When I first joined Twitter, I could not imagine what it would be like to have 10,000 followers, or as I prefer to describe it, to have 10,000 people subscribe to my updates. (Jesus had followers. Twitter users have subscribers. It’s not the same thing.)

I got there honestly, and therefore, a lot more slowly than people who were better at amassing followers for the sake of numeric bragging rights. I never participated in any schemes to add followers, and in fact, did not participate in “Follow Friday” and came out strongly against what I saw as a pyramid scheme. When I was within a few hundred of 10,000, I offered a copy of my SocialCorp book to my 10,000th subscriber and a copy to a randomly selected person who tweeted about it, but by then I was certain to reach 10K any way. If you do the math on the cost of a couple of books, my 10,000th subscriber was really expensive.

When I signed up in June, 2007, Twitter, launched publicly in July, 2006, was less than a year old. Everyone was an early adopter. The conversations were engaging and stimulating. This has changed, and it’s partly my fault for following people whose tweets do not interest me, or in some cases, offend me.

It’s time to review my criteria for following/following back people on Twitter. Way back when (sounding like a wagon master on the Oregon Trail), I actively sought people in two distinct categories — friends and present/former colleagues, and people in allied fields, like public relations, social media, corporate communications, writing and publishing. As I spent time on Twitter, observing early adopters and the triumphs and missteps of the first businesses using Twitter as a communications tool, I became very well informed in these areas, and was often quite amused. As new users joined Twitter, many of them gravitated to me and the other one million or so people who were already there. So much of the early communications on Twitter involved discussions like “What is Twitter?” “Is it for real?” “How does a business use Twitter?” “What a waste of time!” and “What’s the etiquette here?”

Somewhere along the line, that all changed, and now about 25 percent of my new followers are multi-level marketers (MLMers), spammers, people actively trying to sell me goods and services, pornographers, and “make $3000 a minute while you sleep” hucksters. At the same time, Twitter grew from well under a million users to around 20 million today.

My original followers policy was to follow people in the categories I’ve described who interested me, people who came to my attention through an interesting article or presentation; and people I met at conferences and on panel discussions. I also looked for people who lived in my area, rural Santa Cruz County. I would follow back any new follower who appeared to be a “real” person and not a spam or porn account, or some kind of bot.

My online conversational style is to engage with anyone interesting. I don’t segregate by political affiliation, religion, profession, gender, etc. While this is an inclusive policy, it has led to too much noise in my Twitter experience. My inclusive policies regarding political discussion, for example, which once allowed me to see many sides to a political issue, have now subjected me to fringe discussions which are often hateful and offensive.

And I know I’ll get a bunch of grief for revealing this, but I don’t really care for pets. And I don’t have any. But I have early Twitter friends who have pets. (This is like saying I know people who wear shoes.) Others who have come along have observed that I have pet lovers as followers and have assumed I am one, too. But I am not. So people who sell/market to pet owners target me, and they couldn’t be further off their demographic.

I forged some great friendships during those early times, and had my brushes with celebrity, like many Twitter users have. It was great watching Comcast, Dell, Ford, and others as they joined Twitter and began to use it seriously. Recently, for example,  I noticed someone tweeting about their enthusiasm for Kentucky Fried Chicken. I replied that they should follow @kfc_colonel, the official Twitter account for KFC. @kfc_colonel replied to me “Joel, you’re the Colonel’s guy. You were there when we had more herbs & spices than we had followers. Thanks!” It’s nice to have a personal connection with a company. I’ve had the chance on Twitter to “talk” to Tony Hsieh of Zappos, MC Hammer, and Curt Smith of Tears for Fears. Alyssa Milano even sent me a direct message! (I sleep with it under my pillow.)

So Twitter is what I make of it. And it’s sort of cool to have 10,000 subscribers, but the number of followers I have is not as important as who they are and how I interact with them. And that’s up to me. Anyone who says “Twitter sucks, there are too many spammers,” or “Ashton Kutcher ruined Twitter,” can easily take back control of their Twitter existence. That’s what I’m trying to do.

I was interviewed recently by Canadian Press, and subsequently a number of radio stations across Canada, on the effect of social networking on student language skills. The title of the Canadian Press article was Students failing because of Twitter, texting and no grammar teaching, but I don’t necessarily agree with that. Rather, I think what we have is the clash of two worlds and two kinds of language.

We live on the electronic commons of the internet. Our work, school, social, and private lives have become one. This has implications for students who might move from home to classroom to cafe and home again, using the same Facebook and Twitter accounts, interacting with the same set of friends, real and internet, personal and academic, without considering what this entails.

The language of emoticons and SMS (text message) abbreviations might be appropriate for some friends, in some settings, but not for certain contacts and interactions in the academic and career worlds. The problem arises when a person moves seamlessly from one world to the other without considering without adjusting language and style to suit each new situation. Academics don’t want to see informal language showing up in term papers. Hiring managers are bothered by its use in cover letters and resumes, and in a large number of business and media careers, emoticons and text abbreviations are not appropriate in the work the candidate is expected to produce once on the job, so the recruiter rejects candidates who use them during the application process.

Language is both prescriptive (defined by fixed rules in dictionaries, text books, and style guides), and descriptive (defined by current popular usage.) Whereas before, we had, for example, the language of hip hop in one realm and the language of academia in another, clearly separate from each other, the online and offline versions of the language today exist side-by-side, uneasily sharing the same physical and temporal space. The usual lag time and adoption curve has disappeared, and non-users of the latest informal language are expected to instantly comprehend it and speak it fluently, else there is something wrong with them. Eventually, many of these words and expressions may make it into the broader language, but problems arise when we rush this process.

This year, for example, the New Oxford American Dictionary announced that “unfriend” was its “Word of the Year” for 2009. I wonder if five years from now people will be using the word more widely, or not at all. (It would be interesting to see some analysis of the various words-of-the-year from the past and which are still commonly used. I suspect except in the case of the verb “to Google,” the number would be low.)

There are many solutions to this, if you view it as a problem. Students need to show a little commonsense about understanding the difference between social network speak and formal language. This is something that should be taught in basic communications classes. A tactical solution for students is to have multiple social network profiles, one on each site for personal and professional/academic use.

In the meantime, students who take the time to understand this dynamic, and can show some restraint in their use of smiley faces and LOLs, will find themselves at a clear advantage in what is probably the most competitive academic and career environment of the past 30 years.

Tags: language, emoticons, SMS, Canadian Press, grammar, prescriptive, descriptive, students

The free-form writing style of social networks like Twitter and Facebook is changing the way people communicate, and causing students to fail English. That’s the claim of a piece out this afternoon from the Canadian Press. According to the article “(at) Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, one in 10 new students are not qualified to take the mandatory writing courses required for graduation.” And academicians are, in part, blaming social networking.

I was interviewed for this, and I share the view that students who let social network style, like SMS (text) abbreviations, such as L8R, and emoticons (like smiley faces) slip into their more formal communications, run the risk of being viewed as poor communicators by very influential people, such as potential employers and graduate school review boards. These things:

“say to me … ‘well, this person doesn’t think very clearly, and they’re not very good at analyzing complex subjects, and they’re not very good at expressing themselves, or … they can’t spell, and they can’t punctuate,’ These folks are going to short-change themselves, and right or wrong, they’re looked down upon in traditional corporations.”

So have fun when you’re online, but remember, almost everything you “say” and do is visible to the entire world, including people who can make a difference in helping you achieve your objectives. And even if the social media gurus tell you the old rules have been thrown out, and communications has gone informal, and you should be yourself, someone apparently forgot to send that memo to our universities and corporations.

Social media, particularly its use in business communications, is still in its early days, and like anything new and different, there’s plenty of mythology surrounding it. The problem posed by certain of these myths is that they mislead those trying to adopt social media, and can lead to bad decisions, poorly implemented initiatives and unrealized expectations.

E-Mail Is Dead

The blogosphere has been buzzing recently in response to a Wall Street Journal article declaring that e-mail is dead. Unfortunately, the Journal didn’t say e-mail was dead, but reported on Oct. 12 in Why Email No Longer Rules, “Email has had a good run as king of communications. But its reign is over.”

The concept that e-mail is in decline, rather than dead, is too complex for many bloggers, and the technique of declaring things “dead” is a tried and true blog traffic generator. Gizmodo, for example, responded with Email is Dead? Oh Really? and went on to cite statistics that show both e-mail and social networking use on the increase.

E-mail is far from dead, particularly in large companies. It’s hip and cool to say Facebook, Twitter, and text messaging have replaced e-mail, and “anything worth saying can be said in 140 characters,” but it isn’t true. Running a business is a complex affair requiring complex communications. Some companies use Sharepoint and other technologies to manage documents, but many still use e-mail to circulate Powerpoint, Excel, Word and other docs. Could you imagine negotiating a contract 140 characters at a time?

I emailed this article to my editor at Talent Zoo (where it originally appeared). Had I sent it to her via Twitter, it would have required 60 separate messages.

The CEO Needs to Blog

Guy Kawasaki once said that one measure of a company’s commitment to the Macintosh community was whether the CEO could be found in the company’s Macworld booth. That might be realistic for startups and small companies, but no way would you find the CEO of Adobe in the company’s booth.

Similarly, today, many contend that a truly engaged CEO should have a blog, or ought to be on Twitter. After Barrack Obama was elected, many people were disappointed when they couldn’t find him on Twitter chatting with the hoi polloi.

As powerful as it would be, it is unrealistic to expect the CEO of a public company or the president of a nation of over 300 million people to maintain a blog, or a personal presence on Twitter. To do so might not be a good use of time for a CEO or a president. These people must also comply with laws, governing communications by publicly traded companies or the president of the United States, which limit what they can say and may require too much oversight to be worth doing.

Certainly there are successful CEO bloggers at major companies, and politicians who use Twitter to communicate with the electorate, like Malcolm Turnbull, Leader of the Opposition in Australia. But that doesn’t mean it’s right for every company.

Many CEOs have opted out for business reasons. Or maybe the CEO is a poor or uninteresting communicator. Perhaps social media is not a part of the company’s communication strategy.

A company should choose its bloggers on the basis of their potential to write well and interestingly on one or more topics relevant to the company’s business. In all likelihood there are people in the company who are more interesting and more articulate than the CEO.

MySpace Is Where the Young People Hang Out

Everyone knows MySpace is the social network for kids, but in truth, in October, 2006, comScore reported More than Half (51%) of MySpace Visitors are Now Age 35 or Older, as the Site’s Demographic Composition Continues to Shift. 2006! That was three years ago! Of course the demographic at MySpace, and on every network, continues to shift, and is interpreted differently from study to study. A recent Pew Internet survey found:

“The median age of a Twitter user is 31, which has remained stable over the past year. The median age for MySpace is now 26, down from 27 in May 2008, and the median age for LinkedIn is now 39, down from 40. Facebook, however, is graying a bit: the median age for this social network site is now 33, up from 26 in May 2008.”*

Early impressions of a social network tend to stay with people, even if these impressions are no longer true. In social media, as in any endeavor, conventional wisdom should not be used to make business decisions. A little research can help a company avoid investing in the wrong places.

There’s plenty of data on social network demographics, although, as we learned above, it’s not always consistent. Even so, making any statement about “young people” constitutes a vague generalization, and is a phrase last used without irony by June Cleaver.

Social Media Communication Is Informal

Everyone knows online communications is not the same as formal business communications. Spelling, grammar and capitalization don’t matter as much as they used to, and Twitter, with its 140-character limit, also calls for a loosening of the rules.

Wrong. When you’re communicating online, people are judging you. Sometimes they’re just jerks who judge people, or martinets who enjoy correcting others, but they can also be important people who can influence your success.

If I was going to hire a PR agency, I would read the agency blog to learn about the firm’s communications philosophy. If its employees write poorly on the company’s blog, which after all is just a new kind of company web site, then why should I expect good writing if I retained them for my company?

In an age in which there are many regulations limiting how much information a potential employer can request from a candidate, social media is one area where they can freely gather extensive data on potential hires.

Recruiters are looking beyond employment history for hints about a candidate’s personality, possible drug or alcohol use, attitude toward previous employers and ability to communicate clearly and professionally. If you post a story about your night in a Mexican jail, you probably won’t get hired.

In fact, a poll by Harris Interactive and CareerBuilder disclosed that 14% of recruiters who use social media to vet candidates would reject a candidate who used emoticons (aka “smiley faces”)! LOL!

It’s Going to Go Viral

The best way to ensure the failure of a social media initiative is to label it “viral.” Every marketing manager is eager to create a video that will be viewed 1 million times on YouTube, making the company’s name a household word. Truly viral videos rarely come out of the corporate communications laboratory. They are instead more spontaneous, and involve a complex synthesis of many elements that is too difficult to reproduce with a business process.

When I was at the agency, we made what we referred to as a viral video. We wrote a script, scouted locations, and hired a videographer. The project took over a month. We posted the finished video on YouTube and Facebook. More than two years later, the video has fewer than 700 views.

On the other hand, my daughter, who was seven at the time, asked if I could suspend a couple of her Webkinz stuffed animals from a ceiling fan. She suggested we take a video of the animals spinning around. She then asked, “Can we put this one on YouTube?” That video has nearly 7000 views, many positive comments, and at one time was the most viewed YouTube video of Webkinz spinning on a ceiling fan.

Don’t Be Taken In By Conventional Wisdom

Most of the myths above stem from sweeping generalizations, a common form of logical fallacy. Corporate communicators who approach social media initiatives with logic instead of emotion will avoid the perils posed by buying into the mythology. You should always do the research before venturing into a new area, and assumptions should only be acted on when they are backed with data.

If you enjoyed this article, please feel free to add me on Facebook and Twitter. Thanks!

* Pew Internet and American Life Project, Twitter and Status Updating, Fall 2009 by Susannah Fox, Kathryn Zickuhr, Aaron Smith, Oct 21, 2009

This piece originally appeared November, 2009, on my Very Public Relations column on Talent Zoo.

Tags: Debunking, social media myths, CEO blogging, e-mail, dead, viral video, myspace, young people, informal communications, conventional wisdom

I see so many motivational quotes on Twitter, I thought I would take a moment to share a few of my favorites:

1. How will you know the depths of your ineptitude until you try something you’re unsure of?
2. If you fail to plan, you’ll have a lot more time to do the actual work.
3. I have never failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work. Don’t you wish you could screw up 10,000 times before you got fired? You’re not Thomas Effing Edison, pal.
4. Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, feed him for life. Teach a man how to exploit disadvantaged workers in the third world, build a multinational seafood empire and feed his family for generations.
5. Some see the future with anxiety, some with hope, and still others as the inevitable approach of the apocalypse replete with biblical plagues, pestilence and alien invasion.

I hope I’ve helped brighten your day if only a bit.