twitter | Social Signal

Turns out it really is better to give than receive! We just handed Julie Ovenell-Carter, a.k.a. @sfuwoodwards, her brand new Flip MinoHD video camera, her prize in Social Signal's first Twitter contest.

Friend and SoSi advisor Leda Dederich asked for my thoughts on Virginia Heffernan's New York Times Magazine article last week, Let them eat Tweets. Heffernan riffs on Bruce Sterling's recent SXSW keynote, and writes:

I have only lately begun to wonder whether I’d use Twitter if I were fully at liberty to do what I liked. In other words, I’m not sure I’d use Twitter if I were rich. Swampy, boggy, inescapable connectivity: it seems my middle-class existence has stuck me here.

Heffernan is just about my favourite writer on tech culture, and while I can't concur with her subjective experience -- my fantasies of wealth involve having more time to spend online, not less -- her article prompted me to think about how much of my Twitter use is compulsive, rather than fulfilling.

Whether you're an ambivalent Twitter newbie or a chronic tweeter in the throes of a growing addiction, your tweeting is going to take time that you're currently using for something else. Even if you're following our guide to effective tweeting in 5 minutes a week, those five minutes have to come from somewhere. So here are my suggestions for activities you can pare back on -- or give up entirely -- to make room for tweeting.

Gillian Shaw pointed out a "Twitter squatter" to me last night -- Mel Lehan, the NDP candidate in our riding, who'd nabbed his name on Twitter but not actually posted anything. It's smarter than not squatting -- the last thing you'd want as a candidate is to see someone else posting in your name! -- but there is a better way.

If you need to stake a claim to your Twitter identity, but you don't know what to tweet about, here's an easy way to get your Tweeting underway. You don't need to look like the world's most longstanding Twitterer (after all, Oprah just started tweeting last week!), but an empty Twitter feed is just, well, a little forlorn.

So I've taken the liberty of writing your first 21 tweets for you. That's enough for you to post something once a day for the next three weeks...by which time you should have the hang of Twitter and know what kinds of things you want to say. If not, at least you'll look like you gave it a decent try.