With Mark’s approval, I set up a Twitter account for Carnival of the Blue. I expect most folks reading this blog already know about the best monthly blog carnival for ocean bloggers. But I hope Twitter will be a way to attract more attention to our collective effort. And maybe, just maybe, we can get the likes of Miriam and Mark to join Twitter too.
If you have any suggestions on how best to handle the social aspect of running a Twitter account for CotB, let me know. Except for obvious spammers, I reckon it’ll be easiest just to follow anyone who follows the CotB account.
The background for the CotB Twitter page is adapted from a template at Twitterbacks.com. The white shark photo is adapted from Flickr user pterantula/Terry Goss.
- Twitter.com: carnivalblue
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I’ll twitter when you all share your amazing time management skills. Seriously, between blogs and Facebook, how do you fit in Twitter? I don’t have a snazzy internet phone, so that’s not an option.
Use Twitter anyway you want. It’s still too new and raw to have any normative behavior. Twitter (and social networks in general) do not scale well. I codified my decision tree for handling Twitter followers here. It worked well for the first 100-200 people. But as Twitter becomes more popular the only thing I can do to keep up is to block the obvious spammers. Spammers usually have a following to follower ratio of 1000:1. Being a social network friend is not the same as being a friend friend or a friend friend friend. It is a euphemism because these relationships are novel and we lack the vocabulary to describe them more accurately.
Sorry, just some unnecessary peer pressure directed your way. We think your blog is grand and just wish there were more bits of Oyster Garter shedding off onto the Net for us to filter feed.
So how do I keep up? Being sedentary helps. Some days I can almost feel the byssal threads adhering me to the chair in front of my laptop. I currently use Twitterific + Growl on my Mac for most tweeting. Others swear by Twhirl or Tweetdeck. Having an iPhone helps, but isn’t really necessary. I rarely use the actual Twitter web interface. My other tip for managing it all is to eschew Facebook whenever possible.
But if you think of Oyster Garter as your brand, then social networks like Twitter are just the useful, ciliary filaments you can fling out to draw in more nutritious particles (readers) to your real palps (blog). It is not a bad idea to stake a user id in as many networks as you can (digg, stumbleupon, facebook, youtube, etc.), even if you don’t have time right now to develop them. I suppose it could be considered cynically, but it is just more arrows pointing to your virtual door. And by joining and using the networks, you at least have a little control over which way those arrows point.
As for purpose of Twitter, this video does a decent job of explaining some of the gist:
Twitter in Plain English – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddO9idmax0o
One of the realities of living in a digital world is dealing with new interfaces and means of communicating on a daily basis. It is easy to get fatigued and overwhelmed by it all. Also, it is OK not to join.
Hur hur. You said palps. So do you think it’s necessary to use Twitter interactively – that is, to read other people’s Tweets? Or do you think it’s ok to just fling off bits of blogular debris to be nibbled upon by the Twittering masses? It’s the interactive part that intimidates me.
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