Fire hose outside our office

Twitter has been referenced as a waste of time, pithy non-sense and a time suck.  However, it’s best description for my use is drinking from a fire hose.  There are so many people typing so much information and even with just 140 characters it can be hard to manage.  I’ve written before about my struggles with the Twitter stream, but one benefit the fire hose does provide is tapping the collective knowledge of Twitter.  I agree with Micah that this is NOT necessarily crowdsourcing.  It’s just searching for information or asking a few (or many) people a question and getting an almost instant result.

In the past few months, Twitter has helped me find new restaurants, backup software, news sources, software, home improvement contractors, immediate sports updates and new music.  Why would you search Google for an answer to a question others might immediately give you?   Google has to crawl all those web sites and although its fast, Twitter is faster and I usually know who I can trust.  There is a much bigger discussion over the ascension of real-time search and Twitter’s fire hose provides that too at search.twitter.com.   For detailed research the fire hose may only give you a start, but almost every time I need a simple answer I can poll or search Twitter.

Our society seems to only increase its need for convenience and immediacy, so how do you find quick information?  Do you search online?  Look in a phone book?  Read the local newspaper?  Call or text message a friend?  I’m curious to know.

I couldn’t help but notice the differences between online and offline companies. Here are a few observations and takeaways that make me think us web geeks/startup junkies sometimtes live in a bubble.

• Salespeople don’t mess around – I know some people think I’m a “sales guy”, although I’ve never been trained (most that are great have been). I brought my portfolio and plenty of cards, but the real salespeople had tri-fold brochures, client lists and a few even had custom name tags with a scrolling digital message. Before you laugh, it was memorable and again their motive was clear. Takeaway – Customer acquisition is so different for offline businesses.
  
• Social what? – Most attendees referenced the web in some way and a couple even talked about their Facebook group or *gasp* Twitter page (their words not mine). I was floored to hear business owners and employees talk about using social tools. Granted some butchered the vernacular and I assume the execution, but there was obvious curiousity and interest. I suspect these steps are much like company blogs were a few years ago and 99% still haven’t heard of RSS. Takeaway – Social tools are still shiny new toys for most offline businesses and some may sadly be looking for the magic bullet.
  
• You are what you wear – As we rotated groups you had to choose your next table in less than one minute. Needless to say, we were all forced to make judgments on where to sit by who you knew or what the table looked like. Some folks wore their company logo (helpful for this event) a few were business casual and most were professionally dressed. I chose the sportcoat with no tie and it was obvious a few suits wondered if I accidentally left my tie at home. Takeaway – I know some people hate to hear this, but just as online companies are judged by the look of their site, offline folks are judged by their attire.
• Face to face matters – In addition to physical appearance, those who were quick witted or well spoken ruled the event’s roost. Most of my online friends can write great copy for a web page or type funny statements in under 140 characters, but human interaction is just so different. I found it refreshing and realized many people (of all ages) still want the face to face interaction for making decisions. Takeaway – While our crowd may use Paypal, email and Google docs there is a massive customer base for companies who will meet you in person.

I’m not ready to ditch my web conferencing, twitter addiction or LinkedIn account, but it was a nice change of pace. I really enjoyed the event’s framework as people weren’t there to meet and greet, they came to generate business. It felt almost more relaxed knowing everyone’s intentions (i.e. – buy my wares or help me find someone who will). Online we criticize those who try to sell, sell, sell, but this was the purpose of virtually every attendee.

There are many things I appreciate about the web like scaling, speed and visibility (Google the term earwood). But, just like the show “Lost” there are “others” out there and they’re not going away.

It’s pretty amazing how quickly Mike’s account of the incident raced through Twitter and Mike’s tweets were even cited by major news outlets.

In the beginning our issue was we knew very few folks and no one locally using the service. However as I mentioned recently, Twitter users now face a very different scenario… how to deal with the masses. You can see based on these stats my usage and follow patterns have drastically changed. That’s no mistake as I couldn’t handle the stream.

Last week I had a cartoon about Twitter and I couldn’t resist sharing this fitting one below created by the smart folks at Hubspot. If you’re wondering why people aren’t following you back, check Shannon’s list (don’t miss the comments either).

Will I be using Twitter in another 650 days? Hard to say since the signal to noise ratio is changing rapidly and I have been known to be wrong about social networks. At this point, I’ll just say Twitter has been a great network to participate in and I can only hope the water doesn’t get poisoned too soon.

This year while others slept, I caught up on some reading and enjoyed a little time on Twitter. Needless to say, turkey, football, naps and more turkey were the predominant terms being discussed, so I quickly grabbed ten funny turkey tweets for Thanksgiving 2008.

• Twitter – Some love it, others just don’t get it. I’m firmly in the first group. I find great links, have established new connections, keep myself amused and easily keep up with existing relationships. I’m going to start pulling my daily twitter posts into this blog. It won’t replace my blog, but will give you much more insight to my world and network. If you’re on Twitter, follow me and hopefully we’ll find new ways to help each other.
• Video, video & more video – For over two years, I’ve been engrossed in web video, its best uses for brands, monetization and distribution. I’ve blogged about Daily Idea and Almost Mediocre as my two video properties, but many more opportunities have arisen. We’ve launched another web show for PopCrunch (warning: explicit language). Ping me for more information or if you have ideas for web video.
• Startup work – Rob and I really changed gears with our startup and have landed our first major customer. We’re built a social platform for local media companies. Have you seen your local newspaper, tv or radio station’s web site lately? Good, then you know there’s a market.

I thank you for sticking around and it’s good to be back. Even though at times I live by my calendar and task list, this quote summed up my eighteen days of absence.

“Calendars are for careful people, not passionate ones.”
- Chuck Sigars

Flickr photo credit: Leo Reynolds

In this instance, I pulled up twitter on my mobile phone and numerous Louisvillians were updating the storm and their personal status in real time. I quickly found out a tree was down less than a mile from my house and luckily, everyone was ok.

So, be sure to follow me on Twitter, as I’m updating more than once each day and I try to give more insights to things I find online and in my business. If you still aren’t convinced, here’s a few links showing Twitter can benefit almost anyone.

- Rohit gives us 8 Unique Reasons People Like Twitter
- Get Elastic offers Ecommerce Microblogging: More Reasons To Use Twitter
- Aaron gives Using Twitter for Ministry, Church and Missions
- Melatone Music spells out The 3 Most Compelling Reasons To Twitter