My top 10 for Twitter

My Twitter chronology:
- It's early 2007. I don't get what all the hype is about. "Twitter is only for self-obsessed geeks"
- August 2007. I sign up. Might as well try it if it's survived this long. Now what do I do?
- November 2007. This is cool. Have 5 followers, don't have the faintest idea how they found me.

-December 2007 @LeWeb3. Meet serial twitterers and see them in action. Start to see the light.
-January 2008. I'm hooked. Here's why:

10. Procrastinating: Twitter's a wonderful way to pass the time when I want to avoid a task.
9. Blog traffic: I got over 100 visits in 3 hours thanks to a twitter by @LoicLeMeur (not that it has happened again since :-)
8. Diversity: I can "create my own village"
7. No pressure: Watch, listen, learn. No pressure to speak out, show up, bump into.
6. Garbage Can: Second thoughts? That's okay. Delete.
5. Style in 140 chars: If WW2 Allied radio operators could "see" who was behind the German transmissions just by "reading" the pulse and style of their morse code transmissions, I can surely get to know people in 140-character bursts of personality
4. No "fun walls."

3. The mental challenge of being concise. Of building a style, consciously or otherwise.
2. Great blog posts and great bloggers I wouldn't have otherwise gotten to know.
And my top top reason:
1. A weird sense of community. For Frozen Peas. For Ashley . For causes. For news. For something beyond the egocentric, narcisisstic tweets that I initially throught were the achilles heal of the app.

Let's meet. @creativivi

Social Graces 2.0

Dear A.bb.y,

I need your help. I don’t think I’m doing things right. The more time I spend online, the more confused I get about social norms 2.0.

For example,

- Am I expected automatically connect in LinkedIn or ning if somebody responds to a post on a professional mailing list? Or should I save those only for facebook or myspace?
- And will people be offended if I add them to my “limited profile” list? Or don’t allow them to see my LinkedIn connections?
- Maybe that explains why I don’t have enough friends. My facebook stats say over 70, but hey, my (20-year old) sister has 632 friends, and counting. Is my social life over at 31?
- Maybe I should be a better friend. Am I the only one not throwing back friendship balls, traveling bears or playing Texas Hold’em?
- I got “accepted” to Pownce the other day! But then I didn’t find any friends there. Does that mean I don’t have cool friends?
- And a web 1.0 question that still puzzles me… When in doubt, should I break the chain? My friend Esther Solomon published a nice op-ed piece in Haaretz today against automatic chain mail forwarding (“England wants to ban Holocaust studies!”) But what if I’m responsible for not helping find a lost child’s parents or passing on a warning about cancer and deodorants?

Thank in advance,

A very confused Vivi

P.S. Just occurred to me… wanna be my friend on Pownce?

Facebook sins

"So you too have given into the vortex?" is what a friend wrote to me (privately, not on my wall) after having "ran into me" in Facebook. And less than 3 months after that original sin, my poor soul must confess to three other ones:

1. Last week I sent my cousin a birthday greeting through Facebook after having learned what he actually did for his 29th birthday (jumping from a plane, seriously) from his Facebook updates. We live 50 km apart (no time zone difference, no long distance calling or VoIP failure=no real excuses.)

2. I then sent my sister a happy birthday greeting through Facebook (okay, she lives halfway around the world) BUT.... I tried to make up for it by using my one free gift (chose cute chocolate birthday cake, which she -publically- said she liked very much)

And the worst of them all:

3. My bosses' boss found me on Facebook. I had the honor of being his friend. Big Brother is officially watching, and I let him.

Guess I now have to say three Hail Zombies and install the super-enlightened-extra-fun-fun wall as pennance.