Hi. I’m Rob.

Following up on my earlier posts: Twitter 101: Why I Bother and Twitter 102: Twitter Terminology Explained, I thought I’d come back with a third lesson for people just getting into the whole Twitter scene.

You may have noticed that every once in a while, you get a notification that User XYZ is following you.  It’s a person you’ve never heard of, and have no idea why on earth he or she would be interested in what you have to say.  Sometimes it’s a self-professed “social media expert.” He’s got 30,000 followers, follows about 30,000 others, and tweets nothing but random quotes.  Other times it’s a scantily clad woman, with a profile pic that looks like a post-wardrobe malfunction Janet Jackson.

So, why do they follow you?

It’s the first of a two-step process by which Twitter’s seamy underbelly of spammers try to game the system.  They follow you in the hopes that you’ll follow them back.  If you don’t within the next few days, they unfollow you.  Then they wash, rinse, and repeat.  Over time, they build up a following of the easily duped.

There are two lessons to take from this odd wrinkle of Twitter behavior:

• Don’t worry, no one’s stalking you. If you’re creeped out by the fact that some dude in Romania is following your tweets, don’t be.  He doesn’t give a rip about what you have to say.  He’s only in it for the followers.
• Not all followers, fans, subscribers, etc. are alike. It’s tempting to make the same mistake the spammers make–albeit in a more well-intentioned way.  We chase the raw number of followers, fans, subscribers, leads, etc., without thinking enough about the getting the right people:  People who will be engaged with your brand; people who know your product or industry; people with whom the conversation you’re having will ultimately matter.

So, be happy that users with names like AffiliateDood, MLMNinja, and BustyJuggs1234 are among your Twitter followers.  Just don’t follow any of them back!

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I usually use the “Rob The Explainer” category of this blog to dispense technology advice to others.  This time, I’m the one that’s got a question.  It didn’t fit neatly into a 140 character tweet, so I’m posting it here, in the hopes that someone can set me straight in the comments section of this post.

I’m going to be upgrading the PCs in my house to Windows 7, My wife and I do alot of digital media work–Photoshop, Lightroom, After Effects, Premiere, etc. I’m leaning towards installing it as 64-bit for the better performance and greater headroom on RAM usage. In addition, Adobe has announced that future versions of After Effects and Premiere will only support 64-bit.

What I don’t fully understand is what are the drawbacks of going 64 bit? One I’ve heard is that there’s no Adobe Flash (yet) for 64-bit browsers, but that’s easily solved by installing the 32 bit version of browsers. Other than that, are their major drawbacks to installing 64-bit?

Also:
1) No snarky “well you should just get a Mac” comments, please.
2) I assume that you’re given the choice of 32 or 64 bit when installing Windows 7, correct?
3) Do most modern processors (Intel Core 2 Duo, Core 2 Quad, i5, and i7) support 64 bit?

Thanks in advance for your advice.

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Thanks for the great response to my last post, Twitter: Why I Bother.  It was great hearing from so many people that said “Oh, now I get it!”  I wanted to follow up with some additional tips on the terms and protocol that have evolved among Twitter users.

Where it’s @

The @ symbol plays an important role in navigating Twitter.  It’s used to direct a tweet at a particular user.  For example, If I tweet “@Bellysocking welcome to Twitter!” it’s directed at my friend Deborah, maker of great pregnancy and nursing accessories.

You can see tweets directed at you by looking at the right side of your Twitter home page, and respond accordingly by using the @ symbol right back at the person who sent it.

Retweeting: The Meritocracy of Good Ideas

A specific way that the @ symbol is used is to “Retweet.”  Retweeting is like tipping your hat to someone that tweeted something cool that you want to repeat.  You Retweet by simply typing RT (for Retweet), @ (the user’s Twitter handle), and the contents of the original tweet.

For example, if @droolbuster tweeted “check out this awesome music video: http://bit.ly/NdXd1” and it was indeed awesome, I could tweet: “RT @droolbuster check out this awesome music video: http://bit.ly/NdXd1” (the link in this example is itself an example of my all time favorite internet inside joke, The Rickroll)

The nice thing about retweets is that they expose your thoughts and finds to other people’s followers.  That encourages Twitter users to check out your profile, and if interested, follow you.  Thus, if you want to gain followers on Twitter, be interesting; be retweetworthy!

Hashtags

The sister of the @ symbol is the # – the hashtag.  The @ symbol is all about people; the # is all about topics.  Let’s say you’re going to the NAB trade show for the broadcast industry.  Everyone tweeting about the show can tag posts with #NAB, so other people can quickly find them.  Then, using the site Hashtags.org, you can see a realtime stream and traffic graph of those using the tag.  Another use of the hashtag is for themes that evolved in the twitterverse.  For example, #followfriday is a tag used to highlight interesting people to follow on Twitter.

URL Shortening

Long website addresses (aka URLs) can be a pain when working within Twitter’s 140 character limit.  To get around this problem, several services allow you to create compact URLs that simply redirect to the longer ones.

The one I like the best is called bit.ly.  It allows you to log in with your Twitter account, shorten a URL, then send a tweet directly from the bit.ly website.  Plus, it also tracks clicks that go through it, so you can quickly see the interest in a link you post.

Twitter clients

Most new users of Twitter will use the service on the Twitter.com website.  However, you may want to check out some of the standalone applications that allow you a bit more control over your Twitter experience.  The most popular is called Tweetdeck.  It allows you to group the people you follow into categories, view your @replies in a separate tab, and automatically shorten URLs.  I personally prefer a different program called Twhirl, but Tweetdeck is most popular these days.

Bringing It All Together: Your Homework Assignment

Let’s see what we have learned today: Go to Twitter (or your newly installed Twitter client)  and tweet the following:

RT @thatrobguy Attention Twitter newbies: confused by Twitter terminology? Read this: http://bit.ly/qcHaE

And, for extra credit, you can use the icons below to share this post with others through Facebook, StumbleUpon, Digg, etc.  Class dismissed!

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Twitter is everywhere these days.  The microblogging service that asks simply “what are you doing?” has exploded past the early adopter stage of hot new technologies.  It has reached that point in its hype cycle that Larry King and Oprah are talking about it.  Shaq and MC Hammer are twittering, as are Mr. and Mrs. Kutcher.

When the media talks about Twitter, it’s usually done with a whiff of bemused condescension.  “Can you believe?” their coverage sneers, “that people are sitting on their computers all day talking about what they are doing?  ‘Hi everyone, I’m having a sandwich.  How ’bout you?’  These people have too much time on their hands.”

In reality, Twitter is much more interesting, fun, and consequential than that.  For me, it goes far beyond “sandwich blogging,” and that’s why I wrote this post.  To explain to you, dear reader, Why I Bother with Twitter.

Twitter 101

For the uninitiated, here’s how Twitter works: you set up a profile for yourself that contains a brief description of who you are, where you’re located, and your website.  You have a space of 140 characters in which to write anything you want (If you’re a Facebook user, it’s similar to status updates).  Once you write, or tweet–the verb-ified form of Twitter–people who have subscribed to or “followed” your status updates see what you wrote.  In turn, you can follow other people’s tweets as well.

I Will Follow

I subscribe to the updates of over a thousand people.  Among this crowd are bloggers, celebrities, fellow entrepreneurs, politicians, friends, and my mother.  I enjoy the constant din of conversation on topics both substantive and trivial; the cacophonous medley of information flowing through my feed.  But because I’ve chosen those I wish to follow, they’re usually kibbitzing on subjects of interest to me:

• Cool new baby gifts
• Neil Diamond twittering about his Seder
• The Seattle tech scene
• My friend Scott’s latest ruminations and ponderances

Interesting to you?  Maybe not.  But to me, it’s like a talk radio station created from little pieces of my world.

Do I read everything they write?  No.  The updates flow like a constant river of information.  If I miss something, it’s no big deal.  No individual tweet is essential, and that’s the beauty of it.  There is a marvelous serendipity to my river of tweets.

My legion of adoring fans

Just as I follow those who interest me, about a thousand other Twitter users have followed me.

Some of the people I follow are friends, but most are people I’ve never met.  They are folks that for whatever reason decided they are interested in what I have to say, and I appreciate the tiny slice of attention they’ve given me.

Having this audience is a dream come true for an ENFP like me.  It’s “hey everyone, listen to me!” 140 characters at a time. Occasionally I’ll have thoughts that just need to get out–and since the networks have yet to give me my own talk show, Twitter’s the next best thing.  Plus, blogging is deeper commitment; I’ve been noodling on this post for about a week.  With Twitter, I can just broadcast a thought out to the world and boom-it’s out there.

What do I tweet about?

• I’ll indulge in some sandwich blogging from time-to-time–usually about the music I’m listening to at the moment.
• An interesting link or news story I saw.
• Responding to tweets from those I follow.  For example, last week someone asked “where can I find good Wordpress themes?”  I was able to suggest woothemes, maker of the template I use for this blog.
• Conversely, I might have a quick question that can be answered by the Twitterverse.  For example, I asked tonight if anyone had seen a demo of a new After Effects plugin that was launched today at a trade show.
• My not-so-hidden agenda is to promote my AWESOME children’s DVDs and CDs.  Twitter is heavily used by influential moms that have strong followings through Twitter and their own blogs.  For example, if someone writes a great review of my products, I’ll promote that review through Twitter.  If you market to moms as I do, your audience is on Twitter, with or without you.
• I try to keep my own self-promotion to a reasonable level–many marketers make the mistake of overdoing it on Twitter.  I also try to keep things in karmic balance by highlighting other entrepreneurs doing cool stuff too.

Monitoring the Twitterverse

Even if you don’t set up a Twitter account for yourself, it’s fascinating to listen in to the conversations of the Twitterverse.  If you go to http://search.twitter.com, you can search for a particular term or phrase.  I am interested in knowing when someone’s discussing my products, so I set up a search for “That Baby DVD” and “OyBaby“  I take it a step further by subscribing to those search results with my RSS reader (you do remember what an RSS reader is, don’t you?).  You could do the same for your company, product, or hobby (remember to put phrases in “quotes like this” to search for the entire phrase).

Why do you bother?

So, that’s why I bother with Twitter.  How ’bout you?  Use the comments feature below to let me know what you get out of it.  And remember to follow my Twitter posts at http://twitter.com/thatrobguy.

Update: Just added a related post, Twitter 102: Twitter Terminology Explained

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