Following is a guest post from my friend Paddy Donnelly (@paddydonnelly), an Irish web designer, illustrator and blogger who currently lives in Belgium and spends too much time on the Internet.
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Imagine you are a music student and you’re researching into the music industry’s evolution, how the introduction of new technologies are destroying certain aspects and creating new opportunities in other areas. Instead of trawling through literary sources, interviews and music magazines, why not just ask Bono for his thoughts? Wouldn’t that be so much easier?
While studying the effects of social media and Internet culture for my Masters degree, I decided that instead of wading my way through the millions of blogs and other resources looking for answers, I would just go straight to the top and ask the experts. Over the past few months I have been lucky enough to interview some of the Twitter elite including Guy Kawasaki, Pete Cashmore, Tim O’Reilly, Chris Brogan, Smashing Magazine, Damien Mulley, Chris Coyier, Eoghan McCabe, David Lanham, Paul Boag and Darren Rowse, asking their opinions on the social media scene and getting an insight into how they personally use Twitter.
And how did I do it? It’s simple. I just asked.
Well, I did have a little help from Twitter, which allowed me to cut a path directly to the top of the pile and interact with some brilliant minds about the effects of the micro-blogging sensation. In the ‘How Did They Twitter’ interview series I tried to ask consistent questions each time to get a varied view on the topic along with a few specific questions for each interviewee on their particular industry. In this article I will include some of the most interesting opinions and advice given by these experts.
Will we still be tweeting in 5 years?
When you miss just one day on the web, you’re left to play catch up constantly to see the hottest viral video or try out the latest app. Did our interviewees think we would still be tweeting in 5 years time or will Twitter be replaced by something else just as fast as it invaded our lives?
Pete Cashmore: “5 years is a long time on the web. If Twitter reaches its fullest potential – becoming a messaging platform akin to IM and email – then we could indeed be tweeting in 5 years. But there are so many unknowns in that equation that I’d be hesitant to give a definitive ‘yes’.”
Darren Rowse: “I doubt we’ll be doing it in the same form that we do today. As we’ve seen blogging evolve from the early days we’ll probably see social messaging evolve too. Where it ends up I’m not sure anyone really knows!”
Chris Brogan: “Yes, in some form or another. It won’t necessarily be “Twitter” the name brand, just like most people don’t stop to think if it’s AIM or Yahoo! or MSN. But yes. One-to-many micro conversations are a medium that will endure, if not proliferate.”
Smashing Magazine: “Maybe, but definitely not the way we do it now. The ubiquitous Web is coming, with mobile devices transmitting information about us every second. For instance, if you go to a concert, you won’t have to explicitly twitter about it – mobile devices will perfectly take care of it.”
How can you trust a big name brand on Twitter? You never know who is tweeting, it could be anyone from the CEO to an intern.
This is one of the most interesting aspects of Twitter as more and more businesses are seeing the sheer potential of setting up an account. This fact illustrated by Google as they finally started using their account this past week.
Guy Kawasaki: “Why does it matter who is doing the tweeting? Either the content is good or not good. I’d rather follow a smart intern tweeting for a CEO than an dumb CEO tweeting for himself or herself. Twitter is great that way: Everybody, no matter who they are, gets 140 characters. Then you have to earn your followers and keep earning their allegiance with every tweet.”
Pete Cashmore: “That depends entirely on the brand. There are trustworthy brands and untrustworthy ones; brands that seek to serve their customers and those that seek to exploit them. Social media brings a new level of transparency to our conversations with brands – that, I think, will help the sincere, authentic and genuine brands rise to the top.”
Darren Rowse: “I’ve found that trust only really comes with time online – whether it be on a blog or a social networking site. If a Twitter account provides value and proves to be useful to people consistently over time I think it’ll gain trust and profile – no matter who is behind it. I think the key is consistency, transparency (ie don’t say it is the CEO if it is not) and usefulness.”
Chris Brogan: “I much prefer when a brand identifies as a person on Twitter, like @MolsonFerg or @RichardATDell, but when you ask about trust, how much do I have to trust them? I’m not giving them my credit card info. I’m just learning something about them or having a dialogue.”
Eoghan McCabe: “By knowing the people behind the company. Twitter works well as a medium for personal communication but not so well as a broadcast system for “company line” messages. Brands on Twitter will benefit by exposing the names and faces and personalities of the people behind them.”
Are we losing our ‘real life’ social skills because of the increase in social media tools?
Can we really call our 500 Facebook friends, friends? If we have not met any of our 100 Twitter followers in the flesh does that really mean we aren’t sociable? Have we become too comfortable sending DMs instead of meeting someone for coffee?
Chris Brogan: “No, but what’s interesting is, as online social tools are encouraging less real-world-socially-equipped people to meet up in the real world, I find that we’re flooded with a whole new generation of not-exactly-social people who thrive with the tools, and now need to learn their offline analog. I think it’s an exciting opportunity.”
Guy Kawasaki: “I could make the case either way. In one sense, if you’re glued to a monitor and never get out, then your real-life social skills will decline. However, email and social media tools enable me to connect with thousands of people. I could not do this with only face-to-face meetings. I can tweet that I am going to be in many cities in the world and organize a tweetup. I’ve done this in Istanbul, Moscow, Mumbai, and Honolulu so far. In this sense, social media is increase social skills–to the degree that a tweetup is social.”
Pete Cashmore: “No: it’s a medium that’s inherently about communication.”
Darren Rowse: “I’m not so sure, in fact Twitter has opened up social opportunities for me and given me plenty of chances to have face to face and engaging interactions. I guess some people’s personalities might be the type that would use Twitter to hide away from real life social interaction but if it wasn’t Twitter they’d probably do it with something else. The majority of us are having our eyes opened up to all kinds of new and interesting social interactions as a result of the tool.”
Smashing Magazine: “A tough one. No, not necessarily. It depends on the person who is using the technology. You see, we, humans, just love to blame technology for everything bad that happens to us – even if we are the cause of it. I am pretty sure that it’s up to every person to decide how important “real life” social skills are to him/to her.”
Paul Boag: “Not at all. In fact I think the opposite is true. Now when I meet people in the flesh I have something to talk to them about because I know more about their daily lives.”
David Lanham: “I can definitely see that happening to an extent. But one of the things I love about twitter is that it introduces all those (mostly) pointless bits of information back into the conversation. And it’s always the little strange things and quirks that make people interesting”
What are your thoughts on the power of the Retweet?
The emergence of the Retweet has given us the option of telling all our followers ‘this person just said something I think you would be interested in’. Without Twitter it would be impossible to instantaneously give credit to someone on such a large scale.
Guy Kawasaki: “Do you know the old saying, “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery”? Now the operative saying is, “Retweeting is the sincerest form of flattery.” Using various techniques, one can gain followers, but it’s much harder to game retweeting because people either like what you tweet and spread it or they don’t.”
Darren Rowse: “I didn’t realize the power of the ReTweet until I started using TweetDeck. Previously I was using Twitter.com to monitor replies but this meant I was only seeing replies that started with @problogger (and not messages that started with any other word). When I started using TweetDeck I began to see all tweets that others did with a mention of @problogger. This included many many ‘retweets’ – hundreds of them every week. When I saw this I began to see their power and ability to spread a link virally among the community. It is no wonder that Twitter is one of the larger referrers of traffic to my blogs now – retweets can be very powerful.”
Pete Cashmore: “I like retweeting…the tweets you choose to share say as much about you as the tweets you create yourself. Retweeting helps good ideas spread.”
More specifically
It was great getting varied responses to these questions regarding social media effect on us but how did the Internet gurus react to some questions about how they use Twitter?
How do you think Twitter has changed the way people interact online?
Tim O’Reilly: “It has vastly increased the amount of serendipity. Case in point: I noticed that Scoble was in Barcelona via twitter; connected him with Terry Jones of FluidInfo, who lives there. Terry is a fascinating technologist looking for venture funding. Robert did some video interviews, thought it was really cool; Terry got a term sheet the next week. On a more personal level, I have a kind of “ambient intimacy” (@leisa is responsible for that term) with my family. I learn small details about the day my wife and kids are having, and am closer than I have been in years (on a day to day basis) with my one brother who tweets regularly. I learn small details that I’d never think to ask about.”
Does AllTop.com benefit a lot from Twitter?
Guy Kawasaki: “This is like asking if Hawaii benefits from the surf or Aspen from the snow. Twitter is making Alltop. The Twitter community suggests topics, suggests feeds for the topics, and then spreads the word about Alltop. Alltop wouldn’t be nearly what it is without Twitter.”
How has Twitter helped/changed Mashable?
Pete Cashmore: “Twitter is both a blessing and a curse to bloggers. It has dramatically increased the speed with which news travels, but it also makes our job – filtering through that information – a greater challenge. It creates more signal, but also more noise. It spurns conversations around blogs, but makes those conversations more widely dispersed. Most of all, it provides immediate feedback on our content in a way that wasn’t possible before.”
What would your number one tip be for people wanting to get the most out of Twitter?
Darren Rowse: “I think the key thing is to be useful, add value and to ‘give’ to your network. The more I put into Twitter the more that comes back to me. Those that I see consistently ‘taking’ from or ‘using’ Twitter tend to become ostracized by the wider Twitter community.”
You obviously don’t follow everyone who follows you. How do you decide who is worthy?
Chris Coyier: “I have a soft cap of about 300 people to follow. Even that is too many most days. If I know someone in real life or they are good friends outside of Twitter, that’s an automatic in. Otherwise it’s solely based on if I think you tweet interesting things, which I can see from your Twitter homepage. It does make me feel guilty in a weird way sometimes, having 10x more followers than people I follow, but there is nothing I can do about that while still keeping Twitter useful for me.”
Do you prefer the speed and instant feedback of Twitter over blogging?
Damien Mulley: “I think Twittering and blogging are entirely different. They’re both personal and transparent communicating but then they’re much different on how that’s done. Twitter is that whole Blink thing Malcolm Gladwell talked about. Quick, almost subconscious reactions to things whereas blogging generally means there’s more work and consideration going into your writing. It’s probably a but more reflective. I do like Twitter for the way news and thoughts are spread at the speed of light.”
Who Next?
So where is the limit? With the likes of Shaquille O’Neal using Twitter, will you now be able to ask his advice on your dribbling skills? Social media has largely demolished any form of hierarchy in communication, creating a new route straight to the top, allowing anyone to communicate effectively with anyone. The world is now a global chat room with everyone having richer conversations, not hindered by any form of social hierarchy. This also brings up the idea that individuals have become more confident with the arrival of social media and the Internet. People famously fainted everywhere Elvis went in the 1950s, unable to comprehend his superior status. If Elvis were alive in 2009 and had a Facebook page, it’s reasonably apparent that we wouldn’t have any qualms about poking him.
People may argue that social media isn’t ‘real’; you aren’t ‘really’ talking to MC Hammer when you send him a message through the Internet, but it’s simply the next step in communication for the human race. The world reluctantly adopted the phone in the last century and surely the first people to lift a receiver didn’t believe they were actually talking to another person hundreds of miles away? That wasn’t ‘real’ contact for them, however nowadays no one could argue that a phone call isn’t one of the most natural forms of connecting with someone.
So my advice is to just get out there and start engaging with the ‘bigwigs’ of the Internet. They are real people too and many of the smartest ones are engaging regularly with their audiences. By using fantastic resources like Twitter to their full potential you too can speak to the experts in your industry.
Just ‘@’ them and see what happens.
