Nine *other* ways to use Twitter

"Disregard the hype and the haters," PC Mag's longtime columnist John C. Dvorak inveighs in yesterday's column, "Nine ways to use Twitter." This an improvement on a previous column from the magazine last month offering us "Six Ways to Make Twitter Useful." The editors surely are hard at work to come up with a whole dozen for the April issue.

Yes, Twitter is useful and fun. I have found events through it, made new contacts in the industry, re-connected with people who I wasn't friends enough with to connect on Facebook. I find news through it, such as Dvorak's column.

But this is news? Or even a worthwhile stab at service journalism? If I have my history right, Dave Winer revved his blogging empire because he felt the computer trade press was crap. Dvorak's column does little to convince me that much has changed in the intervening decade.

So I present nine other ways to use Twitter.

1. You don't have to bother with RSS anymore.

Never got the hang of subscribing to RSS "feeds"? Don't bother. Twitter is much easier to read through. If somebody blogs something that they want people to read, they'll put it in their Twitter updates.

2. You don't have to bother with email anymore, either.

Email is so maddening: when you send an email out, you risk forgetting someone. And in return you get spam and bills and mailing lists you don't read. Well, maybe bills are important, and you probably don't want them going through Twitter. But mailing lists, notifications, and personal appeals are all moving to Twitter.

And why send emails yourself? Just have them check your Twitter feed (and/or Facebook).

3. "Sales and Marketing"

Actually, this is one from Dvorak's list. But the depth of his explanation should give pause to anyone  who might think that journalism is about to enter a new golden age: "I am sure people can sell things over the system, which makes eight uses and counting. Lance Ulanoff, PCMag's editor, uses Twitter to sell the publication's columnists and hot stories." So much for the famed crowdsourcing of readers that he spoke of in use #6. When John C. Dvorak is hard pressed to round out a list of 9 items, he asks his editor.

4. Charitable Fundraising

Selling things is so bourgeoisie. It is much more noble pursuit to use one's influence raise money for charity, no? Once upon a time, you'd guilt people into donating by some silly exertion like a walkathon. But why not do something more constructive, and interactive -- like getting people to Tweet about? Proctor & Gamble recently flew a number of digital marketing leaders into Cincinatti to work with in-house marketing folks to sell T-shirts for their Loads of Hope charity. The marketing machine mercilessly flacked this on Twitter and other social media networks in four hours, raising $50,000, which the company matched.

AdWeek's Digital Editor, Brian Morrissey, called it "The feel-good social marketing bribe."

5. It's the fastest global rumor mill ever devised.

Around noon on Monday, Washington Post book reviewer Ron Charles had what sounded like the scoop of day "Frequent contributor tells me the New Yorker is considering switch to biweekly or monthly. Recession pains," This spread halfway around the literary world before the magazine's writer Sasha Frere Jones and editor David Remnick smacked it down (the Observer covered this).

6. TweetDeck makes a heckuva an alarm clock.

Tweet, tweet! Chirp, chirp! Leave your computer or iPhone on overnight, and, when your early bird friends awaken with some Twitter tweets, you will, too!

7. You can negotiate your starting salary at a new job.

Last week, a Silicon Valley techie wrote this down: "Got a job offer, but unsure. Maybe-- just maybe-- if they give me five more vacation days to care for my ailing mother, I'd accept it."

Actually, he posted something a little more indiscreet on Twitter; somebody at the company took notice, and he never took the job, anyways. Here are his now-infamous words: "Cisco just offered me a job! Now I have to weigh the utility of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work."

For this Connor Riley has earned the sobriquest "Cisco Fatty." That's probably a bit unfair. He goofed; he fessed up, through his website.)

8. You can get out of jury duty. Or a relationship.

One of the great shared pasttimes in America -- prior to voting for "American Idol" -- is getting out of jury duty. The thrill of voting is tempered by the responsibility of living with the consquences. I helped Norfolk County convict a drunk driver once; I was able to sleep that night after the judge told us he'd have decided in the same way, and was limiting the sentence to probation (Not sure how well I could have sat through the trial of a Southie homicide in 2007. A timely cold kept me off of that one).

If you can convince the court that you're an addicted Twitter user, you may get an early dismissal. As John Schwartz reported in last week's Times, a couple of trials have invited appeals over jurors' use of Twitter. Of course, Twitter is only a gateway drug. Jurors' use of Google has caused a mistrial.

As for the relationship, see the breaking news on Jennifer Aniston and John Mayer. Breaking, indeed: Mayer preferred time with Twitter to time with Aniston.

9. Twitters are rainbow-colored, fruit-flavored, and crunchy and chewy at the same time!

Oh wait, I think I meant skittles.

10.  The rich get richer.

(We're at ten because I added one of Dvorak's. Not because we're counting. But this is one where math is crucial).

On Facebook, Robert Scoble maxed out at five thousand friends, which kinda limited his reach. The average person could spend years on on Facebook without even knowing that the Scobleizer existed. Twitter has no practical limit to followers, so it is scale-free, and the power law takes full effect. On Twitter, Scoble has seventy-four thousand followers. I'm still not sure what purpose Robert Scoble serves on the Internet-- he couldn't even get Microsoft SharePoint to implement RSS decently-- but he still has double the number of followers of Jeremiah Owyang, a bonafide research analyst for Forrester, a paid expert. And I still don't know what the Jeremiah Owyang knows -- he didn't know that airlines have advertising! Forty of his readers pointed out contrawise after he let that slip while presumably boarding a plane (To his defense, he reported having done a lot of work when he landed, so he may not notice these things).

And here's what great about Twitter for power users: no one will know that Owyang misspoke! Unlike the blogs, where comments are generally visible, on Twitter they get scattered throughout. (see Jeremiah Owyang, your tweeters know more than you)

The real lesson here is that every single one of John Dvorak's uses of Twitter depends on one key factor: yield. My rough guess is that you'd be extremely lucky if out of 100 followers, 10 actually read it and 1 responds (I invite social media analysts to provide real data for this, which they surely have access to more than I). Since Dvorak has 47,000 followers, by yield alone he is able to get hundreds of responses to anything he says.

In other words, the average brain flam of an A-Lister will likely get an order of magnitude more interest than the most erudite post of the bottom 95% of Twitter users who have less than 200 followers. This is variously called the Power Law, the Pareto Principle, and the Matthew Effect ("The Rich Get Richer"). People follow Scoble or Owyang or Dvorak not because they are exemplar observers of the social scene, but mostly because other people follow them. This is not they are fraud , any more than saying that New York City is unaccorded of its own popularity, but careful readers should keep that it mind.

(And this will remain this way until consensus comes along to implement a priority system).

And I'm sorry-- if a highly respected tech columnist isn't aware of that-- than he really doesn't know jack about information.

Well, that's my rant, and you've been reading wordplay. Off to help some nonprofits do fundraising via social networking. :-)