Posted via email from danielmiessler.com | posterous

Yeah, so I implemented the new official Twitter button in a few places. We’ll see if it lasts. If it’s slow or annoying it’s out of here. ::

There are two reasons to read a book: one is to read it, and the other is tell people you read it. — Bertrand Russell

First, let’s state the obvious: you need a bit of ego to maintain a Twitter account. Not to experiment, but to keep doing it. To do so you must believe that the world wants to hear about you and your life.

So it naturally follows that when people tweet they’re usually trying to impress someone. This can be done by describing an impressive activity, like:

Wow, five continents in five days. That’s just TOO much.

…or it can come in the form of an insight, like:

Most Twitter posts are, in some shape or form, an attempt to disguise outright narcism using wit. ¹

In both cases the goal was to make the reader say, “Wow, that guy’s cool!” This may not always be a conscious goal, but for this type of poster it sits under the surface of most

How to Hide Narcissism

Here are a couple of the methods for obscuring outright lovemeness.

Self Deprecation

This is by far the most popular method. The most common implementation looks like this: “I’m so stupid: trying to build a 100K+ user Rails app in a weekend should be left for the Gods.” Translation:

I not only build Rails apps, but I do what you could never do in a weekend. Oh, but don’t worry, it might actually take me until Monday.

Notice that the first quote about traveling five continents employed this as well. He’s basically saying, “I’m not durable enough to do this many cool things.” Even though he already did them.

The Name-drop + Thanks

Another excellent way to cover your self-love tracks is to execute the brag–which consists of talking about all the cool people you hung out with–and then to thank people profusely for their work that made the get-together possible.

Man, non-stop party with Chris Brogan and Tim Ferriss this weekend. I just want to say thanks to Chris Pirillo and Gina Trapani for making the whole event possible! You guys rock!

See? He wasn’t really talking about how cool he was, he was just saying thanks!

Conclusion

Anyway, now you have a keen insight into the inner-workings of narcissistic Twitter posts…all because of me. You can find more of my brilliant insights at http://danielmiessler.com. ::

What follows is my method of deciding who to friend on the three major social networks: Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Your method may differ; I get that. It’ll come off a bit pompous; I get that too.

Facebook

Facebook for me is personal. I friend people on Facebook using the following criteria (at least one of these must be true):

1. You are a close friend
2. You are someone I’ve met a number of times (associate) who I would enjoy having numerous, long conversations with (hint: concepts vs. current events)
3. You are someone I know of and have interacted with only a little, but you’re someone I’d enjoy having numerous, long conversations with

Who’s Not On This List

• High school friends who I have nothing in common with
• Celebrities of any sort who I have nothing in common with
• People I know well but who don’t have anything in common with me (see long conversations)
• Anyone who I wouldn’t trust to have a key to my house

Basically, the criteria is trustworthy people, who share interests with me, who I can enjoy long conversations with about things I find interesting. This matters because this is where I post personal stuff, like thinking of changing jobs, thinking of moving, rants about stupid people, religious and political humor, etc. It’s for close people only.

This results in me having around 100 friends, which is trimmed down from over three times that amount. Clean out your list; life is too short to miss important stuff from those you care about because it’s been squelched by those you don’t.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn for me is professional. No surprise there. I friend people on LinkedIn based on the following criteria (at least one of these must be true):

1. I’ve worked with you directly in the past, and the experience was positive
2. I’ve dealt with you in the past, and the experience was positive
3. I know your name, and know you’d be a valuable professional contact

Who’s Not On This List

• People I’ve worked with, or dealt with, who I didn’t have a positive experience with (could be negative, or even just neutral)
• Random people who send me invites

The goal here is to have a list of valuable contacts, not a list of people I’ve met or seen…ever…while in a work environment. That’s not useful to me.

Also, the upside of keeping your list properly groomed like this is that it’s not a problem to post things like Tripit updates because you’re not worried about someone on the list robbing you while you’re away. If you have that problem on LinkedIn then you’re doing it wrong.

Twitter

Twitter for me is public. It’s a realtime stream of events from the public-facing personas of various entities. Friends, companies, whatever. I have simple criteria for who I follow on Twitter (at least one of these must be true):

1. You’re a friend
2. You’re family
3. You’re an associate who posts interesting content
4. You’re a company I enjoy hearing about
5. You’re a personality I enjoy hearing from
6. You’re informative

Who’s Not On This List

• Boring people (yes, there is a different between entertaining mundane and just mundane)
• People who tweet about the fact that they’re tweeting, i.e. they’re so into social media that they aren’t actually using the mediums to talk about life, but rather to talk about talking about it

Twitter is an information source. I follow people in two main groups: 1) those who are close to me (see the Facebook section), and 2) those who contribute input that I find either useful or entertaining.

From Public to Private, But Not the Other Way Around

So let’s summarize here: Facebook is private, LinkedIn is professional, and Twitter is public. Let’s capture that differently by saying you post things to Facebook that you can only tell your friends or family over dinner. You post things to LinkedIn that you wouldn’t mind on a resume, and you post things to Twitter that you wouldn’t mind being brought up…anywhere. Ever.

This illuminates an interesting model for cross-posting, which is the practice of sending content from one social network to another. The general rule I recommend is that you allow content to go from more public to more private, but not the other way around. So I send my Twitter content to Facebook, but I’d never send my Facebook content to Twitter. LinkedIn sits in the middle, so it could receive from Twitter but not from Facebook, while Facebook could pull from both of the others.

Summary

Your attention is the most precious of commodities. Adjust your networks accordingly, and don’t be afraid to be exclusive. ::

Mine, for example, are: industry, evolution, technology, infosec, nontheists, developers, tech, neatpeeps, blogs, tech, security, infosec, privacy, etc…

I think this is a much better view of what you’re presenting yourself as than a tag cloud of the content of your posts. When I get a chance I’m going to write a little Ruby deal that’ll pull these, and then I’ll try to figure out how to display them as a cloud. Or maybe there’s an API for this already?

Anyway, yeah. ::

[ Daniel Miessler's Twitter Information Security List | twitter.com ]

And here’s my complete list of…lists.

::

/cricket sounds/

Just click the link, dammit. :) It’s a very unique and interesting way to look at what the world is talking about. It really makes 24-hour news channels look pretty damn stupid.

[ Twitter Trends Map | trendsmap.com ]

Here’s the full image for anyone interested.

People struggle with why Twitter is special. It’s special because it counters, better than any other technology, the timeless social obstacle of “out of sight, out of mind”. Regardless of how much time you’d spend with a given person if they lived nearby, relationships atrophy when distance comes between you.

The longer someone you care about is gone, the more an invisible barrier grows between you–one that makes it awkward to reinitiate contact. It’s as if loved ones over time somehow change from tangible people into abstract ideas that require effort to interact with. This sinister effect of distance turns best friends into strangers, and technologies such as mobile phones and video conferencing don’t help. They don’t help precisely because the barrier is the initiation of contact, not the ability to communicate once connected.

Twitter solves this problem in a way that no other technology has. Through a stream of common, real-world updates about one’s life, Twitter reminds our fickle, here-focused brains that those we care about are real, and prevents them from disappearing into the world of the abstract. In short, Twitter’s magic is that it’s able to keep close people close regardless of how far they are from each other, which is a feat that no other technology has been able to accomplish. ::

It is considered good social networking etiquette–especially on Twitter–to warn your followers that you are posting a link to content on your own blog or company website.

I hereby reject this for the following reasons:

1. When I follow someone it’s because I think they, on the whole, produce content that I want to read vs. content that I find spammy, boring, or otherwise low-signal-to-noise. If this ever stops being the case, I will no longer follow, and I don’t care at all where that content comes from.
2. If you’re worried that the links I post might be “spam” then we already have a much more serious problem than a labeling issue.
3. The odds of my own content being significantly lower quality than the content I enjoy and share from other sources that you DO enjoy, is low.
4. If I don’t have to warn you before I tell you I am going to get a coffee at Starbucks, then I damn sure am not going to warn you before I refer you to a piece I wrote that I think you might find valuable.

In short, what it really means to warn people that you’re posting your own stuff is:

I wrote this, so it’s probably way lower quality than what I normally post.

But if that were the case, then you probably wouldn’t be following me in the first place.

The whole purpose of social media and networking is to put yourself out there–to share your life and ideas with others. There is simply no more pure way to do this than to show people what you’re thinking and writing about.

So no, I will not shield or obscure my own perception of what I find interesting in what amounts to a preemptively apology. If you like what I normally post then you should also like what I write about. From the follower perspective, you either trust me to post content that is somehow worth your time or you don’t. ::

If you’re into Information Security, and you use Twitter, you probably want to be following @securitytwits.

It’s a group of security professionals and enthusiasts that use Twitter to share ideas. The group is herded by Zach Lanier (@quine), and the list of members can be found here online.

For a decent introduction to the ideas behind the group, here’s a short podcast of Bill Brenner (@billbrenner70) interviewing Zach on the topic of Twitter itself as well as the Security Twits list.

[ Bill Brenner / Zach Lanier | csopodcasts ]

The challenge is that you don’t want to just follow people indiscriminately because it gets noisy in a hurry, but at the same time you want to expose yourself to new inputs.

Here’s a simple technique that will help immensely:

Using Twitter Search, perform a number of queries for specialized terms relating to your topics of interest, and follow people that are discussing these things intelligently.

Examples

So let’s say you’re like me and are in the Information Security field. Try some queries for:

• “pci qsa”
• “risk controls”
• “static analysis”

The results show a good amount of promise. In fact, I ended up finding @risktical in this test query, and he’s someone I follow already due to our similar interests. That’s a win for the technique.

Or perhaps you’re into Graphics and Design:

• “xhtml logo”
• “typography best”
• “css design”

In both cases the queries returned people in the midst of conversation on the very topics that we enjoy, and sampling this interaction is an excellent way to evaluate someone’s value as a follow.

So in other words, don’t search for value-add people directly. Instead, sneak up from the side by finding those engaged in the types of conversations that you’d like to be part of, and follow the people that are participating. ::

Related

[ When to Blog vs. Tweet | dmiessler.com ]
[ Why Twitter Works | dmiessler.com ]

I really hope Twitter’s pushing of OAuth is successful. ::

I woke up this morning and noticed that my Feedburner/Google subscriber count had plummeted from around 900 to around 400–a drop of 500. Content creators don’t like that because it makes you start wondering what you did wrong.

Was it that picture I posted?
Have I been too heavy on religion lately?
Crap, I hope I didn’t seriously offend someone…

…etc.

So I fire up Quicksilver and run a Twitter Search (screencast forthcoming) on the word “feedburner”. Instantly I get back hundreds of people asking the same exact questions, which confirms my theory that there’s been a glitch with the subscriber numbers at Google.

This is power. No, this is serious power. Never have we been able to so easily figure out if the “world” (by sampling) is having the same problem you are, or what “people” are talking about.

Sure, we’ve had the mailing lists for various products and communities, and IRC channels are good for those types of queries, but never has it been this mainstream (and thus, useful). Exciting stuff. ::

I’m trying to come up with a simple decision tree, or flowchart, for when something should be tweeted vs. when it should get the respect of a full blog entry. Here’s what I’ve come up with.

Move through the blogging rules below and see if you get a match. If you don’t, move on to the Twitter rules. Note: all blog rules assume that the post is blog-worthy according to your existing standard, whatever that may be.

When to Blog It

• idea cannot be reduced to 140 characters
• the idea is meant to encourage intelligent conversation
• the idea is designed to gather input
• the idea is important enough to be associated with your identity
• you’re posting non-twitter-supported media, e.g. videos
• when you want it to last (think searchable 5 years from now)
• asks for input that you want to capture

When to Tweet It

• personal status update, e.g. seeing movie x, landed in san francisco
• you’re broadcasting the existence of interesting content on your blog
• the idea can be condensed to 140 characters
• random, somewhat interesting idea, but not worth blogging (else, blog)

If you don’t get a match after running through both sets of rules then you either shouldn’t be sharing what you were about to share or you need to adjust your rules.

Obviously these rules are based on my own personal conceptualizations of blogging and Twitter, so you may have to adjust accordingly. But hopefully this first attempt will prove useful to someone. ::

In other words, in terms of my own Twitter content, Twitter is blogging.

This is part of my ongoing attempt to define precisely what Twitter is to me, and to resist the temptation to let it creep into other spaces, such as chat and “place to hang out”.

If it ends up being all these things to me later that’s fine, but I do know that the primary role for Twitter, at least as it’s presented on my site, is that of a supplement to my main blog. ::

Like many others, I’m trying to figure out where Twitter fits. Not just in my life online, but in general.

I recently tweeted a question:

Should non-DM tweets include context? In other words, should Twitter remain a micro-blogging platform vs. chat, or is it too late?

This captures part of the problem. It’s not a micro-blogging platform if half of your posts are, “It depends on the flavor.” That is a chat fragment, and it alienates followers rather than attracts them.

So if Twitter is for micro-blogging, then what’s “micro”? Obviously the 140 character limit is meant to help us with this question.

My original understanding of Twitter was along the lines of “personal status updates”, with some “personal musings” thrown in, e.g. “I wonder why chipmunks always look so happy. I must investigate”. But in both cases the tweets are still complete ideas–even if they’re short ones or mostly meaningless.

Basically, I saw Twitter as a means of not losing touch with the personal influence of those you care about. So perhaps you have a friend who’s always complaining about rude drivers, but he moved away. Well, it brings a smile to your face when you see him tweet, “They should require people to get a license before they can drive. Oh, wait…” Not because what he said was that funny, but because it’s your friend complaining about bad drivers like he always does.

But now Twitter’s becoming something else: Chat, current events search, etc. I suppose this isn’t a problem since you don’t need to follow those who “misuse” Twitter (whatever that means), but it’d be nice to have something to tell a newbie when they ask what you do with Twitter.

Right now I’m not sure most users could give a tight answer. ::

[ Twistori ]

My buddy Ken just put up a short Twitter primer over on his blog. The primer was spawned from my dumb ass accidentally responding to him directly in my Twitter window rather than via direct message. So here he’s showing us how to reply to people’s tweets directly and send direct messages to people.

Definitely good stuff to know for Twitter users.

[ A Twitter Primer | kenswain.com ]