Yesterday Kristen spoke about Ivy Bean, an 104 year old lady who is apparently an avid Twitter user.

The story was picked up in the UK by The Daily Telegraph and The Sun and then repeated through The Next Web.

Unfortunately, this was just a pre-arranged PR campaign and most people, including myself, didn’t realise this. However today TechCrunch explained the rest of the story.

The picture which was circulated a few days ago can be seen below :

The picture which everyone didn’t see was this one :

The guy in the picture is Martin Dix from Geek Squad, which is the company behind this PR stunt. When I checked out Ivy’s profile the other day what I didn’t notice was that her first tweet was on May 14th, the very day before her story was in all the British newspapers. I’d like to believe that if I had saw that I would have put two and two together and realise that this was a PR stunt but alas, hindsight is a wonderful thing!

Just goes to show how a simple PR setup like this can grow arms and legs when you mention the word ‘Twitter’!!!

Link : The REAL story behind the 104-Year-Old who joined Twitter

My grandparents are just now getting accustomed to email. And my parents are sometimes iffy about text messaging. But Ivy Bean is 104 years old, and is an avid user of Twitter. She already has over 10,000 followers.

As Twitter begins to take over many of the functions used for emailing, instant messaging and blogging, it’s certain that this now mainstream tool will have a quickly growing user base from the more mature demographic. So is its device-bridging capabilities the perfect medium for gaining on the older generation?

Twitter is a pretty simple tool to use, especially when you’re using Twitter for basic communication or keeping in touch with a few key people, such as family members. So perhaps Twitter is the ideal medium for such communication, despite the slower adoption of certain technology from the mature demographic. But the fastest growing demographic on Facebook is from this particular demographic. So why couldn’t it happen on Twitter as well?

Now, Ivy Bean was already pretty tech savvy when she joined Twitter. Having already created a Facebook account, Ivy was adept at social networking and readily uses it to keep in touch with family and friends. But perhaps Twitter could become an even more welcoming introduction to social media for the older demographic.

The concept of Twitter, however, isn’t always easily grasped, especially by those (of any age) that haven’t tried it out yet. Many often say that the true value of Twitter comes not from basic communication but in marketing and online brand-building. I think, to a certain extent, this is an overstatement–one that Ivy Bean is beginning to prove wrong.

And Twitter is actually layering in even more features to enhance the communication capabilities of Twitter, making it a more inherently useful tool. As more features are added onto Twitter, the more useful it could become to a broader set of users. I think geo-data could be important for Twitter in this regard. Microsoft Vine is currently testing an update system with integrated geo-data features to be used for alerts within a preexisting community.

But I think Microsoft’s introduction of such technology gives geo-data a real chance to become widely accepted as a controllable factor in social media and intercommunication practices. Twitter may be able to take advantage of the growing acceptance of geo-data and integrate it into its own service in order to generate revenue and appeal to even more mainstream (and older) users.

Though a great deal of Twitter’s value comes in the form of marketing potential for personal or business brands, it’s also important to remember the core principle of Twitter is to merely communicate with others. And that’s something we all do at any age.

This past week has been kind of rough for Twitter, as the microblogging platform attempted to improve the system around @replies. Prior to the changes, users could view @replies between followers and those they follow, as well as the @replies from those they follow, even if they’re directed at someone else. This gave a decent amount of filter control for items showing up in Twitter streams, and enabled users to see multiple angles of a given Twitter conversation.

The importance of being able to see these different angles around Twitter correspondence between two or more people is that it also allowed for some level of user-discovery. Think of it as the ability to jump into a conversation that’s going on with a person you know, and their friend. Now you have an opportunity to introduce yourself into the conversation and make a new friend.

But Twitter has been tweaking the @replies in the past few days, causing an uproar, a full-scale Twitter revolt including a dedicated site, and a prompt repeal of the changed features on Twitter. A series of blog posts on Twitter explained the changes and the reasoning behind these changes, but in the end, Twitter is still looking to further modify the way @replies work. For the time being, a temporary fix has been put in place–only mutual friends (followers & folowees) can see an @reply posted by a Twitter user when the actual “Reply” button has been utilized. A tweet that has a mention (@username) and was created without using the “Reply” button will still be seen by all followers.

Whew!

So why are things so complicated? The @reply and the newly modified @username systems are confusing, and more importantly, they’re not fluid. As the most basic level, they work for their respective purposes. But utilizing these systems for meaningful conversation, complete with context and easy correspondence, is quite a task on Twitter. The popular microblogging platform is begining to overtake some of the activity we’re seeing in traditional blogs, instant messenger clients and email, so the necessity for fluid conversation is increasing exponentially on a daily basis.

To that end, there are a couple of things going on. Third party developers have been more forward-moving in their ability to provide additional context around a given conversation, though this is still a difficult task for the developer community, given Twitter’s own limitations. Additionally, Twitter has been ramping up the amount of new features its introducing to users, as the site has seen a great deal of growth in the past six months a lone and has officially become a mainstream product with mainstream expectations from investors and users alike.

A major missing key to Twitter is the ability to have a comprehensive conversation with one or more Twitter users, especially in the public forum of Twitter streams as opposed to direct messages. The the faster Twitter can figure out a way to retrofit its existing systems to work with our existing schema around web-based and mobile communication, the better we’ll all be.

Gary Jinks posted a funny video the other day on Twitter Twiddle about the latest celebrity craze! Enjoy

Sheamus from Twittercism, argubly the best Twitter blog around at the moment, wrote a post yesterday about his public debate on Twitter with Aaron Wall from SEOBook entitled ‘Twitter Is A Public Forum, So Be Mindful How You Quote Me‘.

It started 2 days ago when Sheamus noticed that the pop up for SEOBook’s ‘7 Days To Success’ course would still come up on his screen, even though he had clicked the option to not see it again. So he contacted Aaron with this request :

Aaron, polite request: can you take a look at the ‘don’t ask me again’ part of the pop-up on SEO Book? It *always* asks again.

The conversation continued with the following.

Aaron replied :

if I could replicate the problem I might spend a bit of resources on fixing it, but it works for me. are you clearing cookies?

Sheamus said :

I clear regularly, yes. It doesn’t bother me as much but I link to your site a bit on here, and folks complain at *me*.

Aaron then replied with a statement which suprised me a little. He said :

tell them not to be cheap asses or whiners. Either I effectively market my site, or I stop working on it 80+ hours a week.

I was really surprised by this comment. As regular BloggingTips readers know, I’m not a fan of these kind of pop ups myself though I do understand that this type of promotional method is effective and can increase sign ups by a good percentage. However, I don’t like the implication that anyone who complains about a pop up is a whiner, nor are they a cheap ass just because they are not interested in the product being promoted.

In his post Sheamus rightly points out that he wasn’t complaining about the pop up, he was simply letting Aaron know that the option to not see the pop up again was not working.

Ciaran Norris joined in the debate and replied with the following :

# Wow. Been taking lessons in customer service from big brands? Cheap asses & whiners? Really?

# of course you can market your site how you like, but people can also say if they find pop-ups annoying.

# maybe you should think about them as non-customers

Aaron replied about 20 minutes or so later with the following tweets :

# I get about 10 product support requests daily from people who never have intent on spending a cent with me.

# the same people whine about pop ups (or any profitable marketing strategy).

# I probably wasted millions of dollars catering to people who never had any intent of being a customer.

# those who find marketing by giving away free great information a turn off are generally pretty useless

# particularly when it takes less effort for them to click the “don’t show” link than it does for them to bitch & whine

# not really. because most non-customers (for me anyhow) probably think the information is too advanced.

# those who bitch about a pop up w a free offer *for real potential customers* were never going to be customers. just azzwholez

Having public debates via Twitter

Before I proceed, I just want to point out that I don’t Aaron Wall personally. I think some of the tweets above might give the wrong impression of him but from what I have read, he’s a nice guy.

You need to remember that it’s very easy to get caught up in a heated discussion and say something which, in hindsight, was probably not the best thing to say. Over the years I did this several times on forums I ran and have had to then apologise to people and clarify what I meant. Things can also be taken out of context easily online too.

To his credit, Aaron did not backtrack and remove his tweets and he explained his view about the whole thing in his post ‘But Who’s Opinion Matters?‘ and replied at Twittercism too (for the record, I actually agree with a lot of what he says in his post).

For me this whole debate has highlighted how public Twitter really is (Sure you can protect your updates though that’s not something I’d like to do). Because of the interactions we make with other people through Twitter it is very easy to forget that your tweets are public, that everyone can see what you are writing. It’s also easy to misintepret what is being said because we may only see half of a conversation.

In this situation I think Aaron Wall did not paint himself in a good light, particularly by saying that those who complain about pop ups but who have no intention of signing up to his course are ‘azzwholez’. Again, it’s worth remembering that things can be said in the heat of the moment and it is easy to misintepret or overexaggerate a situation.

All of this raises somes questions :

• Should we be having heated debates through Twitter?
• What kind of replies should be sent privately via a direct message instead of posted publicly?
• Should strong views and personal opinions be tweeted at all?

Twitter is a great way to build your online repuation however reputations can be destroyed much quicker than they are built and theres always a chance of of doing that if you get involved in a heated debate online. In this sitation I don’t think Aaron has hurt his reputation though it does remind us all how public Twitter is and how negative Tweets can affect our online persona.

Have you ever tweeted something you later regretted or said something personal which should have been posted privately?

I’d love to hear your opinion on having debates through Twitter

There are 3 main locations you can tell people a little about yourself on Twitter : You can add some info to your Twitter Background, add a descriptive bio and last but not least, you can link to a website.

Linking to my website is not something I really spent much time thinking about, I simply linked to my personal blog. However, a few days ago I decided to make it a bit more personal for Twitter users.

I created a welcome page for Twitter Users on my blog and linked to it from my Twitter account. This page is not linked to on the blog itself so only Twitter users will see it (and of course, you guys too!).

In the welcome post I talk about what users can expect me to talk about on Twitter. And after reading Jonathan Baileys post last week about why people will not follow you, I was inspired to add this to my welcome page too and tell users which type of Twitter users I will not follow back. I think this is a smart thing to do as it tells users why you might not follow them back so they are less likely to take it personally.

You can of course take this further. After following Kristen Nicole I was sent an automatic message saying “Saw u added me. Thx! What are u workin on? Made a welcome greeting for you!”.

Here is the welcome greeting she sends to her new followers :

Not only is a video a great way to welcome new followers, it should also go a long way to making you seem more real and not just some random person publishing their thoughts through Twitter.

I encourage you to create a information page about yourself and then link to it via Twitter. I’m sure it will convince a few people to start following you. Remember, you don’t need to own a website to do this. There are countless free blogging solutions and social media sites which allow you to open up your own space and publish some information about yourself

Thanks,
Kevin

* p.s. you can view my welcome page here