Seems I'm simply way behind the curve when it comes to following the latest trends on the most popular open-source microblogging script: Statusnet. Unfortunately, Statusnet changed from an AGPL-licensed script to an Apache 2.0 licensed script called pump.io. With that, Identi.ca changed too. The new microblogging community is located at Microca.st. Oops. It seems they dropped the microblogging platform they once had so the microblogs that this blog used to front are gone.

P.S: Statusnet's change reminds me of the Croatian company Shoutem which had a microblogging platform some few years back. Then, voila, it dropped the service and is now a mobile apps company. Is it that the microblogging concept isn't a cashcow model? May be I should leave this for the next blog post.

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This is one area that I covered in a particular post some time back. However, the post lacked the stats to back up the arguments plus some more info really. And, you know, some people can be quite skeptical of any information that lacks some backing stats to it. I do believe that anyone with a keen sense of observation could easily extract similar views I stated in that post. So who’s coming in with the stats to support these arguments?

Here comes a Thesis designer with a thorough post on what works on Twitter. FYI, Thesis is one of the most popular Wordpress themes out there. And it’s a premium theme my friend. I was quite interested in seeing this Twitter post on the developer's website (but there are so many other informative posts on the blog). Not many other developer websites post off-topic i.e. not related to the project's development on their blogs.Quite an interesting post. I could see some parallels in my post and theirs but mine lacked the stats (#fail).

BORED OF READING A LONG POST?

For the lazy bones amongst us, here is a condensation of the main points in that post:

1. Twitter users love funny tweets.
2. Witty tweets are a favorite to the Twitter crowd.
3. Create curiosity, what Derek Halpern, the post's author, calls an "information gap" in your tweets.
4. And finally, be interesting.

Well, this means there is work to do in polishing up my Twitter usage. I'm out.

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Visualize this incident: a driver reaches a junction and is about to move into the main "road". A motorcycle rider is coming up the main road while cruising at roughly 20-30km/h. His bike is heavily loaded. The motorcycle rider then punches his horn on which lets out a blaring noise (most motorcycles nowadays have got very loud electric horns) which kind of shakes the car driver. The car driver halts thus letting the motorcycle rider to pass first before he joins into the main road. Does that seem funny? One by-stander was so amused by this spectacle that he had to ask this question: Since when did motorcycle riders start hooting to vehicle owners so as to get their way? OK, this is Kenya. Many vehicle owners consider motorcycle riders as those pesky road users on two wheels.
Back to some serious stuff now. Many microblogging sites have hashtags as one of their features. By simply appending a hash, "#", to a word, the word becomes a link. Clicking on this link will bring up all posts with that hashtag. Hashtagging, if I can call it that, is just one of the ways of effecting categorization.
Here is a little history of where this concept came from. Joshua Schaster, the guy who started the social bookmarking site Delicio.us, had a file of 20000 links. As a way of trying to quickly access some link from the file, he started appending hashes to some little information he added to each link. With this system, he could easily grep any word with a hash thus easily bringing up the particular link he was searching for. From this we can see that hashtags are quite beneficial when it comes to doing searches for particular posts/tweets/notices in any microblogging site.
How are they mostly used then? There is no any hard rule of how one should use them; that's left to the user. Mainly, if you would want to prominently show a particular word on the post, you mostly hashtag that word. But there are 2 ways in which hashtags are mostly used:

1.  Do you remember this post that I had posted some time back: the line between spamming and promoting in microblogs?. Yup. That's just one of the ways hashtags are used.
2. To create Trending Topics: This is Twitter-specific. If a group of users are using a particular hashtag continuously in their posts, that hashtag may turn out to be a trending topic on Twitter that day. For example, some of the hashtags by #KenyansonTwitter that have turned out to be trending topics are: #rutoplaylist and #KCPEresults. And I thought that we weren't a crowd on the site!

REMEMBER: To create a hashtag, the words need to be stringed without any spaces in between; much like Camelcase wording in wikis. Hyphens break up the words which you would like to hashtag; so please leave them out.

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Blogging is tough, especially if you do not have the writer's streak. I am not saying that one can't learn how to be a prolific writer. I am actually pointing to to those who write occasionally or erratically. Their output is usually low. Some not only have fewer posts but heir posts may be very short. So what do we have in the long run? A neglected blog. Publishing new articles on a regular basis is almost a requirement in the blogosphere. It's a fact that a blog's homepage design - where the latest post is always at the top of the page - can expose a blogger's activity quite easily, without even the user digging into the site's archives.
On the other hand, microblogging does not require as much input from the user in terms of the time spent on thinking of what to post. You can simply post anything, even non-sensical posts such as:



ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ.


Idle babble occupies a sizable proportion of all posts on Twitter. Disclaimer: Microblogging cannot replace blogging. But it does help whenever you get the writer's block. Furthermore, no single person can generate a good article every hour of their working days :-).

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Who cares about retweetability? I do. What about you? Can retweetability be a measure of one's influence on any microblogging site?  Anyway. What's retweeting in the first place? Retweeting is just a way of repeating another microblogger's post on Twitter. With a simple "RT @username message" syntax or a simple click on the RT "button" you can repeat anyone's post; and that message will appear on your personal timeline. Twitip does give a a formula (?) for retweeting in a way.
So what makes a post retweetable? Here are some 3 observations that I have made:

1. Post quality. How informative is the post? Does it help in starting or even building an online conversation in that microblogging site? I can only link to the article on the the effect of informative posts here.
2. Reputation. A good name is better than riches really. If it's not Solomon who said that then you have every right to correct me. Popular persons, bloggers, celebrities have great influence on their followers. And many of their tweets end up being retweeted by their followers.
3. @Replies. I've noticed that mentions of another person in a post can cause them to retweet such a post. Is it the "mention" psychology at work here??? May be.

P.S: And what's this info about the Retweetability Index. :-|

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Kenya Tweets released a report on the activity of Kenyans on Twitter around Oct-Nov 2010. It provided some very wonderful insights. For example, one of them was that Kenyans follow more than they are followed. Anyway, that is an analysis we will carry out another day. This article is closely linked to the aspect of following/subscribing. Have you noticed that whoever you follow on any microblogging site will end up following you in return? But there are some who even after follow them will never reciprocate or will take time doing so. It can be a little annoying to learn that the person continuously updates their profile without showing any interest in your "follow". Here is why some may never subscribe to your updates:

1. You are a business. (Can this be a reason?) Your profile image is your business logo. Microblogging is bent towards inter-personal relationships. Some microbloggers may not follow businesses since they are scared that you might flood their streams with company updates, promotional messages and the like.
2. You do not have profile image. The default avatars used on certain microblogging sites are not attractive in any way. So why do you still have one while your account is now 3 months old on the site? Upload your photo today. It sure does help in increasing your followers since they get to see the person behind that account.
3. The ring in your name. Can you follow a person whose username is "ma1k55"? Trust OSS developers to conjure up such usernames for their microblogging profiles?
4. Your interests do not match with theirs. Show me your updates and I will tell you what interests you. If your updates point to a person interested in say American soccer, do you expect a person working in an NGO in a 3rd World country to follow you back? :-(
5. You both update your profiles at different times. This one isn't really a strong reason as to why microblogger B may not follow you. However, it does have an influence for those who are following many people. If they cannot see an @reply in their stream from you then they might take time subscribing to you.
6. Your updates look spammy. No need of an explanation on this one.
7. Going, going, gone! You stopped posting some 2 months ago. So, what is the worth of subscribing to an inactive account?
8. They are grappling with a heavy stream. Sorry, they can't add another person into their network.

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There is only one social network right now that puts a cap on the number of friends one can have. And that is the The Personal Network stroke Path. Based on Dunbar's research results, the guys behind it have put a limit of 50 friends for each user. And who are these guys? Dave Morin, once an executive at Facebook, and Shawn Fanning, cofounder of Napster. This gives credence to a view that I had that even though one can have hundreds to thousands of friends/followers on a social network, there is usually a small group that one particularly listens to or follows keenly. Here is how Dave Morin puts it:
"You usually have about five people whom you trust most, 20 whom you consider your BFF's (what's this, anyone?) and about 50 or so who are your personal network."

P.S: Did I hear one scientist say on BBC radio that man's evolutionary limit of their friendship networks is 150 people? May be Morin and Fanning aren't that off the mark in trying this out.

P.P.S: You can read the site's blog here.

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What’s your mission whenever you login into any microblogging site ? Do you ever have a sense of duty to your subscribers/followers and friends whenever you are sending out those messages? Let us put this way: what were your aims when you registerd an accounrt on that site? Was it:

1. To make friends or to maintain the online relationships that you have?
2. To solve people’s problems?
3. To promote some blog, website, product or service?
4. To just check out what the service had to offer?
5. To seriously spam or troll on the network (a serious #failure)?

Anyway, this article is not about that but on the little bright moments every microblogger experiences on any microblog.

Subscriptions

Do you remember the very first days after setting up your account on, say Twitter? Fresh faced with some subscriptions and NIL followers? It seemed quite strange when posting a message which you knew no one was listening to; all against the nagging thought at the back of your mind which was saying, “You are wasting your time here. No one is listening, buddy.”

What about that day when you saw that you had gained some few subscribers? You were over the roof. In your excitement you were ready to "fungua roho" (open up your heart literally) and share as much as you can with your new followers. This excitement is not only felt by the newest signups on the site only. Believe you me, I have followed people who seemed to have neglected their accounts but afterwards they came back and started posting again. It’s like they just saw that they had gained some new followers and felt the need to at least start taking their “networking” seriously.

On another note, are you obsessed (I’ve lacked a better word for this) with the number of followers/subscribers you have gained recently? You are not alone. I confess that on many occasions I usually visit Twitter, or Nairobi-stique for that matter, just to see how many followers I’ve gained. That’s not bad at all. It’s human nature to feel appreciated whenever you know someone is listening.

@Replies

The #NewTwitter puts it well: @Mentions. The link’s description is: “all the tweets in which you are mentioned.” Anyway, here is the main point: @replies on any microblogging site do stimulate conversations. It’s quite motivating to see someone has “@replied” you. By the way, some microbloggers do not like it when someone fails to reply to their posts. Some even drop/unfollow those who never respond.

NB: Some microblogging sites have comments for their replies.

Repeats/Retweets

Has someone ever repeated/retweeted your post? How did you feel? It sure feels great whenever you see someone has repeated one of your messages.

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Here is one conventional belief on how to gain more followers on any microblogging site: follow as many as you can and you'll get more followers. If you've ever heard about Osen Komura Experiment, you already know what power lies in subscribing to someone's updates. But all that is tedious and boring if you have to muck around, subscribing (especially manually) to any user on the site. What about if you set up a bot or client program to do just that for you? Wonderful! I mean, you only have to set up some program, get out your hammock, go out and bask in the sun for some hours as the bot mass-follows for you. But the downside is that you'll have to grapple with one heavy stream of posts. Furthermore, if you know anything about purging your followers, then what was the benefit of mass-following in the first place?

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For Twitter users ‘subscribers’ may sound a little bit strange instead of ‘followers’ but this site (and this one too ) use that to describe those who listen to another person’s updates. At least it sounds right for microblogging. To get more subscribers/followers on any microblogging site is no means task especially if you want to create an audience that just loves to listen to your updates. So many bloggers ,Twitter users and others recommend following as many people so that they may follow you back. But this can turn out to be not so productive in the long term since much of your stream will be noisy. The truth is that many people only respond to tweets/shouts/notices from those who have a strategic importance to their goals; the rest are listened to rarely. There are so many ways through which one can attract more followers/subscribers on any microblogging service and offering great content is one way. Great content for microblogging can be:

1. NEWS: You just can't beat news updates in creating more followers /subscribers. For example did you know that Microsoft ditched its Live Spaces blogging platform for Wordpress.com? What about " Wikipedia uses P2P Technology to show its video content "? And I hope you heard about LibreOffice? You see news, especially technology news, can boost your visibility on any microblogging site if people come to trust your reputation and tweet/repost your updates. So look around you. Do you have access to news sources? Are you smack right there in an organization that makes things happen? You have an advantage over the rest of the microblogging masses.Note: Retweeting / reposting of the latest news updates can also increase ones follower / subscribers too. This just shows that you are ‘up to date’, too.
2. ITS-ALREADY-BEEN-SAID CONTENT BUT WITH A PERSONAL TOUCH: I will call this adding some spin to information that many already know about. For example everything about creating websites is already known but you can attach some personal touch to that content breathing life into it and setting yourself apart. Maybe it can be through your writing style or your personal experiences or something that makes you unique. Now condense this content into short microblogging posts and you will attract people to your profile. For a fuller display of your uniqueness, you can link to blog posts or information you have written elsewhere. 
3.  WITTY CONVERSATIONS: Display some wit in your @ replies and I will love your conversations. Drop a witty quote and I will not forget about it. Go on like this and who will not be attracted to you?

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Here is an article on how one can improve their writing skills . Now let's apply that to microblogging. To improve one's writing skills for effective tweets/notices/updates requires:

1. Practice.
2. Practice.
3. Practice.
4. Practice and,
5. More practice.

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Here is a set of actions that any person on any social network follows through, whether consciously or out of a habit:

1. Login into the site
2. Check out whether any friend/follower is logged in at the same time. (The user will not nudge the friend/follower into a conversation at this stage since they are clueless on what they will say)
3. Check out notifications and messages in the mailbox. If there is nothing, stage 4 kicks in,
4. Browse through the most recent comments from friends/followers so as to get some "seed" for a conversation,
5. If there are no noteworhty comments, the user will then browse for something notable from persons without his/her friends network. This is so as to get something to talk about. Once they get it then,
6. They can nudge that friend into engaging in a conversation.

It is mostly at stage 5 where many identify persons who they can turn into friends or follow. Now let's say that you have time limits or little money and you want to meet with that friend. The truth is that it would be very frustating, once you have got into the site, to see that your friend is not in  at the same time. And after sifting through the site for other people to talk with, you can end up wasting some precious time and money. What if we practiced ...

Arranged Meetings

How would that turn out to be? What if we arranged with some of our friends to meet at the same time on a particular social network? Wouldn't that be cost-effective in some way? Wouldn't it give a meaning to the word "virtual conversations"? This would be highly appropriate for chat sessions and...

Microblogging Sites

Since the microblogging concept is built on the notion of encouraging people to send out short messages to each other thus encouraging conversations, arranged meetings are workable. Additionally, with the argument that the microblogging concept is a likely alternative to E-mail, arranged meetings can allow the dispatching of private, direct messages on a real-time basis.

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This article on tips on how to start up a microblogging service in Africa is heavily biased to the technical end of a microblogging service. However, the arguments contained here that:

1. Microblogging sites in Africa should put much more emphasis on integration with the SMS service and,
2. the stripping down of  service overheads and,
3. (some how) recommending efficient clients for African microblogging sites,

are good.
Now let's add some 2 more tips:

1.User Experience

Initiators or entrepernuers behind these sites should offer a service that is user-friendly i.e.:

1. Make the site easy to access and use
2. Primp the site to have a simple look/appearance.
3. Provide much more character count per post: Africans like talking.

2.Listening

Many a microblogging service have found it hard on African terrain with some eventually dieing out after a short time of existence. To prevent this, the backers of microblogging sites should be good at listening be it:

1. the few people using their service i.e feedback from users.
2. trends in the social media world
3. to people without the service e.g African bloggers, review sites etc.

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While microblogging offers a faster way of communicating with others, it also requires that the blogger (if we can call him/her that way) to be adept at managing online relationships. This requires that the blogger to:

1. be good at listening and,
2. be empathetic at best.

There are a few resources from which one can learn how to write/post good tweets/shouts/notices on any microblogging service.

1.Twitter

Twitter is the most popular microblogging service currently. It allows its users to send messages called "tweets" top other users of up to 140 characters. The beauty of Twitter is that well known personalities and corporations are on board. That can be quite suitable for anyone to learn about good tweeting. For example, using Google one can search for the most popular blogger in a particular niche then search for their Twitter profile. With that one can get to glean some lessons on how to post good tweets from that particular blogger.Note also that some Twitter users do protect their tweets; so that requires you to sign up to the service and request to follow them so as to get to see how they tweet.For business persons, searching for the Twitter profiles of their competitors or industry leaders can teach them on how to use Twitter for business.

Another reason on Twitter is the "Trending Topics" section. Searching for what is trending on the site then zeroing down the search to a particular profile whose tweets seem credible, a new user can get a role model to emulate. Note that the trending topics may contain a lot of noise in the form of tweets with the trending word nested between hashtagged words making up the posts.

2.Identi.ca

Identica is another microblogging service just like Twitter. However, one main difference between it and Twitter is that all posts, called notices, are open to the public. That is an added advantage since one can see how they go about creating conversations. The "Public Timeline" section can be a big eye opener to anyone who is new to microblogging. One, anyone can get to see who are the most frequent users of the site and, two, the quality of their notices.

3. Google Searching

You can scour through the Internet for guides, websites and ebooks on "How to write good tweets".

4.Dirty your hands

It is said that "Practice, practice makes perfect". Get your hands dirty by creating an account on any of the microblogging services and learn from experience. As you review your mistakes and also emulate some good Tweeple around, the quality of your posts will improve. So get on with it today.

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