Rules to abide by

Michael Brito is a Social Media Evangelist at Intel. It sounds like a fabulous job, by the way. He has written a great Twitter manifesto that lays out appropriate rules for Twitter etiquette and behavior that he abides by. Some great tips include:

• Don’t expect the people you are following to follow you.
• Participate.
• Reply.
• Minimize self promotion.

I think we can all benefit by following @Britopian, both on Twitter and in behavior. I certainly agree with these principles. Congratulations @britopian on a job well done!

A few other rules have been written by noted Twitterers, David Berkowitz, Reflections on a Milestone and Robert Scoble who wrote 10 Rules not to follow. All great rules to tweet by.

Twitter's out of this world

Great article in Saturday's NY Times on the Mars lander and its use of Twitter. There are currently 15,078 Twitter followers of MarsPhoenix. Unfortunately, the Phoenix isn't following anyone. I guess it doesn't need any conversation up in space. The MarsPhoenix account is managed by Veronica McGregor of Jet Propulsion Labs. Veronica has been answering all questions addressed to @MarsPhoenix. The trip to Mars took a mere 9 months! I'm sure many of us are interested in the expedition. And probably just as many are excited about the novelty of being "tweeted" from Mars. The Mars lander touched Martian soil for the first time yesterday. More information about the mission can be found on Nasa's Phoenix site. Biz and the gang seem pretty proud that Nasa is tweeting from Mars.

Update: Marta Strickland of Organic's Three Minds blog has also blogged about her new friend, the Mars lander.

Twitter on other Social nets

Most twitterers belong to other Social Networking platforms. A recent Forrester study showed that there was a fair amount of overlap between Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. No surprise there as I think many Twitterers would fall out as Creators or Critics on Forrester's Social Technographics ladder. Looking deeper into Facebook and LinkedIn, there are some interesting statistics. Facebook's Twitter fan page has over 7000 members with over 333 wall posts. There are 3118 people using the Twitter application, many of whom use the application to update their Facebook status directly from Twitter. There are another 30 applications that integrate some aspect of Facebook with Twitter.

On LinkedIn, over 500 people have included their Twitter username in their profile. Some like Dayna Marcum include it right in their own name. LinkedIn also has a robust group of Twitter members called Tweeple which has several thousand members. One of the most useful aspects of LinkedIn is LinkedIn Answers. Here members can ask questions that are answered by each other. There have been over 225 questions asked related to Twitter. A current question, about using Twitter for business, is below. Notice not everyone is drinking the Twitter Kool-aid as the first answer says it's useless! Of course, more experienced, useful answers have been provided to help the user.

Red Sox nation

I am a big sports fan, that's why my twitter background is a baseball glove chair. I've even been known to blog a bit about it. Twitter has been great at connecting sports fans into a big happy family. Living on the west coast, I don't have many opportunities to watch the Red Sox on TV, but Twitter brings the action to me. Each game, RedSoxcast broadcasts the play by play. And using hashtags, Red Sox nation keeps up using Twemes. Many of Boston's biggest fans like Aaron Strout, Doug Haslam, Bryan Person, Jim Storer, Adam Cohen and Kyle Flaherty chat away as if they were at the Cask and Flagon. Of course, a final wrap up from the Boston Globe completes the coverage.

Of course, there are other fans that are active on twitter like the Mets and Red Wings. Wouldn't you expect that from a strong community? What team do you follow on twitter?

Fudgie the whale

I've been getting frustrated seeing the Twitter whale as I am sure others have. Any time I see "fudgie", I feel like tossing my laptop or punching the screen. As far as I'm concerned the only cute whale that I want to see is Tom Carvel's "Fudgie."






Ok, only people who grew up in the Northeast will recognize him, so for everyone else, here is a happy whale.

Here is what others are saying:

Scobleizer interview with Ev and Biz

Yesterday, Scobleizer wrote about a recent visit to Twitter where he sat down with Ev, Biz and Jesse Stay to talk about recent problems, and clear the air as their was a rumor that that power users like Scobleizer were the cause of the recent problems as reported by Om Malik.

A video of the full interview is here. It's long (about a half hour), but I highly recommend it.

How's Twitter doing?

As most of us have noticed, there have been significant performance problems on Twitter over the last few weeks. Whether it's outages, service limitations (no SMS or page history), or API restrictions (that really killed my Twhirl usage), we've all been affected. Alot has been written, for good measure. Most recently, TechCrunch has written a scathing critique of Twitter from a technology perspective. I don't profess to be even close to an expert, but Arrington's analysis seems spot on and many agree (175 comments as of 12:30 on 6/1). Jack and Biz have responded on the Twitter blog with authentic, transparent point by point answers to the operational and engineering issues.

Personally, I appreciate how Twitter is opening up and sharing their problems and attempts at resolution with the community. After, this is what social media is all about, isn't it.