Konamoxt, Inc.

I have a confession to make… when I first signed up for twitter, I thought it was a waste of effort… but lately, I think I’m starting to “get Twitter”. Its finally becoming clear to me why Evan Williams has been so confident that Twitter is really “the next big thing”. 

I first signed up to twitter earlier this year. I suspect my introduction is pretty similar to most peoples introduction to twitter…

I followed a couple friends, posted some “is this thing on” tweets, and tested the SMS features. Ok, the technology worked, but so what?

After a couple months, my follower list had grown a little, mostly from friends or colleagues of mine who were also signing up to twitter, and like me, had searched for people they knew who “might be on twitter”… I’d get emails telling me that so and so was following me, but when I checked it out, I didn’t see much to their streams other than the same “hello, anyone here?” type tweets I had posted.  I still hadn’t figured out what to do with this gadget.

Then, a couple months ago, as I prepared to race my third Ironman race, I had an idea for integrating my fitness blog, with a “live stream” of my race. Now stick with me here, fitness is not just my passion, it’s also my business. Konamoxt’s primary product is Sweat365.com, a fitness portal. A big part of the emphasis of our product focuses on how ordinary people can reach amazing fitness goals when they have the right tools, information and support. And so the idea of me live blogging my Ironman race seemed like a natural use for my until now relatively nascent twitter account.

As I turned back to my twitter account, I discovered that in fact I’d picked up a handful of fitness followers… people I have never met, but they found me through the social graph that is twitter. What’s particularly interesting about this seed “fitness group” within my growing twitter follower list, is that they found me. I hadn’t exactly been a very interesting person to follow… until now… But now, I had a reason to to share. And so I began to actually tweet.

The original design for twitter.

There are plenty of things I could tweet about… Business (many of my early followers are fellow entrepreneurs); technology (many twitter early adopters are technologists); politics and current events (what with a Presidential election and economic collapse on our hands); and I could also unapologetically talk about fitness. I don’t think I put much thought into, I just started tweeting. Tweeting whatever came to mind. But from day one, I have been very deliberate that this stream I am creating is Content.

Unlike facebook, where the social network is person centric, twitter’s open follower/following paradigm lends it’s social networks to be more content focused.

As someone in the “Media Business”, this content derived social network is a significant advantage.

This content orientation isn’t new of course, blogs are all about content, and only loosely related to people. And blogs, which largely pre-date the “social network” boom do have some early beginnings of network connectors in the form of blog rolls. And as any good blogger knows, Blog rolls are great resources for discovering other like minded bloggers.

You know the drill,  you have a blog you love, then one day you check out a couple blogs from the blog roll, they turn out to be good to, you engage, you comment, and if the author engages back, you extend your network.

Twitter, has it’s equivalent of the blog roll, in the Following list. The list of other tweeps that this this twitterer is following. But twitter also shows you, all the other people who are following the original twitterer, and this is where the real power of twitter is revealed.

Imagine if you could start a conversation with every reader of the most prestigious periodical in your industry? What it if you had the email address of every reader Wall Street Journal? What if you had the phone number for every viewer of “Lost” or “Heroes”?

If you’re in the business of delivering content, and building your brand by marketing your content in the social internet, this is a gold mine. You now have a completely transparent list of all the people who find any particular topic interesting. And, you can immediately and directly engage with them.

And this is where the controversy over how to use Twitter really comes out. Guy Kawasaki is a huge Twitter fanatic, and although there are several other internet illuminati with strong Twitter footprints, Guy recently stepped out on a limb and declared his bold philosophy about how to use twitter as a marketing tool. He’s not alone in his belief (I agree with most of what he’s saying, and clearly by how people like Jason Calacanis, Chris Brogan, Gary Vaynerchuk, and others, we’re not alone in seeing the value in these relationshops).

Guy’s twitter strategy can basically be summed up as: follow everyone, tweet about anything and everything, don’t be bashful about promoting yourself or others as you go along.

Guy’s caught a fair amount of flak for this. And there are many folks who disagree with his approach. One of my earliest followers, local Seattle startup guru, Marcelo Calbucci, recently posted on his blog about the “Wrong Way” to use twitter. Marcelo’s a great guy, and I’m sure he won’t mind me disagreeing with him on this. But Marcelo’s post basically argues the exact opposite position that Guy makes. My sense is that Marcelo hasn’t yet “got it” when it comes to Twitter. (I hope I don’t lose him as a follower now that I’ve posted this.)

The detractors of Guys approach usually use the “but it’s spammy” argument for why you shouldn’t use this technique. But here’s where I think they have it wrong.

The number one rule of publishing is always to make sure your content is compelling. If your content really is just spam, you won’t last long.

If you’re a spammer, real people won’t follow you. And unlike blogs, you can’t really comment spam, twitter’s paradigm actually allows the publisher to manage the contribution of external comments to her conversation in a much more direct manner. James Governor had a really great post that details not only the technical but social implications of this style of conversation. If you’re a developer thinking about scaling its a great read on its technical merits, but its an even more compelling read for doubters of the twitter tide.

Finally, let’s not forget, Twitter is just like any other media source, as a viewer you can always just change the channel. If you don’t like how Guy’s using twitter, then just unfollow him!

Filed by Brad Hefta-Gaub at 8:00 am under Social Media
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