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[Chris Brogan. Should this guy be Twitterville's Mayor? Photo by FramesMedia/Dan]
NOTE: This is the 4th & final part of my Table of Contents for Twitterville, my new book on why business should use Twitter. Just scroll down this blog to see my three earlier sections. I am looking for feedback on what I have and suggestions on what I should add. Please leave a comment here, Tweet me or email me.]
PART 2. The Why & How of Twitterville
Chapter 12 Global Neighborhoods
This chapter ties back to my reference to the Global Neighborhoods in Twitterville's introduction and expands significantly on it.
It begins with an example that I have used in many of my public talks:
Picture two neighbors talking over their back yard on a Saturday morning on Autumn morning where they have backyards. Their spouses think they are raking leaves but they are not raking leaves. Instead, they are shooting the breeze about whatever topics come into their minds—sports, movies, restaurants, whatever.
Over time, they get to know each other well. They learn where to trust each other’s judgment and where to file and forget. When another neighbor asks about finding a local handyman, one recommends the other as a good source, but warns not to ask his backyard colleague about restaurants beased on past recommendations.
Such conversations happen every day. Trusted networks are built on personal reputations that are built and tested and revised over backyard fences, or coffee houses, on athletic fields and local taverns all over the world.
Not only are our personal brands built by what other people say about us, local businesses depend on these trusted networks. Chats about weather or hometown sports or where to go on a Friday night develop into relationships and relationships develop into business a sizable percentage of the time.
This is very much a dynamic that has spilled into the internet where simple conversations are restructuring how business and sales . On the Internet where we regularly bypass many of geography’s barriers, we form global neighborhoods where we share vital information and idle chatter with people who share our interests, people we have come to know over time, people whose reputations are built by other people we trust.
“No one cares what you had for lunch,” is a skeptical quote often used by Twitter scorners. “But,” as Twitter co-founder Biz Stone [twitter.com/biz ],” told me in an interview, “When it’s your old friend and the meal was in an interesting place, you do care.”
Some 250 million people now go online. Nearly all of them live in one or more global neighborhoods. We have friends who live far away from us. While there is still nothing quite like a face-to-face meeting, these online encounters are the next best thing and they are expanding people's worlds in ways that almost no one envisioned just a decade ago. Our friends are world wide. We care about their families, jobs and well-being. Last week a friend in Beijing advised me on Twitter to avoid the new James Bond movie which premiered in our two countries simultaneously.
What's ironic is that there is a very retro impact to Global Neighborhoods. In them, business is being restored to the way it was conducted in simpler times, before the franchise and chain and big boxes gentrified so many of the world's consumer markets. Not long ago, Mrs.O'Reilly's advice to Mrs. O'Brien on where to buy her corned beef had more impact than the ad broadcast over airwaves and now the power and credibility of word-of-mouth recommendation engines are once again becoming the primary influence over the marketplace.
Global Neighbourhoods pervades a great many social media platforms. But Twitter is the best-suited to date to enable this natural progression from chatting about weather to recommendations and transactions that occur as naturally online as they do every day in tangible encounters.
Twitterville may not be a tangible place, but it is a real place. And the people who meet there are real and they influence each other on what to buy, watch, read and listen to. They go further. They are starting to influence who we vote for, recruit people for new jobs, even sell a house in a dead market.
Global Neighborhoods allow people to help people all over the world, without annoying disintermediation of advertisers, government regulators, bosses, direct marketers and people who believe they will influence you more by shouting at you than talking with you.
This chapter will also examine a revealing 2008 study [www.slideshare.net/fgossieaux/2008-tribalization-of-business-study-sncr-webinar] conducted by Francois Goussieaux [www.emergencemarketing.com] co-founder of Beeline Labs, and Deloitte examining 140 corporate backed online communities. It determined two often overlooked factor of online communities: (1) People are tribal by nature. They join communities to find people like themselves, and (2) Communities are usually founded with a single purpose in mind, but the people who joing, use these communities for multiple purposes. This reinforces several basics
As we keep noting, these are down times in the global economy, but history teaches that downtimes create precisely the conditions the inevitable upswing. Today's constraints will disrupt some When the downturn becomes an upturn, the friendships made in Twitterville will have a significant impact on who buys from whom in the real world.
Well, for one thing is that it’s fun and you will meet people who will give you great advice on what you might buy. Through the same interchange, it is likely to help your profession and your business through a very natural process that may include discussing what someone had for lunch or where they had it.
This chapter will also emphasize the often overlooked aspect of business relationships with customers and that is the fun factor. People spend times where they have fun. For some that is in front of the TV or with a good book. But for a growing number of people, they find fun in Twitterville. And building business relationships with people who are having fun while you do it may have greater value than you have previously considered.
Chapter 13. Why Twitter Works
Why will Twitter last when so many competitive micro blogging programs are now being offered? There’s Plurk and Pownce, Jaiku and Jammer. Pretty soon, I expect they will be followed by Donner and Blitzen. Every day there seems to be a new micro blog competitor. And Twitter users learn about them right there on Twitter.
Twitterville has countless flaws in its technology. In its early days its down time screen featuring a cartoon whale being carried off for medical assistance by a flock of bluebirds has become a pop art icon known as the fail whale. Millions of words have been written on Twitter about the platform’s shortcomings. Why don’t people just leave it for something else.
Occasionally, they do leave. Robert Scoble [twitter.com/scobleizer] who has over 30,000 Twitter followers once declared he was through with Twitter and he left for another service. He was gone for two weeks, before one day, without fanfare, he started tweeting again.
What happened was that extremely few of thousands of followers decided to go with Scoble into a new neighborhood. Once settled in a comfortable in a neighborhood, most people prefer to stay put. If a community leader leaves, he or she may be missed for a while, but the void will be filled as others emerge.
Twitterville is very much like a real world neighborhood. Every neighborhood has problems--traffic, crime or maybe skate boarders on street corners. We may complain and grumble, but very few of us actually want to move because of them.
Twitterville is a seriously flawed community. Almost any of its denizens will tell you that. But it is also wildly loved by a growing number of people who have become Twitterville boosters. Many of it’s problems are caused by that very fact. Scaling the technology has been a continuing issue.
But, this chapter will conclude. Twitterville has achieved a critical mass while maintaining continual momentum.
Chapter 14 XX Tips on Getting Started
Among the most popular blog posts that I have ever put up on my blog is one called 7 tips for New Twitter Users [redcouch.typepad.com/weblog/2008/08/7-tips-for-new.html], intended for people getting started on Twitter. It is still visited several times per day despite the fact that it is now an old post. I receive several thank you notes each week for having posted it. In fact, the popularity of that post was a critical factor on my opting to write Twitterville.
This chapter will expand the number of tips. Some of them will be user-generated. I will ask for new tips in Twitter and include the best of them in the chapter—with credits to the contributors.
Chapter 15. The Twitter Toolshed
This is a guest chapter to be written by Chris Brogan [twitter.com/chrisbrogan] , who I once nominated as "Twitterville Mayor," [redcouch.typepad.com/weblog/2008/01/who-should-be-t.html] because he so exemplifies the qualities I think generate respect in Twitterville. He is also among the most knowledgeable people on the complex issue of tools that enhance the Twitterville experience. There are more than 100 of them . New ones are popping up like corn in a microwave. His job will be to explain the best of them.
Chapter 16--conclusion
I will draft this chapter only after completing the remainder of the book. The conclusion may surprise
