Hype is part of the online world, and Twitter has probably been hyped more than any social networking app in recent history. With a huge amount of buzz around it but a small amount of people who "get it", it was destined to be the next big thing that was (and still is) referenced in mainstream media as an example of new media that only the hip kids "get".
I hate that.
You've got to put all that hype and buzz to the side and look at Twitter for yourself to get anything out of it. And even then it's not the kind of thing that's easy to wrap your head around overnight.
One of the most repeated statements I hear about Twitter is; "at first, I thought it was pretty stupid - who cares about what I'm doing right now?" and that's exactly what I was thinking as well. But you have to think about why different groups of people may be interested in what you've got going on at any given time.
I'm not trying to write the comprehensive Twitter guide here, just documenting the same information I give my friends in the security industry when we talk about Twitter.
Friends
In a way, Twitter is about re-approaching your existing methods of communication and the ways you keep up with the people and things you care about. Currently, you have some idea what your friends are up to.
From talking on the phone to hanging out around the water cooler to email or chat, you already have SOME form of communication.
I don't know about you, but it's extremely difficult for me to take advantage of those forms of communication anymore. So - instead of each friend specifically reaching out to the other and having to replicate that effort with other friends, Twitter gives you another option.
You post what you'd like to share when it happens or when you can, and your friends receive that at a time that's convenient to them.
Professional
Just like Twitter changes the way you communicate with your friends, it can enhance the way your professional network interacts as well. Posting a quick observation on an industry topic is easy - and believe it or not people want to see it. I follow people that are movers and shakers in their respective industries and gain a lot of insight by browsing their posts. The key is to find people who either post information or are part of something that is of value to you.
I follow people from my own industry, sister industries and local industries that have nothing to do with my field. I've made valuable contacts through Twitter that would be impossible otherwise.
Local
The Raleigh - Durham area (Research Triangle Park) has a tremendous network of people who use Twitter. We've even got some folks that are superstars in the twitter-verse like @waynesutton.
In addition to all of that, there are innovative people who use Twitter among other things and come up with brilliant online ideas like 30Threads (@30THREADS ).
Use tools like the ones found on the TriangleTweetup website to search your regional area for useful groups, people and events.
Day to Day
Because Twitter is a very bare-bones concept, and relies on 3rd party apps to provide specific features that individuals want. You can spend months going through 3rd party apps to find ones that work for you, but I'll list the ones I use for you later in the post.
All the tweets (posts) from people you follow come to you in your friend's timeline in chronological order. This can be overwhelming to say the least, but your not expected to read every post. There is a way to make sure you know if someone wants you to see something specific by them putting the "@" symbol before your username. If they do that, the message will show up in your replies list. You can also filter out @/reply conversations between other people in your settings. If you want to see all replies - you see all conversations between your friends and whoever they reply to. You can choose to see only replies between friends you have or no replies at all (unless they are to you - then they go to your replies list).
Confused yet? It's not as bad as it seems.
There is also a way to share private messages with other users - if you put the letter "D" in front of the message it's treated as a direct message that only goes to the person you're sending it to. You can choose to have replies and direct messages sent to your email or even sent via SMS message to your phone. You can even choose to have specific people's tweets sent to your phone if you want, but I only recommend that in unique cases.
I usually end up posting things I find interesting, funny or could be of value to my contacts. My last three posts are about my 5 year old son walking around the house singing "Benny and the Jets" to himself, how PETA is trying to make Duke Medical Center stop serving meat to patients, and letting people know I posted last night's Part 2 of this series.
The same thing applies to all status messages - don't try to SELL products, ideas or anything else. You have to give your network value, either from a personal friendship level, professional or even valuable information about your regional area (traffic alerts, news alerts, etc).
There's nothing wrong with letting people know you have a new product, one of your products got an award, you have a new blog post or any other kind of self promotion as long as it's balanced with value and interesting to your network. But your network is also interested to know what problems you're facing as you are developing a new product or service, what you're working on and what kind of lessons you've learned in the process.
Big note here - as security industry people - everything we do online should be filtered in a way so we are not compromising our integrity. It's not cool to talk about a lunch meeting you are having with a perspective client in most cases or specifics about new technologies if there are intellectual property factors. You wouldn't want your lead engineer tweeting about how he's found a way to compress video that puts your company ahead of the pack right? Keep this kind of thing in mind and always remember that whatever you post in any kind of status message should be considered public information.
If your company supports the use of social networking and media - develop a policy to cover it and include the do's and do not's clearly. There are awesome benefits to using social networking but the dangers are very real as well.
Does some of this sound familiar? Tweets can be a lot like your FaceBook status messages, and there's no reason they can't be. There are many ways to broadcast your status message to multiple networks and I'll include my favorites in the next section.
Helper Services:
Here are some of the top reasons to use helper services for Twitter -
1. IM (or chat) style interface where you keep a little window up on your computer and see everyone's tweets.
2. Spellcheck
3. Easy icon based ways to reply to people (@), send them a direct message (D), Re-tweet their message (RT) - forwarding their tweet to your network
4. Shorten long URLs so that your posts stay under the character limit. - if you want to list a link to an article, blog post or other item the URL is usually pretty long, there are numerous services that take that link and shrink it down for you
5. Post to multiple status messages on multiple networks at the same time (same status message on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc..)
Twirl is a nifty little app that gives you most of the features above
Tweetdeck does too - but also lets you make lists out of your network so you can organize the people you want to keep up with in categories(i.e. friends, professional, local)
Bit.ly is my favorite URL shortener service - it tracks stats on your shortened URL use and even lets you post to Twitter from their page.
Selective Twitter Status is a way to update both your Twitter and FaceBook status just by using the "#fb" hashtag on your tweet.. what's that? I didn't get into hashtags yet? They are just a good way to track a topic because searching for the topic with the "#" symbol in front of it screens out the stuff you don't want.
Security Industry People On Twitter:
If I've missed you - let me know and I'll get an updated list out
@brachlin - Bret Rachlin
@BtheDean - Brian Dean
@CampusSecurity - Campus Security at Queen's University
@chelsiewoods - Chelsie Woods
@dremeda - Andres Armeda
@idmachines - Salvatore D'Agostino
@info4security - Anthony Hilderbrand
@RTPPhysec - This Blog's
@Sam_Pfeifle - Sam Pheifle
@SDNEditor - Rhianna Daniels
@shawnf - Shawn Flaugher (me)
@stevesurf - Steve Surfaro
@Steve_Hunt - Steve Hunt
@thesteverussell - Steve Russell
@trbuckley - Tom Buckley
