Tweetworks

It was very nice to see Tweetworks mentioned on Mashable again. It is exciting to be part of such a vibrant development community.

In other awesome news, Tweetworks user-created groups have crested the 2,600 mark. You have created 2,009 public groups and 606 private groups. That’s incredible. Group count is my most important metric because when the rest of the Twitter development community gets around to understanding what Biz Stone and I know, that meta data (aka relevancy and context) is needed to bring the conversation web to the masses, we’ll see many of them leveraging the foundation we’ve built through our API.

Speaking of community…

Many of my friends, Aaron Strout of Powered, Jim Storer and Rachel Happe of The Community Roundtable, and Bryan Person of Live World are heavily involved with developing and facilitating community engagment. Recently a few of them have mentioned that I should promote Tweetworks’s inherent community assets as a value proposition. I think they may be on to something.

Featured Groups:

• LotusConnections (created by Praveen Pandey) – If you use Lotus Connections as a social software for you busienss be sure to connect with other users and administrators here. On a side note, John Stack of 3 Big Heads, had the interesting idea of plugging Lotus Connections into Tweetworks. Hmm..
• DevelopingTwitter (created by Kristi Colvin) – The Twitter developer community is growing by leaps and bounds. Barely a day goes by without something new and creative hitting the scene. Kristi herself recently released TwitterFace, a branded Twitter interface tool.

All this talk of community, Twitter and the Tweetworks API got me thinking of Laura Fitton‘s new company OneForty (which launched its Alpha today). Laura is working to make it easier for users to navigate the maze of Twitter powered products while giving developers a showcase for their creations. Be sure to pay OneForty a visit to see what’s cooking. I smell some coolness.

Despite the monsoon like rain outside I am in a fantastic mood today. Nomar is back in Boston and saying all the right things about wanting to come back to the Red Sox. Of course that doesn’t necessarily mean he’ll be coming back but we do have a need for a 5th infielder at the moment so it would definitely be cool. Join me in the Red Sox Nation group to share your thoughts.

Okay, let’s get to some groups.

Featured Groups:

• Tour de France (created by Tweetworks) – Every year some crazy dudes jump on bikes and race for 2,000 miles. Join the Tweetworks peloton and tweet each stage with cycling fans from around the world.
• PrensaHonduras (created by Prensa Honduras) – Stay on top of the breaking news in Honduras.
• TweetworksDevelopers (created by Tweetworks) – In honor of @UltraNurd‘s achievement, he created Python bindings/library for the Tweetworks API, I thought it would be nice to recognize the Tweetworks Developers groups. One of the things that has made Twitter so successful is the army of developers that have contributed to the ecosystem. I’d like to invite those same developers to begin leveraging the Tweetworks API to bring rich conversation features to their applications. Check out the fine work of Nicolas Ward in the following locations:
  • His Blog
  • The Python Site
  • GitHub

I learned two very important lessons today.

I was blindsided and pulled into a Twitter pissing match out of nowhere. What started out as what I thought was a nice gesture, sharing a link to a video in which someone I had met was mentioned, quickly turned into a disaster. Before the dust settled I was emphatically told that “I don’t get it”, accused of being the “civility police”, and finally accused of being a chauvinist.

Now before we go any further I have to say I totally blame Gary Vaynerchuk for this because it was one of his videos I shared and he obviously has done something horrendous to this person to make her so angry. (Just kidding Gary, I walked into this one.)

So what did I learn from this experience?

1. If you don’t really know the person you are talking with on Twitter, tread very lightly. I met this person once, very briefly, at an event. I connected with her on Twitter but we haven’t really had any substantive back and forth prior to today. I had no idea she had this quick of a trigger and that lack of knowledge cost me.
2. The first time you find yourself uttering (not typing) “WTF” or “What is wrong with this person?” out loud, get out. Stop tweeting and extend an invitation to connect privately. Or just beg off and let the person know you’re done. Say you are sorry, do whatever you have to do but get out as quickly as you can.

Having said this, what kept me in the conversation was exactly what got me into the conversation in the first place. I had shared the @Garyvee video with my would be assassin because she was mentioned in it and I thought she might like the opportunity to respond. The funny thing is that Gary’s video was about listening to Twitter for negative mentions of you or your brand that require your engagement. Unlike Gary’s example however, I was living it real-time. I was getting flamed and was left with little choice but to address it.

You simply cannot stand idly by while someone kills you in public. Responding can be messy and you won’t always make things perfectly right with the other person but in the end they know you’re listening.

Let’s get to the groups:

• Entrepreneurs (created by E-Commerce Info) – A place for entrepreneurs to get advice, feedback, and discuss ideas.
• PalmPre (created by Dan Silverstein) – A group for Palm Pre users

Bonus Group: TwitFights (created by Marvin aka eMarv) – Debate can be fun. If you know you are going to be going back and forth, why not do it threaded style.

On yesterday’s show I mentioned how I thought sharing things of interest with others is one of the most powerful benefits of social media tools. Today I’d like to “share” with you a few ways that you can expand your share network by leveraging Tweetworks groups.

• Facebook (created by Loreen Liberty) – Jump in and share a link to your personal profile and/or your fan page. You can also tweet it up about tips and tricks for getting the most out of your presence. I hope to see Facebook experts like Mari Smith, Cappy Popp and John Maver tweeting it up in the group sharing their tips and tricks.
• Digg (created by JD Rucker) – See something like on the web and share it with the world. Digg helps you do just that. Share your Digg profile and share the cool stuff you’d like to see Dugg here.
• Bloggers (created by Ally Marie) – You need look no further than Posterous to see that blogging platforms are becoming increasingly social. Let others know where you blog and what you blog about. Ask questions about platforms, etiquette, and so on.

You can also search Tweetworks for “social” and find pages of other groups for sharing connections.

New Feature:

I love new feature day. In this episode I get to “share” with you the new “share this” features we’ve added to Tweetworks groups and conversations. Now it’s super easy to let your friends and the world know about the cool stuff on Tweetworks.

Facebook Fan Page:

I’d also like to invite you to join the Tweetworks fan page on Facebook.

Featured Groups:

• MichaelJackson (created by @mjjnetwork) – This Michael Jackson fan group was created the day before the King of Pop’s passing. Weird timing to say the least but if you are a fan of Michael’s music, stop by and tweet it up.
• goodbyeMichaelJackson (created by Allan Miguel) – This group was created the day after the Kinf of Pop’s passing. If you’d like to send your condolences feel free to do so here.
• Check out some other music conversation groups on Tweetworks. At the time of this post there are two pages of search results.

The Metro-West Chamber of Commerce invited me to speak at one of its Nearly Noontime Lunch events. They also asked if I knew any other local leaders in the field of social media who could share their expertise with local business people looking to undersand how this relatively new series of tools can benefit their ventures.

I used this opportunity to invite three incredibly smart and talented gentlemen to join me on the panel:

• Cappy Popp of Thought Labs
• Eric Guerin of SmartMarket Media
• Jeff Cutler of JeffCutler.com

Mass Innovation Nights continue to rock. Last week was another successful event with great attendance and very exciting companies participating as you’ll see in the six that I interviewed for this episode. As I said last month, I urge you to plan to attend one of the next MIN events and if you live in another area of the country or world consider starting your own innovation night series.

Join the MassInnovation group on Tweetworks.

People, Companies and/or Products Featured in this Episode:

• ChatterBox – Todd Clayton, a member of the founding team, gave me a nice demo of this incredible engagement tool for Twitter. Be sure to contact Todd if you’d like to get a private beta account. Also, stop by and join the ChatterBox group on Tweetworks.
• Popkins – Karen Jarostchuk and her team came decked out and looking the part to show off their super “cool” idea for keeping your kid’s iced treats from dripping all over theirr clean clothes.
• ThingMagic – Yael Maguire, PhD and a team of other people way smarter than me have developed RFID technology that will change the way we interact with just about everything.
• PaperShow – Kaitlyn Siner demonstrated this 21st century colaboration tool developed by a 500 year old French paper company Canson. Innovation at it’s finest.
• NaviSite – William Toll shares how this monster, enterprise hosting company is now serving the small to mid-size business segment.
• MyRoar - Kate McDonough, President & Founder, has created a natural language search engine that enables users to search terabytes of information by asking simple questions in plain english.

After my appearance on Permission TV Live last week I thought it only fitting that I have Matthew Mamet on Tweetworks TV to share with you what’s so special about PTV.

HubSpot piled on more tough numbers to the growing “Wow! Really?” analysis of Twitter user adoption rates. The silver lining however, is that for those who actually use Twitter, their numbers are still phenomenal.

It’s bringing the average user (mass market) into the fold that is posing a problem for Twitter. I think Tweetworks offers the best solution to both Twitter and the myriad of applications leveraging the tool.

I share my thoughts on why Tweetworks is the best solution for Twitter to reach the mass market in this episode.

PS. Please vote for Tweetworks to be added to Seesmic Desktop. Spread the word!

Three Things:

1. I’ll be on Permission TV on June 4th at 2 pm ET. Swing by and watch Matthew Mamet and me chat it up about Tweetworks and online video.
2. Vote for Tweetworks to be added to Seesmic Desktop. Loic Le Meur put out the call to Twitter applications in a response to the news that Tweetdeck will now charge $50,000 for implementation.
3. I told you so. And here’s the big reason why Loic and the Seesmic team should include Tweetworks on Seesmic Desktop. 90% of people who have a Twitter handle, don’t tweet. The platform that figures out how to get these people tweeting wins.