Dopp Juice Archive

I’m hearing more and more confused questions about Twitter. People are on it, but they’re not quite sure what they’re doing here, and what’s up with these weirdos they don’t know who are suddenly following them? Relax. Twitter is a good thing. And it gets to be pretty much whatever you want it to be. Here are some more tips from my angle on the tool (there are a bazillion more out there, so please comment with yours).

Get Perspective

If you’re new to Twitter and baffled, start with this plain-english video by Common Craft. No one, to date, has been able fully to explain Twitter. But this comes close.

Get Pings as they Happen

By default, you’ll see your replies by clicking the “Reply” tab and you’ll get Direct Messages in your inbox. I’m having both of those sent to my phone as text messages so I can see them as they happen. Here’s how I did that:

1. I went to Settings -> Phone & IM, set up my phone, and turned Device Updates to “On” (not to “direct message”. You’ll see why in a second.)
2. I went through each person I was following and made sure I had Notifications set to “Off” (cuz I don’t want everyone’s tweets coming into my phone. Fortunately, “Off” is the default when you add someone new, so you might not have to do this.)
3. I went to my phone and sent “track sarahdopp” to the Twitter number (404040 in the U.S.) This means that every time the string “sarahdopp” shows up in a Twitter message, I hear about it right away. 95% of the time, it’s an “@” reply. (I’m fortunate that that my Twitter name is unique enough to do this.)

Voila. Direct Messages and Replies straight to the cell phone. Bonus tip: When you’re at a big event like SXSW, switch your favorite friends’ Notifications to “On” so you’re also finding out what parties they’re going to right away, as they twitter about them. Then turn them back “Off “when you go home.

Get a Grip on Your Goals

If you’re using Twitter as a…

…mini blog, then don’t feel pressured to join in on the constant “@ reply” conversations, and keep your content in your style. Keep an eye on your Twitter profile page and make sure your “face to the world” is representing you. Be appreciative of the strangers who follow you and don’t feel obligated to follow them back. Follow the people whose content you care about, and try to ignore the background noise without criticizing it. People will appreciate the quality of your posts.

...community-building tool, then stay aware of what other people are writing and be consistently present for them. When someone messages or replies to you, respond right away. If you do it with an “@ reply,” you’ll give them public props and they’ll appreciate that. If you’re trying to welcome new people, then consider following the people who follow you (here’s a hint though: if they’re following 800 people and only 3 people are following them, you can probably write them off as “spam”). Be extra respectful and extra helpful, and people will take care of you.

…way to stay in touch , then be there for your friends and ignore everything else. Post about what your friends will care about, try to post with about as much frequency and “@ replies” as your friends use, and don’t feel obligated to follow anyone who’s not your friend. If it creeps you out when strangers follow you, then switch your posts to private. If you don’t mind being a little bit “on stage” with your life, then let them watch but just pretend they’re not there. Or picture them in their underwear.

If you have one of these styles, and some of the people you follow have different styles, that’s okay! You’re both right! Respect the differences! If you don’t like watching their tweets, then unfollow them. Simple as that.

Get Convenience

First thing’s first: make sure you can post from your cell phone. It will change your life. Then figure out how you want to see your friends’ tweets.

If you like living in your browser and you want to minimize distractions, use the Twitter.com site. It’s pretty awesome.

If you’re on an Intel Mac or using Vista and you want to keep an eye on your tweets as you work, get Twhirl. (It’s a two-part download. Just follow the instructions.)

If you’re on an older Mac, use Twitterific. (I also have this set up to update my Skype profile with my latest tweet.)

If you’re on an iPhone, try Thincloud or Pocket Tweets.

If I didn’t list your machine (or if you just want more choices than this), check the list of apps. There are a lot. A lot. A lot.

Get More Tips

I feel like I haven’t even scratched the surface here. But these guys dig a little deeper, so if you want more tips, start here: http://twitter.pbwiki.com/

Unless you’ve been following my twitter feed or partying in Austin, TX, you haven’t heard much from me in the last week. That’s because my laptop died a horrific logic board death in Oakland Airport, just before I boarded my flight to SXSW. Emails and blogging quickly became a thing of the past, and I resigned myself to in-person interactions and text message documentation. Now I’m back online with a cheap desktop PC while the Apple store continues to try to fix my baby, and I’ve got a week’s worth of epiphanies and adventures to blog about. So here’s the abridged version.

What’s SXSW?

SXSW (pronounced “South By Southwest”) is actually three different festivals that happen all at once in Austin every March. Most famous is the Music festival, where every band who’s any band comes to town and plays a show. Then there’s the Film festival, where all the top independent films of the year screen their glories. And there’s also the Interactive festival, which no one except us geeks actually knows about, because Music and Film are far more glamorous. It’s all one big 5-day party of brilliance with exceptional speakers and wild nightlife and the most fun many geeks get to have all year long.

What did I learn?

Here were some of my major “Aha!” moments from the panels and conversations.

From Kathy Sierra on wooing users…

• A successful website is one that makes a user feel like they are awesome.
• Adding randomness to a situation increases the chances for serendipity, which increases the chances that people will think an experience was perfect and was meant to be.
• Since lots of people still think the Internet is a “totally lame waste of time,” a successful website will give its users an easy way to defend their use of that waste of time to friends and family.
• The iPhone is awesome because its animations replicate the laws of real physics.
• A successful website will enable people to do something really cool really quickly. Minimize the learning curve for experiencing gratification.
• There are no dumb answers. Encourage people in your organization to answer questions, and keep encouraging them if they don’t give the right ones. A culture of answers is a culture of support.
• Jargon is valuable — it’s a rich language that passionate members of a community use to talk with one another efficiently and effectively. Don’t insist on not using jargon in order to make newbies feel more comfortable. Instead, create a space for newbies that is separate from the jargon users.

More brilliance…

• Parents need to realize that “TV time” and “Internet time” are as different as “TV time” and “reading a book.” Don’t lump it all into “screen time.” (Henry Jenkins)
• The best thing you can do for your health this year is see a therapist. Instead of forcing yourself to go to the dentist (or eat better, or exercise more, or meditate regularly), get some help on unpacking your unconscious avoidance of it. (Kathryn Myronuk)
• True anonymity on the web is not a realistic goal. Whatever you do under a pseudonym, you should accept right now that someday it may be attached to your real name. (Sex and Privacy Panel)
• Marketing is the price you pay for creating mediocre products. (via Tara Hunt)
• “Social gestures beget social objects which beget social markers.” (Hugh McLeod)
• You’re only going to execute on 10% of your ideas, so give the other 90% away for free. It shows people that you have them. (Jeremiah Owyang)
• If you have a startup with a small user base, now is the best time to put energy into answering every question personally and convey that they matter to you. Don’t just put up an FAQ. (Deb Schultz)
• Don’t treat users like they’re stupid. Explain what your service is going to do for them, not how it works. (Leslie Chicoine)

And epiphanies overheard by others…

• Drupal is like getting a dump truck full of legos.
• You can’t control the information that’s out there on the internet about you. But you can curate it.

I’m also honored (no wait, that’s not the right word…) to have witnessed the Zuckerberg-Lacy keynote trainwreck and ensuing analysis. I’ll let the other tech pundits give you their analysis on that one. (Or you can just watch it here.)

The panels were brilliant as usual (especially if you picked them by speakers rather than by titles). But the real focus for me this year was the partying. I was out until 3am every night (except for that last night when I was out until, um, 7am) laughing and dancing and feeling alive and revived among “my people.” This is, arguably, what makes SXSW so special. If all you want to do is talk about technology, there are plenty of opportunities to do so that don’t involve getting on an airplane. But for a whole bunch of geeks to show up in one place equally inconvenient to New York, LA, Chicago, and Silicon Valley and create meaningful experiences with people who do what they do… that’s juice of what matters.

And frankly, I’m pretty sure that when geeks party, the Internet becomes a better place.

Tomorrow I will get on a plane and fly to Austin, TX for a week. I’ll be staying with some friends from high school and joining in the city-wide celebration of Spring Break for Geeks, aka SXSW Interactive. I did this last year and it was an extraordinary event… but one person made it extra special: the homicidal drunk rocker who sat next to me on the flight there.

I didn’t blog this story publicly when it happened because it was too close to the event. But now it’s “that time of year” again, and I’m starting to feel nostalgic for my angry seatmate. And I think enough time has passed that the story can be told.

So here’s what happened….

I had just boarded my flight to Austin and was quietly celebrating the fact that I had an empty seat beside me. The doors to the airplane were closing and we were getting ready for takeoff. That’s when I saw him — pushing his way onto the airplane at the last minute. He was wearing sunglasses and his dirty hair was pushed forward on his face. With his dirty tan coat, hard suitcase, and pinstripe pants, he looked like a 70’s rockstar. He was walking recklessly close to the person in front of him and whacked my shoulder hard with his suitcase as he passed by. All of the window and aisle seats were taken, and the flight attended asked him to choose a middle seat. He did a quick scan of the people around him, locked eyes with the bald girl in the black leather jacket, pointed to the seat beside me, and said, “I’m sitting there.”

I broke the ice by asking what time zone Texas was in, and he quickly became kind and friendly. Twitchy, though. A little nervous and angry about something. Depressed. He got to talking and some mentioned family issues, and then quickly added that he didn’t want to talk about them. But he wanted to talk, so I put on my best “attentive listener” face.

Within an hour, I learned that he was flying to Austin to kill his brother-in-law and then kill himself. But not in so many words. He tip-toed around it, giving references to the Godfather and shooting me knowing looks. His brother-in-law was his “best friend in the whole word,” but the dude was mistreating his sister and threatening to leave her, and my airplane buddy didn’t tolerate people messing with his family. He repeated Godfather allusions over and over, and told me he “might not be long for this world.” He was conflicted. He didn’t know what to do. “There’s no rulebook for these sorts of things,” he mumbled. I accepted this information the same way I would if he had just told me he was an accountant.

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