A way to make Twitter better
I *almost* love Twitter. I use it sporadically to either fill a bit of time or to buoy a moment of low brain activity. It has never taken a consistent place in my day. I just figured out why.
The Problem
Twitter is great for following colleagues and professionals who use it to disseminate interesting articles, resources, facts, etc... It is also great for keeping up with some details of friends lives. It can be frustrating, however, when you log in and find dozens of posts about the personal side of your professional contacts. It gums up the works and causes interesting tweets to drop well below the fold (or several ajax folds).
A Solution
Add a personal / professional switch for each tweet. This tweet is personal... this one is professional. On the reader's side, we have the simple ability to filter our stream. "I just want to see the professional tweets." *Click*
The draw of Twitter is simplicity, so I'm trying to add as little extra complication as I can imagine. Some people may never use it and many will probably chronically mis-tag their tweets, another good hearted tech eccentricity to quip about in podcasts and on blogs.
Taking this a step farther. Twitter could completely voluntarily add the ability to tag tweets with any sort of boolean, or even category-type tags. I know this breaks their wall of 'everything in the tweet' and that the # tag is their gift to the universe for this sort of thing. These solutions, however, would allow those tweeters who want to use it to create more in-depth semantics in their tweets, which would allow those readers who want to sift through the noise the ability to do so.
[Update: Twitter is moving in this direction with Annotations:http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/what_twitter_annotations_mean.php -http://apiwiki.twitter.com/Annotations-Overview. The only question is how these will be integrated into the popular UIs to drive behavior. Looking forward to seeing how this plays out.]
Startup Success on Social Media with Steve Rubel
Bob and Pat talk with Social Media and PR thought leader Steve Rubel on the changing roles of blogging, social media, public relations, and advertising. Steve talks frankly about both the role of social media in business and his consulting in that field.
I find it particularly interesting because this is a realistic breath of fresh air from the social mania that has been sweeping the tech world. I have done some minimal social consulting and execution as a line item on greater web development projects. It is incredible easy to scan the surface, look at the number of fans or followers and shift around whichever version of the omnipresent share link we decided to use. For our efforts, which admittedly were always a distant second to the creation of the site itself, we saw little or now measurable results.
Steve frames the social world as communication and talks through some thought processes on *almost* measurable results that his company is working toward with real clients. He rather humbly discusses some of his own successes and abandoned ideas framing his work as one part of a larger company's strategy. It's a refreshing interview, because there are no easy answers, which is the way it is.
Startup Success has been one of my favorite business podcasts for over a year now. If you haven't heard the show and are into this sort of thing, I recommend starting from Episode 1 and listening to the entire run.
http://startuppodcast.wordpress.com/2010/06/09/show-70-steve-rubel-on-the-evolution-of-social-media/