Fun with Twitter: Do your “overheards” tell a story?

One of the joys many people, including myself, find with Twitter is the beauty of the tweeted “overheard” statement, which is some odd statement that is, well, overheard, that you just feel compelled to share with the rest of the world. (Because of character constraints, “OH:” is usually used before the statement instead of “Overheard” though I confess when I first saw people using this I wondered what Ohio had to do with anything.)

Usually neither attribution nor context is given, which makes them that much funnier. In fact, in my office, it’s become somewhat of a competition between coworkers to see who makes my “overheard” tweets. I work with a very creative, linguistic bunch and there’s never a dull moment in our conversations. My overheard tweets aren’t always coworkers, mind you, oftentimes they’re friends outside the office, like at gigs or something.

Anyway, the other day I decided to see which gems I had tweeted “OH:” recently, so  I went to my profile and searched “OH:” in my tweets only. Twitter only archives the past few days now, which I just learned, but the tweets in my past few days’ archives were not only hilarious, but kind of sounded like a funny story if you read them in chronological order.

Keep in mind that NONE of these tweets are related in any way, shape or form, and most had completely different contexts:

To “get it,” you have to read from the bottom up, but to make it easier, here they are in succession:

“That’s like, WAAAAAY down the road. Like Friday.”

“Haven’t you seen Subway commercials? Don’t you know the right way to say it?”

“I wore so much black I out-blacked myself. Black is the new black!”

“You are the reason that dress was invented.”

“Woo! It’s nice and bright in here! It makes me wanna take this dress off!” #unrelatedtothelasttweet

“We’re going to drool all over her like a pork chop.”

“… and it doesn’t give you the risk of having quintuplets!”

“You just want me for my numbers.”

“You gotta perpetuate the SEO-ness of your lineage.”

“Who the hell are you and why are you soliciting me?!”

OK, maybe it’s only funny to me, but I’m curious to see if anybody else’s completely unrelated overheard tweets also look like they kinda tell a story. It’s an interesting and fun exercise.

Here’s what you do:

1. Just view your own profile on Twitter.
2. Plug “OH:” (or “overheard,” whichever you use) into the search box and make sure that the box is checked to read only your own tweets.
3. Read from the bottom up.
4. Do they kinda tell a story?
5. If so, take a screen shot & share.

Come on, you know you want to. It’s fun!

Amazee: A winning alternative to Ning for cause-based communities

In April 2010, custom social network service Ning decided that they were going to start charging and do away with their free service. Beginning August 20, Ning will charge the following for usage of their custom social network platform:

(Features included in each plan are not shown because of space.)

As you can imagine, this decision by Ning caused (and is still causing) quite a stir among users and administrators of such networks.  Even if it’s only $2.95, many administrators of smaller groups are unwilling to pay for it, and many are struggling to find effective Ning alternatives, especially nonprofits and “cause” networks. There’s even a Facebook group dedicated to prevent Ning from doing so.

Well, have no fear, activists — Switzerland-based Amazee is stepping up the plate and offering FREE Ning migration service to their platform.

What is Amazee, you ask?

Though it hasn’t caught on in the United States (yet), it’s a popular custom platform for projects and reaching goals, whether it’s fundraising or non-monetary aspirations. It’s very popular in Europe, South Africa, and elsewhere in the world.

Here’s a quick video Amazee made explaining the benefits of migrating to their platform:

Welcome, Ning refugees! from Amazee on Vimeo.

From Amazee’s blog:

First of all you’ll get a lot of the features on Amazee which you’ve been accustomed to on Ning*: You’ll be able to post blog entries, upload pictures and embed videos, you’ll have your own forums for discussion, and have a good overview over who’s doing what in your group and on the platform.

Next to that we are taking your Ning experience to the max: There is no limit to the number of members a group can have (Ning only allows for 150), there are no limits on storage and bandwidth (Ning only allows you for 1GB and 10 GB respectively), you’ll be able to set up events and have people rsvp directly in your group (this is not possible at all at Ning) and you can add an unlimited number of RSS feeds and content boxes to your group (Ning has 1 and 3 respectively).

Furthermore we allow for maximum online collaboration and promotion by supporting a solid Facebook integration: You can easily recommend your group on Facebook, if you like you can even sign in to Amazee with your Facebook account. And the icing on the cake: You’ll get a reliable and competent community management on top of all that. For free, of course.

I’ve had an account at Amazee for over a year and have been (minimally) involved on this platform with a few projects in South Africa, and absolutely love the functionality of it. There are other Ning alternatives, like GroupSite and Mixxt, but personally, I don’t find the others very conducive to the needs of collaborative activism.  Amazee, on the other hand, was designed for that very purpose.

So if you’ve got a cause-based community on Ning, don’t fret – head on over to Amazee and they’ll make migration easy, painless, and free.

Have you found any other good Ning alternatives? Please share in the comments below if so. Thanks!

Note: I got no form of compensation for writing this post.

There’s too much ME-ME-ME in social MEdia.

I’m clearly in the wrong field.

See, though some may say I’m rather outgoing, the truth is I’m an introvert. Meaning, while being out and around people is nice and all, I can only take so much. I prefer to be by myself (always have), and usually I’m lost in a deep cloud of my own thoughts. I’m highly analytical and have an uncanny ability to remain objective in most situations & not get too caught up in the thick of things.

In other words, I have a very finely tuned bullshit meter.

So when I say “I’m clearly in the wrong field,” I mean that from my observations, I’m not nearly as social as I should be, nor am I able to sit and be spoon fed the latest ideas, buzzwords, and thoughts du jour without throwing up in my mouth. I just can’t surround myself with people beating dead horses, talking more about the tools they beat them with than the strategies they have to do so.

Unlike the majority of the people I see in this “field” of “social media” online and off, I do not want to be in the spotlight. I understand that to some extent I have to be sometimes, but I don’t go out of my way to win contests, speak at conferences, get my mugshot in the pages of Fast Company, the local newspaper, or what have you to talk about my field or what I do.

Why?

Because I understand it’s not about me.

I got into PR initially because I enjoyed shining the light on others. I don’t need to be on center stage; I’m very happy being a “behind the scenes” person. Enter what we now know as “social media,” the ethos of which is to be social online through various media (plural of “medium” — in case you forgot). Then businesses caught wind.

Suddenly everybody’s a “social media consultant/expert/strategist/ninja/guru/swami/etc.,” thinking they can cash in and help businesses navigate the SM waters, experience and track record notwithstanding.

And suddenly, everybody’s clamoring and practically bashing each other in the knees for the spotlight, because hey, everyone wants to be “famous,” right?

It reminds me of the lyrics in that old Counting Crows song, “Mr. Jones”:

We all want to be big big stars, but we got different reasons for that…

The recent “Influencer Project” experiment/stunt by Fast Company has done wonders for vetting the attention whores from those who are are able to call a spade a spade. If anything, this has become loud and clear:

The majority of this field is more social ME-ME-ME-dia than it is about marketing, than it is about PR, than it is about community, than it is about, well, being social for the sake of getting to know other people and helping them.

What ever happened to that?!

I’m not the only person to notice and point certain aspects of the social ME-ME-MEdia phenomenon out. I certainly won’t be the last.

However, it’s enough to make me want to duck out of it all, keep my head down, mouth shut, and nose to the grindstone and just do my job to the best of my ability. Many valuable people in the “scene”/field have done this rather quietly, and I’ve tried to, but I can’t stay silent on this any longer.

Maybe I’m stating the obvious here, maybe I’m not, but it should be pointed out that in everything in life, those who make the most noise are rarely doing much of the real work.

Social media is not about you, your agenda, or your ego, and likewise, it’s not about me. It can live without me. But if you take “me” out,  as the Latin words will tell you, it becomes “social dia,” which translates loosely to “social day,” which I’m not sure makes much sense. Maybe it would mean that hopefully there will be a day people realize that it’s about connecting with people in genuine, meaningful ways, whether that’s as a person or assisting a brand making that connection to create brand loyalists.

Maybe I’m not in the wrong field. Maybe I’ve just kept myself at a far enough distance from the “social” to recognize the ME-ME-MEdia and finally say something.  Either way, we all need to get back to our roots and figure out what exactly it is we’re doing here and why, else more valuable contributors to the space will be lost.

Image by Anyaka.

The secret to my (alleged) Twitter “success” revealed

There’s nothing like tweeting about blogging and blogging about tweeting to beat a dead horse into the ground, eh?

Guess what?

I’m doing it anyway.

Last week a friend messaged me on BlackBerry messenger about something, I don’t remember the exact context, but somewhere along the line I decided to send him a link in a direct message (DM) via Twitter, and realized he wasn’t following me. So I asked him why, and he said he was “trying a different approach to his Twitter strategy” and he unfollowed a lot of people in order to reduce the noise in his stream. His logic was that if he wanted to talk to me, see what was up with me lately, etc., we’re connected on Facebook and of course, BlackBerry messenger.

I can respect that.

However, it spurned an interesting conversation about “Twitter strategies.” People put a lot of time and effort into trying to figure out how to best use this tiny tool of epic proportions. Ari Herzog has been experimenting with it and documenting his findings, which, from an analytical perspective, is very interesting.

People ask me what my Twitter strategy is quite a bit. To my knowledge, I’ve never really divulged the details of what it is in writing, until now.

Are you ready? After the jump, you’ll find out my own personal Twitter strategy. (If you came here on a direct link, you won’t see the “Read more” thing.)

Read more

I can quit Twitter, but Twitter can’t quit me.

Between friends getting married, friends passing away, getting used to a new schedule, and just overall life things, you could say I’ve had a lot going on lately. Sometimes, one can only take so much before wanting/needing to pull the plug on some things that cause more noise than signal in life.

The other day, after attending the funeral of a friend, I decided to quit Twitter for a while.

Many didn’t think I could do it. I’ve tried to “take a Twitter hiatus” before, and have only lasted a few days, at most. This time, however, I was pretty sure that I was done spewing <140 character blurts into the ether for a while. I just needed my “Stacy time,” my time to be lost in my own thoughts without the internet bugging me or me bugging it.

I really thought I could do it.

Fat chance.

It didn’t occur to me until after I had posted the above that even when I have no intention of tweeting, I tweet anyway. I’ve integrated so many webby things with my Twitter account that it’s nearly impossible.

Hitting the “Tweet this” button at the top of an interesting blog post or article after reading it has become second nature to me. BOOM! There’s a tweet.

If I subscribe to a YouTube channel? BOOM! There’s a tweet.

If I just “like” a video on YouTube? BOOM! There’s a tweet.

If I check in somewhere on FourSquare? You got it — BOOM! There’s a tweet.

You get the idea.

Not to mention, that if somebody chooses to retweet (RT) or reply to one of my auto-tweeted tweets, it’s usually appropriate to say something back to them.

Oh sure, I could manually go and remove all of my Twitter connections/integrations on each app, but really, that’s a lot to go though if I’m only planning on a temporary hiatus. Plus, I’d have to re-hook it all back up when I came back.

So I guess I’m stuck tweeting, whether I intend to or not.

I guess I just find it funny — these days, there are still hoards of people trying to figure out HOW to use Twitter and why; meanwhile, I’m so enmeshed in it that I can’t easily quit using Twitter, even if I wanted to.

Has anybody else had this problem?!

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