The next day he was shot.
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Given that we just launched our own in house Twitter tool called CipCip which based on the Laconica platform I thought it might be interesting to post this TechCrunch article which was written by Yammer CEO David Sacks. Yammer is the hosted version of Laconica. While I think Yammer is a great idea the problem is still one of privacy – you run your data through their servers. Not ideal, especially not for security sensitive humanitarian aid organizations.
What I think is most interesting is that these opinions come from someone running a corporate microblog so his lessons learned are going to be slightly different from those of your average Twitter user. His ideas boil down to two basic suggestions:
- Let the message sell itself – you shouldn’t have to have to be part of the ReTweet process just facilitate the transfer. You should be able to push the message without adding an ‘RT’ to the front and that way the sacred 140 wouldn’t be violated. Not a bad idea but I think the clever ones (like @Mashable) always leave room at the end. Preserving the 140 would let the message be carried further down the line.
- Make the follow process easier – include a follow button beneath the image icon in the freshly minted and unmodified ReTweet.
Good ideas all around. Interesting that we’re now down to fine tuning our Twitter experience as if we were a bunch of guys standing around on a Sunday afternoon with beers in our hands staring down at the Hemi in some badass ‘68 ‘Cuda talking about how to tweak the headers.
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I am a pretty proud papa today for today we gave birth to CipCip which, I believe, is the world’s first humanitarian microblog. (Now, I may be dead wrong about the last bit but I haven’t heard anything to prove me wrong and besides you always think you kid is the cutest!) CipCip is our very own Twitter and it lives within the walls of the World Food Programme. As you can tell from the logo it’s built on Laconica and right now we’re firing away using Twhirl although I wish there was something that could pull double duty (Twitter and Laconica) but in one consolidated interface. Where’s that new Seemic Desktop?
Everything I am telling you is available on today’s post over on the DELIVER project blog which outlines WFP’s efforts to synchronize their various data systems. Some of the highlights of rolling out the system have been: 1) the ease with which a user in Maputo, Mozambique contributed information to our social stream and 2) the ability to live blog meetings elsewhere in the office so that folks could tune in and get the highlights all from the comfort of their desks. As you know I can’t tell you much more than what is on the printed page but needless to say I am pretty thrilled by the results.
Where it goes from here is anybody’s guess but there are some pretty big plans for the system. Just think of hundreds, if not thousands, of aid workers having one dialogue from 85+ countries around the world. If the World Food Programme, the world’s largest humanitarian aid organization and humanitarian logistics operation, can put something like this into to play I should think it is not out of reach for smaller, lighter aid organizations to implement. The beauty of it all is that it is basically free of charge minus the few extra hours it took to get it up and running!
Please stay tuned for more and I’ll be sure to keep you updated!
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After my last gush about Bit.ly and microtrends, etc. I got a hand slap from Jeff:
URL shortners will contribute to the already ephemeral nature of the
web. They are not a good idea. The whole limited characters thing of
Twitter is not actually a good idea. Perhaps stylistically it is, so
maybe twitter’s UI needs to change so that the URL lives outside the
post or something.We are going to wake up to a terrible hangover from URL shorteners.
Jeff said I could use that if I made sure to include this article by Boing Boing founder Cory Doctorow featuring Del.icio.us founder Joshua Schachter talking about how URL shorteners suck.
Jeff is getting married soon so he better be worrying about the hangover he’s going to have from all that Swiss Alpen grog stuff he’s going to be drinking! Woo hoo, Jeff! Oh yeah, and thanks to JAT for jacking me so I couldn’t make it to the wedding!
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It is really hot in Rome today. Summer has arrived in full force and I am sure it will get even worse. I am thinking that an AC unit might be needed if we are going to make it through the summer. I just joined a gym not far from my place that has a fantastic pool and after doing some laps this morning I am looking forward to heading back over there after the sun drops a little more. I am really getting to like the Italian tradition of just laying low on Sundays and I no longer feel guilty about spending the day reading, catching up on correspondence and (finally) writing another blog post. Thankfully, this post will be short and sweet.
I love this picture:
I know it is about as sexy as a piece of dried salt cod but for me shows the difference between how we think things function and how they actually function. Basically, no one is in charge. Well, ok, it looks like Cole is kind of important but in Rob Cross’ Organizational Network Analysis summary it turns out that Cole is some mid-level guy that just happens to be sort of important. (How did I get here? I follow @timoreilly who follows @kanter who writes Beth’s Blog that has this story that featured Rob Cross.)
We spend so much time trying to tighten up and streamline structures that just don’t exist anymore, except for on paper, and we forget that our job is actually to spend our time making sure the world keeps turning. It struck me that in so many businesses and organizations no one has any idea what they are doing. We are all just technically proficient and there are so few people that can effectively orchestrate these proficiencies that we all just end up doing our best. While not a new concept I always feel better for a while after each time I have this epiphany.
What I really like about this image is that if you stare at the diagram on the right long enough you realize it looks like a microblog, it looks like Twitter. How messed up is that? It doesn’t look like Facebook (actually, I have no idea what Facebook looks like because I hate it) and it doesn’t look like email, chat, etc. What it does look like (at least to my heatstroked mind) is Twitter.
While I don’t think I am going to get a bunch of WTF!?’s because nobody is really reading my blog anymore and I will probably lose a few readers I also just might get you to add me to your Bookmark Toolbar if you are also feeling slightly bonkers today. In any event please let me know what you think about my observation and whether or not you agree with me.
Personally, I think it is just fine that no one is in charge and that we’re all just winging it. We’ll get there eventually but first let’s see if Twitter can figure out what to do with their data. That might give us some idea as to how get to where we’re going.
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This is what happened on my street today. There was a build up of gas in an apartment across the street followed by a massive explosion. Two people were killed and several hurt. Very sad.
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I have been working with microblogs lately and the various tools they employ to get the job done. While Twitter, Laconica and Twhirl are my stand out favorites I have recently become enamored with URL shortening tools like Bit.ly. I really had no idea how much potential lay hidden within those scrunched up little URL’s until I read a piece in the New York Times titled ‘Mini-Links to Websites Are Multiplying‘ and a short while later I came across TechCrunch’s article on the URL shortening service Awe.sm. And, now, after tonight’s Twitter microrally that lasted all of 26 minutes and spanned nine countries including the US, UK, Italy, Israel, Tanzania, Senegal, Portugal and Switzerland I am convinced that these ‘microlinks’ are the next big thing.
Not only are they the next big thing (actually, they have been ‘the thing’ for quite some time as I am sure many of you would argue, i.e. tinyurl) but they are also inherently addictive. They are like handfuls of sunflower seeds, Peanut M&M’s, etc. Once you start you can’t stop and when a site like Awe.sm offers 10,000 URL creations for $8.50/month you being to wonder if that will be enough. Actually, it is not so much the quantity as it is the quality of the micropost that’s gets you ‘bounce’ during a microrally in addition to the words ‘Please ReTweet!’ that follow at the end of your plea. A microrally is really just a brief sprint in Twitterland that involves shrinking up a random URL, preferably linking to a site where some sort of reward (like stats) reside, and then pushing it out into the social stream where your Twitter minions either play ball and bounce your post by first clicking the microlink and then retweeting or they let it die not having looked at stats like these:
What you don’t see is that the bulk of these participants saw my Tweet, clicked the microlink and retweeted all within about 30 minutes of one another. My short message bounced to four continents in well under 30 minutes and all I said was:
I know, I know, a microrally sounds like something a guy sitting home with too much time on his hands would do (it is) but until you take a run at one and unabashedly pimp yourself to high hell you won’t understand what it means to watch your stats roll in parsed out to the minute. With Bit.ly you can actually watch your stats roll in minute by minute and immediately flip over and see which countries are helping you. It’s an incredible marketing tool for Twitter especially if you first want to see who is online and if they’re listening. You certainly wouldn’t want to launch a microrally if it is 3am in the States where I believe most of my audience comes from. It’s evening here so I had a good collection of US supporters but I was also very nicely surprised to see folks from Tanzania, Senegal and Israel joining in!
Go ahead, give it a try. You just might like it. I’d love to pimp it one time to a celebrity Twitterer like @aplusk and watch as the stats shot through the roof. Maybe a humanitarian fundraiser rally where you line up participants and then get a donor to match the stats? What do you think? Should we give it a try? Leave a comment below and let me know what you think!
Be sure to follow me on Twitter so that you can help out next time around! @aidworkerdaily
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When you live in a very quiet Italian village even Friday nights are dull. Well, not dull just very, very serene. If local kids got caught drag racing their mopeds down the streets of my village they would be so embarassed…well, you get the idea.
All those quiet hours make for a very active mind. As some of you know I have long obsessed over the ability to Twitter via Thuraya and I think I have found a solution. Now, for those of you not using a Thuraya SG-2520 you are SOL when it comes to this app but I promise you I will keep searching for a workaround for the Hughes and Ascom sets.
Actually, finding the app was quite simple. I Googled “J2ME Twitter client” and up popped jibjib. Jibjib is a free to download open source Twitter client that should run just fine on the SG-2520. When I dropped the JAD file into the very cool MicroEmulator Java Web Start application I was immediately able to start Twittering. Here’s the pic:
You can do all the usual stuff that you would do with other Twitter clients but what is really interesting is that since it is open source one should be able to modify it to work with the Laconica microblogging platform. Wouldn’t it be something if we could figure out how to make that work? Considering that the SG-2520 comes equipped with a built-in GPS unit and the new beta version of jibjib corrects some geocoding issues it seems like we might be pretty close to having a suitable microblogging tool for folks in the field. Here are some other features:
- Small about 30-40 KB
- Minimum requirements are only CLDC 1.0 and MIDP 1.0
- Reply button to add @reply automatically
- Small bandwidth consumption via JSON and birdnest (5-6 KB for 20-entries friends timeline)
- Fast response by multi-threading
- Quick word with prefix
@and#insertion - It’s open source! If you have idea to improve, just do it!
- Simple development, no IDE, just ant.
If you’ve got a Thuraya and want to try it out please do and be sure to let us know. Otherwise, you can try out the app in the emulator and see what you think. Problem solved?
No, wait, there are two drunk women giggling in the plaza. Ok folks, now things are getting out of control out here in my Italian Mayberry.
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