12 February 2010
My short time on twitter
Posted by under: socia media; twitter; web .
This week, I passed an important milestone on Twitter, I managed to write 1,000 tweets, or 140,000 characters or so, in the span of six months. In that time, I have accumulated close to 300 people and started following another 200 or so. Originally, I thought it was a waste of time and effort but I’ve been proven wrong, way wrong.
Here’s a graphical representation of my twitter account, via twitterholic.com
I recall going to this industry event back in March of 2009 and meeting this Twitter evangelist, she was touting the significances and praise of twitter. My thought process at that time was I don’t want to know what other people are doing at any particular moment or what they had for breakfast. Don’t get me wrong there is a lot of that, on here but the real value of twitter is what connections you build and who you follow. As most of you who read my blog know, I’m a jack of all trades filmmaker / project manager, who recently finished his first film “Black Site.” For me the real value or the intrinsic value of twitter is what I have learned from the people I follow and the ones who are following me.
Let me explain and give some specifics. As a filmmaker, I follow other similar type of people who are doing what I’m doing, i.e., fellow filmmakers, editors, producers what have you. A great thing about twitter, you can find people in the career or industry you want to be in and at different levels of the industry spectrum. I follow people who are at my level, below me and above me in terms of what they have produced, directed and so on. Case in point, I follow Kevin Smith, who doesn’t right? but I also follow some fellow GREEK filmmakers in the US and abroad. A lot of the established filmmakers, I’ve noticed are on here to promote their films. There’s nothing wrong with this, per se. I’m also doing this. These filmmakers push or tweet nonstop on their films for a month before. Once the movie is out for a few weeks, their tweets slow down and their posts start to be about what they had for lunch at the Chateau Marmont. Then you have other filmmakers and independent producers who share their knowledge and provide a support for anybody who cares to listen and learn from their experience. One of the best is producer TED HOPE, he is a champion of Independent films and if you go to his blog you will learn everything and anything you need to know, about navigating the “Indie scene.” Another example is what two local filmmakers, who are using twitter to fund their next feature and short via crowdsourcing. These are two great examples on how Twitter is changing the landscape. This point can be applied to other industries and disciplines. Like the old adage, “twitter” is what you make of it.
Another great value of twitter is the support of you’re peers. People help build you up when you’re down by offering encouragement and singing your praise when you do something they like. Even though in most cases, you never meet them in person. Twitter has some very successful people on here, who provide some valuable words of wisdom and help motivate you by being positive and though provoking. One of these is Russell Simmons, who like Kevin Smith is a person everyone should follow.
The best part of twitter is the news aspect of social media. You can gauge what is big and popular on twitter at any given moment. This shouldn’t be earth shattering news but the real value is what you feel is news worthy to you. Let me explain, I use TweetDeck, it’s always running on my computer as I edit or work on projects. For people who aren’t familiar with this application, it helps you track all your conversations and follows all your friends, but on steroids. The best feature is it’s saved searches or key words. My saved searches are; Greece, Torture and Human Rights. Anytime any of these words come up in a post, they show up on my tweetdeck. This is an invaluable resource. One of the news stories I was able to find was the recent revelation that there was a secret Black Site on American soil at Guantanamo Bay. This news, reinforced and validated my film even more so. One of the main plot points of the film, happens after a news reporter, loosely based on some guy on FOX who went to GITMO. Instead of asking the tough question, this person did a fluff piece, sort of what you see reporters do on Red Carpet events. When the official report came out back in 2006, the cable channel tried to cover this up, by saying the visit happen before the report came out, which wasn’t the case. Another news related example is when the iPAD came out. The people I follow stop tweeting. My feed became a online ghost town. It seems most or all, where watching and listening to the news coverage. As you can see, I’m a geek at heart and the people I follow have a similar mindset.
One of the negative effect of twitter is I don’t write as many blog posts. When I see a cool video or find a good piece on editing or film making I tend to post it on Twitter instead of writing about it, on this blog. This has changed my blog to a more self promotional or self centric focus. Twitter for me has became the 6pm news show, while my blog is now the 10pm cable opinion show.
For me, it’s official I’m now another person drinking the Kool-Aid. If you want to follow me, hit me up here. And as always thanks for reading any and all comments are greatly appreciated.