Tag Archives: social

Do We Publish Anything With Meaning and Longevity Today?

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Edwards Sermons Publication

How much do we write that has meaning and longevity today? While we aren’t, and can’t, all be Mark Zuckerberg (see Mark Zuckerberg and the Biblical Meaning of Success), it got me thinking about the value (and noise) we add when it comes to our photos, videos, and  our writing today. Much like photography when the digital camera boom happened, there was a flood of “uncle Bob” photographers that rushed on the scene, flooding every corner of the Internet with second rate photos. Now 10 years later, photographers, pros and amateurs alike, are adding a staggering 200 million photos to Facebook PER DAY, or around 6 billion per month, and that’s just Facebook, Flickr from February and March 2012, has reached the pace of 1.8 million photos a day, that is up to 28 photos per second in peak times. Same goes with video, YouTube is now receiving 72 hours of video uploads per MINUTE, and I’m sure the same goes with the music industry.

So what about writing? WordPress (the blogging platform of choice for many writers and bloggers, added 937,374 new posts, 1,492,356 comments, & 197,044,567 words TODAY on WordPress.com, which doesn’t even include self-hosted WordPress blogs making that number about double. When you add Twitter in at something in the range of 300-350 million tweets per day, you really start to see the massive amount of data we put out each day. Perhaps volume of information written degrades the overall quality of our writing? Would someone who wrote in the 15-17th century have actually had an advantage to writing in the 21st century? Less noise, less Tweeting, Facebooking, blogging, Instagr.am-ing, etc, would probably have given Calvin or Luther more time to write, and write well, right?

This morning I received a notification from the Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale that Wipf & Stock Publication has released previously unpublished writings of a series of sermons preached by Jonathan Edwards between 1737-1738. Here is a man who wrote profusely when it couldn’t be done on a computer. He had to write by hand, and even at that often times he didn’t have paper and had to use any scrap he could locate. In fact, he wrote so much that a whole team and museum of people are still sifting through his writings, trying to compile them into volumes. I wonder how much he could have written in the 21st century world. Maybe it would have been less… and not nearly as inspired as it was?

Repeating the Same Message Dilutes It’s Value

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This is the industry standard for information today. Repeat, repeat, repeat, the message so many times that at some point it will finally sink into the person’s mind, unless of course you are one of those who hears the message the first time, then turns off every next repetition. There is actually a negative term for this, which some people call numbness of frequency.

I really get tired at times of people and organizations that continually repeat the same message over and over again on commercials, marketing, their blogs, twitter, facebook and the like. I really like to get to know some of these people I read or follow on a more personal level, but when all they can do is continue to repeat their party line, whatever that is to them, in some ways it dilutes the message they are trying to send out.

Obviously the message is important but finding ways to provide some variety, or allow others to get a more personal view of themselves goes a long way to providing trust and value. Just a little variety once in a while would be great. I try to keep this in mind myself whenever I write anything so my message is more about what is going on with me personally, i really don’t think my readers, whoever they are, want to read about Auburn football every single time they see a post from me, and I would love to read some variety from those people who have none, just sayin.

Reasons Why Google+ is Already Better than Facebook

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So I almost felt obligated at this point to do a post about Google+ just because it really wasn’t what I was expecting from Google. What I was expecting from Google was another failed attempt at doing something social (they do have a good long history of trying social networking and missing big time), but this time I think they created something that just might work long term. Of course, it works, because basically they finally developed a format stream that is just like Facebook except without much of the garbage that is Facebook. When (not if) Google adds an iPhone AND an iPad app they will have surpassed Facebook, at least in functionality.

When Zuckerberg made the statement that the iPad was not a mobile device, and therefore Facebook would not be developing an app for the iPad, he pretty much told everyone using Facebook that Facebook is whatever Zuckerberg says it is. Google, even though they seem to have the biggest rival with Apple, can no doubt see beyond this and will very quickly release apps for the iPhone and iPad. Once Google+ hits the iPhone/iPad users they will grow at an alarming rate. It’s the “mobile” users that will feed Google+ and the easier Google makes it to use on ANY mobile device the faster they will grow Google+. The misses right now with Google+ remain the lack of an iPhone app and some other minor functionality issues like being able to hide comments in a stream, being able to view several circle streams at the same time, and at the moment people. The people thing is a plus and a minus at the same time. The millions and millions of masses on Facebook are what makes Facebook work. Google+ has a different genre of people right now and I don’t see that as a bad thing, but they do need more buy in.

Why is Google+ better than Facebook already?

  • No Ads
    so far (who knows how long this will last) there are no ads, anywhere. This is top on my list, and key. This is why I like twitter, this is why the experience on Google+ is better right from the start. All that junk on Facebook’s sidebars is the worst. You never know what’s going to come up but you know you don’t want to look at it.
  • No Spam
    Facebook and spam go together like spam in a can, or something like that. Spam is not the telemarketer calling you at dinner anymore. Spam is ANYTHING sent to you unsolicited. Facebook is full of this stuff from Mafia Wars to stupid games and poll questions, event invites, and all the other stuff that clutters up your feed stream with stuff you don’t want to look at. The stuff you do want to read is so buried in the mess of Facebook I often just give up trying to find actual real high quality content.
  • Design is Cleaner
    everything is cleaner, but making a cleaner design makes it easier to read, has less clutter, call it whatever you want but Google+ is just flat out easier on the eyes. Google has long since prided itself on simplicity of design, and in this case it works so much better than Facebook
  • Messaging System
    while Facebook has been vastly improving their messaging system, trying to overtake email, the message system on Facebook has always been one of their weakest points, and until recently, no one wanted to look at that inbox, it was just annoying. Google+ has made sending a message to a single person, or a select group, extremely easy. I would expect this since Google has built it’s non-search business around Gmail, but Google+ has the potential to be able to do away with email all together.
  • Integrates with Google Everything
    this is a no-brainer but it’s worth pointing out. There are some things I like better off Google, like their photo system Picasa (Flickr still has better functionality) but overall everything you do throughout the day is basically run on Google’s cloud anyway, you are already there, so adding Google+ isn’t too much of a burden.
  • People Who Don’t Like Social Networking Will Like Google+
    there are still some people that are not attached to a social network at all (really, I know this for a fact). For those people, Google+ is a way into that social networking circle without being in Facebook or Twitter. For many (or most) of these people they are already on Google. They use Google, they use Gmail, they are familiar with Google and in some ways have a trust built with them as a company. If you aren’t on Facebook or Twitter or anything else, you are probably already on Google, and Google will make trying Google+ a breeze for the non-adopters.
  • It isn’t Facebook
    there are many people who just hate Facebook, for them, this isn’t Facebook and that is good enough for them.
  • It is Google
    this is just like the Apple vs Android thing. Some people think Apple is straight from the devil himself and think Android is not. Facebook has a lot of “you are the devil” fans so being anything but Facebook is a plus.
  • It’s New and Has a Lot of Potential
    everyone doesn’t necessarily like change but new is always a big seller. Since every company puts out products or services today that are a work in progress (beta) and not a final completed entity, Google will continue to develop and improve Google+. Yes I know Facebook does this too, but they seem to take 2 steps forward and one step back and make everyone mad in the process.
  • Facebook still Doesn’t Give you Ownership of Your Data
    some will say Google doesn’t either, but they have made far more progress in this realm than Facebook has, and Facebook has no intention of ever letting go of your data. Every time you put content on Facebook instead of your own blog or somewhere that you have access to your own data you are building up the mother ship, not your own history. Google+ has a really cool download data set functionality that will probably improve over time. Facebook has nothing. Facebook owns everything you put on there and you own nothing.
So there you have it. I am sure there are plenty of other points I could make but those are my first and initial observations after using Google+ for about a week now. What has your Google+ experience been so far? If you need an invite just send me an email and I will send one over.

5 Reasons Why You Can't Ignore Facebook Anymore

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I have always loved this clip from Friends where Chandler goes in and tries to “quit the gym” Everyone who has ever joined a gym like Gold’s Gym or President’s knows… it’s impossible to quit the gym, but today, it’s even harder to ignore Facebook than it is to quit the gym.

This week I started reading Tim Challies new book called The Next Story: Life and Faith after the Digital Explosion, which talks about how to balance our faith with the explosion of technology. Challies makes a great point to say right off, completely removing ourselves from all forms of technology is not what we are called to do, or as Challies puts it “there is no biblical reason to utterly separate ourselves from them“, but we must be disciplined and discerning.

We cannot run away from digital technology—mobile phones and computers and the Internet and television are likely to be with us in one form or another for some time. Nor would we necessarily want to run away from them. Certainly, not all technology is harmful or dangerous. Is there a way, then, to live virtuously, immersed in this strange new digital reality?

Today, Facebook has made it far more difficult to get away from than it ever was years ago, and I have tried for years to stay far far away from Facebook. The short of it is, if you are in business, work for a non-profit organization, or are part of any organized group at all, it’s almost impossible for you not to have a presence on Facebook. And if you don’t, your organization, peers, co-workers, and friends, do, and they will be exchanging ideas, planing meetings, and discussing the overall day to day business of the “group” whether you are there or not.

It’s not that you personally have to be in the know on every single piece of information that goes on in your organization, but where meetings and information use to be exchanged face to face, they now can (and are) easily take place between private Facebook groups and even the new Facebook messaging system. If you are not on Facebook, you are out of the loop at this point. They may not be a big deal to you at all, but it’s more than finding out who went where on vacation, it’s impacting the world within your sphere of influence.

Reasons You Can’t Ignore Facebook Anymore

  1. Facebook is Where EVERYONE Connects Now

    2. This is basically everything Facebook has going for them in a nut shell, with 600 million people on Facebook, there is no other single organization that has more people connected and has a bigger area of influence. Yes there are far more than 600 million people in the world, but that is the single largest collection of people in one single organized area, and Facebook really hasn’t scratched the surface yet of what they can do, especially in China.

    Facebook has been embraced collectively by people and groups all across the world that never agree about anything, everyone from churches to commercial organizations, to government entities, to even the Vatican.

  2. You’re Kids Are or Will Be on Facebook

    3. Even if you don’t let your kids on Facebook yet, eventually they are going to go to college or get a job, and chances are they will end on Facebook, mainly because that’s where all their friends are. You don’t have to use Facebook to spy on your children but not knowing how it works or what Facebook is all about leaves you on the outside looking in. There are a thousand other things that go along with this but I’ll leave those points to someone who knows more about the subject at hand.

  3. It’s a Buy-in Method for Group Communications

    4. Your church, non-profit, charity, company, softball team, any group of like minded people can and will meet on Facebook. I have spent several years trying to find a better communications method that didn’t include Facebook and, while there were many great options, buy in was difficult outside of Facebook. No one wants to learn a new system and keep up with something new when they are already on Facebook.

  4. Someone Else Will Speak For Your Organization

    5. This is one of the biggest reasons to me. If you are not on Facebook as a company or organization, you are leaving a huge void that is going to be filled by someone, and probably not someone your organization has invested hours and hours in, like yourself, developing that organizational DNA. Eventually someone will make the “abc group” that represents your organization, and everyone on Facebook will join in and develop your presence for you. This is never a good idea. Your organizations has probably spent an enormous amount of time and energy into developing a specific marketing and organizational plan, why leave your business to the untrained masses where they can run wild with your image or passions, especially when it’s free?

  5. There Will Never Again Be a World Without Facebook

    6. We are not going to wake up one day in a world before Facebook. It is best to learn and understand how Facebook functions and use it to our advantage than to ignore the single largest organization of people on the planet. This is an organization that started in February of 2004. It isn’t even 10 years old yet and it has 600 million users! It’s not a fad, it’s not a passing gimmick, it’s a privately held company, estimated to be worth over $50 billion.

    I spent years trying to just ignore the Facebook monster, but in the end, it goes back to my first point, it’s where everyone is. I have thought about pulling the Facebook plug and deleting my account many times but there are many people I communicate with on a weekly basis that only communicate through Facebook. Some people are ok with just not communicating, but if part of your job includes “communication” of any kind, I don’t see how you operate without Facebook, even if it’s just a user ID.

So there it is, my Facebook rundown. This really only scratches the surface of what is Facebook. I can’t imagine the influence Facebook with have in another 5 years when they have 2-3 billion users. As with all technology, there are things about Facebook that aren’t cool, and aspects that enable great connectivity with other people. Learn how to use Facebook, understand the privacy issues that go along with being on Facebook, but don’t ignore Facebook because you don’t understand it.

The Complete Egoist by Arthur Guiterman

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I have tried over the years to reconcile the whole of what is social networking to how it helps or destroys the effort of devoting one’s life to the pursuit of God.  Reading through a sermon written by a family member in 1976, I came across this poem by Arthur Guiterman called “The Complete Egoist”, who wrote this around 1930 about our pursuit to self. I wonder what he would think of our narcissism in 2010.

A Mollusc who dwelt in primordial slime
Was always himself to the innermost core;
As being himself took up most of his time,
He never did anything more.
Still just as he was, though long ages have flown,
He stands on the specimen-cabinet shelf
A fossil, immortal in durable stone,
A monument raised to himself.

–Guiterman ~1930

Telecommuting Can Save Your Business Money

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Some of you may or may not know that I have been looking for a good job match in a full time IT related field for about 3-4 years now (yes I said years). So far, it has been one of the most frustrating ongoing experiences I have had in business.

I have been denied a lowly $7-9/hour job to work out of my home office because I had too much experience, and have turned down a $60,000 job because it wasn’t a good match between my personality and their culture.  There is nothing easy about finding a good career match any more, and I have a lot to offer a company.  Almost 20 years of business experience, education, flexibility, a low required salary, and a willingness to travel.  See also my post Top 5 Tips to Help Your Job Search.

How I Can Save Your Business Money

What is astonishing to me, is how many potential employers will not look at the possibility of having a professional (and I mean that in every sense of the word) work out of their home office when the typical IT job really doesn’t require a physical presence in an office, or anywhere for that matter.  I understand some do, and that’s fine, but not all by any stretch.

It’s simple math.  If I can be hired to do a job in a middle-income American city for $50,000, which requires me to move, I can do the exact same job from my home office for $40,000.  That’s $10,000 a year in payroll expenses your company doesn’t have to pay.  Computer equipment they don’t have to buy, phones, office space, parking, gas, and food that doesn’t have to be purchased.  If your company has a tight budget and really needs to control expenses, why ignore this potential savings?

My Office is Better Equipped Than Most Office Buildings

How old is your office equipment? What tools are you missing to get your job done in an effective and efficient manner?

I have 4 different phone lines/numbers I can use including a landline, cellular, and VoIP.  A network of 5-6 computers (PC and MAC), laptops, desktops, mobiles devices, a reliable 6M high speed DSL line, 10 TB of data storage (yes Tera), data backups, and my office is even wired for a 20KW backup generator in case of power failure with 250 gallons of propane on site.  I am probably better equipped and better prepared than the standard office building in middle America.

With that said, I have no problem going out of city or state for the right position, it will just cost everyone more money.

What Comes Around (To Get Down, Timo Maas)

This week I had a few different conversations with potential employers, some very promising.  One of these companies was so unique in the way they required applicants to submit information I decided to go the extra mile and respond to their creativeness with creativity by making a portfolio video.  Videos like this are nothing new but I made it specifically for them for an added personal touch.

Below is the video, (with the names removed to protect the innocent of course), but if you are one of those out there looking for a job, don’t just do the exact same thing that all the other applicants do, that accomplishes nothing but allowing yourself to blend in.  Be creative, stand out, showcase your skills.  Not all employers will appreciate this approach for sure, but a company looking for a Linchpin instead of a door knob will.

See the full size version of The Portfolio Project here.

Top 5 Tips to Help Your Job Search in this Economy

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In my ongoing pursuit of the perfect full time employer I have compiled more information than I could possibly have imagined a few years ago.  I could probably write an HR book called HR, the Good the Bad, the Ugly but I am sure someone else has beat me to it.  After writing a post about a recent interview I decided to put down a few quick tips I learned just in case someone else out there is also looking for that perfect match.

The Match-Making Job Market of 2010 Is Fluid

Today is a different market than even just five years ago.  Potential employers are doing more with less, and are in no hurry to bring on a new hire that may or may not be an exact match with the company’s existing culture.  As a potential employee, I am also just as picky when it comes to looking at a potential employer.  I don’t just want any job, I want a good match, but in 2010 it’s more like online dating or match-making than job hunting.  Don’t just automatically jump on the first offer, really look at what kind of match you are with the company culture, business model, and their clients.

Flooding the Market with Resumes Doesn’t Work, Be Creative

I have sent in hundreds of resumes, made countless followup calls, gone out of my way to not be in the way when needed, met tons of new people, offered to move to all over California (my native land), Texas, Florida (wife’s preference), New York, Wisconsin, Montana (those two were a stretch), Georgia, Virginia, and Kentucky.  Yet, it’s the end of another week of meeting new people, making new connections, learning new companies, and waiting.  One thing I have learned, flooding the market with resumes doesn’t work.

If you want to be seen, you need to do something creative and unique.  Don’t just do the same old thing that everyone else does, that doesn’t do any good at all.  Find a unique way to stand out to the HR person or hiring manager.  For an example of what I did this week see this video I did for How I Can Save Your Business Money.

Become a Major League Scout in Your Search

You need to seek out new prospects like a scout looks at potential minor league players.  Traditional job sites like Monster have been almost worthless to me.  Today, employers will post on Facebook, Twitter, blogs, craigslist, and on their own websites.  Where are the creative companies posting their new positions?  Don’t limit yourself to finding a great job by only looking on the traditional websites.

Do Your Own Research, Don’t Just Skim the Surface

When you do get an Interview, phone or otherwise, do you know more about the company than the HR person?  Impossible?  Not at all, and many times I have known far more about the details of a company than even their own employees do.  Do your own research, and dig deep.  A good example is to look at the company on LinkedIn.  Look at their current employees on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook (are they happy with their job), their former employees (why did they leave, where are they now), and all the associated websites you can find.

Keep in mind your potential employer is doing the same research on you.  Don’t give them a stupid reason like a photo on Facebook to hire someone else.

Don’t Try To Hide, Control Your Internet Footprint

If you are on Facebook and you hide your account from a potential employer they will probably wonder what you are trying to hide, and if there is good reason, perhaps fixing that first would be a good idea.  I have created a one stop shop on Google where potential employers could find out every thing there is to know about me (http://www.scottfillmer.me), professionally and personally, and from there they can find their website of choice without having to give them 10 different places to look.  You can still be publically seen and control your private information, just use common sense.

What are your favorite job search tips?

How a Church Communicates in a Generation Gap

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Tweetdeck on Twitter

I read a few interesting articles today in Entrepreneur Magazine and Marketing Pilgrim, about how people communicate, and have difficulty communicating, between the generational gaps.  Each generation has a different way of embracing new forms communicating that becomes comfortable to them but where gen-x and gen-y ‘ers seem to have adopted to new forms of communication, the boomers have let is slide and still prefer their face-to-face and over the phone exchanges.

Face-to-Face, Phone, or Twitter-ific

The reports go on to talk about how that makes it difficult to properly communicate between the boomers and gen’ers who don’t really care for face to face and hate making an actual phone call.  All that got me thinking about how we communicate within the church.  Poor communication in a church can kill its momentum, growth, or relationships, but “poor” communication is not universal and what is poor communication from a 20-something to a boomer is acceptable among their peers.

Being Unaware Creates Mis-Understanding

It doesn’t take long to see how mis-understandings in communication methods between generations can cause problems.  As an example, I have found that the farther away you get from the Baby Boomer generation the less an actual response to something is deemed necessary… a response to a phone call, email, sms, facebook comment, tweet on Twitter, whatever it is, the younger you are, the fewer responses are deemed to be needed where the closer to a boomer you are, the more you expect a response to everything.

Where a boomer-ish person is offended by a non-response, the gen-y’er doesn’t even give it a second thought.  Being a Gen-X’er myself, I get quite irritated with non-response but always try to remember who it is I am communicating with, then interpret what their lack of response means.  What it means is that they don’t communicate in the exact same method I do, and I shouldn’t hold that against them when I don’t get a response.

Of course that is a generality and certainly not scientific, but it highlights that an understanding of how each generation prefers to communicate is needed, especially within the church body. If we want the church body to grow, if we want to reach new people for Jesus, we have to understand how the younger generation likes to communicate, what is important to communicate to them, and what they could care less about.  As we all get older, it isn’t about what makes us happy and what we like, right?

Who is the Church Trying To Reach Anyway?

Who are we trying to reach?  If we are trying to reach the Boomer’s, they are probably still looking for those traditional forms of communication from the church like a weekly snail-mailed newsletter, a printed paper bulletin, a pictorial directory of church members, and even those phone calls to the house.  It wouldn’t be a stretch to say Gen-Y doesn’t care a thing about getting something in the mail or receiving a bulletin when they walk in, that just isn’t what they are looking for in a church, it doesn’t add any value to their experience.

They want to share ideas.  They could possibly be the most sharing generation the world has seen, but it isn’t sharing face-to-face like the boomers, it is sharing stories, ideas, life dreams, it is life lived as open source. Even email is unimportant, and becoming less and less important as time goes by.   It is just considered to be spam (even if it isn’t), and sending an email newsletter is irrelevant to the generation that lives on rss feeds.

Produce, but Don’t Push Information

Like each past generation, they want to communicate with each other in the manner they are accustomed to, which is electronically.  They get their information proactively, and don’t want it pushed onto them, this means we have to produce the information and let them come get it.  Communicating things in that manner may seem backwards to traditional means (because it is), and may be more difficult, but push methods will be rejected by the Gen-Y’ers.

So how do we produce information we want them to see and just hope they find it?  Carefully I guess, but I know if it is meaningful enough to them, they will find it.  Word of mouth still rules with Gen-Y as it does with Boomers, so maybe that is the bridge over the generation gap.

Check out the chart below.  I think if we make an effort to understand how each generation prefers to communicate we can better know how to serve each person.  Serving someone in a manner or custom they could care less about it totally ineffective and a waste of everyone’s time.  Wouldn’t it be better to know how best to serve (communicate with) each individual person instead assuming all will respond in the same way?

Learning the Differences, is Important

Communicating in the Generation Gap

A New Website About to Launch at Cornerstone Church

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Cornerstone Church Splash Page

It is not to much of a surprise (outside of the actual look) that Cornerstone is about to launch a new website.  I had the privilege of working with Brad Ruggles, a website/graphics designer and creative developer, on the launch of this new site.  Two of my three earthly passions are faith, technology, and photography, which means I was pretty much able to combine all three into one project.

This project was something that took a few months to put together, and was the collaborative effort of every staff member at Cornerstone, but it was something I have wanted to work on for many years now.  Not just a new website, but a new mindset into what potential the Internet has in the Church body.

Tools like Twitter, Facebook, rss feeds, podcasts, videos, and all the things that make up the Internet today can be utilized for kingdom purposes, and done in a professional way.  This isn’t a new subject for me personally (see The Church’s New Drug of Choice // Part 1, Does a Church Really Need a Website?, The Church Body and the Internet, Part 1, The Church Body and the Internet, Part 2, to name a few past posts), I have been on a quiet campaign for relavant church websites for the better part of 10-15 years.

This is (to me) what people expect out of their church today, and especially those Believers and visitors in the 19-29 age range.  It is a connected world, a connected society, and they don’t want or expect to walk into a church today and see 20th century technology.  We don’t need to or have to spruce up Jesus. The Salvation message has remained the same for 2,000 years, but each church in the Church body reaches different people according to its purpose, and a website is a great place to start.

I say start because a website, a well designed, relavant, media based website, is where you can start to bring people to the Church and where they can learn and connect with others that have a love for Christ.  It is no longer about displaying something static that shows the worship times and directions, it is about how do we connect with each other and grow in the Body.  I can’t wait for the new site to go live.  I think this is exactly what Cornerstone is to me and my wife when we arrived about a year ago and I was thrilled to have some part in putting it together.

I know there are a few other Church IT people that read my blog so I will be writing some additional posts on how it went together and how to even get started.  What to look out for when choosing a website design company, and what you should be able to expect from your developer.  I think we chose one of the best in Ruggles but throughout the course of the project I did meet several other companies, some good, and some very bad, and hope to share that with you in the upcoming months.  Hope you enjoy the new site, it should be live some time this weekend.

The 5 Most Useful Twitter Apps and Clients

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We are just about to launch a new website (details coming closer to the end of the week) and Twitter is highly integrated into the framework of the website, so I thought I would highlight some of the better applications you can use with Twitter for Free (mostly).

People often ask me, “what is twitter”.  I should just write a post about that, but this is assuming you already know about Twitter, at least a little bit.  Some of you Twitterholics will recognize most of the top 5, but be sure to check out the ones at the bottom which I consider up and coming.

What Is Twitter?

If not, I have determined there is no one answer to “what is Twitter“, but for me, it is a free flowing exchange of ideas and thoughts with people who may have never been able to meet or contact in any other way.  I have talked to musicians, politicians, and a lot of other ians that I would never have access to before Twitter.  It is a two way street of course, but Twitter is far more than just “what am I doing”.

Because Twitter has made their service somewhat open (meaning they provide an API for their systems) there have been many people and companies that have developed great applications and services for twitter.  On a side note, I would argue (slightly) that Twitter is at risk of becoming the next AOL without making themselves a true open source project, but that is also for another post.

So if you are looking for some great things to do with Twitter, here is my short list.

1. The Ultimate Desktop Application, TweetDeck

TweetDeck for Twitter

If you read no farther than this first item, you have hit the best right off the top.  Tweetdeck is THE desktop application that pulls out the potential that is Twitter.  Tweetdeck really deserves a post all its own so I will make this recap brief.  Once you get to the point where you are following more than about 25 people on Twitter it is time to install Tweetdeck.

It allows you to add twitter groups to filter out different users (I have a group just for news where all Twitter news feeds like CNN, AP, etc, go so I can see them independently of all my other tweets.  You can view Twitscoup which is a live running tag cloud of converstions on Twitter, and of course you can send out new tweets with a shorten URL field for posting links.

2a. Mobile iPhone Apps :: Twitterific

Twitterific for Twitter

If you have an iPhone (or Blackberry), that will really unlock the potential of Twitter (a Blackberry will do but honestly, the apps really don’t compare to the iPhone, but they do have corresponding Blackberry apps too).  Twitterific is the place to start.  This free iPhone app is one of the best ways to follow a larger number of people with basic @reply, direct, and tweet functions.  You can also see user info and tag favorites within the iPhone app.

Some of the features I like about Twitterific is you can click through to links and photos and they open in a twitterific type browser on your iPhone that allow you to open and close without having to launch Safari.  What I have found that you can’t do, is see a list of your favorites, which is something I would like to do, but that is minor for what this app does.

2b. Mobile iPhone Apps :: Tweetie

iPhone App Tweetie

If you can ignore the name, Tweetie is probably hands down the best iPhone Twitter app available.  It costs $3.00 through your iTunes account but is well worth the price.  It has far more functionality than Twitterific (the free version) but I don’t find it quite as fast to use.  What you can do with this iPhone app that I have not found with any other desktop or mobile app is manage multiple accounts.

If managing multiple accounts is important to you, this is about the only way I know to do it without having to log out and log back into the other account.  For that I would have paid $10 for this mobile app.  Some of the other things you can do with Tweetie is view @replies on one page.  For those who complain that they are overwhelmed by the people following them and replying to them, Tweetie is built just for these popular Twitter divas (I love you. I really do€¦but€¦) who are just so popular on Twitter it is impossible to keep up with effectively on anything else.  I am going to pick on Anne Jackson just because I love her blog and her work in general (sorry Anne).

Tweetie is one application that will allow you to still follow the conversation with anyone and everyone that wants to send you an @reply without actually following them.  Just tap the button at the bottom for @replies and see all those replies coming in from people you don’t follow.  Tweetie also has several unique functions under the “more” section.  One that is really wild is the “nearby” link.  This will allow you to see who is close to your location by using the GPS on the phone.  I used this last time Deb and I went to Gulf Shores and it worked great.

3. Tweet Grader

Twitter Grader

Do you love stats.  Then Tweet Grader is for you.  Find out how you are doing amongst all the other Twitter users, find local people using Twitter, and see a host of different stats about your own usage.  This and the next one may be the vain uses of Twitter but I find them very very useful to help improve everything about how I use Twitter.

Tweet Grader, if you notice, is a user entered stat grade, and you can check anyone, not just your own Twitter ID (like mine here, still sitting at #6 in Twitter Auburn behind some great people).  This has several uses as well but all in all a great stat tool for Twitter.

4. Mr Tweet, the Networking Assistant

Mr Tweet for Twitter

This is the most recent addition to my Twitter life.  Mr Tweet is quickly becoming the most useful tool that I have found for Twitter.  Tag lined as “Your Personal Networking Assistant for Twitter”, it allows you to do three things. (a) find new people based on my recent activities, (b) find recent followers I am not following, and (c) check my own profile and usage stats.

What this does is pull data that you can probably not find by just surfing around.  It gives you useful information like how likely the person is to reply to your tweets, how many tweet per day they average, and what their network of followers looks like.  You have to follow Mr Tweet on twitter before they will start calculating your information, and it is updated every two weeks.

5. TwitPic

Twitpic on Twitter

Being a photographer (even one on Twitter), this is my favorite of all Twitter uses.  Twitpic has become an incredible source of information.  That actually posted one of the first photos of the US Air flight that crashed in Hudson river here http://twitpic.com/135xa.  It ended up almost crashing the Twitpic servers but it showed how useful Twitter is as a journalistic tool for everyday people.  This photo was one of the first to circulate the Internet after the crash.  It wasn’t by CNN or Foxnews, or MSNBC, it was by a Twitter users using Twitpic.

Twitpic is one of the easiest Twitter tools to use.  All you do is sign into Twitpic and they give you an email address that uploads to your twitter account.  You can take a photo with your cell phone (for those who have cell phone cameras) and upload it to twitter on the fly, right then and there on the spot.  Facebook has done this with their iPhone app so it works in a similar way if you are familiar with how that works.  If you don’t have a cell phone with a camera, just use the desktop uploader and start sharing your pics.

Are You Ready for Twitter Now?

So if that isn’t enough for you to ponder on Twitter, there are a few other cool tools of note.  With Twitter allowing the use of its API data there are almost endless applications available, but the great ones find a need and build upon that to make something we will find value in using.

  • Twhirl (desktop app)
  • Hashtags – a great search tool – http://hashtags.org/
  • Eventbox – combines all kinds of social sites
  • Summize – Twitter search, Summize before Twitter bought them, great job on this one
  • Twingly (http://www.twingly.com/) – something I am pretty hip on using right now
  • FriendFeed (another combining tool)
  • Dial2Do – very interesting tool that might prove very useful

So take the plunge and get started with Twitter.  Just don’t tell me no one cares what in the world I am doing.  It is far far more than just that.  It is a free network to exchange ideas and thoughts with the world.  Oh, and if you want to follow me on Twitter, here you go http://www.twitter.com/scottfillmer or @scottfillmer on Twitter.