Since I already had a Twitter account for personal use, I had to make another Twitter username for this project. I decided to make my Twitter name @michelle_haag, a more professional username, as opposed to my personal one, @meechy. Right off the bat, I was hesitant whether it was acceptable or not that I had two Twitter account! Ironically this directly applies to Golden Rule #6 – Don’t Be Afraid to Have More than One Account, and after reading that I sure wasn’t.
During the planning process, I was not sure which ten people I was going to follow. Even though I was an experienced Twitter user, I had never heard of Listorious. I found this resource to be very helpful. Almost every person and organization Listorious provided was legitimate in terms of categorizing the proper people according to the subject matter or area of expertise.
At first I thought that I could not learn that much from completing this project because I am an experienced Twitter user and thought I knew everything there was to know about it. However, I had never heard of Listorious before this assignment. I also did not realize how simple it was to make a Twitter account when I had to make another username. I learned that Twitter directly brings a new user to an “interests” page automatically. Here, the new user can pick and choose from a variety of topics to determine which organizations or people they want to follow based on their preferences and interests. I used this method, along with Listorious, to choose the 10 people I wanted to follow.
As you can see on my Twitter account, @michelle_haag, I chose these 10 people to follow on Twitter and observed their tweets on a daily basis:
1. Peter Cashmore
2. Walt Mossberg
3. Jeremy Steele
4. Dr. Oz
5. Peter S Greenberg
6. Andrew DeVigal
7. Martha Stewart
8. Greta Van Susteren
9. Dr. Keely Kolmes
10. Andrew DeVigal
In order to find people that tweeted about non-personal things, I used a process of elimination. Initially, I chose more than ten people to follow during the planning stage of this project. I picked about 20 people and observed their daily activity on Twitter. Almost all of them tweeted daily, however not always about non-personal things. I typically found that after I had followed a person for a few days, I would come across a few tweets that were related to their personal life. These were the accounts that were tricky because I assumed they tweeted strictly about their focused area of expertise. I stopped following those people after seeing a tweet regarding personal activities and thoughts, even if it occurred sporadically. This method I developed was my way of following Golden Rule #1- Follow the Right people.
Bill Gates tweeted only about business, however he did not tweet daily. I had to disqualify him from this project as a potential person I was going to follow because he did not use Twitter frequent enough for me to observe the content of his tweets. I came across the same problem with Biz Stone, Co-founder of Twitter. I was shocked that the co-founder of Twitter did not tweet daily! This proved to me that everyone’s twitter activity varies greatly.
I never realized how many users were columnists, broadcasters, or reporters that were associated with big organization names, but tweeted for the own individual business, not for the organization they work for. For example, OscarPRGirl, a public relations girl for fashion designer, Oscar de la Renta, tweeted about her public relations work, however tweeted equally as much about her personal life. I wish I had the chance to observe this user for a longer time because I could have observed more of her professional tweets. In this aspect I failed to follow Golden Rule #5- Personal Tweets are Fine Every Once in a While. It was only the short amount of time I followed her tweets that I made the assumption she tweets equally about business and her personal life.
This user differed from Jeremy Steele, News 12 CT (who I actually met when I went visited studio this year). He tweets only for News 12, not for his own personal reasons. He is not tweeting to make a name for himself like OscarPRGirl tries to do. Instead he tweets strictly for business reasons and does not mix the personal realm with business realm.
Before this assignment, I followed Jeremy Steele after I met him. Every time I check my personal twitter feed on my Blackberry Smartphone, I get excited when I see his tweets. I always find out about local CT news first because of his tweets for News 12 before watch the news on television or go to their website. I am the one that is always delivering the news to my friends first. This is a core journalistic value of immediacy and constant dissemination of messages for quick news blurbs. I truly enjoy looking at my twitter feed and seeing the latest Fairfield, Westport, Bridgeport, or Norwalk news; in addition to immediacy, it also satisfies the journalistic value of proximity. I find myself doing additional research online when I read the news updates from Jeremy Steele.
I also realized I had a misconception about what a “verified account” entailed. Twitter displays a little blue circle with a white checkmark symbol next to an account that verifies the user as genuine and not an imposter. I thought that a verified account meant the user would tweet about their topic of expertise, for the most part. Instead, I found that even the verified accounts tend to tweet about personal life information, when I thought they wouldn’t. For example, Nina Garcia, an official account, is Marie Claire fashion director and Project Runway judge; she does not tweet about her job. For instance, she tweeted May 3, 20011 at 6:15 “Thank you so much for all of the birthday messages you sent me today. This truly made my day. Some music to celebrate?” I stopped following her because of this personal tweet. However, after reading the chapter “Microblogging” in Journalism Next, I failed to realize that a few personal tweets are acceptable; microblogging should have a personal twist.
I also came across twitter accounts that tweeted about their subject of expertise, however they were not identified people; instead they tweeted as the organization as a whole. For example, Life & Style Weekly, a magazine, does not have any personal tweets. The only predicament is that there is not a specific person associated to this Twitter account like Jeremy Steele was for News 12.
As a creator on Twitter, my experience was not than different than my experience tweeting about my personal daily life. The only aspect that was new to me was tweeting through an entire event, from the prologue to the epilogue. Usually, I tweet just the prologue, on my way to the event or just the epilogue, after I had attended an event. Planning which event I was going to live tweet from was easy because numerous events have been occurring on campus since it the end of the school year. The busy activity on campus prompted to attend an event I would have never knew about. The day before the event I chose, I strolled through the Barone Campus Center and heard a song by Michael Jackson on the piano; it caught my attention. It was at the moment when I saw the sign that read: Piano Battle at the Levee on Wednesday, May 4 at 9:00 p.m. This would the same way I would have generated a story idea.
When I attended the event, I tweeted from my Blackberry. I was very familiar with tweeting from my cell phone because I always tweet this way on my personal twitter account. I think it is the easiest and most effective way to tweet because the idea is fresh in your mind and you can publish your thoughts instantly. I found this task of the project to be the simplest. Since I was already experienced with tweeting, I knew how to make my tweets fit the limited amount of characters with ease. This reflect to the Golden Rule #1- you don’t have 140 characters, you have 120 at most. I adhered to this rule. I also knew what types of tweets would generate the most interest because of when people would “retweet” or reply to my personal tweets. This would be what the scene looks like, what songs were playing, along with the little things a person would only know if they were in fact present.
All of these aspects make the tweet appealing to an audience. I learned that making them feel like they were physically present is the most successful way to tweet about an event. I knew how to link pictures to my tweets from my past experience. Attaching images to tweets is another effective method to make your audience feel like they are there at the event with you. I followed Golden Rule #7 in the method- People Love Pictures. In the future, I predict that Twitter will create a feature that lets users attach a sound byte or voice note to the tweet. If this has existed, I would have used it and recorded some of the song that the men played on the pianos (obviously an entire song would be too long to record).
Overall, I thought it was so tricky finding people that did not tweet about their personal life. In fact, this is that part of the entire project that was the most time consuming! I would have never guessed that this is where I would encounter this most trouble. This project made me realize how personalized Twitter has become, even in its business and consumer aspects. I have concluded that Facebook is almost more business oriented than Twitter. Facebook is not focused on status updates, it is just one of its features. Twitter, on the other hand, is solely about updating statuses, therefore tends to be more social and personal. This project proved to me that there is an infinite amount of knowledge to learn in social media because its software is constantly updated in terms of its format, features, and the way it functions. I knew the Twitter terminology and lingo before this assignment, however I did not know how much of an impact it could have on a consumer. My history in Twitter was only in the personal realm. Using Twitter as a consumer was eye opening. Without following these users in the eyes of a consumer, I would have never thought to do further research on certain products.
I found that this assignment was a learning experience in a business aspect. I had never seen the magnitude that business world Twitter has on its followers. Twitter impulsed me to go out and buy New York Times just to look at Andrew DeVigal’s multimedia layout on page one titled “Behind the Hunt for Bin Laden” that included the intricate diagram of the compound Bin Ladin was hiding in. If I did not follow Andrew DeVigal, the Multimedia Editor, I would have never come across his links that displayed his work. His tweet about “page one” posted on May 3, 2011 at 10:00 a.m. prompted me to go out and buy the newspaper. I realized I did not follow Golden Rule #11- Don’t Trust Everything That is Tweeted. I generally assumed that majority of the tweets were accurate and credible, especially those of the certified users. There were only one or two users that I followed who were not certified, so I tended to observe the credibility of their tweets for than the others. In the future, I do not want to assume that all tweets are legitimate. I also failed to keep control over my account because I left automatic feed on. This goes against the chapter “Microblogging” because it suggests that microbloging should not remain automatic. The quality of the tweets is more important that the quantity. I found myself observing all of the tweets from the automatic feed and not as individual cases. If I had observed each account as its own and not in a huge automatic feed, I would have probably found different tweets that appealed to me as opposed to comparing all of the tweets as a whole. I also failed follow the notion “interactivity” in this specific project. Interactivity is what microblogging is all about. I wish I tweeted and communicated to my followers, instead of just following them. In the future, I want to use two-way communication and not one-way by just following people.
If I were to be working on a story, I would have observed all of the tweets of the 10 people and jotted down notes of which tweets were most interesting to me in terms of the core journalistic values. For example, Jeremy Steele tweeted about Clam Jam, Fairfield University’s annual party on the beach, on May 4, 2011. This is a potential story idea that applies to proximity, relevance, and timeliness because it happened last weekend. From reading that tweet, I would did more research on the topic. The Fairfield Citizen also reported on this event and I would use this as a resource. I also would interview people who were at the event as more sources.
Tweet dreams everyone! Hope you enjoyed this post.
Michelle Haag's Blog 