As mentioned previously, I was at Tweetcamp last Saturday and, for once, I've actually got all my photos up on Flickr before I've had the chance to write up my thoughts on the event.
Here's a Flickr slideshow of them:
Recently in Web 2.0 Category
The pace of change is astonishing right now. In the next 48 hours or so we'll see a new version of the iPhone OS and a new iPhone with video recording and better photographic options - and thus a potentially more useful mobile reporting tool.
But Twitter client development is moving even faster than mobile platform development, with a new version of Tweetdeck for desktops and a brand, sparkling new iPhone version realeased this morning. Tweetdeck is many people's preferred Twitter app on the desktop, if only for it's ability to create groups and then view multiple different stream at once. It's major weakness has been the fact that you can only manage one Twitter account in it at a time. Well, that weakness is gone with the new release. I'm now tracking both of my active Twitter accounts at the same time, and that's a huge improvement in its usability.
But there's something more significant in this release, something that ties in very closely with the iPhone release: the launch of the Tweetdeck account. Signing up for a free account within the app allows your column states to be synced between different devices. This means that, in theory, you should be able to open the app on your work PC, your home Mac or your iPhone - and see exactly the same set of columns. This ability to maintain perfect synchronisation states could give the app a huge advantage over clients like Seesmic Desktop - because it reduces the imput you need to keep everything working the way you like. At the moment, it appears that only column and group states sync, rather than accounts, meaning you need to do a little set-up on each device - but after that it all works very smoothly.
But Twitter client development is moving even faster than mobile platform development, with a new version of Tweetdeck for desktops and a brand, sparkling new iPhone version realeased this morning. Tweetdeck is many people's preferred Twitter app on the desktop, if only for it's ability to create groups and then view multiple different stream at once. It's major weakness has been the fact that you can only manage one Twitter account in it at a time. Well, that weakness is gone with the new release. I'm now tracking both of my active Twitter accounts at the same time, and that's a huge improvement in its usability.But there's something more significant in this release, something that ties in very closely with the iPhone release: the launch of the Tweetdeck account. Signing up for a free account within the app allows your column states to be synced between different devices. This means that, in theory, you should be able to open the app on your work PC, your home Mac or your iPhone - and see exactly the same set of columns. This ability to maintain perfect synchronisation states could give the app a huge advantage over clients like Seesmic Desktop - because it reduces the imput you need to keep everything working the way you like. At the moment, it appears that only column and group states sync, rather than accounts, meaning you need to do a little set-up on each device - but after that it all works very smoothly.
Continue reading Initial Thoughts on iPhone/PC Tweetdeck.
Oh, yawn. Yet another newspaper columnist has a go at Twitter and social networking generally. This time it's Simon Heffer of the Telegraph, and you can predict the main beats of the article: shallow, pointless, empty...
At least he avoids the trap of talking about celebrity use of Twitter and focusing on that as the model of use. But he then plunges head-first into the pit beyond, the one marked "misunderstands conversation as publication". And that, in the simplest terms, is how and why so many journalists misunderstand so much of social media. The look at the work "media" and think publication, without thinking how important the adjectival use of "social" is in that context. For all its horrible buzzword connotations, there is real meaning behind the term social media, if only the people who decry it for its shallowness would pause for a few moments to think it through. But then, perhaps they're handicapped. Having spent decades doing nothing but publishing, the idea that conversation might happen in text form appears to be a mite challenging for them.
Still, if the "social networking is shallow" meme has hit Heffer, it's probably all but played out in traditional media. And you never know, in five years or so, he might be writing compelling interviews with its major practitioner, just as he did a few weeks back with Tina Brown and the Daily Beast, a news site which clearly has its origins in the blogging age.
(I'd just like to say a quick thank you to Ian Douglas of the Telegraph Media Group, who dropped me an e-mail with a link to the Tina Brown interview, after I complained on Twitter about its lack of an online presence a few days after it was published in the dead tree edition.)
My first, tentative step into the world of AudioBoo:
This is all interesting stuff:
you can't build a community it is either there or it's not. You know you have a community if it takes care of itselfThe rest of the summary here is worth a read.
YOU are the asset of a community and not the other way around
the best community leaders come out of the community rather than being hired or thrown in
"Moderation in everything," my late mother used to say, somewhat ironically given how much unused wool and unpainted china she left behind. But, like many clichés, it has a deep element of truth, as I've discovered by disconnecting somewhat from my normal blogging-twittering-photographing lifestyle. A quiet weekend with friends and family, as well as a rather sobering visit to my parents' grave (to check the newly-placed gravestone with Mum's name added) have helped put many things back in their proper perspective, and that's valuable.
The one big danger of social media, I think, is also its strength - its ability to connect you with like minds. If you don't move outside the tight circle of people just like you, you can start seeing things in a distorted way, leading to a bubble mentality. This is one reason I value being married to a social media sceptic. Perspective is important, and sometime you have to step back to get it.
I've yet to open my feed reader, which is likely to be a place of horror and despair after 5 days away from it, but I'm glad I took the break.
Sorry for the unannounced silence, but I'm back in business.
The one big danger of social media, I think, is also its strength - its ability to connect you with like minds. If you don't move outside the tight circle of people just like you, you can start seeing things in a distorted way, leading to a bubble mentality. This is one reason I value being married to a social media sceptic. Perspective is important, and sometime you have to step back to get it.
I've yet to open my feed reader, which is likely to be a place of horror and despair after 5 days away from it, but I'm glad I took the break.
Sorry for the unannounced silence, but I'm back in business.
There is, I think, a tendency for journalists to over-complicate social media and how they talk about it. Somehow they makes something which is fundamentally just about talking to people, well, hard. Look at the recent kerfuffle about the WSJ guidelines for using social sites.
There is a remedy for this. And Ryan has just published it.
Friday night saw me at #TweetupLondon, an impromptu drinkies session after the Somesso 09 conference. Good beer, good conversation and a good time.
Here's a wee bit of video I shot, featuring Jason Falls, Andy Piper, Dennis Howlett, Andrea Vascellari and Sarah Blow, as well as others whose names elude me.
TweetupLondon from Adam Tinworth on Vimeo.
Oh, and there are some photos on Flickr, too.
It's nearly the weekend. And we know what this weekend brings, don't we?
Eurovision.
Now, we might be lacking Terry Wogan this year, so can I recommend a whole different kind of coverage for you? Mr Ewan Spence, a mad Scotsman whom I've run around New York and Paris with (but never anywhere in the UK, strangely), is over in Moscow reporting on the thing, in an online, new-media kind of way. In fact, he's been doing so all week, so you can head over to his site to get your preparation done for tomorrow night's Eurovision extravaganza.
And just to whet your appetite, here's his 50 Fun Facts about the Eurovision:
Eurovision.
Now, we might be lacking Terry Wogan this year, so can I recommend a whole different kind of coverage for you? Mr Ewan Spence, a mad Scotsman whom I've run around New York and Paris with (but never anywhere in the UK, strangely), is over in Moscow reporting on the thing, in an online, new-media kind of way. In fact, he's been doing so all week, so you can head over to his site to get your preparation done for tomorrow night's Eurovision extravaganza.
And just to whet your appetite, here's his 50 Fun Facts about the Eurovision:
Going on holiday is a good move, it appears. Traffic on OM&HB is up, RSS subs are up and I've just hit 1,000 followers on Twitter.
I'm only following about half of the people who follow me - and 500 is about my ceiling. Twitter has evolved for me from something I only use to communicate with a small circle of friends, to something I use to monitor sentiment and activity amongst a whole load of people who work in similar fields to me.
And, interestingly, it has become my main internet presence, which significant amounts of traffic coming from it back to this (and other) blogs. I suspect we're only just seeing the potential of these real-time, flow applications to change how we publish.
