credentials.  This saves you having to remember unique identities for every site you go to.  All you have to remember is your Twitter login information.  Twitter enables “single sign on”.

Status Updating Platform

I use Twitter to create status updates in one place (usually TweetDeck or Twitter for Blackberry) and push my tweets to Facebook and LinkedIn.  I find it far more convenient to use one simple updating service that I can share in multiple places.  The trick for me is about context and audience.  I will only push certain tweets to Facebook (family and friends), others to LinkedIn (business) and some I just keep on Twitter (Enterprise Architecture, IT and Leadership thinking).  You can control where your updates go with tools like TweetDeck and also use hashtags and rules to send tweets to your other Twitter-connected social media sites.  Read more...

Social in the Enterprise

 communication, enterprise architecture, social media  No Responses »
Jan 292012
 

JP Ranganswami posted an article that resonated with the work I am doing on my MSc as well as some thinking about social enterprise in my day job.  Please take the time to read JP’s post Thinking about the Social Enterprise and Flow, it will definitely stimulate and challenge your thinking about how people and companies conduct business.

Here is the main paragraph from JP’s post :

The theme was simple. What causes friction between companies in a market? How can that friction be reduced or removed altogether? What can be done with the resources that are freed up by removal of the friction? It may sound boring to many of you, but I enjoyed thinking about it and talking to friends and colleagues about it. Most of the time, in a post-trade world, frictions are caused by “reference data” mismatches: names, addresses, that sort of thing. Low-volatility data are incredibly important in capital markets; vast sums of money are spent in seeking to keep them accurate and up-to-date; and yet errors related to such data continue to be immense sources of friction within that trading environment.

Here is my comment back to JP:

JP, thanks for another outstanding post. The timing for me is particularly good. I am taking an Enterprise Social Media course as part of my MSc in Information Management at Syracuse University. The course is taught by Dr Anthony Rotolo (@rotolo). I just completed reading a book by @chrisbrogan and @julien smith called Trust Agents. They proposed similar themes to yours about friction, community, trust. While the book doesn’t speak specifically about “flow” the proposed characteristics would generate it:

1. Make your own game – pick something and do it well
2. Be one of us – join or create a community
3. The Archimedes Effect – leverage your environment
4. Agent Zero – be at the centre of wide networks
5. Human Artist – be genuine with people
6. Build an Army – empower others to take up the work

Some of my thinking about social business/enterprises puts the actors at the centre instead of the policies and processes. Perhaps your focus on company pairs can take a similar approach. If we have companies (this is really simplified) be more open and tell a community about what they are doing and perhaps need then matches may be found with other companies who are equally social. Finding the medium to do this and changing corporate culture seem to be the big challenges.

Thanks again for the inspiration and pushing all our boundaries. Leo

JP replied with:  Read more...

Full Disclosure, A Favourited Tweet Does Not Mean I Read It … Yet

 education, personal  No Responses »
Jan 202012
 

As many of you know, I am a huge fan of Twitter.

Twitter provides the medium for my tailored news source (I find out about world events on Twitter faster than any of the regular news outlets), my 24×7 global support base (see my post The Evolution of My Global Network) and my notetaker (this attempt failed as it was too verbose for a Twitter feed).  Finally, Twitter is a deep mine of refined precious metal harvested by the brilliant people I follow.  Here are a few examples of posts I wrote because of Twitter:

All of these posts were triggered by a tweet that I read or a tweet to me about a topic that made me think and then share something with all of you.  Powerful stuff for me and hopefully for you too!

I have been getting @replies and mentions for favouriting certain tweets.  Twitter recently enabled a notification to the original tweeter if someone favourites a tweet they posted.

In the interest of full transparency to those who thank me, I have a confession.   Just because I favourited your tweet does not always mean that I have read the link in your tweet.

I have taken to spending 15 minutes each morning scanning my Twitter feed (mostly to see what went on in the world while I was asleep in Vancouver) and look for interesting tweets (usually ones with links to articles).   I favourite them (my Twitter bookmarking method) so that I can look at them at a later date.  I do most of this scanning on my Blackberry Mobile Twitter app.

One ask I would have is if you have a website, think about huge shift to the mobile world and enable a mobile theme please!  I would be more inclined to browse to the link and read it if the content presented was for a mobile experience (especially now that I am getting middle aged eyes!).

So, it is really me who needs to thank all of you for sharing all the great content.  Keep tweeting and sharing because I for one, am listening and learning from you!   Thank you!

 Older Entries  Newer Entries

Switch to our mobile site