I frequently come across developers that scoff at Twitter as a waste of time and a cesspool where productivity goes to die amongst the social media “experts.” Yes, it is definitely those things, but it doesn’t have to be. Here is how I use Twitter to maximize its professional value.
Unfollow/don’t follow people whose tweets bother you.
The great thing about Twitter is that relationships are one-way. You’re in total control of what content you subject yourself to. You should never feel obligated to follow someone that follows you or is notorious.
When I look at someone’s profile trying to decide if I should follow them I look for a few things:
- Mostly original content. Frequent retweeters that don’t add value or insight are out. If I see more than ~25% of your recent tweets are retweets, I’m likely to skip following.
- Content relevant to my profession. If you are using Twitter as a platform for your political/religious/other viewpoints, I’m probably going to pass. I’ve got my views, you’ve got yours and we’re probably not going to change each other’s minds so lets just stay away from it.
- Using Twitter where Facebook would be better suited. Related to #2, if you’re using Twitter to give me the blow by blow of your day and I don’t know you personally, you’re not providing much value to me. Facebook is great for this kind of stuff and if you want to know more intimate details of my life (and you don’t, trust me), add me as a friend there. Twitter isn’t the ‘what’, it’s the ‘why’.
- People who prefix replies. This is particularly a problem in the .NET community. I understand people are disappointed Twitter removed the option to view all replies but prefixing only makes the issue worse. I can’t click on a link to the replied-to Tweet to follow the conversation so now you’re just cluttering my stream with portions of a conversation I can’t expose the rest of. I’m probably the most lenient with this rule especially with more prominent people.
Put the tools to work.
Once you start following a lot of people, the web interface and simple clients like Twhirl, Witty, etc. just don’t scale to handle the workload. I needed a way to extract the most relevant tweets from the people I follow. In the latest version of TweetDeck they added groups that you can sync with the iPhone version. This makes a huge difference.
From the people I follow, I’ve selected a subset of them to be included in my main reading list. This list contains the people I follow who consistently tweet high-quality content. I read it frequently throughout the day. When I have a little more time to browse, I scroll over to the ‘Everyone’ list and see what else is going on. As I start to recognize consistently high-quality tweets in the Everyone list, I move them over to the main list. This lets me loosen up a bit on my rules for following AND follow conversations. It’s sort of a compromise between viewing all replies and viewing just those to people I follow.
Best of all, TweetDeck syncs the groups to my iPhone so I get the same reading experience on my two primary devices. TweetDeck has a lot of deficiencies and UI quirks, but the sync’d group settings are such a killer feature that I’m willing to deal with those issues.
I never used to think I’d be able to follow more than 30 people and get any value out of Twitter but the combination of a well-curated follower list and the proper tools I’ve been able to ramp up the number of people I follow while maintaining a good signal-to-noise ratio without any additional time commitment.
Related: How to not abuse your Twitter followers
If you don’t care about Twitter, see you next week. It seems like every Twitter blog post I come across is immediately barraged with anti-Twitter sentiment so if that’s what you’re planning on doing, save your keystrokes. I promise I won’t write about it often. That’s what Twitter is for.
Twitter is still relatively new and as such there isn’t a lot of precedent for good and bad behavior, especially for businesses. I have some recent experiences about the right way to use Twitter for your company, and the wrong way.
First the wrong way. If you’re a Mac enthusiast you’re probably familiar with MacHeist. They bundle a bunch of software together, sell it for a big discount and then give a portion of it to charity. The more people buy, the more software that’s included in the bundle. Neat system. For the recent MacHeist 3 there was an additional software package you could get if you sent out a tweet to your followers promoting MacHeist. I had probably a dozen of those come through my Twitter stream before I added a filter in TweetDeck to hide any more of them.
There’s a lot wrong with this situation. Those tweets were essentially paid advertisements that MacHeist was extorting out of people in exchange for a popular piece of software. This is tantamount to spam. Imagine Twitter didn’t exist and you got an email from a half dozen of your friends from an automated system with a standard message provided by MacHeist. There is no doubt you would consider this spam. Why is it different on Twitter?
This is the problem with how many companies are approaching Twitter. They see it as another broadcast medium when in actuality, it’s a distributed conversation platform. So if you’re a business you should use Twitter to engage in conversations with your current or potential customers.
So here’s the right way. A few months ago I complained about Telerik controls ruining my day. Shortly there after I received an email from one of the cofounders of Telerik asking me if I would care to elaborate and that he was sorry his product has ruined my day. I wrote back outlining my issues with the r.a.d. controls and after a little back and forth we were able to work out the issues we were having. The latest version is really not so bad and is markedly better than the version we had.
Ideally, the Telerik conversation would have taken place out in the open on Twitter, but despite that not being the case, there was a happy ending.
So if you’re a company looking to use Twitter to your advantage you have two options. You can become a slimy spammer and get the resulting negative PR, or you can directly converse with your customers and leave them with a favorable view of you (so much so I was compelled to blog about the experience). Which would you prefer?
I’m a Windows guy and I’m not ashamed of it. Despite the problems it has (and what software package doesn’t have problems?) it has been a productive and profitable platform to build a career on. I don’t have anything against other platforms either. Whatever works for you, go use it. Someday I will be cool enough to own a Mac :).
So even though I’m a Windows user, I’m a technology enthusiast at my core so I’m always up for trying new things. A loooonnng time ago (probably 9-10 years ago in my late teens) I set up Linux on a spare machine to see what the fuss was about. I tried Red Hat. I tried Mandriva. Once I got it installed I didn’t know what to do with it. It was nice enough, but it just didn’t grab me. This was also pre-Firefox so the Internet browsing experience was subpar. The biggest hurdle though was installing programs, if I could even find one to do what I wanted. Package managers were sparse and compiling from source was well beyond my capabilities at the time.
Fast forward a few years and I was churning out web sites with ASP/VBScript and some PHP and this new thing called Ruby on Rails came out. I, like many others, was wowed by the famous “build a blog in 20 minutes” video so I got it up and running on my machine but didn’t do anything with it because I was a scripter not a programmer and learning Ruby was well beyond my capabilities at the time.
I’ve been a professional programmer now for 3.5 years. I worked as a sysadmin for a couple years. I’ve used Mac OS a lot more. To save time, let’s just say I’d consider myself a seasoned computer guy with a broad understanding of How Things Work and the ability to figure out almost any new thing. Or so I thought.
I’ve been wanting to learn a new programming language for awhile now. I really like C# and feel I have a pretty good grasp on it so I thought it was time to broaden my horizons. Ruby and Python are en vogue right now and have some philosophical differences from C# so I thought I’d try to learn some Ruby (and Rails along with it). I have an old ThinkPad T60 I just retired so instead of setting up Rails on Windows (which was not that great of an experience the first time around) I decided to go with Linux on the T60. Ubuntu seems to be all the rage lately so I burn the CD and it installs beautifully. No driver issues, in fact, not a single install issue. Awesome! We’re off to a great start.
Time to get Rails installed. I figured the software installing experience had to be better than 10 years ago. It is, but barely. Look what it takes to get Rails installed. Are you serious? I went through all this and encountered a couple errors along the way that I was able to solve with some lengthy Googling. I know what you’re thinking “Lame Windows dude wants a GUI.” Yeah that’d be nice, but I’d settle for an apt-get one-liner. RubyGems appears to be the solution for this, but getting that installed and configured was not exactly straightforward either.
I eventually got it running. In the process of trying to get all the packages installed and configured I had no idea what version of what was installed or how to uninstall Ruby 1.9 after accidentally installing it. I didn’t want to run into some conflict down the road because I had the wrong versions installed.
Worst of all, I felt like I was wasting tons of time configuring everything just to get going and I had no way to really verify I was doing anything right. This feeling would be mitigated with experience so I’m not blaming the platform for that feeling, just pointing out my experience.
With Rails up and running I thought I’d try to find a text editor or IDE with some basic Rails support to at least provide a little structure for messing around with it. Googling around I come across RubyMine but that’s not in the Ubuntu package manager and downloading and installing (still after all these years just an afterthought) requires Java, which is in the package manager. Download Java and try again. No go. This was about the point I had enough with trying out Rails.
Here’s my advice if you want to try Rails: buy a Mac and TextMate.
Not wanting to entirely give up on things, I recalled that there were some big Mono releases earlier in the day. I try following some steps with apt-get to get MonoDevelop 2. No go. Tried the package manager and ended up with MonoDevelop 1. I have no idea what version of the Mono core is installed anyway. Download from the Mono site? Yeah, not so much. Ubuntu, even though it’s the most popular distro, doesn’t have a supported download. So much for that.
How is it after all these years the Linux software install experience is still so awful? Are my expectations unrealistic? Am I still too dumb to get all this stuff? I really wanted to like Linux/Ubuntu/Rails/Ruby/etc and to be energized by learning something new, but apparently I’m just not ready for that yet.
I recorded a short screencast on how to set up a Windows instance on Amazon EC2. I didn’t use a script so I stutter a little bit, so I apologize for that. It’s 6:30 long and weighs in at about 14.5MB.
View The Screencast
How big a geek do you have to be to feel bummed about letting a domain name registration lapse because you haven’t had a need for it in years? Well, that’s how big a geek I am. In 1998 I registered wiseguysonline.com to be used for my software, web development and computer repair company. It was the first domain I ever registered and I believe it cost $35/year from Network Solutions. It served me well for years but that’s now two businesses ago and I haven’t used the domain for anything since 2001 or 2002. The domain expires tomorrow and for the first time, I’m not going to renew it. So long friend, enjoy being parked by some shady squatter.
Back when I posted my initial thoughts on the iPhone I said the following:
No iChat?!?! Are you kidding me? Giving SMS an iChat interface just doesn’t do it for me. The device needs instant messaging. This is the killer feature for my Sidekick. Only providing SMS for real-time messaging is inadequate. Without presence management and contact with external networks (i.e. anyone you want to chat with not using a cell phone), the iPhone is incomplete. Considering the data network they need to have for web browsing and such is already in place, this seems like a gross oversight to me.
And guess what? If SMS is a good enough real-time communications method for you, you’re going to get gouged with text message fees. The threaded “mock iChat” nature of the iPhone’s SMS implementation will resort in people sending a TON of text messages. Only problem is you only get 200 text messages a month with all the plans! I don’t know the exact number, but I’d estimate I send 200 IMs from my Sidekick every few days. But wait, there’s good news. You can add unlimited SMS to your AT&T account for the low, low price of just $14.99 a month!
Let’s compare…
Plan
T-Mobile Sidekick: $39.99/month for 600-1000 minutes (depending on when you sign up)
Apple/AT&T iPhone: $59.99/month for 450 minutes & unlimited data
Data Plan
Sidekick: $19.99/month
iPhone: included above
Text Messages
Sidekick: Unlimited, included in data plan
iPhone: 200 included, $14.99/month for unlimited, various other packages (couldn’t find per message rate on AT&T’s web site)
Web Browsing
Sidekick: Lacking web browser, decent speed, browser works well with limited network (EDGE)
iPhone: “Real” internet…good luck with that on the EDGE network
IM
Sidekick: Unlimited Yahoo, MSN and AIM.
iPhone: Uh….
Yes, the iPhone wins with their sweet apps (Google Maps, Youtube, Email, Visual Voicemail, et al.), iPod integration, device form factor, multitouch, yada, yada, yada. But they could have really put it over the top with a knock-out data/voice/sms plan. For some reason, they’re choosing not to. To get the equivalent service that I have now, it would cost me upwards of $100/month and I still wouldn’t be able to use IM. I’d sure look cool though.
I have a feeling that the SMS message limit will go up within 2-3 months and that we’ll see iChat added as well in about the same timeframe. When that happens, I’m going to want one of these things so, so badly.
UPDATE: Here’s Apple’s official plan pricing page.
Apple FINALLY released the iPhone today and it’s pretty. I’m currently a Sidekick 3 user so I’m definitely intrigued. So far, from what i’ve read about, I can see a few issues that would prevent me from converting.
First off, I’m stuck in a ridiculously long contract with about 19 months left on it. To get out of it, it would cost me $200. Add $500 to that for the phone and that’s a pretty pricey gadget. Then I’m stuck with another two-year contract (quick rant: its bogus that they can lock you into contracts that long with devices that barely “live” that long…if you want to tie me up for two years, at least support the device the length of the contract). If Apple makes the device carrier-independent (which they can’t because of the integration with the network for things like “Visual Voicemail”), I’d be all over it in a heartbeat. While I wanted a lower price for the device, my current equivalents (SK3 & iPod 20GB Color) ran me about $550 combined so it’s right in the neighborhood. As my buddy Jeff (a fellow SK user and Apple fan)� pointed out, by the time our contracts run out we’ll be able to afford the phone. They will probably have released a few revisions and worked out the initial bugs by then, so this isn’t all bad. Especially considering…
No iChat?!?! Are you kidding me? Giving SMS an iChat interface just doesn’t do it for me. The device needs instant messaging. This is the killer feature for my Sidekick. Only providing SMS for real-time messaging is inadequate. Without presence management and contact with external networks (i.e. anyone you want to chat with not using a cell phone), the iPhone is incomplete. Considering the data network they need to have for web browsing and such is already in place,� this seems like a gross oversight to me.
I’m also not sold on the touchscreen keyboard. I have heard through a friend of a friend that works at Apple that you have to see it to believe it (remember, we were all skeptical of the iPod’s scroll wheel interface when it was launched). So until I do, I’ll reserve judgement. I would have loved to have seen it as a slider, but again I could be wrong.
OK, despite those few hang ups, the iPhone looks wicked awesome. I’d kill to be able to get down to one device for phone, IM/email/web and� music. The form factor is unbelievable. Downright sexy. The touchscreen interface is genius. The software looks� spectacular. Without ever using it I’m going to say the web browser is already the best browser on a mobile device. The email app looks solid as well. There are endless good things to say about it. And probably best of all, every phone maker is going to have to try to compete, which only bodes well for all of us gadget lovers.
