Monday, April 7th, 2008
Brian Solis over at bub.blicio.us (who is one of my new March subscriptions) posted an article on Facebook adding a new chat feature, with a link to the Facebook blog telling users about the new feature.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to be available on my Facebook yet, perhaps they’re starting with North America. Nonetheless, I’m excited to start using it.
My first reaction: great! I already think Twitter is so powerful because it almost emulates that “water cooler” or “chatroom” function that the internet used to have (I do miss the chat rooms because MSN is usually just one-to-one) and Ping.sg, a community-focused aggregator already has a chat function on the page as well. It’s almost like we’ve come full circle back to the era of chat.
The second reaction: I’m assuming that you have to remain logged in on Facebook to use the chat and see who’s online. This leads to longer time on the Facebook site, presumably more exposure to the increasing number of Facebook ads, and a way to combat Facebook Fatigue?
What do you think?
Tags: brian solis, bubblicious, chat room, facebook, facebook ads, facebook advertisements, facebook blog, facebook chat, facebook fatigue, mirc, ping sg, ping.sg, twitter, water cooler effect
Posted in social media, twitter | 5 Comments »
Wednesday, March 26th, 2008
It hit me in the shower last night why exactly Twitter is so powerful. It’s like IRC.
No, I’m not kidding and don’t run away yet.
Today @stripedshirt and @valene were talking about why MSN (aka IM) isn’t used by them anymore, simply because it’s too distracting. On top of that, MSN mostly allows for one-to-one conversations (yes I know you can add more people to conversations), but Twitter is cool in that you can have many people adding to a conversation at different times of the day and it’ll continue on.
And that’s what I like most about Twitter and that’s why it’s so powerful. It requires a short amount of attention, but it allows you to feel connected and part of a community more than IM does (at least for me). A real example is when a few of us just got started on Twitter. Me (@uniquefrequency), Andre (@stripedshirt) and Valene (@valene). So 3 of us kinda were messaging here and there but with only 3 people, there wasn’t much benefits to reap in terms of network externalities.
Fastforward 4-6 weeks, add in Andre’s group’s great presentation on microblogging, and now we have Nabilah (@allquirknoplay), Jacqueline (@jacquelinechang), Amelia (@amsie), Lionel (@gaothebao), Peiling (@gniliep), Alaska (@alaskie), Xiao Hui (@thehsuperficies), Mark (@beatmastermark), Gladys (@gladyschock) and Christina (@tinana).
The best part is I have less than half of these people on my MSN list, and yet I talk more to most of them than to other people on my MSN list.
It’s like IRC in that we all drop in the same “room” at different times of the day and maybe I’ll know that some of them are in the library, some are awake at 5am finishing a project, who’s in a Starbucks, and the list goes on. It’s come to a stage where we even have @SMUtweets to tweet school-related stuff to all of us. How cool is that?
To me, Twitter has truly become the new social water cooler.
You might argue that 13 of us out of a school population of 4,500 is insignificant. But is it really? If you were a company and you had 13 passionate advocates following your brand on Twitter, Tweeting things to each other and spreading your brand and/or message, wouldn’t you be happy? (Wouldn’t it be great if Frujch could tell us when the queue is short? Or if portobello melts are running out so we can ZOOM down to get the last few?)
I think this is just the tip of the iceberg and here’s an experiment I want to run: All of us SMU students currently on Twitter should aim to get one, just one, other friend on Twitter by Week 14 (just lean over to the person next to you in the library and do some convincing!). We’re going to try to double the SMU-Twitter population and see just how far we can go with this in really forming a community and network, and see what comes out of it.
Post your success stories and/or great Twitter stories in the comments section so we’ll know who to follow and we’ll review this experiment in 2 weeks! Let’s keep in mind that getting new people to sign up on Twitter is just the first step, we need to make them feel welcome to get them to stick around and enjoy it as much as we do!
Tags: alaska, alaskie, allquirknoplay, amelia, amsie, beatmastermark, christina, curiousfoodie, frujch, gaothebao, gniliep, im, instant messaging, irc, jacqueline, jacquelinechang, lionel, mark, microblogging, microsoft messenger, msn, nabilah, online conversations, peiling, smu twitter, smutweets, social media experiment, social water cooler, stripedshirt, thehsuperficies, tinana, twitter, twitter community, twitter experiment, twitter network, twitter population, twitter stories, uniquefrequency, valene, water cooler effect, xiaohui
Posted in SMU, Singapore, twitter | 17 Comments »
Sunday, March 23rd, 2008
Incredible week for Twitter news. Let’s get into it.
If you liked all that news but aren’t sure how to get started on Twitter, my handy guide called Twitter 201 is available:
Tags: best twitter apps, desktop application, growing your twitter network, how to get twitter, new water cooler, proposing over twitter, proposing via twitter, tech water cooler, tracking twitter conversations, tweetscan, twitter, twitter 101, twitter 201, twitter marriage proposal, twitter meet new people, twitter uses, twitter vision, twitter visualisations, twitter visualizations, water cooler effect, ways to have fun on twitter
Posted in Icio, twitter | No Comments »
