Netizen: guykawasaki

Showing posts with label guykawasaki. Show all posts

Thursday, February 12, 2009

Twitter Tips: It's A Bird, It's A Bird

"What am I doing? I am talking to an empty telephone, because there was a dead man at the end of this fucking line!"

- Robert De Niro in Heat.

thinking about connections
120 is the New 140: How to Build Relationships on Twitter
Looking for Mr. Goodtweet: How to Pick Up Followers on Twitter
My First 7 Days on Twitter
Facebook, Twitter, and Blogs - the big three Right now, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are where it's at. Add a blog to the equation and you have the complete solution for communication with the maximum number of people.

I have been on Twitter only a few weeks (I Get Twitter), so I don't claim to be an authority, but my hunch is that Twitter is all things to all people. It is what you make it. But I think it is obvious Twitter is a fundamental internet application. Google became a verb because search is the ultimate fundamental internet application. Email is a fundamental internet application. News is basic. Facebook is a fundamental internet application. Twitter is the new kid on the block. It is basic, it is fundamental. It will catch on. It will stick around.

There can't be tips. There are no tips for search. There are no tips for how to use your Facebook account. I think the same is true for Twitter. There are no tips, really. But I wish to share a few that work for me, and I suspect might work for a few others like me. But I make no claim to universal appeal. There is no such thing. On Twitter you create the ultimate niche.

But as to tips, these work for me.

(1) Become A User, Not An Addict, But Do Become A User

I can see how easy it is to get carried away. You get a few hundred followers, or even a hundred, and you can fall in the trap of thinking you are finally the celebrity you always deserved to be, but until now it had been the world's loss to not have discovered you. Use Twitter in moderation. This is like having an email account. You are not on email all day.

But knowledge workers are on email all day. And many people have successfully integrated Twitter into what they do. Twitter is how they broadcast themselves to the world. And many of them have followers in the tens of thousands. They are not addicts, they are avid users.

(2) Be Yourself

Guy Kawasaki is the number one name on Twitter but I am suspicious of his number one advice, which is, follow everyone who follows you. Then, what's the point? I don't think he follows 50,000 people. But he follows 50,000 people in hopes 50,000 people will follow him. And many do, and all the glory to them, and I am one. He usually posts links to news items that often look interesting, and sometimes I click through. But Kawasaki has a website to promote and he has a brand name to establish: his name. And so follow as many people as you can if you share his goals. Why not? But if your Twitter account is like your email account to you, then don't.

(3) Take It Easy

Only follow people you intend to follow, people you know, people who are famous. Unfollow people you no longer wish to follow. And don't worry about how many people follow you. If they want to, they will. Glory is not in the numbers. Few is not bad. Many is not necessarily good. There are zombie followers who add you in hopes you will add them and it will look like they have a lot of followers, but who don't really "follow" you. They don't read a word of what you have to say.

(4) Respect Your Followers

Imagine your followers as people genuinely interested in what you are doing, what you might be reading. Let your personality shine through your Twitter posts. If you link to a lot of news on Africa, I am going to think you are really into Africa. And if you really are, that helps me get to know you better, if I am someone interested in getting to know you better.

(5) Don't Feel Obliged

It is okay to not tweet every day, it is okay to not tweet every hour. Pace yourself. And it is okay to put out 30 tweets in an hour. Too. You decide. Don't feel obliged.

(6) Celebrity Tweets

I like the Kevin Rose model. He founded Digg. That makes him a celebrity. He has over 100,000 followers, but he follows only about 100, and he posts sparingly. On the other hand you have the CEO of Mashable, he posts several per hour, all day. But then it is because he mostly posts links to his own website. And that is good too. That does not make him a fake.

I also want to end up with 100,000 followers, but I want that to happen because my tech startup became a grand success. And I want to post more often than Kevin Rose, and less often than Mashable. And I only wish to follow people I really wish to follow, and so I wish to keep that number as close to 100 as possible. I have no desire to "follow" 50,000 people. I don't think that is humanly possible.

How not to scare away a celebrity? Mitch Kapor started following me within days of my showing up at the site and he only follows a few hundred, so I knew it was genuine, but I celebrated the event in a grand way, and then he was no longer following me: Mitch Kapor Now Following Me On Twitter.

http://twitter.com/paramendra/statuses/1204544455

Twitter Enterprise

A business model for Twitter: Pay up | Outside the Lines - CNET News
The three business models that make Twitter a billion-dollar...
11 Business Plans For Twitter

I think Twitter is going to make a ton of money. There are people who have ridiculed it as a site that is hot, but guess what, it is not making any money. Google did not make any money for years and years, but anyone who used Google in the early years, or most people, they could tell it was a great application.

The way for Twitter to make big bucks is by having a Twitter, and another Twitter Enterprise that big brand names pay for, that has a greater number of functionalities.

Friday, January 30, 2009

Mitch Kapor Now Following Me On Twitter

43 is my lucky number. Mitch Kapor, a legend in the industry, is now following me on Twitter. This is not like Guy Kawasaki following me. That guy is officially the number one Twitterer in the world, but then he follows as many people as follow him, which is about 50,000. Which means he does not follow anybody. He just makes them feel good. It is like when you first signed up on MySpace, you automatically got one friend, I believe some guy called Tom, a MySpace staffer. Tom was everybody's friend at MySpace. Guy Kawasaki, great guy, a legend in his own right, Guy Kawasaki the Rich Dad Poor Dad guy, is the Tom of Twitter.

But Mitch Kapor. He is not trying to become a celebrity. He was a celebrity before anyone knew who Bill Gates was.

So when I saw he was my follower number 43, I immediately sent him a direct message. I am honored to have you follow me here on Twitter. He is only following 331 people. What that means is that once in a while he will read your twit.

The Hare Rama Hare Krishna people aspire for a Krishna consciousness. I think today on Twitter I have come to acquire a Kapor consciousness. Now on when I twit, I am going to ask a question, not What Would Jesus Do, but How Would Kapor React?

I don't believe this. I kept Twitter at arm's length for the longest time. Then I came in kicking and screaming. Within days I became an addict. (I Get Twitter) I mean, I want to snatch Guy Kawasaki's title away from him, but not by fraud following as many people as might be genuinely following me, but by becoming a genuine celebrity, someone who people want to follow, because they are interested in knowing what you do, what are you thinking about, what you are reading.

I almost want to lock up my account. As in I already got Mitch Kapor, I don't want any more people following me. But instead I decided to immortalize the moment with a blog post.

I do want more followers, more than most. This is PR at its best. If you think about it, this is Reverse Paparazzi. The paparazzi follow you e-v-e-r-y-w-h-e-r-e. Twits follow themselves everywhere.

We have become our own paparazzi. But this is fun. In a way this is the ultimate mindfood. Suddenly all my news browsing has become a social activity. I am not some loner reading a ton of news. Almost every news item I read these days, I feel the urge to share. I feel the urge to comment and share. I don't have enough followers yet to spark conversations, but I will get there.

I have met so many amazing people here already. For the longest time I thought the tech world was all male and boring. Then I saw all innonate was following. And I found all sorts of outrageously gorgeous women on the New York tech scene who I also decided to follow, one of whom I have kind of sort of become friends with. She has an exciting YouTube channel. By the way innonate is the Organizer of the New York Tech MeetUp, the top tech event in town. He was voted into that position. Used to be my friend the MeetUp CEO Scott was the Oragnizer.

I am honored you are following me now on Twitter, I said. Promptly I pitched. I thought I was done with round 1 fundraising back in June 2008. But I will save the details of the story. I am still a little short. I pitched the Plenty Of Fish: Online Dating King Markus Frind yesterday, but now I believe it that his company is a one person operation. I have not heard from him.

I mean, I could not resist. Mitch and I have exchanged a few emails since. At Twitter those emails are called DMs. They are Direct Messages. They also have that 140 character limit. Whoever came up with that random number? It feels scientific to me. Good enough for one unit of expression, especially if links are allowed.