Networking on Social Sites - Twitter.com Spotlight

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Developers:

Regardless of who you are... you network every day.

You have your circle of friends, acquaintances, and family members.

When you go to a family gathering, a business party, or a community event... you network.

You see people you haven't seen in some time... you drift from one person to another... to a group of people off in their own corner of the room... to the center of activity of the event.

The Internet provides many places to do the same thing... from the comfort of your own home. You can sit and chat with many people all at the same time... just by watching your fingers dance on the keyboard and intently watching your computer screen for a response to a comment or a question, or an update that you haven't heard about.

Most of you have used or have at least heard of some of the internet web sites that enable you to secretly sit in your bathrobe while you are carrying on the most dignified conversation a person can have with your local congressman, pastor, grocer, boss, employees, coworkers, grandparent or children.

Early in the internet age... there were bulletin boards, discussion groups, newsgroups, etc.... where you could find and/or exchange information with those who utilized these internet resources.

Now there is FaceBook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Classmates, Google, and many others. But tonight... I want to tell you about the social networking internet website called Twitter.

I was invited to join by a favorite internet marketing consultant I've been "studying." Or as you would say while on the Twitter web site... "following."

As soon as I signed up for my free membership... I checked it out and found it to be a great resource!

There was no hesitation... in spite of twitter's growing pains... their membership seems to be growing in leaps and bounds. I believe it is expanding so fast that the computer wizards behind the blue curtain are having a hard time keeping the gremlins out of the computer gears.

Some of my early information on twitter seems to have disappeared, and some of my followers have vanished into a virtual reality never-never-land. Who is to say I'll never see them again?

But in my mind... the benefits outweigh the (temporary) hardships by a ton. I see the site as a great resource. It is a think-tank, a market opinion place, a mentoring resource, an information exchange, and more... all rolled into one web site.

In exchange... most want you to look at what they are working on... regardless of who you are or what type of work you do, or what type of environment you grew up or are in at the moment. They could be tweeting about their next informational product... or seminar... or book.

Sometimes you get the chance to find out stuff that no one else knows about yet... like the earthquake that occurred yesterday in Southern California. I was barely signed in on twitter when I started seeing messages and photos of the event as it was happening... first person stories and information. Today, the Los Angeles Times published an article about twitter and the earthquake.

Your personality shows through in your messages. However, twitter forces you to make your messages short... 140 characters or less... otherwise more than one update is needed. Anyone who knows me can tell you... 140 characters or less is a challenge to me.

It is also a place to gain trust in those who share freely whatever information you are looking for. Or... from your cell phone... instead of sending a text message to each person you know... it is one place you can send a message so any curious family members (or concerned friends) will know what you are doing when you want to share that info.

I asked several twitterville citizens what they thought about twitter and how it is benefiting them. Then I asked the general population of twitterland how twitter is improving their personal, business and social lives.

Many people told me they would provide me a quote, but only two stepped up and followed through with their offers. Some did not get the request at all because of twitter's growing pains. I know I am missing some of my early discussions. It's all good though.

You can see that MichaelDWalker aka http://twitter.com/MichaelDWalker and JeanetteJoy aka http://twitter.com/JeanetteJoy sent me their comments about how useful Twitter is to them. (Click on the ScreenShot images to see what they wrote.)

There are many opportunities during our lives to share our time, talents and skills. We just have to use what we have at the moment to get the most productive results. And there are plenty of ways to get very productive results on twitter. You just have to look... or take the time to find out where to look.

Take for instance... a milestone in my stepping stone to building my internet presence on twitter... achieving 100 followers felt good.

[2/23/2009 Update: I just now took a look and noticed there are 1,084 twitterzens currently following me.]

More than likely, there must have been a reason why I had problems with a computer program on my computer: Last night's scheduled posting of this article was too early for me to have captured my 100 followers achievement for you to see.

My screenshot program mysteriously started working this evening. As you can see for yourself.

I could go on and on about the benefits of twitter, but you need to check it out for yourself.

When you get there... follow me... and my followers... and who I'm following. Just click here or copy and paste http://twitter.com/gfb3 into your URL area and sign up.

Until next time...

Girard Frank Bolton, III.
The Developers Advocate
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