My Ten Favorite Tweets – Week Ending 042310

April 24, 2010 by Leave a comment

From the home office in some Redwood City bar, where I’m using my pick-up line on all the single ladies, “Did you happen to find my Congressional Medal of Honor around here? Or my iPhone 4G?”

#1: RT @TechCrunch Foursquare Becomes More Business-Friendly http://tcrn.ch/b45AJY > Biz owners can claim their businesses

#2: RT @jowyang Heard that foursquare us charging brands $50,000 for a custom branded badge. Good deal or bad? Think it through.

#3: RT @courtenaybird GOOD READ: It’s Time For An Open Database Of Places http://ow.ly/1A4HL (via @erickschonfeld)

#4: RT @briansolis The State and Future of Twitter 2010: Part Two http://bit.ly/aAV0r9

#5: “Sucks Less” Features http://bit.ly/an6s50 > funny product management perspective from my b-school classmate @trochte

#6: RT @amcafee New blog post up. “Drop the Pilot” advocates AGAINST small-scale #E20 pilot projects: http://bit.ly/aKD3WF

#7: This @gapingvoid cartoon well-describes the creative process, incl writing. http://bit.ly/9LlVIN Sometimes you got it, sometimes you don’t.

#8: Had to check to make sure this wasn’t dated April 1. It’s for real: “Vacationing a human right, EU chief says” http://bit.ly/bMYAH0

#9: I hear stories about Americans’ deep discontent with government, and I’m just not one of them. We’re working our way out of a deep well.

#10: Hilarious site that any parent of young kids can appreciate: www.shitmykidsruined.com (h/t @rochelle)

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My Ten Favorite Tweets – Week Ending 032610

March 27, 2010 by 2 Comments

From the home office in CTU, where I’m taking control of ’24’, not going to let it be canceled…

#1: RT @scobleizer http://bestc.am/T90 This is Paul Pluschkell CEO of @spigit which is cool ideation software used by tons of companies. Now onto @pipioinc

#2: Wow – my moment in @dahowlett‘s spotlight: Enterprise 2.0: let’s be careful out there http://bit.ly/bQR3vj Great stuff, needs several reads

#3: Enterprise 2.0 and our tendency to think and talk in terms of efficiency http://bit.ly/cDe3mO by @oscarberg #e20

#4: Discussion is a good thing! RT @rawn Had to write disagreeing response to spigit post “Maslow’s Hierarchy of E2.0 ROI” http://bit.ly/9ltJo6

#5: Avoiding Innovation Chaos inside Companies (via Spigit blog) http://bit.ly/anh1cY #innovation #e20

#6: RT @govfresh Manor in WSJ: ‘A Hotbed of Tech Innovation: the Government of Manor, Texas’ http://bit.ly/aUyxbF #gov20

#7: Is Crowdsourcing Disruptive? http://bit.ly/aYybmt by @stephenshapiro > Cost per design vs cost of acquisition #innovation

#8: Can truly great design be done the open source way? http://bit.ly/bcZszD by @cdgrams > a bazaar or a cathedral? #design

#9: Actual newspaper headline: “Republicans turned off by the size of Obama’s package.” http://bit.ly/crhh2O #hcr?

#10: RT @skydiver “One of the things I love about Twitter is that you can totally make up quotations.” – Abraham Lincoln

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Greece’s Incumbent Party Leans on Social Media Ahead of Oct 4 Election

September 30, 2009 by Leave a comment

Greece holds national elections for its Prime Minister on Sunday October 4. This is a “snap election”, called by the incumbent Prime Minister Kostas Karamanlis in what is regarded as either a savvy play to get a mandate, or a suicide electoral mission. This election was only called on September 2, giving the political parties only a month to get their candidates air time. ΝΕΑ ΔΗΜΟΚΡΑΤΙΑ (New Democracy) is the party of the incumbent, Karamanlis. Polls suggest his more conservative party will have a tough fight with the Socialists.

Walking through Athens, I was impressed by the display set up by the ΝΕΑ ΔΗΜΟΚΡΑΤΙΑ party. It was nighttime, and the ND party station was bright with blazing lights, blaring music and a modern look. Included in the station was this wall:

Greek New Democracy party social media

Check out those social media chops! Blog, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube. The URLs are well-done. They redirect to the actual social media site account for the ND party, while making it easy to remember them.

And these aren’t “ghost town” accounts. The party’s Facebook page has nearly 9,300 supporters, and each entry in its news stream receives dozens of Likes and Comments.

I don’t know if Prime Minister Kostas Karamanlis will regret his decision to call a snap election this Sunday October 4. But I’m impressed with his party’s use of social media. Perhaps they’re taking a page from Barack Obama’s presidential campaign.

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My Ten Favorite Tweets – Week Ending 050109

May 2, 2009 by Leave a comment

From the home office in La Gloria, Mexico…

#1: Not sure if it’s good or bad that I just learned that David Souter is retiring from the Supreme Court via Twitter Trending Topics.

#2: Had to do it, subscribed to @whitehouse

#3: The #TCOT grass roots conservative movement on Twitter is riven by feuding at the top: http://bit.ly/nwr1m

#4: Interested in corporate innovation? Join Forrester’s @oliveryoung & me for a webinar to learn practical ways to improve  http://bit.ly/cGI4W

#5: Reading: How to Get the Most From Your Best Ideas http://bit.ly/kuWci by @Accenture

#6: Looking at BW’s 50 most innovative companies http://bit.ly/18nBe7 How much of what #1 Apple & #2 Google do really applies to most companies?

#7: Reading – Enterprise 2.0 marketing score card: solid ‘C’ http://bit.ly/T1yJi by @sameerpatel Great Google Trends charts

#8: Joined foursquare, which asks you to add/rate stuff for cities. Hard to be hip as a parent, here’s my playground entry http://bit.ly/MBsE4

#9: Really interesting study and hypothesis about how our brains forget/rewrite memories just by recalling them http://bit.ly/1941k8

#10: Today is apparently a big day 4 college acceptance letters. Here’s a post that describes harshest/nicest reject letters http://bit.ly/1anN7p

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My Ten Favorite Tweets – Week Ending 021309

February 15, 2009 by Leave a comment

From the home office on Capitol Hill…

#1: @hblodget says Twitter will be worth $1 billion (http://bit.ly/6niDF cmt #3). I agree: http://bit.ly/C9Ia

#2: Reading: 11 Percent of Online Adults Now Use Status Updates http://tinyurl.com/ansm6r

#3: Reading: “How I made over $2 million with this blog” by @davewiner http://bit.ly/Mygcb Exactly right sense of blogging’s value.

#4: Yammer to be available behind the firewall: http://bit.ly/mgF9B Big move, one that will open up more of the market for them.

#5: Private accounts on Twitter and FriendFeed that require a request to follow…always such an air of mystery…

#6: Steve Wozniak will be on ABC’s Dancing with the Stars. Wow.

#7: “The more labels you have for yourself, the dumber they make you.” – Paul Graham http://bit.ly/1SiThw

#8: San Francisco’s Bay-to-Breakers to reflect sobriety of our times: http://bit.ly/gV6SM No alcohol, no floats. Nudity is still wink-wink OK.

#9: Just watched David Letterman’s “interview” with Joaquin Phoenix. Dave at his best in a bad situation: http://bit.ly/86Bwi

#10: Sarah Palin – “a naughty librarian with a gun.” CafePress CEO #ugcx

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The Drudge Report Meets Twitter: The TCOT Report

December 29, 2008 by 6 Comments

tcot-report

The Republican revolution will be tweeted…

I’m guessing you’ve not heard about the TCOT Report. I hadn’t until yesterday. It just started this month. But it got my attention, because it’s a really innovative use of Twitter for grass roots idea generation and discussions. Social media skeptics rail against the echo chamber of geeks talking to one another about how grand social media is. So when non-geeks start leveraging social media’s best characteristics to improve things, it warrants attention.

OK, so what is TCOT?

Top Conservatives on Twitter

At its core, TCOT is a site that tracks the top conservatives on Twitter. As TCOT founder Michael Leahy describes it:

This list was first placed on the web on November 28, 2008. In the short time since then, it has become a bit of a rallying point for conservatives on Twitter. I think all of us who are on the list can conceive of many additional ways to improve the list to strengthen and grow the conservative community on Twitter.

You must primarily tweet on conservative themes and cannot be merely a “campaign profile” “political office holder profile” or a “radio or television program or publication promotional profile” to be on this list. New participants are welcome. Just nominate someone you follow or yourself and show that you are primarily on Twitter as a conservative.

Hats off to Leahy on this. It appears anyone, not just those with authority, can be included in the list, so long as you talk conservative themes. Here are the top ten conservatives on Twitter right now:

tcot-top-ten

The list itself is a resource for other conservatives looking to find like-minded people on Twitter.

What I found interesting was the TCOT Report.

TCOT Report: Crowdsourced Drudge Report

Leahy has set up the TCOT Report to track the news, opinion and discussion around conservative principles and politics. The real-time element of the TCOT Report is a continuous stream of tweets based on the hashtag #TCOT. Anyone can join in, as they are using the Twitter search function for this. To confirm this, I did a #TCOT tweet. Sure enough, it showed up:

tcot-feedAnd I even got a reply from someone in the TCOT community. The site also includes links to various news articles, opinion pieces and blogs.

To really understand the import of this initiative, consider the Rush Limbaugh ditto-heads.

Grass Roots Conservatism

Rush Limbaugh has millions of listeners to his daily radio show. People who are interesting in the news, and have opinions about it. The “social media” experience of this was to listen to your radio at the same time as everyone else.

When it comes time for communicating with others, there are two online formats for that: email and forums. Both have their place. Email is a great way to direct an action campaign. Forums, such as lucianne.com,  are great for longer discussion threads where all comments are displayed. Twitter appears to occupy a third spot, with some overlap with those other two.

Twitter lets folks express major or minor points easily, without guilt or worrying about whether a forum thread will grow. The hash tag identifies both the message and the person. And Twitter lets everyone weigh in on the events of the day, establishing their own brand of conservatism through their series of tweets.

At its best, politics is a world based on ideas. The ability to put forth an idea and argue persuasively is a the basis for the presidential caucuses that Barack Obama did so well with.

Once the election is over, what’s a person to do with all these ideas and enthusiasm? Channel them into engaging your fellow philosophical travelers. And right now, the Republican Party is thinking hard about its next moves. Given the grassroots orientation of the party, use of social media to discuss and spread ideas seems like a terrific idea.

Michelle Malkin, the conservative commentator and Fox News personality, is a fan of TCOT:

And if you haven’t opened a Twitter account (or haven’t figured it out yet), make sure to join TCOT.

And so is former House Majority Leader Dick Armey:

#TCOT @michaelpleahy Great to see so many conservatives on Twitter. It’s clear why everyone at @FreedomWorks wants me to use this more.

Not bad for a site that’s been up for a few weeks so far.

The Live Real-Time Web Version of the Drudge Report

I imagine some readers of this blog don’t agree with the Republican Party. That’s not my point in writing about TCOT. What interests me is the way some basic social media tools are being used for potentially great effect.

Twitter? Never be mainstream. Hashtags? People can’t be bothered. Twitter search? Why would I want to read the garbage people write?

What TCOT is doing is showing the potential in these tools. It’s too early to tell how this initiative will turn out, but a quick scan of the #TCOT tweets shows a lot of interest in this. I suspect the Obama administration and Democratic Congress will give a lot of energy to the TCOT Report. No one will displace the Drudge Report, but adding the instant reaction, and multiple points of view on myriad subjects in real-time is something that has proven addictive elsewhere.

If nothing else, I’m glad to see the continuing experimentation with social media outside the geeksphere.

*****

See this post on FriendFeed: http://friendfeed.com/search?q=%22The+Drudge+Report+Meets+Twitter%3A+The+TCOT+Report%22&who=everyone

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Super Tuesday with Twitter/Twittervision/Google

February 9, 2008 by 1 Comment

Enjoyed using the Twitter mashup for Super Tuesday. Some algorithm (Google-created?) identified Super Tuesday-related tweets. Twittervision mapped these to Google maps. So you’d see comments pop up alongside someone’s picture, with their location on the Google map. Very entertaining.

There were plenty of Europeans and Australians chiming in that night. A few Latin Americans and a decent showing of Canadians. Demonstrated for this insular American how engaged the rest of the world is in our politics.

Also, by the end of the night, there seemed to be a 43-minute lagtime between posting a tweet and seeing it show up on the map. The typical comment display plus move around the Google map may have been ~10 seconds. So that’s roughly 258 tweets at any given time waiting to post.

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