Posts tagged as:

Twitterstream

Forget Streamtime: Preliminary Impressions of Twitter and the Real-Time Web

by Daria Steigman on August 3, 2010

I’ve been looking at my Twitterstream in real time since Thursday morning. Unlike the streamtime approach we’ve become used to, real time has no updates. It is a non-stop stream. Instant-ness. Immediacy.

In a blog post aptly titled Trialling Twitter at the Speed of Wow, TweetDeck opened up an experimental version of its desktop app to a handful of accounts. I was lucky to nab one, and so I thought I’d share my first (very preliminary) impressions.

1. Much as our brains have had to learn to process growing amounts of information in streamtime, real time will force us once again to readjust how we process information. I’m not sure yet whether this process will be iterative or require new systems and tools.

2. Without the “chunking” of tweets (via timed stream updates), it’s easier than ever to miss key information–so setting up TweetDeck notifications for mentions and DMs is more important than ever.

3. You can once again pull in replies to people you don’t follow from people you do. This is a huge step to restoring the ambient discovery Twitter took away 15 months ago.

4. We’re following a lot more people than we were 15 months ago, and somehow we’ve gotten accustomed to the quieted stream. I’ve been experimenting with the new functionality restored sometimes–and sometimes silenced when the volume of tweets streaming by gets overwhelming.

5. I’d like to see Twitter (or TweetDeck and other app developers) create a tool that lets me selectively follow the public replies of some people in my Twitterstream without having to pull in all of them. A list that I can shape and reshape to fit what matters to me over time.

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7 Deadly Sins of Bad Speakers

by Daria Steigman on March 24, 2010

[Note: This post originally appeared on IABC's Communications World blog.]

It can hard to hold a room these days. Between the Twitterstream and the BackChannel, and our relentless need to surf as we learn, keeping your audience alert and engaged requires skill, smarts, and a great presentation.

While not every speaker can be a rock star, there’s no excuse for not doing your homework. Yet, time and time again, speakers screw up the basics.

Here’s my list of the seven deadly sins of a bad speaker:

  • He mumbles, fumbles, and stumbles out of the gate.
  • He reads his PowerPoint, which is all text anyway.
  • He makes sweeping pronouncements, but offers no data to back them up.
  • He’s giving the same speech, with the same examples, at the third conference in a row.
  • He doesn’t bother to change the date on his handouts.
  • He forgets (or does he really?) to leave time for questions.
  • He name drops, and name drops some more.

Have I left anything out? What speaker sins have you seen?

Photo by Mauren Veras (Flickr).

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Are You Filtering Information In or Out?

by Daria Steigman on November 2, 2009

Filter Failure

Call it Web squared or just a data explosion, but the universe isn’t the only thing that’s expanding. So is the volume of information out there in bytes and megabytes.

Take Twitter, for example. When I first signed up, I wasn’t following enough people to need any group functionality. That quickly changed. So I created a “Faves” group in TweetDeck to make sure I didn’t miss tweets from the 50 or so people I interact with most or whose Twittersteams provide other value. But then that Twittersteam started to grow, so I created a second group–this time of local folks.

That’s when it hit me: by default, I’m filtering in more and more information. Whether on Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Reader, or another site, I’m increasingly looking for tools to help me receive and process–rather than avoid–the growing data stream.

What about you? How are you filtering information, and has this changed over time?

Photo by catspyjamasnz (Flickr).

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Decoding the Twitterstream

by Daria Steigman on April 20, 2009

Why is everyone’s first instinct to think that Twitter is silly and self-indulgent? Admit it, you probably felt that way once–or still do.

I’ve been pondering the Twitter start-up barrier the last few days as I pull thoughts together for a conversation I’m having on Thursday with University of Maryland PR students. And, since I’m on Twitter, I’ve been chatting with a few people on the topic.

I got a lot of clarity from this brief back-and-forth with Mary Deming Barber:

@dariasteigman Thanks for the rec. I am really enjoying the conversation on Twitter since I started connecting w good folks. #followfriday
[from @mdbarber] 12:24 PM Apr 17th from Nambu in reply to dariasteigman

@mdbarber I think that’s why it’s hard for newbies to get started. You have to figure out who to interact with, build up your community.
[from @dariasteigman] 12:27 PM Apr 17th from TweetDeck in reply to mdbarber

@dariasteigman I agree. People look at the public timeline which makes no sense. Our job now is to show them how to build the community.
[from @mdbarber] 12:33 PM Apr 17th from Nambu in reply to dariasteigman

Eureka! We all start by looking at someone else’s timeline, filled with strangers having conversations that are disengaged from us. Obviously, we can’t build a “demo” community every time we need to explain Twitter to someone — but we need to be aware of the disconnect and take steps to demonstrate why our timelines work for us.

That’s my challenge for Thursday, and for every time I talk to a student, client, prospect, or friend who gives me a blank look or rolls their eyes at the mention of a tweet.

Any ideas? What steps do you take to decode the Twitterstream?

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Have You Mapped Your Twitter Stream?

by Daria Steigman on January 7, 2009

Twitter StreamI read a very interesting post earlier today in which Matt McDonald threw out some ideas about how Twitter might monetize. One idea he suggested was to create tweet clouds that could help advertisers create targeted tweet blasts.

So here’s mine, drawn from my tweets over the last 24 hours or so.

You can also find my Twitter Stream on Wordle. (Ignore the Anonymous tag; I just clicked before I was ready. It’s really mine.)

This is just one day. Imagine if we aggregated all of a Twitter user’s data. What would your Twitter cloud say about you?

Word cloud courtesy of Wordle.

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