Conner's Blog

In the last month or so I’ve been asked on several occasions what my Twitter name means. So I thought I would take the time to share this incredible story with my readers.

Ok, I’m lying it’s not interesting or incredible but since people want to know I’m going to tell them. Sloped came from a blog that I started in college and killed almost immediatly called slopedsideways. I came up with the name because I realized fairly early on in my life that my brain doesn’t work like the rest of the world’s. Not that this makes me unique, but at the time I thought it did.

So in an attempt to describe this phenomenon I settled on the phrase slopedsideways, basically this meant that my thought processes don’t go in a straight line but instead slant a touch to the right or left depending on the time of day.

When I joined Twitter I was looking for a short yet unique name for myself. I had recently been thinking about the blogs I had started throughout the years. It seemed like the perfect opportunity to resurrect the name and it’s unique enough that I generally can use it anywhere I go.

So that’s the story behind the name, and this is also the perfect opportunity for me to announce one of my new projects. I’m starting another blog at http://sloped.me. It’s going to be a place for me to get on my soap box about social media, workplace technology, and other things that don’t really fit with that I’m doing here. So take a look, subscribe if you want, and let me know what you think.

A trusted source, with knowledge of Twitter recently let it slip that Twitter is in trouble.  Due to Sunday’s poor outing by the Minnesota Vikings, and some poorly placed bets.  Twitter apparently owes money to the Mafia.  There have been reports of random people getting into people’s feeds, random DMs being sent to cell phones, and people suddenly having themselves stop following others. There is no doubt this information is related. There are unconfirmed reports that they failed to feed the hamsters recently due to lack of funds as they try and save some of their venture capital money to pay off the mob.

So grab the women and children, stock up on groceries, and start working on the underground bunker. Twitter will soon be run by Tony Soprano and friends.

It is no secret that I love social media and the Internet.  Twitter and this blog are my playgrounds, with a few dashes to Facebook added for seasoning.  One thing that amazes me is the fact that people still think social media is going to ruin interpersonal communication in the real world.  This makes me cringe every time because the exact opposite has happened to me.

My love of social media really began during the political conventions leading up to the November 4, 2008 elections.  I didn’t have any friends at the time that would watch the speeches with me, so I logged onto Twitter and was suddenly bombarded by hundreds of people talking about what was happening.  The best part was that not only was I interacting with others watching from afar, but also getting first hand accounts from convention goers.  At the time, I had no idea how much of an impact Twitter would have on me, I just was having fun bashing politicians and discussing the issues with real people scattered all over the globe.

I believe it was sometime in January or February when Art and I had a conversation on Twitter and made a decision to meet at the Herkimer for happy hour.  Art was the first person I met who I had known exclusively through Twitter before meeting in real life.  Though he was not the first person I had met through the Internet, (I had joined a few meetup.com groups previously) he was the first person I met through an online social network.  Since then we have remained good friends.

Of course Art was just the beginning, in the last year or so, I’ve met a lot of people because of Twitter.  Some I met because they knew someone I met on Twitter, others I met only because they were on Twitter.  In fact, at last count, my In Real Life list has 89 members.  Some of these have only been meetings in passing, but many of them have involved fun times, great conversations, and a few have become close friends. Add at least a dozen people I’ve met who aren’t actually on Twitter and my social circle has been expanded by over 100 people just because of a little box saying “What are you doing?”

What I’m trying to say is, if anyone says our Internet connected networks are going to ruin our personal lives, destroy our ability to communicate, or stop us from meeting new people, well, they are crazy. Unless you are already an introvert and do not enjoy meeting new people, interacting online is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to social media.

Dear Star Tribune,

Welcome to Twitter, it has been fun having you in our playground.  It is great having people with connections giving us some insight and some breaking news once in a while.  In fact I’ve really enjoyed following the Favre, Rubio, and the Twin’s collapse sagas over the last few weeks.

But here is the thing, you’re doing it wrong.  It’s great that you are with us, but, with the way you are currently doing things it’s not going to work.  Here are a few of the reasons.

• The number one reason you’re doomed to fail is your avatars.  You’re a media company and as much as I know you hate to think it, to succeed you need people to want to listen to your people.  No one really trusts the Star Tribune, yeah you have some cred, but most people are likely to take the word of Lavelle E. Neal, Judd Zulgad, or Sid Hartman over the faceless paper.  So having them tweeting is great, and yeah I can look at their names and know whom I’m reading.  However, I don’t use Twitter like that, and I bet 90% of those who follow you don’t either.  We look at the avatars to see who is tweeting, currently all I see is Star Tribune, and this just doesn’t excite me.  Let me know who is tweeting without wasting my time by making me read the name.  Let your writers put their face up.  You could even use a Star Tribune badge in the corner of their photo so your branding is still there.  I guarantee we would all appreciate it.
• Second, your use of hash tags is a problem.  Hash tags are great; they give context to tweets and make searching quite a bit easier.  But your insistence of putting “strib” in front of whatever your tweeting about is accomplishing nothing.  When your readers tweet about the Twins we hashtag it #twins, you have your writers hash tag it #stribtwins.  Now what happens if I search for the #twins, well your writer’s tweets don’t show up, and if I search for #stribtwins other tweets don’t show up.  Kind of a pointless endeavor, you would be better off avoiding hash tags all together.
• You should also try and have your writers interact with the public a bit more. A quick review of four of your writer’s last page of tweets showed only seven tweets with @ mentions.  Most of those go back to their fellow writers.  Most readers understand writers aren’t going to be able to interact with all followers, but giving it a try will help develop a relationship that you can capitalize on later.
• Finally, you should make it easier for readers to find your writes twitter feeds.  I spent a few minutes looking for this information on your site and it wasn’t easy to find.  If nothing else, a link to their Twitter page should be included on their profile page right next to their email address.

I hope that you take a few of these ideas and try to improve your use of Twitter.  I’ll be the first one to say Twitter isn’t going to solve all your problems and you also can use it how you want But, if you are going to use a tool, at least use it well.

P.S.  I have noticed you are using hashtags without the strib added to them.  Keep that up; we appreciate it.

Yesterday, I saw this tweet from @just_kate.  “Question for everyone: Twitter – Social Network? Still just microblogging? Somewhere in between?”  If you read my blog, you know that I do not think Twitter has rules or really allows for a definition and so I sent back the following.  “It’s whatever you make it, it’s both for me.”

This is 100% true, one moment I may be talking (blogging) about my latest cooking adventure, only to end up in a conversation about what makes the best Guacamole.  @just_kate responded “interesting! What about social networking vs social network? Blog/Twitter a social network or (micro)blogging platform??”

This got me thinking, and I sent a few quick responses using the 140-character platform.  The main point that I came to is that people are constantly attempting to put Twitter on a pedestal and say it is special.  The thing is, Twitter really is not that special, it’s just a new way to share what we’ve been sharing since we learned to speak.  It’s a free eco-system that allows you to talk about what you want, but by limiting you to 140 characters it keeps conversations clean and neat.  E-mail, instant message, and social networks will all be around for a long time, but you get messages that take minutes to read where Twitter’s messages take seconds.  This enforced brevity let’s you interact with a lot more people on a daily basis.  Twitter just takes online communication and adds what events like Ignite add to presentations.

The second problem is our constant attempt to define web sites as “social networks” and acting like social networks are new.  They aren’t new, it’s as old as spoken word.  I argue they have been online since the Internet first launched.  Usenet, forums, and chat rooms were the precursors, and even without a comment system, a blog is a form of social networking.  You’re publishing for a reason and usually its so people can get to know you.  Whether talking about car repair or your kids soccer game  you’re building people’s image of you.  You do the same thing at work when your co-workers come over and ask for advice, or you talk about last night Twins game.  You develop new connections whenever you go to a party and meet your friend’s friend or meet with a new client.  Social networking is just building and maintaining your social network.  We can try and make online networking special but it’s not, it’s just easier because computers handle the physical pieces of our connections for us.  We just have to worry about the conversation.  Like I said yesterday, “[p]eople want to put Twitter on a pedestal, it’s no different than the water cooler or networking at a conference.  It’s just online”.

The truth is the web has always been one giant social network.  It may not have been interconnected using terminology like friends/followers; instead, it’s built on social connections called links.  If you consider the web a university, you could consider individual sites to be clubs or fraternities/sororities. They are just networks inside of a larger network.

I say we stop trying to define these sites and start finding new ways to use them.  The truth is, if you are publishing online you are networking, people are getting to know you and your viewpoints.  We have always had the ability to create vast “social networks”; it’s just easier to maintain them with the tools technology has provided.

If you wish to read the full conversation between me and @just_kate, go here.

Photo via eye2eye on Flickr.

This week has seen Oprah join Twitter, CNN and Ashton Kutcher battle it out for 1,000,000 followers, and a bunch of other famous people jump into the world of twitter.  I’m here to tell you that Twitter isn’t ruined.  Well for the most part at least.  See you just need to look back at my Twitter rules post and think about it for a second to see it is true.

Just because the celebrities and their followers are suddenly on Twitter doesn’t mean you have to notice them.  Considering Twitter survived Oprah’s first tweet with little to show for technical problems, I think we’ll be okay.  Unlike Facebook, your local watering hole, and other venues you might socialize, Twitter is in many ways immune to an influx of people you don’t want to see and hear.  Unlike Facebook, you don’t need to follow someone just because they follow you.  You can protect your tweets and block people and preserve your current Twitter experience.

One thing that has seen a dramatic change for the worse though has been Twitter search.  Where I once could glance at trending topics and find out about things I actually cared about, I now look and it’s been overrun with TV shows, celebrities, and things such as the sudden appearance of the name Joe as a trending topic earlier this week.  The sudden decrease in the value of search.twitter is disheartening.

Still, even with the decrease in value of search, you still get the same Twitter experience regardless of how many new people join Twitter.  You don’t have to follow them, and even if they follow you, nothing has changed in your feed, only theirs.

P.S. Sorry about two Twitter posts in two days, but I just had to put this out there and couldn’t fit it into 140 characters.

If you happen to follow me on Twitter, you know that I”m an compulsive twitterer.  When I go on a streak there is always the possibility that I’ll single handily cause a fail whale appearance or  a 4-5 minutes delay on tweet delivery.  In fact, according to tweetstats I post around 20 updates a day.  Of course, when you consider the fact that I signed up for twitter about 5 months before I actually started using it, you can probably put my tweets per day at round 30-40 when I’m actually on line most of the day. 

Why am I writing this?  Well yesterday I was on Twitter, discussing this and that, and saw a link from @intheloop to PC Magazine’s 13 Twitter Dont’s.  I read through it, and immediately posted the fact that I generally break rules 3, 5, 7, and sometimes 8.  So here’s the deal, I’ve already posted my rules for getting me to stop following you, so here are my rules for Twitter.

1. There are no rules

Sorry to dissapoint all of you, but that is it.  Of course it’s important to use common sense, you are leaving your public record out there. Still, if you want to tweet 3 or 300 times a week, never reply to anyone, only follow celebrerties or news orgs, or just tweet about going to the restroom, go for it.  That’s the beauty of Twitter, as long as you don’t break the terms of service, you’re in control.  Of course you might not have any followers, but hey that’s your choice, and of course everyone elses choice to.  So go for it, if your not on Twitter, join, if you are on Twitter, don’t read up on how to fit in, it’s a community not high school, everyone has their place.

I made guacamole last night and it didn’t turn out to my satisfaction.  I decided to share this piece of unfortunate news with Twitter and wow did I stir up a conversation.

I have more ideas for guacamole than I have brain cells now.  First here is the recipe I generally follow.

• 2-3 Avacados
• garlic
• tomato
• onion
• fresh lime juice
• Salt (course, either Kosher or sea)

If it’s available and I know everyone who I will be serving likes it, I will usually add cilantro.

Now apparently guacamole is incredibly diverse.  Here are a few suggestions I got on Twitter and ones I found on-line. I had heard of some of these, but some were new to me.

• A squeeze of orange
• lemon juice
• egg
• chili peppers
• cumin
• hot pepper sauce
• chunky salsa
• green onion

I’m now craving guacamole so I may need a trip to the grocery store for some supplies.  Any other suggestions for guacamole ingredients.

For those of you back to work today, hopefully I can give you some links to distract yourself with.  For those of you that didn’t have to return to work, well good for you, spend a while looking through my archives after you’ve finished this post. 

I was having issues with my Twitter plugin and it has been missing for the last week.  I had to replace it due to some weird compatibility issue with Wordpress 2.8, things are working now though and you can follow my Twitter activity from here again.

• The one decent article from CNN reviewing the year in celebrities.
• A Christmas kidnapping.  Don’t worry everything worked out fine.  (I like the idea behind that blog)
• Bigger is always better when it comes to insulation.
• Rick Reilly discusses the many reasons to hate Tyler Hansbrough.
• A very interesting story about a college basketball player who lost her memory after colliding with a teammate.
• xkcd details the usefulness of time spent in 11th grade.  This confirmed many of my suspicions.
• A series from NPR about the American spirit.  Created by Ketzel Levine who was laid off during production. (Via Kottke)
• And finally in celebration of the end of the Holiday Season, here is a very cool display at Rainbow Foods captured by Erica over at fresh.mn.

As promised, I’ll be giving you my 2009 Minnesota To-Do list on Thursday.  I may skip the Wendesday Where? this week due to being out of town again, but if I find a good photo I may get one up.

I generally try to follow anyone who follows me, and I’m consistently looking for interesting people to follow, but I do have a few rules which I tend to use when deciding who to follow.

1. If you are following twice as many people as are following you, I will not follow you.  I am guessing you are just trying to get new followers by following random people.  The exception to this rule is if you are new and have only a few followers.
2. I won’t follow you if your time line consists of only links.  I love the content I find through Twitter, but the real conversations that occur are worth much more.
3. If you are local, and you don’t completely violate my other rules I will always follow back.  I have found out more interesting things about the Twin Cities in the six months I’ve been on Twitter, than I did in the year and a half before.
4. If you do not have a bio, a link, or your real name in your profile, why are you here?  You do not need to do all three, but you should at least go for two out of the three.
5. If you follow more than 1000 people, I will assume you don’t care what I say and will do the same.  The exception is if you are truly famous and have close to a 1:1 follower to follow ratio.
6. If you do have a link in your profile and it goes to a page that is 80% ads.  Well you do the math.
7. If you tweet in all caps more than once a decade, you can guarantee I will not follow you.
8. Swearing, though funny occasionally, is no substitute for actual content and humor.  If you swear because it’s easy I will not follow you.
9. If your tweets consistently cross the 140-character line into a new tweet, I will find you annoying and I will not follow you.
10. Do you constantly pick fights on Twitter? I left trolls behind with vBulletin. Healthy debate is acceptable and encouraged though.

Well after writing down these rules, I realize I need to quit following myself.  Does Twitter allow me to do that?