#Masquertweet behaviour

Apparently I've become the poster child of anonymous tweeters (at least in our own little circle). Over the last few days I've heard a few concerns from the other anonymous tweeters about maintaining their security and keeping their (lack of) identity at the event.

I thought this went without saying....but just in case.....

Any kind of misconduct, harassing behavior or motions to un-mask (literally or figuratively) someone at #Masquertweet simply will not be tolerated. I'm all about a good joke and having a fun time (and if you're not then why in the world would you be following my feed), but we all know the stakes in this little game we call life and should all know where the lines are drawn.

If anyone is unclear on this - lemme know. I'm happy to discuss it - you know where to find me.

Social Media: The great communicator?

Rambling a bit on this one...not enough coffee...

In a recent WSJ article from our own Julia Angwin she notes that digital small talk really doesn't replace a 1-on-1 interaction for finding out what's going on with old friends (BTW - in this case 'our own' refers to the twitter community).

Julia's (terriffic piece) is spot on regarding known friends - friends who we may hesitate to open a vein to because they were that much a part of the building of our own self-image through high school, college and our early careers that we have to keep that persona up with them. That is unless of course we've made a 180 in our lives and don't give a darn anymore.

The segment that goes unaddressed in Julia's piece are those who would not have met without Twitter and other social networks (Nota Bene: I don't include FB and LI in this segment. For my proper personae I only use those for people I actually know or have worked with. Twitter on the other hand is an orgy. I do know a number of others who will connect with anyone on either - that's simply not my style.)

Referencing my last post and making a bit of an exception to it (I promise I'm not bipolar but rather just see many shades of gray) - there are those I've met initially on twitter, followed by a long 'acquaintance curve' that once I actually do meet them in person or have a phone call with them, may actually be more aware of where they are now in their lives than a 'long lost' friend may be even with the assistance of status updates given my lack of prejudice from having known them for years.

For anyone tracking it, I've had the unadulterated pleasure of meeting a handful of you. With each coffee/drink meeting we were able to talk immediately, comfortably, completely passing over the awkward small talk of old acquaintances or the false notion of complete familiarity FB updates may bring. Each conversation would likely have gone on for many more hours (and some in fact did go on for hours).

The topic of twitter as the great icebreaker actually came up in May (sorry I can't find the entire thread).

Of course the proof is in the pudding - it'll be interesting to see how this all pans out next week at Masquertweet and we all get to play with a hundred-ish of our favorite people we've never met.

(PS -- Julia, you are, of course, invited Masquertweet. I'm sure there's more than one of us that would love to talk SM with you).

How Twitter will die...

(Thank goodness I don't need subheads - not sure I can be that optimistic twice in a row.... ;) )

No, I don't mean the company, I mean how it will die for each of us individually.

As a number of you know I'm an old-school hacker (in this sense). Everything from spending hours tinkering with the order of loading up TSRs in my autoexec.bat and config.sys files to get the most from my 2MB of RAM to coding HTML in DOS 'Edit' before there were any worthwhile HTML editor applications. Back in the day this kind of thing went hand-in-hand with message and file boards to trade secrets, tricks and hacks.

And so, for many of us it all really begins with the BBS. Like so many to-be hackers of the time I was hooked from that first time I heard my 2400 bps modem connect to a BBS (a WWIV system I'll note). It only took days until I began saving up for a 14.4k bps ....

This was still back in those precious days when BBSes, Rock music and staring at a computer screen were all the cause of angsty and withdrawn teenagers in the mass media. Anyone who participated back then surely recalls their parents asking

• "What do you talk to 'those people' about?"
  
• "Why would you send messages to someone you don't know?"
  
• "It must only be perverts and criminals - you will stop now or [Insert threat]."

Yes, it's the same questions we get now from the luddites - why would someone I don't know care about what I'm doing or what I thought of a particular movie?

And it's the same reason - we're social creatures and for some of us this is a preferred way to connect, for better or worse ... but that's a post for a different day.

Since then, so for nearly 20 years, I've pretty much done it all:

• ran (or as they would've called it then - SysOp-ed) my own BBSes, Co-SysOped others; even posting against myself to build interest in the system (Hmmm, maybe I should talk to someone about this MPD ;) )
• played in aol chat rooms
• admined IRC and other live (actual live - no APIs and no fail whales) chat systems
• organized and promoted listservs/mailing-lists
  
• and the list goes on....

I've avoided playing with online communities (or as we're now calling them - social networks) for the last few years since I've seen how it works and with the assistance of my crystal ball know how it'll end and had little reason to rejoin the fun...

(Disclaimer - this applies to the 'everyday' users, not writers/journalists/bloggers or Sm. Businesses who use the service to ply their wares. It's for those of us who discuss booze, dinner plans, work, yoga classes, what our kids are up to, etc. The "real conversations" on the service - where you can figure out a user's top "friends," recommendations, potential FollowFridays simply by looking at their last 40 tweets or their stats. Take a look at my most frequent @'s - I couldn't even begin to dispute the conclusions that can be drawn from it in terms of who I speak to, or have spoken to, on a regular basis historically).

And so, one day, it'll happen a few years down the line - you'll come back from a business trip, long vacation, or sick leave and simply not have the time or energy to login to twitter and your life will continue with no (or minimal) negative effect.

Out of a distorted sense of obligation you'll eventually login, but won't participate like you did before - conversation threads will be lost, the tweeple you only chatted with occasionally will be lost in the static, and your 'regulars' will even be logging in less or their conversations will become diluted as more people join. Then you'll go for weeks without logging in....

Notices of DMs will skim by in your email (assuming you're even signed up for the notices) unless it's from someone you've taken the care to trade actual emails with and even then you'll find yourself replying to them in email. A relationship growth to be sure, but not twitter based which is the topic of this post. Eventually you'll simply not bother to login except when bored on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon with a good drink to see what's going on and even that will stop at some point...

Fast-forward a bit more and...

One day, 5-10 years in the future. Any loosely knit circles of friends you've developed have spread to the four winds and something will spark a memory - A new coworker with a less common spelling of Erik/Arik, mention of a Cog being broken on a gear or someone using the word twitter to actually refer to what birds do and you'll recall a tweet, incident (perhaps a public tweet meant to be a Direct), or maybe even this paragraph.

A smile will pass over your face and for a moment you'll pause. You'll wonder what happened to all those people you 'knew' and spent hours, days even, talking to...and the-then real life will catch up and time will move forward once more.

You'll make vain attempts to reach out to a few of them, but alas cell phone numbers and email addresses change, people become impossible to find, and even if you do find them after half a decade what do you have to chit-chat about that was so special back then in '09? The feeling won't be anything easy to express - just a feeling of a deep (now hollow) friendship, memories of fun, and a sense of loss.

For anyone who was using technology to connect 5-10 years ago - AOL chat rooms, message boards, forums, etc. - Do you still go to the same haunts? Do you have any connections from those prior platforms that moved on with you to twitter and facebook (excluding maybe pre-existing real life connections)?

If yes, then you're certainly a better man than me.

Conclusion - I don't have a real one....

It's up to each of us to make of this what we want. If it's deep relationships, continuing friendships, lasting connections - then make it real. Meet your people, email with them, let them in and buck this trend. If this is just a game, a time-killer, or something to do during calls - then continue on, but one day you will know you've lost something.

(And yes, before the comments begin I do see the irony in this coming from me -- the one who doesn't even post his real name).