I spent a good amount of the morning trying to feverishly tweet about Twitter Vote Report, a project quickly-yet-skillfully implemented in just three weeks by Allison Fine from the Personal Democracy Forum and Nancy Scola, Associate Editor of techPresident (Fast Company story). This project is proof that a huge tech project can be produced in a truly grassroots fashion, wrangled via a fantastic wiki, contributed to by volunteers, and get the attention of outlets like CNN (can’t find a link, but I know people saw it), Mashable, and rocketboom. Three weeks, kids. Amazing. I wish I had done more to help get the word out (I’ve tweeted off and on about it in the past few days), but still, I think the turnout was impressive.

Twitter Vote Report was designed to take in data from hashtags in tweets and reprocess them into mashups like Google maps to track wait times, machine problems, registration problems, fraud, and overall good/bad feelings about the voting experience. Most people new the basic #votereport hashtag, but not many of the other tags were used, or used properly, enough to help the other apps pick up the data necessary. On the enormous upside, it’s impressive that Twitter Vote Report offered a “don’t Twitter, never will” set of options, to broaden the scope of participation, including posting transcriptions and sound files of phone messages. I think that, with enough time to seriously market the tags, or perhaps even some sort of structured form-based input system for people may need it, it could be a serious way to track the next set of elections.

It took me approximately 53 minutes to vote. It was worth it. I tweeted my vote, and even took listeners into the voting booth with me via a recording on Utterli:

The rest of the WBUR Twitter Central crew arrived in the early evening (in order of appearanc): Jeff Cutler, Gradon Tripp, Scott Frazer, Deb Agliano, and Adam Zand (there were more Twitter peeps posting off-site, check out the search for everything hashtagged #wburvote). The entire event was peppered with exceedingly exciting and scintillating conversation, excellent snacks, and lots of fun watching the numbers roll in. We were interviewed on video, talked to WBUR staffers about what exactly we were doing and many aspects of the social web, pictures taken. The staffers were really happy to see us there, and very curious about what we were doing, which made for a very positive and open environment. Everyone had different approaches to the “reporting” idea: Jeff corresponded with Twitter followers and friends about their experiences and tweet bits, Adam posted many utters, I messaged followers with questions and comments while I trolled different Twitter searches, and everyone tweeted their hearts out. The WBUR Twitter effort even got a shout out on the air, which is awesome progress.

When I started this post, I was drinking a Hitachino Nest Red Rice Ale, watching Obama deliver his FTW (abbrev. internet slang, “for the win”) speech, still tweeting, at home, in my pajamas, just after watching Jon Stewart announce Obama’s win on Indecision 2008 and helping a friend find a live video stream of the speech for his sister in China. It’s been a day of meeting new people, coining new phrases (Scott gets a super gold star for “premature calculation,” a danger of overly-excited polls, but nothing to be ashamed of ), and feeling really connected in person *and* by way of technology with the rest of the nation on this momentus occasion. It was definitely a treat to use the social web’s powers for good today, and I’m excited for what the future of interaction holds for us.

© Andrea for LibraryTechtonics, 2008. | Permalink | 6 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: election, election08, social media, social networking, Tweetup, twitter, vote, wbur, wburvote

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Dear Reader Takeaways:

1. Don’t treat social networking like collecting business cards. Seriously, Social != (does not equal) Business [sometimes, maybe, but certainly not all the time].
2. Social networking is a [slightly] obnoxious term. Most hoity toity terms for things are, indeed, hoity toity. Not taking them so seriously is healthier.
3. LJ is full of “self-indulgent maxi-musings.” I agree, and it’s just not my scene, which is a big part of why I’ve all but abandoned it. It’s got it’s own culture, see?
4. Sometimes it’s better to be out rescuing a baby from a burning submarine than being online all the freakin’ time (I say, typing away at midnight on a Saturday… hey! Whatever, see, cuz I was out last night for shabu shabu then 2 hours of mead sampling, at work all day today, and I’m going to a craft/artist market tomorrow with Yelpers and then craft night with a whole other set of friends, so it’s my social night off this weekend!). Go out, get some sun, and talk to real people.
5. Random hash brown batches make interesting tweets. Especially to nomPr0n freaks like me.

© Andrea for LibraryTechtonics, 2008. | Permalink | 9 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: culture, fun, socialnetworking, twitter

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I found this post from an online marketing blog by way of a new mutual follower on Twitter, and gave it a quick read.  The interesting angle of the post is getting information you need to help your business, and how you may be able to outsmart your competition by using the tools intelligently.  It strikes me as treading that fine line of using Twitter for evil… but marketing isn’t always bad, and libraries could use some help with that.  Plus, these tools have non-library, non-marketing applications.

Of the five tools outlined, I’m really interested in:

• Summize:   May be the Twitter search people have been looking for.  I do love Twemes (I included it in the interesting experiment with hashtags for the PLA Blog during the national conference), Summize doesn’t require any tagging, it just searches tweets.  The advanced search is Google-esque, including options to find tweets with links, positive/negative tones, questions, and more.  Something exciting to play with.  Heck, I might start searching proactively for questions and answering them.
• Twitt(url)y:  All about tracking URL-based memes without needing to follow “the right people” on Twitter.  The most tweeted sites are at the top, each listing includes the popular link and recent tweets.  See what the Twitterati are reading and talking about, catch memes faster, learn about new things sooner, especially if your following group tends to be a bit… insular.
• Twistori:  Reminds you of the humanity of most of Twitter (you know, the part that isn’t trying to sell you something as of late).  Totally anonymous — unless you’re like Chris Brogan (nice new brand, btw, totally you) and follow so many people that you might recognize some of this stuff ;D — Twistori grabs data from Summize and lists out tweets that include “I love/hate/think/feel/believe/wish” statements and scrolls the new posts one by one on the screen.

Other things of note I’ve found in my travels:

• Twitter Answers: Um, why didn’t librarians build this?  Are we so obsessed with how broken our catalogs are that we’re missing the easy stuff like this?  If you’re a librarian playing around on Twitter Answers, do let me know.  It’s a sort of Twitter MetaFilter, built by Mosio, a service that allows people to text message a question and get answers from “real people” (where were librarians for this, too?).  Granted, when I work the Information Desk at my library, I tweet that I’m taking questions, and the answers I send out count towards my stats, and I know a few other librarians, like self-proclaimed guerilla librarian Connie Crosby, who do also.  But this is a whole application answering questions where people are.  I don’t have an account yet (I haven’t had time), but I’ll get on that soon, likely.  Librarians should consider this a form of outreach to let people know that librarians can answer questions like this.
• My Tweeple: Another mutual follower, Shannon Whitley, is working on one of a few new whitelist/blacklist apps for Twitter, and I kinda like this one.  When you’re receiving 10-50 new follower notifications a day, it can get quite unruly trying to figure out who everyone is.  Since most Twitter spammers pick up names from other large Following lists, it’s helpful to block spammers, but knowing who the spammers are is the trick.  My Tweeple helps with that.

It’s a struggle, keeping Twitter simple, and yet adding the features everyone craves.  Just take a look at the Twitter Fan Wiki, and you’ll see all the informational ruckus such an elegantly simple yet wonky system has created.  And this isn’t even touching the Twitter Packs concept (the online marketing post mentions sites that do the same “figure out who to follow” stuff mechanically), it’s a whole other ball of wax!

© Andrea for LibraryTechtonics, 2008. | Permalink | 11 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: tools, twitter

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