Just got off the phone with a very nice, but stressed out salesperson. Deal taking nosedive.

He had to deliver me a message that the Sweetwater.com accounting department wanted to speak to my wife on a landline phone about a new purchase we were making for a guitar that cost $2,800. They said this was for our “security” apparently because talking to us on Skype / VoIP was a problem. Specifically they wanted to talk to my wife on a landline phone because we used her debit card (remember, we canceled our credit cards). Nevermind the fact that on Friday she talked to them over Skype and personally authorized the charge. Should have been end of story, right? Wrong.

WTF? I had to do a doubletake when the salesman told me this. And the more I thought about it, the more bothered I became, particularly when the guy told me it was for my own security? Huh? You don’t want to talk to me on the phone I called you for directly for the sale? Here are the problems with Sweetwater.com request:

1. I initiated the sale. How? By calling the salesman. Over Skype.
2. We do not have a landline phone at our home. We have *one* landline phone at our offline business. Since that business has nothing to do with a personal purchase, we’re using the phone we have: our personal phone. And it shouldn’t matter what type of phone we use to call in an order, should it? Why?
3. Our bank declined their charge and it would have been necessary for us to contact the bank and authorize the purchase this morning personally when it opened at 10am PST. In other words, Sweetwater wasn’t going to get any money from us without us contacting the bank directly to personally authorize the charge. How is that for increased security, already? Why would there be an additional step to speak to us on a landline phone?

You might be wondering why our bank might decline Sweetwater’s authorization? Maybe this sounds fishy. Were we trying to scam them or something? No. Our bank actually declined their charge twice. Once on Friday and once this morning. According to online account information plenty of money is there so it has to be some sort of internal bank thing. The bank the card is from is a local small town bank so it’s possible in the interest of protecting us from possible fraud they declined the charge.

The Sweetwater salesman said they’ve seen this before because some banks do not trust online purchases and customers need to authorize the purchases first. Fine, we were willing to call them and do that, but no, we weren’t also going to speak to their accounting department on our single landline phone. This isn’t a loan, we were planning to pay in full, essentially in cash. As customers we should not have to jump through (unreasonable) hoops to buy something. Screw that. The Sweetwater accounting department can stick it.

You might find the landline request dealbreaker absurd, but stop and think about this for a minute.

There’s a picture above and to the right of what I was planning on buying: a custom Gibson metallic green robot guitar that tunes itself. A limited edition of only 1,000 that are being made. Talk about technology, eh? This thing looks like a lot of fun. I thought it would be great to have for jamming with the boys so I could easily use alternate tunings, but if I’m buying from a company that doesn’t trust VoIP, or rather doesn’t trust talking to me using that, what happens when the robot guitar breaks down someday? Will they tell me I can only talk to them on a landline to put in a service request?

You might say this is a silly reason to kill a deal for the guitar, but to me, the sale is far and away not the end of the purchase. There is service that goes with it and if Sweetwater doesn’t trust technology for a technology purchase, then they can sell that guitar to somebody else who still has a landline phone in their home.

I do feel a bit for the salesman because he’s out a sale and like me depends on commissions, but I told him to go back to his accounting department and blame them. It wouldn’t surprise me if in 10 years it’s considered very normal not to have a landline phone.

Sadly, VoIP still has a long ways to go in the respect department. At least from VoIP snubbing accounting departments of online vendors.

In July 2008 if you use a cell phone while behind the wheel in Washington State you could earn a $101 ticket. Using a hands-free cell phone like the service Onstar offers will remain legal but is this any safer? A recent study says no.

Listening while driving led to a "significant deterioration in driving accuracy," Just and his co-authors write in the latest issue of the journal Brain Research. The drivers hit the guardrail and veered out of the center of the lane more often while listening. In the listening situation, MRI brain scans found a 37% decrease in parietal lobe activity.

Back in February 2005 a study pegged cell phone use while driving the equivalent of having a blood alcohol level of 0.08. Curious if other studies have been done on listening to podcasts or other non-interactive content and compared to hands-free cell phone use? In that post comments MRN writes:

Some research was done on this issue at the MIT Media Lab in the late 90’s. We found that a conversation with another passenger in the car didn’t create quite the same problem as a phone conversation: passengers in the car naturally adjust the conversation’s pace to account for changes in driving conditions, while remote interlocutors are oblivious to critical moments where the driver’s attention needs to be focused on the road.

How about eating while driving? Adjusting songs or playlists on the iPod or other portable music device? There are lots of driving distractions. How about a single law which encompasses any driving distraction rather than specifically calling them out?

In the case of my wife and son being hit in the crosswalk, the woman hadn’t taken the time to clear her windshield of ice. My wife has gone through neck surgery and still has a lot of pain. To date and to our knowledge the woman who hit her wasn’t even ticketed. The police should have leveled criminal charges at this woman’s negligence.

GHSA.org compiled a list of U.S states and other countries cellphone laws including whether it is a primary or secondary enforcement. Here in WA, the no cell phone while driving law will only be enforced if there is another driving violation. How is your state?

I see people talking on phones all the time and will be curious to see how this changes in July, if at all. My guess? It won’t change behavior that much. Hope I’m wrong.

Also see: Americans more dependent on cellphones (USA TODAY)

While riding the financial roller coaster in the US and foreign stock markets, it’s healthy to remember to laugh. Check out the Lol-O-Meter:

NomoreLOL.com is humorously advocating getting rid of the lie that is LOL. Lie in the fact that it’s become “increasingly obvious” that netizens are using ‘lol’ when they aren’t really laughing out loud.

Instead of using ‘lol’ NoMoreLOL recommends using ‘loi’ which stands for Laughing On the Inside.

Update 8:34am PST: And if NoMoreLOL doesn’t make you LOL, try this dog biting balloons video:

Looking at the Forbes list of The Web Celeb 25, I thought it would be fun to look at their public following/follower numbers on Twitter. I don’t think there is any dispute that Twitter, love it or hate it, is the current king of the hill in the microblogging niche. For those who think Twitter is a waste of time, how many of Forbes chosen Web Celebs are not only on Twitter but actively using it right now?

I’ll draw a few conclusions, probably flawed, along the way from the data but you have the chance to weigh in below with your own interpretation, if any. The numbers below were accurate as of Wednesday December 19, 2007 and naturally subject to change by the time you read this.

1. Perez Hilton (unofficial? automated blog updates) twitter.com/perez
Following 0 - Followers: 28 Last update: within last 24 hours

2. Michael Arrington (official) twitter.com/techcrunch
Following 78 - Followers: 5,162 Last update: within last 24 hours

Funny: check out Mike Arrington saying he will stop following somebody that asks for diggs:

Considering he is following less than 100 people of the 5,100+ that are following him, he must have a lot more criteria for not following others than this?

3. Mark Frauenfelder (official) twitter.com/Frauenfelder
Following 7 - Followers: 195 Last update: 3 months ago

4. Seth Godin (official, automated blog updates) twitter.com/SethGodin
Following 0 - Followers: 853 Last update: less than 24 hours ago

5. Cory Doctorow (official) twitter.com/doctorow
Following 7 - Followers: 693 Last update: 7 months ago

6. Matt Drudge (official?, 1 update) twitter.com/drudge
Following 0 - Followers: 14 Last update: 8 months ago

7. Gina Trapani (official) twitter.com/ginatrapani
Following 86 - Followers: 575 Last update: less than 24 hours ago

8. Mark Zuckerberg (Official, *protected*) twitter.com/markzuckerberg
*Following 1 - Followers: 1 Last update: *protected, unknown

9. Harry Knowles (no account?)
Unknown, no search results. If you have details on Harry’s Twitter account, please use the comments below. I also tried an unsuccessful search for aintitcool.

10. Robert Scoble (official) twitter.com/Scobleizer
Following 6,950 - Followers: 6,890 Last update: less than 24 hours ago

11. Frank Warren (no account?)
Unknown, no search results. If you have details on Frank’s Twitter account, please use the comments below. No result for post secret, but curiously there is a twittersecret that allows you to send along secrets and have them posted anonymously.

12. Om Malik (official, *protected updates*) twitter.com/om
Following 146 - Followers: 137 Last update: *protected, unknown*

13. Will Leitch (no account?)
Unknown, no search results. If you have details on Will’s Twitter account, please use the comments below. Nothing for deadspin.com either.

14. Jeff Jarvis (official, 2 updates total) twitter.com/buzzmachine
Following 17 - Followers: 325 Last update: 6 months ago

15. Kevin Rose (official) twitter.com/kevinrose
Following 22 - Followers: 1,076 Last update: 6 days ago

Note: Kevin is one of the people behind competing service: pownce.com.

16. Kathy Sierra (official? no updates) twitter.com/lefthead
Following 0 - Followers: 0 Last update: never

17. Fake Steve Jobs (unofficial? blog updates only) twitter.com/FSJ
Following 0 - Followers: 72 Last update: less than 24 hours ago

Note: Doesn’t appear that Dan Lyons, the author of the Fake Steve Jobs is on Twitter either (?)

18. Markos Moulitsas (no account?)
Unknown, no search results. If you have details on Markos’ Twitter account, please use the comments below. I tried searching for dailykos too.

19. Xeni Jardin (official) twitter.com/xenijardin
Following 87 - Followers: 1,249 Last update: less than 24 hours ago

20. Ryan Block (official) twitter.com/ryanblock
Following 45 - Followers: 592 Last update: less than 24 hours ago

21. Glenn Reynolds (no account?)
Unknown, no search results. If you have details on Glenn’s Twitter account, please use the comments below. I tried searching for Instapundit too. Nadda.

22. Pete Cashmore (official, mixed with automated blog updates) twitter.com/mashable
Following 647 - Followers: 2,215 Last update: less than 24 hours ago

23. Steve Rubel (official) twitter.com/steverubel
Following 1,452 - Followers: 2,947 Last update: less than 24 hours ago

24. Heather Armstrong (official) twitter.com/dooce
Following 39 - Followers: 1,742 Last update: a month ago

25. Darren Rowse (official) twitter.com/problogger
Following 371 - Followers: 369 Last update: less than 24 hours

Hmm thoughts
As noted in the Forbes summary three of the Boing Boing editors are included in the list (Frauenfelder #3, Doctorow #5, Jardin #19). Here’s some other stats:

No presence: 11 of 25 (44%) - those that appear NOT to have a direct Twitter presence either by using bots to just aggregate what’s already on their blog or haven’t updated in the last month.
Non-selfish: 3 of 25 (12%) - who follow more than follow them? Robert Scoble (#10), Om Malik (#12) and Darren Rowse (#25). Is it more popular among these ‘celebs’ to be followed than to follow?
Active: 8 of 25 (32%) - who appear to be active Twitter users. Michael Arrington (#2), Gina Tripani (#7), Robert Scoble (#10), Xeni Jardin (#19), Ryan Block (#20), Pete Cashmore (#22), Steve Rubel (#23) and Darren Rowse (#25). So does this mean that these 32% “get” Twitter? Or is their attention misguided, since a greater percentage 44% do not have a non-automated presence on Twitter?
Bots: 3 of 25 (12%) - who are using automated feed only. Perez Hilton (#1), Seth Godin (#4), Fake Steve Jobs (#17).
Protected: 2 of 25 (8%) - who are protecting their feed. Mark Zuckerberg (#8) and Om Malik (#12).

Sidenote: This is day #66 of my Twitter experiment (along the left sidebar of the homepage you can see a counter) which basically involves me trying to find value, if any, in the service. I’m building programs for it using the API, adding friends (600+ now) and making messages (900+ now). One major setback on the API side is currently the network is jammed and not accepting a lot of server requests. Alex on the Twitter team says the new data center migration won’t happen until after the first of the year. Bummer

On the list above as of this writing, I’m only following two of these people (Robert Scoble and Darren Rowse). I’d follow Om Malik too but haven’t followed anybody who protects their updates. A few people have changed to protecting their updates after I’ve followed them which is cool.

A major attractive stat to me for any unknown/new Twitter user that I’m not already following is having close to, equal or more than the number of people following them that they follow. This stat suggests to me, and I could be wrong, these people are more open to conversation from new people. It’s a bit disappointing to me that most of the internet celebs according to Forbes are as inaccessible as other entertainment celebrities, but it’s nice to see a few folks like Scoble who are very accessible.

What can you draw from this data, if anything?

Somberly, I’m thinking about “Tuesday’s Gone” by Lynyrd Skynrd:

Train roll on many miles from my home,
See, I’m riding my blues away.
Tuesday, you see, she had to be free
But somehow I’ve got to carry on.

On Sunday December 2, Marc Orchant had a massive heart attack and fell into a coma. Marc fought to return to consciousness for a week, with many bloggers, family and friends praying he would, while local Seattle blogger meetup organizer Anita Rowland had been fighting cancer for years. Marc passed away on Sunday December 9 and last night Anita passed away, Monday December 10.

I’d never had the privilege to meet Marc in person, who hailed from New Mexico, but we had a number of conversations through this wonderful thing we call the internet. He left comments at this blog and would reply when you talked to him through Twitter with direct messages. I think he did that because he wanted to make sure people knew he saw and cared that they were trying to converse with him. That shows the type of good guy Marc was with relative strangers, so it doesn’t surprise me that he was loved by those who were closer to him.

His last message to me was on Saturday, less than 12 hours before his heart attack, a response to his post that he was leaving Facebook over the Beacon issue. For a couple days after his heart attack this post remained atop my Twitter direct message stream:

Truly believed he’d come out of the coma and be loving, laughing and geeking with us here again. Marc died at 50. I’m sure Marc is up there somewhere, if such a glorious place exists enjoying a lifetime of neverending gadget launches and “calling it like he sees it.” Rest in peace.

Anita Rowland, meetup organizer extraordinaire
I did have the privilege of meeting Anita Rowland and her husband Jack William Bell several times in person. The last time I saw Anita was at a conference in Vancouver BC. She called my name and I turned, surprised and smiled. It was then that I learned she had cancer and was trying to beat it back. I’d kept her in my thoughts and was always glad to “see” her online from time to time reminding me that cancer doesn’t always win.

Also saw her several times at various blogger meetups here in Seattle that she organized, although I haven’t attended many event since 2005. Anita was always a friendly and gracious host at these events and her smile was warm and inviting. You can see her standing just above Jake from 8bit Joystick in the picture below wearing a white shirt. This was from one of several Seattle weblogger meetup’s I attended in 2005.

Anita would leave comments here from time to time as well and the last thing she did was add me as a Twitter friend. The date? Same day of Marc Orchant’s message above: Saturday, December 1, 2007. Probably just a coincidence how both my final interactions with these two good people who passed away involved Twitter, but it’s one of those details I can’t completely shake from my brain this morning.

Jack William Bell posted a heartfelt memorial post for his wife:

Some people shine so brightly they light the way for others; Anita was such a person. Having that light snuffed out so soon is a loss to the world.

To the guy I jammed alongside with at the first Mind Camp, Jack, I’m sorry for your loss. Please know I’m keeping you in my thoughts.

{{{{family and friends of Marc and Anita}}}} Now, time to go hug my family. Do you hear the wind? Tuesday may not be gone as I write or as you read this, but sure feels that way. And the lights are dimmer in life on earth with these two kind, giving souls gone.

In this morning’s reading I came across a new search engine called IRSeeK.com which has built a searchable index off spying listening to chats, most likely employing bots to do the dirty work.

In the IRSeeK About Us tab I became curious about this passage (emphasis mine):

By constantly archiving thousands of active, highly-focused, public chat-rooms in a wide variety of topics (e.g. Linux, soccer, Christianity, poker, business and others) then indexing, processing and publishing the content on the web using advanced Web 2.0 technologies while maintaining the privacy of the users, we are creating a knowledge base different from any other.

A couple issues here. One, they are “creating” a knowledge base? No, they are becoming the peeping tom’s of IRC channels without the permission of the people chatting. Two, how are they maintaining the privacy of the users when their entire conversations are being logged? Try searching for one or more handles you’ve used in IRC. Are you finding messages you’ve made in various IRC channels? I found messages I hadn’t even made in IRC, but on Twitter that was picked up by an IRC bot somewhere.

Strangely enough, the IRC server we’ve been running for over five years didn’t yield any hits. It appears our server isn’t on the IRSeeK server list. In the spirit of being open it would be nice to see a complete server export list of the IRC servers IRSeeK is mining.

Good idea, bad idea?
Mining public IRC channels for information and making it searchable isn’t an altogether bad idea, there is a goldmine of information being shared in IRC, but the execution here by IRSeeK is a bit questionable. Do their bots identify themselves as spies? Let’s put this in the context of a respectful search engine spider. Good bots identify themselves like Googlebot and give you the ability to refuse them access. Is IRSeeK following these same principles?

What IRSeeK is doing might be entirely legal, so don’t misconstrue my comments. Just because you can on th web doesn’t mean you should.

My problem with IRSeeK is one of manners. Taking without permission on the web is using bad netiquette. It’s like screenscraping or hotlinking without permission. There is a lot of great information on IRC and that’s what there is to love about IRC but there are also some semi-private conversations that people in niche groups have, yes, even out in the open “public” channels.

As a channel op and IRC server administrator based on experience I wouldn’t feel comfortable logging every word in the public channels and making it searchable without notifying the people in the channels the second they joined that this was happening. Why not? I can think of a couple cases where we’ve posted the public IRC channel logs of the live radio show we do on Fridays and people have come back to me and commented about something they said in the channel being published. People assume, either rightly or wrongly, that what goes on in IRC stays in IRC unless it’s made very clear otherwise. IRC etiquette.

I would be interested in hearing a reply from somebody in the IRSeeK team as to how they are addressing these sensitive issues as well as how they currently are disclosing their bot activity. If they aren’t, then do they plan to do so in the future? If they don’t feel compelled to disclose their intentions, then expect IRC server administrators to be up in arms and this is certainly not an organization or site I’d recommend to anybody. Their “idea” for making select IRC servers chat logs isn’t original, it’s just something few have had the stones to do because of obvious privacy implications.

Jim Kukral is getting drowned with messages from Twitter and is considering quitting for awhile. He’s looking for suggestions for how he can better manage the flow:

Anyone have any tips for Twitter information overload?

I checked out how many people Jim is following as of this writing: 195. While he might have cut this number back, I’ve been using Twitter regularly for the last 45 days or so and am up over the 300 follows mark, so I have an idea of quantity of message flow Jim has been receiving. I still consider myself a bit of a Twitter newbie and learning more about how to tap the signal and let the noise flow by, so if you’re looking for tips from more established Twitterers please keep this in mind.

My piece of advice for Jim and others who feel similarly burdened by the number of messages (Twitter vernacular: messages = tweets)? Setup a system where the messages flow freely like he might tune into a favorite radio station. I have satellite radio in the background and tune in here and there. Don’t let Twitter eat up valuable business flow space like your email client. Jim tried that and found some 800 messages waiting which made him feel overwhelmed.

In the comment section of Jim’s post he’s receiving tips like cut down the number of people he follows. That’s a bit silly if you’re also trying to use Twitter as a networking tool. If that’s a worthwhile goal, the idea should be to grow your network, not reduce it, correct? I think Jim’s problem is he is attributing too much priority and importance to every message. Twitter isn’t like reading a blog or news source you’re subscribed to, it’s more like being part of an IRC channel. I’ve made this comparison to IRC before and people have disagreed, but to me the two are very similar as far as the flow.

With that in mind, my preferred Twitter client is part of an IRC bot I wrote which brings me the messages as a private message in the channel. The bot also keeps track of the number of messages and some other stats so if I’m away and want to catch up on messages missed — again, I don’t feel obligated to do so — all I need to do is navigate to the number I left off at and read forward. I’m planning on refining this system even further to be able to quickly search through messages from people I’m following. This way I can follow interests within the messages of those I follow, similar to subscribing by keywords to RSS feeds. This way I won’t miss things that are of more interest to me.

One thing I’ve decided in my Twitter experience was that I didn’t want or need to read every. Single. Message. Readers might remember that my original reaction to Twitter was like many others: what’s the point? It was less than two months ago that my eyes opened to a way to utilyze the service that seemed worthwhile. Since this time, I’ve been using the service regularly and am growing both the number of people I follow and those following me.

So I don’t feel obligated to read every single message from every person I’m following, nor do I expect every person following me to read all of my non direct or non reply messages or follow all the links I’m sharing. Is this the best way to utilyze the service? For me it’s working.

My system has the messages flowing by and while I will go back and read many of the archived messages, I stopped feeling like I must read every single message after following 200 people. I do watch for and try to respond to every reply so if I’m following somebody reading this and you want to be certain I’m seeing your really important message, send it as a direct message or reply. Otherwise, expect me to be tuning in periodically throughout the day. I don’t feel the slightest bit guilty treating Twitter message flow like what’s playing on the radio.

Liberate your flow.

Good signal Twitterers
Occasionally I see people asking for recommendations of good people to follow on Twitter. My preferred follows to date are people who are interactive.

If I send you a reply and you reply or acknowledge in some way, that’s interactive. Conversely, I’m not as interested in following people who don’t reply and/or have a lot more people following them than they follow. There are exceptions like people I’ve met in person, but for me anyway, communication and microblogging tools like Twitter don’t work nearly as well if communication is only one way. In some ways, I’m treating Twitter like trackbacks at this blog: two-way trackbacks are preferred.

Another plus for people to follow are those who are actively using the service. The reason somebody being active is important to me is because what if I’m looking for feedback or something or vice versa? The likelihood of getting a good response is better with people who are actually using the service.

One of my friends asked me what was too many messages? I replied that there wasn’t a solid number as far as I could tell, it’s subjective, but a message an hour (24 messages a day) would be considered very active by most people. Maybe too active for somebody in Jim’s situation who is reading every message. Since regularly using Twitter I’m averaging around 15 messages a day but suspect this number will fall off a bit when my experimental time with the service ends (3-6 months planned).

Take control of your stream
To recap: it’s important to remember that it’s your flow. You, and only you, get to choose how much attention and time gets attributed to your flow. While I don’t consider myself selfish, I am definitely selfish when it comes to how much of my time and where is spent. I encourage others who are interested in being more productive in their lives do the same. This doesn’t mean you’re being like Guy Kawasaki and too busy to read other people’s blogs but want them to read yours (having a high follower to follow ratio might mean that). Rather, it’s a way for you to be able to read and follow in a way that fits your life. I’d rather have somebody reading my non-direct non-reply messages who doesn’t feel obligated to read them as opposed to somebody who does and critically judges every message. Life is too short, really.

For Jim and others feeling overwhelmed: take control of your microblogging reading and make it convenient for you. Make it fit your schedule. Don’t become a slave to the stream. For those who enjoy Twitmas Music: let it flow, let it flow, let it flow.

For some reason the folks at twitter.com removed the hyperlinks on @names from the message stream (Update 1:30am PST: It’s a bug, says one of the developers that they are working on fixing). These hyperlinks were useful because they led directly to the profile of the person being spoken to/about.

Those who use third party Twitter clients might not have noticed, but I’ve seen several friends mention missing this feature and wondering when or if it would be added back. When the names aren’t hyperlinked, it makes it an extra step or two to get to the person’s Twitter page. Here’s what a message page looks like without the names hyperlinked:

Today, I took some time out and created a tiny little Firefox extension called Twitter Link (TL) which will add those links back. After installing TL here’s the same page with the missing hyperlink back:

This would have been ideally suited for a Greasemonkey script, but I decided to make it standalone for those who don’t use Greasemonkey. Twitter Link v0.1 adds the text “TL” to the status bar so you know it’s enabled. I’ll probably remove that in the next version though. TL will ignore email links and it only works on twitter.com at this time. I thought about leaving it open to work on any site with @name since it ignores linking email@address.com, but could easily enable that in TL v0.2 or later if others wanted it.

What happens when twitter.com adds back the hyperlinks? Just disable or uninstall the plugin from the TOOLS->Add-ons menu. Feel free to leave any comments/feedback about the plugin below.

Trick or treat? Treat: Phonespelling looks like fun.

Our business line number is 253-843-6283 which is also TDavid on Skype. I kind of like Ale-then-Bud, but then my ale lager of choice is Budweiser (Update 6:17pm PST: I’ve since been corrected in the comments below that Budweiser is a LAGER, not an ale, now you know why I’m not a brewmaster). Or does the phone number reefer (!) to that other bud? Haven’t touched that stuff in years, sorry to disappoint the stoner crowd.

ALE = 253
THEN = 8436
BUD = 283

Slick, huh? I also like: 253-THEN-ATE, 25-DUG-EM-CUE (could be a call to digg something?)

On a serious note: please always include the numbers when spelling out your phone number. Not cool when people only include the name without the actual numbers and force us to work it out on the keypad.

Does your phone number spell anything memorable?

Kudos to Marshall Kirkpatrick for laying out how he uses Twitter — and no, it’s not for nonsense messages — with his excellent post: Twitter is paying my rent:

Earlier this week I was remarking (on Twitter) about how many of my recent story leads came from Twitter. I counted and at that time 5 of my last 11 stories were based on news I learned first from my friends on Twitter. It was amazing.

I’ve been down on the usefulness of Twitter since it’s launch, but a lightbulb glowed yesterday when Marshall described his real world Twitter usage. A good example of why it’s so important for bloggers to share their customer/user experiences rather than providing only vanilla descriptions. Your individual experiences are vastly more useful to me as a reader than a spec sheet. Fellow blogger readers, please remember this the next time you write about the newest, greatest site/service/product.

Admittedly, I haven’t understood how Twitter was that different from dozens of (often competing) IM services and what was already happening in niche groups like IRC. Marshall’s post caused me to revisit and rethink the passive listener dimension of Twitter and remember that it’s not the service as much as the people using it. One of the things I like about RSS is that I don’t have to go to the news to stay updated, it comes to me while I’m working thanks to bloggers, mainstream media and anybody else who provides site updates via RSS feeds. RSS is a timesaver. With Twitter one can do something similar with one important caveat:

Update notification speed.

There’s more latency involved in RSS than Twitter. The time it takes for the blogger to publish, the time it takes for the ping services to pick it up, time it takes for others to write about it and link to it (if I’m not subscribed to said blogger) and lastly the time in our individual RSS readers to retrieve the new content and the services to update them.

Even if you subscribe to the best sources and cut down on the noise in signal ratio, some amount of latency still remains.

Twitter message speed
Now consider how Twitter latency works.

1. Person leaves message in Twitter. Basically you can just type it and hit enter. There’s very little editing, no HTML, you only have 140 characters. Much faster than blogging and equal to IM and IRC as far as speed and immediacy.
2. Update within minutes in your Twitter client (I’ve been trying all of them to see which I like best, Snitter is shown in the screenshots in this post, just FYI).
3. If you’re already following the person on Twitter, you’ll see it as soon as your Twitter client updates, almost like an instant message, but a little slower. If you’re not following the person, somebody else could leave a message (they call them “Tweets” and I’m desperately trying to avoid that term) replying to that person that you are following.

RSS speed
It might be 15 minutes, 30, 60, maybe even a couple hours before I see something appear in RSS, but in Twitter, if I’m following people who talk about things I’m interested in — and no, I don’t mean only or even primarily the A-list, really anybody who uses their Twitter for good signal (subjective, I know, but so is subscribing to quality RSS feeds) will work — I can see the new site, service and/or news sooner. This gives my aging brain more time to think about it and see if it’s something that motivates me to write about it.

Once I see too many other people blogging about a topic, my energy on the topic usually wanes. If I’m really late to the party, the comments drain my interest in commenting as well. We might discuss this in our IRC channel, but it’s not something I’ll probably write about. The opportunity (for me anyway) to add in a beneficial way to a conversation generally diminishes the longer the topic is out there. Especially when it’s news-related topics. Is this the same for you?

Twitter experimental listening phase begins
I’m still concerned about too much noise and not enough signal, so Sunday 10/14/2007 I warily began following more Twitterers (yes, another corny term). At first less than a dozen, but will begin to expand the list as I become more comfortable with the signal-to-noise ratio and try to integrate into my workflow in the coming weeks. Marshall was among my first new Twitter follows. I added his blog to my RSS reader as well. Marshall used to write for Techcrunch and now writes for Read/Write Web.

I also started following Scoble and Winer who I’ve met previously in person as well as a couple others who seemed like interesting people that I don’t know at all or very well. Interestingly enough, Winer has been the only new Twitter follow that I’ve met in person who hasn’t reciprocated yet (did our meeting at the local blogger meetup in Seattle suck that much, Dave?). I haven’t reciprocated to everybody who follows me, so not meant as a criticism for Dave. Just curious.

How others are using Twitter
Yesterday I noticed Dave Winer replying, comment style, to various posts in Twitter, offering this view of how he uses Twitter (pictured at top right of post). Scoble used Twitter yesterday to point to each of his new posts, and although he says he isn’t using Twitter as a “publicity network” he did that along with comments he didn’t leave on other blogs like these to Allen Stern pictured below:

Since I didn’t see the @ next Allen’s name, it doesn’t appear Scoble was talking directly to Allen on Twitter, rather he was musing in Twitter about Allen’s post, as Winer also was doing yesterday. Fortunately, Scoble also commented on Allen’s blog post, so a brief and apparently positive exchange happened, but I noticed yesterday that this doesn’t always happen.

On these Twitter messages that don’t lead to blog comments, many people won’t see them, perhaps including the parties involved, which is another downside to the service. Twitter creates another channel to watch for feedback. Argh, multiple listen channels are not very efficient, but if you want to receive feedback on what you’re writing, you need to go where the people are talking about it, not expect them to come to you. As much as I’d prefer the latter for convenience and organization, it’s not about only my convenience in a conversation, it’s about the convenience for everybody involved in the conversation. Add to that the fact that I’ll gladly accept genuine feedback on a cocktail napkin, in a podcast, from another blog, mainstream news piece, on a videblog, at a conference in person, and yes, even a Twitter message.

Allen Stern craves one way links?
It’s interesting seeing Allen write this in his post linked above:

“Naturally I am not suggesting that everyone uses these networks in a publicity-oriented manner, but it seems many of the smart marketers are doing so.”

Smart? Hmm, not always. He follows with this:

“As long as the people attached to your account (personal or business) understand that’s the use, then it’s a perfect marketing opportunity.”

Is this is one of those do as I say, not as I do pieces of advice?

I had to ask Allen several times to please stop replying to posts here with links to his posts at Center Networks. It’s one thing if you want to add something intelligent and on topic in the comment area along with a link the signature area — that’s encouraged — but if the substance of your comment is “here’s what I have to say about this at my blog -> insert link” then do that elsewhere. Maybe this isn’t a rule in all comment areas like it is here, but I thought this was common sense netiquette? Yes/no?

In the process of leaving comments elsewhere, I’ve noticed Allen doing the same thing in other comment areas around the web, perhaps most frequently at Techcrunch where apparently Arrington and crew don’t mind this type of blatant marketing. Um, isn’t this what trackbacks are for? Obviously Allen thinks other blog comment areas are his publicity network. He hasn’t left a comment here since I delinked his site so I guess he wasn’t really interested in joining in any conversation here, only interested in using our space as a publicity network for Center Networks. Not cool, but in the scheme of what he ascribed to Scoble and some other “smart” marketers primary use of Twitter, undeniably relevant.

One last thing on using the comments area to point to your own blog posts. I’m not saying you can or should never do this. Just try doing it in a non-selfish way. Summarize your thoughts in your blog posts and then put a link in the signature for others to follow if interested if they don’t allow trackbacks (two-way trackbacks are always preferred). That’s not in your face marketing, which means it won’t get you as many clicks, but it won’t have people remembering these details at some later date and bringing them up like I did in this post.

Feeling a little warmer about Twitter
To date I’ve been using Twitter — sparingly, just check my timeline — to keep track of Twitter-related programs, but heretofore will be using as a notification and listening service to supplement my RSS feed and to catch comments not being left on blogs. As I become more comfortable, I’ll likely start replying to some of the other Twitters of those I’m following. If you have a good signal-to-noise ratio, let me know in the comments below and I’ll start following you.

I’m not doing a complete about face on Twitter and clones like Jaiku that Google just bought, but am now listening more carefully to the stream. Hey, at least a start. Thanks again to Marshall for sharing a real world business use for Twitter. And now I’m off to Twitter what I’m eating for lunch.

(just kidding)