A Twitter experiment — part 2

I started with 20 names—people whose books and sites had some influence on my own development as a Flash and website developer. Just over half of them were Flash people. Of the 20, how many would I find on Twitter?

The results surprised me:

What does it mean? If nothing else, it shows significant participation by people whom I’d describe as knowledgeable and influential in the world of website design and development. God knows there are many more options online than any of us have time for. A lot of folks might play with Twitter for a few days or weeks, but most of my test group who are on Twitter seem to be regular users.

I’d call it a pretty strong show of support from a group that knows the Internet intimately.

And, yes, I did sign up as a “follower” to the 12. A few of them are now following me. The experiment continues.

A Twitter experiment — part 1

Right. I was saying Twitter turned out to be surprisingly useful. Lately I’ve been following a few people who have a sincere interest and involvement in advertising and every day they come up with a few links or observations that I normally would have missed.

140 — Twitter’s character limitSo I began to wonder about other people I might like to follow. Would it be as easy as thinking, “Ooh, [insert name of well-known person here], I bet s/he’s good on Twitter”? Face it—most people probably couldn’t be bothered. Then again, there are probably some interest groups with a much higher likelihood of taking part.

I’m into website development and standards, Internet usability, and Flash programming. I’ve been following some thought leaders in these areas for years. How many names can I list right off the top of my head? How likely is it they’d be on Twitter too?

Here’s the first set of names I came up with:

That’s 20. Seemed like enough to start with. And so far I’ve checked the first 10 on Twitter. How many did I find there? Are they active?

Tomorrow.

Hey, I just noticed. All 20 of the people listed up there are male. What’s up with that? I don’t think it’s me. Is it?

Twitter reconsidered

TwitterWhen I first heard of Twitter, and for months afterward, my reaction was simple—sounds like a real waste of time. A 140-character limit. What’s that, two or three sentences? I mean, who the hell cares most of the time what you’re doing at this very minute? It didn’t help that most of the examples I heard seemed to focus on the trivial. “I’m having a Quarter Pounder at McDonald’s. With fries and a Coke. Yum!”

Give me a break.

Then I read something or somebody said something. I don’t remember who or what, but it made me reconsider. Whatever, I thought I’d dive in and give Twitter a chance. For the first week I twittered several times a day, but then I tapered off to once or twice a day. I have a few followers, mostly people I know. They follow me, I follow them, and we’re all pretty sporadic.

If that’s all there was to it, Twitter wouldn’t be anything special for me. But after a few weeks, I started following a selection of folks involved in the ad industry, people I don’t know but who were quite active on Twitter and who, it turned out, often made observations that really helped me in my work as a Flash developer for an ad agency. It might be a link to a website or a blog post, or comments on a new commercial or advertising campaign. Whatever, it involved me in a wider world of advertising than I was exposed to in my day-to-day work.

Little things here and there. Nudges. There’s stuff to learn and to be excited about. And it’s fun.

Now I have an experiment in mind.