Blog of Mr. Tweet

Twitter is one of the most open, flexible and dynamic communication system ever invented. With such simplicity, it has of course plenty of limitations, but also an unique ability to create lots of powerful connections between its users.

In the spirit of Xmas, would like to share what meaningful connections we have gotten out of Twitter and how we got them, which we think is very difficult to achieve on other platforms.

And of course, we would love to hear what YOU think are meaningful connections!

PS: The more we know about what you think is meaningful, the better we can build our service to facilitate them

1) Understanding the social circles in our industry

Tim O’Reilly is well networked, generous with information sharing, and most importantly, he is on Twitter 24/7. As such, his Twitter stream was a valuable source of industry information.

Now, with the “Show Conversations” feature in MrTweet, he has also become an invaluable window into the networks he is part of (and which I am keenly interested in).

By seeing clearly what they are discussing, what they are concerned about, etc, I am beginning to understand at a much better level the type of people and conversations happening in his social circles, which is a highly valuable networking resource.

 
For example, I do not know Mary Hodden, but I can tell easily that Tim OReilly respects her work, since he always retweet her, and John Battelle and Michael Arrington certainly pays attention to her.

2) Valuable Business Relationships

I first discovered @Shayang when we were analyzing Twitter data sets. Looking at his bio, I realized he was the founder of Zoosk, one of the largest dating social networking sites around with 11 mllion users.

Since I had been a big fan of Zoosk (I featured Zoosk quite a bit in my slideshow about discovery), I connected to him on Twitter using the @reply and went for coffee in San Francisco.

Now I chat with him regularly for advice on starting up, catering to users, life in SF etc. And of course, I keep track of all his adventures on Twitter too, including chasing robbers, winning awards and erm, persian dolls.

    
Discovering, Connecting and Keeping in Touch Via Twitter

3) Uncover Opportunities for Online Collaboration

@KrisColvin and @KarlLong are two examples of great people that we have started working together with for different aspects of MrTweet. While the eventual outcome of the collaborations are no different from typical business collaborations, the reason why these relationships happened is a enormous testament to the power of Twitter in initializing relationships.

Both of them started using MrTweet, and both of them were discussing the pros and cons of our service. We were constantly monitoring the conversations, and we were intrigued by what they were saying about MrTweet. After that, I looked at their Twitter stream and their blog.

It was clear that Kris has a amazing personality, holds her design work with utmost seriousness, and is very open about sharing; Karl had insightful opinions, well thought through pieces, and held powerful experiments. I started chatting with them, and  before you know it, we were discussing collaborations.

The open-ness of twitter allowed us to discover them simply because they were talking about us, and the medium allowed us to understand them even before connecting, and then of course touch base easily. There is just no other platform where you would be able to do the same!

 
Discovering KarlLong via his comments about us, and subsequently initializing a collaboration

Kristi’s blog posting which made me realize what a great lady she was in terms of having and sharing knowledge!

4) Strengthen Existing Relationships

@Tempo is the founder of GetSatisfaction, a great site which we use regularly for purposes of gathering feedback. We had coffee before a couple of times, but it is hard to constantly keep up with each other! But he has now emerged as one of my favorite Twitterers, with his insightful commentary, fun links, and common perspectives.

 
Having arcane conversations about silly human psychology and beliefs. The funny thing is that we talk much more boring stuff offline.

On this point, my favorite quote actually comes from @tonystubblebine (founder at Crowdvine, a pretty awesome networking site). Happens to me all the time!

 
NYTIMES Quote from Tony Stubblebine

5) Daily nuggets of humor and fun.

Sometimes it is just fun. Personally, I love people who say the darnest things that I would love to say but lack the balls/cred/creativity to say. Here are two of my favorite:

 

Ever tried “I’m Wil ****ing Shipley* as a promo code?

 
I wish I could say these damn things and not lose all my followers

———————————

These are the various types of meaningful connections and value we have gotten out of Twitter. We believe these connections are highly unlikely to happen anywhere else - what is your story?

What meaningful connections have you gotten out of Twitter?

Due to a Twitter error, our Followers list have stopped updating again since the 8th of Jan (see Disruption 1). Do ping @al3x and @ev to fix it, so we can service you folks! =)

Updates for (Disruption 1): We have received the followers list from Twitter for folks who joined between Dec 5th to Dec 11th, and will be serving all of you like, now

We listen to comments very closely on timelines, DMs, and GetSatisfaction. The overwhelming reason why users are sometimes unhappy with our service is because of service disruptions. As such, we want to explain the most severe disruptions that had occurred, and the reason they did, and what we are doing about them.

*Some errors listed below are due to Twitter, but 1) the Twitter staff  (especially Alex) have been incredibly helpful through the process, and 2) we are a “special” case because we have been working their system in so many different ways!

1) Twitter Error: Followers List was not updated From Dec 5th to Dec 11th

What happened: Followers list essentially did not budge as a (severe) Twitter error prevented the list from being updated.

Impact:  Folks who followed us were successful in following us, but they did not show up anywhere in our system. A couple of nice folks also had difficulty unfollowing us. HEHEHE (dream feature) *evil grin*

Working On: We are waiting for Twitter to fix the error on their end ASAP, so we can know who these followers are, and serve them accordingly!

2) Twitter Error: Approximately 900 users who signed up in a period between Nov 27 / Nov 28 did not get their DM

What happened: Twitter accidentally deleted a bunch of names from their developers list. Unfortunately we were one of them. :(  Hence our DMs were sent, but not received by our dear users.

“…looks like some database maintenance inadvertently truncated our table of whitelisted users” - Alex (Twitter)

Impact:  Lots of users did not get their DMs from us, even those whose reports are actually done up already. We were not aware that such a problem existed until we received lots of people who told us that they have not received their DMs. These comments usually came with a big ” =( ”

Working On: 1) Being responsive to people who complained of weeks-long delay, and sending DMs to them manually.  2) Working on identifying who these people are, and notifying them accordingly!

3) We are sorry, something went wrong….

What happened: There are a couple of cases whereby either we were processing someone like Jason Calacanis or Robert Scoble, each of follows about >20,000 followers, and servers would crash. Either that, or we are deploying some fixes.

Impact:  Server required an reboot. Which means I will wake @ambivalence up at 3am*

*Like you know, the famous 3am phone call. Only that it is a Scoble and not a nuclear disaster. Oh wait… there is a difference?

Working on:  Identifying and minimizing these errors. We put on hold folks who follows more than 10,000 people, so as not to disrupt service for the rest. In fact, we process them manually. =(

Alright, that’s all folks, hope we shared some insights into what and why these errors occurred, and how we are handling them. =)

This topic of “influence” can be a pretty polarizing one between members of the Twitterverse. In fact, one of the most common questions we get is how we define whether someone is an influencer. (The short answer is that we don’t)

Doing what we do, we are fortunate enough to have received lots of great feedback on what influence means. Hence, we would like to share our thoughts here, as well as understand what everyone’s opinion is.

Besides being a very healthy topic to have a open discussion around, having a more well-rounded understanding will also allow us to construct our engine better. Please leave your comments below or @reply us.  =D

Note: Our recommendations engine have clearly not caught up with these ideals below, but believe it would be good to share what we are working towards!

1) Influence is in the eye of the audience (not the beholder!)

What: We judge influence much less in accordance to how many “powerful followers” they have, than how relevant and credible they are to users who viewing the recommendations.

Tim O’Reilly is (and should be) considered influential for web technologists wanting to know about big trends. But when it comes to UI designers who want to learn from each other, folks like Kris Colvin (who shares lots of great tips on designing interfaces) should be considered as influential.

Not possible to compare Tim / Kris. Influence is all in the eye of the audience, and is impossible to express as an attribute of the individual!

What We Work On:
1) Use personalization techniques to determine recommendations based on an user’s existing network and interactions,
2) Ascertaining the credibility of the individuals being recommended. Again, credibility is not universal, but personalized to the user.

Problems: Due to the way Twitter networks are constructed, A-listers, tech, and marketing folks still occasionally skew the recommendations. When that happens, we get complaints. =P

We will be doing one more round of updates soon that will affect the recommendations significantly.

That Said: It is important to remember that folks new to Twitter do find the A-listers very useful, before they go onto building mutual relationships!

2) Dear Auntie Tweetie: What is my influence grade?

What: Many folks have asked us what is their “influence grade”, similar to what they get with influence graders like Grader and TwInfluence. It is basic human nature to want to know where you stand. Remember grading in high school? Same thing.

However: We do not believe that a “universal grade” is useful when forming effective relationships is the goal. As mentioned earlier on, influence really is not an attribute of a person, but dependent on the audience.

Consider this: My kid’s influence on me is 1000%, but his influence on everyone else is probably zero (exception being if you swoon at super cute kids).

What We are Working On: A unique metric that would provide the necessary guidance, yet be more meaningful that a bland number. Hint: It would depend on your audience.

3) Beyond Influence: Creating relationships where good, relevant people discover each other

What: Twitter is a great open platform with thriving conversations, lots of smart intelligent people with either information, experiences or relationships to share.

We want to help good, relevant people on Twitter discover and connect to each other. This is clearly beyond what a simple “influence” can achieve.

What We are Working On: Will keep everyone in suspense, but we are definitely working on it! =D

Ok, these are our thoughts on influence. Some questions:

• What are your thoughts on influence?
• What would YOU like to be considered an influencer in?
• What type of “influencers” would you like to discover?

Let us know, we are still just 2 weeks old, and our sole aim in life is to make meaningful connections!