Bryan Person organized Social Media Breakfast 5 this morning at the venerable S&S Restaurant in Cambridge. The topic was "How Twitter changed has changed my life."
I don't know that Twitter has changed my life that much, but I have found it useful for keeping up with my West Coast friends, seeing what web sites Robert Scoble has been visiting, and in general staying on top of what's hot. More recently I've discovered that there is an active community of Twitterers in the Boston area. However, thefour-minute testimonials from Scott Monty, Doug Haslam, Jim Storer and Laura (Pistachio) Fitton taught me a number of new things, to wit:
- Twitter now has 800,000 users and an increasing number of outages.
- Twitter is a community - the more you give the more you will receive
- Use the Favorites feature so save tweets for later
- Think of the Twitter feed as a river - dip into it but don't try to drink all of it
- The @username convention can be used to send messages to people who are not following you. (
I just tried this and it may just be an urban legendYou need to look in the Replies tab - see Bryan Person's comment below.) - Use Tweetscan to see what anyone has tweeted on any topic.
- Twitter Karma is a Flash app that lets you manage your friends and followers, including bulk following.
- You can get reports on LA freeway accidents at twitter.com//LAFD.
- Don't worry if you don't have Twitter Equilibrium - it's not personal if everyone you follow doesn't follow you.
- Club 140 tracks who has sent tweets that are a "perfect" 140 characters in length.
- There are a lot of wikis and blogs that provide information for newbies and advanced users:
I met a librarian who send out a tweet when she is at her desk in the library. Send her a tweet and she will look stuff up for you.
Flickr stream: socialmediabreakfast, smb5
Steve Garfield streamed live video from his Nokia N95-3 using Qik. Steve also suggested checking out Flixwagon.
